The King's Speech - Mark Logue [28]
Bertie, by contrast, was gradually becoming his father’s favourite. On 4 June 1920, at the age of twenty-four, he was created Duke of York, Earl of Inverness and Baron Killarney. ‘I know that you have behaved very well, in a difficult situation for a young man & that you have done what I asked you to,’ the King wrote to him. ‘I hope you will always look upon me as yr. best friend & always tell me everything & you will always find me ever ready to help you and give you good advice.’25
In his capacity as president of the Boys’ Welfare Society, which then grew into the Industrial Welfare Society, the Duke, as we will henceforth call him, began to visit coal mines, factories and rail yards, developing an interest in working conditions and acquiring the nickname of the ‘industrial Prince’. Starting in July 1921 he also instituted an interesting social experiment: a series of annual summer camps, held initially on a disused aerodrome at New Romney on the Kent coast and later at Southwold Common in Suffolk, which were designed to bring together boys from a wide range of social backgrounds. The last was to take place on the eve of war in 1939.
The Duke rose even further in his father’s estimation following his marriage on 26 April 1923 to the society beauty Elizabeth Bowes Lyon. Although his bride had led a life even more sheltered than that of her husband, she was a commoner – albeit a high-born one. The King, who had to give his consent under the Royal Marriage Act of 1772, did not hesitate in so doing. Society had changed, he appeared to have reasoned, making it acceptable for his children to marry commoners – provided they came from among the highest three ranks of the British nobility.
Bertie and Elizabeth had met at a ball in the early summer of 1920. The daughter of the Earl and Countess of Strathmore, Elizabeth was twenty and had just arrived in London society to universal acclaim. A large number of young men were keen to marry her, but she was in no hurry to say yes to any of them – especially the Duke. It was not only that she was averse to becoming a member of the royal family, with all the constraints that this imposed. The Duke also did not seem that much of a catch: although kind, charming and good looking, he was shy and inarticulate, thanks in part to the stutter.
The Duke fell in love with her, but his early attempts to woo her were not successful: part of the problem, as he confided to J. C. C. Davidson, a young Conservative politician, in July 1922, was that he could not propose to a woman, since, as the King’s son, he could not place himself in a position in which he might be refused. For that reason, he had instead sent an emissary to Elizabeth to ask on his behalf for her hand in marriage – and the response had been negative.
Davidson had simple advice for him: no high-spirited girl was going to accept a second-hand proposal and so, if the Duke was really as much in love with her as he claimed, then he should propose himself. In 16 January 1923 the newspapers were full of their engagement. Three decades later, after she was widowed, the then Queen Mother wrote to Davidson to ‘thank you for the advice you gave the King in 1922’.26
Their wedding on 26 April 1923 in Westminster Abbey – being used for the first time for the nuptials of a son of the King – was a joyous occasion. The bride wore a dress of cream chiffon moiré, a long train of silk net and a point de Flandres lace veil, both of which had been lent her by Queen Mary. The Duke was in his Royal Air Force uniform. There were 1,780 places in the Abbey – as the Morning Post reported the next day, there was a ‘large and brilliant congregation which included many of the leading personages of the nation and Empire’. ‘You are indeed a lucky man,’ the King wrote to his son. ‘I miss you . . . you