The royals - Kitty Kelley [105]
She had spent weeks preparing for the tour, including days of wardrobe fittings with her favorite dressmaker, Hardy Amies. For this trip she had allowed her hatmaker, Frederick Fox, to make a dress. “Freddie was thrilled,” recalled a friend. “He spends months designing the gown, makes it, and goes to the Palace for a fitting. Blue sort of sheath with silver bugle beads on the long sleeves. The Queen loves it. He does the fitting; she looks great. Then she presses a button. An old crone comes crawling in, hauling a box the size of Madagascar. The Queen opens it and removes an amethyst brooch as big as a plate. She lugs out diamonds the size of soup bowls and plops them all on her bosom. The style and creation of the dress is lost under the gargantuan crown jewels. Freddie rips everything off: the bows, the bugle beads, the whole lot. The Queen senses his distress. She says, ‘But that’s what they want to see.’ ” Someone later asked her an abstract question: “What do you think of taste?” The Queen said, “I don’t think it helps.”
On that trip to Canada, Her Majesty traveled to Quebec with her husband and grudgingly accepted the protection of bulletproof limousines and riot-control policemen. Philip chafed at so much security and, as always, spoke out. The Foreign Office patiently explained the political tensions building among French Canadians and noted that violence had become a terrible reality since the Kennedy assassination a few months before.
“Kennedy wouldn’t have been shot,” snapped Philip, “if it hadn’t been for all the bloody security surrounding him.”
Throughout Canada the Queen was trailed by armed guards and squad cars. She attended functions that required invitations and made her two speeches from secure television studios. Sailing up the St. Lawrence River aboard her royal yacht, frogmen checked the hull for explosives at every stop.
“Fancy having to put up with this sort of thing,” said her dresser, BoBo MacDonald.
“Don’t worry about me,” said the Queen. “Nobody’s going to hurt me. I’m as safe as houses.”
She spoke English in Ottawa and French in Quebec, urging fraternity on both feuding factions. She praised Canada as “one of the older and most stable nations of the world.” Still, she was hissed and booed, but despite the insults and screams, she never flinched.
After she left, Canadian television presented an hour-long show about her visit. “The question remains,” concluded the commentator, “was it worth it? For all that was accomplished—the opening of a building here and making a speech there—was it worth the strife, the harsh words, oppressive security measures? We believe it was not. Good night.”
In the past, the magnificent voice of Winston Churchill would have trumpeted the virtues of the British monarchy and drowned out such criticism. But that voice was gone. The Queen’s first and favorite* Prime Minister had fallen into a coma in January 1965 and died nine days later. His death marked the end of an era for England and left the monarchy without its staunchest defender.
“The grandeur of Great Britain died tonight,” the BBC reported on January 24, 1965. “The power and glory are gone.”
The Queen wept privately. Then she composed herself and gave her revered mentor the grandest royal funeral ever accorded a commoner. Years before, Churchill had issued instructions for his burial: “I want lots of soldiers and bands.” His sovereign gave him all of that and more.
Attuned to Churchill’s sense of history and theater, she instructed the Earl Marshal, who is also the Duke of Norfolk and in charge of royal pageants, to spare no expense. England was saying good-bye to its savior, and the Queen knew that the world would be watching this historic farewell on television. She wanted the spectacle to be as magnificent as the man himself.
She ordered that his body lie in state for three days and nights in Westminster Hall so that