The royals - Kitty Kelley [36]
“I guess it really started in earnest at Balmoral [in 1946],” Philip said, recalling the pretty twenty-year-old Princess, who still laughed at his jokes.
“I still recall the occasions when Prince Philip was an honored guest of Princess Lilibet—as we all called her—at those after-the-theater parties when he was on leave from the navy,” recalled René Roussin, the former royal chef. “Then I would be asked—as a special request from the Princess—to send up some lobster patties, of which Prince Philip was especially fond.”
After Philip had spent several days with the royal family at their Scottish castle, the King felt he had overstayed his welcome. “The boy must go south,” he told his favorite equerry, RAF Wing Commander Peter Townsend. So Philip left. He later invited Elizabeth to visit him at the Kensington Palace apartment of his aunt the Marchioness of Milford Haven and the Chester Street home of the Mountbattens. He also took Elizabeth to visit Mountbatten’s older daughter, Patricia, and her new husband, John Brabourne, at their modest cottage in Kent.
“It was an absolutely foreign way of life for her,” recalled Brabourne. “She had never lived that sort of existence, and she was enchanted, though her maid could not believe it when she saw where we lived.”
Philip also took Elizabeth to Coppins, the home of the Duchess of Kent, in Buckinghamshire, where he had spent many of his shore leaves. The Greek Duchess, known as Marina, who had been imported to marry the homosexual Duke of Kent, was one of Philip’s favorite relatives. After several visits to Coppins, Elizabeth trusted her enough to confide, “Daddy doesn’t want me to see too much of Philip or anyone, so please don’t tell him.” The Duchess never did.
Philip’s cousin Alexandra, who knew about the couple’s secret visits to Coppins, remembered his passion for Cobina Wright Jr. and wondered if he was simply toying with Elizabeth.
“I only hope Philip isn’t just flirting with her,” she told Marina. “He’s so casual that he flirts without realizing it.”
“I think his flirting days are over,” replied the Duchess. “He would be the one to be hurt now if it was all just a flirtation or if it is not to be. One thing I’m sure about, those two would never do anything to hurt each other.”
Reflecting on their courtship many years later, Philip said: “I suppose one thing led to another. I suppose I began to think about it seriously… oh, let me think now, when I got back in 1946 and went to Balmoral. It was probably then that we, that it became, you know, that we began to think about it seriously, and even talk about it….”
After spending time at Balmoral in August 1946, Philip proposed and Elizabeth accepted—secretly. This was the first time she had acted on her own without first consulting her parents. She then caused the first real argument she ever had with them by insisting she wanted to marry the penniless Greek Prince. She knew that the Royal Marriages Act of 1772 specified that descendants of King George II had to get the permission of the monarch to marry and that permission had to be “declared in council” before the marriage could take place. Elizabeth wanted her father’s permission, but he did not want to give it. He confided his discomfort to his equerry, who shared the King’s opinion of the brash young man and agreed that the King should delay making any decision.
Elizabeth’s only ally within the royal family was her grandmother Queen Mary, whose arranged marriage to King George V had grown into a loving union that had produced five children. So when Prince Philip was ridiculed in her presence, she was not receptive. She frowned when he was derided as a product of “a crank school with theories of complete social equality where the boys were taught to mix with all and sundry.” Queen Mary said nothing and stared straight ahead.
“What sort of background would this be for a son-in-law to the King?” she was asked.
“Useful,” she said curtly.
The cautious King consulted his courtiers about the possibility of his