The royals - Kitty Kelley [48]
“It’s a boy. It’s a boy,” shouted a policeman at the Palace gates. The gathering crowds sang lustily for hours as the country celebrated the birth of a future king. The royal baby was hailed with forty-one-gun salutes from His Majesty’s warships around the globe. Winston Churchill said the birth of Prince Charles had made the British monarchy “the most secure in the world.” Prime Minister Clement Attlee congratulated the royal family, who by their “example in private life as well as in the devotion to public duty, have given strength and comfort to many in these times of stress and uncertainty.”
At Windsor Castle, the two-ton curfew bell, which rings only for royals on four occasions—birth, marriage, investiture, and death—tolled for hours. For the next week, London’s church bells pealed day and night, bonfires blazed, and fountains spouted blue-for-boy water. More than four thousand telegrams arrived at Buckingham Palace the first night, and a dozen temporary typists were hired to handle the letters and packages that poured in from around the empire and beyond.
The day after Prince Charles was born, the King ordered laborers working on Clarence House to “stop taking so damned many tea breaks.” He insisted they work overtime to get the residence ready so his daughter, his son-in-law, and his eventual heir could move from their cramped quarters in Buckingham Palace. During World War II, the King had lent Clarence House to the British Red Cross. When he decided to give the bombed-out mansion—which had no heat, bathrooms, or electricity—to his daughter as a wedding present so she could live near him, Parliament allocated £50,000 ($200,000) for renovations. But work stoppages throttled England’s postwar economy and stalled the project for eighteen months, and it ended up costing five times more than the war-drained treasury had allotted. Still, the King’s subjects did not object. The royal family was so beloved after the war that the public willingly absorbed the cost of $1 million for remodeling the royal residence and installing crystal chandeliers, satin draperies, and gold faucets. Only the communist newspaper in London questioned the expenditures for the future sovereign at a time when the average weekly wage was less than $25 and scores of homeless families were shivering in abandoned military barracks.
The Queen addressed the misery of “all those who are living in uncongenial surroundings and who are longing for a time when they will have a home of their own.” In her radio address on the occasion of Their Majesties’ Silver Jubilee in 1948, she said, “I am sure that patience, tolerance, and love will help them to keep their faith undimmed and their courage undaunted when things seem difficult.”
The King continued raging at the laborers working on Clarence House, his irascibility now exacerbated by failing health. At the age of fifty-three, his habit of chain-smoking cigarettes had clogged his lungs with cancer, although the word was never used in his presence. The deadly disease had blocked his bronchial tubes, which caused incessant coughing and shortness of breath. He relied on his doctor, Sir John Weir, a genial seventy-two-year-old homeopath, who dispensed more jokes than remedies while His Majesty’s health deteriorated. Finally the amiable practitioner called in six other elderly specialists, who recommended surgery to remove the King’s left lung. None of the doctors ever told the King of his spreading