The royals - Kitty Kelley [54]
The Princess’s maid and dresser, BoBo MacDonald, inspected everything before Her Royal Highness arrived and declared the accommodations satisfactory. “Why, it’s just like her bedroom at Windsor Castle,” she said.
Elizabeth never complained about her accommodations on foreign visits. She left that to her husband. On a subsequent visit to Washington, the royal couple again stayed in Blair House and were awakened throughout the night by the comings and goings of Secret Service agents. The next morning, Philip objected to U.S. Chief of Protocol Henry Catto. “I say, Catto. Do you employ professional door slammers in this house?” Duly chastised, Catto immediately ordered all the doorjambs to be lined in felt.
The President’s elderly mother, who was bedridden on the top floor of Blair House, was looking forward to meeting the royal couple. “She’ll kill me if she doesn’t get to say hello to you,” Truman told the Princess. So Elizabeth and Philip followed the President up six flights of stairs.
“Mother,” bellowed Truman, “I’ve brought Princess Elizabeth to see you!”
Infirm and almost deaf at the age of ninety-eight, Martha Truman had learned that Winston Churchill had been returned as Prime Minister on October 25, 1951. So she was primed for the royal introduction.
The little old woman beamed. “I’m so glad your father’s been reelected,” she said.
Elizabeth smiled and Philip chuckled as Harry Truman threw back his head and roared.
The folksy President had won the affection of the royal couple, and Elizabeth wrote him a three-page letter of thanks: “The memory of our visit to Washington will long remain with us, and we are so grateful to you for having invited us. Our only sadness was that our stay with you was so short, but what we saw has only made us wish all the more that it may be possible for us to return again one day….”
British Paramount News filmed one thousand feet of newsreel on the royal visit to Washington, because after the GI presence in England during the war, Britons were intrigued with America. They packed the movie houses to see the footage. The Foreign Office complimented the British Ambassador to the United States for a job well done, and the Ambassador wrote to the President: “I am so delighted with the success of the visit of Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh that I feel I must express my own deep gratitude to you. I know from what they said to us how much Princess Elizabeth and her husband enjoyed their stay at Blair House.”
On their return home, Elizabeth and Philip were buoyed by the praise they received for improving Anglo-American relations. The King and Queen met them at Victoria Station with Prince Charles, who timidly approached his parents as if they were strangers. The photograph of Princess Elizabeth greeting her three-year-old son with a pat on the back would haunt her years later when the young boy grew up and, citing the picture, criticized her for being a cold and distant mother.
The King, who had undergone three operations in three years, said he felt so much better that he wanted to reinstate his visit to Australia and New Zealand. “An operation is not an illness,” he said, “and a sea voyage would be beneficial.” His doctors adamantly refused, so once again Elizabeth and Philip were pressed into service. The King received tentative permission from his doctors to plan a therapeutic cruise to South Africa in the spring, and the departure date was set for the next March. The country rejoiced over the King’s recovery. “By then he was esteemed to the point of tenderness,” recalled writer Rebecca West. A national day of thanksgiving was declared for December 9, 1951. Church bells pealed, the Commonwealth thanked God, and the King knighted his doctors. Five days later he celebrated his fifty-sixth birthday at Buckingham Palace.
Preparing for the rigorous five-month trip