The royals - Kitty Kelley [78]
The children spent the rest of the day with their nannies and nurses, the sturdy Scottish women with sensible black shoes and tightly permed hair, who fed them, dressed them, bathed them, and even slept in the same room with them. At 5:00 P.M.* every day, the nannies took the children back for another visit with their mother and father before taking them to the nursery for their baths and bedtime. The children saw their nannies more often than they ever saw their parents.
“A miserable childhood,” recalled Prince Charles years later, blaming his parents, especially his father, for his upbringing. One of his saddest recollections was growing up alone. He said that his father was rarely present for his birthdays and missed the first five. Instead his father sent him notes.
“Loneliness is something royal children have always suffered and always will,” said Lord Mountbatten, refusing to place blame on either parent. “Not much you can do about it, really.”
The romance novelist Barbara Cartland could not bring herself to fault the Queen as a mother. Instead she damned her by implication. “Charles was born when his mother was very young, so she didn’t spend an awful lot of time with him,” she said. “He was such an unhappy little boy growing up.”
The Queen Mother knew where to place the blame. “The papers continually accuse Philip of having been a harsh father,” she confided to a dinner partner. “If they only knew the truth…. It was always Lilibet who was too strict and Philip who tried to moderate her.”
Each time the Queen returned from one of her royal tours, she expressed surprise at how much her young son had grown and how noisy he had become. Unaccustomed to his energy, she felt overwhelmed around him. “He’s such a responsibility,” she said with a sigh.
Early on, she decided the children should be known in the household simply as “Charles” and “Anne” rather than “sir” and “ma’am.” She decreed that maids and footmen no longer had to bow and curtsy to the sovereign’s children, reserving that homage for herself and her mother. Like the staff, Charles, too, was required to bow to his mother before he left the room, just as he bowed to his grandmother, the Queen Mother.
“You always have to do as Granny tells you,” he told a playmate, “or else she has no sweets in her bag.”
“Why do you bow to her?” asked the playmate.
“It’s what I have to do.”
“Why?”
“Because Papa says so.”
When his nanny insisted Charles wear a pair of tartan shorts beneath his kilt at Balmoral, he refused.
“I’m not wearing those,” he said. “Papa doesn’t.”
“Papa” was the sun that shone on his childhood and warmed his days, despite occasional scoldings and spankings. “I think he has had quite a strong influence on me, particularly in my younger days,” Charles said in later years. “I had perfect confidence in his judgment.” Only when Charles was unable to live up to his father’s expectations did he turn on Philip. Then Charles said his father was a bully, who ruled his childhood like a despot. He sniped to friends that there are two types of fathers: the first instills self-confidence in his children by offering praise when merited and withholding criticism when possible. “The second is the Duke of Edinburgh,” he said. By then Charles had forgotten how he once idolized his father and imitated everything he did, right down to walking with his head down and his hands clasped behind his back.
“As a child, Charles begged to be with