The royals - Kitty Kelley [87]
The British press took exception. “We could not drag even a simple denial out of the palace for the British public,” said an editorial in the London Daily Herald. “For Americans, a denial. For the British people, no comment. The Queen’s subjects were evidently not supposed to know.” The Daily Mirror blamed the Queen’s courtiers: “They need lessons on how to handle a hot potato.”
The next day the Queen put on her public face, and the United Press reported from London that she “was amused” by the rumors of a rift between her and her husband. “The Queen shrugged off the story,” UP said, “and gave the impression that her reunion with the Duke in Portugal after the longest separation of their marriage would effectively squelch further gossip…. Anyone with eyes to see will know then how wrong the stories are.”
A horde of reporters and photographers swarmed into Lisbon to watch the royal reunion at the airport. Philip was already irascible about the press coverage he had received, which compared him—unfavorably—with Queen Victoria’s husband, Albert. Victoria had included him in her meetings with ministers and allowed him to read her state papers. At first Philip joked about his lack of status. “Constitutionally, I don’t exist,” he said. But when he arrived in Lisbon and saw the press waiting for him, he stopped chuckling. “Those bloody lies that you people print to make money,” he snapped. “These lies about how I’m never with my wife.”
Running five minutes late, he bounded up the steps to the Queen’s airplane two at a time. He was wearing a suit, a white shirt, a tie, and a bronze tan with a small white shadow around his chin where he had obviously just shaved off his beard.
An hour later he emerged from the plane with a faint smudge of lipstick on his cheek and smilingly assumed his position a few paces behind the Queen. They spent the weekend together on the Britannia, anchored in the choppy waters of the river Sado, which was a big concession on the Queen’s part. Never a sailor, she was afraid of water and usually avoided the yacht because she was prone to seasickness, but on this weekend she was determined to accommodate her sea-loving husband. Knowing their schedule was set for the next two years, she decided that after their royal tour of Canada in 1959, she would concentrate on her ambition to have four children. She also would change the rules regarding her family name so that her descendants not in direct line for the throne would carry her husband’s name and be known as Mountbatten-Windsor.
After their four-day state visit to Portugal, the royal couple returned to England, where the Queen made a rare public display of affection. She rewarded her husband for his service to the Commonwealth by issuing a proclamation that granted him the title and titular dignity of a Prince of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. She declared that henceforth he would be known as the Prince Philip* Duke of Edinburgh. She no longer wanted him treated as a mere adjunct or royal accessory. Except for sharing her sacrosanct red boxes and her weekly meetings with the Prime Minister, she made her husband a full partner in her monarchy. She even insisted that when Philip attended royal functions alone, he was to get the complete first verse of the National Anthem, no longer the abbreviated version.
Feeling ennobled, Philip delivered a self-serving speech a few days later, to justify the four months he had spent away from his wife and children. “I believe there are some things for which it is worthwhile making personal sacrifices, and I believe that the British Commonwealth is one of those things, and I, for one, am prepared to sacrifice a good deal if by doing so, I can advance its well-being by even a small degree…. I might have got home for Christmas, but I could not have entertained nearly 1,400 people in the Queen’s yacht from Australia, New Zealand, and those remote communities at twenty-six lunches, dinners, and receptions, and thereby strengthened, I hope,