Chapter I
I JOIN THE HOUSEHOLD
I had always wanted to teach, but I had certainly never intended to become a governess.
I was born on 5 June 1909, in the same house where my mother, and her father before her, had been born—Woodside Cottage, near Kilmarnock in Ayrshire. My father died when I was a year old, and five years later—when I was six—my mother remarried and we came to live in Dunfermline.
I studied at the Moray House Training College in Edinburgh, and my training had taken me into the poorer parts of the city. Here I saw a great deal of poverty, and had to do with children who were not very bright because they were undernourished. I was at that time very young, and I became fired with a crusading spirit. I wanted to do something about the misery and unhappiness I saw all round me. I wanted desperately to help. I always had a great sense of vocation, and the feeling I had a job to do in life, and I had quite made up my mind that this was what my job was to be.
Something else, however, was coming my way.
I had finished my exams, and gone home to rest. Dunfermline is a small country town built on hills. Up to the first world war it was the centre of the linen industry. Both the Queen when she married, and Princess Elizabeth, were given large chests of linen from Dunfermline.
It has a famous old abbey where the body of Robert the Bruce is buried, and a lovely palace, now in ruins, which was the home of the early kings of Scotland. Once it was the capital of Scotland. Charles I was born there and the bed in which he was born is now part of a mantelpiece in nearby Broomhall, the home of the Earl and Countess of Elgin. Andrew Carnegie also was born in Dunfermline in a little humble cottage which remains quite untouched.
Broomhall is a square Georgian house, to the south looking on to the Forth; to the north one can see the lovely range of the Ochil Hills. It has a very large front hall, and round it are placed some of the Elgin marbles. It was old Lord Elgin who brought these over from Greece. As the family is directly descended from Robert the Bruce, his sword and helmet also hang in the hall. Both the helmet and sword are enormous, as he was an outsize man.
One morning I had a letter from Lady Elgin, who knew I had finished my training and had heard I was home on long leave, asking me if I would take her son Andrew, Lord Bruce, in history. He was a charming little boy of seven whom I already knew, and as I had nothing very definite to do when I wasn’t studying myself, I took this on. What influenced me greatly was that I loved walking, and this post was within walking distance of my home, about three miles through shady woods and paths among the farms belonging to Lord Elgin, with occasional glimpses of the Forth through the trees.
As I sat writing the letter accepting Lady Elgin’s offer, I little dreamed that here was one of those turning-points in life that we never do recognize when they first come along.
The Elgins were a charming family, very friendly and simple. Soon the three other Elgin children joined us—Lady Martha, Lady Jean and the Honourable Jamie. Presently I was running a small class at Broomhall, teaching other subjects besides history to four very nice children, and enjoying it thoroughly.
But I still thought of it as a temporary post, to tide me over until I could take up my real life-work.
* * *
The Elgins breakfasted early, about eight o’clock. I used to approach the french windows leading into the schoolroom to the strains of hymns and the tail-end of family prayers, and I would wait in the garden tactfully until these were finished. The children used to peep through their fingers during their devotions to watch for my coming.
Friends and relations were always dropping in and would join us for ‘elevenses’. The grown-ups had coffee and the children a large glass of lemonade, rock cakes, and jam, while the domestic staff and garden workers would retire at the same time to still-room and stable for bread and cheese and cake on their own.
Most large country houses have a still-room. It is the housekeeper’s domain, where all jams are made and stored, all fruit bottled, and light meals that need no cooking, like elevenses and afternoon tea, and after-dinner coffee, and so on, are prepared. It is really an extra pantry and store-room. The linen is mended there, and peaches and fruit are stored. It probably comes from the old days when ales were brewed and home-made wines made.
Lady Rose Leveson-Gower came about this time to Rosyth with her husband, the Admiral, who was stationed there. Rosyth is on the banks of the Forth not far from Broomhall. I was asked if I would take their little girl, Mary, who was rather delicate, for a short session every day.
So now in the good weather, which is not so infrequent in Scotland as some people suppose, I had a really fine day’s walking. I would do the three miles to Admiralty House from Broomhall when I had finished my class there. Then when the day’s work was over, I would walk home again.
It seemed to me then that this was just a pleasant interlude, a temporary arrangement to fill in the time between one course of study and the next. I intended, as soon as my present pupils were ready for school, to return to my first love, which was child psychology. I spent my evenings reading and studying for this very happily. I was twenty-two. At twenty-two one has the illusion of there being lots of time.
* * *
Meanwhile, Fate was marching up on me in the way Fate has. There came one lovely morning when I walked as usual through the gardens of Admiralty House for my session with Mary. The gardens were very charming. Terraces ran down to the River Forth, overlooking a bay called Saint Margaret’s Hope, after Margaret, sister of Edgar Atheling, the Saxon King. She married Malcolm Canmore, King of Scotland. The chroniclers say she was learned and pious, and a keen politician. She did a lot to bring English ways and customs up to Scotland, and it was here she is supposed to have landed when she came north. I always took this part of my walk slowly.
Lady Rose told me that her sister, the Duchess of York, was coming to see her with the Duke, and that she wanted me to meet them. There were always visitors coming and going, and we were seldom alone for our elevenses. As I crossed the lawn I remember there came over me an eerie feeling that someone was watching me. It made me look up toward the house. Then it was I saw there was a face at the window, and for the first time I met that long cool stare I was later to come to know so well.
* * *
Lady Rose’s sister, the pretty little Duchess of York, and her young husband, the Duke, were the visitors. I was introduced to them as usual, and we all ate our buns and drank our coffee before Mary and I went off to work. I was quite enchanted, as people always were, by the little Duchess. She was petite, as her daughter Margaret is today. She had the nicest, easiest, most friendly of manners, and a merry laugh. It was impossible to feel shy in her presence. She was beautifully dressed in blue. There was nothing alarmingly fashionable about her. Her hair was done in a way that suited her admirably, with a little fringe over her forehead.
She sat on the window ledge. The blue of her dress, I remember, exactly matched the sky behind her that morning and the blue of her eyes. I particularly noticed her lovely string of pearls. She did not wear ear-rings then. Her hands and feet were tiny. My whole impression was of someone small and quite perfect.
The Duke was extraordinarily handsome, but I recall thinking he did not look very strong. He was slight, and looked like a boy of eighteen, though he was considerably older than I. He had a diffident manner and a slight impediment in his speech that was not so much of a stutter in the ordinary sense, as a slight nervous constriction of the throat, I thought. It was obvious that they were devoted to each other and very much in love, and I remember thinking they looked just as a Duke and a Duchess ought to look, but often don’t.
* * *
No word of any kind was said, or any hint given me of what was coming. Two weeks later Lady Rose told me that the Duke and Duchess had talked the matter over and had decided to ask me to undertake the education of their daughters, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, then aged five and two. They fully realized, Lady Rose said, that there might be some opposition to this arrangement in certain quarters because of my youth, but both the Duke and Duchess were anxious that the little girls should have someone with them young enough to enjoy playing games and running about with them. The Duke, I gathered, had throughout his own childhood been hampered by somewhat immobile pastors and masters. He wanted someone energetic with his children, and had been impressed by the amount of walking I did!
I told Lady Rose that, if I accepted the post, it would mean that I would not be able to go on with what I had intended to be my life’s work—child psychology; but that it was a great honour and I should like some time to consider the matter.
In two weeks’ time, I wrote to the Duchess saying how honoured I was to have been asked to undertake the education of the Princesses, and I suggested that I should take up the work for a trial period during which I would be able to determine whether it would be easy for me to become reconciled to the idea of leaving Scotland and my intended career, and living permanently with other people.
The Duchess wrote me a charming, friendly little letter: ‘Why not come for a month and see how you like us and how we like you?’
That seemed a sensible arrangement. It was fixed that I would go to them at Royal Lodge, Windsor, just before Easter.
I remember feeling distinctly apprehensive on the long journey south from Scotland. I had led the quiet open-air life of a Scottish girl. I knew nothing whatever about court etiquette. I was a little scared, doubtful whether I was doing the right thing. All the children I had had to do with at the Elgins’ and the Leveson-Gowers’ had been pleasant and amenable, and easy to deal with. It was a couple of very spoiled and difficult little people I somehow visualized as I travelled south, for already the papers had produced odd stories about these royal children. I was more than convinced that my month’s trial would stop at the end of the month, and that I should soon be home again.
From the train I had my first glimpse of Windsor Castle. I saw it first in the gathering shadows of a spring twilight. It looms up suddenly, topping the whole countryside, a fantastic mass of turrets and battlements and towers. It is incredibly old. The stone circuit wall was built by William the Conqueror. Henry III contributed the first complete round tower in 1272. Though George IV rebuilt so much of the Castle, there is still beneath it a sinister labyrinth of dungeons, most with their own sinister stories, some with pathetic little scratches made on the walls by prisoners of other days.
Little I dreamed then how well I was to come to know the place, or how one day I, too, would be hidden away there, as securely and as secretly as any political prisoner waiting to be relieved of her head.
A tall, handsome, courteous man met me on the steps of the front door of Royal Lodge. This was Ainslie, the butler, who was to become one of my fast friends. He is now steward at Buckingham Palace. His beautiful manners alone were enough to take him a very long way.
The Duke and Duchess, he told me, had had to go to London and would not be back until later. But Her Royal Highness had had special permission to sit up for me, so would I go straight up to the nurseries, as Mrs Knight did not like the Princess to be kept up late.
Mrs Knight was called by everyone Alah, probably a childish version of her Christian name which was Clara. She had been nanny to the Duchess and her brother David as babies. She was a tall, noble-looking woman, born in Hertfordshire. She was not, like so many of the royal attendants, a Scotswoman. She was what every good nurse ought to be—calm and kind, exuding that comfortable air of infallibility and security so necessary to the welfare of the young.
English nursery tradition is dying out now, along with other admirable institutions that have provided some of our finest citizens. The nursery was a world in miniature, a state within a state. The head of the state was the nurse, usually called Nanny or Nana. It was into her kind arms that the latest baby was handed when the monthly nurse departed. It was she who had the entire upbringing and training of him until the cruel years when school came and he was torn from her, at eight.
She would have a nursemaid to help her and wait on her, who in turn would be training to be a nanny herself. In the more important households there would be a footman and a housemaid told off to wait on the nurseries as well.
The system was open to abuse when the nurse in charge was a tyrant, as she sometimes was. But mostly these were dedicated women as surely as nuns are. They had a real vocation, and it is impossible to convey to anyone who has not known it the comfort and serenity those old-fashioned nurseries had.
They would mostly be upstairs, shut off on the sunny side of the house. A fire usually burned behind a high wire fireguard on which baby clothes would always be airing, and in front of which the latest baby was bathed. There was always a rocking-chair in which Nanny would rock sufferers from bumps or private sorrows back to serenity. She was always there, a shoulder to weep on, a bosom to fall asleep on. She would sit at evening in the rocker, the children around her on the hearthrug, mending or knitting and telling stories of ‘when Mummie was a little girl’.
For nannies were handed on. When one family grew up she would go with them, and be a nanny to their babies. When a family fell on evil days and all the rest had fled, Nanny often remained even when no wages could be paid her, one of the family, taking the rough with the smooth, inaugurating in a different and smaller place that atmosphere of comfort and warmth, and the smell of hot flannel and camphorated oil which those of us who remember those other days can never forget.
The matron of a small boys’ school once told me that on the first nights of school terms, most of her homesick little boys wept, not for Mummie but for their nanny. She was much more than a paid servant; she was their childhood.
Here and there in England these devoted women are still to be found, the sweet sound core of many a home. But they are dying out fast. This was another world, shattered by the bombs!
Alah awaited me with that mixture of reserve and apprehension felt by all nannies when the governess is introduced. I like to remember that in all my years at 145 Piccadilly, London, and later at Buckingham Palace, Alah and I remained good friends; and if on her side the neutrality was sometimes armed to the teeth, I was always very careful not to tread on her toes.
Alah had entire charge in those days of the children’s out-of-school lives—their health, their baths, their clothes—while I had them from nine to six. She had to help her an under-nurse and a nursemaid. These two girls are there still—Margaret MacDonald and Ruby MacDonald, two sisters, who have become the personal maids and friends of two sisters.
The night nursery was decorated in pink and fawn, the Duchess’s favourite colour scheme. A small figure with a mop of curls sat up in bed. She wore a nightie with a design of small pink roses on it. She had tied the cords of her dressing gown to the knobs of the old-fashioned bed, and was busy driving her team.
That was my first glimpse of Princess Elizabeth.
‘This is Miss Crawford,’ said Alah, in her stern way.
The little girl said, ‘How do you do.’ She then gave me a long, comprehensive look I had seen once before, and went on, ‘Why have you no hair?’
I pulled off my hat to show her. ‘I have enough to go on with,’ I said. ‘It’s an Eton crop.’
She picked up her reins again.
‘Do you usually drive in bed?’ I asked.
‘I mostly go once or twice round the park before I go to sleep, you know,’ she said. ‘It exercises my horses.’ She navigated a dangerous and difficult corner, and went on, ‘Are you going to stay with us?’
‘For a little while, anyway,’ I replied.
‘Will you play with us tomorrow? Will you come to the Little House with us?’ she asked eagerly. Alah had by now unhitched the team, and laid her flat. She allowed herself to be tucked away like a small doll. ‘Good night. See you tomorrow,’ she said to me.
* * *
Royal Lodge was originally a shooting-box built by George IV. The original part left is a large drawing room, which is called the saloon, and an octagon room and the wine cellar underneath. It has been painted pink because the Queen had spent happy years of her childhood in a pink house and had kept a great affection for it. Royal Lodge is quite the most up-to-date of the royal establishments. It is plain and simple, and might have been any country gentleman’s home.
* * *
I had dinner alone on a tray in a pleasant sitting room upholstered in chintz. To my horror, a large fire was burning there. After Scotland, the south seemed to be almost unbearably warm and close, and I could hardly breathe. Upstairs a cheerful housemaid had done some of my unpacking for me. The schoolroom on the second floor looked out over the gardens, and the whole atmosphere of the comfortable, unpretentious pink house was homelike and informal. Some of my apprehension began to disappear.
The Duchess came in later that evening, wearing her going-out clothes, having just come down from London, twenty-five miles away. She had a sort of sheen or brightness about her in those days. She was thirty-one, and her way of speaking was the easy, friendly one of any girl in her own home speaking to another girl who was far from home and might be a little homesick and needed to be put at her ease. She wore as usual blue, and I still thought her one of the loveliest people I had ever seen.
She had a gentle, kindly manner of looking at you. Her eyes were her most outstanding feature, very blue, very sympathetic, and she looked incredibly youthful. The old enchantment I had felt up north still held me. When she said, ‘I do hope you will be happy here, and like us,’ I replied, ‘I am sure I shall.’ And I meant every word of it.
Copyright © 1950 by the executors of the late Marion Crawford
Foreword copyright © 2002 by Jennie Bond
