Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth’s education – Crawford, Marten, Crawley and human nature

 

Senior members of our modern Royal Family have been robustly characterised as outdoorsy types with a bent for anti-intellectualism, and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second was no exception.

This kind of class-conscious ‘taking down a peg’ is human nature and has been a subject of comedy for Aristophanes and Chaucer as much as the writers of Spitting-Image.

A 2008 article in The Independent sums up popular opinion in saying: ‘The royal family is not known for its intellectualism; but some members do have unexpected skills.’

Where to find clues to the complexities of those who live in palaces has been a constant question for journalists and biographers throughout time. One line of enquiry is – their education. It is safe to say that how we respond and fail at school can often foreshadow some of the ups and downs of a person’s life.

Predictably, much of the ups and downs of Queen Elizabeth II’s education will be kept as private anecdotes among her own family, and perhaps those of her tutors…

 

Crawfie – Marion Crawford

However, in 1949 (when Elizabeth was 23) something unprecedented happened. Woman’s Own Magazine in the UK and Ladies Journal in the US published a long memoir by Marion Crawford – Princess Elizabeth and Margaret’s long-term tutor and friend.

The fragile nature of being a servant in the heart of a family dynamic was reflected in The Queen Mother’s reported response – ‘The governess has gone off her head.’

The woman who had affectionately been known as ‘Crawfie’ by the family for over a decade did not receive a Christmas card from the palace that year, and swiftly moved out of her grace and favour cottage.

Aside from the delicate terms of working as a royal tutor, what can we learn from Crawford’s unauthorised articles and subsequent bestselling book The Little Princesses?

As a work of fiction or auto-fiction, The Little Princesses could be characterised as a series of freeze-frames depicting a lifestyle rather than an account of the Princesses’ education. Although, we can paint in the gaps of what young Elizabeth’s emotional and intellectual life may have been. Crawfie writes:

‘Life in a palace rather resembles camping in a museum. These historic places are so old, so tied up with tradition, that they are mostly dropping to bits.’

The most interesting part of the book is Crawford’s description of a surreal transition for two little girls – from living in an upper-class household in Piccadilly to living as heirs apparent in Buckingham Palace.

Apart from gossipy commentary around the subject of the abdication – ‘All that we knew in the school room was that we saw much less of handsome, gold-headed Uncle David’ – what jumps from the page are Princess Elizabeth’s swimming lessons.

 

Miss Daley & The Bath Club

Crawford’s narrative around the subject of the abdication tenderly illustrates the importance of routine and a sense of normality to Elizabeth and Margaret.

Descriptions of their lessons at The Bath Club, colourfully bring this to life. Crawford writes:

‘The little girls were always anxious to do what other children did. They longed to swim and I suggested this. The Duke and Duchess were very good about allowing these innovations.’

Miss Amy Daley, who was to swimming what ‘Mrs Wordsworth was to that other accomplishment’ was charged with teaching the Princesses swimming and life-saving – a hobby deemed inappropriate by some older members of their family.

What emerges in the story, is a picture of Princess Elizabeth as a pragmatic and earnest older sister, while Margaret plays the loveable jester. As Margaret hovers by the waterside, Elizabeth calls: ‘Don’t be a limpet Margaret!’ Crawford describes their first exercises:

‘She laid them over a wooden bench and taught them the motion of swimming by asking them to make the marks of letters…Margaret turned to Lilibet and said ‘You look like an aeroplane about to conk out.’

Another competition between peers was unfolding simultaneously – that of Crawford and the girls’ nanny, who she cattily describes as ‘Allah.’

‘Miss Daley was wonderfully clever with Allah – after a time I think Allah realised this was a scene in which she did not appear. A incessantly knitted socks. How she struggled to teach Lillibet to knit.’

The vignettes that describe the princesses penultimate swimming sessions are genuinely moving as they touch on theme of achievement where there is privilege. Elizabeth and Margaret were required to jump fully clothed into a pool to dive for objects and each other –

‘Lilibet saved Margaret in fine style and they were both given certificates which they were immensely proud of.’

Their father, the then Duke, is quoted as saying: ‘I don’t know how they do we were all so shy and self-conscious.’

Crawford’s pointed comment that the swimming lessons ‘Were a great diversion at that time and took our minds off other matters’ surmises the challenge of modern royals – to engage in a shared reality, while constantly living a high-stakes version of it.

 

The palace as a classroom

The question of how to bring education into a diplomatic household was contended with by King George. Crawford introduces the problem of a ‘schoolroom’ –

‘The question of a schoolroom was a problem. The king took me up to see one – it was one of the darkest and most gloomy rooms in the palace…the whole atmosphere was regal but oddly dead.’

With a brief ‘This won’t do,’ The King arranged for a space which, by contemporary standards, would be considered appropriate for learning –

‘In the end we were given a small bright room overlooking the mall.’

This is perhaps the last significant reference to formal education in the Little Princesses, as the politics and ritual of royal life pervades.

In the transition of monarchs, Crawford regrets that the girls were often pulled out of lessons to witness occasions of state or the arrival of VIPs –

‘We used to watch in the well of the dome – important people coming and going – the prime minister, bishops and archbishops passed below all looking anxious and harried.’

Princess Elizabeth’s yearning for an anonymous kind of freedom is expressed in the moment she observes a little boy riding a bicycle near Sandringham. Sighing and turning to Crawford she says: ‘One day, I shall have a bicycle.’

There has been much speculation as to whether the financier husband Crawford met in retirement persuaded her to sell her stories.

Irrespective of this, Crawford’s loss of what must have been a surrogate family is believed to have contributed to her profound depression. She writes: ‘The world has passed me by and I can’t bear those I love to pass me by on the road.’

 

Sir Henry Marten, Cannon Crawley & Miss Longman 

Marion Crawford’s book is peppered with the suggestion that Princess Elizabeth had all the natural talents required of a monarch.

When little Elizabeth is made responsible for greeting her new singing mistress, Miss Longman, she: ‘Received her graciously and said in her most grow- up manner – Crawfie will be back in a few minutes, her epiglottis has just collapsed.’

Little is publicly known of the other tutors who intermittently impressed their knowledge on Elizabeth’s young mind but there are records of their sessions.

In his 1943 article for The Atlantic, Wilson Harris addresses the educational credentials of Britain’s new heir, while comparing her to another would-be Queen – Victoria.

He writes: ‘Princess Victoria was a skilful horsewoman, a good musician, and a singularly keen dancer. But there is no reason to suppose that she was a swimmer, and much reason to suppose that she was not.’

In a piece that wildly shouts of good palace PR, Wilson continues to cite the books young Elizabeth had been introduced to by her mentors – The Vice Provost of Eton, Henry Marten, and Cannon Crawley of St George’s Chapel, Windsor –

‘Trevelyan’s History of England, which could not be improved on, and Muzzey’s History of the United States…P. G. Wodehouse (whose hold was as potent over a Prime Minister of seventy as over a Princess not seventeen).’ He continues –

‘Moliere, some Corneille, some Daudet, and she knows many of Les Cent Meilleurs Poemes Francais.’

As well as emphasising the academic rigour required of a twentieth century Queen in waiting, Harris also refers to her appreciation of the establishment in the form of the Rangers –

‘The scope of the Rangers is wide. A system of war training has been developed, known as the Home Emergency Service, which includes First Aid and Home Nursing, Child Welfare, and various forms of Civil Defense.’

One of the more poignant passages of The Little Princesses provides an insight into how wartime Windsor Castle was fortified. Crawford recalls Princess Elizabeth naming one of the trenches dug on the estate as ‘Bertie.’

Harris continues to infuse his writing with references to the army –

‘Another trait in the Princess’s character,” writes one who knows Princess Elizabeth well, “which certainly comes down through generations on the King’s side, is her love of the Army and its tradition”—in particular, naturally, of the Grenadier Guards, of which she is Colonel.’

It’s clear from Harris’ article that Princess Elizabeth was not only being educated as an aristocratic woman but also as a leader in training, and that this perception was encouraged by the Royal Press Office at the time.

Canon Crawley’s bible studies lessons are more of a religious mystery – on enquiring about any records he might have kept, St George’s Chapel Windsor could not find any, except for note to his family from the palace, thanking him for his service.

Marten on the other hand, has been legendary among Etonians for his eccentricities and keeping a live raven in his study. In her biography, Elizabeth The Queen, Sally Bedell Smith writes –

‘Elizabeth was thirteen and bashful with the tutor, often looking at her governess as she learned her lessons. Marten, an eccentric scholar, was also uncomfortable, probably at the pressure at serving as tutor to the heir to the throne, and sometimes called her ‘gentlemen,’  thinking that he was back with the Eton students.’

Marten was knighted by the King on a Special visit to the school in 1945.

 

As Elizabeth became a young woman who discreetly hid her feelings for Prince Phillip of Greece from her governess, formal education predictably took a back seat to a new kind – recognising the administration, rituals and faces of power.

In her contact with a determined Scottish governess, an eccentric public schoolmaster and a minister of the cloth, it could be said that Princess Elizabeth received a comprehensive education in both what makes people tick and the worlds they become immersed in – not a bad grounding for a Head of the Commonwealth.

One thing is plain – that beneath a graceful posture of impartiality, Elizabeth contained an in-depth knowledge of human nature and its relationship to privilege – the kind that wouldn’t be readily useful to satirists or tabloid newspapers.

 

tf.

ENDS