Lilibet An Intimate Portrait of Elizabeth II

Chapter One Crowds of theatergoers spilled out into the streets on a rainy night in April, 1926, the women pulling on thick coats over their skimpy short dresses and the men stamping their feet and rubbing their arms to keep warm. "The Student Prince" had just ended at His Majesty's, Ruth Draper had completed her monologue at the Garrick, the stars of George and Ira Gershwin's "Lady Be Good" and Jerome Kern's "Show Boat" had taken their last bows. The cinemas too were closing for the evening, and the variety shows and concert halls, until by eleven o'clock the sidewalks were full and it was nearly impossible to find a cab. Many couples gave up trying, and ended up at the Piccadilly Hotel where Jack Hylton's band was playing, or at the Queen's Hotel in Leicester Square where the Ladies' Russian Orchestra held forth, in peasant costume, with balalaikas and black boots. Some set off for the cabaret at the CafÉ de Paris, or for Elsa Lanchester's nightclub, the Cave of Harmony, in Seven Dials. Celebrity hunters looked in at the Embassy Night Club where a sofa table was set aside for the Prince of Wales, a regular visitor, or at Ciro's, where the prince sometimes played drums with the band, his explosive rimshots setting off an inevitable wave of applause. There was gossip about his brother Prince George, who was said to be having an affair with the American singer Florence Mills; it was always possible that George and Florence might be having a quiet cocktail in the darker recesses of the Silver Slipper or the Hambone Club, or even at the Fifty-Fifty in Wardour Street, where Gertrude Lawrence and Beatrice Lillie and NoËl Coward went after the theater, to see and be seen. One man in the vast crowd was hurrying through the clogged traffic on an important errand. Sir William Joynson-Hicks, Home Secretary in the Conservative government, had been deputed to represent the cabinet at the birth of a royal child. He was on his way to Mayfair, to the town home of the Fourteenth Earl of Strathmore in Bruton Street, where the earl's daughter the Duchess of York was in labor-indeed she had been in labor for more than a day-and he was impatient to fulfill this obligation and return to more pressing duties. As his cab made its way along the rain-slick streets with their carefree merrymakers Joynson-Hicks turned from the sight with indignation. As far as he was concerned, the capital was in lthe grip of a destructive hedonism that brought in its wake lax morals, decaying values and a pervasive ennui. The postwar society of London, he was convinced, had far too many women-indeed, because of the immense loss of life in the Great War, far more women than men-and they seemed to be everywhere, unescorted, in their alarmingly short dresses and bobbed hair under cloche hats, their cigarettes in long holders, their gaze bold and direct and provocative. Modesty, Joynson-Hicks believed, had gone the way of the dinosaur. A jungle ethic prevailed, catering to primitive urges. One had only to note the pervasiveness of liquor (the sale of which the Americans, in their wisdom, had prohibited), the loud jazz music, the sordid nightclubs, the pornographic "modern" books that extolled adultery and unnatural sexuality, modern art with its formlessness and lack of proper aesthetic standards, above all, the rampant illicit sex that seemed to be the besetting vice of the postwar world. As Home Secretary, Joynson-Hicks was on a crusade to quash the evils he deplored, sending in the police to shut down nightclubs, arrest drinkers and jail partygoers, confiscating books and closing art galleries, campaigning in speech after speech against the decline of principles and urging his hearers to aid him in the cause of holding the line of civilization against the encroaching barbarism. Such was his mission-but not on this night, when civilization, or at least the Conservative government, with which he often confusedErickson, Carolly is the author of 'Lilibet An Intimate Portrait of Elizabeth II', published 2004 under ISBN 9780312287344 and ISBN 0312287348.