Philip: Such a terrible blow
Princess wrote a happy letter home- then her life changed for ever
IT WAS, although she could not know it, her last night as a Princess — spent with Prince Philip in the company of baboons and leopards, lit only by the light of the moon.
Local tribesmen armed with spears stood guard as the royal couple settled into Treetops Hotel, a game-watching lodge in Aberdare National Park, near Nyeri in Kenya. Elephants and rhinos passed only yards from the Princess as she filmed them with her cinecamera.
The next morning — February 6 — she excitedly wrote home to her father, telling him of the wild animals she had seen the night before. He would never read the letter. He had died that night in his sleep at Sandringham.
His daughter knew nothing of this as she ate breakfast — scrambled eggs and bacon — with the other members of the party.
She told them how well her father had been looking lately and how much stronger he was getting after his lung operation.
At 10am, the couple headed off to Sagana Lodge, a trout-fishing lodge Princess Elizabeth had been given as a wedding present.
‘I will come again,’ the Princess promised, as she and Philip were driven away from Treetops.
It was there at Sagana, beside a trout stream, at 2.45pm that Prince Philip gently told Princess Elizabeth the dreadful news that made her a Queen. The first person in Nyeri to receive the terrible tidings that day had been Granville Roberts, a reporter on the East African Standard newspaper based in Nairobi.
Mr Roberts’s office telephoned him at the Outspan Hotel at Nyeri, where reporters who were covering the tour were staying. Mr Roberts then called Major Martin Charteris, the Queen’s secretary, to the phone. The shattering news from London was read to him.
Major Charteris immediately phoned Sagana Lodge and spoke to the Duke’s equerry, Lieut Commander Michael Parker.
He asked Lieut Commander Parker whether the royal party had heard the news but they knew nothing. Major Charteris suggested that he find a wireless so they could hear confirmation for themselves.
Lieut Commander Parker crept into the sitting room, where Princess Elizabeth was writing more letters, to sneak out a wireless. He listened to the news then went to tell Prince Philip. The Prince lifted his newspaper, in a gesture of despair, and said: ‘This will be such a blow.’
Philip then took his wife for a walk around the lodge garden and told her. Returning to the lodge, the new Queen immediately began discussing the mat- ters of state that had become her responsibility. The royal party left Sagana at dusk to begin the journey back to London. The calm Queen said to her cousin, Lady Pamela Mountbatten, also on the Kenyan trip, ‘I am so sorry. This means we all have to go home.’
This is a sleepy, isolated community with only about 450 Europeans, mostly farmers scattered over an area of many miles. The news of the King’s death percolated slowly by word of mouth, for few listen to the radio.
One comment from an English woman was typical: ‘Thank God he died in his sleep. What a blessing — except for the poor Queen. I am so sorry for her.’
Her eyes filled with tears and she turned away from me. Only on Sunday, when Princess Elizabeth had passed through the
village of Karatina, where African chiefs and their wives stood resplendent waiting for her, they had told me through an interpreter: ‘The Princess is lucky for us. She brought us rain.’
After many years of drought, the rains were heavy this year, and the Africans said it was because the Princess was coming to Kenya.
At 2.15pm yesterday, just before the news reached here, a thunderstorm broke out — a remarkable occurrence for this time of year, which is the dry season.
For 20 minutes, the sky was black. Tall eucalyptus trees shook in the wind and the Africans ran to shelter from the heavy downpour.
It was if the gods above knew the tectonic plates of history were suddenly shifting.