Marion
Crawford
Marion
Crawford, CVO (5 June 1909 – 11 February 1988) was a Scottish educator and
governess to Princess Margaret and Princess Elizabeth (the future Queen
Elizabeth II), who called her Crawfie. Crawford was the named author of the
book The Little Princesses, which told the story of her time with the royal
family. After the book was published in 1950, Crawford was socially ostracised
and left Nottingham Cottage, her grace and favour house, which had been granted
to her for life. Neither the Queen nor any other member of the Royal Family
ever spoke to her again.
Crawford
was born, the daughter of a mechanical engineer's clerk, at Gatehead, East
Ayrshire, on 5 June 1909. She was raised in Dunfermline, Fife and taught
at Edinburgh's Moray House Institute. While studying to become a child
psychologist, she took a summer job as the governess for Lord Elgin's children.
This led her to take a role in the household of the Duke and Duchess of York
(later known as King George VI and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother), as the
Duchess was a distant relative of Lord Elgin. After one year the arrangement
was made permanent.
Crawford
became one of the governesses of Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret.
Following the abdication of King Edward VIII in 1936, the Duke of York ascended
the throne as King George VI, and Elizabeth became the heir presumptive.
Crawford remained in service to the King and Queen, and did not retire until
Princess Elizabeth's marriage in 1947, Crawford herself having married two
months earlier. Crawford had already delayed her own marriage for 16 years so
as not to, as she saw it, abandon the King and Queen.
Retirement
and authorship
Upon her
retirement in 1948, Crawford was given Nottingham Cottage in the grounds of
Kensington Palace, as a grace and favour home. Queen Mary, the princesses'
grandmother, also provided it with antique furniture and flower prints as a
mark of her appreciation.
After their
wedding, Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh conducted an overseas
tour, visiting Canada and the United States of America. Shortly afterwards,
Bruce and Beatrice Gould, editors of the large circulation American magazine
Ladies' Home Journal, contacted Buckingham Palace and the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office to seek stories for publication across the Atlantic.
Although the approach was refused by the Palace, the British government proved
keen on the idea and suggested Marion Crawford, as the recently retired
governess of the princesses.
In April
1949, having heard of the offer, Queen Elizabeth wrote to Crawford, saying:
"I do feel, most definitely, that you should not write and sign articles
about the children, as people in positions of confidence with us must be
utterly oyster. If you, the moment you finished teaching Margaret, started
writing about her and Lilibet, well, we should never feel confidence in anyone
again." However, the Queen did give a carefully qualified approval for her
to anonymously provide some assistance, writing: "Mr [Dermot] Morrah (the
man chosen to write the articles), who I saw the other day, seemed to think
that you could help him with his articles and get paid from America. This would
be quite all right as long as your name did not come into it. Nevertheless, I
do feel most strongly that you must resist the allure of American money and
persistent editors and say No No No to offers of dollars for articles about
something as private and as precious as our family."
However,
the contract with the Goulds stipulated: "You will further consider
publication of the articles without Her Majesty's consent (possibly with only
the consent of Princess Elizabeth, or no consent) and under your own name, on
terms to be arranged."
In October
1949, Lady Astor sent a copy of the manuscript from the Goulds to Queen
Elizabeth for her approval. The Queen was deeply distressed, finding it
shockingly frank, especially Crawford's revelations of the King's moods and the
Queen's chilly relationship with Wallis Simpson. She replied to Lady Astor
saying: "The governess has gone off her head", and had her private
secretary send a further letter to Lady Astor. This contained the Queen's
annotations on the manuscript with the request that passages of particular
concern be removed. The Goulds were taken aback as they considered the account
sympathetic, but they kept the response from Crawford. The first intimation
Crawford had that something was wrong was when she did not receive a Christmas
card that year from the Palace.
Crawford's
unauthorised work was published in Woman's Own in the UK and in the Ladies'
Home Journal in the United States, becoming a sensation on both sides of the
Atlantic. A book, The Little Princesses, also sold exceptionally well. Later
she wrote stories about Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. She
also put her name to Woman's Own's "Crawfie's Column", a social diary
written by journalists several weeks in advance.
As the
first servant to cash in on the private lives of the royals, Crawford was
ostracised by the royal family,[10][9] and they never spoke to her again.
Later life
and death
Courtiers
believed that Crawford was deeply under the influence of her husband George
Buthlay, who she married after her retirement, and that he pressured her to
capitalise on her royal connections, as he himself did. Buthlay boasted of it
in his business transactions, and had her ask the royal family to change their
bank account to Drummonds, the bank for which he worked.
Crawford's
writing career came to a crashing halt in 1955 when the column to which her
name was attached was exposed as a fraud. It carried details of a Trooping the
Colour ceremony and the Ascot races, when in fact they had been cancelled that
year because of a national railway strike. As the stories were written in
advance, it was too late to stop their publication.
Crawford
retired to Aberdeen, buying a house 200 yards (180 m) from the road to
Balmoral. Although the royal family regularly drove past her front door on
their way to Balmoral Castle, they never visited. When her husband died in
1977, she descended into depression and attempted suicide, leaving a note
saying: "The world has passed me by and I can't bear those I love to pass
me by on the road."
Crawford
died at Hawkhill House (a nursing home in Aberdeen) on 11 February 1988.
Neither the Queen, the Queen Mother nor Princess Margaret sent a wreath to her
funeral.
Her story
was featured in a 2000 Channel 4 documentary The Nanny Who Wouldn't Keep Mum
Sun 25 Jun 2000 : Queen Mother was 'ruthless' to royal nanny
Love for princesses kept truth hidden
Vanessa
Thorpe, Arts Correspondent
Sun 25 Jun
2000 00.15 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/jun/25/monarchy.vanessathorpe
A portrait
of the Queen Mother as ruthless and unforgiving has emerged from the discovery
of a 50-year-old box of letters and legal papers.
The
documents, which The Observer has discovered are due to be released to the
public after the matriarch's death, belonged to the late Marion Crawford, nanny
to the royal princesses.
Now held by
Crawford's solicitor, the private papers show that the Queen Mother was
secretly involved in a government plan to sell anecdotes about her daughters'
childhood to an American magazine - a publicity stunt for which the nanny was
pilloried for the rest of her life.
The
revelations came to light as a result of research carried out for a Channel 4
documentary and have been criticised this weekend by Lord St John of Fawsley,
the royal commentator, as a 'strange kind of birthday present' for the Queen
Mother, who will be 100 on 4 August.
Crawford,
or 'Crawfie' as the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret both knew her, was an
intimate companion of the royal family for 17 years, but was ostracised for
supposedly selling her story to the press without the permission of her former
employers. In fact, the deal was brokered with the Palace by the Foreign
Office, who believed the magazine articles would be good for Anglo-American
relations.
Childless
and separated in later life from the famous sisters she had cared for, Crawfie
attempted to commit suicide twice, nearly succeeding in the late Eighties. She
eventually succumbed to cancer and died alone in a nursing home - but not
before passing on a number of key documents to her solicitor, Bruce Russell,
with instructions that they should be released once they could no longer hurt
those involved.
Among them
is a letter, never seen before, which forms a central part of the programme to
be broadcast tomorrow evening. Typewritten, it appears to come from the then
Queen and is addressed in informal terms to Crawfie.
'I do feel,
most definitely, that you should not write and sign articles about the
children, as people in positions of confidence with us must be utterly oyster,'
it reads.
'I know you
understand this, because you have been so wonderfully discreet all the years
you were with us.'
But the
letter goes on to refer to a Times journalist, Dermot Morrah, who had been
engaged to write pieces based on information supplied to him by Crawfie: 'Mr Morrah,
who I saw the other day, seemed to think that you could help him with his
articles and get paid from America. This would be quite all right as long as
your name did not come into it.'
The royal
writer, Anthony Holden, believes the discoveries prove that the popular,
'pearly queen' image of the Queen Mother is far from the steely truth.
'Crawfie
was extremely badly treated by the Queen Mother and by all the royals,' he
said. 'It is symptomatic of the ruthless and brutal cold-heartedness of that
family and of the way they treat the victims they leave in their wake who,
including Diana, have generally done them great service.'
For 30
years - during which time she was publicly vilified for her apparent treachery
- Crawfie protected her former royal employer by keeping these letters hidden.
According to her friends and relatives, she felt her life had been ruined by
the Queen Mother's decision to cut all ties.
'She always
hoped for a reconciliation, but it never came,' her close friend and confidant
Nigel Astell said on Friday. 'Crawfie was intensely loyal and would not use the
letters to defend herself, even though they showed she had being acting in good
faith.'
Crawford's
husband, George Buthlay, signed a contract on her behalf with the American
magazine publishers Bruce and Beatrice Gould, of the Ladies' Home Journal. In
contradiction to the wishes of the Queen Mother, Crawfie was clearly named as
the source. She and her husband were paid $85,000 for the pieces, but for the
doting nanny the price was to prove much greater.
The Queen
and the King immediately broke all contact with the young teacher from Fife
they had chosen for their children back in 1930. A bestselling book called The
Little Princesses appeared in 1950 and soon Crawfie had been offered her own,
ghosted column in Woman's Own .
'I hope the
truth will finally come out,' said Astell. 'That is what Crawfie wanted. She
loved Elizabeth and Margaret and could never quite believe what happened to
her.'
'A beautifully woven and exquisitely detailed story'
HEATHER MORRIS, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz
'A hugely entertaining, emotionally satisfying story
of love and loyalty'DAILY MAIL
'A poignant, fictional reimagining of a woman
condemned by history, with plenty of modern-day echoes'MAIL ON SUNDAY
___________
She Came From Nothing . . . and Raised a Queen
The drama of the Abdication, the glamour of the
Coronation, the trauma of World War II – Marion Crawford, affectionately known
as Crawfie, stood by the side of the royal family through it all.
In 1933, a progressive young teacher became governess
to the little Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. Determined to give her pupils
a fun and normal childhood, she took them on buses, swimming at public baths
and Christmas shopping at Woolworths.
For seventeen years she served at the heart of the
royal family. But her devotion and loyalty counted for nothing when a perceived
betrayal brought everything crashing down.
This sweeping, sumptuous novel brings her long-buried
story to life and shines a completely new and captivating light into the
world's most famous family.
___________
'Brilliantly researched . . . I was completely
absorbed and transported' ADELE PARKS, author of Just My Luck
'Compelling characters and a wonderful blend of
historical accuracy and real narrative drive . . . a heart-breaking study of
loyalty and love' SALLY MORRIS, Daily Mail
'[A] beautifully researched and captivating novel . .
. Wendy Holden's tender and intimate portrait of Lilibet, the future Queen
Elizabeth II, is masterly' RACHEL HORE
'I adored this wonderful book. What a great story
Wendy Holden has told' JILLY COOPER
'A great book for escaping into . . . I loved this!'
KATIE FFORDE
'Sensitive, funny and fascinating – this masterful
novel gives the reader fly-on-the-wall privileges into the early life of the
Queen' FREYA NORTH
'A brilliantly imagined and poignant novel . . . of
sacrifice, deep affection, strained loyalties and divided English society in
the post-Downton Abbey era' ELIZABETH BUCHAN
'An intimate view of the royal family at a time of
great uncertainty and change . . . Marion Crawford's dedication to her charges,
as well as her passion for education and reform, shines through the pages'
CHANEL CLEETON
'Wendy Holden absolutely delivers in this perfect
blend of story and history . . . Lovers of The Crown series on Netflix will
adore this!' SUSAN MEISSNER
'I loved, loved, LOVED this book and if it isn't
adapted for the screen, I’ll eat my crown!' ERICA JAMES
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