Happy Fortunes

As usual with any family getting ready for a trip, there were some eleventh-hour decisions to be made (should they take the crown along?--they decided against it). But at long last everything was packed and ready. Aunts, uncles and cousins gathered to kiss the travelers goodbye and neighbors lined the streets to wave them away. An elderly well-wisher (Poet Laureate John Masefield) had even written a little verse:

Most gracious sovereign, leaving England's shore

To build your peoples by a link the more,

Deign to accept, from one, the hopes of all

That at your going happy fortunes fall,

That on your journey 'blessed stars may burn

And fair winds company your safe return.

After months of planning, King George, Queen Elizabeth and their two daughters were off to South Africa to shine politely on a tottering Empire and prove to the world that Britain's exports were second to nobody's.

No detail had been spared to make their trip a success, no chance overlooked to display Britain's manufacturing prowess. In Portsmouth harbor, Britain's vastest, newest battleship, the 42,500-ton Vanguard, was laden with three vanloads of baggage, a refrigerator freight car full of choice game. Five Vickers Viking planes equipped with the latest safety gadgets, four dozen or so sleek, new Daimler, Austin and Humber motorcars, a 14-coach, ivory-and-gold train, complete with telephones, offices, kitchens, salons and armor-plate windows had been shipped ahead. The Vanguard herself was tricked out with curtains, carpets, elaborate apartments for the royal travelers, and a special platform on which they could be seen at naval reviews.

In London the family had been sedulously boning up on South African history, politics, economics and the Afrikaans language (they could all now say a cheery "How do you do?"--Hoe gaan dit?--to their hosts) while Britain's leading designers, Hartnell, Molyneux and Thaarup, labored feverishly on trousseaux. Fashion reporters were invited to see the new clothes but editors had to sign a solemn promise that the clothes would not be described until the royal ladies had appeared in them. Meanwhile, hints kept Britain's newspaper readers in more or less breathless anticipation.

As the departure drew nearer, a state drive from Buckingham Palace to Waterloo Station was carefully rehearsed, but when the great day dawned raw and cloudy, London was blanketed with snow, virgin white on the rooftops, instantly debauched into slush on the streets. Open horse-drawn coaches were abandoned in favor of the family's cosy Daimlers. But in drab Waterloo, draped with tattered bunting, crowds stood shivering six-deep to watch the farewells. Before a royal Pullman smothered in hyacinths and cyclamen, the Queen pecked at her relatives, King George exchanged a last affable word with the Prime Minister, and the Princesses in girlish blue and rose beamed with excitement. Just as the train pulled out for Portsmouth, the clouds parted and a shaft of feeble, wintry sunlight strained through the dirty glass of the station roof.

Spectators agreed that it was an excellent omen.

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