Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography (23 page)

The first surviving letter from Mrs Thatcher, rather than Margaret Roberts, dates from the middle of February 1952, two months after her marriage to Denis. Writing from 112 Swan Court, Chelsea Manor Street, London, Denis’s sixth-floor bachelor flat, Margaret informs her sister Muriel that the couple’s planned first cocktail party together is postponed because of the death of King George VI on 6 February. Although perfectly content in tone, the letter is certainly not ecstatic. It is practical, and its main theme, as so often for people in London even well into the 1950s, is shortage. There is an ‘egg famine’ in town, she declares, and she wants to buy some eggs from Muriel and Willie’s farm ‘on a strictly business basis’. She has also been in search of clothes: ‘I’ve got the turquoise set from Peter Jones but the only pleated waist slips they have are in that rather violent pink.’ She is starting a law course with Gibson and Waldron (‘
the
law tutors’) – ten weeks, for three days a week – but only in the criminal law: ‘Roman law I realise I can cram on my own.’
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Another aspect of the mourning for the late King was the cancellation of the rugby international, which Denis would otherwise have attended. Margaret’s substitute activity was probably less to her husband’s taste: she took Denis off to hear her speak at a dedication service in Camden Town of the Methodist chapel run by Mr Skinner, the kindly minister with whom she had stayed on her sole pre-war visit to London. The next day they attended Sunday service at Wesley’s Chapel in the City Road to hear Mr Spivey, the minister, who, with Mr Skinner, had married them there.

The wedding had taken place on 13 December 1951. The bride remembered it as ‘a cold and foggy December day’.
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As befitted the weather – and perhaps her slightly uneasy status as a woman marrying a divorced man – she did not wear white, but a velvet dress of sapphire blue, modelled on the black velvet dress she had cherished at Oxford, and a striking hat, in the manner of Gainsborough’s portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, clinging to the back of her head with ostrich feathers cascading down
the right-hand side. The photograph shows a sparkling, happy and pretty young woman, with a bridegroom who looks – and was – older and more shy. The couple were married to the strains of ‘Immortal, invisible’ and ‘Lead us, heavenly Father, lead us’. The words of the latter hymn were to prove prophetic as the marriage successfully carried the couple for more than half a century ‘o’er the world’s tempestuous sea’. About fifty people attended, and the reception was held at Alfred Bossom’s great house in Carlton Gardens. The best man was Kent Green, with whom Denis had spent his last holiday as a bachelor. Denis failed to make a speech. Forty years later, he told his daughter that (oddly in view of the fact that he had been married before) ‘I didn’t know I was meant to’.
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Perhaps he was already observing the rule which, in later life, he made firm, that he would never make a speech ‘in front of Her’.

The Thatchers spent their wedding night in the Savoy Hotel in London – ‘a wonderful hotel’, Margaret wrote to Muriel. ‘… You just press a bell and a valet or maid or waiter appears.’
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Then they flew to Estoril in Portugal by flying boat. Thence, after a few days, to Madeira, and another Savoy Hotel, where they spent Christmas: ‘Some of the people with us are very nice but some are rather “tatty” tourists: Jews and novo [sic] riche. Talking of Jews – one of the directors of J. Lyons, a Gluckstein, is with us. He and his wife are very nice.’
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In her memoirs, Mrs Thatcher did not recall much lotus-eating. Nor did Denis: ‘We stayed in the capital, Funchal,’ he told Carol, ‘and did a sort of economic survey: we went and looked at people making lace and other things and went and toured the Madeira Wine Company.’
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But at the time Mrs Thatcher entered happily into the pleasures of the place. On Christmas Eve, she sent a postcard to Muriel: ‘Funchal really goes gay at Christmas … We change for dinner every night and dine and dance either here or at Reids hotel … You can get pure silk shirts made to measure for £3 each & nylon socks for 15/- a pair so it is indeed a paradise for men buying clothes.’
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The weather was too bad for the return journey to involve a flight to mainland Portugal, and they crossed by boat with Mrs Thatcher very sea-sick. They returned to England via Paris, where Denis had business to transact.

Mrs Thatcher enjoyed her newly married life. She had improved social status, a husband she liked and respected, and a comfortable mansion-block flat which she set about redecorating with her customary domestic energy. Writing to Muriel on 28 January 1952, she excitedly described the whirl of events – the annual dinner of the Inns of Court Conservative Association where Anthony Eden, Foreign Secretary in the new government, ‘seems a new man since he came back to office’, parties, meetings. ‘The days simply fly past.’
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In her memoirs, she waxes lyrical about this period,
especially for young married people like herself: ‘The 1950s were … the reawakening of normal happy life after the trials of war-time and the petty indignities of post-war austerity.’ Echoing Wordsworth as she had in Dartford, she said that to be in her situation at that time was ‘very heaven’.
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But there was to be no slackening of pace, no exile from the great world to the kitchen. The death of the King gave her the opportunity to set out her views of what the new reign should bring for her sex and generation. In an article entitled ‘Wake up, women’ in the
Sunday Graphic
, Mrs Thatcher announced, ‘If as many earnestly pray, the accession of Elizabeth II can help to remove the last shreds of prejudice against women aspiring to the highest places, then a new era for women will indeed be at hand.’ She advocated the combining of marriage and a career for more women, and regretted that ‘The term “career woman” has unfortunately come to imply in many minds a “hard” woman devoid of all feminine characteristics.’ She traced this prejudice: ‘Far too often, I regret to say it comes from our own sex.’ In her view, though, ‘The idea that the family suffers is … quite mistaken’; a career meant ‘a wife can be a much better companion at home.’ She praised various current women role models, including Janet Vaughan from Somerville, and asked ‘Why not a woman Chancellor – or Foreign Secretary?’, though judiciously stopping short of calling for a woman prime minister. Using a technique to subvert the opposite sex at which, in later life, she became very practised, Mrs Thatcher added: ‘And if they [women] made mistakes, they would not be the first to do so in those jobs!’
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When she had left Dartford after the general election of 1951, Margaret Roberts had said, ‘I shall not be contesting this division again, but I have no intention of leaving politics,’ and this was no more than the truth. In the letter to Muriel quoted above, she refers to coming on to stay with the Cullens after a political conference in Maidstone. At the beginning of April 1952, Alfred Roberts wrote to his elder daughter: ‘We had a letter from Margaret … obviously scrawled in great haste for it appears that, if anything, she is busier now than before marriage … I hope she isn’t chasing Denis about too much after his being so poorly.’
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And he mentioned that she was to speak at a Regional Savings Conference in Nottingham. It was also at this time that Mrs Thatcher had what was to be her only experience of being married to a political candidate. In the Kent County Council elections of April 1952, Denis was persuaded to stand as a Ratepayer, a label that tended to be used by Conservatives in areas where national parties were thought inappropriate for local government. He lost without, it seems, investing much emotional or physical energy in the contest, and without canvassing. As Mrs Thatcher put it succinctly in a letter to Muriel: ‘Denis
went the way of all the others who were fighting bad seats in the County Council elections but he wasn’t too disappointed.’
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But although, as we shall see shortly, politics never vanished from her mind, Mrs Thatcher’s immediate career preoccupation was with the law.

Her first law exams took place on 12 and 14 May 1952, and she was called to the Bar on 9 February 1954, but in between came motherhood. Her baby was expected on 29 September 1953, but early in August Mrs Thatcher, who had experienced quite a difficult and exhausting pregnancy, suffered labour pains and went into Queen Charlotte’s Hospital in London on 14 August. The next day the doctors told her, which she had not previously suspected, that she was carrying twins, and that they were on their way. They were born by Caesarean section then and there, a girl, Carol Jane,
^†
and a boy, Mark. Each weighed 4 pounds. Denis did not attend the birth (at that time, hospitals did not permit fathers to be present). He did not even know it was happening, since he was watching the England v Australia Test match at the Oval.
^‡
When he got home from the Oval, he found a message from the hospital telling him to come at once.

According to Carol, Denis’s reaction to the first sight of his children was to exclaim: ‘My God, they look like rabbits. Put them back.’
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And there is no doubt that he was not immediately attracted by babies. In the 1990s, when staying with friends where the Thatchers were fellow guests, the present author’s wife, also a parent of twins, sought to engage Denis on the subject. What had been his first thought, she asked him, on the discovery that he had two babies? ‘I just wished the little buggers had been drowned at birth,’ was his reply. Although Mrs Thatcher would never have thought, let alone spoken, in such terms, she was not someone who settled to the task of dealing with infants as if this was her vocation in life. She was pleased to have twins, but more because it meant that she need not
get pregnant again than because of a wild enthusiasm for motherhood. ‘Neither of my parents’, wrote Carol, ‘could be described as being natural or comfortable with young children.’
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Besides, as we shall see later, Mrs Thatcher had been planning her career on the expectation of one child or, at least, one at a time. Twins altered the case. As she lay in her hospital bed, she worked out how. By her own account, she was almost frightened by the emotional impact of the birth, the miracle of life sharpened by the perils of prematurity – ‘Oddly enough, the very depth of the relief and happiness at having brought Mark and Carol into the world made me uneasy’ – and she realized that she must keep the idea of a career constantly before her eyes: ‘I needed a career because, quite simply, that was the sort of person I was.’
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She decided, despite her new burden, to go ahead and sit her Bar finals on 1 December. She also received a letter from John Hare, the party vice-chairman in charge of candidates, congratulating her on the birth and asking her if, in the circumstances, she wanted her name withdrawn from the candidates’ list.
¹⁶
Mrs Thatcher confirmed that she did, but not in a way that suggested any permanent turning from the political path: ‘we had no idea there were two of them,’ she wrote on 2 September, ‘until the day they were born … I think I had better not consider a candidature for at least six months. The household needs considerable reorganisation and a reliable nurse must be found before I can feel free to pursue such other activities with the necessary fervour.’
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At Swan Court, an Austrian nurse, Gerda, was duly engaged for the first few weeks, and she was followed by Barbara, a nanny from Kent who stayed for five years. Nanny Barbara was often quoted as saying that when the Thatchers left the house in the morning for work, ‘He was very good at remembering to wave up to the nursery window [from which the twins were watching] … whereas Mrs Thatcher, whose mind was already on the job, would forget.’ The full context of the quotation, however, makes clear that it was Denis who was detached from the care of the children whereas Margaret was not: ‘Mr Thatcher left parenting to Mrs Thatcher and me.’
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Just after the twins came home for the first time, Denis was briefly away,
and there was a gap in domestic help. ‘We have several outstanding bits of entertaining to do,’ Margaret told Muriel, ‘but as I shall be on my own all day and all night doing 3-hourly feeds throughout the 24 hours with 2 bairns that will have to wait. Fortunately I am now very fit.’
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The sixth-floor flat had only three bedrooms and was quite ill-suited to young children. When the twins were three, Denis solved this by renting the flat next door so that ‘I could slam the door on all three of them.’
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Driven and career-oriented though she was, Mrs Thatcher was definitely a concerned and conscientious mother. Her letters to Muriel, which become more sporadic and brief in the 1950s, show a woman attentive, in a slightly uninquiring and practical way, to the needs of her children. When they were five months old, she wrote a busy, post-Christmas letter, thanking her sister for their romper suits to which she herself had added smart little white collars. Mark, she said, had a ‘tummy bug’ which she dealt with – ‘I slept in the nursery as I should have been about all night and probably have woken Denis, so it seemed to me more sensible to let Nanny have a decent night’s sleep.’ The bug caused a laundry problem because ‘We have always operated with the minimum number of vests (7 between them).’ She also mentioned the problem of Mark’s circumcision, and the fact that Denis’s South African cousins, the Pellatts, were staying. The Thatchers took them out to dinner: ‘my goodness – do they eat! Hors d’oeuvre
and
soup and entrée
and
cheese! Denis and I had the usual 3 courses only but in spite of that the Bill was £7-15s! We shan’t take them out again in a hurry!’
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A year later, she congratulated Muriel on the birth of her daughter (‘the fact that it was a girl [Muriel’s first child had been a boy] seemed to make it all worthwhile’). The twins, she said, were ‘in the pink’ and had just had ‘2 little friends round’: ‘Having made all the cakes and scones the night before I left Nannie to get on with it. With three nannies I should only have cramped their style.’ Dealing literally with the small change of life, she tells Muriel that she has just bought a ‘knockabout’ dinner and tea service, Royal Doulton ‘Coppice’, and paid the bill of £16 10s out of sixpences she had saved up in a jar.
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