As Close to a Royal Memoir as We May Ever Get

I find the lives of the upper echelons to be absolutely fascinating.  My undergraduate research focused on Queen Elizabeth and the women around her, but I'm also intrigued by what little we know of her personal life.  My graduate research was all about a number of American women who married into the British aristocracy.  One of the most interesting books to me, when I was doing that research, was the memoir by Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, The Glitter and the Gold--a book that I talk about in this post. Balsan was candid and told what life was really like as a duchess.  One day, I would really like to see a memoir from someone at the center of the Royal family.  Queen Elizabeth II would have a phenomenal one, I'm sure, but even one from the younger generation, from Will or Kate, Harry or even Meghan would be amazing.  These are the people changing what monarchy means in today's world.  As we don't have any of those memoirs yet, let me tell you about the one that I did read:  Daughter of Empire: My Life As A Mountbatten, by Lady Pamela (Mountbatten) Hicks.


Lady Pamela Hicks is the second born child of Lord Mountbatten--a man known as Dickie.  If you watch Netflix's The Crown, the name should sound familiar.  Dickie Mountbatten was uncle to Prince Phillip and a second cousin to Queen Elizabeth.  Lady Pamela was one of Queen Elizabeth's ladies, and even a bridesmaid at her wedding.  There are only so many characters a TV show can handle, after all!  Her memoir seems short, although my copy is 240 pages long.  Something that is important to remember for this book is that Lady Pamela lived through things such as World War II, the Abdication Crisis, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the Suez Canal crisis, her father was held by Queen Victoria at his baptism--These things that seem so long ago happened within living memory for Lady Pamela.

Lady Pamela starts the book as most memoirs start, by talking about her parents.  Dickie Mountbatten was an upstanding Englishman who, after seeing his German father pushed out of the Navy during World War I, was determined to rise to his father's place as First Sea Lord and Admiral of the Fleet.  He was in love with his wife, Edwina, a heiress and orphan who had abandonment issues.  While Dickie Mountbatten was often away, Edwina Mountbatten would surround herself with friends and lovers--and Dickie, so desperate to see his wife happy had no jealousy.  Lady Mountbatten used her husband's job in the Navy to be able to travel the world.  This allowed Pamela and her older sister, Patricia, to see the world as well.  It continues through her childhood and into World War II, during which the Mountbatten girls were sent to New York to live with Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, a friend of their parents.  After World War II, Lord Mountbatten was sent to India as Viceroy to partition the country and prepare to hand over government to the Indians.  This was an interesting section, because Lady Pamela talks about meeting people that are inspirational, influential, and seem to be above being as "normal" as they seem in the memoir--notably Pandit Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi.  The picture below is of Lady Pamela with Nehru.  After the Mountbattens returned to England, Lady Pamela went into her cousin Elizabeth's service.  During this section of the book she talks about missing the bustle of India, her life in Malta, and, finally, the death of the King while Princess Elizabeth was in Kenya.  I think the saddest part of this section is that, before she learned of her father's death, Princess Elizabeth was writing him a letter to tell him how much he would enjoy the area. 

I originally wasn't fond of the title that Lady Pamela used for her memoir.  Daughter of Empire.  She was from a cadet branch of the English royal family, and from the Greek one.  But the more I read, the more the title grew on me.  Lady Pamela grew up in many different parts of the Empire; she was a global child.  She also lived her early life in service to Princess, then Queen Elizabeth II.  She served the empire.  In the end, I rather liked the title.  I also found it interesting that Lady Pamela stopped her narrative in 1955--but by that point, she had already shared stories of her life on four continents.  She'd stepped foot in a good portion of the British Empire at that point.  In the epilogue, Lady Pamela briefly talks of her romance and marriage with her husband, but the final image made me tear up.  During her honeymoon, Lady Pamela's mother, the inestimable Lady Louis Mountbatten, passed away.  As she had asked, she was buried at sea.  Lord Mountbatten was crying, the only time that Lady Pamela could remember that detail of her father.  As per Pandit Nehru's instructions, marigold petals were scattered across the sea, showing the respect of Nehru and India. 

Memoirs are always an interesting read.  In a non-fiction book such as you'd read for school, facts are laid out in a very factual way.  Memoirs, however, have a lot more emotion in them.  When they are written about a period that was several years before, there is always, to me, a hazy feeling.  We don't often remember the bad about our own childhood, but it's also hard to remember the good.  Everything has the kind of magical feeling.  Lady Pamela's memoir was so different because she talks about people that we "know" today, like Elizabeth II or Prince Phillip.  Memoirs are also hard, because facts can be skewed.  Memory doesn't always match up with fact, but it provides context and emotion.