"A Prince Has Been Born"

"Now, now," huffed a police sergeant at the palace gates, "there's nothing to see 'ere. Nobody need wait who don't know what 'e's waitin' for. Step along now. Step along." All around him the milling crowd grinned self-consciously and held its ground. For a week or more, curious and sentimental Londoners had gathered outside the gates of Buckingham Palace to gaze curiously at a third-floor window, wait aimlessly for a while, drift away and return again to renew the vigil.

"Time, Gentlemen." From time to time a flurry of speculation ran through the watchers like autumn leaves in a gust. On Friday night there was a moment of letdown when Princess Elizabeth herself stepped out of the palace door and drove off with her husband in his Austin sedan. (They had a date to dine with Philip's cousin, Lady Brabourne, and practical Elizabeth saw no reason for breaking it.) By Sunday night 4,000 or more people in slouch hats, toppers, evening clothes, shawls and workmen's denim were clustered about the huge Victoria Memorial.

London's publicans were setting up their nightly cry of "Time, gentlemen" and were just closing when the long vigil at the palace gates was at last rewarded. At 10:10 p.m., from out of the palace bustled a young, blue-clad page. He whispered a word to the bobby at the gate. The bobby nodded. "It's a boy," he announced solemnly, then, throwing his chest out and his head full back, he shouted for all to hear; "A Prince has been born!"

"We want Philip!" chanted some of the crowd. "We want grandpa!" cried others. Some began singing Pack Up Your Troubles and All the Nice Girls Love a Sailor. Then the whole crowd had squared away in the inevitable British hymn of love, For He's a Jolly Good Fellow.

Thus, exclaimed the usually businesslike Associated Press, as its clacking teletype machines began to carry the news around the world, "the fairy-tale drama of Britain's exciting weekend closed."

41 Guns. From the time the news of his impending birth had first been made public (TIME, March 15), a wave of sentiment, curling into sentimentality, had traveled across the English-speaking world. Early last week an impressionable housewife of Elizabeth, N.J. dreamed that Britain's Elizabeth had had a boy, and woke her husband and three children in the dead of night to tell them about it. When the news reached Australia, electric carillons pealed in Sydney and Melbourne. Next morning, in London, the bells of St. Paul's, Westminster and many another church rang out in clangorous rejoicing. Stock-exchange members stopped their trading to sing God Save the King', the official 41-gun salute decreed for the birth of a royal heir boomed forth from the Tower of London and Hyde Park. Even in Norfolk, Va., Britain's battleship, Duke of York, fired an extra 21-gun salute in honor of Britain's baby, and was answered in kind by half a dozen U.S. vessels. In Manhattan, Gimbels department store advertised a coroneted doll, holding a baby doll--"Liz herself and His Royal Highness ($8.95)."

Scrubbed & Sterilized. But throughout the Commonwealth, Elizabeth's baby (whose name will not be decided upon until just before his baptism) was welcomed with warmth and affection rather than official pomp and circumstance.

For weeks, Buckingham Palace had been made ready for the event. In an improvised but immaculate delivery room on the second floor, hospital equipment rented from a local supply house stood scrubbed and sterilized. Each day the healthy young expectant mother had been given a going-over by beetle-browed Obstetrician Sir William Gilliatt.

By Saturday night,, the doctor had moved into the palace to stay. On Sunday the King tinkered with his cameras and tried to read, while Elizabeth, under the watchful eye of her nurse, Helen Rowe, and her maid, Margaret ("Bobo") MacDonald, sat around and listened to the radio or telephoned friends. At 6 p.m., just after the family tea, Elizabeth's pains began. Nurse Rowe rushed her to the delivery room and summoned Sir William. Within an hour three more doctors had slipped into the palace by the electricians' gate in the rear. Philip went moodily down to knock a squash ball around the palace court.

Quiet, Please. That night none of the royal family bothered to dress for dinner. They all ate a cold snack in the palace sitting room, and during the long wait that followed, Philip paced up & down in an old pair of flannels and tieless shirt.

At 9:14 Nurse Rowe rushed out of the delivery room and down the hall to Philip. When he heard her news, Philip's face lighted as fathers' faces have since time began, and he raced off to tell the King. There were others to tell as well--Queen Mary by telephone, Philip's mother, who was in Greece, and his uncle. Earl Mountbatten, by wire. After Philip had made his family calls, Home Secretary James Chuter Ede, the first on the official list, was duly notified.

Soon after, as the news sang around the world, Great-Grandmother Queen Mary arrived in white evening dress and ermine, and Philip broached a bottle of champagne to toast the newcomer. "A spanking fine baby," said Grandfather George.

Outside, like a stiffly starched nurse in a hospital corridor, a police car drove up to the cheering crowds. "Ladies and gentlemen," admonished a loudspeaker, "it is requested from the palace that we have a little quietness, if you please. The Princess is trying to sleep."

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