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The Corgi Who Went On The Queen's Honeymoon! Why Elizabeth Never Let Susan Go Will Melt Your Heart — Transcript

by Aristo Life · 2,503 words · 359 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00There is a photograph of Princess
0:01Elizabeth leaving Buckingham Palace for
0:03her honeymoon and her corgi is in it out
0:05of sight. Elizabeth and her new husband
0:08Philip sit in an open carriage under a
0:10shower of rose petals. It was a freezing
0:12day in November 1947. They had taken the
0:15open carriage anyway so that the crowds
0:17could see them. The Royal Collection
0:19keeps a print of that moment and its
0:21caption explains what the lens could
0:23not. Tucked under the rugs alongside the
0:25couple's hot water bottles was Susan,
0:28one of the princess's favorite corgis.
0:3011 years later as queen Elizabeth would
0:33go back over a single word written for
0:35that dog and underline it. The Royal
0:37Collection traces Elizabeth's later
0:39corgis back to Susan, a line of dogs
0:42that ran from 1944 to 2018. When Susan
0:45died, the queen sketched the gravestone
0:47herself. On the 30th of May 1944 at
0:50Windsor, a photographer found an
0:5218-year-old princess holding a corgi
0:55puppy in her arms. The puppy was Susan,
0:57a little over 3 months old. She had been
1:00born on the 20th of February that year.
1:02The agency caption on the photograph
1:03calls her Sue or Susan. Vanity Fair says
1:07she was called Sue at first and the name
1:09grew into Susan. The Kennel Club
1:11registered her as Hickerthift Pippa. She
1:14was a present for Elizabeth's 18th
1:15birthday which fell on the 21st of April
1:181944. Corgis had come into the family 11
1:21years before. In 1933, Elizabeth's
1:24parents, then the Duke and Duchess of
1:26York, approached a breeder called Thelma
1:28Gray. Three puppies were brought from
1:30her Rozavel Kennels in Surrey so that
1:33the family could choose one together.
1:34The one they kept was registered as
1:36Rozavel Golden Eagle. He was called
1:39Dookie, a nickname that began among the
1:41kennel staff who knew the puppy was
1:43going to the household of the Duke of
1:44York. Another corgi, Jane, followed.
1:47Dookie and Jane were family dogs shared
1:49by Elizabeth and her younger sister
1:51Margaret. Susan was the first corgi
1:53given to Elizabeth for herself. The
1:55Guardian, reporting on her in 2004,
1:58called her simply the queen's first
2:00corgi, a present for her 18th birthday
2:03from her parents. And Thelma Gray, the
2:05breeder who had supplied Dookie, would
2:07come into Susan's story in 1949, waiting
2:10at the far end of a flight on a Royal
2:12Mail plane. By the time Elizabeth
2:14married, Susan was no longer the only
2:16corgi around her. The caption on that
2:18carriage photograph calls her one of the
2:20princesses' favorite corgis, which means
2:23there were others. When the day came to
2:25leave London as a married woman, it was
2:27Susan who went in the carriage. The
2:29wedding service on Thursday, the 20th of
2:31November, 1947, was at Westminster
2:33Abbey. Elizabeth was 21. For going away,
2:37Hartnell had made her a dress and
2:38matching coat in mist blue with a blue
2:41felt bonnet beret trimmed with ostrich
2:43feathers. That was what the crowds
2:45outside the palace saw as the carriage
2:47pulled out. The official Royal website,
2:49in its list of facts about the wedding,
2:51gives the dog a sentence of her own.
2:53Princess Elizabeth's corgi, Susan, came
2:56with them. Susan was 3 years and 9
2:58months old that day, to the day. She had
3:01been born on the 20th of February, 1944,
3:04and she had belonged to Elizabeth since
3:05before the war in Europe was over. The
3:07carriage took them to Waterloo Station.
3:09The Royal Collection's exhibition text
3:11on the honeymoon says the couple
3:13departed from there with the princess's
3:15corgi, and it uses the pet name Sue. A
3:18train ran south into Hampshire. The
3:20first part of the honeymoon was spent at
3:22Broadlands, near Romsey, the house of
3:24Philip's uncle, Earl Mountbatten. A few
3:26days later, the cameras caught them in
3:28the grounds. A print in the Royal
3:30Collection, credited to Photographic
3:32News Agencies of London, shows Elizabeth
3:35and Philip walking together in the park
3:36at Broadlands. The catalog entry says
3:39they are accompanied by the princess's
3:40Welsh corgi, Susan. You have to look for
3:43her. She is just visible behind them.
3:45Another agency picture from the same
3:47grounds, captioned for the 24th of
3:49November, has the newly married couple
3:51playing with her. 77 years later, in
3:54November 2024, the Royal Collection
3:56posted a honeymoon photograph and, as
3:59Hello magazine reported, asked its
4:01followers whether they had spotted Susan
4:03walking just behind the bride. Before
4:05they left for Scotland, the couple
4:07issued a statement from Buckingham
4:09Palace. It begins with the crowds, the
4:12reception on their wedding day, and the
4:14loving interest shown by well-wishers in
4:16all parts of the world had left, in
4:18their words, an impression which will
4:20never grow faint. Then it goes on, "We
4:22can find no words to express what we
4:24feel, but we can at least offer our
4:27grateful thanks to the millions who have
4:28given us this unforget table send-off in
4:31our married life." The honeymoon moved
4:33north to Balmoral, a house on the
4:35Balmoral estate. Vanity Fair has Susan
4:37on that honeymoon in Scotland, too.
4:39Within a year, there was a baby. Prince
4:41Charles was born on the 14th of
4:43November, 1948, and the dog had not been
4:46forgotten. Vanity Fair, in a long
4:48history of the royal corgis published in
4:502015, dug out a page from that time. It
4:54was the children's section of the
4:55Mirror, and it asked young readers how
4:57the family should keep Susan from
4:59growing jealous of the new baby. The
5:01answers came in. One boy, Alan Moore,
5:03suggested showing the baby to Susan
5:05while stroking her all the time. And
5:07when nursing the baby, he wrote, "Let
5:10Susan have a nice saucer of milk or tea
5:12beside you." The Mirror printed it. In
5:141949, according to that Vanity Fair
5:17history, Susan came into season during a
5:19visit to Balmoral. She was put on a
5:21royal mail plane and flown south.
5:24Waiting for her was Thelma Gray, who
5:26took her to be mated with a Roosevelt
5:27dog called Lucky Strike. In May 1949,
5:31Susan had a pair of puppies, Sugar and
5:33Honey. Sugar was, on paper at least,
5:36Prince Charles's dog, although Charles
5:38was only about 6 months old. Honey, in
5:41later years, lived with Elizabeth's
5:42mother, the woman the country would come
5:44to call the Queen Mother. That was the
5:46start of Susan's line. In August 1950,
5:50Princess Anne was born, and the
5:51household around the dog grew again. The
5:54breed was changing, too. By 1951, Vanity
5:57Fair writes, "Royal favor had helped
5:59make the corgi one of Britain's most
6:01popular dogs, and the numbers rose
6:03further after Elizabeth came to the
6:05throne. The magazine traces how over the
6:07decades a scrappy working dog, once all
6:10but unknown outside Wales, turned into
6:12an ornamental breed. Then the princess
6:15became the queen. On the 6th of February
6:171952, her father died at Sandringham and
6:20Elizabeth succeeded him at 25. Susan was
6:242 weeks short of her 8th birthday. 16
6:26months later, on the 2nd of June 1953,
6:29the new queen was crowned in Westminster
6:31Abbey, the church where she had married.
6:34Vanity Fair has a dry line about what
6:36followed for the dog. Susan, it says,
6:39"coped as best she could for almost
6:40exactly 1 year after the coronation."
6:43Then, in the magazine's phrase, she
6:45lashed out. Vanity Fair reports that on
6:47the 25th of June 1954, Susan bit the
6:50royal clock winder, Leonard Hubbard. 5
6:53days later, the victim was a Grenadier
6:55Guard on sentry duty, a man named Alfred
6:58Edge. Susan was 10. She was not the only
7:01royal corgi with a temper that year. A
7:03little later, the magazine says, "a
7:05corgi belonging to the Queen Mother went
7:07for a policeman, tore his trousers, and
7:09cut his knee." And one newspaper
7:11solemnly called it the first time a
7:13royal corgi had ever bitten a policeman.
7:15Soon afterwards, by the magazine's
7:17account, Susan's line produced another
7:20litter. This one sired by a Rowzevel dog
7:22with the name Rebellion. Thelma Gray and
7:25Daphne Slark brought the puppies to
7:26Windsor. The plan was for the Queen,
7:29with Charles and Anne, to choose one.
7:31She could not make up her mind. Slark
7:33remembered what the Queen told the
7:34children, "Don't tell your father we've
7:36got two puppies, two new puppies." The
7:39same magazine, writing in 2015, gives a
7:42hint of what the dogs did for her.
7:44"Whenever possible," it says, "the Queen
7:46feeds the corgis herself and leads them
7:48on daily walks, which serve as a kind of
7:51therapy." Prince Philip had his own name
7:53for it. He called it his wife's dog
7:55mechanism. Nobody outside that family
7:58can know exactly what Susan was to
8:00Elizabeth across those years, from a
8:02young marriage to a sudden crown. In
8:041959, she did leave a paper trail. In
8:07January 1959, Susan was nearly 15. She
8:11fell ill and she was sent to Cambridge
8:13to a vet named Harold Swan. He could not
8:16save her. Susan died on the 26th of
8:18January 1959. The Queen was 32. She had
8:22been on the throne for almost 7 years
8:25and she had a son of 10 and a daughter
8:26of 8. She wrote to the vet herself. The
8:29letter, later printed by People
8:31magazine, thanks him for all he did for
8:34my dear old Susan when she became ill
8:36and for the immense amount of trouble
8:38you took in getting her sent to
8:39Cambridge and for all the care she had
8:41while she was there. Then comes the line
8:43that tells us when the dog came to her.
8:46I had always dreaded losing her as I had
8:48had her since she was 6 weeks old, but I
8:50am ever so thankful that her suffering
8:52was so mercifully short. It was signed,
8:55"Yours sincerely, Elizabeth R." 6 weeks
8:58old. Vanity Fair gives the puppy's age
9:00at the handover as 2 months. The Queen's
9:03own figure is younger and she wrote it
9:0515 years on in a letter to a vet. If her
9:07memory was right, it shifts the birthday
9:10story. 6 weeks from the 20th of February
9:121944 is the beginning of April, which
9:15would make Susan hers almost 3 weeks
9:18before the 18th birthday the puppy was
9:19meant to mark. Susan was buried at
9:21Sandringham in the pet cemetery on the
9:23estate. The Queen sketched the headstone
9:25herself. The drawing shows a rounded
9:28stone and she sent it to Robert
9:29Marrington, the superintendent of works
9:31at Sandringham in Norfolk. Her first
9:34version of the wording gave Susan 15
9:36years as a faithful companion of the
9:38Queen. On the 4th of February 1959, 9
9:41days after the death, another note went
9:43to Marrington. Hello magazine later
9:45printed the wording. "I have found the
9:47date of Susan's birth, 20th February
9:501944. So, could you have that inserted
9:53between her name and her death on the
9:55stone, please?" It was signed, "E. R."
9:57She had gone and found it. The Queen had
10:00tracked down the date a puppy was born
10:02in the middle of a war so that it could
10:04be cut into stone. Once the birth date
10:06was there, the arithmetic changed. The
10:0820th of February 1944 to the 26th of
10:11January 1959 is 14 years, 11 months, and
10:156 days. Susan had died 25 days short of
10:19her 15th birthday. 15 years, the figure
10:22in the first draft, was no longer true.
10:24About 2 weeks later, by Vanity Fair's
10:26account, there was one more memo. The
10:29Guardian printed its wording in 2004. My
10:32only comment is that I think for
10:33accuracy's sake, we ought to put for
10:35almost 15 years. The rest is quite all
10:38right. The word almost is underlined.
10:41The initials at the bottom are E.R. The
10:44notes do not say whether she counted the
10:4525 days herself. They show that she
10:48changed one word and that she underlined
10:50it. The stone was set up over the grave
10:52at Sandringham, and a Getty picture by
10:54the photographer Anwar Hussein, dated
10:571980, shows it in place. Its wording, as
11:00the Kennel Club records it, gives her
11:02name, her birth on the 20th of February
11:041944, and her death on the 26th of
11:07January 1959, and calls her for almost
11:1015 years the faithful companion of the
11:13Queen. The sketch and the notes had been
11:15sent to Marrington. They passed to
11:17another owner who died in the 1970s.
11:20After that, they went to one of his
11:21relatives. By April 2004, 45 years after
11:25Susan's death, they were listed for sale
11:27with Mullock Madeley, an auction house
11:29in Church Stretton in Shropshire. The
11:32guide price was £300. Offers of more
11:34than a thousand had already come in when
11:37Palace officials challenged the
11:38ownership. The Guardian called the
11:40sketch one of the Queen's more unusual
11:42autographs. The auctioneer, Richard
11:45Westwood Brooks, told the Guardian how
11:47the Palace saw it. Technically, it was a
11:49business letter sent to him in his
11:50capacity as an employee of the Queen. He
11:53added that the owner was obviously
11:55disappointed to sell something he
11:56thought was his property, and someone
11:58comes along and says it isn't. The sale
12:00was stopped. That is how the word
12:03almost, underlined in her hand, reached
12:05the newspapers. The dogs that began with
12:07Susan kept coming long after her. Over
12:10her reign, the Queen owned more than 30
12:12corgis, and Vanity Fair in 2015 called
12:15Susan the common ancestor of all of
12:18them. That year, the two youngest, Holly
12:20and Willow, appeared to be the 14th
12:22generation. They came from a litter of
12:24eight born on the 9th of July, 2003, and
12:28every puppy in it was given the name of
12:30a plant. Diana King, chairman of the
12:32Welsh Corgi League, told the magazine
12:34that the Queen was the only breeder who
12:36still has bred from her foundation
12:38In all those years, the same
12:40article says, the Queen never sold one
12:42of her corgis and never let them compete
12:45at a dog show. By then, the breeding had
12:47stopped. The horse trainer Monty Roberts
12:49told Vanity Fair about a conversation
12:51with the Queen after the death of her
12:53corgi Monty in 2012. She didn't want to
12:56have any more young dogs. She didn't
12:58want to leave any young dog behind. She
13:00wanted to put an end to it. Holly died
13:02in October 2016. Willow was put to sleep
13:05at Windsor Castle in April 2018 after
13:08cancer. She was 14, and she was the last
13:11of Susan's descendants. Almost 74 years
13:14after a puppy was given to an
13:1618-year-old princess, the dogs descended
13:18from Susan were gone. The two corgis the
13:21Queen still had when she died in
13:23September 2022, Mick and Sandy, came
13:26from other stock. In October 2025,
13:29Buckingham Palace said of them, "The
13:31corgis will remain with the family." At
13:33Sandringham, the stone is still in the
13:35pet cemetery with the birth date she
13:36went looking for. Next to the number 15
13:39is the word she underlined in her final
13:41memo. "Almost

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