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How to entertain a US president who comes to stay? The Queen can go one better than getting out the old photo albums
During her long reign, the Queen has met a quarter of all American presidents, but few have stayed at Buckingham Palace for a sleepover. But Barack Obama – a man almost young enough to be her grandson, younger than three of her four children – was a guest on Monday night with his wife Michelle. Generations and continents apart in experience and age, they seemed to be getting on like a house on fire.
But how to entertain the nice, polite young man after lunch? Some of us might get out the family album, or the holiday souvenirs. The Queen can go several steps better: laid out in her private gallery in the palace, under the Rubens paintings, for the presidential perusal were notes by George Washington and George III, a letter by Abraham Lincoln and two copies of the original edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Not forgetting a 19th-century volume of John James Audubon's Birds of America, in double elephant-sized folio, one of the most valuable books of the world: if you want to buy it, the going rate at auction is $11m.
Nothing quite like that in the exchange of gifts: the Queen gave the Obamas leather-bound facsimiles of the presidential letters in the royal collection, with an antique gold-and-red coral brooch for the first lady. In return Obama, evidently learning from the slight hiatus over his trifling gift of DVDs to Gordon Brown, gave the Queen a collection of photographs from her parents' visit to Washington in 1939 – the first to the US by a reigning British monarch. The duke received a gift perhaps qualifying for the response "you shouldn't have": horseshoes, bits and shanks of equipage from the US champion carriage driving team, engraved with the presidential seal. It was probably the thought that counted.
The royal party, fresh from lunch, were clearly in relaxed mood as they entered the gallery, the Queen pointing out the exhibits as an 85-year-old might show off her begonias. "Jane – you explain," she instructed Lady Jane Roberts, the librarian at Windsor Castle, who had selected the exhibits.
Get any awkwardness out of the way first: a letter from Washington about the surrender of British troops at Yorktown at the end of the war of independence. Beside it, George III's neatly written note, agonising over the loss of the colonies: "America is lost! Must we fall beneath the blow?" Spirits evidently rising, he concluded perceptively: "A people spread over an immense part of fertile land, industrious because free and rich because industrious, presently becomes a market for the manufactures and commerce of the mother country." He didn't add, as one of his negotiators of the peace treaty did, "And everyone of 'em speaking English."
"That was just a temporary blip in the relationship," said Obama, looking down genially.
They made their way slowly round the gallery, the Queen murmuring, "Interesting" at Lady Jane's commentary, while examining her fingernails. The duke cheerfully turned the pages of the Audubon to show Mrs Obama, ruffling them as if they were a paperback.
There was some chuckling at a letter, written from Washington during the 1939 tour, by the Queen's mother to "My Darling Lilibet" describing a picnic luncheon: "All our food on one plate – a little salmon, some turkey, some ham, lettuce, beans and HOT DOGS too!"
It was a pity they scarcely had time to glance at the handwritten letter Abraham Lincoln wrote to Queen Victoria in February 1862, in the middle of the civil war, after learning of the death of Prince Albert. He sympathised with his "Great and Good Friend" over the overwhelming affliction that had befallen her: "I would fain have your Majesty apprehend … that real sympathy can exist, as real truthfulness can be practised, in the intercourse of nations..." Three years later Victoria was writing to Lincoln's widow, following the president's assassination: "Though a stranger to you, I cannot remain silent when so terrible a calamity has fallen upon you," and Mary Lincoln was writing back in anguish about "the intense grief I now endure."
Protocol directs that after a reciprocal banquet at the US ambassador's residence, the Queen and duke will bid farewell to their guests, who then return to the palace for a further night. Perhaps they will leave the cornflakes out for the morning, with a note for the Obamas to help themselves.