As fears for the king’s health had grown in the latter part of 1951, the Duke of Windsor had paid lip service to national concerns, but also kept a close watch on his book sales. The reaction in Britain to A King’s Story was cooler than it had been in the United States, although not without enthusiasm for both its historical and literary qualities.* The Times Literary Supplement talked of how ‘it is the Duke’s own book … his own personality, his likes and strong dislikes, spring to life as well as his keen sense of humour’. Had they known of the extent of Murphy’s involvement, the praise may have been less warm.
One of these strong dislikes was especially obvious to British readers. The duke’s vitriolic portrayal of Stanley Baldwin, even in toned-down form, came in for both public and private criticism – the Earl of Athlone’s reaction that ‘you were a bit too strong about Baldwin, who was really very fond of you’1 was typical – and some of the press reviews were less glowing about the duke’s own self-presentation. The Observer sighed, ‘the wisdom of publication is arguable … the hero emerges as rather a pathetic figure’, while in the Spectator, Wilson Harris wrote, of Edward’s adulterous relationship with Wallis, that ‘on the Duke’s resolve to drag every detail of this old unhappy affair to light again when it had been well forgotten some judgement is called for … it must be unreservedly adverse’.2 Yet even these criticisms could not harm the book’s sales, which were considerable: eighty thousand copies were sold in Britain in the first month of sale.
It had received greater acclaim on its publication in the United States earlier in the year, on 14 April; Stephen Spender’s review in the New York Times the next day went so far as to compare Edward’s downfall to that of Byron and Wilde, and suggested that in his ‘important and highly interesting book’, the duke had redeemed himself in the public eye, even if the saga remained ‘on the level of serious comedy rather than tragedy’. Spender, perhaps not entirely au fait with the wider circumstances of the duke’s relationship with his family, wrote that the abdication crisis – ‘a situation pregnant with disaster’ – had, in the end, ‘ended with comparative happiness all round’.3
Edward’s private secretary, Anne Seagrim, wrote that ‘HRH [is] in terrific form … very happy about the book, which has had a wonderful reception, and the reviews have been too marvellous … He spends most of the day signing his name.’4 A more critical observer may have remarked that the duke’s most famous – and worthwhile – signature was that with which he had sealed the deed of abdication on 11 December 1936. Yet the warmth of the public response meant that as the duke and Seagrim were packing up his office, he gave her ‘a look that meant a thousand things’, and suggested that, given the success of A King’s Story, he was considering writing a sequel that would explore his post-abdication life. He added, ‘with a repetition of the confidential look’, ‘I dare say it will be a great deal more interesting than this one …’5 It sounded like a threat as much as a promise.
However, despite the vast publicity that A King’s Story had engendered, the expensive tastes of the duke and duchess meant that sums of money that would have kept most people happy for years were spent in a matter of a few months. They wished to purchase a property using their new income, rather than being perpetual renters, and Wallis had written to her Aunt Bessie on 4 November to suggest that ‘we cannot find the one unit near Paris, and the Duke must have the country. So now we are looking for a small house or flat in Paris and something small in the country for week-ends.’6
Edward occupied a strange and unsatisfactory position in public life at this time. His memoir had once again thrown him back into the spotlight, but the news of his brother’s ill health had meant that its British publication was overshadowed by far graver matters. He had seen Lascelles on 27 September, during one of his increasingly frequent visits to Britain, and the private secretary reported to Churchill that ‘The Duke of Windsor was with me for the best part of an hour this morning. His Royal Highness, without mentioning that he had had a letter from you on the subject, asked me for my advice with regard to his projected attendance at this Publishers’ Dinner tomorrow. I gave it. As a result, His Royal Highness was good enough to say that he would, for the present at any rate, cancel his appearance at the dinner.’*7
This thwarted desire stemmed from an invitation that the duke had accepted to address the Book Publishers’ Representatives’ Association at their annual dinner at the Connaught Rooms in London on 28 September 1951. This was a major, if unglamorous, event that would nevertheless have presented the duke as an homme des lettres, in addition to being the former king; his publisher, Desmond Flower, suggested that ‘your gracious presence at the dinner would give your book the finest possible send off throughout the trade’.8
Additionally, it would have allowed him to make his first high-profile speech in Britain in fifteen years. Not since his abdication broadcast of 1936 had Edward given any kind of public statement in his home country. The major exception to this, a global broadcast that he made from Verdun on 8 May 1939, was not transmitted by the BBC for fear that the former monarch might rile his countrymen, despite his being in France. Tellingly, the Verdun recording in the BBC archives remains marked ‘not for broadcast’; the duke’s activities were off limits as far as the national broadcaster was concerned.
Had Edward made a more conventionally high-profile appearance – for instance, an ‘in conversation’ at the Royal Albert Hall with a literary friend or admirer such as the Scottish novelist and biographer Compton Mackenzie* or Nicolson – he would immediately have been accused of showboating on the grandest scale. He was caught between the considerable demands of his own ego (and the attendant boost that his publisher, Cassell & Co., would have received from such an event and its concomitant publicity) and the knowledge that his family’s horror at his having written the book at all would be magnified a hundredfold if he took to the stage to present himself no longer as a regal figure, but, of all unbecoming things, a writer.
Therefore, his acceptance of the invitation to address the BPRA seemed like a compromise that his family would have to accept, however reluctantly. Yet when it became clear that the duke would be appearing in public, his friends and intimates intervened to frustrate his plan. Rowland Baring, 2nd Earl of Cromer and a former Lord Chamberlain of the royal household, had already written to Edward in August in the warmest terms. He praised A King’s Story for its ‘literary qualities and tactful choice of words that elevate this pathos-laden story to such a high and dignified plane’, as well as saying that the book boasted ‘verity, sincerity and graciousness of style … it cannot but command respect in the hearts of all the fair-minded’.9 Yet a month later, on 19 September, just over a week before the dinner, he wrote to the duke and urged him not to attend, on the grounds that his presence would have been too closely associated with commercialism.
Given that by this stage Edward seldom saw a money-making opportunity he was prepared to turn down, it is likely that he would have ignored Lord Cromer’s words, on the spurious grounds that it would be harsh to disappoint the good men – and they would exclusively have been men – of the BPRA. Churchill, however, made a more apposite intervention on 26 September, the eve of the book’s publication, to remind him of his brother’s grave ill health and the necessity of remaining out of the public eye until the monarch was recovered, suggesting, ‘it is so important that the first time you address the British public [you] should have the most cordial welcome’.10
Reluctantly, the duke cancelled his appearance at the dinner. He was replaced at the last moment by Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook’s son; hardly the high-profile figure the former monarch was. The assembled company rose ‘as one man’ to drink the duke’s health in absentia at the Connaught Rooms in London, but this did little to assuage his displeasure. It did not help his ill temper that the young princesses were seen enjoying themselves at Ascot the day that he should have been giving his speech; he grumbled to Ulick Alexander that their presence at the races when he was himself stabled was ‘pretty blatant discrimination’.11
He wrote miserably to the BPRA’s president, Kenneth H. Smith to say, ‘I know you will understand the sad circumstances which have led me to cancel my long-standing engagement to be the guest of honour … to the great relief of all his loyal subjects, the King’s recovery from his serious operation is making satisfactory progress. On the other hand there must be continued anxiety for some days to come.’ He referred to his keen disappointment over ‘not being able to be with you all [at the dinner] … to which I have been so long looking forward to attending’.12
If no copy of the duke’s undelivered speech existed, it would be tempting to wonder what was in it. Petty grumbling? Statesman-like oratory that he would no doubt have delivered with gravitas? Bland self-promotion that might have been received well enough over the large brandies and cigars but is deadening to read today? All are possibilities. Thankfully, in the Monckton papers in the Balliol College archives, there is a surviving copy. The speech is extraordinary. If he had been allowed to make it, it would have caused reverberations that would have echoed far beyond the function rooms of the BPRA.*
From its opening, Edward’s intention was to make far wider political and social points than simply to thank a publishers’ trade association for selling huge quantities of his book. He would have started by reminding his audience that ‘this is the first speech – if my few remarks to you this evening can be so classified – that I have made to Great Britain since I went away almost 15 years ago’. Acknowledging that the book had already been a bestseller in the United States since its publication there in April –‘it has been generously received by the reading public of that great country’ – he would also have sought to counter any criticism that he had abandoned Britain entirely.
The speech continues, ‘I have of course been looking forward to the day when my book would become available to the people of the United Kingdom, where I was born, where I was raised, where I worked and played’ – one imagines at this point a knowing pause, perhaps some smutty laughter from the more red-faced members of the BPRA – ‘where I reigned even if only briefly, and where so many episodes and incidents recorded in my story took place.’
It would not have been a modest speech. It took as its central thesis an unusual new identity for its speaker. The Duke of Windsor had been, in his life thus far, prince, king, exiled duke and much else besides. Now he was attempting to claim another mantle for himself: that of author. In true after-dinner style, he would have professed that ‘from considerable experience in public speaking I find it hard to believe those who claim that this, one of the most difficult of human accomplishments, holds for them no terrors’, and flattered his ‘very critical audience’, whose time was spent ‘reading through material that is submitted for your approval in the hope that with your assistance it may obtain the dignity of print’. He acknowledged his fear that this material ‘finds its way into the limbo of forgotten things’, and then praised the dignity of his listeners. ‘It is inevitable that the attitude of a publisher towards an author must differ from his attitude towards the rest of the world … for the rest of the world consists of people to whom you are anxious to sell something, while the wretched author is someone who wants to sell something to you.’
Edward may have called himself wretched, but his intentions were anything but. Acknowledging his appearance via the medium of paradox (‘publishers are the servants of the public but authors are the servants of the publishers’), he would have said, with an arch dig at his family and their courtiers, ‘Yes, I have written a book, and it seems in the eyes of some that in doing so I have done something very terrible.’ Then the speech segues into a routine that would not have disgraced a cabaret performer, and indicates a hitherto unsuspected degree of humour and wit on the part of the duke, especially when it came to literary matters. ‘It was Job I think who in the depth of his misery exclaimed that he wished his enemy had written a book.* I used to find it difficult to understand why he wished such a peculiar thing. Now, I know. Gentlemen, Job was dead right. He knew what he was talking about. If you’ve got a grudge against anybody, and want to do him a bad turn, all you have to do is persuade him to write a book.’
The duke then would have offered a meta-commentary on his own situation, not least his family’s fears – and his hosts’ hopes – that he might yet produce a sequel to A King’s Story. ‘It’s the first one that gets you into trouble. After a man has written two or more books, people get used to it. They say “Oh, he’s written another book, has he? Well, he’s always doing it. It’s too late to stop him” … with the first book it’s different. “Why on earth should he write a book?”’ With tongue firmly in cheek, Edward’s speech suggests the likely reactions to his authorial ambitions. ‘He of all people. I never thought he’d do that. How very unwise, how quite unnecessary, how indiscreet, how unfair, how wrong. What a bad book it must be. I certainly shan’t read it.’
He then chose to make his own status explicit, in case, for some unfathomable reason, a refreshed member of his audience was confused as to who this ‘Duke Windsor’ character was – ‘I suppose that it follows in the minds of people who feel this way that when someone who has been a King writes a book it makes the crime even worse’ – and began to advance a justification for what he had done, not least by appealing to posterity. ‘Few people I believe know that previous occupants of the British throne have written books before me. Even if no monarch ever had, that would not have prevented me from writing one, for I cannot think of a worse reason for not doing so than the fact that no ancestor has done it before.’
He made no claim to be a pioneer in this regard – ‘Henry VIII wrote a book, and it was a very successful book – I cannot give you the figures of its circulation, but I can tell you that the Pope was so pleased with it that he conferred upon Henry the title of Defender of the Faith’ – and then compared himself to another king forced from the throne before his time, Charles I, who he described as ‘an unfortunate monarch but a very good man’, and implicitly compared A King’s Story to Charles’s Eikon Basilike, ‘all his most intimate thoughts and feelings’. Anyone in the audience listening to this speech may now have realised that there was an agenda at play rather than the speaker merely cracking a few jokes, made even more explicit by the next segment. ‘My great grandmother was also a writer. Queen Victoria did not think it beneath her dignity in what we regard as the extremely conventional period in which we lived to write and publish details of her most private life.’
With this appeal to the ‘eminent precedents’ he had followed, the duke modestly played down his own intentions. ‘[I did not write] A King’s Story in any spirit of emulation of my illustrious predecessors. I wrote it because I had something I wanted to say. Can there be a better reason for writing? As a man who having lived a life of infinite variety and become involved in perhaps more than his share of controversy, I felt impelled to tell my own story in order that it remains the final record.’ He did not mention that everyone from Churchill to Beaverbrook had given him similar advice, nor that the creation of his book had been fraught because of his continual disagreements with his ghostwriter. This was glossed over by his comment ‘On the whole I enjoyed writing my book, a difficult and exacting task as it was’, and he expressed his hopes for its commercial success and its wider purpose. ‘I hope that many people will read my book. I hope so not only because I do not want my publishers to lose money but because I want as many people as possible to realise that there are two sides to every story.’
He acknowledged that such ‘fair’ criticism as the book had received had been directed ‘more towards the principle of my writing it at all than towards the material’, but in typical self-aggrandising fashion commented that ‘approval of my undertaking has been gratifyingly generous’. ‘At the risk of being accused of self-glorification’, he would then have read out a tribute from ‘an old and trusted friend of my family who served my father for many years and then me during my short reign, in one of the most distinguished posts at Court’.
This statement* announced that ‘Always outspoken in my relations with my sovereign I am led to say now, Sir, how glad I am you have recorded your “King’s Story” for the peoples of this and other lands to learn at first hand. Both for personal and historical reasons it had to be told and there was little point in unduly delaying its telling.’ The puffer praised the book’s ‘variety, sincerity and graciousness of style’, and concluded that ‘it cannot but command respect in the hearts of all the fair minded’. One can only imagine the smirk on the duke’s face as he might have delivered such an encomium to himself.
The undelivered speech remains one of the great ‘what-ifs’ of the royal family’s history of this period. Its provocations and innuendo would not have escaped the attentions of the media and his family alike, and Churchill and Cromer’s advice for him not to give his address – presumably with the text sight-unseen – was savvy foresight when it came to the most mercurial and unreliable member of the monarchy. Over the previous decade, he had been caught up in everything from an intrigue with pro-Nazi forces, perhaps even the Nazis themselves, to toying with assuming a regency if ill health forced his brother from the throne. Now he was promoting a book, and doing so in typically inimitable fashion.
In his address to the BPRA, he showed an even more mischievous – some would say reckless – side. With his brother gravely ill, his niece facing the impending burden of monarchy that her uncle had so calmly given up, his former country crippled by debt and national despair, and discontent running riot, the nation of which he said, ‘I always remember with pride that … [my native land’s welfare] is ever near to my heart’ was being brought to its knees. It was therefore unorthodox for the duke to suggest that his book was ‘as far as its last chapters are concerned’ a romance, and that the ‘lovely and wonderful lady to whom the book is dedicated’ was its subject. And now such a story was being dangled in front of the hungry association of publishers as the golden goose, for their – and his – enrichment.
The duke would have gazed out over the audience on 28 September and privately derided them as the little people, as he had everyone else he had come into contact with throughout his life. Yet they were there to lap up his wisdom, and he had a last piece of brilliance – ‘one final thought’ – to bestow on them: ‘For myself – I only wish that I had thought to add the old familiar ending of all romances – “And they lived happily ever after.”’13
If he could have said such a thing without a grin, then he was a master of deadpan. With Britain on the edge of existential disaster, the idea of a happy ending for anyone seemed remote.
When Edward was not seething with frustration at his thwarted opportunities for self-promotion, he continued to rail against the left-wing menace that he saw as society’s greatest threat, and the weakness of the British government in combating it. Congratulating Monckton on his appointment to the Cabinet as Minister for Labour and National Service, the duke stated, ‘it’s too bad that the electorate did not give Winston a proper mandate. It’s proof of how evenly divided the British nation still is between sanity and bedlam. Between those who realise that you can’t have everything for nothing, and those who do not … I’m afraid, therefore, that it’s going to be very difficult for your party to bring about all the necessary reforms to save the country from further ruin with so slender a majority. However, if in the next year you can convince more people of the follies of socialism by correcting their economic blunders, then a change of political thinking might well follow, and the Conservatives be re-elected for a full and effective term of office.’14
Yet just as the country was distracted from the election with the news of the king’s indisposition, so Edward was unable to pursue his own desired agenda while he remained in his brother’s shadow. He still wished Wallis to be granted the coveted HRH title, but he knew such a thing was impossible while his brother was gravely ill. Therefore, writing to the king on 12 November, he not only expressed his relief at ‘the change of “His Majesty’s Servants” to use the old constitutional expression when referring to the Cabinet’,* but also said, ‘I have been delighted and relieved to read of the steady progress you have been making since your operation’, as he suggested visiting the king between 21 and 23 November, when he was in the country once more. Concluding, ‘I hope that you really are feeling better after so many wretched months of sickness’,15 the letter seemed the model of fraternal amity, following their former disagreement and rancour.
The two men met around the dates Edward had suggested, and the duke later reported to Sir Oliver Franks, the British ambassador to the United States, that ‘I have just returned from London where I saw the King for the first time since his serious operation. I am glad to be able to report that he is making a wonderful recovery and looks better and more robust than I have seen him in some years.’16 It was a welcome step towards reconciliation. Had it continued, both men might have found the common ground that had eluded them since the abdication. But the king died shortly afterwards, and the drama moved into its next phase.
On 7 February 1952, the duke, bound for Britain from New York, gave a semi-impromptu press conference on board the Queen Mary. He made a statement in which he said, ‘This voyage, upon which I am embarking on the Queen Mary tonight, is indeed sad – and is indeed all the sadder for me because I am undertaking it alone. The Duchess is remaining here to await my return. I am sailing for Great Britain, for the funeral of a dear brother, and to comfort Her Majesty, my mother, in the overwhelming sorrow which has overtaken my family and the commonwealth of British nations.’
He told some white lies about his relationship with his brother – ‘the late King and I were very close, and the outstanding qualities of kingship he possessed made easier for me the passing on of the interrupted succession to the throne of the United Kingdom’ – and then there was a hint that his visit was not an entirely selfless one. ‘But Queen Elizabeth is only twenty-five – how young to assume the responsibilities of a great throne in these precarious times?’ Backing away from the clear implication, he concluded, ‘But she has the good wishes and support of us all.’17
There had, after all, been no question of his not attending the event, despite Channon’s musing on 9 February, ‘One wonders what the Duke of Windsor will do at the funeral? And how he will be received? It is natural but tactless of him to come.’18 However, his motives were ambiguous. When de Courcy stated in 1949 that the duke should return to Britain and prepare himself for a de facto regency in the event of his brother’s continued ill health, no letter exists in reply to the suggestion. Yet with the king dead and an inexperienced young woman on the throne, the apparent vacuum created an opportunity. Even as the duke spoke, probably accurately, of his ‘profound shock’ at his brother’s demise, it was clear that he and Wallis had discussed the likelihood that they stood to gain preferment if they played their cards right. The question remained who held the king, and who the joker.
Over the course of a correspondence that began as soon as the Queen Mary set sail, and continued until the duke returned to the United States, Wallis outlined her Machiavellian belief that this represented a God-sent opportunity. After first describing her misery at their being parted – ‘I hate, hate having you go away alone – but you are not really alone because I am so much a part of you’ – she then got down to business. On 7 February, she advised caution with some of the participants (‘Be canny with Dickie [Mountbatten] – we do not want favours through the young Prince Consort because he doesn’t know how nice we are’);19 three days later, she was alternately sneering (‘the papers and radio talk of nothing but Bertie and the girl – very, very sentimental’) and exhorting: ‘I hope everything won’t be too hard and that for once a few decent things will come your way after the long, sad journey and the difficult relationships. You have jumped many obstacles in life and this is just one more.’20
The duke was unable to reply with the loquacity he usually reserved for his letters to his wife, and the only surviving correspondence from his side is a brief telegram, sent on 11 February, that stated, ‘Smooth voyage is giving good if lonely rest. Hope digglets [sic] better. All love your D.’ Yet it was clear that they both had the same intent in mind, as could be discerned by Wallis’s reply of 12 February. ‘I am really scared to breathe … I hope you can make some headway with Cookie and Mrs Temple Jr.’21 The couple had come up with the insulting sobriquets ‘Cookie’ or ‘Mrs Temple Sr’ for the queen mother, and ‘Mrs Temple Jr’ or ‘Shirley’ for the new queen; she was given her title after the popular film star Shirley Temple, to whom Edward and Wallis fancied she bore a likeness. The king, while he had been alive, had been known simply as ‘Mr Temple’.
It remains unclear which, if any, works from Temple Jr’s oeuvre the couple were familiar with. Perhaps if they had seen 1935’s The Littlest Rebel or 1945’s Kiss and Tell, the films might have given them ideas. Yet when the duke arrived at Southampton on 13 February, private irritation had to be replaced with statesmanlike dignity. He issued another statement upon his embarkation, repeating many of the same phrases he had uttered on leaving New York, but now he took care to offer an olive branch of sorts to the queen mother and Queen Elizabeth.
Alluding to his abdication broadcast of December 1936, he said, ‘My brother drew strength in his heavy responsibilities from what I once described as “a matchless blessing … a happy home with a wife and children”. So as we mourn a much beloved monarch our hearts go out to the widowed Queen Mother and her two daughters in their grief.’ He concluded with an encomium to the new monarch. ‘The eldest, Elizabeth, has by God’s will been called upon to succeed her father. His well known attributes will I am sure descend to the young princess.’22
If the duke’s public statement had the intent of offering an implicit reconciliation to his semi-estranged family, it had the desired effect. Shortly after he arrived in Britain, he headed for tea at Buckingham Palace, where he was received by the new queen, Prince Philip and the queen mother.* His presence there may have been assisted by a letter that Queen Mary had written to her daughter-in-law on 10 February, saying, ‘[I] beg & beseech of you & the girls to see him & to bury the hatchet after 15 whole years … I gather D is awfully upset as in old days the 2 brothers were devoted to each other before that dreadful rift came.’ She acknowledged that ‘I feel grieved to have to add this extra burden on you 3 just at the moment’, but she lived up to her acknowledged role as the matriarch of ‘the Firm’ when she suggested, ‘I feel that you are so kind hearted that you will help me over what is to me a most worrying moment in the midst of the suffering we are going through just now.’23
Underneath the Christian sentiments, the tone of command was clear. And despite the queen mother’s reluctance, the reception duly took place. That the duke believed he had been reconciled with his family seems clear from a draft of a letter he wrote to the duchess immediately afterwards, stating, ‘officially and on the surface my treatment within the family has been entirely correct and dignified … but gosh they move slowly within these palace confines & the intrigues & manoeuvrings backstage must be filling books’.24 Wallis’s reaction to the news was straightforward, even as she counselled, ‘I hope you will not leave [this] around the room for all and sundry to read.’ She wrote, ‘I am so glad that things for once have been done properly regarding you … Now that the door has been opened a crack try and get your foot in, in the hope of making it even wider in the future because that is the best for WE*.’
Alluding to a hurtful missive that the duke had at some point written to Queen Mary, Wallis advised, ‘I suggest that you see the widow and tell her a little of your feelings that made you write the offending letter. After all, there are two sides to every story.’ Money was, as usual, at the forefront of her mind –‘I should also say how difficult things have been for us and that also we have gone out of our way to keep our way of life dignified which has not been easy due to the expense of running a correct house in keeping with your position as a brother of the King of England’ – but she also knew what could and could not be broached. She did not attach as much significance to the matter of her HRH title as her husband did, hence her advice to ‘leave it there … do not mention or ask for anything regarding recognition of me’. Suggesting that the duke attempt to ingratiate himself with the new queen and her husband, the duchess added that ‘I know how you hate being there but this is a golden opportunity and it may only knock but once.’ She concluded, with her own hint of command, ‘Do try to do what I suggest.’25
George VI’s funeral took place on 15 February 1952. Wallis was anxious about her husband’s status there, fearing that he would neither be allowed to wear his military uniform nor walk immediately behind his brother’s coffin, as was his right. Her concern was needless; he took his place alongside his younger brother, the Duke of Gloucester, Prince Philip, and the sixteen-year-old Duke of Kent, the son of his late brother. It was, inevitably, a solemn and sombre occasion. Nonetheless, the Duke of Windsor’s behaviour on the day attracted adverse comment. Channon described him as ‘jaunty’, and mused, ‘What must be his thoughts and regrets?’26 One observer, writing to the photographer Cecil Beaton, remarked on his ‘swaggering’ manner, and how the duke was ‘talking and looking around, gesticulating and almost waving to the huge and completely silent crowd’.27
If one wished to be fair to the Duke of Windsor, his inappropriately cheery, even showboating, behaviour might be explained by his remaining in a state of shock and confusion, caused by the stress of a long boat journey and a continuing uncertainty as to his place in the newly reshuffled royal family. It did not help his mood that shortly before the funeral, he discovered that the £10,000 he had been receiving as an allowance since his abdication was to be stopped, as the amount had been purely in his brother’s gift. Although the original agreement had been considered binding for the remainder of the former monarch’s life, rather than as long as George VI lived, it was a blunt reminder that the duke’s apparent reconciliation with his family was at best conditional, at worst an impossibility.
On the morning of the funeral, the duchess wrote angrily to her husband to say, ‘I can hardly believe that this can go on at this time. I hope you have not taken the expensive trip to lose the £10,000 and to be insulted.’ She concluded, ‘love, love and fight for WE’.28
The day after the funeral, depression and exhaustion overwhelmed the duke. After he spoke to Wallis on the telephone, she was driven to write to him on 17 February to say, ‘I did feel so distressed hearing your voice last night … You sounded so sunk and discouraged.’ She described his family as ‘beasts to continue to treat you the way they do’, and suggested, ‘do the best you can my darling, but I am afraid Mrs Temple Sr will never give in – all due to that letter which your mother should have kept to herself’*. Musing on his options, and offering her sorrow for her husband having ‘such a hurting time’, the duchess suggested, ‘I am afraid Mrs T Senior won’t see you as she may feel she would lose the stand she has taken … Naturally you can’t storm the Palace, [but] you will however be able to work on some of the girl’s advisers I imagine.’29 As Lascelles remained the new queen’s private secretary, this was a fanciful idea.
The duke lingered in Britain after the funeral, struggling to make sense of what his new role would be. He might have hoped to be received once more into the heart of the Firm, even to take on an informal counsellor role of sorts for his niece, but the loss of a substantial annual pension and the family’s continued coolness towards him meant that any longed-for reconciliation seemed impossible. He wrote to the queen mother on 18 February to ask for a private appointment, saying, ‘I can well understand your not wanting to be bothered by people at this terribly sad moment in your life. But I would very much like to have a talk with you alone before I return to America … I feel for you so very deeply and would like to say so in person.’30
This was untrue. He expressed his actual feelings to Wallis the same day by telegram – ‘have asked to see Cookie but general atmosphere frustrating … am growing long grey beard in snowstorm so can’t wait here too long’ – and a few days later, he took stock of the situation while staying with his mother at Marlborough House. Describing his dissatisfaction at the ‘difficult, painful and discouraging trip’, he railed against the apparent hypocrisy of his family. ‘Cookie was sugar as I’ve told you and [Mountbatten] and other relations and the Court officials correct and friendly on the surface. But gee the crust is hard and only granite below.’ He sighed that the likely reason for his pension not to be continued was ‘the fine excuse of national economy’, and, in the most damning and furious statement he had made about his family to date, complained, ‘it’s hell to be even this much dependent on these ice-veined bitches, important for WE as it is’.*31
During his various interviews and appointments, the duke kept a series of notes about his reception and experiences. They make dispiriting and cynical reading. Noting that ‘nobody cried in my presence … only Winston as usual’, he christened the prime minister ‘Cry Baby’, and was scathing about the family’s reaction to the king’s death. ‘Cookie & Margaret feel most … Mama hard as nails but failing. When Queens fail they make less sense than others in the same state.’ His appointment with the queen mother was unproductive – ‘Cookie listened without comment & closed on the note that it was nice to be able to talk about Bertie with somebody who had known him so well’ – and he remained suspicious about the power structure that now existed. ‘Economy is the slogan in G.B. … I don’t believe the Civil List will be cut but they are all talking poor which is bad.’ As for Mountbatten, his one-time friend and supporter, the duke was dismissive. ‘One can’t pin much on him but he’s very bossy & never stops talking. All are suspicious & watching his influence on Philip.’ The only people he was warm about were the new queen and her husband; he noted that ‘Clarence House [their residence] was informal & friendly. Brave New World. Full of self-confidence & seem to take job in their stride.’32
Edward’s presence in Britain had not been wholly welcome. Channon wrote in his diary of 19 February that ‘Queen Mary complained about the Duke of Windsor and particularly of his growing garrulousness – she can never get in a word!’ Although Channon acknowledged that ‘he has now seen all the Queens and officially at least has re-established some relations with his family’, he criticised the duke as ‘an advanced chatterbox’.33 Nor did matters improve as his stay continued. Channon, damning his late king on 24 February in his diary – ‘“Bertie” is forgotten and nobody except his daughters really liked him’ – was able to remark that ‘the Duke of Windsor, too, seems out of the picture and apparently bores and irritates his mother’.34 Two days later, the well-informed politician disclosed that ‘[Edward] made a poor impression on his niece and goddaughter’35 when he finally met the queen and Prince Philip in an effort to bring them to his side over the vexed question of money. He failed.
Edward returned to the United States in early March, miserable and disappointed. Even as his mother wrote of her son’s presence that it had been ‘nice but a bit disturbing’,36 and expressed relief that the feud between the duke and the rest of his family appeared to be over, he was angered both by their continued refusal to acknowledge his wife and now by the withdrawal of his much-desired £10,000 a year. The Duchess of Gloucester may have felt that ‘it was particularly moving listening to the Duke, because he was obviously so pleased to be talking with his own family again’,37 but his actual thoughts on them all were considerably less generous. He was angry, frustrated and lashed out whenever he could: plus ça change.
He returned to Britain repeatedly throughout 1952, ostensibly to see his mother and sister-in-law and to enquire about his family’s well-being, but his intentions were more mercenary in nature. He was received with politeness but little more; there was no renewal of his allowance. He poured out his feelings to Queen Mary about this on 9 October, after commiserating with her about her ill health. He wrote, ‘our situation is further aggravated by the fact that I have just suffered the loss of £10,000 per annum through the payment of the voluntary allowance I had from poor Bertie being stopped at his tragic death. This serious loss of income has come at a most inopportune time and will necessitate a complete revision of the style of living we have maintained ever since our marriage as befits the position of a son of a sovereign.’38
His entreaties were unsuccessful. Had he known of the queen mother’s continued antipathy towards him, he may have been unsurprised at their poor reception. She wrote to Lascelles on 29 November, musing on the difficulties of kingship and wishing that her husband had been allowed ‘a few years of comparative peace’. Yet she also reserved continued contempt for the man she blamed, at least in part, for George VI’s tribulations. ‘[There was] the abdication & all the agony of mind – I doubt if people realise how horrible it all was to the King & me – to feel unwanted, & to undertake such a job for such a dreadful reason, it was a terrible experience.’39 Sixteen years after the abdication, she showed no signs of softening towards the duke, and any support he might have hoped for from her was not forthcoming.
Greater humiliation lay at hand. After a largely terrible year in which he suffered a severe attack of food poisoning in August, the duke turned his thoughts to his niece’s coronation, which was planned for 2 June 1953. If he was invited – with or without Wallis – it would prove that he had been truly reconciled with the family towards whom he alternately expressed contempt and indifference. He soon discovered, via the Duke of Norfolk giving a press conference, that his presence would be unwelcome. It was made clear that although Edward, as a royal duke, could not be barred from the ceremony, his wife could be excluded, and Norfolk not only stated that he did not believe the duke would attend, but publicly asked that he make a statement saying that he would not be present, ‘to ease the situation from every point of view’.40
The situation was not as clear-cut as might have been imagined. The duke wished to attend, and had gone so far as to ask his solicitor, A. G. Allen, to intervene on his behalf, but Lascelles was adamant that the former king could have no place at the ceremony. He described his attending with Wallis as something that would be condemned as ‘a shocking breach of taste’, and that given that Edward was unable to attend his own coronation, ‘however good his reasons’, his presence at his niece’s ‘would strike a distressing and discordant note’. Even as Allen weakly attempted to suggest that the events of the abdication were now ancient history and that there was no purpose or benefit from prolonging hostilities, Lascelles, a noted scholar of the past, soon corrected him. ‘Have you or I, for example, forgotten the Somme?’41
Had the new queen wished for her uncle to be present, such a consideration would have overruled all other matters of intention or protocol. But although relations between the two of them remained cordial – a letter exists in which she invites the duke for lunch on Tuesday 20 November 1952, and sympathises with him about Queen Mary’s failing health – she, whether influenced by her mother or not, did not wish him to attend the coronation. After a discussion between Geoffrey Fisher, the Archbishop of Canterbury,* and the new monarch, both decided that it would be both inappropriate and undesirable for the duke to be present. Fisher even went so far as to write in his notes of their conversation that ‘the Queen would be less willing than any one to have him there’.42
Around the time of the duke’s lunch with Elizabeth, it was made clear to him by Churchill that his presence at the coronation, with or without his wife, would be nothing but a distraction. Edward, unhappily, ceded. He wrote to the prime minister on 23 November to say of the ‘delicate matter’ that it stemmed from ‘my family’s uncompromising attitude towards the Duchess and I which causes the rekindling of this controversial subject as headline news with each and every Royal public occasion’. Mindful of the desire to avoid ‘unpleasant publicity’, he asked that a statement be issued that explained that no former monarch would be invited to the ceremony, thereby placing him in the same category as such figures as Leopold of the Belgians and Peter of Yugoslavia.
The wording he suggested was ‘The Duke of Windsor will not be present at the Coronation service in Westminster Abbey on June 2 1953 because it would not be in accordance with constitutional usage for the Coronation of a King or Queen of England to be attended by the Sovereign or former Sovereign of any State.’43 The prime minister demurred, replying to the duke on 5 December to assure him that while no former monarch would attend the coronation, ‘I feel that the statement which you suggest will come with force and dignity from Your Royal Highness personally, in reply to any questions which may be addressed to you.’44 For all the courtesy with which Churchill treated the duke, the implication was clear: this is a private matter, and no longer one of state concern.
‘Mama died at 10.15. All love and more.’ So the duke informed Wallis of Queen Mary’s death on 24 March 1953. Just over a year after his brother’s death, his mother, who had been unwell for some considerable time, finally succumbed to her illness. Her eldest son was by her side, reluctantly leaving the duchess in New York on 6 March to seek a final audience with the last member of his family who had been, after a fashion, supportive of him. Yet after the disappointments and humiliations of the previous year, he was all but indifferent to the affairs of the Firm. He may have informed his friend Lord Dudley on 6 April that ‘it was terrible when her end came … her passing has left a great void for our generation, and a last great personal link with our past has gone’,45 but this was merely another of his public platitudes at times of grief, albeit delivered privately. Privately, he felt little but contempt.
The duke had planned on joking in his undelivered speech to the BPRA in September 1951 that ‘After a man has written two or more books, people get used to it. They say “Oh, he’s written another book, has he? Well, he’s always doing it. It’s too late to stop him” …’ It was with this in mind that he agreed to write a short, topical follow-up to A King’s Story, this time entitled The Crown and the People, which would be an account of the monarchy over the past half-century and published to coincide with the coronation. As a work of history and memoir, it is unexceptional, with only the expression of the duke’s increasingly conservative social and political views of any note amid the usual self-justification; many might have cavilled at his brief description of George VI’s ‘constant strain’ at his responsibilities coming so soon after his death, even if the duke acknowledged that ‘I am not insensible to the fact that through a decision of mine he was projected into sovereign responsibilities that may at first have weighed heavily upon him.’46
However, the main, if not the sole, purpose of The Crown and the People was to make money, and, in part, replace the £10,000 that showed no signs of being returned to the duke. He and his wife had recently purchased a property, a dilapidated mill named the Moulin de la Tuilerie, at Gif-sur-Yvette, a short distance from Paris, and the refurbishment of the building would be expensive and time-consuming. Yet even as Wallis complained to her aunt Bessie that ‘I wish the world and particularly the US press would forget the Windsors’,47 both she and the duke were aware that their financial stability depended wholly on their not being forgotten. It was partly with this in mind that the duke boarded the Queen Elizabeth from New York to see a woman who was now describing herself as ‘an old crock’, and whose existence, after years of decline, could no longer continue for more than a matter of weeks.
He wrote a series of letters to Wallis while they were apart, which summarise the bitterness and anger he felt towards his family by then. On 9 March, he stated that ‘fate certainly can be tough taking me away from you after two weeks of separation with my nose to the grindstone to repair the loss of income my very wealthy niece withholds … What I think of having to make this ridiculous and costly trip instead of our being together in Palm Beach is nobody’s business.’ He reserved little but contempt for his dying mother – ‘ice in place of blood in the veins must be a fine preservative’48 – and upon his arrival in Britain, he wrote about her with cold detachment. ‘She is very sick indeed and it’s just a question of how long she will last … She repeats herself a lot and has one or two theme songs upon which she harps all the time.’ Given his own constancy on certain matters, mainly financial, this was an inherited family trait.
Acknowledging that it was ‘hellish’ for ‘poor Mama’,49 he nevertheless occupied himself alternately with asking the advice of the likes of Monckton and Nicolson on the merits of The Crown and the People, and complaining that his mother’s final decline was lasting too long. He wrote to Wallis on 21 March that ‘it’s one of the most trying situations I’ve ever found myself in and hanging around someone who has been so mean and vile to you my sweetheart is getting me down’.
He intended to return to New York on 1 April, informing the duchess that ‘I just can’t take this hanging around any longer and anyway as I have no part in the Royal Family beyond Burke’s Peerage or Who’s Who and don’t stand to benefit from Mama’s will I’m off back to you my beloved where I belong.’50 Wallis urged her husband to eat properly; the stress and uncertainty of the situation had triggered the eating disorder he had had most of his life, and both his mental and physical state were at a low point.
His mother’s death, when it came, was something of a relief. He wrote to Wallis that ‘I couldn’t have taken it for much longer, for her sake or mine.’ He missed the actual moment of her demise, but at least he was not half-cut like the Duke of Gloucester; he sneered to Wallis that ‘I found [him], glass of scotch in hand and feeling no pain* … I guess it was emotion.’ He reflected, after he saw his mother for the final time the next day, that ‘my sadness was mixed with incredulity that any mother could have been so hard and cruel towards her eldest son for so many years and yet so demanding at the end without relenting a scrap … I’m afraid the fluids in her veins have always been as icy cold as they now are in death.’ And then it was back to discussing renovations for the mill and how much he was going to be paid for The Crown and the People; ‘I believe the price may go up to £15,000!’51
The funeral took place on 31 March, and the duke departed as soon as he could afterwards. He was under no illusions that he had any further place within the Firm, commenting to the duchess the previous week that ‘I’m so excited to think that I’m going to be with you again so soon and that this agony is all over with … Thank God this is the last of these Royal Family passings that I’ll ever have to leave you and cross the ocean for.’ He was, naturally, keen to get his hands on his mother’s possessions (‘I also told my niece I wanted some nice things’), but his removal from the scene meant that, as he put it, ‘I’ll be at a disadvantage being away when the division is made and the “vultures” will have first pick.’
If he ever considered how his behaviour over the past two decades had estranged him from his family, and how merited his treatment had been, he showed no signs of it. Although he allowed that his sister, Mary, had been ‘quite sweet’ and that the Duke of Gloucester, who he sardonically called ‘the Unknown Soldier’, and his wife had been amicable hosts, it was with anger that he hissed to Wallis that ‘what a smug stinking lot my relations are and you’ve never seen such a seedy worn-out bunch of old hags most of them have become’. His fury stemmed, as so often, from their refusal to accept his wife: ‘of course they don’t talk our language and never will and I’ve been boiling mad the whole time that you haven’t been here in your rightful place as a daughter-in-law at my side’.
That Wallis was never regarded as a daughter-in-law, or remotely acceptable in any social sphere, was not a truth to be borne at this point. After years of trying to ingratiate himself with the royal family and the establishment at large, the duke had finally admitted defeat. He could only take some consolation from the knowledge that with his mother and brother dead, and his niece the new monarch, he was free to live his life as he saw fit, estranged from his family but also with all responsibility or expectation removed from him. He revelled in this second abdication of sorts, as he declared to the duchess, ‘let us skip this rude interlude and enjoy our lovely full life together far removed from the boredom, the restrictions and the intrigues of the Royal Family and the Court … God bless WE.’52 Yet as he abandoned the final trappings of his inheritance, it would be left to others to pick up where he had so gleefully left off.