The interwar years—Churchill called a portion of them “the Loaded Pause”—were fateful for both men. Bertie would marry, have children, and endure the worst crisis to befall the British monarchy in recent memory. By the end of 1936 he would be king. Churchill, having found himself again on the margins, again recovered. He would reenter government, once more as a Conservative, having earlier concluded that “Liberalism was a state of mind rather than a growing political force,” only to be sidelined by the prime minister, Stanley Baldwin. Again, he would see his career and reputation founder.
One reason this time around was his loyalty to King Edward VIII. Churchill was the most prominent, perhaps the only, Tory to do so well after it was politic or useful. The unhappy royal may have known better: “I want no more of this Princing!” he was overheard to say before his coronation, adding, “I want to be an ordinary person” and “I suppose the fact of the matter is that I’m quite the wrong sort of person to be Prince of Wales.” To his brother Bertie he later said something similar: “It was never in my scheme of things to be King of England.”
Or he may have prepared for it and may well have intended to keep it. A monarch with a loose reputation was nothing new. Edward was said to take after his free-spirited grandfather, who followed in the wake of so many decades of the reign of the staid Queen Victoria, so much so that the term “Victorian” will forever carry the association of dark rooms, tight collars and corsets, and large, virtuous families. Stern, strict, and dutiful George V, who followed Edward VII, brought about a kind of restoration, and his son, too, may have been expected to perpetuate the cycle.
The twentieth century has been described with good reason as the age of extremes. The new king declared that his bachelor days were over and that he was now determined to marry an American, Wallis Simpson, “a nice, quiet, well-bred mouse of a woman with large startled eyes and a huge mole.” The problem was that she was a divorcée who was still married to her second husband when this latest association began. Edward could not remain on the throne if he were married to such a person. There could be no doubt of that. His determination to impose his beloved Wallis upon the British people and to demand her acceptance took things too far. He was her “absolute slave,” and was unmovable. He even began to speak with a slight American accent. He cared little for the concerns of those around him and even less for the popular press. Both were errors. “The Battle for the Throne,” meanwhile, “had begun.” Its partisans were not only journalists but also figures like Sibyl Colefax, the salonnière hostess whose circle, it was said, was “a party of lunatics presided over by an efficient, trained hospital nurse,” and her chief rival, Emerald Cunard, whose circle was “a party of lunatics presided over by a lunatic.” So formidable was the mobilization of gossip by these people that they and others like them were seen to be the arbiters of a royal split. The king’s loyal but dwindling camp began to wonder how much longer the ordeal could drag out. The Canadian press tycoon Lord Beaverbrook foretold the end to the Anglo-American social adventurer Chips Channon:
“Our cock would be all right if only he would fight, but at the moment he will not even crow.”
“Cocks crow better in the morning.”
“Not this one.”
Churchill, however, stood by Edward. “What crime . . . had the King committed?” he asked. “Had we not sworn allegiance to him? Were we not bound to that oath? Was he to be condemned unheard? Was he seeking to do anything that was not permitted to the meanest of his subjects?”
Why did Churchill do it? At that time, he was a man of known qualities, but he was also tenaciously, even permanently, unpredictable. There was no record of hostility, true enough, and Churchill was a loyal monarchist. He and his father had not always seen eye to eye with their respective sovereigns and, in the latter’s case, had even reached the point of a public breach. Yet Churchill was said to like this king, a “chatty, handy type of monarch,” and had been close to him socially. Churchill was consistent about many things, and inconsistent about others, but the one value from which he never wavered was his reverence for the institution of the monarchy, and this now included defending the flawed man on the throne. Churchill’s real feelings were probably mixed, as suggested by his later confession to Beaverbrook: “Perhaps we were both wrong that time.” He may well have placed Edward in a different category. Or this may be reading too much between the lines. Once, during a game of bridge, “Winston, having led up to and sacrificed his king, declared: ‘Nothing is here for tears. The king cannot fall unworthily if he falls to the sword of the ace.’”
A less charitable view of the crisis has held that this had nothing, or at least very little, to do with whom the king married or bedded and everything to do with Churchill’s own political ambitions and corresponding strategies. By 1930, if not earlier, Churchill had cast his lot decidedly against Baldwin, “the cabin-boy made captain,” who became determined to see abdication through as rapidly as possible after a difficult delay. There was no love lost between them. Churchill considered Baldwin, along with Joseph Chamberlain, father of Neville, to have had the most devastating effect on the country of any two politicians. It is probably impossible to disentangle Churchill’s motives, although given the result—it would coincide with his longest period in the wilderness, lasting over a decade—it was more likely that he wished the king to survive more than he wished Baldwin to fall. In any case, “to bugger Baldwin,” as Beaverbrook (who genuinely did seek Baldwin’s defeat) put it, was not entirely consistent with Churchill’s nature. Baldwin, “half Machiavelli, half Milton,” had brought some of this on himself, pretending for too long that the crisis was not really happening, then wishing it away at the final moment by taking an absolute position in favor of abdication, more or less concurrent with the king’s own ultimatum over his decision regarding Mrs. Simpson. “Let this thing be settled between you and me alone,” the king was supposed to have said to him. “I don’t want outside interference.” By then this was out of the question. Churchill was not the only one who “had put himself in a false position.” Baldwin “flung up his hand. ‘We are all in false positions!’” The final position was, Wallis or the throne. That is certainly not the way Churchill would have preferred it, for while his loyalty to the king was clear, he never took seriously the possibility of Wallis becoming queen. He dismissed whatever power she had, which was considerable. Nor had Bertie publicly admitted the possibility that his brother would not become and remain king. At the very least, he never expected it to happen so soon.
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Bertie endured the entire episode with “unrelieved gloom.” His brother had barely spoken to him, or confided in him, and rarely sought his opinion. This was probably for the best, since Bertie would have had to support his brother even more aggressively than he had done. Nonetheless, he, as well as Elizabeth, especially, had deplored the prospect of the “shop-soiled American, with two living husbands and a voice like a rusty saw” being anywhere near their family, let alone a member of it.
His brother’s neglect must have been agonizing. Despite their differences, the two had been close their entire lives. How often he must have thought, as his wife once said to an acquaintance, “You are a lucky man to be able to do what you like.” But she stiffened the spine, as she so often did: “I have great faith in Bertie,” she wrote to Queen Mary. “He sees very straight, & if this terrible responsibility comes to him he will face it bravely.” For now he did, even while being ignored. He and Wallis were the two most strident, unwavering opponents of abdication. Then at last, on December 7, he heard from the king.
“No, I will come & see you at once.” The awful & ghastly suspense of waiting was over. I found him pacing up & down the room, & he told me his decision that he would go. I went back to the Royal Lodge for dinner & returned to the Fort [Belvedere] later. I felt having once got there I was not going to leave. As he is my eldest brother I had to be there to try & help him in his hour of need.
When recounting this to his mother, he “sobbed like a child.” The short signing ceremony took place on the tenth. “Perfectly calm D signed 5 or 6 copies of the instrument & then 5 copies of his message to Parliament, one for each Dominion Parliament. It was a dreadful moment & one never to be forgotten by those present.”
The family gathered for dinner the following day. “When D & I said good-bye we kissed, parted as freemasons & he bowed to me as his King.” The performance was as unfamiliar as it was uncomfortable. “All my ancestors succeeded to the throne after their predecessors had died. Mine is not only alive, but very much so.”
Edward had abdicated and a new King George—the Sixth—took his place. To his brother’s onetime partisan, he wrote:
My dear Mr. Churchill,
I am writing to thank you for your very nice letter to me. I know how devoted you have been, and still are, to my dear brother, and I feel touched beyond words by your sympathy and understanding in the very difficult problems that have arisen since he left us in December. I fully realise the great responsibilities and cares that I have taken on as King, and I feel most encouraged to receive your good wishes, as one of our great statesmen, and from one who has served his country so faithfully. I can only hope and trust that the good feeling and hope that exists in the Country and Empire now will prove a good example to other Nations in the world.
“This gesture of magnanimity,” Churchill later recalled, “towards one whose influence at that time had fallen to zero will ever be a cherished experience in my life.”
The king had a difficult time of it at first. “Dickie,” he said to his cousin, “this is absolutely terrible. I never wanted this to happen; I’m quite unprepared for it.” Mountbatten tried to reassure him by quoting something his own father had said to Bertie’s: “George, you’re wrong. There is no more fitting preparation for a King than to have been trained in the Navy.” Baldwin also assured him that he had the country’s full support.
The coronation took place on May 12, 1937. “I could eat no breakfast, and had a sinking feeling inside,” Bertie wrote. He later told someone “that for long periods . . . he was unaware of what was happening.” Yet, as Channon has described,
[t]he panorama was splendid, and we felt we were sitting in a frame, for the built-up stands suggested Ascot, or perhaps—more romantically—the tournaments of mediaeval days; the chairs were covered with blue velvet . . . on all sides were MPs I knew and their be-plumed, be-veiled, be-jewelled wives. . . . The North Transept was a vitrine of bosoms and jewels and bobbing tiaras. . . . There was an excited pause, then a hush as the regalia was carried in and then out again. . . . And I looked about again, dazzled by the red, the gilt, the gold, the grandeur. After a little the real Royalties arrived, the Princess Royal looking cross, the tiny Princesses excited by their coronets and trains, and the two Royal Duchesses looking staggering. . . . Another pause, till the gaunt Queen of Norway appeared, followed by Queen Mary, ablaze, regal and over-powering. Then the Queen’s procession, and she appeared, dignified but smiling and much more bosomy. Then, so surrounded by dignitaries carrying wands, sceptres, orbs and staffs, as to be overshadowed, George VI himself. He carried himself well.
Churchill came out of the abdication less well. Having broken with his fellow Conservatives, especially Baldwin, a half decade before, he found himself at the nadir of his party, and with no cabinet role.
Out of Office! And what a variety of Office he had seen. The crowded career is too familiar to need rehearsal in any detail. . . . Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary, First Lord of the Admiralty, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War, Secretary of State for Air, Secretary of State for the Colonies, Chancellor of the Exchequer—all these lay behind him by 1930, interspersed and accompanied, outside the field of politics, by one or two Lord Rectorships, active service and prolific authorship.
Again, the pliable Churchill recovered. His position vis-à-vis the reconstituted royals would improve when he stood by the new king in the decision to deny a royal title to Mrs. Simpson. It probably did not dispel the Baldwin-related suspicions—which Baldwin himself may have fueled when he met secretly with Bertie on the eve of the abdication. This also is unknowable. What is known is that a much different man now wore the crown. Buckingham Palace was occupied by a charming and attractive young family. The wholesome Georgian monarchy was restored. The country could relax. The people could feel confident and hopeful.
There was still the matter of the king himself: he had not sought this enormous new job, however much the prospect of having it may have sat in the back of his mind. He must have been frightened, yet part of him seemed well armored. As was now his custom, he began to swim harder and faster once he survived the initial shock of being thrown into deep water. He would not be a figurehead. Yet he was not, at least not then, at all temperamentally suited to rule.
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How far they had come in a mere two decades. Churchill lurked in the political wilderness, not entirely in disgrace but close to it, “an Ishmael in public life.” The king—who was not yet king and had few premonitions of becoming one—was a shy young man who dreaded speaking in public and found the first few episodes when forced to do so to be excruciating. Having become king, he was said to have “discovered that he was for the first time in his life able to make up his own mind.” By 1940 the two would lead the nation together in war.
If their upbringing and youth had set the foundation for the men they would become, the interwar years thrust them together in a way that would allow each one to master the forward elements of his character. For Churchill these were his tenacity and his power of rejuvenation; for the king it was his decency, integrity, and duty. In time some elements of each merged with those of the other. Whereas these qualities in both men were praiseworthy but perhaps ill suited to the 1920s, by the mid-1930s events and circumstances would create an entirely different need for them.
The interwar crises had a silver lining. That is to say, neither man emerged unscathed or undamaged from setbacks, but both acted to master them. Some part of their character drove them on, even against, particularly in the king’s case, his evident desires. He was not ambitious, at least not in public. At first he would be a reluctant monarch. He was the good, loyal second son, pleased with his place in the immediate background. And why should he not have been?
Churchill, on the other hand, could not have been happy with subordination. He meant to be the leading man or no man. He was no mere careerist; the role he sought was historic; it was meant to transcend, to last well beyond, his professional career. And so his tactical pursuits went, at least in these years, somewhat against the grain of the man on the make and would seem, on first examination, to be rather self-destructive. Whereas the soon-to-be king would spend the remainder of the decade gaining further in confidence, Churchill would spend it tempering his ambition with what he may have considered to be self-willed judiciousness, or as near to that as he could come.