KING EDWARD VIII BEGAN THE NEW REIGN WITH AN IMPRESSIVE display of zeal, scouring his official red boxes in search of interesting matter, reading and initialling everything, dutifully discussing a variety of subjects with his private secretaries.1 Even if there had been no Mrs Simpson to distract him, his enthusiasm would not have lasted. However protective his staff may be, a King is deluged with official documents, and Edward VIII cheerfully admitted that he never had much zest for paper work.2 Within a few weeks the complaints began. The King insisted that Cabinet papers must go to him first, said Wigram, but then left his boxes unopened, or the papers no more than glanced at – by the time they got back to the private secretary it was too late for any action.3 While in his possession they were handled carelessly, said Hardinge, no responsible person was put in charge of them, it was sometimes weeks before they reappeared. ‘Who among the “exotic circle” had had access to them in the meantime can only be a matter for conjecture. At any rate, the possibilities were serious enough to create alarm among those who were aware of the pro-German leanings of the clique.’4 On one occasion Martin – ‘Mike’ – Scanlon, the air attaché at the American Embassy, was staying at Fort Belvedere. On leaving he was surprised to be handed the official boxes and asked to drop them off at Buckingham Palace. ‘I had a feeling that Hardinge did not approve of the King’s practice of confiding state papers to the care of an American intelligence officer.’5
Scanlon was at least an official in the employ of a government which, if not an ally, was felt to have its heart in the right place. Hardinge’s fears about other members of the ‘exotic circle’ were not confined to him alone. In February 1936 Wigram was summoned to Baldwin’s room in the House of Commons. He found Warren Fisher, Maurice Hankey and Vansittart, as imposing a trio of civil service mandarins as could readily be imagined, awaiting him. ‘From all the evidence available,’ he recorded, ‘the King is discussing all problems with Mrs Simpson and showing her State Papers.’ Vansittart put in that agents of the French and Swiss in London had reported to their governments ‘that Mrs Simpson is one of the key points in this country as the King discusses everything with her. The Foreign Secretary is very anxious lest the FO Cypher may be compromised, as Mrs S is said to be in the pocket of the German Ambassador.’ The civil servants urged Baldwin to take some action about this, but ‘he was afraid to move and preferred the line of least resistance’. Wigram himself told the King how much concern was felt in Whitehall over the safety of secret documents in his possession. ‘HM assured me he was very careful, and read them going down to the Fort in his car. As HM leaves about 3 a.m. in his car, I did not feel there was much light to read!’6
There is no reason to suppose that any German or ardent Nazi sympathizer ever visited Fort Belvedere, and there was nothing found in the German archives after the war to indicate that Mrs Simpson, or anybody else, passed on to the German government information gleaned from papers in the King’s keeping. Though Hankey and Vansittart had reason for disquiet, it was almost certainly a mare’s nest that they were investigating. What was still more certain, however, was that the King grew increasingly lax over official engagements, and less and less punctual in his habits. He decided at the last minute not to attend a Garden Society dinner. ‘One hears these stories of engagements being chucked or of outrageous examples of tardiness,’ complained Lord Crawford. ‘He doesn’t yet realize how much trouble is taken on his behalf nor what inconvenience is caused by his forgetfulness and vacillation.’ Someone had remarked to him in the House of Lords that afternoon that the King would be blackballed for any decent London club.7 Cromer was so indignant when he was kept waiting for two hours and then told that the King could not see him at all that day that he threatened resignation. He could not do his job properly, he protested, if he was not able to see the King from time to time.8 Edward VIII seemed increasingly reluctant to do the sort of odd job which can only be done by a King and which can do so much to ease matters for his ministers and officials. He refused to see King Carol of Romania, even though the Foreign Office urged him to on the ground that pro-German tendencies in that country made it particularly important to keep Carol well-disposed to Britain.9 He was equally disobliging about Prince Paul, the Regent of Yugoslavia, whom he spoke to politely enough during a visit to England but failed to invite to anything. ‘Prince Paul is head of a friendly state,’ Eden told Harold Nicolson, ‘and it is almost an insult to ignore him. If the King is so selfish and unconventional about a real friend like Prince Paul, how will the Government ever induce him to do his duty when some President of a Baltic State comes to London?’10
‘He appeared to be entirely ignorant of the powers of a constitutional sovereign, and of the lines on which the King’s business should be carried on,’ Hardinge wrote after the abdication. ‘In fact, in its transaction, his unpunctuality, inconsequence, lack of consideration and self-conceit created every possible difficulty for those who served him. Not only did he give proof of a desire to change merely for the sake of changing, but a dislike, amounting almost to hatred, of the regular methods of his Father, was painfully apparent, nor could he see that this regularity was less a choice than a necessity for the proper discharge of his duties.’11
Hardinge’s diatribe was written by a man who disliked the King, in the mood of bitterness that followed the ending of his reign, but it is hard to find anyone closely associated with King Edward VIII who did not grow more and more critical as the months passed. Wigram was so concerned about his behaviour that he called on the Lord Chancellor and told him, ‘I did not think the King was normal, and this view was shared by my colleagues at Buckingham Palace. He might any day develop into a George III, and it was imperative to pass the Regency Bill as soon as possible, so that if necessary he could be certified.’12
If to be obsessively in love is to be mad, then Wigram was not altogether wrong. The King’s natural untidiness and unpunctuality were exaggerated a hundredfold by his devotion to Mrs Simpson. If he cancelled a dinner at the last moment the chances were that she had expressed a wish to see him; if he was two hours late for Lord Cromer it was almost certain he had been visiting her. Nothing mattered to him so much as the gratification of her wishes and the performance of her instructions. She herself believed that her effect on him was beneficial. ‘I am implored on all sides not to leave him as he is so dependent on me and I am considered to be a good influence, believe it or not,’ she told Aunt Bessie.13 Margot Oxford was on one of the sides to which Mrs Simpson referred. ‘I am an excellent judge of character,’ she told Lord Cromer firmly, ‘and think Mrs S’s influence is a good one. I have had several very private talks with her – one about his going to Church, one about his drinking more than is good for his health … and have always found her trustworthy and discreet.’14 Even those who most resented her baleful presence admitted that she was in some ways good for him; Queen Mary herself is said to have remarked that her worst fears for her son had always related to his drinking. ‘She has been a sane influence in that respect. And that is important.’15 And some of those who found his passion most ill-advised conceded that it was touching in its depth and its sincerity. Victor Cazalet watched them at dinner together. ‘Every few minutes he gazes at her and a happiness and radiance fill his countenance such as make you have a lump in your throat.’16 Baldwin told John Reith that he had come into the room while Edward VIII was talking to Mrs Simpson on the telephone: ‘The King’s face was as if he had seen a vision; he walked about in ecstasy saying “She is the most wonderful woman in the world”.’17
She was not the most wonderful woman in the world. Nor was she the fiend incarnate envisaged by Wigram or Halsey. Her letters written at the time suggest that she was a shallow and greedy woman, delighting in the reflected glory of the throne but with no very clear idea of what she wanted or how she was going to get it. She told her aunt Bessie in February that it was a tragedy the King would not marry some convenient Duke’s daughter.18 This was surely disingenuous – it would not have suited her at all if the King had taken a wife who would inevitably have displaced her from some of her most cherished redoubts – but it does suggest that at that time she had barely contemplated the idea that she might marry Edward VIII herself. From time to time she jokingly referred to the possibility that she might be Queen, but always with the implication that it was something too absurd to contemplate. Perhaps she sought to conceal her real intentions, but it seems more probable that she was telling the truth. She later repeatedly told Lady Monckton that she had never envisaged the likely course of events: ‘It came upon me with devastating force that I did not know England very well, and the English not at all.’19 At the beginning of the new reign she was riding with the tide and relishing every minute of it, without giving too much thought to what lay ahead for herself and the King.
Edward VIII was giving thought to little else. He later told Monckton that he had made up his mind to marry Mrs Simpson as early as 1934, and that from that time onwards his mind never wavered. He would have made his intentions clear to his father had the King lived a little longer.20 There is no reason to doubt the first part of his statement; he had no reason to try to deceive Monckton once the deed was done, though he kept him in the dark until November 1936. Edward VIII had always been secretive, and he was convinced, quite rightly, that any open admission of his intentions would provoke violent efforts to thwart them on the part of courtiers, ministers and his family. He kept his own counsel; extraordinary though it may seem, all the evidence suggests that even Mrs Simpson was given no inkling of his real wishes until his reign was some way advanced. Whether he would ever have plucked up his courage to tell King George V is more doubtful. He had plenty of opportunities in 1935 and missed them all; there is no reason to believe that he would have been more forthright in 1936. Probably things would have drifted on; it took the growing incompatibility of his love for Mrs Simpson and his role as King as envisaged by his advisers to drive him into decisive action.
Helen Hardinge first conceived the idea that marriage was on the cards after a dinner at which Mrs Simpson was present at Windsor on 28 March. She claims that, when she discussed it with her husband and other courtiers, it was dismissed as ‘too wild to even be considered’.21 Either her husband thought it better to keep her in ignorance or he omitted to discuss the matter with his senior colleagues. More than six weeks before, Wigram had consulted the Lord Chancellor ‘about the Marriage Laws of a Sovereign, so that I could have a ready answer if HM suddenly said he was going to marry Mrs S’. He imagined the answer would be that, if he were to do so, the King must abdicate, which he expected would put an end to any matrimonial aspirations: ‘HM likes this King business too much.’22 A week later he complained to Baldwin that ‘some of his younger Ministers’ – presumably he had Duff Cooper particularly in mind – were doing mischief by staying with the King and encouraging Mrs Simpson: ‘Neither HM nor Mrs S were normal, and were inclined to think that such a marriage would be accepted by the people.’23 On 27 February Aird noted in his diary that Wigram seemed ‘obsessed with the idea that HM wants to marry her, which in my opinion is absurd, even if Ernest consented I doubt W wishing to’.24
Wigram had first been alerted to the possibility by a former Lord Mayor of London, Sir Maurice Jenks. Jenks had been drawn into the drama the previous year when the Prince of Wales had asked him to secure the admission of Ernest Simpson to the Masonic lodge over which he presided. Jenks agreed but ran into opposition from certain fellow Masons who said they would not accept a candidate on the recommendation of his wife’s lover. Jenks reported this to the Prince, who replied indignantly that he was not and had not been Mrs Simpson’s lover. On this basis Simpson was admitted but only after much hesitation. According to Godfrey Thomas, the initiation meeting was ‘a humiliating fiasco. Hardly any of the outside bigwigs invited came. The story now goes throughout the City that HRH has violated his Masonic oath, that E.S. wishes to be a Mason for business reasons, and that HRH to keep him quiet about Mrs S was more or less blackmailed into sponsoring him.’25
In early February 1936 Jenks arrived at 10 Downing Street and poured out the next chapter of the story to a startled Prime Minister. Simpson had been to see him and had announced that the King wanted to marry his wife; what action did Jenks recommend? Baldwin sent for Wigram, whose first reaction was to burst out laughing. ‘However, we talked the situation over and came to the conclusion it was blackmail. Unfortunately Mr S was a British subject, and it would be difficult to deport him.’26 They might have reached a different conclusion if they had heard the testimony of Bernard Rickatson-Hatt, the editor-in-chief of Reuters, who had accompanied Simpson to York House. According to Rickatson-Hatt, Simpson had directly challenged the King and asked him what his intentions were. The King rose from his chair and answered: ‘Do you really think that I would be crowned without Wallis at my side?’27 If correctly quoted the words were momentous as being the first definite indication that the King believed he would be able to marry Wallis and make her his Queen.
Jenks next called on Wigram. He dismissed the blackmail theory, insisting Simpson was an honourable man who was above all anxious to make sure that his wife and the King were not involved in scandal. What was a loyal subject to do? Wigram sent word to Simpson that he should remember his marriage vows and hold on to his wife at all costs. ‘I urged Sir Maurice that he should impress on Mr S that the duty of the latter was to cart his wife back to the USA.’28 The message was duly transmitted and Simpson promised to do his best. He made it clear, however, that he did not think he had much chance – anyway until after his wife’s aunt Bessie had visited London in March. It was during her visit that the crucial decision about the marriage was likely to be taken.29
Wigram pleaded with the Prime Minister to intervene but met with bland assurances that problems of this kind were best solved by ignoring them; in time they were almost sure to go away. Halsey had made a similar approach a month before and done no better. ‘I don’t say he would have done any good then,’ he told Aird, ‘but it was worth trying.’30
Baldwin was not the only dignitary who showed himself reluctant to intervene with the King. The Archbishop was all for the Prime Minister doing his duty but when Wigram suggested he might say something himself he declared that he ‘was persona non grata with the King and could not help’.31 Lang told the Bishop of Pretoria that he repeatedly tried to point out to the King the error of his ways, but it was made clear to him that advice on such a subject would be accepted from no one except the Prime Minister. The Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, had every right to speak his mind and told Malcolm MacDonald that he had done so forcibly, but it transpired he had done no more than tell the King how much he was admired in Canada and how important it was that the prestige of the Crown should not be impaired. If the King gained any impression from this somewhat opaque démarche it was that he should be encouraged to pursue his plans.32
Meanwhile Mrs Simpson established herself more and more overtly as the shadow queen of King Edward VIII’s private life. She spent almost every weekend at Fort Belvedere, rarely accompanied by her husband, and played the part of hostess with enthusiasm and considerable ability. ‘Wallis must not get too bossy,’ remarked Diana Cooper after a weekend at the Fort in February. It was admirable that she should encourage the King to read his papers and master the main points in them, but less desirable that she should lecture him on the subject at the dinner table.33 Osborne, the butler, told Ulick Alexander in March that he was very unhappy: ‘Mrs S had got her knife into him, and he felt that he was doomed. O said that things were very unsatisfactory, and that after a night at the Fort with Mrs S the King was absolutely limp and a rag.’ Osborne reported that he had picked up a label in Mrs Simpson’s writing which had evidently been attached to some present given to the King. It read ‘To our marriage’.34
The company over which she presided was not particularly distinguished, either in wit or in achievement. It consisted, wrote Michael Bloch, who analysed the guest books with care, of ‘an innocuous, if fairly jolly, collection of courtiers and diplomats, American men of affairs and English Society, garnished with a sprinkling of statesmen, soldiers and sailors’.35 The statesmen, soldiers and sailors were sprinkled thinly indeed, but the gatherings were never less than respectable; there was a touch of raffishness perhaps about a few of the habitués, but nothing calculated to cause real distress at Lambeth Palace or in Downing Street. The entertainment was equally undramatic: a lot of golf and gardening; bathing in summer; fairly heavy drinking, though no more than in most English country houses; occasional cards or roulette for modest stakes; dancing to a gramophone. The high spot of the weekend usually came when the King put on his bonnet, picked up his bagpipes, and paraded around the dining room playing ‘Over the Sea to Skye’ or his own ‘Mallorca’ – ‘It’s clever to have chosen the pipes as one’s show-off,’ commented Diana Cooper, ‘for which of us can detect mistakes, or know good from bad artistry?’36 Such humdrum goings-on proved insufficiently sensational to satisfy various commentators who should have known better. The company was perhaps not worthy of the King of England, yet how could Osbert Sitwell describe the King’s friends as ‘the riff-raff of two continents … the rootless spawn of New York, Cracow, Antwerp and the Mile End road’?37 There may have been a dearth of intellectual conversation or political discussion, but how could Baldwin’s parliamentary private secretary, William Dugdale, have referred blithely to the ‘orgies there used to be when Mrs Simpson did the “danse du ventre”, and other un-English performances of an unsavoury nature’?38
In May 1936 the Prime Minister and his wife were invited to dine at York House, where the King was still ensconced. The other guests were eminently suitable for such an occasion: the Mountbattens, the Wigrams, the Chatfields, the Lindberghs. Only Lady Cunard and the Simpsons struck a discordant note. It was the last time Ernest Simpson accompanied his wife on an outing at court. When the King told Mrs Simpson he wanted her to be at the dinner, he went on: ‘It’s got to be done. Sooner or later my Prime Minister must meet my future wife.’39 Baldwin had no idea of the significance of the meeting; he admitted to some surprise at seeing Mrs Simpson at one end of the table, but at least her husband was there as well.40 Others reacted more violently. Lady Astor said that only the best Virginian families should be asked to court, and that the effect in the United States would be deplorable.41 To Reith, the announcement in the Court Circular that Lady Cunard and the Simpsons had attended the dinner was the worst news that The Times had carried for many years. ‘It is too horrible and it is serious and sad beyond calculation.’ Two days later the King made the Victorian Order open to women in all grades. ‘Will the first GCVOs (female) be Lady Cunard and Mrs Simpson?’ asked Reith bitterly.42
At the beginning of July the King sent Cromer a list of the people he wanted invited to an afternoon reception. The names were not supposed to be in order of precedence, but the Lord Chamberlain may still have been put out to find the Simpsons at the head and the Duke of Sutherland, the Earl of Sefton and the Earl of Dudley following behind.43 The inclusion of Ernest Simpson was a formality; by the beginning of July he had moved out to his club, though it was not until late October that Wallis Simpson was installed in a house rented for her by the King in Regent’s Park. Ramsay MacDonald spoke angrily about the King’s ‘appalling obstinacy’ in sending Wallis Simpson to Ascot in a royal carriage and featuring her in Court Circulars. It would not have mattered if she had been a widow, he told Harold Nicolson: ‘The people of this country do not mind fornication but they loathe adultery.’44
The name of Mrs Simpson still meant nothing to anyone outside a tiny circle of informed Londoners. The circle was to expand, when the King’s summer holiday made headlines throughout Europe and the United States. His original intention had been to take a villa near Cannes. Aird was sent off to find something suitable; he was now better off, the King told him, ‘so could afford to spend a little, but must still be careful’.45 The British Ambassador in Paris instantly applauded the idea, then took alarm at the political instability in the area caused by the Civil War in Spain, and advised against it. ‘I really am very annoyed with the FO for having messed up my holiday in this stupid manner,’ wrote the King to his mother. ‘You and I could have told them that the Riviera was no place for me to go this summer a whole month ago!!’46 Aird wanted to offer the owner of the villa £1000 as compensation for the cancelled lease. The King agreed, then consulted Mrs Simpson and reduced the amount to £100.47
The King now decided to charter a yacht. His first idea was to borrow the Duke of Westminster’s but Mrs Simpson vetoed this as insufficiently comfortable. Aird then inspected Lady Yule’s yacht, the Nahlin, and found it nice enough, though ‘furnished rather like a Calais whore-shop’.48 Lady Yule was ready to charge no charter fee, only expenses, but even so Aird calculated that the yacht would cost the King £6000 or more and the whole holiday about £10,000 – say £250,000 at current prices.49 All the books were removed from the yacht’s library on the no doubt justified grounds that they would not be wanted and that an extra bedroom was more useful, and a plentiful supply of golf balls was stowed aboard for the King to drive into the sea.50 The guests varied from stage to stage but included Duff and Diana Cooper, Lord Sefton, Helen Fitzgerald, a few other old friends, and Thomas, Aird and Lascelles from the household: ‘Outwardly as respectable as a boatload of archdeacons,’ commented Lascelles. ‘But the fact remains that the two chief passengers (the King and the Earl) were cohabiting with other men’s wives.’51
The image of the Nahlin cruise which has been imprinted on the public mind is of the King, his mistress and a group of disreputable hangers-on carousing around the eastern Mediterranean, invariably under-dressed, usually drunk, shocking the local inhabitants and causing any Englishman who met them to hang his head in shame. There is a smattering of truth in this caricature, but it is far indeed from being a fair picture of what was on the whole a harmless and sometimes modestly useful escapade.
Though planned as a holiday, and treated as such, the royal progress did yield valuable political dividends. The reports of American diplomats are as usual likely to be more objective and less obsequious than those of the British. From Belgrade the American Minister reported that the visit had had a good effect on Britain’s relationship with Yugoslavia and the other nations of the area. The King, however, was clearly there to enjoy himself and ‘the political consideration was an afterthought, albeit an important one’.52 His colleague in Athens considered the visit had ‘done much to re-establish any British prestige which may have been lost last spring. The conditions under which it was made favoured its delicacy and its effectiveness.’53 From Ankara came the report that: ‘The Italian press … sees in the visit a step towards the setting up of a new combination in the Eastern Mediterranean directed against Italy. There have been rumours that the USSR was not overly pleased at the royal visit, on the theory, apparently, that it might lead to a loosening of the ties, sentimental and otherwise, which bind that country and Turkey.’54 In Sofia the press devoted columns to Edward VIII’s three-hour visit to King Boris and ‘voiced their praise of the democratic spirit he displayed’.55
The fact that American diplomats took the tour seriously does not prove that it was serious, but the King’s performance in Turkey at least deserves some credit. It was the first visit in history by a British king and the first by any European sovereign since the Kaiser’s forty years before. Atatürk, the absolute ruler of Turkey, met Edward VIII when he landed and drove with him to the British Embassy in an open car (a fact remarkable in itself since Atatürk normally favoured an armour-plated limousine). After dinner the King returned to the Nahlin and stood on the bridge for an hour and a half acknowledging the applause from the fleet of illuminated boats that circled round him. Like all the best spontaneous demonstrations it was carefully orchestrated – the ferry from the Galata bridge to Therapia was made to circle the Nahlin for five hours with its indignant passengers aboard and ended up at its starting place – but the enthusiasm of the crowds was unmistakably sincere.56 ‘Psychologically, it transformed the attitude of the Turkish people towards Britain, to whom they had grown used, from the outbreak of the First World War, as an enemy,’ wrote Lord Kinross, the biographer of Atatürk. It was ‘an exercise in cordial diplomacy to rank with the foreign excursions of his grandfather, King Edward VII’.57
As to Atatürk himself, the British Ambassador, Percy Loraine, reported that the Turkish ruler was greatly interested in and impressed by his visitor. ‘The King has an extraordinarily happy manner and a way of putting everyone at their ease, and I could see that Atatürk felt at once his uncommon charm and appreciated his simplicity and directness.’58 That is the sort of thing Ambassadors tend to say, but to Lascelles, who Loraine knew was highly critical of his employer, he insisted that the King had made a great impression on Atatürk and that this sort of informal trip was far more effective than a state visit, with all its protocol and pompous paraphernalia.59 To set against this, Atatürk, having noted how obviously enslaved by Mrs Simpson the King was, is said to have remarked that he would lose his throne because of her.60
The fact that the King was travelling with a woman who was everywhere considered to be his mistress attracted much attention. John Balfour, at the British Legation in Belgrade, was not best pleased when a Romanian colleague remarked that when his King travelled abroad, he left his mistress behind.61 In Vienna Victor Cazalet was shocked to find the names of the Duke of Lancaster (traditional travelling alias of British monarchs) and Mrs Simpson posted up in the porter’s lodge for all to see.62 Nor was everyone gratified by the King’s habit of peeling off his shirt, even when under the eyes of a startled crowd, or of wandering around the streets of some Adriatic town with a bottle of lemonade in his hand. To some such behaviour was charmingly informal, to others it was deplorably undignified. Aird was one of the latter. When, in Athens, the King insisted on dining with Lord Dudley at a sleazy restaurant and then went on to the flat of a ‘Levantine Englishman called Reiss’,*8 Aird sulked on board and blew up when the King got back. ‘I … told HM that much as I liked him as a man I could not despise him more as a King, and that I thought I had better go home tomorrow, as feeling as I did I feared that I would only spoil the rest of his holiday. HM took it very well but of course pulled in W, who to my surprise on the whole sided with me.’63
Sir Sydney Waterlow, the British Ambassador in Athens, supplemented his official despatch with a private letter to Hardinge. The tour, he said, had been a great success, and the Greeks, usually the most malicious of people, had showed nothing but delight at the fact that the King spent some time with them and the obvious pleasure he had derived from his visit. But he still felt a sense of depression ‘made up partly of uneasiness as to the ultimate results on our prestige abroad if the King should persist in being surrounded on his travels by Mrs S and other people of little or no standing … and partly of the effect produced on me by the atmosphere of the jaunt, which was of an almost unbelievable vapidity, quite without any taint of raffishness indeed, but equally with no dignity and no spark of intelligent interest in anything seen or heard’. The King’s character, he believed, was unformed and fluid, ‘almost a case of arrested development – with great possibilities for good, which may be lost unless some strong, sympathetic and humanly understanding influence can be brought to bear, which, without imposing itself, would canalize the energy now running to waste in a restless pleasure hunt (he is obviously, and pathetically, worried, anxious, preoccupied, all the time) … There is something appealing about him – something really charming and good, with such good intention … all of which makes me anxious that he should be helped.’
At the root of his restlessness, Waterlow thought, was an ‘unsatisfied craving for domesticity’ and it was to this craving that Mrs Simpson was a response, ‘and, I think, a serious response’. And yet her most marked characteristics were ‘perpetual restlessness and a vacuum as complete as that of the prairie or small town from which it originally derives. What can be hoped from mating restlessness with restlessness, vacuum with vacuum?’ Mrs Simpson, then, must be the wrong woman for the King. But still Waterlow was uncertain. He had taken to her, he could understand why the King had so fallen for her. In the end he wondered ‘whether this union, however queer and generally unsuitable and embarrassing for the state, may not in the long run turn out to be more in harmony with the spirit of the new age than anything that wisdom could have contrived’.64
This somewhat unexpected conclusion would not have appealed to Diana Cooper, who after ten days afloat with Mrs Simpson found that she wore badly, ‘her commonness and her Becky Sharpness irritate’. After they got back from a visit to the King of Greece, the King went down on his hands and knees to rescue a corner of her dress which had caught under the chair. She stared at him coldly: ‘“Well, that’s the maust extraordinary performance I’ve ever seen,” and then she started to criticize his meanness, the way he had talked to Mrs Jones [the King of Greece’s English mistress], his attitude to the other King. Diana Cooper left the room in protest. “The truth is, Wallis is bored stiff with the King.”’65
After abandoning the yacht, the last stop of the holiday was at Vienna. Edward VIII visited the President and the Chancellor, von Schuschnigg, but the American Ambassador said that nobody was inclined to attach political importance to the visit, though ‘he is believed to have obtained a good grasp of the present Austrian situation’.66 While in Vienna he went with Aird to the clinic of the celebrated ear specialist, Dr Neumann, where they both had their ears tested and were found to be not in the least deaf.67 The point is worth mentioning, because the legend has grown up that Dr Neumann was a sex therapist who, at Mrs Simpson’s behest, performed some arcane operation on the King.
And so it was the train to Zurich and a flight back to England. Talking to Aird while they were in Vienna, Lascelles vouchsafed ‘he could not be better pleased with HM’s behaviour as compared to past trips’.68 The reason, no doubt, was that the King was entirely fulfilled by Mrs Simpson and so felt no need for the restless womanizing which, in Lascelles’s eyes, had marred their earlier excursions. The judgment, however, coming as it did from a man who was harshly critical of the King, is worth bearing in mind when the supposed iniquities of the Nahlin trip are considered. The most immediate result of a holiday that was enjoyable and useful, if also somewhat indecorous, was that the names of Mrs Simpson and the King were now firmly linked in the newspapers of the world outside Britain. Within Britain not a word was said. Even within the royal family not a word was said – to the King at least. ‘David got back from abroad looking very well and came to dine with me and we had a nice talk,’ Queen Mary wrote in her diary on 14 September. But they talked about nothing except the details of his sightseeing and the weather he had enjoyed.69
Traditionally the royal summer ended with a few weeks at Balmoral, and though the King cut the visit to less than a fortnight he did not defy precedent altogether. According to one account, his private secretaries on the Nahlin produced letters of invitation for his signature to all the dignitaries who had attended in the past: the Prime Minister, the Archbishop, the Moderator of the Church of Scotland.70 The King scrapped the lot, inviting instead ‘a number of friends to whom I was indebted for hospitality over the years’.71 But it seemed at one moment as if the most important guest would be missing. While the party was still in Vienna, Aird had noted in his diary: ‘Heard today that W is to be at Balmoral. Thank God I shall not be there.’72 On the way she stopped off in Paris. She fell ill, and spent some days in bed at the Hôtel Meurice, studying with mounting horror the American press coverage of the Nahlin cruise. On 16 September she concluded that the affair was becoming too much for her and wrote to the King to tell him that she proposed to return to Ernest Simpson. ‘I am sure you and I would only create disaster together …’ she wrote. ‘I want you to be happy. I feel sure that I can’t make you so, and I honestly don’t think you can me.’73 Whether or not she was totally sincere in this renunciation; whether or not, indeed, Ernest Simpson would have welcomed her back if she had offered to return; the effect of her letter on the King was dramatic. He telephoned her at once, according to Lascelles threatening to cut his throat if she did not come to him in Scotland.74 She came, with Herman and Katherine Rogers as her escorts.
On 24 September the Court Circular announced that Mrs Simpson had arrived at Balmoral. ‘Everyone now knows of Mrs Simpson and talks freely of her,’ commented Alan Don.75 ‘Everyone’ was still only a handful of the well-informed but the note of disapproval was growing more marked. Winston Churchill, who had taken the line that the King could do what he liked with his private life, told Monckton that he ‘deprecated strongly Mrs Simpson going to such a highly official place upon which the eyes of Scotland were concentrated’.76 There were bitter complaints that the King had installed his mistress in the room hitherto reserved for Queen Mary, an unjust accusation, though what he actually did was little better in the eyes of the more traditional retainers: ‘He put her in what has always been the best spare bedroom,’ wrote Lascelles, ‘but he refused to occupy the King’s room himself, and put himself into what is, in effect, the dressing-room of her suite.’77 To his mother the King wrote cheerfully that the weather was fine and the house most comfortable; ‘only a few more baths will have to be added for another year’.78
‘I could never believe that any place could change so much and have such a different atmosphere,’ wrote the Duke of Kent after he left the Castle. ‘It was all so comfortable and everyone seemed so happy – it really was fun.’79 A man is not under oath in his bread-and-butter letters, but the comment still reads oddly in view of the uniformly bad press which the Balmoral holiday was later to receive. The Duke of Connaught told Princess Louise that he was very distressed at the party staying at the Castle: ‘What a pity. I wonder what the Scotch people thought of it.’80 Probably not much, but whatever resentment there might have been was fanned on 23 September when the King sent the Yorks to open a new hospital in Aberdeen and himself drove to the same city to meet Mrs Simpson off the train. ‘I do wish that David could have done it,’ the Duchess of York wrote sadly, ‘as they have all worked so hard for so long, and it will be one of the best in Scotland, and it would have given such enormous pleasure to the countryside.’81
The King’s defence was that he had long ago told the Lord Provost of Aberdeen that he would not be able to open the hospital because the court was still in mourning. It seemed curious to his subjects that he should be able to disport himself in the Mediterranean while in mourning, yet not visit a hospital, and that his brother should somehow be exempt from rules which applied so strictly to the monarch. Even if his behaviour can be justified on grounds of protocol, it was to say the least tactless to visit Aberdeen for his own purposes on the same day. The Aberdeen newspaper featured two photographs side by side: one of the Yorks opening the hospital, the other with the caption, ‘His Majesty in Aberdeen. Surprise visit in car to meet guests.’ ‘This has done him more harm than anything else and has lost him Scotland,’ wrote Thomas in his diary; melodramatically, perhaps, but not without some justice.82
That he made such a blunder is indicative both of his consuming desire to see Mrs Simpson again as soon as possible and also of the strain which he was under. His preoccupation with the future of his relationship with Wallis was increasingly making it impossible for him to judge any situation objectively or to take any account of the feelings of others. Anne Lindbergh met him at a dinner party and found ‘his face is drawn, lean and terribly sad … That boy’s face drawn tight into the responsibilities of age. Very sad to look at. One feels either he is prematurely old for his looks or else still nostalgically young for his age.’83 He was irascible and easily upset. At another dinner party he was absurdly put out and sulked all evening when he claimed to have met one of the guests before and was told he had not. ‘It seemed absurd that he should have allowed himself to be so upset by so trivial a mishap in his briefing,’ wrote a fellow guest, John Boyd-Carpenter, a young barrister and future member of parliament, ‘it was in retrospect an indication of the nervous condition which showed itself in the abdication crisis.’84 Even though things had not yet reached a point of crisis, he seemed to sense that difficulties were building up. A week after his return from Balmoral he was asked to approve the name of King Edward VIII for a new battleship. He scratched it out and substituted Prince of Wales.85
The strain was exaggerated by his growing alienation from his brothers. At first he had tried conscientiously to keep the Duke of York briefed on affairs of state, insisting that he should be shown as many official papers as possible.86 But the same did not extend to his personal affairs, and as these absorbed his full attention, so the brothers grew apart. He rarely saw the King, the Duke of York told his mother, and when he did the conversation never turned to the subject which was at the forefront of both their minds. ‘It is all so worrying and I feel we all live a life of conjecture; never knowing what will happen tomorrow.’87 The distress which this caused the royal family is movingly shown by a letter which the Duchess of York wrote to Queen Mary from Scotland a few days after the King and his party had left Balmoral. The weather had been wonderful, she wrote, and the flowers too:
But there has also been a great sadness and sense of loss for us and all the people. It will never be quite the same for us … David does not seem to possess the faculty of making others feel wanted. It is very sad, and I feel that the whole difficulty is a certain person. I do not feel that I can make advances to her and ask her to our house, as I imagine would be liked, and this fact is bound to make relations a little difficult. However, luckily, Bertie is quite outside all that, and I am sure that it is very important for him to steer clear of those very difficult questions. The whole situation is complicated and horrible, and I feel so unhappy about it sometimes, so you must forgive me, darling Mama, for letting myself go so indiscreetly. There is nobody that I can talk to, as ever since I have married I have made a strict rule never to discuss anything of Family matters with my own relations – nor would they wish it, but it leaves so few people to let off steam to occasionally.
… Has anything transpired about Xmas? Can we all spend it together? Do suggest it to David as he loves and admires you and I am sure would arrange what you wish.88
Things were little happier with the rest of the family. On one of the few occasions that the Gloucesters visited Fort Belvedere the Duchess was noticed to be ‘most nervous and fidgety’.89 The Duke of Kent was even worse, since Mrs Simpson used him as a weapon to provoke the King into displays of jealousy. Kent told Dugdale that, at Balmoral, she did this to such good purpose that by the end of dinner ‘the King was beaten into a frenzy of jealousy and desire’.90 Once when Baldwin was waiting to see the King the Duke of Kent stormed in. ‘He’s besotted by the woman,’ he exclaimed. ‘One can’t get a word of sense out of him.’91 Yet until the crisis was in its dying throes, none of the royal brothers could bring himself to believe that the affair would end in abdication; somehow, the King would come to his senses, Mrs Simpson would vanish from the scene, all would be well.
The same was true of Queen Mary. ‘I am so pleased to hear that you and dear David can talk over everything together,’ wrote Queen Maud of Norway in April 1936, ‘he is devoted to you and you can both help each other.’92 It is difficult to imagine what Queen Maud can have heard to create this delusion. The King and his mother had hardly a single serious discussion between the accession and the abdication and the letters they exchanged were few and far between and confined to trivialities. In February Queen Mary told Lady Airlie that she could not say anything to the King about Mrs Simpson because she did not want to interfere in his private life and also because he was the most obstinate of her sons. ‘To oppose him over doing anything is only to make him more determined to do it. At present he is utterly infatuated, but my great hope is that violent infatuations usually wear off.’93 She still cherished that hope when the King left Balmoral, but it was to become less substantial every day.
Lascelles claimed that as early as February 1936 he had been warned by Legh ‘that plans were already afoot to liquidate Simpson (matrimonially speaking) and to set the crown upon the leopardess’s head’.94 It must have been about this time that Ernest Simpson realized how seriously his marriage was in danger, though it was not until July that he moved out, installed himself with his current woman friend, Mary Raffray, and left the field to the King. Some people claimed that he had received a handsome quid pro quo for this complaisant conduct, but there is no evidence to support the charge and it seems more likely that he was actuated by reluctance to let a humiliating situation drag on further, a wish that his wife should be happy, and a genuinely patriotic if somewhat misguided deference towards his King. The picture of Ernest Simpson that emerges is of a man who was unattractive, dull and inclined to lechery, but above all anxious to conduct himself publicly in a manner he felt befitting an English gentleman. Even as late as September, Mrs Simpson was telling the King that she had ‘the deepest affection and respect’ for Ernest, and felt secure with him in a way she never had with anyone else.95
By then, however, she was far down the road towards divorce. Monckton had told Churchill as early as 7 July that the possibility of a divorce was now being openly discussed and that Simpson would not oppose it. Churchill was horrified and begged Monckton to stop proceedings which were likely to lead to open scandal.96 Monckton would have liked to, but could bring little influence to bear on Mrs Simpson and was comforted to some extent by her repeated assurances that she had no intention of marrying the King. Monckton put Mrs Simpson in contact with the solicitor Theodore Goddard.97 The ritual act of adultery which the husband was required to commit if an un-opposed divorce were to be granted had taken place at Bray, and Goddard therefore tried to get the divorce proceedings taken at the Assizes at nearby Reading. It so happened, however, that no divorces were being taken that season at Reading, so Goddard had the case transferred to the next convenient Assizes, which happened to be at Ipswich. The choice of this somewhat remote venue seems to have been entirely fortuitous and not made from any desire to transact the proceedings in hugger-mugger; if secrecy had been the object, Goddard would hardly have retained England’s most celebrated and flamboyant barrister, Norman Birkett, to appear for Mrs Simpson.98
The news of what was in the wind spread panic in Whitehall. Neville Chamberlain, on 17 October, told his sister that Baldwin had planned to stay on as Prime Minister until the Coronation, though doing little if any work: ‘However, that may not pan out as he thinks, for tomorrow morning he will hear that a certain lady … intends on Friday next to begin proceedings for the purpose of obtaining a divorce from her husband. S.B. will be informed that the most alarming consequences would or might ensue and that it is his duty to stop it. What effect that will have on his health remains to be seen,’ added Chamberlain with mild Schadenfreude.99 Horace Wilson was sent posting down to Chequers a few days later to tell Baldwin he must now intervene to stop the divorce. Hoare added to the dismay within the Cabinet by returning from a shooting party at Sandringham with the opinion that King Edward VIII was ‘contemplating a morganatic marriage if the lady is free’100 – an early mention of a possibility that was to bulk much larger in the ensuing weeks. It was the only time Edward VIII acted as host at Sandringham. When he arrived and the Royal Standard was hoisted on Sandringham church the flag pole snapped; a carpenter worked through the night to mend it and thus deprived the attendant journalists of a spectacle which would doubtless have joined the accident to the Imperial Crown in popular mythology as a sinister portent of impending doom.101
Reluctantly Baldwin accepted that he could no longer put off the unwanted confrontation. On 20 October he met the King at Fort Belvedere. His son Oliver gave Harold Nicolson a curious account of the interview, in which he has probably muddled elements of several meetings. Tired from the drive in his unpleasant little car, and in considerable pain from arthritis, the Prime Minister first asked for a whisky and soda. Having got it he raised his glass and said: ‘Well, Sir, whatever happens, my Mrs and I wish you every happiness from the depths of our souls.’ At this the King burst into tears, and Baldwin began to cry too. ‘What a strange conversation-piece, those two blubbering together on a sofa,’ commented Nicolson.102 After this unpromising start, the two men got down to business. Baldwin told the King that his correspondence about the relationship with Mrs Simpson was growing larger every day and a tide of public outrage was beginning to flood in. Could not the affair be conducted more discreetly? ‘The lady is my friend and I do not wish to let her in by the back door,’ answered the King with dignity. Then could not he put off the divorce? ‘That is the lady’s private business’; a disingenuous but unanswerable reply. Then at least could not Mrs Simpson leave the country for six months? To this the King made no answer.103
Baldwin found the King ‘stiff and in the toils’.104 He felt he had conducted himself with some aplomb at this interview, but according to Chamberlain the King spoke of it ‘with good-natured amusement and some very near say that it is of no use to repeat the warning unless it is given by the C of E, for whom, they say, HM has a wholesome respect’.105*9 The Archbishop of Canterbury offered, with some diffidence, to intervene if it would be useful. Baldwin replied that his line with the King had been to sympathize with his need for domestic happiness but to insist that ‘if Mrs Simpson was to supply his need she must be kept in the background’. Lang reasonably felt that this was hardly a point of view which he could advocate, whereupon Baldwin ‘realized my difficulty in intervening … and agreed it would be better to leave the matter in his hands’. The Archbishop concluded that he might find a chance to put in a word with the King when going over the Coronation service.106
But though the imminent divorce seemed certain to increase the risk of public scandal, still few people believed that the King would marry Mrs Simpson. To this illusion the two principal protagonists contributed vigorously. When Theodore Goddard spoke of a possible marriage to Mrs Simpson, she blazed out at him: ‘What do you take me for? Do you think I would allow such a thing? I would never think of it … Some day I shall just fade out …’107 Monckton, the King’s closest adviser, was similarly kept in the dark until the divorce case had been heard and a decree nisi granted.108 In the light of such assurances the Cabinet remained optimistic. On 31 October Chamberlain noted that he was greatly reassured by all he heard about the ‘attitude of both parties … I am told that Mrs S is likely soon to be paying a six weeks visit to the Riviera’.109 The King and Mrs Simpson had, of course, excellent reasons for propagating the view that they had no thought of matrimony; if the judge who heard the divorce proceedings had been given any reason to believe that the plaintiff was already involved with another man then, according to the law as it stood at that time, the case would have collapsed.
The divorce was heard on 27 October. The judge disliked the whole proceedings and made it plain that he did so, but the evidence which Mr Simpson had obligingly provided, that he had spent a night at a hotel with another woman, was watertight as far as it went. A decree nisi was granted; a divorce, that is to say, but only a provisional one. The decree absolute, after which remarriage would be possible, had to wait six months and would not be granted if in the meantime any proof had come to light of collusion between the couple seeking the divorce or of misconduct by the innocent party. Ipswich was thronged with journalists for the occasion, but though the British pressmen present busily filed their stories, only the most emasculated versions appeared in next day’s papers. The longest report was carried by the News Chronicle and that did no more than mention that Mrs Simpson ‘had been well known in social circles in London for several years’.110
The restraint of the British press was indeed one of the most remarkable features of this strange affair. On 16 October Beaverbrook had called at Buckingham Palace – ‘name your time,’ the King had said, which had led the press lord to think that his presence must be badly wanted. It was; Edward VIII asked him to ensure that only the briefest facts about the Simpson divorce appeared in the newspapers. He put his case with ‘considerable cogency and force’, said Beaverbrook; his main point being that otherwise Mrs Simpson would be traduced in the press for no fault of her own but because she was a friend of the King.111 Edward VIII did not state categorically that he had no intention of marrying Mrs Simpson, but he implied it strongly; the divorce, he maintained, was simply to allow her to escape from a marriage that had become intolerable. It was on this understanding that Beaverbrook persuaded the other British newspaper proprietors to maintain silence about the affair, and also made somewhat desultory efforts to do the same by the continental papers. ‘The sole purpose of this application to you,’ he told Jean Prouvost, director of France-Midi and France-Soir, ‘is to escape as far as possible the publication of unjustifiable gossip concerning the King.’112
So far as the American press was concerned, the cat was already far out of the bag. The divorce was covered in lurid detail and the New York American for one announced categorically on 26 October that a marriage between Mrs Simpson and the King of England would follow eight months later. Lady Cynthia Colville reported from Canada to Queen Mary that the whole front page of many American papers had been occupied by the news. Most of the comment was friendly enough; the principal feature being ‘naive admiration for the King’s democratic and unworldly character in thus choosing his own friends’. The Americans, not surprisingly, took it for granted that the British were at least as cognizant of the affair as the citizens of other countries: ‘One quite nice American … casually told me how astounded he had been, travelling with an English MP … to find that the Englishman had never even heard of Mrs Simpson.’113
The Canadian press observed the same self-denying ordinance as the British, but there was no stopping the gossip flowing across the border from the United States. Lord Tweedsmuir, the Governor General, was asked about Canadian reactions and described them as having at first been incredulity and indignation at the lies of the American press. As it slowly dawned on the Canadians that a large part of the rumours, at least, was true, their mood turned to irritation, shock and genuine alarm. There was, said Tweedsmuir, particular sensitivity about anything which touched on the King: ‘He is really idolized here. Canada feels that he is, in a special sense, her own possession. It is wonderful how strong this personal affection is in all classes, from guides and trappers and prospectors and small farmers up to commercial and political leaders. Any smirching of their idol is felt as almost a personal loss.’ The sentiment was even stronger among the young, who felt personal intimacy with the monarch. ‘Like all devotees they are unwilling to believe that any clay can enter the composition of their god. And if they are compelled to admit this there will be a most unfortunate reaction.’114
On 26 October, Dawson of The Times took to Hardinge a letter which he had received from a Briton in New Jersey signing himself ‘Britannicus’. The writer claimed that the prevailing American opinion was that ‘the foundations of the British throne are undermined, its moral authority, its honour and its dignity cast into the dustbin. To put the matter bluntly, George V was an invaluable asset to British prestige abroad; Edward VIII has proved himself an incalculable liability.’115 The evidence of the American press suggests that this was nonsense: a few of the more socially traditional elements might have been repelled by what they felt to be a mésalliance, and there would no doubt have been some dismay over Mrs Simpson’s two previous marriages among the inhabitants of the bible belt, but the tone of most press comment was extravagantly friendly. Britannicus wrote what Dawson and Hardinge wanted to hear, however, and the editor asserted gloomily that it could only be a matter of a few weeks, perhaps far less, before the British people learnt what was going on and rose in outrage. Hardinge was so struck by the cogency of the letter that he told Dawson he was sure it would make the ‘desired impression’ on the King. If it made any impression at all it was not perceptible.116
The circle of the informed was growing every day. At the end of October John Reith was told that Coronation insurance risks had risen from 4 to 21 per cent in two and a half months. ‘This is all due to the wretched Simpson affair and it is most significant.’117 Ten days later a question was asked about the Coronation in the House of Commons. John McGovern, an Independent Labour Party member from Glasgow, jumped up and shouted, ‘Why bother, in view of the gambling at Lloyds that there will not be one?’ There were roars of ‘Shame! Shame!’ but McGovern, unabashed, called out, ‘Yes, Mrs Simpson.’118 It was the first time the name had been heard in the House of Commons, indeed, the first time that there had been a reference to the affair in any public forum in the British Isles. Hansard dutifully made no mention of the exchange, but McGovern’s intervention introduced a new and final phase of the protracted story.