ONLY EIGHT DAYS SEPARATED MRS SIMPSON’S DEPARTURE from the abdication, but to the chief protagonist it must have seemed a lifetime of tribulation. In the case of Wallis Simpson, to be out of sight was not to be out of mind, nor even out of touch. Her exile was punctuated by a series of anguished telephone calls as she was harried across France by the press and then skulked in the Rogers’s small and gloomy villa. Each conversation left the King emotionally exhausted, yet the absence of a call drove him into a frenzy of anxiety. ‘Those telephone calls, with a bad line, at a long distance, will never be forgotten by any of us,’ wrote Monckton, who was in almost constant attendance at the Fort, with Ulick Alexander and the King’s solicitor, George Allen.1
At first the burden of the calls was that whatever happened the King should not abdicate. Edward Peacock, who as the King’s principal financial adviser saw a lot of him at this period and was more nearly in his confidence than anyone except Monckton and Allen, claims that Mrs Simpson insisted Edward VIII should fight for his rights and that his popularity would carry him through.2 If she took this line at first she soon changed her tune. The horrors of the flight through France, the blandishments of Perry Brownlow, the abuse and hostility to which she found herself subjected if ever she ventured outside the villa, convinced her that her present situation was intolerable. On 6 December she arrived in Cannes and the following day issued a statement for the press in which she claimed she was anxious to avoid any action which might do harm to the King or his throne, and stated her readiness ‘to withdraw forthwith from a situation that has been rendered both unhappy and untenable’.3 Before releasing it she read it over the phone to the King; he welcomed it as being likely to deflect some of the animosity now directed against her, but made it clear that in no way would it affect his handling of the crisis.
To the government it seemed that the statement opened new possibilities. Mrs Simpson’s solicitor, Theodore Goddard, was summoned to Downing Street, where he was seen first by Horace Wilson, then by Baldwin. Wilson later recorded that ‘what Mr Goddard was really saying was, in effect, what price could be paid to Mrs Simpson for clearing out?’4 This interpretation of the interview was passed on to Chamberlain, who noted in his diary that ‘it is evident she is an entirely unscrupulous woman who is not in love with the King but is exploiting him for her own purposes. She has already ruined him in money and jewels and it is thought that she can be squared when she realizes that she has lost the game.’5 If Goddard in fact gave that impression it must have been unwittingly; certainly he made no attempt to find out from Mrs Simpson whether she had a price and, if so, what it was. He did, however, agree that Wilson’s statement that there was little prospect of the government giving the King any sort of financial grant after his abdication was a factor which Mrs Simpson would think relevant. Dugdale, who was with the Prime Minister that evening, thought Goddard ‘a typical tough type of hard-working solicitor’. He was very obviously ill at ease in such rarefied circles, ‘like an uneasy bull having walked into the farmer’s sitting room instead of his own stable’. His opening remark was: ‘I hope you won’t think me a Bolshie, Sir.’ Baldwin asked why on earth he should. ‘During the interview,’ Dugdale considered, ‘Mr Baldwin was obviously more preoccupied in thinking over Mr Goddard’s strange introductory remarks, and the possible thoughts that provoked them, than what Mr Goddard was actually talking about.’6
Baldwin urged Goddard to go to Cannes to find out exactly what Mrs Simpson’s intentions might be, and placed an official aircraft at his disposal. In his memoirs the Duke of Windsor recollected that he had expressly forbidden Goddard to go to see Mrs Simpson.7 Goddard’s partner, Bertram Ogle, denied that any such veto was imposed, at the most an expression of mild disapproval was received by way of Monckton.8 Goddard, anyway, decided that his duty to his client and his country made the journey essential. It was much misinterpreted. As he had never flown before and had a weak heart he decided to take his doctor with him. It was at once assumed by the more prurient-minded that the doctor was a gynaecologist, summoned by Mrs Simpson: ‘This is foolish and most unfortunate,’ wrote Chips Channon sternly.9 Another speculation was that Goddard was sent out to recapture Queen Alexandra’s emeralds, which the King had given to Mrs Simpson, and that he returned with his pockets stuffed with jewels. ‘If the tale be true were the things brought back for restitution or to be put safely into Wally’s bank?’ enquired Lord Crawford.10 Ogle categorically denies that any such duty was imposed on his partner; Lord Brownlow, who was present at the meeting with Goddard and who had already commented on Mrs Simpson’s jewellery, makes no mention of such a transaction; and anyway, though the King had some very valuable old jewels reset for Mrs Simpson, it has never been possible to identify any as having been specifically handed down from Queen Alexandra. It seems that Goddard did no more than any solicitor would have done in such circumstances, lay the facts before his client and accept her instructions; even though the fact that he proposed to charge the British government five hundred guineas for his trouble shows how far his visit was considered official.11
In his own record of the interview Goddard states that he told her something of the feelings aroused in Britain and questioned whether it was wise for her to contemplate marriage: ‘After a long talk she definitely said she was quite prepared to give him up, but did say that wherever she went the King would follow her.’12 Goddard told Dugdale that he had found her ‘in a most terrified state of nerves, complete capitulation and willingness to do anything’.13 A statement was prepared, dated 9 December and countersigned by Brownlow and Goddard, in which she offered to withdraw the divorce petition.14 Armed with this, Goddard returned, his triumph muted by the knowledge that it would be worthless if the King remained entrenched in his position.
Goddard believed that his client was sincere in her protestations, that she would in fact have felt relief if the King had acquiesced in her wish to call the whole thing off.15 Monckton was equally convinced that she meant what she said.16 Brownlow, on the other hand, who saw more of her at the time than anyone else, insisted that he ‘had no belief in the statement’,17 though it is not entirely clear whether he was referring to the sincerity of Mrs Simpson’s words, or their likely efficacy. Hardinge was quite as certain that she only signed the statement in the conviction that it would be repudiated by the King: ‘It could not be anything but bogus.’18 The Prime Minister, not surprisingly, preferred the opinion of Hardinge, but it is hard to accept that he had the right to be quite so categoric when he assured the Dominions’ Prime Ministers that the statement was no more than an ‘attempt to swing public opinion in her favour’.19 It seems more likely that Mrs Simpson was so bemused and battered by events that she herself hardly knew what she wanted except to be ten thousand miles away and out of touch with everyone in England. But she also knew that, however many thousand miles might separate them, the King would have followed her. King Edward VIII’s attitude was unwavering throughout the crisis. He was determined to marry Mrs Simpson the moment that she was free, and to tell the world that this was his intention. Peacock heard that Harmsworth had turned up at Cannes and urged Mrs Simpson to persuade the King to give her up, on the private understanding that they would go back on their promise and marry later on. She put this suggestion to the King. ‘Certainly not,’ he replied. ‘If we did that we ought both to be hanged.’20
Meanwhile in London the return of Max Beaverbrook moved the action a stage further towards a final dénouement. Randolph Churchill claimed that, when asked why he had chosen to play so prominent a part in the abdication crisis, Beaverbrook replied succinctly, ‘To bugger Baldwin!’21 That was certainly a part of it, but there is probably as much truth in the explanation he gave himself at the time, that he wanted to help the King because he thought his cause was just.22 His role, as he saw it, was to stiffen the sinews of the King and to rally support for him. In both tasks he foresaw difficulties. In the first he feared he would be ham-strung by what seemed to him the curious reluctance of the King to challenge his government and bring down the pillars of the constitutional temple upon his own and his people’s heads. In the second, he saw the main opposition to the marriage as being religious. It followed that the divorced and the free-thinkers should support the King, but here the argument broke down, for whatever their real feelings, the divorced were all trying to become respectable while the free-thinkers disliked the monarchy.23 He did his best, however; in so far as there was a motive force behind the creation of a King’s party it was provided by Max Beaverbrook.
When he called on the King at Fort Belvedere he found him chain-smoking and holding a handkerchief to his head ‘as if to ease some hidden pressure or pain’.24 There are many other testimonies to the strain under which Edward VIII was labouring at this time. His attitude created ‘real doubts about his sanity’, wrote Leo Amery;25 he was under great mental pressure, said Piers Legh, ‘his outbursts on being asked some obvious questions plainly indicated an unbalanced and thoroughly abnormal frame of mind’.26 The American Ambassador reported that for some days the King had been in ‘an exhausted and nervous mental state’.27 Helen Hardinge even claimed that the King was sleeping with a loaded pistol under his pillow – whether to turn on himself or a possible intruder was not revealed.28 The story is not impossible, but Walter Monckton, who slept at Fort Belvedere the last eight nights, denied that it was true.29
The King had now evolved a new plan of action. First he would broadcast to the nation, stating his intention to marry Mrs Simpson but stressing that neither she nor he would insist that she should be Queen. Then he would withdraw temporarily to some foreign country so as to give people time to make up their minds. If he were called back he would be happy to resume his reign with Mrs Simpson as his consort; if not, then he would accept the will of the people and abdicate. He told Brownlow of this plan just before the departure of Mrs Simpson and insisted that it was not abdication, he was ‘going to Switzerland to let things simmer down’. Brownlow later noted this as being ‘the first and the last important lie of our friendship’, but in fact it was an exact statement of what the King proposed at the time.30 Piers Legh was instructed to book rooms at the Dolder Hotel in Zurich while Ulick Alexander went to Coutts’ bank to secure a letter of credit for £5000. The account was overdrawn but no difficulties were made.31 Lord Swinton, the Minister for Air, informed Baldwin in some alarm that two private aircraft had been chartered in the King’s name to fly to Zurich and were waiting at Hendon. Baldwin said that they would not be needed.32
The plan had foundered on the King’s wish to broadcast to the nation before he departed. He told Baldwin about this intention on 3 December; he was ‘frantically keen’, said the Prime Minister. Baldwin promised he would put the proposal to the Cabinet, but made it clear he felt it would be constitutionally improper. The King could speak only the words of his ministers. ‘You want me to go, don’t you,’ the King challenged him. Baldwin admitted that, in the circumstances, he saw no alternative.33 Next day the Cabinet supported the Prime Minister. The King’s proposed text was ‘a plausible and blatant attempt to get the country and Empire to throw over his ministers’, concluded MacDonald.34 One alarmist minister suggested that the King might get hold of John Reith, Director General of the BBC, and broadcast in spite of the government’s opposition. Baldwin, who knew his Reith, said that this was not a serious risk. Everyone agreed that the urgency was great and the crisis must not be allowed to drag on indefinitely.35
The King did obtain one concession from Baldwin – which the Prime Minister later considered to be his first blunder36 – that he could consult Winston Churchill about his future course of action. A few days before, Churchill had harangued Duff Cooper on the subject. ‘What crime had the King committed?’ he asked. ‘Had we not sworn allegiance to him? Were we not bound by that oath? Was he to be condemned unheard? Was he seeking to do anything that was not permitted to the meanest of his subjects?’37 The royalist rhetoric was sincere enough, but Churchill was as anxious as anyone to stop the King marrying Mrs Simpson. A few days after the abdication he told Mrs Belloc Lowndes that women played only a transient part in Edward VIII’s life. ‘He falls constantly in and out of love. His present attachment will follow the course of all the others.’38 His judgment was dramatically wrong but it explains his wish that any final decision should be deferred as long as possible.
Churchill dined at Fort Belvedere on 4 December. He found the King ‘most gay and debonair’ for the first quarter of an hour, but soon it became obvious that ‘the personal strain he had been so long under, and which was now at its climax, had exhausted him to a most painful degree’. He was ‘down to the last extremity of endurance’. The King was emphatic that he had not abdicated, nor even used the word to the Prime Minister. Churchill urged him on no account to leave the country, and, still more important, to see a doctor as soon as possible. He insisted that there could be no need to worry about time: let him ask for as long as he wanted to make up his mind, ‘there is no force in this country which would or could deny it you’. Play for time, he urged, time may resolve all your difficulties.39 The King listened with interest but told Peacock that, though Churchill had been very amusing, he was quite wrong in what he proposed – ‘Such a course would be inexcusable.’40 It was a point of view that Churchill deplored but admired. The King considered, Churchill told Boothby, ‘that it would not be honourable to play for time when his fundamental resolve was unchanged, and as he declared, unchangeable. It was certainly this very strict point of honour which cost him his Crown.’41
The desperation of the King touched Churchill deeply. At lunch with Margesson, the Chief Whip, he was on the edge of tears the whole time and in the House of Commons he talked loudly of ‘the twisting, crooked tricks of the Government’.42 He wrote to Baldwin stressing the King’s mental turmoil and saying ‘it would be most cruel and wrong to extort a decision from him in his present state’.43 Baldwin was unimpressed. He told the Cabinet next day that there was no truth in Churchill’s assertion that the King’s health was seriously impaired. He ‘had never known the King more cool, clear minded, understanding every point and arguing the different issues better’.44 Nevertheless, Churchill was sufficiently encouraged by the reactions of the various ministers to whom he talked to send the King an ebullient message assuring him that no pistol would be held to his head. A final decision could be deferred till February or March, he believed. Meanwhile there had been: ‘Good advances on all fronts giving prospects of gaining good positions and assembling large forces behind them.’45
The Cabinet, meeting exceptionally on a Sunday, was not concerned primarily with the King’s health. A point that was increasingly obsessing the King was that he might lay down his throne in order to marry Mrs Simpson and then find that the divorce was blocked and his sacrifice in vain. At lunch with Horace Wilson and Dugdale, Monckton said that, if the King was forced to wait five months for his marriage without the certainty that it would be possible in the end, he ‘might well go off his head or take to drink’.46 As a corollary to the Abdication Bill, could there not be a second bill making Mrs Simpson’s divorce immediate? Wilson accepted that the request was not unreasonable, and when Baldwin saw Edward VIII on 5 December he said that he foresaw trouble with some members of the Cabinet but that personally he felt it fair. Whether, as the King maintained, Baldwin also said that he would resign if he did not get it accepted is an open question; at the least he promised to champion it vigorously, and this he did.47
Next morning Baldwin first saw Chamberlain and Simon. Simon thought it a shocking precedent – ‘What would the non-conformists say?’ Chamberlain agreed: ‘It would be considered an unholy bargain to get the King to abdicate.’ If, however, when the Abdication Bill was passed, the Prime Minister could say that the government felt the uncertainty over the divorce imposed an intolerably cruel strain on the King and that they were considering legislation to speed it up, the second bill could be introduced in two or three days and the appearance of a bargain avoided.48 This was devious enough to satisfy even Simon, and Baldwin faced a special meeting of senior ministers that afternoon with some confidence. The accelerated divorce, he said, was ‘the only solution for which it might be possible for him to be responsible’. The King was making a tremendous sacrifice and was entitled to ask for something in return. But Duff Cooper, Edward VIII’s only real friend in the government, brushed Chamberlain’s sophistry aside. How could they, he asked, refuse to pass special legislation for a morganatic marriage which would enable the King to stay, yet introduce a bill to legalize adultery so as to expedite his departure?49 Chamberlain and Simon largely retracted their agreement of that morning and only Hoare was left to argue that he could not see that it was a matter of principle: the choice was between a ramp now or in five months.50
The Cabinet then adjourned while Baldwin went to see Queen Mary. On the way he met Lang and put the case to him. As always ready to see at least three sides to any question, Lang first expressed surprise at and dislike of the proposal, then paused to appreciate its advantages, and ended up doubting its constitutional propriety.51 Back in Cabinet, Baldwin accepted that the large majority was against him. Monckton was summoned to be given the bad news. He said that in that case the King would need more time to decide his position. Baldwin said that the matter must be settled before Christmas, whereupon Chamberlain remarked that the Christmas trade had already suffered.52
‘I have felt all day that the tide is turning against the Government, and is more pro-King,’ wrote Channon on Sunday, 6 December.53 That weekend marked the high water mark of the royalist party, in so far as such a movement could be said to exist when given no overt encouragement by the King. Margesson told Baldwin that some forty Tory members would probably support the King,54 less than a tenth of the total parliamentary party but still a formidable nucleus which could rapidly expand if public opinion seemed to be moving that way. Channon put the figure even higher: ‘Belisha is a secret Cavalier and there are many in the Cabinet,’ he wrote, ‘Duff Cooper is one, Sam Hoare is another.’55 Lord Cottenham had chosen Churchill’s royalist government for him: Duff Cooper and Sassoon were to take the Exchequer and the Air Ministry, and Hoare and W. S. Morrison could be counted on.56 Outside the Houses of Parliament, Lang agreed with the Moderator of the Evangelical Free Churches that the mass of the people would support the government, but ‘a large proportion, especially of the young to whom the King was a popular hero … felt a strong sympathy with him’.57 Anthony Cox, who wrote literate detective stories under the alias of Francis Iles, was told by military friends of ‘a conspiracy by certain young hotheads, junior captains in particular, to take up arms against the Government and for the King’.58 At the other end of the spectrum General Sir Ian Hamilton told Baldwin that ‘there would be an ex-service men’s revolution if the King abdicated’.59
None of this adds up to much, but it does show that feelings were running high and by no means entirely against the King. Lady Houston was mercifully untypical of any section of British society but she voiced the feelings of many when she urged: ‘Be of good cheer, Sir – the Country are with You … Sir, I am sure you are conquering. I have outside my windows a flying banner – “The King’s happiness comes first”, and last night a lot of young people stood and cheered it and sang “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow!” They love you, my King. Do not desert them.’60 Less romantically, Lloyd George in Jamaica announced: ‘If the little fellow marries her, I shall back him.’ He telegraphed to his son and daughter: ‘Hope you are not going to join the Mrs Grundy harriers who are hunting the King from the throne.’61 Ribbentrop announced confidently that if the Abdication Bill were forced through there would be rioting in the streets and the King’s party would restore Edward VIII to the throne;62 Margot Oxford agreed that there would be revolution and in a letter to the King went on to predict that ‘all our enemies, Germany, Italy and Russia, would triumph. No one can take your place. You will rise to a pinnacle of fame unknown before to any King of England.’63
If the King ever read the effusions of Lady Houston or Lady Oxford, he would have paid little attention to them. He had more than enough solid evidence, however, to convince him there was sufficient support for him in the country to make things thoroughly difficult for the government. How much that support would in fact have amounted to was never put to the test, because the King had no intention of giving it the encouragement it needed if it was to mobilize and multiply. If he had to go, he would go quietly. An old friend and senior civil servant, Colin Davidson, wrote to congratulate him on his ‘obvious and inflexible determination not to encourage a “King’s party”. It was within your power to create civil war and chaos.’64 Lord Halifax, who on the central issue felt that the King was wholly in the wrong, paid tribute to his behaviour. When he came to London from the Fort large crowds cheered him outside Buckingham Palace and in Downing Street; when Baldwin came to the door to see him off he was roundly booed. Such demonstrations could easily have been encouraged, wrote Halifax, instead ‘he never came up to London again’.65 ‘You ran dead straight at me;’ was Baldwin’s verdict. ‘You maintained your own dignity throughout; you did nothing to embarrass your successor …’66 To his biographer, G. M. Young, Baldwin summed it up: ‘Whoever writes about the Abdication must give the King his due. He could not have behaved better than he did.’67
But though there was evidence enough of a strong royalist tendency in the country, awaiting the call to spring to arms, there is more to show that the weight of public opinion was behind the government. The weekend of 5–6 December produced a dramatic evolution of feeling in the House of Commons. The always wraithlike King’s party almost entirely disappeared. Churchill found himself isolated from his most faithful followers: Boothby thought his stand a deplorable dissipation of energies and influence that were desperately needed for other purposes;68 Macmillan reassured the Prime Minister that, while he might disagree with him on social, foreign and economic problems, ‘you are dealing with eternal verities here, from which no deviation is possible without disaster’.69 The working classes, where the King might have been expected to find most of his support, proved resolutely hostile: reports came flooding in, wrote Francis Williams, ‘from the East End of London and from industrial areas in the Midlands and North and in South Wales that the general mass of middle-class and working-class readers of the Herald were deeply upset that a woman who had been twice through the divorce courts might become Queen’.70 Reports of provincial working-class opinion were remarkable for ‘penetration, common sense and outraged feeling’, wrote a relieved MacDonald in his diary.71 In Islington Harold Nicolson addressed an audience of four hundred, of whom only a handful would join in singing the national anthem.72 The American Consul in Plymouth reported that feeling against the King had hardened every day: it was nothing to do with Mrs Simpson’s nationality, but ‘people here consider that the proceedings leading up to the second divorce were too much of a farce for them to endure’.73 Contemporary polling techniques could perhaps have established the way in which public opinion evolved in the ten days before the abdication; for the government the critical factor was that the members of the House of Commons returned on Monday, 7 December, convinced, in Amery’s words, that ‘the country as a whole was getting progressively more shocked at the idea that the King could hesitate between his duty to the Throne and his affection for a second-rate woman’.74
Perhaps as marked was the feeling that the affair must not be allowed to drag on. Enough damage had already been done. Sylvia French, from 14 East 60th Street, New York, had her own particular axe to grind but she spoke in essence for many millions when she cabled: ‘Dear King, I wish you could come to a decision regarding Mrs Simpson as my stocks fluctuate with every report.’75 With such a mood prevailing there was no hope that the new compromise Churchill had hatched over the weekend – that the King would agree not to marry except with his ministers’ consent, and the matter be left pending – would prove acceptable to anyone, least of all the King.76 Nor did Churchill fare any better when he pleaded in the House of Commons for further delay and a pledge that no final decision would be made without reference to the House. He was howled down with a ferocity that amazed and horrified him. ‘You have delivered a blow to the King … far harder than any that Baldwin ever conceived of,’ Boothby accused him bitterly. ‘You have reduced the number of potential supporters to the minimum possible – I should think about seven in all.’77 G. M. Young congratulated Baldwin on his prescience in foreseeing how opinion in the House would evolve. ‘I have always believed in the weekend,’ replied Baldwin. ‘But how they do it, I don’t know. I suppose they talk to the station master.’78
On Tuesday, 8 December, Baldwin paid his last visit to Fort Belvedere. He went, he told a friend, determined to help the King wrestle with himself, if necessary all through the night.79 For this purpose, he came armed with a suitcase, a precaution which cast the King into even deeper alarm and despondency than he was in already. Peacock, knowing how close the King was to complete collapse, offered to remove Baldwin for dinner to his home nearby. The King refused: ‘I could not let the Prime Minister, who has been so kind as to come here to help me, leave without dinner. He must stay.’ He finally agreed that Peacock should do all he could to ensure Baldwin left soon after dinner, but even then ‘he was urgent that I should not do so unless I was quite sure that it would not hurt the Prime Minister’s feelings’.80 In fact it was clear before they even sat down to dinner that the two men had long ago exhausted all they had to say to each other; only a radical change of heart on the part of the King would have affected the position and that, it was quickly obvious, was not forthcoming. In spite of his fatigue, the King, wrote the Duke of York, ‘was the life and soul of the party, telling the PM things I am sure he had never heard before about unemployment centres etc … I whispered to Walter Monckton, “and this is the man we are going to lose”. One couldn’t, nobody could believe it.’81 Baldwin was on his way home shortly after dinner. ‘This is making history,’ he remarked to Dugdale with some satisfaction. ‘This is what I like.’82
At Cabinet next day Baldwin reported on his conversation and said that it would be useless to do any more. Hoare insisted that the ministers should send one more plea to the King to reconsider.83 The message was rushed to Fort Belvedere and the reply returned almost before the messenger had had time to take a cup of tea. ‘His Majesty has given the matter his further consideration,’ Edward VIII wrote in his own hand, ‘but regrets that he is unable to alter his decision.’84 The fact of abdication was now accepted by everyone concerned. It remained only to work out the remaining details.
There were many questions relating to finance and the King’s future status which had to be resolved. In all of them the rest of the royal family, in particular the man who would have the crown thrust upon him, the Duke of York, were intimately involved. It is remarkable how little communication the King had had with his closest relations in the months and weeks before the abdication – something he explained by saying that, as the issue was a constitutional one, he had thought it best to confine his negotiations to the government.85 It was not till after he had told the Prime Minister of his plan to marry Mrs Simpson that he braced himself to break the news to Queen Mary. He dined at Marlborough House on 16 November. It must have been a macabre feast. The presence of the Duchess of Gloucester kept conversation at dinner to small talk about racehorses and repainting Buckingham Palace, and it was only after she had mumbled some excuse and fled, that the King told his mother and sister, the Princess Royal, what he had in mind. They were sympathetic but it was then, to use the King’s words, that: ‘The word “duty” fell between us.’86 To Queen Mary there could be no doubt that Mrs Simpson was unfit to ascend the throne and therefore unfit to be her son’s wife. The only course was for him to renounce her, or at the very least, to keep her cloistered. King Edward VIII’s happiness was neither here nor there, or perhaps more correctly it was both, for the only true happiness lay in doing one’s duty. Not merely would she not give her blessing to such a match, she would refuse to receive the woman whom she regarded, and in her heart always would regard, as her son’s mistress. ‘As your mother I must send you a letter of true sympathy on the difficult position in which you are placed,’ she wrote after their conversation. ‘I have been thinking so much of you all day, hoping you are making a wise decision for your future.’87 Further than that she could not go.
It was indicative of the King’s mood at the time, swinging between wild elation and blackest gloom, that he interpreted this letter as actively encouraging. ‘I feel so happy and relieved to have at last been able to tell you my wonderful secret,’ he wrote in reply; ‘a dream which I have for so long been praying might one day come true … God bless you darling Mama for all your sweetness and understanding.’ Two years later Queen Mary showed the letter to Wigram with the dry comment: ‘I cannot think why my eldest son speaks of my “sweetness” to him during that awful time, because I thought I was extremely outspoken and tried to express my displeasure, but I suppose he never listened to what I said.’88 By then, however, many things had gone wrong and much bitterness had built up; she would have expressed herself more gently in 1936.
The King now saw each of his brothers in turn to tell them his story: Gloucester, he wrote in his memoirs, ‘appeared little moved’; Kent was ‘genuinely upset’; York was characteristically unable to express his innermost feelings.89 A few days later, however, the future King wrote to say, ‘I do so long for you to be happy with the one person you adore. I, of all people, should understand your own personal feelings at this time … I do realize all your great difficulties and I feel sure that whatever you decide to do will be in the best interests of this Country and Empire.’90 He ended with a plea that he should be allowed to come to see the King next day. His letter was backed up by a letter from the Duchess of York which illustrates, perhaps better than any other document, the turmoil of emotions in which the royal family were floundering at this time.
Darling David. Please read this. Please be kind to Bertie when you see him, because he loves you, and minds terribly all that happens to you. I wish that you could realize how loyal and true he is to you, and you have no idea how hard it has been for him lately. I know that he is fonder of you than anybody else, and as his wife I must write to tell you this. I am terrified for him – so DO help him, and for God’s sake don’t tell him that I have written. We both uphold you always. We want you to be happy more than anything else, but it’s awfully difficult for Bertie to say what he thinks, you know how shy he is – so do help him.91
In a letter to Queen Mary written at about the same time, the Duchess of York confided how ‘every day I pray to God that he will see reason, and not abandon his people’.92 The King knew only too well that this was what his relations were praying, he had no intention of seeing what they regarded as ‘reason’, and he was resolved to spare himself and them useless pain by arguing the matter with them. Godfrey Thomas complained to the Duke of York that he had been shut out of all discussion of the King’s relationship with Mrs Simpson. ‘That is what we all have, myself included, and I feel it very much,’ replied the Duke. ‘I have tried to broach the subject many times this year but he has always turned a deaf ear to it. If the worst happens and I have to take over, you can be assured that I will do my best to clear up the inevitable mess, if the whole fabric does not crumble under the shock and strain of it all.’93 It was not till 7 December, when the die was irrevocably cast, that the Duke managed to have a proper talk with his brother. ‘The awful and ghastly suspense of waiting was over,’ he recorded. The Duke went to the Fort at 7 p.m., went home for dinner and returned later. ‘I felt that once having got there I was not going to leave. As he is my eldest brother I had to be there to help him in his hour of need.’94
An hour of need was one thing, a lifetime of need another. It was the financial arrangements for the King’s future that did more than anything else to poison the atmosphere between the future Duke of Windsor and his family. Godfrey Thomas stated the problem concisely in his diary: ‘Will Mrs S, who is really not in love with him, be prepared to face life as Mrs Edward Windsor, or even the Duchess of Sussex, on an income of £12,000 a year, which Ulick Alexander says is all that he will have if he packed up and departed as a private individual?’95 But he also mis-stated the problem, and in his mis-statement lay the seeds of appalling discord. An income of £12,000 a year would suggest capital of some £300,000 – well over £7,000,000 at today’s values – substantial enough but not adequate to sustain a former King of Great Britain in the style to which he was accustomed, or even the style in which his former subjects would wish him to exist.
In fact Alexander, who as Keeper of the Privy Purse was in a position to find out as much about Edward VIII’s finances as anyone except perhaps Peacock, later put the King’s total fortune at £1.1 million.96 This figure did not include the Canadian property. Samuel Hoare also put the total at £1.1m but states that a proportion had been settled on Mrs Simpson.97 Michael Bloch, in his most reliable editing of the later correspondence between the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, puts the settlement at £300,000 and the King’s fortune at £800,000.98
Nevertheless, when the King and the Duke of York met at Fort Belvedere with their legal advisers on 10 December to discuss financial arrangements, the King ‘made an impassioned speech, pointing out how badly off he would be’. He ‘distinctly told his brother that … he did not think he had £5000 a year’.99 In a later record, Wigram recorded that the King had claimed only to have £90,000 as his total fortune.100 In view of this, he regretfully insisted that the terms of his father’s will should be strictly observed and his life interest in Sandringham and Balmoral treated as absolutely his, to dispose of as he thought best. Whether he cited a similar figure when he spoke to Churchill is uncertain, but he certainly left him in no doubt that he was so poor that he could not possibly survive without some sort of subsidy from the government or the new King.
There are plenty of mitigating circumstances to plead on Edward VIII’s behalf. He was physically at the end of his tether, having hardly slept for a week and eaten only the most inadequate meals. He was distraught at his separation from Mrs Simpson and felt himself desperately alone, suspecting that even his closest counsellors – Monckton, Peacock, Alexander – disapproved of his plans and would have been glad to see them thwarted. He was tormented by the thought that at the end the divorce might be refused and his sacrifice prove to have been in vain. The pain that he was causing his mother and his brothers weighed heavily upon him. He was constantly harassed by telephone calls from the south of France, in which threats of renunciation were mingled with demands that he should stick up for his rights and extract every halfpenny of advantage from the situation.101 He was agonized by the fear that he would let Wallis down, secure for her less than she deserved, earn her contempt. Under such pressure, it is hardly surprising that he clutched at any straw which he thought might help him improve his bargaining position.
Nevertheless, he told a lie for reasons of self-interest, and this cannot be condoned. It was a foolish lie. If he had thought straight, if he had thought at all, he must have known that even if the Duke of York did not already know his brother’s financial situation, he would be bound soon to find out. The lie was pointless, told in blind panic. It was an exceedingly dangerous lie. Even if it gained him temporary financial advantage, the risks involved in being found out were far greater than any possible benefit. By telling it, the King alienated the two men on whose good will he was to rely most heavily: his brother and Winston Churchill. On 10 March of the following year King George VI reminded the Duke of Windsor that he had insisted that if he received no grant from London he would be very badly off. ‘Your recent letter does not dispute that you told me so, and I believed it,’ the King continued. He had now learned the truth about his brother’s fortune. ‘You were under great strain and I am not seeking to reproach you or anyone. But the fact remains that I was completely misled.’102 He did reproach him all the same, the basis of trust had been destroyed between them. Churchill at first refused to believe that he had been tricked, but finally told Ulick Alexander he was convinced: ‘And that,’ wrote Alexander, ‘occasioned the rift between Winston and the Duke – when Winston discovered that the latter had double-crossed him.’103
It was a suicidal lie, and could only be explained by the traditional charity of the coroner recording a verdict of suicide – that the deceased took his own life while the balance of his mind was disturbed. At Windsor on 10 December 1936, King Edward VIII, the balance of his mind being disturbed, made the worst mistake of his life. He was to suffer the consequences until the day he died.
At first the government seemed well disposed towards the idea of granting the ex-King an allowance to help him maintain an appropriate train of life. Monckton was sure that, if he had decided to go even a few days earlier, a wave of sentiment in his favour would have ensured a generous provision.104 Hardinge suggested £25,000 a year. Chamberlain and Simon, however, hesitated to commit themselves and urged caution on the Prime Minister. Peacock saw Baldwin and Chamberlain and asked how long it was felt the King should stay away from Britain after his abdication. Two years, suggested Baldwin. ‘They were both very cordial, but guarded about finance.’105 Away from the chilly restraint of the Chancellor, Baldwin was more disposed to be generous. At the last dinner at Fort Belvedere, Dugdale had been briefed to stop his master making any rash commitment. Unfortunately Baldwin was rather deaf, and when Dugdale tried to make his point unobtrusively, he replied loudly: ‘What did you say? What money?’ The point having finally been made, he protested: ‘But you can’t let him starve.’ No promise was made, however. Later that evening Mrs Simpson telephoned. Dugdale was in the room: ‘He was heard to tell her he would get less than he hoped for, which caused a harsh-voiced twang of rich American invective from Cannes.’106
The meeting at Fort Belvedere therefore took place amidst uncertainty whether the King would be provided for by the government. Nor was it known whether the life or freehold interest in Balmoral passed to the Crown under Scottish law. ‘The discussions tended to become heated, as sentiment and legal fact were getting rather mixed, so I intervened,’ recorded Peacock. ‘… I removed the technicalities which were perplexing the Duke and stated directly and simply what I thought would be his desire.’107 The essentials of the agreement were that the King would sell his life interest in Sandringham and, if appropriate, Balmoral for a sum to be agreed, and would waive any claim to the royal heirlooms. The price agreed for the two estates would not be paid over, but instead the new King would grant his brother £25,000 a year if no similar provision was made by parliament from the Civil List. The only qualification to this was that the new King would not be responsible for making such a grant if the reason for parliament’s refusal to do so itself was ‘His Majesty’s conduct from this date’. The promise, in other words, was conditional on the King not alienating parliament by his behaviour. The new King would take over Edward VIII’s responsibility for pensions at present shared by the four brothers.108 ‘Wigram was present at a terrible lawyer interview which terminated quietly and harmoniously,’ recorded the Duke of York. ‘E. R. Peacock was a very great help.’109
Harmony had equally reigned when Peacock and Monckton had called on the Duke of York the previous day to secure his assent to the King retaining royal rank after the abdication. Another point which Peacock made and the Duke apparently accepted was that ‘if and when he [the King] was allowed to come to England he should have the Fort to live in. The Duke of York authorized Monckton to tell this to the King.’110 This part of the agreement foundered in the storms that followed the abdication; a fact that was to cause especial chagrin to Edward VIII.
Since he had broken the news to his mother in mid-November, Edward VIII had barely seen Queen Mary. The following day Baldwin had called on her. ‘This is a nice kettle of fish, isn’t it?’ she said, a remark which so struck the Prime Minister that he repeated it at once to Dugdale.111 Since then she had watched helplessly as the kettle boiled. On 3 December she wrote to her eldest son: ‘This news in the papers is very upsetting, especially as I have not seen you for ten days. I would much like to see you, won’t you look in some time today?’112 It was another few days before he could resolve himself to face what he knew would be a painful interview and he was very obviously under severe strain when he finally did so. Queen Mary, wrote a close confidant, ‘made a last attempt to induce him to give up Mrs S for the country’s sake – he had stormed and raged and shouted like a man demented’.113 King Edward VIII himself denies that his mother made any attempt to change his mind;114 the cause of his fury was probably more her refusal ever to receive Mrs Simpson. She had, she told Lady Airlie, promised King George V before he died that she would never do so,115 but no deathbed undertaking was needed to fortify her inflexible resolve. The day after Edward VIII left the country she wrote to thank Baldwin for all the ‘kindness and patience’ he had shown the King and to express her grief at ‘the failure of my Son in not carrying on the duties and responsibilities of the Sovereign of our great Empire’. George V and she had worked always to instil a sense of duty and tradition in their children; ‘that one of them failed is very painful to me’.116
One victim of the crisis who was little thought of at the time was Ernest Simpson. On 7 December he sent a message to Wigram via the faithful Jenks to say how distressed he was at the course of events. He was prepared, he said, ‘to come forward and say that the divorce was entirely a collusion between HM, himself and Mrs S … he felt he could squash the divorce by turning King’s evidence’. Wigram was horrified by the thought that the apple cart might be upset at this late stage: if the King could not marry Mrs Simpson, he said, he would certainly live with her and the crisis would be indefinitely protracted.117 Simpson assented: three days later, on the eve of the abdication, he wrote to the King what must surely be one of the most generous – if curious – letters ever sent by a cuckolded husband to his usurper:
My heart is too full for utterance tonight. What the ordeal of the past weeks have meant to you I well know, and I want you to know that my deepest and most loyal feelings have been with you throughout. That you may find an abundance of happiness in the days that lie before you is my earnest hope and prayer.
For the last time, Sir, let me subscribe myself your devoted subject, but always your loving friend and obedient servant.118
The King must have received this letter at almost the same time as his brothers arrived at Fort Belvedere to sign the Instrument of Abdication. Monckton had brought the draft at 1 a.m. the morning of 10 December. The Duke of York arrived at 9.30 a.m., Gloucester a few minutes later, Kent at 10, the King remarking with a laugh: ‘George would be late.’119 Immediately the signing began. Edward VIII declared his ‘irrevocable determination to renounce the throne for Myself and for My descendants’. That afternoon Baldwin was to set out the sad story to the House of Commons and Edward VIII insisted that, as a private individual, he had at last the right himself to speak directly to the nation. Having read the Prime Minister’s speech, Queen Mary tried to dissuade him. Baldwin had spoken in ‘a wonderfully dignified manner’, she wrote. What more was there to say? ‘You are very tired after all the strain you have been and are going through, and surely you might spare yourself that extra strain and emotion?’120 Probably nothing would have changed the King’s resolve; as it was he was incensed by Baldwin’s failure to include in his speech a reference which the King had requested to the fact that Mrs Simpson had done all she could to dissuade him from abdicating. He was resolved that he, at least, would put the record straight.
The King’s decision precipitated a debate, which till then had not seemed very urgent, about what he was to be called. A meeting of ministers had concluded that he would be entitled to the title of His Royal Highness, and that he would probably take precedence over the Dukes of Gloucester and Kent but not the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. The Prime Minister was asked to sort out the point with the new King.121 Not surprisingly he deferred the matter. Now it was made pressing by the fact that Sir John Reith would have to call the ex-monarch something when he introduced him before the broadcast. Reith’s own suggestion was ‘Mr Edward Windsor’. The matter was referred to the new King, who disposed of it with the lapidary common sense that was to be the hallmark of his reign. He couldn’t be Mr anything, the King pointed out, because as the son of a Duke he would be Lord Edward Windsor. If he were given no other title, he would, in theory, be able to stand for the House of Commons. Was this really what was wanted? He must be created a Royal Duke.122 He told his brother he would create him Duke of Windsor; Edward VIII spoke it aloud, liked it, and it was settled.123 Reith was told he should introduce the former King as ‘His Royal Highness, Prince Edward’.
The broadcast was to be from Windsor Castle. Reith chatted for a few minutes about Spain and other subjects; he had thought it right, he later explained, ‘to behave as if nothing untoward or specially unusual was happening’124 – quite an undertaking in the circumstances. The signal was given and the former King began to speak. He declared his allegiance to the new monarch, and his sense of duty towards his country and the Empire, and then continued with the sentence which is the best remembered of anything he said in his whole life: ‘You must believe me when I tell you that I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duty as King as I would wish to do, without the help and support of the woman I love.’ The decision to abdicate, he said, was his alone; he had taken it in the knowledge that his brother, ‘with his long training in the public affairs of this country and with his fine qualities’, was well qualified to take his place: ‘And he has one matchless blessing, enjoyed by so many of you and not bestowed on me – a happy home with his wife and children.’ After that it only remained to pay due tribute to Queen Mary, Mr Baldwin and all others concerned and to embark on his peroration:
I now quit altogether public affairs, and I lay down my burden. It may be some time before I return to my native land, but I shall always follow the fortunes of the British race and Empire with profound interest, and if at any time in the future I can be found of service to His Majesty in a private station I shall not fail.
And now we all have a new King. I wish him, and you, his people, happiness and prosperity with all my heart. God bless you all. God Save the King.
It was Edward VIII’s speech, drafted with some help from Monckton and embellished but not substantially changed by Winston Churchill. He began nervously, noted Monckton, but gathered confidence, and ended almost with a shout. When it was finished, he stood up, put an arm on Monckton’s shoulder, and said: ‘Walter, it is a far better thing I go to.’125
For the most part the speech was well received. ‘A triumph of natural and sincere eloquence,’ Beaverbrook described it. ‘It won back the people’s good will.’126 Even Lang found it had ‘some real pathos’, though he objected to the reference to the new King’s good fortune in enjoying a wife and family – ‘as if he might not at any time have honestly possessed this happiness if he had chosen’.127 Helen Hardinge wept herself, but said everyone else found it vulgar,128 while Lady Ravensdale considered it ‘hot-making and melodramatic’.129 In the pubs and middle- or working-class homes no such squeamishness was felt; the atmosphere was more often similar to that reported from San Francisco. A restaurant had been cleared and fitted with chairs to accommodate those who wanted to hear the speech. ‘The place was crowded out, everyone weeping, and they all stood up and sang “God Save the King” at the end!’130 Amery recorded in his diary that Brownlow’s ‘description of Mrs S moaning and sobbing while King E gave his farewell broadcast was quite harrowing’.131 But the account that, in a chilling way, rings most true, is that of Chips Channon, who was dining with the Stanleys. ‘It was a manly, sincere farewell,’ he judged. ‘There was a stillness in the Stanleys’ room. I wept, and I murmured a prayer for he who had once been King Edward VIII. Then we played bridge.’132
For Britain too there was time for a brief tear and then it was back to the bridge table. With startling speed the memories of the former King were brushed under the carpet and eyes were turned towards the future. At Windsor things took a little longer to settle down. After the broadcast the ex-King went back to Royal Lodge to take leave of his family. Queen Mary, wrote Monckton, was ‘mute and immoveable and very royal’.133 Considerately, she had left off her mourning for the evening so as not to cast further gloom on an already melancholy occasion. The Duchess of York, now the Queen, was in bed at home with a high temperature. She wrote to say how sad she was not to have been there ‘as I wanted so much to see you before you go, and say “God Bless You” from my heart. We are all overcome with misery, and can only pray that you will find happiness in your new life. I often think of the old days and how you helped Bertie and me in the first years of our marriage. I shall always mention you in my prayers.’134 He said goodbye to his eldest brother last. ‘When David and I said goodbye we kissed, parted as freemasons and he bowed to me as his King,’ wrote George VI.135 In another account George VI protested when his brother bowed to him. ‘It’s all right, old man,’ said the ex-King. ‘I must step off with the right foot from the first.’136
For the ex-King, one of the saddest features of his departure was the refusal of his former servants to accompany him. Fred Smith, who had been with him since 1908, angrily expostulated: ‘Your name’s mud. M.U.D.!’ ‘Oh, Frederick, please don’t say that. We’ve known each other for so long,’ was Edward VIII’s reply. When Alfred Amos refused to accompany him into exile, he said that he quite understood and asked him to work for him when he returned to England.137 Crisp, his valet, refused to come because he didn’t want to leave his wife. Edward VIII fixed up for him to work with George VI. The junior piper was asked to come instead. He said that his parents would be shocked.138 Edward VIII affected to be indifferent, even amused, but he was deeply hurt. He wrote to his mother hoping that all his old employees could somehow be fitted in: ‘… they are reliable and trustworthy people despite their amazing disloyalty to me by not one of [them] offering to come away with me for a week or two as valet. I neither know nor care their reasons but I can never forget how they let me down when I most needed them.’139
HMS Fury had been provided to take the Duke as far as France. The Captain, Cecil Howe, had had hurriedly to borrow linen, crockery and glasses from the royal yacht and, at Piers Legh’s insistence, had smuggled aboard a surgeon-commander ‘in case the ex-King’s state of mental stress should cause him to require any medical attention while at sea’.140 In fact Howe found nothing out of the ordinary about the Duke’s behaviour,141 while the Commander-in-Chief, William Fisher, thought that he looked as if he had passed through a very trying experience, ‘but his manner betrayed no weariness, his voice had animation and my general feeling was one of relief that he was so normal’. He insisted that the Flag Officers should come to his cabin for a celebratory drink. When Fisher said his final farewell, the Duke replied, ‘Oh, it’s not goodbye …’142
Fury sailed at 2 a.m. The plan had been for her to lie off Bembridge for a few hours so as to allow the Duke to get some sleep. He insisted on sitting up, however, drinking brandy and going over the events of the last few weeks with the exhausted Legh and Alexander. At 3.30 Legh, in desperation, sought out the Captain and begged him to come down and engage the Duke in conversation, so that the others might get some sleep.143 The Duke was still sending wireless messages of farewell and thanks when Fury reached French territorial waters and the wireless had to be closed down. He ordered the ship to sea again and continued with his task.144
Back in England Monckton motored back to London to catch a little sleep before he paid a final visit to Fort Belvedere to tidy up. The only objects he found it necessary to dispose of were a piece of paper beside the Duke’s bed on which Mrs Simpson’s private telephone number was written and, in the room that had been occupied by Mrs Simpson, a biography of George IV’s more-or-less morganatic wife, Mrs Fitzherbert.145 In the back of the car as he drove away from Portsmouth he wrote a short letter to Queen Mary:
During the journey he talked quietly of old times and places well remembered by both of us, but above all he talked of You – how grand you were and how sweet to him and especially at the last when he wanted it most. (You will recognize the words as his.)
There is, and I think there always will be, a greatness and a glory about him. Even his faults and follies are great. And he will, I feel sure, never lend himself to any such dangerous courses as some, not unreasonably, fear. He has shown that he cares for unity: and he felt deeply the unity of the Family with him last night.146