28

The Duke as Author

‘THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD IS INDEED OMINOUS,’ THE Duke wrote gloomily to Godfrey Thomas in March 1948. Encouraged by their triumphs in Czechoslovakia and the preoccupation of the Americans with their presidential elections, it seemed certain that the Russians would ‘have a bid for Italy and, if successful, for France this coming spring’.¹ Since early 1947 the troubles of France had led the Duke to question the wisdom of putting even a small proportion of his eggs in so rickety a basket. He persuaded the British Army to put three lorries at his disposal so as to carry to London thirty-two packing cases of his most cherished possessions from the vaults of the Bank of France. There remained the furniture from the Boulevard Suchet and his property in the south of France, but these, though their loss would be painful, were of secondary importance. Viewed from the lofty heights of the 1990s his fears may seem exaggerated, at the time they were shared by many who were far from alarmist in their general outlook. France ‘is in the worst shape, politically and economically, of all the countries outside the Iron Curtain’, the Duke told an American friend. The principal blame rested with de Gaulle, who had done so much to sap the power of successive middle-of-the-road French governments, with the result that ‘there is now no alternative to his return to power with the inevitable clashes with the Communists, if not civil war, that his dictatorial doctrines will precipitate’.² Two months later, with a coal strike paralysing the country and armed troops storming communist-occupied mines, he became still more convinced that a Soviet takeover must be imminent; ‘de Gaulle is certainly not the answer to the revival of France’s spirit or her economy’.³

But could he find anywhere more secure, which would offer the same tax advantages as he enjoyed in France? He told the ex-King Leopold of Belgium that he was thinking of Switzerland; a proposition that caused sore alarm to another exiled monarch, Queen Ena of Spain, who had settled in Switzerland herself and did not relish the prospect of living cheek-by-jowl with the Duchess of Windsor.⁴ He played with the idea of buying a plot of land and building in the south of Spain – ‘Of course, I’m not a rich man like you,’ a friend remembers him saying, when asking him to look out for a suitable site.⁵ He looked about for a house on Long Island in which he could accommodate their furniture from La Cröe.⁶ But always he hesitated before making any final commitment, and finally convinced himself that France would probably muddle through, without falling into the abyss of communism, or succumbing to a military dictatorship.

Even if the American taxmen had made it possible for him to establish a permanent home in Long Island, he would have had his doubts about the political future on that side of the Atlantic as well as in Europe. The years after 1945 show the Duke, haunted by the menace of communism and convinced that the democratic powers were effete and enfeebled, entrenching himself ever more deeply in a posture of rigid and irredeemable reaction. From New York he wrote to Beaverbrook that the United Nations were in ‘fruitless session’; somewhat doubtfully he admitted that talking to the Russians might be better than shooting at them, but only ‘at this stage, and until the Western Powers are more prepared’.⁷ He blamed the state of the world on Franklin Roosevelt, deplored the fact that a statue in Grosvenor Square now honoured the memory of the man ‘most responsible for the present impasse’, and prayed for a Republican victory in 1948 that would remove ‘the last dregs of the New Deal’.⁸ When Truman disobliged him by defeating Dewey, he wrote that he was ‘stunned’, though not altogether surprised since he had sensed that leftist thinking was gaining ground throughout the world.⁹ It was not just that a democratic administration would truckle to the communists abroad or pursue disastrous economic policies at home; worse still was that ‘the departments in Washington and even the White House will escape the thorough house-cleaning of liberals and fellow-travellers, if not Communists, which is long overdue’.¹⁰

It was perhaps fortunate for his peace of mind that the one country where it was out of the question for him to live, seemed to him to become progressively more undesirable to live in. In May 1947 his brother-in-law, Lord Harewood, died and it seemed as if his vast wealth and estates would be almost entirely swallowed up by death duties. ‘It is a crime how three decades of Liberal and Socialist legislation have completely destroyed a uniquely English way of life – the great country estates of Britain,’ he lamented to his mother. ‘But then so much of the traditional elegance we used to know has already vanished or is vanishing … until one hardly has the heart to revisit the haunts of one’s youth.’¹¹ After a visit to England at the end of 1948 he told an American correspondent that all the people he knew were getting ‘more sick and tired of the austerity and restrictions’. The most depressing part was that the British people obstinately refused to shed their illusions; a Labour victory at the next election seemed likely, which ‘I am afraid, will hasten an eventual Communist dictatorship. I see no alternative.’¹² When Labour held Hammersmith at a by-election in the spring of 1949, he was more than ever convinced that Britain was lost for ever, and that the only thing that prevented an immediate communist takeover was that Russia was too busy consolidating her gains in Central Europe, the Balkans and the Far East.¹³ It was not until the Conservatives narrowly won the general election of 1951 that the Duke conceded there might after all still be a tolerable future for his country: ‘One can only hope that the misguided voting masses will realize that this new spell of austerity has had to be imposed as a result of six years of Socialist misrule based on class hatred.’¹⁴

And so the Windsors remained in France; with some reluctance abandoning La Cröe in the autumn of 1949, and renting a substantial if somewhat gloomy house in the rue de la Faisanderie in Paris, initially for two and later for four years. ‘Wallis has as usual made it attractive and comfortable as she does to all houses,’ the Duke told Queen Mary, but the house had many inconveniences and they were searching for another, so far without success. ‘Everything is so discouragingly expensive nowadays.’¹⁵ No economies were introduced when it came to entertaining. Though one of the drawbacks of the new house was that the dining room only seated twenty-four, they quickly resumed their former habits, giving luncheons or dinners to a procession of French or foreign dignitaries leavened with friends from England or the United States. Cy Sulzberger dined there in 1951 and found ‘a weird collection of social derelicts’. This seems a little hard; the normal guest list read much as might have been expected in any important embassy when the ambassador had no particular artistic or literary leanings. The dinner attended by Sulzberger included René Pleven, then Prime Minister of France, and a visiting American senator, Warren Austin.

Certainly there was nothing second-rate about the fare. Post-war austerity had been put away. Cocktails were accompanied by canapés spread with caviar or covered with slices of lobster. There were ten courses washed down with sherry, white wine, red wine, pink champagne and ‘huge slugs of brandy’. While the seventh course was being served, a string orchestra arrived. ‘Happy Birthday to You’ was sung in honour of the senator, and the orchestra played on merrily. ‘From then on, the Duke couldn’t eat because he was too busy waving his arms around in time to the music – his favorite habit. Whenever I have seen him anywhere near music, out comes his conductor’s complex.’¹⁶

The Duke left La Cröe with less regrets than he had expected because it seemed to him that the south of France, or at least the Côte d’Azur, had deteriorated sadly. After a visit to the gala at Monte Carlo with Lord Rothermere and the journalist Alastair Forbes, he commented fretfully: ‘The semi-nude people who congest all these joints are so tough and unattractive that going places and gambling really is not much fun any more. As a local hotelier is supposed to have remarked, “Yes, the crowd on the coast is getting worse and worse; in fact this year we have got next year’s people.” The French translation of the “GB” plate on British cars – mostly Rolls-Royces – is Ghetto Brittanique.’¹⁷ In 1950 he returned to old loyalties and spent a month at Biarritz; they liked it so much that they resolved in future to patronize only the Côte Basque.¹⁸

Life in Paris was not made more agreeable by the disappearance of Duff and Diana Cooper from the British Embassy at the end of 1947. The Harveys, who took their place, made no bones about the fact that they disapproved of the Windsors and did not wish to receive them. It was only on direct instructions from London that they eventually and grudgingly invited them to dinner, and even then they only invited members of the Embassy staff to meet them.¹⁹ After that the relationship between successive Ambassadors and the Windsors settled into a tranquil if hardly cordial pattern. The Duke and Duchess would dine at the Embassy perhaps twice a year, the Ambassador and his wife would return the compliment, the Windsors would attend the celebration of the royal birthday – honour was satisfied if little pleasure given to anyone.

They anyway spent less than half the year in Paris. Of the five years from 1947 to 1951 they spent almost two in the United States, for the most part at the Waldorf Towers in New York or at Palm Beach, sometimes renting a house, more often staying with friends. Until 1950 they spent two to three months a year at Antibes, and in 1951 went to Biarritz. Into the time that was left were fitted visits to Britain, holidays in Italy and Mexico, a tour of the British Army in Germany, and other lesser outings. It was a restless, itinerant life, but it suited the Duchess, and since the satisfaction of the Duchess was his chief concern, it suited the Duke as well.

The novelist Cecil Roberts dined with them both in Palm Beach and in New York and found that, with variations, they kept up the same state as in Paris. In Palm Beach they ate on a terrace by moonlight, amid flood-lit palm trees, while four musicians played ukuleles in the background. The Duke was dressed in Stuart plaid trousers with a magenta linen dinner jacket. After dinner he borrowed a ukulele and played it. ‘He looked young and happy.’ At their apartment in the Waldorf Towers it was another matter. There were full-length paintings of George III and George IV in their coronation robes, other royal portraits, two footmen in livery, napkins embroidered with the royal arms. ‘This did not look like exile.’ But once again there was music. ‘The duke, in a plum-coloured velvet evening jacket, went to the grand piano and began to sing. He had a large repertoire, a good voice, and was excellent in some German, Lancashire, Scottish and Irish songs. His à la Harry Lauder “Oh, it’s nice to get up in the morning …” was the chef d’oeuvre.’²⁰

Harold Nicolson met him at lunch with Sybil Colefax in 1947. ‘He is thin but more healthy looking than when I last saw him. He has lost that fried-egg look around the eyes. He is very affable and chatty. I notice that he has stopped calling his wife “Her Royal Highness” … I notice also that people do not bow as they used to and treat him as less of a royalty than they did when he had recently been King. He takes all this quite for granted. I have an impression that he is happier.’ The Duchess also he found improved; softer and with the taut, predatory look almost disappeared. She talked wistfully of their wish to settle down – ‘He likes gardening but it is no fun gardening in other people’s gardens.’ Above all, she said, he needed a job. ‘You see,’ she explained, ‘he was born to be a salesman. He would be an admirable representative of Rolls Royce. But an ex-King cannot start selling motorcars.’²¹

Two years later Nicolson met him again and thought him much older. ‘His face was wizened, his teeth were yellow and crooked, and his golden hair was parched.’ But he was in high spirits.²² Beaton went to Paris to photograph them the same year. ‘His face now begins to show the emptiness of life. It is too impertinent to be tragic … He looks like a mad terrier, haunted one moment, and then with a flick of the hand he is laughing fecklessly.’²³ Almost any account of him mentions his vitality and enduring charm. He descended on Windsor in April 1949. He ‘was as captivating and effervescent as ever’, reported Owen Morshead, the librarian and one of Queen Mary’s closest confidants. He had a team of men unpacking and repacking his silver, ‘and he keeps them happy with a lavish outpouring of chaff and treasury notes. He is extremely fond of the Castle, most kind in all his references to his father, instantly recognizing old servants and asking after the wound in the right part of their anatomy: wherever he passes, people sigh.’²⁴ Sulzberger met him again at the end of 1951 and found him ‘extremely informal and friendly’, though he was disconcerted to find that the royal station wagon had ‘The Duke of Windsor’ displayed in metal letters on each door. ‘After dinner there was a pianist. The Duke was transported with joy. He sang a few songs rather badly and joyfully initiated the playing of various instruments such as the cello and the violin, waving his arms around like a happy schoolboy. He knew a few Spanish and German songs partially.’ At one point the Duchess leaned over to him and said: ‘You promised you were going to listen tonight because there are a lot of brains around, but you are talking all the time.’ ‘I have to talk, or otherwise I would fall asleep,’ he replied.²⁵

Though Nicolson found the Duchess softer in manner, many accounts of the period testify to her formidable rancour against the British and above all the royal family. The Sulzbergers were treated to a lament about the shabby treatment that the Duke had received from his relations and her determination never to go back to England.²⁶ Jock Balfour sat next to her at dinner at Biarritz. He stooped to pick up her bag which had fallen to the floor. ‘I like to see the British grovelling to me,’ she remarked.²⁷ It was a joke, no doubt, but it left an unpleasant impression on her audience. The Duke’s devotion to his wife was as obvious as ever. ‘The Duke clearly adores her,’ Sulzberger recorded. ‘After dinner we were sitting together talking and every now and then he would look across at the Duchess and say: “It’s so wonderful to see her. You know, I have not seen her for a week.”’²⁸ Channon commented too that the Duke was still passionately in love. Three times, when Channon and the Duchess were talking, the Duke came up to bring her a drink, each time she accepted it smilingly but put it down untouched. ‘There was certainly understanding and affection in her glance.’²⁹ In December 1951 the American Association of Marriage Brokers wrote to inform the Duke that the Windsors had been chosen as ‘one of the happiest married couples in the land’, and that it would be an honour to present them with a cupid loving cup at their forthcoming convention. The Duke replied politely, thanking them for the ‘courteous and friendly gesture’ but regretting that they could not be present.³⁰ The proposal was absurd, but to a man as romantic as the Duke it must also have seemed a touching and well-merited tribute.

It would be wrong to give too sugary a picture of an ideal marriage. The Duchess was a restless and discontented woman, sometimes the Duke’s devotion must have cloyed, sometimes she hankered for madder music and for stronger wine. At the time the Marriage Brokers awarded the couple their loving cup, the Duchess was causing her husband some distress by her relationship with the American millionaire socialite and pederast, Jimmy Donahue. The Duke always maintained that his wife’s relationship with Donahue caused him no concern. ‘Don’t you get jealous letting the Duchess go out every night with Jimmy?’ Elsa Maxwell once asked him. He roared with laughter ‘and, in his special semi-Cockney accent, said, “She’s safe as houses with him!”’³¹ In a sexual sense she no doubt was, but his wife meant much more to the Duke than merely sex, and he must have felt some jealousy over the pleasure she so obviously derived from the company of this flamboyant vulgarian. On the other hand, Donahue’s riches and his insatiable appetite for night clubs and other species of nocturnal revelry – matched only by the Duchess’s – made him a useful member of the ménage. It must have been a relief for the Duke when the association ended, if only because of the prurient interest taken in it by the American press, but he must also have regretted from time to time that this epicene gigolo was no longer to hand to share the burden of the Duchess’s quest for pleasure.

At least he by then had something to do with any time left to him after he had finished dancing attendance on his wife. It was as early as May 1946 that he told Monckton it had been suggested ‘from not uninteresting quarters’ that he should write about his side of the abdication crisis. ‘It seems that considerable doubt and conjecture still lives in the minds of many thinking people … concerning that episode.’³² To resolve those doubts to his own advantage, to earn a lot of money, and to pay off a few scores along the road, would be an attractive way of filling the idle hours that lay ahead of him. Besides, the news that he was at work on his memoirs would send a shiver through the court, an idea also not without appeal. The offer, whatever it may have been, came shortly after his hopes of an official post in America had finally been dashed: a neater way of registering his anger at being left in idleness could hardly be conceived.

For some reason the idea was allowed to languish, then was revived early in 1947 in a modified form. The Duke contracted with Henry Luce, owner of Time-Life, to write four long articles dealing with his childhood and career up to 1914. At the same time he hinted that he might later extend his writings to cover the rest of his life, a possibility both more hazardous and even more inviting in commercial terms than the earlier exercise. When in October he told Thomas what was going on, he said that a full-scale autobiography might one day follow but that there was no commitment as yet. ‘He said that as Mr Churchill was doing the same thing through this very group, he didn’t see why he shouldn’t, especially as he was constantly being asked by less reputable publishers in the States to write something for them.’³³ To his mother he adopted a slightly defensive note. He was hard at work on the three articles for Life magazine, he told her – three being the number originally envisaged – and was busily recalling details of his childhood and college days. ‘I am fortunate as having to some extent inherited your prodigious memory. I am sure that an accurate story of our family life by one of its more prominent members can serve a useful purpose and make a good impression in America and wherever it is read. Otherwise I would not have accepted the offer.’³⁴

To aid him in his task Life provided Charles Murphy, a journalist of considerable charm and experience, who at first worked fruitfully and harmoniously with the titular author. The Duke did not need a ‘ghost’ in the sense that he found it hard to write; on the contrary, he had covered so many thousands of pages over the years with his clear, rather childish script that it sometimes seemed his problem was knowing when to stop. His style was undistinguished but clear and serviceable, with touches of wit and a pleasant self-deprecating irony from time to time leavening the slightly stolid text. He had a good eye for detail and enough common sense generally to avoid the perils of self-pity or an excessively partial presentation of his case. What he lacked was the experience or the inclination to undertake the necessary research, or to organize huge blocks of material into a lucid and readable narrative. In his early articles and autobiography it can be taken for granted that the views were his own, and probably the words as well, but that the accumulation of the material and the shaping of the work were the contribution of Charles Murphy. As so often with such partnerships, familiarity soured the relationship. The Duke began to take for granted Murphy’s skills, Murphy to resent the Duke’s sometimes cavalier treatment of his labours. The Duke accused Murphy of arrogance, tactlessness, incompetence, and an unsavoury sensationalism; Murphy found the Duke feckless, idle, irresponsible and wayward to an intolerable degree. Each, no doubt, tried the other high. Murphy had the last laugh, since in collaboration with another of the Duke’s bookwrights, J. Bryan, he produced a biography of the Windsors which the Duke’s friends found offensive and unfair but which contained so much convincing detail not to be found elsewhere that other biographers will ignore it at their peril.³⁵ He was also well rewarded for his pains, receiving 21 per cent of the gross royalties from the autobiography, excluding sums paid by Time-Life.³⁶

Predictably, the court were less sure than the Duke about the ‘useful purpose’ which the articles would serve. Lascelles was the most incensed. Poverty was no excuse, he told Bruce Lockhart. ‘If you knew what that man had taken out of the country, you would know that he did not need money … He is in a royal trade union and the trade union rules are against this kind of thing. He is the meanest royalty that has ever been.’³⁷ The fact that the Duke had first resigned from the union and had then been ceremonially stripped of any remaining privileges of membership presumably counted for nothing. Bruce Lockhart may somewhat have embellished the conversation when recording it; when writing his views for the King Lascelles was more circumspect. But even in this memorandum his tone was damning. The articles, he said, could do nothing but harm – to the author and to the royal family generally. The only way to stop them would be by appealing to the Duke’s better nature; ‘but I am sorry to say that long experience has convinced me that he has no such feelings when the interests of the Monarchy or the Royal Family conflict with what he imagines to be the interests of himself and the Duchess’.³⁸

By the end of 1947 the articles were finished. He had never had to work so hard or with such protracted concentration in his life, the Duke told Thomas, but – an ominous addition in the eyes of the court – he had enjoyed the task and gained valuable experience.³⁹ The articles appeared in Life in America and in the Sunday Express in Britain: good-tempered and colourful pieces that painted an attractive picture of the royal family and its daily life and certainly can have done nothing to damage the image of the monarchy in the public consciousness. To Queen Mary it seemed deplorable that any member of the royal family should reveal to the world intimate details – however innocuous – of the workings of the royal palaces and their inmates. ‘I was surprised you thought it a pity I wrote of so many private facts,’ replied the Duke. He claimed to have taken infinite pains to cut out any detail or anecdote which he felt intruded too far into the sanctity of their family life. ‘I would submit that the personal memoir of Papa undertaken by John Gore at your and Bertie’s request … contains far more intimate extracts from Papa’s diaries and glimpses into his character and habits than I would have dared to use or thought suitable to include in the story of my early life.’⁴⁰ He paid more attention to the opinion of the editor of the Sunday Express, John Gordon, who wrote that the serialization had done the Duke ‘immensely more good than anything in years’. The picture the articles had painted of his early life and the difficulties he had encountered had won him great sympathy. ‘I should say that as a result of the success of the series he stands high in public affection today. And that there is a much wiser [sic wider?] understanding of the course of his life.’⁴¹

Emboldened by his success the Duke now hankered after greater things. In October 1948 he told Thomas that he was not thinking of writing any more for publication in the near future, but that at some point he would obviously want to carry his story a step further and that he was beginning to collect material. ‘He again assured me that this, whenever it appeared, would be confined to his overseas tours and his official duties as Prince of Wales and would not go beyond 1935.’⁴² If the Duke was quoted correctly he seems to have been disingenuous to say the least: three weeks before he saw Thomas he had told Monckton that his file for 1936 was ‘growing ever bulkier’.⁴³ The contract with Time-Life was deliberately left vague so as to give the Duke the greatest possible freedom of action, but by the autumn of 1948, even though he may have envisaged a preliminary series of articles on his life as Prince of Wales, it was a full dress autobiography up to the time of the abdication that was in the course of preparation.

Any illusions the royal family may have harboured were soon dispelled. When Owen Morshead was approached by George Allen two months later and asked to give some help with the English sections of the story, he was left in no doubt that memoirs were being written. Murphy was brought to meet him and ‘proved to be a gentlemanly and reasonable person: I liked him very much and formed the impression that he was trustworthy’. (Murphy had a way with courtiers. Thomas found him ‘exceptionally nice, intelligent and cultured … he is far above the level of the ordinary American journalist’.⁴⁴) Morshead felt certain that Murphy would do his best to keep the ‘tone of the book pleasant and good natured, like the articles in Life … No doubt it were better that this book should not be written at all: but if it must be, then I think we are fortunate that it is in the hands of this decent-minded person.’⁴⁵

Much of 1949 and 1950 – in the Duke’s eyes almost exclusively, to Murphy’s mind at irritatingly erratic intervals – were devoted to work on the memoirs. He refused an invitation from Lord Dudley, ‘as I am carrying on with the research for my memoirs, and am at my desk at 9 o’clock every morning and work for four hours until lunch … It is an interesting if exacting pastime.’⁴⁶ Murphy complained with increasing bitterness that it was proving difficult to fill out the essential features of his story. ‘Please speak plainly to your former sovereign,’ he urged Beaverbrook. ‘He needs bucking up. And he needs to be told that writing must be done again and again. He also needs to be advised that much time and heartache will be saved if he reposes confidence in his collaborators. But I suppose this can never be.’⁴⁷ It is hard to be sure how far Murphy’s strictures were justified, and how far he was merely frustrated by the Duke’s reluctance to include delicate material which would have sold copies but also caused controversy. Murphy was to some extent working in competition with Monckton, who was constantly urging restraint on the uncertain author. ‘If I go too far I shall lose what chance I have of exercising the pruning fork, which becomes more and more necessary at every stage,’ Monckton told Lascelles.⁴⁸

By the end of 1950 the work was almost done. The Duke stayed behind in Paris to finish the book while the Duchess went ahead to New York. The American newspapers had a field day with the news, and announced that the marriage had broken down and that Jimmy Donahue was enthroned in the Duke’s place. Whether it was his distress at this malign publicity, frustration with Murphy, or just anguish at thus being parted from his wife, the Duke impetuously bundled up all his papers and pursued the Duchess. A conspicuously affectionate reunion on his arrival checked the worst of the gossip, and the work went ahead with hardly a break. ‘We really did finish this damn book yesterday,’ wrote his secretary, Anne Seagrim, with some relief on 11 March 1951. ‘He had to write the whole of the author’s note and acknowledgments in his own hand.’⁴⁹

The articles in Life drawn from A King’s Story had appeared the previous summer. The Duke sent copies to his mother; she thanked him cautiously; ‘You know my ideas of that kind of subject, however I am reading the paper with interest.’⁵⁰ The articles, and the prospect of the book to follow, produced a flood of letters: most of those to the Duke congratulatory, most of those to the court deploring the publication. The Prime Minister’s private secretary, Denis Rickett, passed on to Lascelles a letter from a Mr Pearson urging that publication be prevented. Lascelles said that this was but one of many. ‘All of them express disgust at a former King of England selling for money his recollections of his family life, in a form that is indecent and for a motive that is squalid. But none of these has yet suggested any machinery whereby such a sale can be prevented. The only remedy that has ever occurred to me is that somebody should awake in the author the instincts of a gentleman; but, as I devoted the eight best years of my life to this end with signal ill-success, I fear I am not the man to make any constructive suggestion.’⁵¹ What upset Lascelles most were the passages dealing with the Duke’s love for Mrs Simpson – the omission of which would have made any history of the abdication read rather oddly. ‘It is obscene to write gainfully about one’s own love affairs,’⁵² he told Monckton dogmatically; leaving open the questions of whether it was any less obscene to write about somebody else’s love affairs, or to describe one’s own free of charge.

As the centrepiece of the book’s promotion the Duke had promised to address the annual dinner of the BPRA, the association of publishers’ salesmen. Lord Cromer had previously written the Duke a letter which, coming as it did from a former Lord Chamberlain, reads oddly when compared with Lascelles’s objurgations. He had praised ‘the literary qualities and tactful choice of words that elevate this pathos-laden story to such a high and dignified plane’, and protested that the book was presented with such ‘verity, sincerity and graciousness of style that it cannot but command respect in the hearts of all the fair-minded’.⁵³ Now he urged the author to forgo the dinner, which savoured too much of the boosting of a commercial enterprise.⁵⁴ Besides, the King was seriously ill, so the timing would be singularly unfortunate. The Duke would probably have ignored Cromer, but Churchill too weighed in, urging him to avoid any public appearance until his brother was out of danger: ‘It is so important that the first time you address the British public [you] shld have the most cordial welcome and be an unqualified success.’⁵⁵ Reluctantly the Duke gave way, grumbling that on the very day he was supposed to have spoken Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret had been seen at Ascot Races – ‘Pretty blatant discrimination, wasn’t it?’⁵⁶ It was perhaps as well that his oratorial ambitions had been curbed, since he had intended to launch an assault on those who criticized him for indulging in authorship and ask in what way he was different from his great-grandmother, Queen Victoria. His closing remark, however, deserved a hearing: ‘My book is not a novel, but is a romance, and all I can say is that I hope it can end like most fairy tales – “and they lived happily ever after”.’⁵⁷

The book ended with the reign of Edward VIII, so the Duke was mercifully spared any temptation to enlarge on the various grievances that had poisoned the years since the abdication. On the whole it was a fair and well-balanced work, the only major figure who was conspicuously treated with less than justice being Baldwin. ‘I think it was quite a good account,’ the Earl of Athlone wrote temperately, ‘but you were a bit too strong about Baldwin, who was really very fond of you.’⁵⁸ ‘Without any overt expression of dislike,’ the Scotsman judged in its review, the Duke succeeded, calmly and effectively, in ‘roasting’ his Prime Minister. To the contemporary reader the dislike seems all too overt, and the judgment ungenerous. But otherwise one can accept the Economist’s view that the book was ‘most dignified, objective and historically valuable’, or Roger Fulford’s verdict in the Manchester Guardian that it was ‘marked throughout by firmness and generosity’. ‘The reader is conscious that it is the Duke’s own book,’ said the Times Literary Supplement, ‘and that he has worked with care over every page; even if he has needed help to put his thoughts into words, his own personality, his likes and strong dislikes, spring to life as well as his keen sense of humour.’ One of the more critical reviews came in the Observer, which found it ‘frank and absorbing’, but felt: ‘The wisdom of publication is arguable … the hero emerges as rather a pathetic figure.’⁵⁹ Even Lascelles conceded that the Duke might have ‘written a good book’, though retaining his unshakeable conviction that ‘it is wrong (and disloyal) for a former King of England to write such a book for profit, and to sell things that are not his to sell’.⁶⁰

The profits were considerable – eighty thousand copies were sold in the United Kingdom in the first month – and the Duke was delighted by the outcome of his enterprise. One of the more gratifying features, he told Cecil Roberts, had been the conversion of ‘a few of the old stuffed shirts of the hard upper crust who disapproved in principle of my writing my memoirs’.⁶¹ But he could not have deluded himself that his success had in any way endeared him to the court. His complaints about the crimes the King’s officials might be perpetrating against him grew no less paranoid with time: if he received bad coverage in the newspapers it was the Palace’s fault; if he received none, they were just as much responsible. ‘I shall be very interested to know if you are able to get the low down on the marked indifference of the Press in general to my presence in Great Britain,’ he wrote to Dudley. ‘It is difficult to believe that it was not acting on a direction from Buckingham Palace.’⁶²

His chagrin was exacerbated by the fact that other royal families took their line from Buckingham Palace. Victoria’s granddaughter, the ex-Queen Ena of Spain, would never see the Duke since, she believed, the Duchess would not let him come alone: ‘Poor David, but perhaps it is better so, as like that he can never quote me, as having said this or the other to him about none of us receiving his wife, which he is very bitter about, it seems.’⁶³ Among the exiled monarchs, the only one whom the Windsors saw with some regularity was Leopold of the Belgians, who had married his former mistress, the Princess de Réthy. ‘As far as the ladies are concerned, it seems to me a case of “birds of a feather flock together”,’ remarked Queen Ena.⁶⁴

In London in May 1947 the Duke had asked if there was any truth in the rumours that Princess Elizabeth was to marry Prince Philip. Queen Mary replied that there was nothing definite to tell,⁶⁵ but early in July wrote to confirm that the engagement was now a fact. At once speculation began in the press as to whether the Windsors would be invited to their niece’s wedding. To them it appeared obvious that they should be; to Queen Mary in particular it was equally obvious that if the Duchess was not fit to be received at Buckingham Palace it could hardly be supposed that she would be invited to take part in the celebration of a solemn sacrament in a church. George Allen, who had now replaced Monckton as the nearest approach to a mouthpiece the Duke had in London, was pestered by enquirers: he was instructed to reply that no invitation had been received. ‘Believe me, Ulick,’ the Duke wrote to Alexander, ‘this form of publicity is as distasteful to the Duchess and myself as it is no doubt to the King. But so long as the Royal Family do not feel disposed to change the attitude they have adopted for more than ten years, these unpleasant exposés of a cheap and undignified family situation will inevitably flare up each time some relevant event occurs to ignite them, until all concerned are in their graves.’⁶⁶

At about the same time the Duke made another appeal to his mother. ‘I am always hoping that one day you will tell me to bring Wallis to see you, as it makes me very sad to think that you and she have never really met … it would indeed be tragic if you, my mother, had never known the girl I married and who has made me so blissfully happy.’⁶⁷ Queen Mary was unmoved. Nor did she prove more tractable two years later when the Duke renewed his battle over the Duchess’s right to be styled Her Royal Highness. In 1937 the Duke had consulted the brilliant lawyer William Jowitt on the question and had received the reply that he had never ceased to be a Royal Highness himself, and that consequently there was no question of his wife not being entitled to the distinction. Jowitt maintained that the Letters Patent issued by King George VI, which had granted the title to the Duke but denied it to his wife, were nugatory and should never have been issued. Now, twelve years later, Jowitt was Lord Chancellor in the Labour government, and the Duke called on him to reaffirm his views and convince the King of the justice of the Duchess’s case.

Jowitt shilly-shallied with all the expertise of one who was both a lawyer and a politician. The marks of respect which the subject pays to royal personages, he pronounced, were in no sense a legal obligation. They were rather a matter of good manners. To curtsey or not to curtsey to the Duchess was not a recognition of a legal position but arose from a desire to uphold the intentions of the King as the fountainhead of honour. Whatever the position might have been in 1937, it could now only be reversed by the issue of fresh Letters Patent. These could not be issued by the King alone but only on the advice of his ministers, who would probably feel it necessary to consult all the Commonwealth governments. ‘What a difficult position for me,’ Jowitt told Lascelles. ‘I hope I did right.’⁶⁸ It was, Lascelles remarked to King George VI, ‘the best example I have ever seen of a clever lawyer trying to eat his own words without giving himself indigestion’.⁶⁹ But Jowitt, he felt, had done right. That Jowitt himself felt he had done wrong is shown by the letter he wrote to Lascelles a week after his conversation with the Duke, in which he said that he still felt a legal mistake had been made. ‘In reality he remained HRH notwithstanding the Abdication and the attribute to which he was entitled would automatically pass to his wife.’⁷⁰

The Duke knew nothing of this later admission but refused to be deterred by the Lord Chancellor’s discouraging reply. He now decided that the time had come to submit the question to the Prime Minister. King George VI pointed out to Attlee that the question had been exhaustively considered in 1937. If the Duke were to approach the Prime Minister, he went on, the King was sure ‘you will not encourage him to think that any alteration can be made at this time’.⁷¹ The Duke would get no support from Attlee, he told Queen Mary confidently: ‘Anyhow, no one else can change the position except me, and I won’t do anything.’⁷² Lascelles took on the charge, and himself wrote to the Prime Minister arguing that this was not just a question for the Sovereign. To issue new Letters Patent would have wide constitutional consequences, would require consultation with all the Commonwealth governments, and ‘might well evoke a considerable reaction among His Majesty’s subjects in many parts of the world, for it would inevitably carry with it the implication that the Abdication itself was still a matter for discussion, or even modification’.⁷³ There was no need to make the Prime Minister’s flesh creep with such far-fetched bogeymen. Attlee had no intention of risking the displeasure of the King for the sake of a woman of whom he disapproved quite as strongly as did any member of the royal family. He had given the matter careful consideration, he told the Duke a week after their meeting, and fully understood why it had been brought forward, ‘but I feel bound to say that I don’t think it advisable or opportune to take any action at the present time’.⁷⁴ ‘Never apologize, never explain,’ was an adage close to Attlee’s heart.

As the Duke booked his appointment with the Prime Minister, Queen Mary sent the King a letter which showed vividly how little her attitude had changed over the last decade and how certain it was that she would never accept the Duchess of Windsor as a daughter-in-law.

I cannot tell you how grieved I am at your brother being so tiresome about the HRH. Giving her this title would be fatal, and after all these years I fear lest people think that we condoned this dreadful marriage which has been such a blow to us all in every way. I hope you will be very firm and refuse to do anything about it, and that the Government will back you up. I was grieved that Leopold of the Belgians and his wife saw quite a lot of her in the South of France lately, but she is so pushing and she leaves no stone unturned to remain a thorn in our sides and advertise herself whenever she can. I feel furious that she is over here now, so unnecessary and tactless, and that you should be bothered in this way makes me furious, and I beg and beseech you to be very firm and refuse what he wants … With 2 husbands living still, I can’t think how D can be so tactless.⁷⁵

This was not a charitable letter, but charity had no place in Queen Mary’s feelings towards her son’s marriage. If the Duke had read it, even his determination might have wavered. As it was, he made one more approach to the King at the end of 1949. In what must have been a painful interview, the Duke seems to have accused his brother of making his life impossible and demonstrating in every way the hatred that he felt for the former King, and still more for the Duchess. Wearily the King recapitulated the shock that it had been for him and the nation when his brother abdicated. He had done throughout what he felt to be in the best interests of the country, the monarchy and the Duke of Windsor himself. His brother had never realized, never even considered, the ‘ghastly VOID’ his decision had left in his family’s and everybody else’s life. Then came the final rebuff:

When you abdicated you accepted the view of the great majority of your subjects that your intended wife was not the right person to be Queen Consort. For that reason you renounced the throne for yourself and your descendants. What you now ask me to do would be to reverse that decision, which was your own. If your wife now became a member of our family, there is no reason why she should not have become your Queen in 1937. It wouldn’t make sense of the past, and it would be just as unacceptable to a great many people now as it was then …

You said that the present position was an insult to your wife. Please don’t think this. When you married her she attained the highest rank in the English peerage. You won’t believe anything I say to you … but you must remember that I made your wife a Duchess despite what happened in December 1936. You should be grateful to me for this. But you are not.⁷⁶

Nothing could show more clearly the gulf of incomprehension that lay between the Duke of Windsor and his family. Starting from such different premises, how could they hope to reach the same conclusion? Even the words they used – love, duty, loyalty, sacrifice – meant different things to each of them. What to the Duke was callous persecution, was to Queen Mary and the King the course dictated by the inflexible demands of justice and morality. No one can ever be said to be entirely right or wrong in such a conflict of standards. Today, in a laxer generation, it may seem that Queen Mary was unnecessarily rigid, that no vital principle was at stake, that the ‘dreadful marriage’ had brought happiness to its members for a decade and seemed as strong as it had ever been. Yet according to the rules by which she had been bred and which she had followed faithfully all her life, there can be no doubting her total rectitude. Their minds could never meet.

The Duke replied briefly to his brother’s letter, doing little more than protest at the King’s statement that he had said his life was not worth living under these conditions: ‘On the contrary I could not conceive greater happiness than Wallis has given me in these thirteen years of our married life.’⁷⁷ For the rest, he said that the subject had best be pursued face to face. There is no evidence that he did so. He never formally renounced his crusade to win acceptance for his wife, but from this time onwards he seems to have lost heart, and his efforts were perfunctory, as if made for the record.

Queen Mary tried conscientiously to keep her son in touch with the family. She sent him a long account of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding and kept him posted on other items of domestic news: ‘Lilibet’s dear little girl Anne was christened yesterday, such a nice baby; as to the boy Charles, he is a very delightful child, full of high spirits and fun.’⁷⁸

Early in 1951 the Duchess fell ill and cancer of the womb was diagnosed. She was operated on in New York for the removal of a fibroid tumour, and though the operation was a complete success it gave the Duke some agonizing moments. ‘I feel so sorry for your great anxiety about your wife, and am thankful that so far you are able to send a fair account,’ wrote Queen Mary;⁷⁹ not over-effusive, perhaps, but recognizing in her own way that, for the Windsors at least, the marriage had not been so ‘dreadful’ as she had recently styled it. The Duke acknowledged such overtures politely enough, the depth of his rancour would only be revealed when his mother was on her deathbed. For him there was only one way by which his relationship with his family could be properly restored – by their recognition of his wife. And that, he finally accepted, would never come.