‘The majority of the experts collected for “Sextant”* believe that Germany will collapse before the beginning of May; [General Hastings] Ismay† himself thinks not before the autumn, and [he] believes that “Overlord” will be the August 8th battle of this war.’1 Lascelles began 1944 in a philosophical mood. He had reason to be both optimistic and fearful. After the much-hoped-for advances of the previous year, victory seemed a near inevitability, with the circumstances and timing of such an occurrence the major question. Yet he was himself in a position of power and responsibility that he had spent his working life shirking from: he was now the king’s private secretary.
Hardinge, who had segued from reluctantly serving Edward VIII to acting more fulsomely on behalf of George VI, was not seen as an easy figure in the royal household, despite his undeniable dedication to his king and to his work. In January 1939, Chamberlain raised the possibility of him moving to India, with a view to assuming the governorship of Madras.‡ The premier was keen; the monarch less so. He told the prime minister on 3 February, ‘It will not be possible for me to let Alec Hardinge go at this moment. I discussed the whole matter with him after Christmas, and though he hopes one day to go to India (he has been here nearly twenty years) your invitation has come a little too early.’
The king knew how difficult his private secretary could be. He acknowledged to Chamberlain that ‘there has been I know a good deal of talk and criticism of Alec Hardinge in London’, but his reasons for not wishing him to leave his post were twofold. In the first instance, the untested monarch was eager to have a greybeard by his side to guide him, and Hardinge, who had served under both his brother and George V, boasted undeniable expertise. And secondly, as the king acknowledged, ‘if he were to leave me now, people would at once say that he and I did not get on, and that he did not agree with the policy of my government’.
Although the sovereign qualified this as ‘quite untrue’,2 his hesitancy to take action showed his reluctance to wield executive power by himself. And so Hardinge remained both powerful and influential. Channon summarised this by writing, after Chamberlain’s resignation, ‘the King is always led by [Hardinge’s] apron strings … [he] now has a third major victory to his credit, first the abdication, then the fall of [Hore-]Belisha, and now that of Neville’.3
Three years later, matters had changed, and Hardinge had been shown to be mortal after all. As Lascelles pithily described it in his diary entry of 17 July, ‘Since June 25th, I have been in the throes of a crisis, which has now ended in A. Hardinge tendering his resignation to the King, who instantly accepted it and asked me to fill his place.’
Hardinge may have possessed, in Lascelles’ words, ‘great administrative and executive talents as a King’s secretary’, but he was unpopular with everyone in the royal household, including, by this stage, the king himself. Lascelles described this as arising from ‘his complete inability to establish friendly, or even civil, relations with the great majority of his fellow-men’, something that the politician (and later PM) Harold Macmillan agreed with, describing him as ‘idle, supercilious [and] without a spark of imagination or vitality’.*4 Even those who had liked him now turned against him. The king’s treasurer, Ulick Alexander, remarked to Channon in April 1943 that ‘he is ruining the monarchy and always gives the King foolish and misguided advice … he is a disaster, a national calamity’.5
Channon was no impartial source, and for a while this high-handedness could be endured, but it dawned on Lascelles that the relationship between Hardinge and the monarch threatened to repeat the difficulties that had arisen between the private secretary and Edward VIII. As he described it, ‘[Hardinge and the King] were so temperamentally incompatible that they were rapidly driving each other crazy.’ He compared their relationship to that of Queen Anne and Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough in its claustrophobic intensity†, and even feared for Hardinge’s mental health, calling him ‘a man with no sense of flippancy, and no power to relax’ and describing him as ‘quite impossible’ to work with.
The private secretary had in any case begun to tire of the role, which he had occupied for the past seven years. On 25 July 1942, he had confided to his mother-in-law that he had considered resignation, saying, ‘I am in rather a different state of mind to what I was a fortnight ago. My balance was quite upset – for some reason or other – a thing that does not often happen with me, luckily!’ He had been looking for a new job, but decided to stay put for the time being: ‘I doubt if I am really right – from the point of view of my family – to take a leap into the unknown.’
However, he then expressed his deep reservations about his position. ‘I am just as convinced that every year that I stay here, the less chance I have of ever making either a position for myself in the world – or money. I consider that my life – and any ability the Lord may have given me – is being wasted here – nothing will alter my view of that. But in my calmer moments I try to reconcile myself to the view that all this must be sacrificed to cash.’6
Had Hardinge’s dissatisfaction been common knowledge, his departure could have been engineered in a smoother fashion. But under normal circumstances, compelling the king’s private secretary to retire was impossible. Lascelles lamented that ‘the Royal Family themselves are notoriously incapable of cutting that kind of Gordian knot’, and said of the Lord Chamberlain, who should have been able to take such a decision, ‘[he] could not be trusted with negotiating a change of scullery maids, let alone of private secretaries’.
Yet after a row developed between Hardinge and Lascelles, both men simultaneously threatened to resign, which would have caused chaos. Only one could remain, and the king, with little hesitation, chose to side with Lascelles. He telephoned him to say that he had accepted Hardinge’s resignation, something Lascelles described as ‘remarkable proof that my diagnosis of the intolerable relationship between him and Alec was even more accurate than I had suspected’.
The king had mixed reactions to Hardinge’s departure. In his account of events, he wrote, ‘Before dinner I received a note from Alec H in which he tendered his resignation to me as my Private Secretary’, which he called ‘a great shock & a great surprise to me’. He then saw Lascelles, who outlined matters. The king continued, ‘Both he and Eric [Miéville]* had been kept so much in the dark by Alec as to what was going on & they had often complained that they had not enough work to do. Matters came to a head over this & Alec who had not been well for some long time & was utterly exhausted from the [North African] tour wrote me the letter from his house.’
It was not unwelcome. ‘I replied accepting his resignation as I was not altogether happy with him & had always found him difficult to talk to & to discuss matters with. I knew & felt that he was doing me no good.’* Hardinge was surprised by the alacrity with which his departure was accepted, and the following day he asked the king point blank if he really wanted him to resign. ‘I told him that I did, saying that I was very grateful for all that he had done for me in the last 7 years … it came as a real shock to him I could see, & I am sure he expected me to say do go on three months sick leave. After that I felt matters would be no better. I know I shall miss him in many ways, but I feel happier now it is over.’7
Hardinge’s departure had resolved a dilemma. The king wrote the following day that ‘It was difficult for me, but I knew I should not get this opportunity again.’8 The royal household, at a time of international crisis, had been, in Lascelles’ description, ‘as the sailors say, a very unhappy ship’.† Matters had to be remedied. So ‘the old order changeth, yielding place to new’.
Many were delighted. Channon wrote in his diary that ‘glorious news awoke me on this gloriously lovely day … the monarchy is saved and peace reigns in Buckingham Palace’. He took full credit for Hardinge’s departure, in the same fashion as Falstaff ‘s boasts that he had killed Hotspur at the Battle of Shrewsbury. ‘For four years I have worked hard to bring about his downfall, and I must say his tactlessness and many enemies were of great assistance.’9 He approved of Lascelles, of whom he wrote, ‘[he] has moved about in the world and might look – yet isn’t really – hard-nosed’.10
The new private secretary assumed his demanding role at the age of fifty-six. He was delighted to be deluged with telegrams and messages of congratulations by everyone from Lord Mountbatten to Cosmo Lang, although less pleased by one press report of his appointment. ‘The Evening Standard, in a particularly ill-informed paragraph, describes me as having “a thick thatch of black hair”, as if I were an Italian organist.’11
Hardinge, meanwhile, was coldly courteous towards his successor, with occasional lapses into rudeness that might have been explained by his ill health; the royal doctor, Lord Dawson, thought he would need a break of at least six months to recover from the stress caused by his work. A letter to John Simon of 1 August suggested that ‘the machine seems to have been run down – and it will take it some time to get it going perfectly again’, even as Hardinge looked forward to his resumption of ‘a more normal life’.12
The queen was upset by his departure, although more for the loss of a friend and confidante in the form of his wife. She wrote to Helen to ask for a meeting and said that ‘I am so very sad about what has happened … I do hope that you will be able to keep it all quiet & secret for the moment … as you know, whatever “official” things happen … I am truly devoted to you & Alec, & eternally grateful for all your marvellous loyalty & unselfish backing of us both.’*13 She would never display the same warmth towards his successor, marking a rare show of division between king and queen.
Although Lascelles allowed that ‘there were some unpleasant phases in the subsequent developments’, he claimed that ‘there is general recognition on both sides of the fence that all is for the best, and that everyone has behaved with the best intentions’. This was Panglossian in its optimism. As diligent as ever in recording his perceptions of an event, he noted that in his final interview with Hardinge, he expressed his fears of being able to succeed in the role. ‘Characteristically’ Hardinge replied, ‘You won’t last six months.’ Lascelles was able to write, not without satisfaction, ‘I lasted nine years.’*14
Nonetheless, Lascelles assumed his new responsibility with reluctance. ‘For the last twenty years I have said, in jest and in earnest, that the one thing I wished to be spared was being called on to act as the King’s private secretary, and as far as my personal inclinations go, this was never more true than now.’ He had wished to remain in the less demanding role of assistant private secretary and then to retire in 1947, at the age of sixty, but he was not to be allowed this.
A few months into his appointment, Lascelles would feel the full weight of his office. Churchill remarked to the king on 7 March 1944 that ‘with a Bear drunken on victory in the East, and an Elephant lurching about on the West, we the UK were like a donkey in between them which was the only one who knew the way home’. He warned of the dangers the bear could pose (‘the War Cabinet were very much alive to the dangerous attitude of Stalin and what a powerful Russia could do in the way of the harm to the world. We don’t want to have to fight Russia after the defeat of Germany’),15 but wished to talk of more uplifting matters, namely Operation Overlord.
The code name denoted the planned Allied invasion of Normandy, to be coordinated by Eisenhower, General Bernard ‘Monty’ Montgomery and Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay. The logistics of such an attack were formidable. As the king wrote in his diary on 3 February, ‘the more I learn, the more alarming [Overlord] becomes in its vastness’.16 Yet he did not want to be a mere bystander at an event that would dictate the remainder of the course of the war.
Lascelles observed on 3 March that ‘two Military Intelligence men called on me yesterday and explained how the King’s visits in the next few months could assist the elaborate cover scheme whereby we are endeavouring to bamboozle the German Intelligence regarding the time and place for “Overlord”’.17 Over the course of the war, the king had been everything from an inspirational leader to a diplomat forced into realpolitik, to say nothing of his role as husband and father. Now he was asked to add espionage to his activities.
During the following months, the king, queen and eighteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth – on her first official tour with her parents, shortly after being made a counsellor of state to deputise for her father in the event of his absence or illness – made a variety of high-profile appearances everywhere from South Wales to Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. The king’s departure from the latter on 14 May was described in press coverage as his having ‘taken leave of his fleet … in cold and lonely northern waters’. The intention behind this subterfuge was to persuade German intelligence that the planned target for an Allied invasion was Calais, rather than Normandy, in an operation known as Fortitude. The royals were seen in the south-east on several occasions as part of the stratagem. As the historian Richard Aldrich describes it, ‘the King’s visits [acted] like a highlighter pen. He identified particular units that later they [wanted] the Germans to follow.’18
These visits were not without risk. At least twice the monarch had to appear at locations where U-boats were known to patrol, placing himself in danger. Lascelles remarked of his sangfroid in these situations, which translated into greater public confidence. On 15 May, when the monarch visited Eisenhower’s headquarters at St Paul’s School in London, Lascelles wrote that ‘to my astonishment, [the king] stepped on to the platform and delivered an admirable impromptu speech, in which he said exactly the right things, and said them very well’. The private secretary also noted that given the presence of Eisenhower, Monty, Ramsay, Churchill and other dignitaries, ‘there has probably been no single assembly in the last four years the annihilation of which by a single well-directed bomb would affect more profoundly the issue of the war’.19
Yet the most elaborate deception the king was involved in turned to the modernist architect Basil Spence for its full effect. Spence, who was serving as a second lieutenant at the time, had designed a vast and entirely fake oil depot near Dover, at the behest of General Patton’s First US Army Group. It was an elaborate structure, complete with everything from pipelines to storage tanks, and newsreel footage was filmed of the king inspecting the site and addressing non-existent troops. This was observed by German intelligence, who constructed a ‘British Order of Battle’ map that formed the basis of their attempts to ascertain where an Allied attack was likely to originate from. It was painstaking, well informed and entirely wrong.
Fired up with excitement and pride at his involvement in the subterfuge, the king now proposed to Churchill that he should take part in Operation Overlord himself. The prime minister, who had a similar aim in mind, was taken aback, but a compromise was agreed upon: the two men would travel into battle together. The king wrote, ‘It is a big decision to take on one’s own responsibility. W cannot say no if he goes himself, & I don’t want to have to tell him he cannot. So? I told Elizabeth about the idea & she was wonderful as always & encouraged me to do it.’20
Lascelles was less enthusiastic. He attempted to discourage the king by asking him whether it would be fair to the queen to think of her husband in such perilous circumstances, or whether it was Princess Elizabeth’s responsibility to choose a prime minister in the event of both Churchill and her father dying in the invasion attempt. Mindful of the ‘paralysing effect’ of having the king and/ or Churchill on board for any unfortunate captain thrust into the midst of a fiery maelstrom, he persuaded his monarch against such an endeavour (‘which is quite right’, the disappointed king observed). It would be heroic, but also ran the risk of being suicidal.
Not without reluctance, the king wrote to Churchill on 31 May to say that ‘it would not be right for either you or I to be where we planned to be on D-Day’. He suggested that ‘I don’t think I need emphasise what it would mean to me personally, and to the whole Allied cause, if at this juncture a chance bomb, torpedo or even a mine would remove you from the scene; equally a change of sovereign at this moment would be a serious matter for the country & Empire.’
Referring to their proposed presence as ‘an embarrassment to those responsible for fighting’, he decided that ‘the right thing to do is … to remain at home and wait’. He struck a personal note when he added that ‘the anxiety of these coming days would be very greatly increased for me if I thought that … there was a risk, however remote, of my losing your help and guidance’.21
Churchill refused to withdraw, much to Lascelles’ and the King’s irritation, and so the unfortunately named ‘Operation WC’ had to be planned for. As the monarch observed that ‘Tommy’s face is getting longer and longer’, Lascelles remarked, ‘I was thinking, Sir, that it is not going to make things easier for you if you have to find a new Prime Minister in the middle of Overlord.’ Churchill, who was behaving ‘just like a naughty child’, with ‘sheer selfishness, plus vanity’, cheerily said that in the event of his death, ‘that’s all arranged for’,* and that ‘I don’t think the risk is 100-1.’ The king wrote angrily that ‘I am very worried over the PM’s seemingly selfish way of looking at the matter. He doesn’t seem to care about the future, or how much depends on him.’22
Lascelles attempted to invoke protocol to frustrate the endeavour, declaring that no minister of the Crown could leave the country without his sovereign’s consent, but he was batted back, as Churchill declared that he would not be leaving the country since he would remain on a British man-of-war. Lascelles wrote furiously, ‘Just to gratify his love of theatre, and adventure, he is ready to jettison all considerations of what is due to his sovereign, his colleagues, and the state … If he should be killed in [Overlord’s] early stages, the news of his death might easily have such an effect on the troops as to turn victory into defeat.’23
It is not hard to see what attracted Churchill to the idea of taking part in the expedition. The symbolic sight of the prime minister walking onto the Normandy beaches amongst his men and making an impromptu speech of thanks for the much-longed-for victory, to say nothing of the newsreels and photographs that would be taken of such an event, would be nothing less than iconic. Throughout the course of the war, Churchill’s actions and speeches had overshadowed those of his monarch. And now, at literally the eleventh hour, the two men, who had enjoyed such a harmonious relationship after initial distrust, once again found themselves at odds. The king was determined that his premier would not leave the country on such a perilous expedition, at any cost. Churchill, meanwhile, had set his heart on participating in it. As Lascelles commented, ‘none of those who have access to Winston can influence him once he is set on a course, not even Mrs Churchill; nor, apparently, his anointed King’.24
With mere days left before the operation, the king wrote again to Churchill at Lascelles’ behest, this time with urgency. ‘I am a younger man than you, I am a sailor, & as King I am the head of all the Services. There is nothing I would like better than to go to sea but I have agreed to stay at home; is it fair that you should then do exactly what I should have liked to do myself?’ Churchill had spoken to the monarch in romantic terms – ‘you said yesterday afternoon that it would be a fine thing for the King to lead his troops into battle, as in old days’ – but despite his own sympathy with the idea, the sovereign had to dissuade his prime minister from a potentially ruinous course. The letter stressed that Churchill’s presence on board ship would be less exciting than anticipated (‘you will see very little, you will seem at considerable risk’)25 as he adopted the tone of a junior partner begging a superior not to take a hazardous course of action. This was not the way a monarch would usually write to a prime minister, even one as popular as Churchill.
The premier, however, remained committed to ‘Operation WC’. Although Lascelles wrote optimistically that ‘Ismay said this morning that he thought the PM was wobbling’26 and that Churchill could see the absurdity in his taking part in the operation, having advised the king against so doing, the prime minister possessed a stubborn impulse that would not be dictated to. He wrote with some force to the king to say that while he acknowledged that the monarch heading to war required Cabinet approval, ‘as Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, I ought to be allowed to go where I consider it necessary to the discharge of my duty, and I do not admit that the Cabinet have any right to put restrictions on my freedom of movement’. The king remained fearful. ‘I have been very worried and anxious over the whole of this business & it is my duty to warn the PM on such occasions. No one else can & should anything dreadful happen I should be asked if I had tried to deter him.’27
Yet Churchill was weakening. Eventually, his point made, he admitted defeat. He huffed that ‘I rely on my own judgement, invoked in many serious matters, as to what are the proper limits of risk which a person who discharges my duties is entitled to run’, but he petulantly acknowledged that ‘Since Your Majesty does me the honour to be so much concerned about my personal safety on this occasion, I must defer to Your Majesty’s wishes and indeed commands.’28 He would not go to war. Lascelles wrote triumphantly that ‘We have bested him, which not many people have succeeded in doing in the last four years!’29
Although Churchill was becalmed, the sea was not. D-Day had been scheduled for 5 June, but bad weather and a growing storm meant that Eisenhower decided to postpone Operation Overlord for twenty-four hours. Therefore, the Allied occupation of Rome, which took place as scheduled on the 4th, seemed momentarily like a one-off incursion rather than a coordinated European assault. Every day Overlord was delayed increased the risk of detection. It seemed extraordinary that German intelligence had not raised the alarm, given that the Allies were about to launch the largest sea invasion ever assembled in history, involving tens of thousands of troops and hundreds of ships. The weather improved, albeit not as much as might have been wished for, but there could be no further postponement. Eisenhower gave the order that Overlord should take place on 6 June.
After months, even years of anticipation, the invasion of Europe went as well as it could possibly have done. Lascelles wrote, ‘I was woken at 5 a.m. by streams of aircraft passing across London, the harbingers of “Overlord” … the first stage of the adventure has gone well, and surprisingly cheaply. Naval and air casualties are practically negligible, and of the four main landings, only one … seems to have met any serious opposition.’ Before midday, Monty was able to send a telegram saying that ‘I could not wish the situation of this army to be better.’ The relief that the king, Churchill and all around them felt at the successful execution of the plan was overwhelming. Lascelles noted that ‘all those who have been entrusted with the very well-kept secret look ten years younger’.30
It was a magnificent victory. And now that it was clear that it could be billed thus, the king delivered a Churchill-scripted broadcast to the nation that evening. It eschewed triumphalism in favour of optimism, and combined something of both men’s best qualities, with the prime minister’s ear for a telling phrase (‘tested as never before in our history, in God’s providence, we survived the test; the spirit of the people, resolute, dedicated, burned like a bright flame’) yoked together with the monarch’s homespun, man-of-the-people persona. He talked of crusading impulses, called his country to prayer and dedication, and spoke of God, the queen and Empire. The peroration struck a Christian note, as the king cited Psalm 29 and declared, ‘The Lord will give strength unto his people; the Lord will give his people the blessing of peace.’ Yet peace remained elusive. It would be another year until celebrations could finally take place.
Once it was clear that northern France had been secured, both Churchill and the king expressed their desire to head there. It was a quirk of the constitutional process that while Churchill could leave for France on 10 June and return on the same day with his monarch’s assent, the king had to have a similar visit approved by the entire Cabinet. Churchill granted him permission on 13 June, but took care to emphasise the need for careful action at all times.* Yet he acknowledged that such a visit would be favourable propaganda, and waved it through.
When the king arrived in France early in the morning of Saturday 17 June, it was in grim conditions. Lascelles wrote that Overlord would have been a logistical impossibility if the weather had not been to their advantage. After a good lunch (‘with genuine Camembert cheeses’, he noted, ‘a thing we’ve not seen in London since 1940’), the king performed an investiture, discussed battle tactics with Monty and had to be dissuaded from going deeper into the battle lines for fear of snipers. Lascelles observed that the French were not entirely delighted by their arrival. ‘For four years, they have been selling their farm produce to the Germans, who appear to have treated them well enough; they do not all relish being liberated by an invading army, whose passage must inevitably disturb the even tempo of their lives, even if it don’t [sic] actually knock their buildings flat.’†31
After all the excitement of Overlord and the king’s visit, the next few months proved to be anticlimactic and even disappointing. Hitler’s response to the success of D-Day had been to authorise so-called ‘Crossbow’ air raids. By September that year, the V-2 rocket, a self-propelled, erratic but deadly device, was an ever-present threat to life in Britain, especially given the near-impossibility of being able to shoot them down. The king described them as ‘more than a nuisance … [they are] a threat to our normal life & the effects on people’s nerves & energy for their war effort should be impaired should the attacks go on for months’.32 The only means of destruction was to attack the factories that made them, and so the war of attrition continued.
‘Being shut up here is like being a prisoner of war, only worse.’33 Wallis was miserable when she wrote to her aunt on 5 April. She was tired of life in the Bahamas and frustrated with the pettiness of her official role, the dull responsibilities she faced and the pervasive heat. Oakes’s murder with its concomitant publicity* – to say nothing of Bedaux’s suicide – had made matters even worse. Yet it still came as a shock to see herself denounced in a magazine as a grasping and insipid clothes horse, less interested in the war her country was participating in than in acquiring seemingly unlimited amounts of jewels, furs and dresses.
In the damning piece in the American Mercury, the journalist Helen Worden lambasted Wallis as petty, status-obsessed, in thrall to an outdated perception of her own worth (‘She still thinks her public wants display’) and responsible for the reduced status of her husband. One anonymous Englishman even suggested that should she return to Britain, she could expect to be stoned to death in the street. It was undeniably a hatchet job, designed to make the duchess – and by extension the duke – look as out of touch and pathetic as possible, even down to the crude caricature of her face on the cover. What it did not warrant, however, was the duke asking J. Edgar Hoover to investigate the Mercury and other titles to see if there was a conspiracy to blacken Wallis’s name. Edward’s latent anti-Semitism came to the fore in his suggestion that this conspiracy was driven by the Jews, as ‘he believed that Miss Helen Worden, author of the article, was Jewish’.†34
The duke and duchess were bored of the Bahamas. As Edward complained in an unsent letter to Churchill in March 1944, ‘he who is wise senses when he has outgrown his usefulness in any given job, official or otherwise … I am fortunate in being able to detect that this has now happened in my own case.’35 He occupied himself by spreading dissent and cynicism about reports of inevitable victory, remarking to Halifax, ‘Although the ultimate outcome of the war is a foregone conclusion, the present military situation is depressing, particularly the fact that the first stages of the seemingly inevitable invasion must involve appalling casualties among the British and American attacking forces. I am afraid that it looks as if the softening up as to the relentless bombing of Germany has not been as successful as we were at one time led to believe.’36
He announced his intention of visiting America once again, which a reluctant Halifax complained about to Stanley: ‘As you know, I don’t like these visits, but neither on compassionate nor on rational grounds can I really bring myself to prohibit them! And it may well be argued that every time he comes, his publicity value will diminish. I hope this is true!’37
The duke wished to resign and be rewarded for his years of service with a lucrative sinecure. Unfortunately, this was not a view taken by his family or former associates. Lascelles himself was opposed to the very existence of the duke. ‘I don’t think any problems in my life have given me so much anxiety as those arising from his.’ He tersely outlined the future possibilities for him in a post-war, post-Bahamas milieu. An ambassadorial post; life in Britain as a quasi-younger brother of the king; an anonymous existence in his home country as a wealthy private citizen; or the same in the United States. He believed the first option to be impossible (‘I doubt if he would be safe in any ambassadorial post … [I base this] on his Rehoboam*-like tendency to take up with undesirable, and dangerous, associates’), the second and third to be impractical, not least because it would cost Edward around £20,000 a year in tax to return to his home country, which left only the last as remotely suitable, or, in Lascelles’ words, ‘for the best chance for the Prince’s own happiness and for the peace of the world at large’.
Even with the launch of Overlord a few days away, Lascelles remarked that ‘the problem of his brother’s future (involved as it must be with his brother’s past and his own present) probably gives the King deeper and more painful concern than any one of his many responsibilities’.*38 It was unsurprising that the king sent a telegram to Churchill on 16 September before a meeting between the duke and the prime minister in America. It stated baldly, ‘In any discussion as to his future perhaps you would put forward my conviction, which you already know, namely that his happiness will be best promoted by his making his home in the USA. Repeat USA.’39
Churchill, despite his own objections to the duke’s behaviour, saw matters differently, despite an interview he had had with the king on 30 June in which both men agreed that Edward could not settle in Britain after the end of the war. The prime minister had advised Lascelles in late May that he did not believe Edward could be prevented from returning to Britain, and now he suggested to the king that if he delivered such a blunt message to Edward, it could be counter-productive, and even lead the duke to try and establish a rival court of sorts in England. He would intervene with Edward in person, and hoped to resolve matters satisfactorily.
Shortly before Churchill’s visit, the duke and duchess had caused their usual trouble, this time with publicly indiscreet behaviour. A Pennsylvania engineer named William H. Harman wrote to Halifax on 17 August to complain that ‘Every daily newspaper has long lists each day of American boys who are being killed or injured in action in France, Italy, or the Pacific Area. I am sure you can appreciate the reaction of parents, wives and relatives of these boys when they see in the same daily paper, in the midst of their grief, headlines reporting the social activities of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. For a month now, we have had to read of their night clubbing activities, and at the present the headlines refer to their rounds of gayety [sic] at Newport.’
Harman compared the attitudes of the Americans and the British, to the latter’s detriment – ‘I am certain that if a Roosevelt boy were engaged in this sort of thing in England that his father would order him home at once’ – and added, ‘You must appreciate that this is harming tremendously not only the war effort, but the relationship that should exist between our respective countries. If nothing can be done to get them both out of the country, surely somebody could at least see that they both keep their activities under cover.’40
Halifax wrote three letters in response to the complaint. He defended the duke and duchess to Harman, suggesting that ‘criticism of them for spending time in social relaxation gives them no credit at all for spending, I suppose, ninety per cent of their time … in public work and exacting duties in the public service’ and adding that ‘there is no essential difference, is there, between people taking their pleasure, for example by watching a ball game, and other people finding it in the form of social meetings, except that the position held by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor naturally lends itself more readily to publicity’.41 He reassured the duke as to the ‘injustice’ of the letter, while noting that ‘there are plenty of unthinking, and perhaps mischievous, people who will be very ready to take unfavourable notice of what Your Royal Highness does, which they would not do in the case of others’.42 But he offered his most candid reaction to Stanley. ‘I suppose one must expect this sort of thing, but you will see the kind of picture which gets into the mind of the American public, and which is very difficult to eradicate.’43
Fresh from offending American public opinion, Edward met Churchill at Roosevelt’s summer home of Hyde Park in September. The duke was shocked by the president’s shrunken and shrivelled appearance, and described him to Churchill as ‘a very sick man’, only for the prime minister to counter that he was merely ‘tired, very tired’. The pair spoke together à deux, the duke reporting it to Allen as ‘a long and satisfactory talk – in so far as it went, which was not very far’.44 It was agreed that Edward would give up the governorship of the Bahamas at the end of the year, that he would then be free to return to his villa in the South of France and that he would not return to England as a full-time resident, although he reserved the right to make informal visits to his former country now and again.
The major point of contention was his future official role. Churchill reported to the king that ‘the subject was not raised of his future employment as an Ambassador or Governor’, but this was not true. The duke did bring up the idea, which led the prime minister to become evasive and change the subject, but not before saying that the palace would be discomforted if Edward showed an intention of returning to Great Britain as a full-time resident. The duke reported to Allen that ‘[this] amused me a whole lot’, but he was also surprised that ‘after eight years absence, I was still considered so formidable a menace to the solidarity of the monarchy’. He caustically remarked that ‘hardly a day passes by that British propaganda does not stuff us with the extent to which the King has established himself in the hearts of the people’.45
He indicated this in in a milder fashion to Churchill on 3 October. ‘I would not wish to remain unemployed if there was any sphere in which it were considered my experience could still be appropriately utilised.’ He hoped for, even expected, a well-paid and comfortable ambassadorial post to the United States or France. Here, any responsibilities and duties he faced could be deputed to underlings, and he would be at leisure to pursue the life of a wealthy citizen, bolstered by an official title and the opportunity to wear his decorations at receptions as he smiled for the cameras. This did not materialise.
The prospect of Edward heading anywhere was one that struck discomfort into any country expected to receive him. Eden’s private secretary Oliver Harvey reported that René Massigli, the French ambassador to the United Kingdom, was ‘embarrassed’ at the suggestion that the duke and duchess would return to their villa in the South of France, ‘in view of some of the acquaintances which the Duke and Duchess had had [there]’. He asked that they might stay away until at least the conclusion of the war. Harvey observed that ‘[Massigli] feared that the Duke and Duchess would seek to renew acquaintance with many who had turned out to be collaborators, and this would cause a most embarrassing situation.’
It is tempting to wonder what would have happened to Edward and Wallis had they behaved in the fashion they did without the saving grace of his royal birth. Arrogance, disdain and pigheadedness were hardly character flaws exclusive to those with a certain degree of privilege, and the crass opportunism they both frequently displayed, although regrettable, was not a crime. Yet the flaunting of their associations with Nazis, fascist sympathisers and fellow travellers was too extensive and consistent to be excused merely as poor judgement. It may be overstating the case, as some biographers and historians have done, to call Edward the ‘traitor king’. But it is not hard to imagine a situation in which, shorn of the cosseting advantages they enjoyed, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor might have expected to find themselves in Holloway prison, not too far from Oswald Mosley and Diana Mitford, rather than the more salubrious delights of the Château de la Croë.
Edward continued to believe that he was in a stronger position vis-à-vis his family than in fact he was. In his letter to Churchill of 3 October, he reiterated his belief that he and Wallis should be received by the royals for tea, and he explicitly invited the prime minister to take his side in the matter. He acknowledged that ‘it could never be a very happy meeting’, but suggested that his reason for asking for the ‘quite painless’ encounter was to silence those ‘malicious circles’ who speculated about the poor state of royal relations that had existed since the abdication. He wrote, almost triumphantly, ‘I will be very surprised if you do not think my remedy the best cure for this evil situation, and decide to advise the King and Queen to swallow the “Windsor Pill” just once, however bitter they may think it is going to taste!’
The royal family did not consider it necessary to swallow the Windsor Pill at all. Various notes and memoranda that exist from late 1944 suggest that the king was perfectly happy not to see his brother for a further decade and had no intention of receiving Wallis in any formal capacity under any circumstances. Lascelles wrote on 9 November that ‘the King, apart from his recollection that the D of W has, on more than one occasion, been extremely rude to, and about, the Queen, Queen Mary and other royal ladies, thinks that [a gesture of reconciliation] is wrong in principle, and would imply that the Abdication had all been a mistake’. He also believed that Churchill’s ‘sentimental loyalty’ to Edward was based on what he called ‘a tragic false premise – viz that he really knew the Duke – which he never did’.46
Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary closed ranks. They signed a statement refusing to receive the duchess then or at any other time, and believed this to be consistent with their behaviour in 1936. It was also made clear that Churchill should either treat this as a private family matter, in which case his intervention was no longer welcome, or a state one, in which case he faced the embarrassment of having to involve the Cabinet. As in the abdication crisis, this would turn a personal affair into one of national import.
And there, with some tension, the matter was forced to a stalemate. Nobody was prepared to compromise or climb down, and so the persistent ill will that had existed for years was only exacerbated. As the duke prepared to leave his position as governor of the Bahamas, and the king and queen hoped for a final resolution to the European war, the conflict between these irreconcilable personalities showed no signs of resolution. Only the most optimistic of observers might have believed that there was any possibility of the royal brothers ever exchanging a civil conversation in person again.
Still, it was wartime. Stranger things could, and did, occur, and another event on the horizon took the actions of royalty into the realms not of farce but of tragedy.