Planning the Trip
The idea for a royal visit to North America had been suggested in the run-up to George VI’s coronation by Lord Tweedsmuir, the Canadian Governor General, better known as the writer John Buchan, whose more than eighty books included the suspense novel The Thirty-Nine Steps. Tweedsmuir pushed the visit hard, and when William Lyon Mackenzie King, the Canadian Prime Minister, visited London for the ceremony, he gave the King and Queen a personal invitation. Mackenzie King had tipped off Roosevelt, and he, in turn, instructed his special envoy, James Gerard, who represented him at the coronation, to suggest to the King that if he went to Canada he should visit the United States too. The King told Gerard he would be delighted to do so.
For Roosevelt the idea of welcoming the British monarch to America, even if only briefly, had considerable attractions. The presence of the royal couple would, he hoped, further his aim of winning popular support among Americans for closer relations with a Britain that seemed one of the few defences against Nazi Germany. Eleanor was in no doubt as to the President’s motivation. “My husband invited them to Washington largely because, believing that we all might soon be engaged in a life-and-death struggle, in which Great Britain would be our first line of defence, he hoped that their visit would create a bond of friendship between the people of the two countries,” she wrote later. “He knew that, although there is always in this country a certain amount of criticism and superficial ill feeling toward the British, in time of danger something deeper comes to the surface, and the British and we stand firmly together, with confidence in our common heritage and ideas. The visit of the King and Queen, he hoped, would be a reminder of this deep bond.”1
There was also a tinge of snobbery: in protocol terms, George VI, King of the United Kingdom and Emperor of India, was rivalled only by Roosevelt himself, and perhaps the Pope. As one of the President’s biographers put it, “Roosevelt the descendant of Yankee merchants, Roosevelt the Hudson Valley squire, Roosevelt the politician disparaged by much of America’s ostensible aristocracy for his reformist policies could not fail to find the potentialities of such a visit interesting, even piquant.”2
For Britain, the motivation was even clearer. War was coming to Europe, and the British government was searching for allies. Canada, like other members of the Empire, was duty-bound to support the British, but the United States was a different matter. Despite the shared language, Anglo-American relations in the 1930s were not as cordial as they were to become in the second half of the twentieth century. True, both sides had moved on since the War of American Independence and the Anglo-American war of 1812–15, during which British forces occupied Washington and burned down the White House. Cultural ties between the two great English-speaking nations remained close, and America had sided with Britain against Germany in the First World War.
Yet sympathy for the British was far from universal. For many, the country still represented the snobbishness and class consciousness that they had come to America to escape. The British Empire was not just a potential competitor for the United States but also, in the eyes of many liberals, an anachronism. Irish, Italian or Jewish Americans could not be expected to feel the same natural sympathy for Britain as those whose ancestors had come over on the Mayflower. The abdication crisis and the disdain shown by the British establishment towards Wallis Simpson – inspired as much, it seemed, by the fact she was an American as that she was a divorcee – was also perceived by many as a snub.
American memories of the First World War were furthermore tinged with bitterness; in one poll in January 1937, seventy per cent of Americans said it had been a mistake to take part in the conflict. There was little enthusiasm for the idea of being drawn into another. This was not just because of the inevitable suffering and loss of life. There was concern, too, about the implications of total war and full-scale mobilization. For many conservatives, this would lead to inflation and controls on wages and prices – in short, the creation of a form of wartime socialism that would endure beyond the end of the conflict. “God knows what will happen here before we finish it [the Second World War] – race riots, revolution, destruction,” declared Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, the aviator who became one of the leading members of the anti-war movement after his return from self-imposed exile in Europe in April 1939. Liberal isolationists drew the opposite conclusion: total war would engulf the country in “armament economics” and risk turning the clock back to the days of President Calvin Coolidge, when big business was triumphant.
Despite growing horror at Hitler’s actions at home and abroad, many Americans believed that Britain and France shared responsibility for his rise to power as a result of the punitive conditions they had imposed on Germany at Versailles after the First World War. There was also widespread anger that Britain had still not repaid its debts from the war. Add fears of the communist peril, which to some seemed a greater danger than that posed by Hitler, and it was understandable why there was reluctance to become involved. Resistance was especially strong in the Midwest, where the Chicago Tribune, under its owner, Robert Rutherford McCormick, was a bastion of isolationism. It was no coincidence that many of the people who lived there had their origins in mainland Europe rather than in Britain.
In the mid-1930s, as the international situation deteriorated and American isolationism grew, the British government began a concerted campaign to improve its standing in the United States. An important role was played by Ronald Lindsay, who had become ambassador in 1930. Based in Washington on and off since 1905 and having had two American wives – the first the daughter of a senator and the second, Elizabeth Hoyt Lindsay, a long-time friend of Eleanor Roosevelt – Lindsay knew well the country to which he was posted. He also understood that it was as important to work on American public opinion as on the government itself. As he told Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, “I hold that East and West and even the middle can be worked on through emotions. The late King George broadcasting to his Empire, Mr Baldwin’s speech in the House on the abdication crisis, the Stratford Shakespeare Company, Goodbye, Mr Chips by Hilton, Noël Coward’s film Cavalcade, the successes of Great Britain, the calmness and the dignity of their people, these are the things that move America.”3
The royal visit could be understood in this context. For Britain, it would be an opportunity to emphasize the many things that united rather than divided the two countries, drawing a line under what, almost two centuries earlier, had been the biggest schism in the English-speaking world. Yet London and Washington were still a long way from any kind of formal alliance. The isolationist mood in the United States was reflected in Congress and had found its legislative expression in the Neutrality Acts, a series of laws passed in the mid-1930s aimed at keeping the country out of any further European entanglements. Roosevelt and Cordell Hull, his secretary of state, were critical of the laws, fearing they would restrict the administration’s options when it came to supporting America’s allies. Yet, although the President could have used his veto against them, he had been reluctant to do so in the run-up to his re-election bid in 1936.
In a concession the following year, a so-called “cash and carry” provision was added to the law that would allow the President to permit the sale of materials and supplies to belligerents in Europe provided they were paid for immediately in cash and not carried in American ships – the idea being that if the ship were sunk or the cargo seized, the United States would not be drawn into any conflict. The provision was set to expire after two years on 1st May 1939 but, although Roosevelt lobbied to have it renewed, he did not succeed.
A confidential briefing document drawn up for the King by Ronald Lindsay ahead of his visit provides an intriguing insight into how Anglo-American relations looked from the British side. Sympathy in America for Britain had grown markedly, the report argued, not just because of shared fears about Germany, but also because of the naval and trade agreements concluded by the two countries and the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, which had removed a long-standing grievance in the United States. That being said, Americans failed to understand why Britain had not stood up more to Hitler and Mussolini over Abyssinia and at Munich – even if relations had improved as a result of the harder line London had pursued in the months since.
“There is still a good deal of distrust and suspicion that we ‘we may rat again’,” the report commented. “The fact is that the more forcefully we stand up to the Dictators, the more we will be applauded by the United States, though by and large the latter will not give too much thought to the state of our armaments. And from the very nature of things the United States can never pledge its action in advance for any contingency.” This was all the more problematic, the report added, since “nearly everyone in America wants to stay neutral if a war comes” – a position that had been reflected in the various Neutrality Acts passed by Congress.4
It was against this complicated backdrop that preparations for the royal visit continued. The date was originally set for 1939, but the crisis over Czechoslovakia that erupted in the summer of 1938 meant that the King and his advisor began to doubt whether it would be wise to go ahead. Tweedsmuir was lobbying hard, however, arguing that the trip should take place unless the international situation took a sharp turn for the worse. As he told his sister: “I pressed it with the persistence of a horseleech. As soon as I got Neville [Chamberlain] on my side I knew it would be all right, for the King was most sympathetic.”5
The trip’s advocates could also cite the positive example of the four-day state visit that the King and Queen had paid that July to France. Several months in the making, the trip – the first by the monarch outside Britain since he came to the throne – had been intended both to strengthen relations between France and Britain and, in its style, to underline the contrast between the liberal democracies and the dictatorships of Germany and Italy. Comparisons were inevitably drawn with the visit by the King’s grandfather, Edward VII, to Paris in 1903, which had led to the establishment of the Entente Cordiale. At that time, the French had feared the rise of a Germany armed to the teeth under Kaiser Wilhelm II. Just over three decades later, the French were again worried about German militarism; this visit was intended to underline the continued importance to both sides of the Entente.
“I think the Paris visit would have an excellent effect internally and all classes would vie with one another in giving Their Majesties an enthusiastic reception,” declared Sir Eric Phipps, the British ambassador to Paris, earlier that year. “Externally it seems clear that the visit would produce a most healthy effect upon Hitler, Mussolini and Co., who like to think that the streets of Paris are running in blood or at any rate very dangerous to walk about in.”6
The British were not to be disappointed. The King and Queen were greeted with a great military display – the greatest since the Armistice parade after the First World War – as they arrived at the Bois de Boulogne station aboard a special train that had brought them from the coast. A 101-gun royal salute rang out as they pulled into the station. The President, Albert Lebrun, accompanied by his wife and members of the Cabinet, were waiting to receive them. Two hours before their arrival, the army virtually took over the city: tanks rolled through the boulevards, taking up commanding positions in the Place de la Concorde and the Champs-Élysées, barring all traffic. Some thirty-five thousand troops were stationed along the route from the station to the Quai d’Orsay, where the royal couple stayed in the state apartments of the Foreign Office, which had been refurnished and redecorated since George V and Queen Mary had visited in 1919.
The French were flattered that the King had chosen to visit their country before travelling to one of the Dominions. The trip had to be postponed for three weeks because of the death of the Queen’s mother, the Countess of Strathmore, but the delay seemed only to add to the sense of feverish anticipation. Huge crowds turned out to greet the royal couple, whose programme included visits to the Louvre, the opera and Versailles as well as to the unveiling of the Australian national war memorial at Villers-Bretonneux near Amiens: almost every window in the centre of Paris was decorated with the Union Jack, and buses were decked with French and British flags. A special stamp was produced showing two hands clasping each other across the Channel, with the Houses of Parliament and the Arc de Triomphe between them. Newspapers on both sides of the Channel brought out special editions.
There had been speculation in the British press that the King might take advantage of his presence in Paris to pay a visit to the Duke of Windsor, who had taken a lease on the Château de la Maye in Versailles. “There can be no reason why not,” said the Daily Express in an editorial. “There are good reasons why they should meet. The King and the brother who was king have no quarrel. The episode of December 1936 is closed for ever.”7 It was not to be; the King refused his elder brother’s request to see him, describing a state visit as “a most unsuitable moment” for a meeting and urged him to leave town while he was there. The Duke, deeply slighted, reluctantly agreed to do so, but only on condition that he be invited to the British embassy for a formal reception before the visit. The King conceded but insisted that the event not be publicized; his brother responded by leaking it to the press.
This latest instalment in the battle between the two brothers did not detract from the success of the trip, which was seen as a personal triumph – not just for the tongue-tied King, but also for the Queen, whose wardrobe in “mourning white” (the accepted alternative to black), specially designed for the occasion by her favourite couturier, Norman Hartnell, went down especially well with the French.
The pair’s presence also appeared to have breathed new life into Anglo-French relations, fuelling hopes that Europe’s two most powerful democracies would unite and seize the initiative from the totalitarian regimes that had dominated the Continent over the previous few years. Leslie Hore-Belisha, the British war minister, declared that the two countries were united under “what seems to be one general staff and one flag”. Georges Bonnet, the French foreign minister, said it was “impossible to recall a period when relations have been more intimate”.
The message was taken up by commentators elsewhere too. “The political partnership between Great Britain and France which was formally celebrated by the King and Queen’s visit to Paris this week is far closer than the entente to which George VI’s grandfather [Edward VII] was credited with contributing thirty-four years ago,” concluded the New York Times at the end of the trip.8 Sadly, such euphoria rapidly faded in the face of yet more German aggression.
And so, with the success of the French visit much in mind, it was decided to press ahead with the royal trip to North America. When Mackenzie King met Roosevelt on 18th August 1938 for the dedication of the International Bridge at the Thousand Islands, linking northern New York with south-eastern Ontario, he told the American President that the King would in all likelihood pay a visit the following year.
On 17th September, Roosevelt sat down to write what was to be the first personal letter from an American president to a British sovereign.9 The tone was friendly and surprisingly informal. Roosevelt said he had been told in confidence by Mackenzie King of the King’s impending tour and suggested he add a few days in the United States. “I need not assure you that it would give my wife and me the greatest pleasure to see you and, frankly, I think it would be an excellent thing for Anglo-American relations if you could visit the United States,” he wrote. “I have had, as you know, the great privilege of knowing your splendid Father, and I have also known two of your brothers. Therefore, I am greatly looking forward to the possibility of meeting you and the Queen.”
The President’s initial proposal was that the tour should be as much as possible an informal and private one, rather than a grand state occasion. At its heart would be “three or four days of very simple country life at Hyde Park”. The royal couple could also perhaps visit the World’s Fair due to be held in New York in 1939, but there would be “no formal entertainment and an opportunity to get a bit of rest and relaxation”. If, however, the King wanted to add Washington to his itinerary, then the whole visit would necessarily have to be more formal.
“You and I are fully aware of the demands of the Protocol people, but, having had much experience with them, I am inclined to think that you and Her Majesty should do very much as you personally want to do – and I will see to it over here that your decision becomes the right decision,” the President wrote. He ended on an especially informal note: “I forgot to mention that if you bring either or both of the children with you, they will also be very welcome, and I shall try to have one or two Roosevelts of approximately the same age to play with them.”
As the President made clear in the letter, he was keen to keep any discussion of the visit out of the usual diplomatic channels. So he passed the invitation to Joseph Kennedy, whom he had sent as US ambassador to London that January, and noted that Lindsay, his British opposite number, was a very old and close personal friend.
The letter was received at the height of the Munich crisis. On 12th September 1938, during a mass rally in Nuremberg, Hitler had demanded justice for the three million German speakers in Czechoslovakia and, after stirring up clashes between them and the Czechs in which he claimed erroneously that three hundred Germans had been killed, he placed troops along the Czech border. Although Britain and France had given a guarantee to the government in Prague, neither country was ready to intervene in what Chamberlain described as “a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing”. And so, three days later, Chamberlain flew to Munich and then on to Hitler’s mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden, starting a process that was to culminate in the early hours of 30th September in the high point of appeasement: the signature of the Munich Agreement, which allowed Germany to annexe the Sudetenland.
On his return to Britain later that day, Chamberlain waved to the cheering crowds who met him at the airport a short declaration by Hitler and him that the agreement they had signed in Munich was “symbolic of the desire of our two people never to go to war again”. In words that would subsequently haunt him, the Prime Minister declared: “I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. And now I recommend you to go home and sleep quietly in your beds.”
The King, who had travelled down from Balmoral to London to attend the funeral of his cousin, Prince Arthur of Connaught, had been embroiled in the crisis, consulting with Chamberlain and other members of the Cabinet, and even proposing that he should make his own personal appeal to Hitler. His offer was declined. And when Chamberlain came back from Munich, the King invited the Prime Minister and his wife to join him and the Queen on the balcony of Buckingham Palace to receive the plaudits of the crowds below who believed in his claim to have secured “peace with honour”.
It was therefore not until 8th October, when the King had resumed his interrupted holiday and was back at Balmoral, that he was finally able to reply to Roosevelt. His tone was equally cordial. “Your letter, which Mr Kennedy handed to me last week, came as a pleasant relief at a time of great anxiety, and I thank you warmly for it,” the King wrote. But while welcoming the invitation both for the pleasure it would give personally and the contribution it would make to “the cordiality of relations” between the two countries, the King said he would not be able to respond until the plans for his visit to Canada were further advanced, which would allow him to judge how long he could be away from Britain. He also politely declined the offer to take along his two daughters – the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose – on the grounds that the visit to Canada would be far too strenuous for them.10
Roosevelt was undaunted by this apparent uncertainty, and on 2nd November he sent a letter with some more detailed proposals, which crossed one the following day from the King saying that he and the Queen would indeed be delighted to include in the itinerary of their trip to Canada a four-day visit to the United States that would take in Washington, New York and Hyde Park.
Finalizing the details of the programme was to prompt much discussion. Understandably, given his stammer, the King wanted to avoid major speeches, and so turned down a proposal that he address a special session of both houses of Congress. There was concern on the British side that a suggested visit to the World’s Fair in New York City might be seen as a royal endorsement of a commercial venture. A traditional ticker-tape parade of the sort given to visiting celebrities was considered too vulgar for a reigning monarch.
Even more potentially problematic was the Hyde Park leg of the visit. For Roosevelt, the opportunity to host the King and Queen in his family home was one of the main attractions of the trip. British diplomats disagreed. Although not against a visit to the house per se, Ambassador Lindsay warned that any attempt to make Springwood – rather than Washington – the centrepiece could backfire by emphasizing “the personal nature of the visit to the President too much for American opinion”.11
Lady Reading, whose husband had been his predecessor as ambassador, also weighed into the debate, sneering about the suitability of the main house at Springwood for royal guests. “I believe I am one of the very few English people who have stayed at Hyde Park with the President,” she wrote to Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, the following February, “and I must admit it is a dismal small house, extremely badly run and most uncomfortable. I shiver to think of what would happen if the King and Queen went to stay there.”12
The royal visit to Canada had been announced in a brief statement from Balmoral on 8th October – the same day the King had replied to Roosevelt. But although there was immediate speculation that he and the Queen would also visit the United States, it was not until a month later during his speech opening Parliament that the King declared he would be “happy to accept” the President’s invitation, adding: “I welcome this practical expression of the good feeling that prevails between our countries.”
The British press were enthusiastic: “History will be made on this occasion,” declared the Daily Mail in an editorial. “Never before has a British sovereign set foot in North America... They are certain to receive a tumultuous reception from the warm-hearted American people whose reputation for hospitality is world famous.” The news was also largely favourably reported in the US media, although the newspapers belonging to the media empire founded by the retired magnate William Randolph Hearst were cool and the isolationist Chicago Tribune downright hostile.
When, in the same month, Winston Churchill addressed the American people in a broadcast over the NBC radio network proposing closer Anglo-American ties, Hearst replied over the same network. In his broadcast, translated into five languages, he launched a ferocious attack on “England’s invariable selfishness”, “perfidy” and “treachery” and accused her of trying to drag America into war. “If England needs help, where should she turn but to good old Uncle Sam, who is so sought after when needed, and so scoffed at in the intervening times,” he thundered. “The English soft soap is being poured over Uncle Sam’s devoted head and lathered into his ears and eyes.”13
The announcement of the visit prompted criticism of Britain in Congress too. During a debate in the Senate on national defence in January 1939, Robert Rice Reynolds, the strongly isolationist Democratic senator from North Carolina, launched a fierce attack on the trip. After complaining that America’s contribution to winning the First World War was not recognized in France or Britain, who refused to admit that they owed money to Washington, Reynolds voiced displeasure at the prospect of the King and Queen coming to “curry favour with the United States, all of them on bended knee, if not literally so, figuratively so, for the purpose of asking the United States, the people of America, again to save them”. Commenting on the speech, the Baltimore Sun noted that, in taking issue with royalty, Reynolds “has campaign material of incalculable, noise-making potentiality” and said there seemed no apparent reason why he would not continue his denunciation of royalty indefinitely.14
The overwhelming mood in the American papers, however, was enthusiastic. Speculation about what the royal couple would do, where they would go and whom they would meet during their stay had already been building in the weeks leading to the announcement. The style, often tongue-in-cheek, was to characterize much of the coverage in the weeks and months that followed. For the Milwaukee Journal there was “at least one very grave question to decide”, and that was the seating plan for the inevitable White House dinner: would it follow American rules, according to which the President and his wife would sit opposite each other, with the Queen and King to their respective right-hand sides, or “Buckingham Palace usage”, with the President and the King next to each other? The latter method had been used only once before, during a visit by the King and Queen of Siam in 1931, and had caused consternation among veterans of such formal dinners.15
And then there was the question of where the royal visitors might stay: “Capital society is disturbed by the problem of where to house a king and queen in Washington,” the Associated Press news agency had reported in a story carried in many newspapers on 6th November. “When the King and Queen were in Paris, they were put up in a real palace, and Napoleon’s bed was dusted off and brought from a museum for the King, while the Queen was given Marie Antoinette’s. With no palaces on hand, tea-table Washington is in a flutter.”
As to what the royal couple should do during their trip, the agency harked back to a packed visit, back in October 1919, by Albert the King of the Belgians, who had managed during a brief stay to see Niagara Falls, address former soldiers in Salt Lake City, kiss babies through Iowa and Nebraska, go to both a football game and the opera, christen a ship, lay a wreath on Theodore Roosevelt’s tomb and assure America that Belgium would pay all its wartime debts.
As time went on, other questions began to emerge – among them how Americans should react in the royal presence. More particularly, would men be required to bow and women to curtsy? “No,” came the answer the following February. And there would be no need for knee pants, silk stockings or court dress either. “Just act natural and democratic,” was the message from the State Department, according to one report. “The good old American handshake will prevail – with other American customs and dress at functions held for King George and Queen Elizabeth. Without actually saying so, the diplomats indicated they didn’t want the visit marred by someone falling flat at the feet of royalty while trying to execute a fancy but unfamiliar knee bend.” And importantly, the report went on, “There will be nothing in the visit to indicate the British monarchs are paying a belated call on a former colony. Democracy and democratic practices will prevail.”16
Talk of the visit also gave the American press an opportunity to revisit the royal family drama that had been triggered by the abdication. A meeting between the Duke of Gloucester, one of George VI’s younger brothers, and the exiled Duke and Duchess of Windsor in Paris in November 1938, a few days after the announcement of the trip, was seized upon by the newspapers. It was the first such visit by a member of the royal family since the Duke and Duchess had married in June the previous year and prompted reports of a possible thaw in relations ahead of the royal visit to America. Unnamed friends of the exiled couple speculated the Duke and Duchess might even be invited to spend Christmas with the royal family. It turned out to be little more than wishful thinking.
Two years after the abdication, the former King, according to the Associated Press, was a fading memory. “The wave of emotion of two years ago is scarcely a ripple of mild interest as far as the doings of David Windsor are concerned,” it said. “England has almost forgotten him, except when it is reminded once in a while, perhaps because it has had so many other things to worry about.” By contrast, respect was growing for his successor, who, as everyone realized, “has worked like a Trojan, overcome physical disadvantages and, above all, behaved himself”.17 The Duke had further blotted his copybook with a visit to Nazi Germany in October 1937, during which he had met Adolf Hitler at his mountain redoubt of Berchtesgaden and even attempted a half-hearted Nazi salute. He had been planning to follow it up with a visit to the United States, but was forced to call it off after hostile stories in the American press and threat of protests by labour unions.
The Duke’s problems did not necessarily translate into universal praise for his younger brother, however. Particular consternation in London was caused by a long article in America’s Scribner’s Magazine, published in February 1939 and penned by Josef Israels II, who was described as “a press agent”. The article, entitled ‘Selling George VI to the US’, was written in the form of an imaginary memorandum sent by a public-relations firm to the Foreign Office on how to handle the forthcoming royal trip. “Selling a king and queen of England to the United States is essentially a public-relations job, just as much as it would be to sell a product made in Great Britain,” Israels began.18
The author made a number of fairly uncontroversial suggestions as to how the royal couple should satisfy what were bound to be the many demands of the American press while attempting to strike a balance between “dignified regal reserve on the one hand and democratic friendliness on the other”. Yet he also questioned the quality of the “product” that was being sold to the American public. No public-relations expert with the power to choose from scratch “which British personalities he would drop into the American scene for the greatest British profit” would have gone for either the King or the Queen, Israels argued. “The important fact about public opinion in the United States [...] is that a large part of the country still believes that Edward, Duke of Windsor, is the rightful owner of the British throne, and that King George VI is a colorless, weak personality largely on probation in the public mind of Great Britain, as well as of the United States.” As for the Queen, “according to Park Avenue standards, she appears to be far too plump of figure, too dowdy in dress to meet American specifications of a reigning queen”, with nothing of the regal bearing of her mother-in-law, Queen Mary, or the chic and American charm of the Duchess of Windsor.
For that reason, Israels suggested that, before leaving for America, the King provide some public evidence of reconciliation with the Duke, inviting him and the Duchess to Buckingham Palace and granting Wallis the title of “Her Royal Highness” – something that the former King had wanted and his younger brother had refused to concede. It might also be a good idea for the King and Queen to find a “graceful method” to make amends for the British burning of the White House – perhaps a house gift of some sort. “It must be borne in mind,” Israels added, “that many ignorant Americans, particularly among those of Irish extraction, still believe the English people, and British royalty especially, to be evil intentioned with ambitions to conquer the whole world.”
Victor Mallet, a diplomat at the British embassy who sent the article back to London, did so without comment, save to note that “the question of press interviews will be an important one and the suggestions in this article, although inevitably claiming rather too large a share of Their Majesties’ time for the press, are not without interest and imagination”.19
The reaction back at the Foreign Office, by contrast, bordered on fury, judging by handwritten comments on a file containing the piece by Israels. “This article, apparently by a member of some Jewish dynasty, strikes me as a rather unpleasant production,” wrote one official, expressing surprise at Mallet’s comment. Sir Eric Mieville, the King’s assistant private secretary, was downright dismissive. “I understand that the magazine in question has been going downhill for some time, and does not hold the position in the American press world which it had some years ago,” he wrote to the Foreign Office.20 Mieville was right: that May’s issue was to be Scribner’s last. It was decided to ignore the offending article.
Reaction in the press to the views expressed by Israels, meanwhile, was predictably hostile. “George VI is neither colorless nor weak,” retorted a London correspondent for the North American Newspaper Alliance. “Far from it. He expresses his views in the most robust language very often and he is full of good sense [...]. Most Britons believe that, if the present King of England lives long enough, he will develop into much the same man as his father George V was – a sound, level-headed sovereign – with a high sense of duty, and with a considerable amount of political influence behind the scenes.”21
In the meantime, the question of the precise royal itinerary had still to be resolved. In a letter to the King on 18th January 1939, Roosevelt proposed a plan for the US part of the royal visit, which would begin at 9.30 p.m. on Wednesday 7th June, when the royal train arrived on the American side of Niagara Falls, and end with the King and Queen’s departure on the Sunday evening. They would start with packed visits to Washington and New York, including a state dinner in the White House on the Thursday evening, and then go on to Hyde Park, where the pace would be slower. “I have tried in arranging these three and a half days to give you and Her Majesty some opportunity for relaxation because I know that your trip to Vancouver will, of necessity, be tiring,” the President wrote.22 The King replied on 8th February, accepting the plan, though with a few suggested minor tweaks including an official dinner to be thrown in honour of Roosevelt at the British embassy on the Friday evening.
Some thought it would be an error to confine the visit to the East Coast and argued that the King and Queen should also fly the flag among the isolationists of the Midwest. The idea was championed by Lady Reading, who passed on to the Foreign Office a letter from her friend, Helen Woods, the niece of “Jack” Morgan, the banker and philanthropist. The East Coast didn’t need converting to the cause of greater cooperation with Britain, Woods argued, but the Midwest was quite another matter. Adding Chicago to the royal itinerary “would have the inestimable advantage of making the Middle Westerners feel they had had a share in the visit,” she wrote. “After which they would rally enthusiastically behind any cause represented by the King and Queen!”23 Halifax admitted that “there was some force in these representations”, but the idea did not get anywhere, apparently due to opposition both from Roosevelt and from the Canadians, who were concerned that this extra leg would be at the expense of time spent by the royal visitors in their own country.
The same was true of a proposal by Culbert Olson, the newly elected governor of California, that the King and Queen slip across the border while they were in Vancouver to visit San Francisco, and an official request by North Dakota that a visit there should be included in the royal itinerary. “There can of course be no question of the invitation being accepted but in view of the trouble the state legislature has gone to we don’t like to hurt their feelings by turning the idea down straight away,” one diplomat in the British embassy wrote to the Foreign Office. “Perhaps you could in due course let us have a nicely worded reply which we could send on ‘by Command of His Majesty’.”24
There were also other details of the royal schedule to fill in. The Colonial Office suggested that while the royal couple were in New York they visit the West Indian community – an idea vetoed by Ronald Lindsay, who declared: “Not all West Indians in New York are nice. Some have tendencies which are unwisely political and almost disloyal.” He was backed by the Consul General in New York who was also opposed on the grounds that “blacks [sic] are an element held in the lowest estimation, for very good reasons”.25
There were other matters of protocol to resolve. The President was initially reluctant to accept the King’s invitation to a dinner at the British embassy, since this would mean he would have to wear his leg irons two days running. He relented, but scrapped the earlier idea of accompanying his guests to New York; he would instead go directly to Hyde Park and wait for them there. The King’s wish not to address Congress was respected; the formal reason given was that it would set a precedent for addressing legislatures during subsequent state visits to other countries. It was agreed that he would instead be introduced informally to members of the Congress in the rotunda of the Capitol.
Equally ticklish was the question of which politician should accompany the King during the American part of his visit. Mackenzie King would automatically be with him during the Canadian stage, but the King thought he should be accompanied by Halifax when he crossed the forty-ninth parallel, as had been the case during his visit to Paris in July 1938. Yet taking along the British foreign secretary risked sending out the signal that the royal visit was a political one, with the aim of concluding some kind of alliance with the United States, which would have infuriated the isolationist camp. The King’s next suggestion was not to take any minister along with him. This, too, was problematic, since it automatically precluded any political conversation.
For Mackenzie King, it seemed self-evident that he should accompany the King south of the border. There was still some hesitation in London, however, prompting the Canadian to express concern that “the King should cast him aside at the frontier like an old boot”.26 Mackenzie King then embarked on an extensive lobbying campaign to prevent this from happening. According to the King’s official biographer, John W. Wheeler-Bennett, “He moved all heaven and earth in his determination to attend His Majesty in Washington. He harangued the Governor General; he wrote with deep feeling to the King’s private secretary; he telegraphed at length to Mr Chamberlain. No stone was left unturned, no avenue unexplored.”27 That March Mackenzie King was pleased to learn his campaign had been successful. The King sent him a personal letter saying he would like him to come to the United States too.
There were also complications on the American side. As ambassador to London, Joseph Kennedy was keen to go along, not least because he was contemplating a run at the presidency in 1940; being seen alongside the President and the King would be a public-relations coup that would greatly enhance his profile. So he urged the State Department that he be allowed to play the role of guide to the royal couple.
Roosevelt was wary. The relationship between the two men dated back to 1917, when Kennedy was assistant manager of Bethlehem Steel’s Fore River Shipyard in Massachusetts and Roosevelt, as assistant secretary of the Navy, was in charge of overseeing US ship production. They had clashed over two warships that the yard had built for the Argentinians and was refusing to release until they were paid for. The American government wanted them to be handed over and, to Kennedy’s surprise, Roosevelt sent in the marines to seize them.
During the 1920s, Kennedy had amassed a personal fortune through dealings in the stock market, real estate, Hollywood film production and the import of liquor from Britain and was a major backer of Roosevelt’s first election campaign in 1932. When the Securities and Exchange Commission was created to clean up Wall Street in 1934, he was the surprise choice as its first president. People began to mutter about Kennedy’s various financial shenanigans, but Roosevelt replied simply: “Set a thief to catch a thief.”
After helping Roosevelt’s successful re-election campaign in 1936, Kennedy felt he deserved a reward – and hinted that the one he had in mind was to become Secretary to the Treasury. After it was made clear to him that this was not possible, he indicated to Roosevelt’s son James that he would like to be ambassador to Britain.
In his memoirs, James recalls that when he passed on the request to his father, “he laughed so hard he almost toppled from his wheelchair.”28 But the idea grew on Roosevelt: he knew the businessman in Kennedy would ensure that he negotiated hard on an Anglo-American trade agreement that was under discussion at the time and also that he was wealthy enough to entertain in grand style in London – something ambassadors were required to fund out of their own pocket. Above all, the idea of sending an Irish Catholic as Washington’s representative to the Court of St James’s appealed to Roosevelt’s mischievous side.
Kennedy was nevertheless required to pass one bizarre test before securing the appointment: when he came to the Oval Office to press his claim to the job, Roosevelt asked him to stand by the fireplace so he could take a good look at him, and then instructed him to take down his trousers. Kennedy, though shocked, obliged. After a pause, the President told him. “Someone who saw you in a bathing suit once told me something I now know to be true. Joe, just look at your legs. You are just about the most bow-legged man I have ever seen.” This mattered, Roosevelt told him, because protocol dictated that ambassadors, when presenting their credentials to the King, had to wear knee breeches and silk stockings. “When photos of our new ambassador appear all over the world, we’ll be a laughing stock,” he told him. “You’re just not right for the job, Joe.”29
Undaunted, Kennedy asked for two weeks to try to persuade the British to allow him to be presented at court dressed in a cutaway coat and striped trousers instead. Sure enough, he was back with an official letter within a fortnight saying the British were prepared to waive tradition on this occasion. In March 1938, accompanied by a great fanfare in the British press, he arrived in London.
Roosevelt soon came to rue his appointment. Kennedy’s deep loathing of war, and of its impact both on his fortune and on his four sons, ensured that he quickly became a close friend of Chamberlain and an advocate of his policy of appeasement. He coupled this with a conviction that, if war did come, America should keep out of it. This was to put him at odds with Roosevelt, who was coming to realize the potential danger Hitler posed to the United States and appreciated the need to bolster Britain as a bulwark against Nazi expansion. As one of Roosevelt’s biographers put it: “The isolationist Kennedy was ultimately widely reckoned to be, along with the Stalin-worshipping Joseph Davies in the Soviet Union, one of the worst diplomatic appointments in the history of the United States.”30
For this reason, Roosevelt was determined that Kennedy shouldn’t be involved in the trip. And so, although he had been the one who delivered the invitation to the King, it had been in a sealed envelope, and the ambassador was only aware of the contents of the letter when the King read it out to him. It was a serious embarrassment to Kennedy who, apparently at his own initiative, had mooted the idea of a royal trip to America when he and his wife, Rose, were invited for the weekend to Windsor Castle in April 1938, shortly after they arrived. The royal couple had been enthusiastic: “I only know three Americans – you, Fred Astaire and J.P. Morgan – and I would like to know more,” the Queen had told him.31
Kennedy continued to press to be allowed to accompany the King and Queen, but was thwarted by Roosevelt. His only consolation was that he and Rose were allowed to host a dinner party for the royal couple at the ambassadorial residence in London two days before their departure in order to give them an idea of what to expect on the other side of the Atlantic. The food was Virginia ham and shad roe, both specially imported. The entertainment included a couple of Walt Disney films.