The Queen Mother (68 page)

The King’s own Private Secretary precipitated the denouement. On 13 November Alec Hardinge wrote to the King to warn him that the silence of the British press on the subject of his friendship with Mrs Simpson would last only for a matter of days and the effect of publicity was likely to be ‘calamitous’. Moreover the government might resign and the King would then have to find another prime minister. If an election resulted, ‘Your Majesty’s personal affairs would be the chief issue.’ Hardinge recommended that the only way of avoiding these dangers was for Mrs Simpson to go abroad ‘
without further delay
– and I would
beg
Your Majesty to give this proposal your earnest consideration before the position has become irretrievable’.
⁶⁸
It was wise advice but not tactful; the letter infuriated the King, who cut off all contact with Hardinge.

Nevertheless the King was moved to action. On the evening of 16 November he summoned Baldwin and told him that he intended to marry Mrs Simpson as soon as she was free. He would prefer to do this as king, but if he could not, then he would abdicate. Baldwin was appalled and told the King, ‘Sir this is most grievous news, and it is impossible for me to make any comment on it today.’
⁶⁹
That evening he passed on the news to his colleagues. Duff Cooper recalled that he said that ‘he was not at all sure that the Yorks would not prove the best solution. The King had many good qualities but not those which best fitted him for his post, whereas the Duke of York would be just like his father.’
⁷⁰

The Prime Minister might be stunned, but the King apparently felt liberated. After his interview with Baldwin he went to dinner with his mother at Marlborough House, determined to tell her of his decision. Queen Mary’s exact response is not known, but she commented later, ‘I thought I was extremely outspoken and tried to express my displeasure, but I suppose he never listened to what I said.’
^71
*
She
simply could not now and would not ever believe that Mrs Simpson was fit to be the wife of her son, let alone Queen. For her, duty came first, and only in duty came fulfilment. But she evidently did not make her feelings clear enough, and next day she wrote her son a letter which he took for encouragement: ‘As your mother I must send you a letter of true sympathy on the difficult position in which you are placed. I have been thinking so much of you all day, hoping you are making a wise decision for your future.’
⁷²
The King replied with affection, ‘I feel so happy and relieved to have at last been able to tell you my wonderful secret; a dream which I have for so long been praying might one day come true. Now that Wallis will be free to marry me in April it only remains for me to decide the best action I take for our future happiness and for the good of all concerned.’
⁷³

The Queen was more explicit with her daughter-in-law, to whom she wrote on 17 November, the day after her dinner with the King: ‘I am more worried than I can say at what is going on.’ The tension, the sorrow and the loneliness were almost unbearable and she asked the Duke and Duchess to come and see her. ‘There is no one I can talk to about it, except you two as Mary is away & one can’t discuss that subject with friends. What a mess to have got into & for such an unworthy person too!!! Yr sad tho’ loving Mama.’
⁷⁴

The same day the King had finally brought himself to tell his younger brother directly of what he planned. The Duke was shocked and incredulous and went straight home to tell his wife who immediately sat down to write to the Queen:

The next morning, Wednesday 18 November, the Duke and Duchess went to see Queen Mary to discuss the crisis, which was still unknown to all but a very close circle. Indeed some of those in the know wished that the press were less ‘responsible’. The Duchess of Devonshire, with whom the Yorks had spent the previous weekend at
Chatsworth,
^*
wrote to Lady Airlie, ‘What in the world is going to happen about Mrs S! one sees no good solution at all. I think it is getting time for the English Press to utter a few carefully chosen warnings.’
⁷⁶

At the end of the week, on 20 November, the Yorks went to stay for a shooting weekend with the Pembrokes at Wilton House, near Salisbury.
^†
Their inability to discuss the matter with which they were totally preoccupied must have made the stay very difficult for them. The Duchess wrote to Queen Mary: ‘Staying here, in a very normal English shooting party, it seems almost incredible that David contemplates such a step, & every day I pray to God that he will see reason, & not abandon his people. I am sure that it would be a great shock to everybody and a horrible position for us naturally. However, it is no good going over the same ground again, but I must repeat that I do
not
know what we should do without you darling Mama … It is a great strain having to talk & behave as if nothing was wrong during these difficult days – especially as I do not think anybody here
dreams
of what is worrying all of us.’
⁷⁷

His family found it almost impossible to reach the King. It was particularly distressing for the Duke of York, who wrote to his beloved brother on 23 November saying, ‘I do
so
long for you to be happy with the one person you adore,’ and adding, ‘I feel sure that whatever you decide to do will be in the best interests of this Country and Empire.’
⁷⁸
The Duchess wrote to the King on the same day with a plea on behalf of her unhappy, bewildered husband:

Across the top of the page she wrote, ‘We want you to be happy, more than anything else, but it’s awfully difficult for Bertie to say what he thinks, you know how shy he is – so do help him.’
⁷⁹
The Duchess’s concern both for her husband’s inability to express himself and for his future was understandable. In the event the King still declined to see his brother.

The Duchess also wrote to Alec Hardinge’s wife Helen, one of the few people with whom she felt it safe to communicate: ‘It’s bad, whichever way one looks at it, both from our point of view, and the country’s.’ She felt, she said, ‘very depressed and miserable’.
⁸⁰
A few days later, the Duke wrote to Sir Godfrey Thomas, the King’s Assistant Private Secretary, expressing the depth of his fears. ‘If the worst happens & I have to take over, you can be assured that I will do my best to clear up the inevitable mess, if the whole fabric does not crumble under the shock and strain of it all.’
⁸¹

Meanwhile, the King went away on a tour of the mining villages of South Wales. He displayed the best of himself, engaging sympathetically with the destitute, unemployed miners. He made the memorable statement ‘Something must be done’ which, when reported, gave many people hope that their monarch was advancing their cause, while worrying some politicians that the King was trespassing beyond his constitutional role. There was no doubt that he felt keenly the plight of the unemployed, and there was equally no doubt that the signs of his own popularity emboldened him to think that perhaps, after all, he could stay.
⁸²

By the end of November a morganatic marriage – in which his wife would not become queen but would hold some lesser title – had become the King’s ambition. The Prime Minister, however, considered this a distasteful solution, which neither the public nor the Dominions were likely to accept. The leaders of both Labour and Liberal parties agreed with him.
⁸³

Early on the morning of 28 November Baldwin sent out telegrams to the Dominions – Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the Irish Free State – to seek their views on the possibility of the King’s marriage. The answers varied in tone from Australian trenchancy to Irish coolness, but they allowed Baldwin to conclude that the
Dominions, collectively, would not accept the idea of a morganatic marriage, let alone the notion that Mrs Simpson might become queen.
⁸⁴

*

O
N
THE
NIGHT
of 29 November, the Duke and Duchess took the train to Edinburgh, so that the Duke could be installed as grand master mason of Scotland, succeeding the Prince of Wales, who had resigned the post upon becoming king. Upset and uncertain, the Duke wrote to his Private Secretary, ‘I feel like the proverbial “sheep being led to the slaughter”, which is not a comfortable feeling.’
⁸⁵
They kept in touch by telephone.

While they were in Scotland the crisis finally became public. On 1 December the Bishop of Bradford, Dr Walter Blunt, addressed his Diocesan Conference with a criticism of the King – not for his association with Mrs Simpson but for his irregular attendance at church. He commended the King to God’s Grace, which the King needed no less than others ‘for the King is a man like ourselves.’ And he added, ‘We hope that he is aware of his need. Some of us wish that he gave more positive signs of his awareness.’ Subsequently it was said that when he originally drafted his address the Bishop was not aware of the King’s friendship with Mrs Simpson.
⁸⁶

The provincial papers immediately commented on the Bishop’s remarks and the London press then finally followed suit. By Thursday 3 December all caution was gone, and when the Yorks stepped off the night train at Euston they were greeted with newspaper placards emblazoned ‘The King’s Marriage’. This was a terrible shock to them both. The Duke recorded later that the sight ‘surprised and horrified’ him.
⁸⁷
‘We have just arrived back from Scotland, to be greeted with the bombshell of the daily papers – it is all so dreadful &
wasteful
,’ the Duchess wrote to Dick Molyneux; ‘we both are unhappy & terribly worried.’
⁸⁸
That morning, 3 December, the Duke hastened to talk first to his mother and then to his brother, whom he found ‘in a great state of excitement’, saying he would ask the people what they wanted him to do and go abroad for a while.
⁸⁹

But first the King decided to send Mrs Simpson abroad, away from the public drama and private turmoil. She was receiving poison-pen letters and after a brick had been thrown through the window of her rented house in Regent’s Park, she had taken refuge at Fort Belvedere.
She left that night, 3 December, for the villa of Mr and Mrs Herman Rogers in Cannes; she was accompanied by a friend, Lord Brownlow, and carrying some £100,000 worth of jewellery. She walked out of Fort Belvedere without saying goodbye to any of the staff. Weeping, the King said farewell to her and begged her to call him when she stopped for the night. According to her own later account, he said, ‘You must wait for me no matter how long it takes. I shall never give you up.’
⁹⁰
It took just eight more days for him to give up everything else.

After Mrs Simpson’s departure the King went to Marlborough House and saw Queen Mary, the Duke of York and Princess Mary. He made what the Duke called the ‘dreadful announcement’ that he could not live alone as king and that he must marry Mrs Simpson.
⁹¹

The hitherto silent press was now, to the astonishment of the overwhelming majority of the British people, filled with stories and photographs of the King and the hitherto completely unknown Mrs Simpson. Reading them in Cannes, Wallis Simpson was horrified by the often critical tone of the papers. So, for very different reasons, were members of the Royal Family. It was the first time that a monarch had been so roundly attacked since Queen Victoria had been criticized for shutting herself away after Prince Albert’s death.

The effect of the news on many in Britain was illustrated by an entry in the diary of the Duchess’s childhood friend, Freddy Dalrymple Hamilton (now Captain of the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth), on 3 December.

Public opinion was divided between those who held this view and those who felt that the King should be allowed to marry the woman he loved. At Buckingham Palace huge quantities of letters were received from the public at home and abroad, reflecting both sides. Susan Williams in her study
The People’s King
examined the letters from the public preserved in the Royal Archives and concluded that the majority of ordinary people supported the King.
⁹³
On the same evidence King George VI’s biographer John Wheeler-Bennett came to the opposite conclusion, and Tommy Lascelles commented that ‘the day-to-day realization of that [highly critical] opinion had, at the time, a deep influence on the thought of [the King’s] brother, and still more of his mother, who read every word of the stuff … it was a constant feature of that nightmare month.’
⁹⁴
Baldwin and Clement Attlee, the leader of the Labour Party, who both kept close to public opinion, were convinced that the King had little backing in the country. The King’s supporters were a curious combination – Winston Churchill, Oswald Mosley, the fascist leader, and the press lords Beaverbrook and Rothermere. The aim of Beaverbrook and Churchill was, in Beaverbrook’s words, to ‘bugger Baldwin’.
⁹⁵