The Peoples King (17 page)

In the following year, 1919, Edward heard of Lady Rosemary's
engagement to Lord Ednam. He told Freda Dudley Ward that he could
not help 'feeling a little sad', because 'she was the only girl I felt I ever
could marry & I knew it was '
defendu
' by my family!!' He hoped they
would be happy - 'as she's such a darling & I guess he's a very lucky
man!!' After this episode he resisted his family's efforts to find him
a suitable wife and objected to the constant speculation about whom
he was going to marry. While in Paris in 1919, he was horrified to see
a claim in the French newspapers that he was engaged to the Queen
of Italy's eldest daughter. 'I've asked the Embassy to get at the French
press & insist upon an immediate contradiction', he told Mrs Dudley
Ward, adding that 'it naturally infuriates me, particularly as the girl
has a face like a bottom!! . . .' In any case, he wrote, 'I just can't bear
the thought of having to marry.'
⁵⁶

But in 1936 he
did
want to marry Wallis. 'Oh! my Wallis I know
we'll have Viel Gluck to make us one this year. God bless WE', he
wrote to her on New Year's Day.
¹
Wallis's letters to her aunt and to
Edward suggest that however much she too wanted to be 'one' with
him, she was aware that any plans for marriage were so riddled with
difficulty as to be almost impossible. 'I am sad because I miss you and
being near and yet so far seems most unfair', she wrote to him in early
February 1936, adding that 'perhaps both of us will cease to want
what is hardest to have and be content with the simple way.'
⁵⁸
The
'simple way', presumably, was to be a mistress rather than a wife.
Decades later, Wallis stated definitively that

I told him I didn't want to be queen. All that formality and responsibility .. .
I told him that if he stayed on as king, it wouldn't be the end of us. I could
still come and see him and he could still come and see me. We had terrible
arguments about it. But he was a mule. He said he didn't want to be king
without me that if I left him, he would follow me wherever I went.

She added, 'What could I do? What
could
I do?'
⁵⁹

Keeping a mistress was unacceptable to Edward. But it was a prac­tical solution, one which had been shown to work in the numerous
affairs conducted over the centuries between kings and mistresses.
Mrs Simpson's presence would have been acceptable to the British as
his mistress, believed Helen Hardinge, as this would raise no consti­tutional issue - 'but not as his wife, which would'.
⁶⁰
Most recently,
the affair between Alice Keppel and King Edward VII had demon­strated the viability of such a relationship, provided it was managed
with care (it also showed the tolerance of the long-suffering Queen
Alexandra). Mrs Keppel had met Edward VII when he was Prince of
Wales, in 1898: she was twenty-nine, he was fifty-six. All of Society
knew about the affair, and many of the general public too. Mrs Keppel,
with her husband and children, accompanied the King to Biarritz for
Easter on the royal yacht
Britannia.
Edward VII had other mistresses
- the Princesse de Sagan, the Countess of Warwick, Lillie Langtry -
but none of them meant as much to him as Alice Keppel. After
Edward VII's death, Alec Hardinge wrote a tribute to her 'wonderful
discretion'.
⁶¹
She was still a busy member of Society in 1936, by which
time her lover's grandson was on the throne.

But Edward did not want a discreet affair - he desired nothing less
than a proper marriage. According to Ernest Simpson, the King had
told him so early in 1936 - 'that he was in love with his wife, and that
he wanted to marry her'. This was an extraordinary piece of news.
Ernest told the King that he must be mad to entertain such an idea;
that he must realize that she was already married and, even if she were
divorced, it would be impossible for him to marry a woman who had
been twice divorced. He had a long talk with the King, pointing out
the position he held in the state and the traditions of the royal family
with regard to family life. The King became very emotional, said
Ernest, and eventually broke down.
⁶²

Winston Churchill understood Edward's wish to marry the woman
he loved. Thinking about Edward's life as Prince of Wales and then
King, he ventured that 'A life of flittering public pomp without a home
and some human comfort in the background would not be endurable
to the vast majority of men. One must have something real somewhere.
Otherwise far better die.'
⁶³
Edward wanted 'something real' like the
marriage enjoyed by his younger brother George, the Duke of Kent,
and his wife Marina. In the autumn of 1934, the thirty-two-year-old
Prince George had married Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark,
to his family's immense relief. 'How much in love Princess Marina is
with Prince George', oozed Jean, Lady Hamilton. It was the romance
of the year. 'She is the one woman with whom I could be happy to
spend the rest of my life', wrote the Duke of Kent. 'We laugh at the
same sort of thing. She beats me at most games and doesn't give a
damn how fast I drive when I take her out in the car.'
⁶⁴

Although George was eight and a half years his junior, wrote Edward
in his memoirs, they were more than brothers - they were close friends,
too, with similar characters and a shared sense of humour.
⁶⁵
The Duke
of Kent was the most cultured and artistic of all the children of George
V: he played the piano and knew a great deal about music and antiques.
He had also been very kind to John, the youngest child of the family,
who was mentally handicapped and epileptic. John was kept away
from the rest of the family and from the world in a cottage in Sandringham, until his early death in 1919. George had visited him every day
when he was at Sandringham; when he was not, he regularly sent him
postcards.

Despite her royal connections, Marina had had to struggle: at one
time she had posed for publicity photographs to promote Pond's Cold
Cream, and in Paris she had even travelled by public transport. But
nobody seemed to mind - or perhaps they simply didn't know, it all
sounded so young, gay and fairy tale-ish', enthused Lady Hamilton,
from the moment that Marina and her two sisters 'alighted in their
pretty light garments at our dull foggy Victoria Station and lit up the
platform where stood Queen Mary and Princess Mary in their dowdy
clothes.'
⁶⁶
Of this same meeting at Victoria Station, shortly before the
wedding, George reported to Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, his future
brother-in-law, that

Everyone is so delighted with her - the crowd especially - because when
she arrived at Victoria Station they expected a dowdy princess - such as
unfortunately my family are - but when they saw this lovely chic creature -
they could hardly believe it and even the men were interested and shouted,
'Don't change - don't let them change you!' Of course she won't be changed

-
  
not if I have anything to do with it.
⁶⁷

Lady Hamilton suspected that Elizabeth, the Duchess of York, might
not like this enthusiasm for Marina. She had heard that Elizabeth's
hairdresser 'reports the Duchess as being in a
"tres mauvais bumeur".
I wonder! She always looks very sweet.'
⁶⁸
Certainly the sheer beauty
of Marina, Duchess of Kent - like the elegance of the pin-thin Wallis

-
  
contrasted with the more fussy and pretty appearance of Elizabeth.
By 1931, comments her biographer, Penelope Mortimer, the Duchess
of York had 'put on a good deal of weight; her face was rounded, her
eyes smaller; she was no longer a wistful waif, a Barrie heroine, but a
pneumatic mother of two with a roguish twinkle.'
⁶⁹

While Wallis was becoming more and more involved with Edward,
her marriage to Ernest Simpson was crumbling. This was not helped by

Edward's manifest intoxication, which made Wallis feel sandwiched
between him and Ernest. 'I had a long quiet talk with E[rnest] last
night,' she wrote to Edward, 'and I felt very eanum at the end.
Everything he said was so true.' She appealed to the King:

The evening was difficult as you did stay much too late. Doesn't your love for
me reach to the heights of wanting to make things a little easier for me. The
lovely things you say to me aren't of much value unless they are backed up by
equal actions. I should have come back Sat and I didn't. Then last night you
should have left by 8. Then you telephone the second time - which just did
finish the evening and made a row.
⁷⁰

But Edward could not bear- to leave her alone with her husband,
wondering if Ernest was seeking any kind of intimacy, physical or
emotional. 'I do hate and loathe the present situation', he told Wallis,
'. . . and am just going mad at the mere thought (let alone knowing)
that you are alone there with Ernest.' He felt keenly possessive of her
and willed her to give herself to him: 'God bless WE for ever my
Wallis. You know your David will love you and look after you so long
as he has breath in this eanum body."
¹

Ernest, in any case, was in love with another woman - an old school
friend of Wallis's from Baltimore, Mary Raffray. His infidelity had
come to light through what Wallis would later describe as 'one of
those coincidences that are stranger than fiction - a letter meant for
Ernest that was inadvertently addressed to me."
²
Mary and Ernest
had spent time together in New York in 1935 and discovered they had
serious feelings for each other. In the spring of 1936, Mary came to
stay at Bryanston Court, and Wallis became painfully aware that it
was not herself that Mary had come to see. Mary and Ernest left
London for three days in a hired motor, reported Wallis to her aunt,
and 'I then had them followed and of course got the expected report
etc. He now says he is in love with her and she has a service flat here.
Isn't it all ridiculous? Anyway, we will work it all out
beautifully
I
hope.'
⁷³
Wallis could not resist a few sour remarks about her old friend
- 'Mary's clothes are rather naked for here ... I still haven't found
out how long Mary will stay. We are absolutely jammed for clothes
room as she has an extensive line of undress.'
⁷⁴