The Peoples King (21 page)

According to a further report by Canning, in October 1936, Wallis
encouraged photographers to take pictures of her when she was with
the King 'because it satisfies her vanity and provides a means of
developing certain commercial undertakings in which she and her
friends are interested.' There was no doubt, asserted Canning, 'that
Mrs Simpson's association with the King is now being discussed
and commented upon by the people generally, especially among the
working classes.'
³⁸
He listed the magazines and newspapers (mostly
American, but also
Cavalcade
in Britain) in which Wallis's name had
appeared over the previous five months. '
⁹

Neither Edward's nor Wallis's memoirs, published many years later,
suggest that they were aware at any time of being watched by Special
Branch. It is unclear who gave the instructions to Special Branch to
watch the Prince of Wales and then the King, why they did so, or to
whom the reports might have been passed by the Metropolitan Police.
What is certain, though, is that Sir Philip Game met with the Home
Secretary, Sir John Simon, on a regular basis, so they would presum­ably have discussed these reports about the most important person in
Britain and the Empire. However, there is no evidence that Canning's
reports to Game about Wallis's alleged relationship with Trundle
were disseminated to other Ministers, senior government officials or
members of the royal household. If they were, they do not appear to
have been used to persuade Edward against continuing his relationship
with Wallis.

At no time during this period did Edward turn to his brother Albert
for comfort or counsel. There had been a substantial change in the
relationship between the two brothers since the early post-war years,
and as Albert moved into his mid-twenties, he identified more and
more strongly with his parents. Shortly after Edward's return in 1922
from a long journey to the Far East, Albert wrote a letter to his mother
saying that, 'We must all
help
him to get him back to our way of
thinking.'
⁴
" Edward was away from home for many months at a
time, on his overseas tours, which may have increased the emotional
distance between himself and his family. Albert was abroad far less
often, and, once married, he and Elizabeth visited the King and
Queen on a regular basis. In July 1923, when Hardinge was with the
royal family at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, he sent his wife a
description of palace routine. While 'we all have our meals by ourselves
which is a great relief', he wrote, the King and Queen 'have theirs
with Elizabeth and D. of Y. who are staying here.'
⁴¹
Elizabeth had
quickly gained George V's approval, to the point where they could
easily discuss controversial subjects. 'The King during dinner was busy
talking to Lady Elizabeth about birth-control!' reported Hardinge in
some surprise, adding, 'Of which I gathered that he was much in
favour!'
⁴²

Edward saw far more of Prince George, the Duke of Kent. In the
late summer of 1936, George and his wife, Marina, joined Edward
and Wallis at Balmoral; other visitors included Lord and Lady Mountbatten, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, the Duke and Duchess
of Buccleuch, the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, and the Earl and
Countess of Rosebery. Herman and Katherine Rogers, who were now
living in the South of France, came too. Cosmo Lang, the Archbishop
of Canterbury, who had always been invited by George V to Balmoral
in the late summer, was not on the guest list. But the Archbishop still
got his holiday in Scotland, because the Duke and Duchess of York
asked him to stay at their Highland home at Birkhall, which was on the Balmoral estate. The kind Yorks bade me come to them at Birkhall', he
wrote in some notes, and were 'kindness itself'. After tea on the second
day, 'The children - Lillibet, Margaret Rose and Margaret Elphinstone
[a cousin] - joined us. They sang some action-songs most charmingly.
It was strange to think of the destiny which may be awaiting the little
Elizabeth, at present second from the throne! She and her lively little
sister are certainly most entrancing children.' As he left Birkhall, the
Yorks told him that he must come again, so that 'the links with
Balmoral may not be wholly broken'.
⁴³
Edward was furious when he
learned that his brother had invited Lang. Wallis later told a friend
that Edward was upset
not only because the Duke of York had seemingly gone against his wishes but
also because he took it as a not-so-subtle declaration of war against his
authority. In effect, she explained, the Yorks had chosen to follow the tra­ditions established by [George V] and in doing so appeared to be setting up a
rival court to that of the King.
⁴⁴

On 15 November, Mr and Mrs Stanley Bruce, the Australian High
Commissioner and his wife, lunched with Stanley Baldwin and Bald­win's wife, Lucy. Stanley Bruce, who had been Prime Minister of
Australia between 19x3 and 1929, was a very conventional man and
had a reputation of being anti-Labour. He was most perturbed about
the royal crisis and had shared his concerns in a conversation with
Queen Mary; he had also written a letter on the matter to the Duke
of York.
⁴⁵
It was the chief topic of conversation during lunch with the
Baldwins, according to some notes written by Bruce shortly after­wards. Baldwin believed, said Bruce, that the King's conduct was
antagonizing the people and that his popularity was disappearing.
⁴⁶
If
Baldwin thought he was reflecting the views of the general public, this
was simply not possible since the public didn't know about Edward's
relationship with Wallis. Moreover, the King's popularity had not
waned in the slightest - as his visit to South Wales in the next few days
would demonstrate. Bruce put it to Baldwin that the 'Prime Minister's
job was to do everything possible to break the entanglement and to
get Mrs Simpson out of the country, by appeals to the King's patriot­ism, sense of duty, etc.'
^4,
Bruce appears to have been a powerful
influence on Baldwin. Lady Milner certainly thought so: she went to
see Bruce, she wrote in her diary on 2 December, and he gave her 'a
really astonishing account' of his conversation and how he had forced
Baldwin to 'take action on the great "Question of the Hour".'
⁴⁸

It seems likely that Bruce was also a party to Hardinge's letter to
the King. On the day he delivered the letter, Hardinge had lunched
with Bruce. After this meeting, Bruce made some notes for Baldwin to
assist him in his next talk with the King. They carried much the same
message as Hardinge's letter - that if the King were to marry Mrs
Simpson,

The people of this country and the Dominions would never accept her as
Queen, quite possibly the House of Commons would cancel the Civil List, the
Throne would be imperilled, the Empire would be endangered, there would
be a demand for the King's abdication, the Government would resign and it
would be impossible to get an alternative Government.
.
,
⁴⁹

Galvanized by Hardinge's threat that the silence of the press was
about to be broken, Edward sought out Max Beaverbrook, owner of
the
Daily Express,
the
Sunday Express
and the
Evening Standard.
Beaverbrook was in no way an ardent monarchist, but the King had
been pleased with his success in urging the British press to be discreet
about Wallis. To his dismay, Edward discovered that Beaverbrook
was on his way to America, to seek respite from his chronic asthma in
the desert of Arizona and then to visit his home in New Brunswick,
Canada. The King sent Beaverbrook a telegram at sea on Monday
16 November, urging him to come straight back to London. Beaver­brook said he would, and he kept his word: he returned after just four
hours in New York.
⁵⁰
Much as Beaverbrook liked to spend the winter
free of asthma, he liked even better to be at the centre of the action and
the news. Even more importantly, perhaps, he enjoyed the prospect
of engaging in battle against his old foe, Stanley Baldwin. It was
Beaverbrook's view, as he sailed back to Britain, 'that the King had
only to persevere in order to prevail'.
⁵¹

Soon after midday on 16 November, the King telephoned Hardinge
at Buckingham Palace, saying that he wanted to see Baldwin, Cham­berlain and Halifax that evening. He added that he wanted Duff
Cooper, a personal friend who was the Secretary of State for War, and
Sir Samuel Hoare, a fellow undergraduate from Oxford days, also to
be at the meeting. Certainly their presence might have resulted in a
very different discussion from the one that actually took place. But
the Prime Minister replied that it would not be right to take selected
members of the Cabinet to see him on a matter that had not yet been
considered by the Cabinet as a whole. He therefore proposed that it
should be a private meeting between the two of them, and said he
would come on his own.

Once the meeting had begun, Baldwin said that he and senior
Cabinet colleagues were disturbed at the prospect of the King marrying
someone whose marriage had been dissolved by divorce. He was not,
of course, speaking on behalf of the Cabinet as a whole or in any
formal sense, since the Cabinet had not been consulted. The general
public, said Baldwin, would never put up with the King's plan for
marriage:

You may think that I am an old man dating from the Victorian regime, but
I do know public opinion in this country. Since the War there has been a
lowering of the public standards and of public morals, but people expect even
more of the Monarchy and they won't tolerate what they did tolerate in the
early part of the last century.
⁵²

Baldwin spoke, said Edward years later, like 'the Gallup Poll
incarnate'.
⁵³

Baldwin was undoubtedly right that some people - the forces of the
Conservative Establishment, for example, and the gentry - were not
likely to tolerate the idea of their King marrying a woman who was
twice divorced. But 'the people' was not a homogenous group and
included many other important strands, such as the working class,
and more liberal members of the middle class, who were grateful to
Edward for his democratic concerns. Baldwin did not include these
classes, the great majority of the population, in his notion of 'what
the people would tolerate and what they would not'. Nor did he ask
himself if those people who identified themselves as the post-war
generation, and who made clear their appreciation of Edward's
modern style, would really object to a queen from a different social
background and culture. Even support for the Church of England's
position was uncertain - for, as Baldwin was aware, such was the
Church's own crisis that the Archbishop of Canterbury was planning
a national 'Recall to Religion' in 1937.