The Peoples King (23 page)

Churchill, not a friend of Baldwin in any case, was not impressed.
'This was indeed appalling frankness', he observed many years later -
'That a Prime Minister should avow that he had not done his duty in
regard to national safety because he was afraid of losing the election
was an incident without parallel in our Parliamentary history.'
⁶⁹
Leo
Amery, the Imperialist statesman and writer, also took a dim view. It
was a 'most lamentable confession,' he wrote in his diary on
12 November, 'and one which filled the House with dismay. Then SB
sat down almost in dead silence.'
⁷
" The leader in the
Daily Mail
on
23 November drew a contrast - in a paragraph of bold lettering to
emphasize the point - between this speech and the King's concern for
the Special Areas:

Surely those who have recently confessed that they dared not tell the people
the truth three years ago and who have since accomplished so little towards
defence will realise the gulf between their conduct and the King's methods in
Wales.
⁷¹

The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, just four
months before Edward's visit to South Wales in that year, seemed to
divide the people of Britain into two opposing camps - those on the
left and those on the right. On the right were the Conservatives,
aristocrats and businessmen who supported Franco's military uprising
against Spain's legally elected Republican Government. On the left
were many of the working-class and unemployed, as well as middle-
class Marxists and liberals, who supported the popular front of the
Republicans. 'Left and Right', observed the American journalist Janet
Flanner, 'no longer referred to man's hands but to his politics.' This
was a time, she added, when suddenly everybody began being inter­ested in politics - 'President Roosevelt's New Deal, Stalin's Five-
Year Plan, Mussolini's
Mare Nostrum,
Leon Blum's
Front Populaire,
Hitler's
Lebensraum,
and Franco's Civil War finally began altogether
their full, their delayed, their conflicting implications.'
⁷²
Many people
were terrified, wondering where all this conflict was going to lead. The
Spanish explosion, wrote George Bernard Shaw to Beatrice Webb,
was a 'deliberate refusal to accept the democratic substitution of
the ballot for the bullet.' At present, he said, the Spanish Govern­ment was only a muddle. But, he added, 'after the Russian success
against overwhelming odds anything may happen. Well,
apres nous,
le deluge.'
⁷³

John Buchan, the famous author of the espionage thriller
The
Thirty-Nine Steps
and Governor-General of Canada, wrote a letter
about the crisis in Europe to Edith Londonderry on 18 September.
'We do not want to be mixed up in this dog-fight of Fascism and
Communism', he said, adding that 'I dislike both, though of the two
evils I slightly prefer the former, like Sir Percival, who, when he found
a lion fighting a snake, helped the lion as "it was the more natural
beast of the twain".'
⁷⁴
King Edward shared this horror of Communism
and regarded it as a threat that must be resisted in every way possible.
No doubt his feelings were influenced by the murder in 1918 of his
Russian relatives, the family of the Tsar Nicholas II, by the Bolsheviks.
Like most of the ruling class, he believed that Russia and international
Communism was a greater threat to Britain than the growth of Fascism
in Italy and Germany. Along with a large section of the Conservative
Party, he opposed the idea of sanctions against Italy after Mussolini's
invasion of Abyssinia. He believed that it would be foolish to annoy
Mussolini on this issue, on the grounds that there was little the British
could do, and in any case he believed that the Italians had some
grounds for the invasion. He also thought that nothing should be done
to drive Mussolini into Hitler's arms.

Britain's best safeguard against war, argued Edward, was to have a
strong fighting force, and on issues of rearmament he was at one with
Churchill.
⁷⁵
He also had great hopes for an Anglo-American alliance
and expressed the view that the USA and Britain should 'get definitely
together... the only hope for us and the world was to stand together.'
⁷⁶
Overwhelmingly, however, he was haunted by the carnage and brutal­ity of the Great War and shared the common view that every possible
effort should be made to avoid another conflict.

The political situation in the autumn of 1936 seemed to many to be
unstable and explosive. It reflected the more personal situation in
which Edward now found himself. By now, he wrote later in his
memoirs, he felt that his affairs had 'reached a highly explosive state,
and a careless spark from outside might touch off the charge.' Just
thirty-one hours after the momentous meeting with his Prime Minister
on 16 November, he bade farewell to Wallis and boarded the night
train for the journey to South Wales. The King's work still had to go
on, even if he was leaving behind in London a personal crisis of
unbearable proportions:

As the train clanked and rattled through the night, I lay in my berth reflecting
on the turmoil that I knew must by this time have gripped Whitehall. Yet I
was at peace with myself. My spiritual struggle was over. I had passed the
climax. The public struggle remained, and in many ways it would be more
pitiless. But I had declared myself.

By the time Edward had returned to London from South Wales, he
had changed his mind: he now hoped to stay on the throne
and
to
marry Wallis. This, said Baldwin to Archbishop Lang, was because he
had seen 'evidence of his popularity' while on his Welsh tour.
¹
It did
not occur to the Prime Minister that, faced with the desolation of
Merthyr and Dowlais, Edward would feel an overwhelming sense of
responsibility for the unemployed - that 'something
must
be done'.
Seeing the pinched, worn faces of the poor in South Wales may have
suggested to the King that he had a moral obligation to stay on the
throne and do what he could to help. Such a view was consistent with
his stated beliefs. When Alexander Woollcott, an American writer
who broadcast on the BBC, was asked in 1935 to explain his own
liberal and humanitarian convictions, he drew on a philosophy that
had been put to him by Edward. He always remembered, he said, 'a
pungent bit of advice, given, oddly enough, by His Royal Highness
the Prince of Wales. He suggested to those about him in England
that, pending the millennium, each man take hold of a piece of the
depression next him and do something about it.'
²

But Edward's change of mind had in any case been influenced by a
new plan, which Baldwin had not anticipated: a morganatic marriage,
as an alternative to the stark choice between giving up Wallis and
abdication. Inviting Wallis to lunch at Claridges while Edward was
in Wales in mid-November, Esmond Harmsworth, chairman of the
Newspaper Proprietors Association, had put this idea to her. He
explained that it had been thought of by his father, Lord Rothermere,
the owner of the
Daily Mail
(and rival to Lord Beaverbrook, who
owned the
Evening Standard
and the
Express
Group - between them
they controlled most of the British mass-circulation press). By the
morganatic arrangement, were she to marry the King she would
remain a private citizen, and any children they might have would
not be in the line of succession. Although unprecedented in England,
this was not an uncommon strategy in the royal courts of Europe
for solving a conflict between love and social status. Queen Mary's
own paternal grandparents, Alexander, Duke of Wurttemberg, and
Claudine, Countess Rhedey, had had a morganatic marriage. Harmsworth explained to Wallis that a marriage of this kind ought to remove
any difficulty, given that Mr Baldwin's stated objection to the marriage
was that Edward's wife would have to be Queen. As a morganatic
wife, Wallis could style herself after one of Edward's subsidiary titles,
and be known as the Duchess of Lancaster, for example, or of Corn­wall; she would be 'Her Highness', but not 'Her
Royal
Highness'. She
would rank in the social hierarchy below the three royal duchesses
and would not be entitled to curtseys.

Wallis was astonished by the idea. At the time, she said later, she
was sure of only one thing - that she knew 'less than ever of the
marvellous workings of the British political mind'.
³
She told Harmsworth that she felt unable to express an opinion, but he persuaded her
to pass the suggestion on to the King. This she did, during the weekend
of 21-22. November, when she and her aunt were with Edward at
Fort Belvedere. At first he reacted with distaste, but gradually it
appeared to him to be a real solution to the dilemma. The plan had the
support of Winston Churchill and Beaverbrook. 'Max [Beaverbrook]
rang me up to say he had seen the gent,' wrote Churchill, '& told him
the Cornwall plan was my idea. The gent was definitely for it. It now
turns on what the Cabinet will say. I don't see any other way through.'
⁴
Churchill called it the 'Cornwall plan' because he assumed that, as the
King's morganatic wife, Mrs Simpson would become the Duchess of
Cornwall.

Edward returned to London from the Fort at the end of the weekend.
He sent for Harmsworth and asked him to put the idea informally to
Baldwin. The Prime Minister replied that he was interested, but did
not commit himself in any way. In fact, he was unsure how to proceed.
According to Geoffrey Dawson, he was 'getting more and more
worried, though he told me very little and confined himself, as on
Friday, to discussing various possibilities and the popular reaction to
them. He was quite clear however that I ought to give up a visit to
Yorkshire planned for the week-end . . ,'
⁵
The ball was now in Bald­win's court, which changed the balance of power between him and
Edward. From the moment the King proposed a morganatic marriage,
argued the historian A. J. P. Taylor, 'he put himself at the Govern­ment's mercy. He was now asking them for something, whereas
previously they had been asking him.'
⁶

On Tuesday 24 November, Baldwin moved into action.
⁷
He sum­moned to Downing Street the three men who had the potential to
form an alternative government: Clement Attlee, Leader of the Oppo­sition; Sir Archibald Sinclair, Leader of the Liberal Party; and Winston
Churchill. He told them that if the King refused to abandon his idea
of marriage to Wallis, the Government would resign. Sinclair and
Attlee gave their word not to form governments if this were to take
place. Attlee told Baldwin that Labour voters would have no objection
to the King marrying an American in principle, but would not accept
Mrs Simpson or a morganatic marriage. 'Despite the sympathy felt
for the King and the affection which his visits to the depressed areas
had created,' wrote Attlee later, 'the Party - with the exception of the
intelligentsia who can be trusted to take the wrong view on any subject
- were in agreement with the views I had expressed.'
⁸

Winston Churchill said that 'though his attitude was a little differ­ent, he would certainly support the government'.
⁹
Despite this assur­ance, there was some suspicion that Churchill would exploit the crisis
as an opportunity to challenge Baldwin. If the Government resigned
in direct confrontation with the King, worried Lord Zetland, the
Secretary for India, would 'Churchill resist the temptation to take up
the gauntlet and endeavour to form an alternative ministry?' In such
a scenario, he added, 'There would be a grave risk of the country being
divided into two camps - for and against the King. This would clearly
be fraught with danger of the most formidable kind.
¹⁰
These anxieties
were fuelled by a widespread mistrust of Churchill, who was widely
regarded at this time, in the words of the historian David Cannadine,
as 'a cad', a 'half breed', a 'dictator', a 'rogue elephant', and 'the
greatest adventurer in modern political history'.
¹¹
Walter Elliot, the
Scottish Conservative MP, was 'full of fears', said the wife of Baldwin's
Parliamentary Private Secretary, 'as to what Winston Churchill would
do in conjunction with Lord Beaverbrook as to forming a King's
party.
¹²

The editor of
The Times,
Geoffrey Dawson, took up his pen. On
24 November he wrote a leader for the newspaper in which he 'took
the occasion to introduce one or two passages on the importance of
keeping the Crown and its representatives remote from "glaring
public scandal" and above "public reproach or ridicule".' The signifi­cance 'of this and yesterday's leaders', he noted in his diary, 'was not
lost on the American Press or indeed on many people in England.'
Dawson also 'happened to meet both Neville Chamberlain and Alec
Hardinge lunching with Lady Milner, and saw N[eville] C[hamber-
lain] again later in the day; but they added little to what I knew
already.
¹³

Alec Hardinge knew all about the morganatic plan, even though the
King had asked Baldwin not to tell him. 'I apologize for everlastingly
bothering you,' wrote Hardinge to the Prime Minister on
22 November, 'but the Queen has told me what the King made you
promise not to tell me.' If, under these circumstances, 'you feel that
you can speak to to [sic] me about it,' he added, 'I should very much
like to see you before you see the King again.' He offered to come
round to see him that night.
¹⁴

On 25 November, Thomas Jones, who had worked in Baldwin's
private office and was close to him, told a friend about a revealing
conversation with the Prime Minister. 'I cannot tell you all that was
said between us,' he told his friend, 'but I can tell you the essential
fact. The king agreed [before going to South Wales] to go out quietly,
and he afterwards told this to his Mother and his brothers. But he has
clearly now gone back on that. Mrs S was down at Fort Belvedere
over the weekend and has talked him out of it.' Meanwhile, added
Jones, 'I am collecting opinion from all over the place. I've seen Bruce
of Australia and heard from John Buchan.'
¹⁵
Those making plans
were still working on the assumption that Edward would give up his
throne.
¹⁶

Queen Mary was not at all impressed by the idea of a morganatic
marriage (though she herself was the granddaughter of such an
arrangement). 'Really!' she was heard to remark, 'this might be
Roumania!'
¹⁷
On 25 November the Duke of York wrote to Sir Godfrey
Thomas, Assistant Private Secretary to the King, to assure him of his
complete cooperation in the event of abdication. 'If the worst happens
& I have to take over,' he promised, '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.
¹⁸
Some members of the
royal court had been thinking for quite a while that it would be better
to have Albert on the throne than Edward. Clive Wigram had said
'that if he had the Duke of York he could make him into another King
George [V]', noted Mrs Runciman in her diary. 'I suppose there is a
great sense of duty there which HM doesn't entirely lack but he has
been spoilt."
⁹

There were many reasons for Albert's appeal to the court as a
replacement for Edward. He was seen as dependable, just as his father
had been, and was like him in many other ways, too. He was a family
man and had the same zest for shooting. He also, said Edward, found
'the same abiding contentment in Sandringham and Balmoral. He
collected stamps as had my father, and also made a hobby of collecting rare plants . . . there was the same disinterestedness in foreign
ideas and the same disinclination for foreign travel.'
²⁰
The patterns of
their lives

were much the same, with the steady swing of habit taking them both year
after year to the same places at the same time and with the same associates.
Strongly rooted each in his own existence, they tended to be withdrawn from
the hurly-burly of life that I relished.
²¹

Albert was a deeply conservative and conventional man, and he
and his wife enjoyed good relations with all the key representatives
of the Establishment: Baldwin and the Government ministers, the
Archbishop, and the chief courtiers. Albert had lived in the shadow of Edward's personality and talents
for most of his life, but he could adopt a commanding manner when
he needed to. In 1912 Helen Hardinge wrote a letter to her husband
in which she described an occasion on which
The Duke of Y[ork] had dined with all the gang at Claridges. They all danced
afterwards & when he was going away 4 or 5 of them came to see him off. He
said a ceremonious goodnight to them and then signing to Elizabeth [Bowes-
Lyon, his future wife] said 'Get in', pointing to his car which was waiting.
Elizabeth tripped in the royal-auto and they departed together about 1 o'clock
in the morning!!"

Although Albert had worn splints on his legs as a child, he became
a proficient horseman and a tennis ace, playing in the doubles of
the 1926 Wimbledon championships;
²³
he was also 'particularly
nimble' when dancing at Balmoral.
²⁴
He suffered from a stammer
from childhood, but sought help for this in 1926, with the support of
his wife.

One important reason for Albert's favour with the court was the
approval of his late father. 'You have always been so sensible and easy
to work with and you have always been [so] ready to listen to any
advice and to agree with my opinions about people and things', George
V had written to Albert in 1923, 'that I feel that we have always got
on very well together (very different to dear David).'
²⁵
The idea of the
second royal son being more qualified to reign than the first had a
precedent in the previous generation, for Edward VII's first son,
Prince Albert Victor, known as 'Eddy', had been generally regarded
as hopeless by the court. There was widespread relief when he died
before his father, thereby making his brother - soon to be George V -
the heir presumptive.