The Peoples King (25 page)

Beaverbrook was appalled when he heard that the King had not
even seen the text of the cables to the Dominion prime ministers. 'Sir,'
he exclaimed, 'you have put your head on the execution block. All
that Mr Baldwin has to do now is to swing the axe.'
⁵⁸
Certainly there
was nothing whatsoever in the telegrams that put the King's case. On
the other hand, Baldwin made his own view - that neither of the first
two choices were realistic options - very clear. 'I feel convinced', he
stated in the telegram,
that neither the Parliament nor the great majority of the public in all parties
here should or would accept such a plan [for a morganatic marriage], any
more than they would accept the proposal that Mrs Simpson should become
Queen. Moreover, I think it very probable that if such an arrangement were
agreed now, it would prove to be temporary and that later on pressure would
be brought to bear with a view to the King's wife being given her position as
Queen.
⁵⁹

'The ball had been passed to the Dominions and they were busily
returning it', wrote Dawson in his diary on 29 November.
⁶⁰
But
another ball was being tossed around in London. In need of reassur­ance, Dawson decided to ring Stanley Bruce, the Australian High
Commissioner, who was said to be lying ill at his house in London.
'I talked to Mrs. B[ruce], who said that the doctors had forbidden
him to see a soul; but a little later she telephoned to say it would
do him less harm to have a talk than to worry over what I might
have to say.' He went to see Bruce, who was able to confirm that
the Australian Prime Minister, Joseph Lyons, was completely behind
Baldwin. Dawson was pleased. 'My enforced stay in London', he was
relieved to note in his diary, 'may not have been altogether useless
after all.'
⁶¹

In the royal household, tensions had reached an unbearable level.
The week after the visit to South Wales 'was horrible', said Edward's
equerry, Charles Lambe. 'Everyone looked ill and desperate and old
and spoke in whispers. Up to then I knew no details.' One evening,
Mountbatten explained to him that the King was determined to marry
Wallis. 'All that week I had nightmares', he wrote in the notes he was
keeping at the time, I woke sometimes terrified, sometimes angry, and
sometimes just unutterably miserable. There was nobody to speak to
except Dickie [Mountbatten]. The subject just wasn't discussed in the
Palace and one just had to wait and think.' Because he was 'emotionally
exhausted', he went to an afternoon matinee of the film
Romeo &
Juliet,
and was 'profoundly moved'.
⁶²

Meanwhile, Edward's own 'Juliet' was becoming increasingly dis­tressed. The King told her little about what was going on, and she felt
that he had become withdrawn, even from her. This left her with the
alarming sense of having no control over her own situation or her
future. Society appeared to hate her, now that they realized Edward
wanted to marry her, not just keep her as his mistress. She and Bessie
saw strangers loitering on the pavement outside their house in Regents
Park, watching them. Among them may have been an operative or
two sent by Special Branch to gather information for Superintendent
Canning. Journalists, too, are likely to have lurked outside the house.

Hostile letters were arriving, both signed and anonymous, including
one that threatened:

Had you been living 2.00 years ago means would have been found to rid the
country of you, but no one seems to possess the courage required to send you
back to the United States. It has fallen to my lot as a patriot to kill you. This
is a solemn warning. I will do so.
⁶³

Wallis felt ready to believe the warnings she had received from Lady
Londonderry and others - that the people of Britain would never put
up with a marriage between the King and herself. She started to feel a
'mounting menace in the very atmosphere':

It was by now almost impossible for me to get about the streets without
strangers turning to stare ... It was as if some mysterious and silent means of
communication was carrying the story of the hidden crisis into ever-widening
circles of the British public.
⁶⁴

In fact, it was still the case that very few people had even heard
of Wallis. But from her isolated position, unable to influence the
development of events, the glances of strangers must have seemed
as terrible as the bitter condemnation of whole crowds. She was
later to declare that she 'did not know England very well, and the
English not at all.'
⁶³
In England in the autumn of 1936, she must have
felt very much an outsider - a foreigner in a culture she could not
understand.

Ill with worry, Wallis made plans to get away. 'Darling Sybil,' she
wrote on 30 November to Sybil Colefax, 'I have been put to bed for a
week's true isolation policy - I am very tired with - and of it all - and
my heart resents the strain so I am to lie quiet.' She was making plans,
she said, to leave London:

I am planning quite by myself to go away for a while -1 think everybody here
would like that - except one person perhaps - but I am constructing a clever
means of escape - after awhile my name will be forgotten by the people and
only two people will suffer instead of a mass of people who aren't interested
anyway in individuals feelings but only the workings of a system. I have
decided to risk [?] the result of leaving because it is an uncomfortable feeling
to remain stopping in a house when the hostess has tired of me as a guest.

I shall see you before I fold my tent - much love - Wallis.
⁶⁶

To Foxy Gwynne, another close woman friend, she sent a similar
message. A small trip away, she hoped, would 'give it all time to die
down - perhaps returning when that d—d crown has been firmly
placed.'
⁶⁷

Churchill, Duff Cooper and Beaverbrook, who were liaising with one
another in their efforts to keep Edward on the throne, also thought it
would be a good idea for Wallis to go away for a time. This would arrest
the speed at which the crisis was developing and allow it to settle down
- and the King to be crowned. But Edward, who could hardly bear
Wallis to be out of his sight, was not willing to let her go. Instead,
when he heard on Friday 27 November of a plot to blow up her house,
he sent a note telling Wallis and her aunt to come immediately to the
Fort, where they would be safe. Once she was installed at the Fort,
Wallis began to comprehend the magnitude of the crisis and was
utterly dismayed. The telephone rang constantly, the faces of the
servants were drawn, and there were 'constant comings and goings,
between the Fort and London, of advisers, aides, and courtiers.'
⁶⁸

Meanwhile, Baldwin and his Ministers took steps to shift the bal­ance of public opinion in the Government's favour, both at home and
in the Empire. They still assumed that Edward would abdicate, even
though Edward had now decided against this in favour of a morganatic
marriage. They met and decided that 'every effort should be made to
synchronize the publication of the Message [announcing abdication]
in Parliament and its publication in the Dominions. It would also be
desirable, if possible, to avoid a time of publication which would
enable the evening newspapers in London to criticize the event in a
hostile fashion.' It would be necessary for the Press to be informed in
advance in order that 'the morning newspapers might be in a position
to guide public opinion' - this would, 'of course, be done in the usual
manner and through the usual channels.'
⁶⁹
H. A. Gwynne, the editor
of the
Morning Post,
agreed. It was important, he said, that if and
when the Government found it necessary to take the public into its
confidence, the Prime Minister 'should assemble all the principal
Editors and explain to them the course of events and the line which
Ministers felt obliged to take. It was hoped in this way it might be
possible to avoid a press cleavage.'
⁷⁰

On 2 December, Baldwin was due to see the King for a fourth
interview, exactly one week after their last meeting. He prepared
the ground for this interview at a Cabinet meeting in the morning,
proposing to tell the King that 'the Cabinet were not prepared to
introduce the necessary bill to legalise the morganatic marriage.'
Everyone agreed to this, with the exception of Duff Cooper, who
made another vain plea for delay.'
¹
Walter Monckton was summoned
to 10 Downing Street and told of the Cabinet's decision, which he
relayed to the King. Writing about this meeting in his diary, Ramsay
MacDonald expressed some anxiety about what would happen when
the British people actually found out what was going on. Unlike
Baldwin, he was not convinced that all the electorate would support
the position of the Cabinet:

I share the PM's views that the country when the issue has been put fairly
before it will uphold the Cabinet, but not his optimism that it will be practically
unanimous. To underestimate the resources of the King (the PM believes his
word that he will abdicate without trouble, whilst I doubt it), Beaverbrook &
very likely Churchill, would be a mistake.
⁷²

MacDonald was the only man in the Cabinet from a working-class
background: he had been raised in a cottage in the Scottish Highlands,
the son of a single mother who had been a domestic servant. This
background may have given him a keener sense than his colleagues of
the likely reaction to the royal crisis of people who were outside the
circles of the elite.

In the evening, Baldwin went to Fort Belvedere to see the King, and
reported that his enquiries into the views of the Dominion prime
ministers were not yet complete. He added, however, that the enquiries
had gone far enough to indicate that no support would be forthcoming
for a morganatic marriage. To support this statement, he produced a
strongly worded telegram from Prime Minister Lyons of Australia,
who opposed both alternatives to abdication. Baldwin said that he
regarded this telegram as a clear indication of the position of the
Dominions. For years afterwards he maintained that the 'decisive
factor was the uncompromising stand of the Dominion Premiers, and
especially of the Prime Minister of Australia.'
⁷⁵
Baldwin also told
Edward at this meeting that General Hertzog of South Africa had
expressed opposition to the marriage.