The Peoples King (33 page)
Keynes was solidly for Edward VIII.
60
'I thought today's leader in
The Times
absurd', he told his wife Lydia in a letter written that Friday. 'Won't sympathy gradually increase for the King against the Archbishops oozing humbug? If the Government offered him a morganatic marriage, that would be all right. But apparently - I don't know why - they refuse this.'
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Many intellectuals and liberals, among them George Bernard Shaw, shared Keynes's view on the royal crisis. 'On the one side there stands Dr Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury; on the other there stands George Bernard Shaw, Archbishop of Everywhere', said a letter to the King from South London. 'For God's sake,' it urged, 'choose Shaw!'
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When the writer Vera Brittain was in Dunfermline speaking about her new book,
Honourable Estate
, the Nonconformist minister with whom she was staying increased her sympathy for Edward VIII by his adamant disapproval of the lovers and his undisguised commiseration with Queen Mary - ' "I'm sorry for her", he said righteously. "She must feel she has utterly failed as a mother."H. G. Wells also sided with the King, against the Government. This was very irritating to Robert Bernays, the National Liberal MP for Bristol, especially after a conversation with him at a dinner party. 'I cannot stand Wells for any length of time', he complained in his diary. 'He is such a tremendous theorist and really knows nothing of modern conditions outside his coterie in London. He was talking the greatest nonsense about the King saying that as a whole the public would welcome the marriage.'
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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang, was starting to realize that it was not possible to count on the support of the public. In a diary he kept on 'The King's Matter', he recorded that on the afternoon of 4 December,
Young people, realized Lang in dismay, might say, 'He is doing the honourable thing. He wants to marry the woman he loves. Why shouldn't he?' This might be one bad outcome, he feared, of keeping the story from the public for so long. 'I suppose that those who, like myself, have known the whole business for two years', he thought, 'can scarcely realise the effect of this sudden crisis on minds wholly unprepared for it.. .'
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Certainly the sudden crisis seemed highly romantic to many of the population. 'Am told today', wrote the critic James Agate in his diary on 4 December, 'that owing to this affair of the King's marriage the big bookshops are completely deserted. I understand this. Why spend seven-and-sixpence on romance when you can get reality for a penny?"
By Saturday 5 December, Britain was utterly gripped by the royal love affair. 'Papers full of the harpy & the King', wrote Lucy Baldwin in her diary that day.
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The crisis was so terrific, complained Headlam in his diary, that Edith Londonderry 'feels that she and Charley must be in London - so the weekend party at Wynyard [in County Durham] has to be deprived of its host and hostess.'
68
The royal crisis, noted Evelyn Waugh in a tone of some amusement,
has been a great delight to everyone. At Maudie's nursing home they report a pronounced turn for the better in all adult patients. There can seldom have been an event that has caused so much general delight and so little pain. Reading the papers and even listening to announcements that there was no news on the wireless took up most of the week.
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A taxi driver in London was reported as saying, 'We drivers ain't doing no business. We just goes out and collects the news and comes back to the shelter and discusses it . . . We says - let Him have her - Why shouldn't 'e be happy.'
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Nothing else, observed James Agate, was treated as of any importance, even cricket. 'England collapses on the first day of the Test match,' he observed, 'and Leyland rescues the side with a century. What Test match?' (The test series in Australia had just got under way.) In a reference to the legendary cricketer, Donald Bradman, he added, 'News came this morning that Bradman is out. But what people are asking is whether the King is going to be out.' The immediate effect of the rumpus, he said, was chaotic. 'I am very nearly run into by a man driving a car and reading a special edition of the evening paper at the same time - he has the paper spread over the steering-wheel! '
71
That Saturday's
Evening Standard
printed an 'extremely witty' article by George Bernard Shaw which easily disposed, said Agate, 'of the objections to the lady on the score that she is an American and a commoner.'
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In this article, entitled 'The King, the Constitution and the Lady', Shaw set the nation's crisis in a fantasy - in 'the Kingdom of the Half Mad', where the King was not allowed by his Government and Church to marry a woman called Mrs Daisy Bell. Mrs Bell was an American who had been married twice before - 'and was, therefore, likely to make an excellent wife for a King who had never been married at all.' But, explained Shaw, you could never count on anything going off quietly in the Kingdom of the Half Mad, because
The Government, for instance, would let whole districts fall into ruin and destitution without turning a hair, and then declare that the end of the world was at hand because some foreign dictator had said bluntly that there were milestones on the Dover Road.
The King of the Half Mad told the Prime Minister and the Archbishop that he had to consider the views of 495 million subjects, only 11 per cent of whom were Christians. Therefore, he said, it was fine that the Church would not solemnize his marriage - for a civil marriage would enable him to be married legally without offending the religious feelings of a single soul in his Empire. When accused by the Prime Minister of being entirely mad, the King answered that 'To a little London clique some two or three centuries behind the times I no doubt seem so . . . The modern world knows better.' The Archbishop complained that the King's arguments were 'so entirely off the track of English educated thought that they do not really belong to your world and mine.' But the King retorted, 'Would it be too brutal of me to remind you that there are others' who might form a King's party? 'The people are behind me. You may have to resign in any case long before the Coronation.'
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Shaw's article was widely enjoyed. 'Thanks for sending Shaw's phantasy, which is the most real thing I have seen written about the situation', wrote the Labour politician Sir Charles Philips Trevelyan to his wife, Mary, it is saying in telling and literary form', he added, 'what I have been saying in half a dozen letters.'
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Charley Londonderry told Headlam that Churchill and Beaver- brook had been called by the King and were 'going to use this opportunity to have another go for SB.' These men, he said, would 'not stop at anything to secure their own ends'. This showed, thought Headlam, 'how little they know of public opinion - the country is not behind HM and the sooner he realizes it the better it will be.'
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It was certainly true that some of the country were not behind the King, as Headlam claimed. But it was clear that many others were. 'Whatever you may be told,' wrote a Brighton resident to the King on 5 December, 'the Truth is that the People of England - if their voice could be heard - have only one wish, and that is to see you a happy man ... & to have you & none other'. 'Good luck. Stand firm' urged a civil servant and his wife from Surrey. 'That part of your people which matters is behind you; but is desperately afraid you may not know it. We want a King who is a man and no hypocrite.'
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Some people took straw polls. Three-quarters of his friends and acquaintances, reported an Aberdonian, regarded the King's intentions with approval. A disabled ex-serviceman from Cheltenham believed that 90 per cent of Edward's subjects were behind him - 'for the sake of the workers,' he pleaded with the King, 'don't abdicate'.
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A letter from a jobless man in Lancashire claimed that at least 90 per cent of the unemployed and 'the man in the street' were with the King in his 'gallant fight against the combined forces of cant & humbug & hypocrisy' that were marshalling against him.
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'"Vox populi, vox Dei" -
and rub it in',
enjoined a postcard from Northampton to Winston Churchill, who was known to be backing the King.
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'God Save the King! Tell Us The Facts, Mr Baldwin!' proclaimed the headlines on the front page of Saturday's
Daily Mirror.
'The Nation Insists', it continued, 'on Knowing the King's Full Demands and Conditions. The Country will Give You the Verdict!' The newspaper backed the King completely and published letters of support from its readers. 'This Crisis Can be Settled', urged the leader. 'No More Talk of The King's Abdication.' The vast majority of the people, it told its readers, 'hate seeing a man bullied when he thinks he is right. They respect the man who will stand up for his rights.'
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The
Daily Express
strongly criticized the Government's role in the crisis. 'Mr Baldwin and his Government', it objected, 'are making a direct challenge to the King':
The result is that if there was a crisis yesterday there is a worse one today. There is no need for it. This grave issue has not been forced upon us by outside events beyond our control. It is a man-made crisis, and made here at that. But as men have made it they are capable of ending it. This thing can be brought to a close whenever Mr Baldwin and his Government desire - by withdrawing their opposition to the King's intention of marrying.'
The paper insisted, 'We cannot afford to lose the King. We cannot let him give up the Throne.'
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As Lord Zetland, the Secretary of State for India, warned in a telegram to Lord Linlithgow, the Viceroy, 'Government are being attacked . . . for their refusal to countenance proposal for Morganatic marriage, and they are charged with attempt to rush King into a decision to abdicate.'
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In the Beefsteak Club, said Virginia Woolf, 'only Lord Onslow 8c Clive [Bell] take the democratic view. Harold [Nicolson] is glum as an undertaker, and so are the other nobs. They say Royalty is in Peril. The Empire is divided. In fact never has been such a crisis.'
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But outside the Beefsteak it was a different story. When Archbishop Lang left 10 Downing Street in the middle of Sunday afternoon, a man ran out from the crowd calling, 'We want King Edward.' Later that evening, while the Cabinet was in session, reported
The Times,
large crowds assembled in Downing Street and in Whitehall. The National Anthem was sung, and a section of the crowd started to chant 'We want the King.'
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There was a demonstration at Marble Arch by a group of young men and women carrying banners on which they had painted in red and blue lettering, 'After South Wales you can't let him down.'
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Outside the home of the Duke of York, on Piccadilly, a young woman clambered up the railings and held aloft a newspaper picture of the
King for the crowd to see. Men removed their hats, and there were shouts of 'We want Edward!'
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'Whatever Your Majesty decides is right' was the message of a telegram sent from Queen Mary's Hospital for the East End.
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'Please, England cannot do without you, as surely you must see by the loyal demonstrations in the towns all over the country', appealed another subject.
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Similar sentiments were expressed all over the nation. 'The workers of Coventry are with you to a man (and woman)', urged a loyal supporter. 'Good luck! and confound the politicians.'
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From Leeds came this telegram: 'Baldwin and Bishops utterly wrong. Leeds people support Your Majesty.'
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From the Midlands a letter assured the King that
HER'S YOURN!
HEIR'S OURN!
Opinion in the Black Country, in the event of Your Majesty's marriage, could be summed up in the above couplet.
. . . what the Black Country thinks today, the rest of the Empire will think tomorrow. Keep calm! Don't abdicate!
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'I have been walking the streets of London with a placard, "Hands off the King. Abdication means Revolution"', wrote a woman to the King. She enclosed a newspaper cutting showing a photograph of herself carrying the placard. 'My impression', she said, 'is that I have all the working classes with me, but I was insulted by some of the upper classes. I did not know that there was so much humbug and hypocrisy amongst the English.' She begged him not to give in. 'However as the Common People are all obviously for you and don't care a damn who you marry,' she said, 'I feel if you stick out for a Morganatic marriage that you will get it. Forgive my writing but I have had a good opportunity of gauging public opinion.'
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'Cavaliers and Roundheads'
To some who supported Edward VIII, the crisis recalled an earlier king - Charles I, whose conflict with Parliament had led to the English Civil War and to his execution in 1649. 'We have all become King's men or Cabinet men', commented Beaverbrook. 'It is as if the whole country had slipped back into the seventeenth century again.'
1
Now, in the twentieth century, the nicknames for the King's supporters and the Parliamentarians seemed appropriate once more. 'The world is now divided into Cavaliers and Roundheads,' wrote Chips Channon in his diary on 7 December.
2
The evening before, on the Sunday, he had held a dinner party attended by the King's supporters, while the 'Oliver Stanleys had a rival festival of 11 people, all Roundheads and violently anti-King.'
3
Some letters and telegrams sent to the King at this time were sprinkled with antique language, recalling the earlier crisis faced by the monarchy. 'Good luck where 'ere befalls', urged one telegram, while a woman living near Reading assured the King that 'The Lady Mrs Simpson is a pearl of great price among women. One day you will have your heart's desire. I raise my Glass to Both of you in my toast & Say, Gentlemen,
The King.'
4