The Peoples King (47 page)

Edward then said goodbye to Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and to Prince George, Duke of Kent, both of whom broke down in tears. He finally approached the new King, reported Lord Brownlow, 'who completely broke down. "Buck up, Bertie!" the Duke said. "God save the King!" And with that, he turned, walked away, and that was it.
¹¹⁹
That evening he left England, as a private citizen. He was bound for Austria, to be the guest of the Baron and Baroness Eugene de Rothschild at Enzesfeld Castle, near Vienna. At two o'clock in the morning of 12 December 1936, wrote Edward in his memoir,

HMS
Fury
slid silently and unescorted out of Portsmouth Harbour. Watching the shore of England recede, I was swept by many emotions. If it had been hard to give up the Throne, it had been even harder to give up my country . . . The drawbridges were going up behind me.
^12
0

Once Edward had gone, the nation was able to settle down again to life as it had been lived under King George V. That week's British Movietone newsreel,
Amen: The End of a Tragic Chapter in British Imperial History,
reminded viewers of the highlights of King Edward VIII's short reign, especially his trip to South Wales the month before.
¹
But there was a sense of anticlimax, and many people felt jaded. 'Another day in bed - very bad headache', wrote a Sutton Coldfield headmistress in her diary, '& I think the reason has been the fearful happenings of this week - it has seemed one shock on top of another. The affairs of the Royal Family. The abdication of King Edward. The sorrow & sympathy for him. The rejoicings for the New King & Queen etc etc.'
²
Geoffrey Dawson's wife, Cecilia, developed a bad cold with a high temperature, confining her to her bed for days, while Geoffrey himself slept for ten to eleven hours 'without opening an eye'.
³
Nothing, said the Liberal MP Robert Bernays, 'seems to have happened since the King's abdication and nothing seems likely to happen again. The nation has sunk back into a sort of coma. Parlia­ment was quite lifeless the last fortnight and the newspapers are empty of everything except the test matches.'
⁴

On Saturday 12 December, George VI was proclaimed King of Britain and its Dominions and Emperor of India. 'Fiji islands was supposed to be the first place - 5.15 a.m.,' noted the saleswoman in the book department at Barkers. 'At Singapore it was proclaimed in 4 languages.'
⁵
Many of London's streets were closed for the pro­clamation, and it was bitterly cold. Lucy Baldwin, feeling sorry for Edward, wrote sadly in her diary, 'The new King George VI was sworn in by the Privy Council today. - I decided to go out, I just hadn't the heart for it. - Evening had a telegram of thanks for my letter from King Edward now his HRH the Duke of Windsor.'
⁶
Some people were angry at the turn of events, including Lloyd George, who turned down an invitation by the Governor of Jamaica to attend the proclamation ceremony in Kingston.
⁷
'Are we downhearted?' asked Lady Houston on the cover of the
Saturday Review.
'YES' was given as the answer, in huge bold type, followed by this poem:

Goodbye - Goodbye We cry with a sigh Driven away

By a law that's a lie

Great King and True Lover

For you we would die.
⁸

'Got home', muttered Geoffrey Wells, 'just before the Proclamation at Carfax', in the centre of Oxford. ' "All this bunkum", as one bus driver, held up by it, said.'
⁹

Two days after the abdication, Queen Elizabeth wrote to the Arch­bishop of Canterbury in her new role as the wife of the Sovereign. 'I can hardly now believe that he [George VI] has been called to the tremendous task,' she said, 'and (I am now writing to you quite intimately) the curious thing is that we are not afraid. I feel that God has enabled us to face the situation calmly.. . When we spoke together at Birkhall only three months ago,' she added, 'how little did I think that such drama and unhappiness was in store for our dear country . . . We were so unhappy about the loss of a dear brother because one can only feel that Exile from this country is death indeed.' She felt that Edward had been ruined by Mrs Simpson and believed that he had lost the love of the people: 'We were miserable, as you know, over his change of heart and character during the last few years and it is alarming how little in touch he was with ordinary human feelings - Alas he has lost the "common touch" .. . We pray most sincerely that we shall not fail our country,' she ended the letter, 'and 1 sign myself for the first time & with great affection Elizabeth R."°

On Sunday 13 December, the day after the proclamation, the Arch­bishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang, spoke to the nation on the radio. In a speech entitled 'The Pity of It,' he criticized the former King Edward VIII for having 'sought his happiness in a manner inconsistent with the Christian principles of marriage, and within a social circle whose standard and way of life are alien to all the best instincts and traditions of his people.' Sternly, he warned, 'Let those who belong to this circle know that today they stand rebuked by the judgement of the nation which had loved King Edward.' The Archbishop of York then spoke in a similar vein, though less strongly. Baldwin, Reith, Lord Salisbury and Queen Mary wrote to Archbishop Lang to congratulate him on his speech." Baldwin's letter, written in his own hand, warmly praised the speech 'as the voice of Christian England'.
¹²

The Times
, predictably, ran an approving article - 'Social Circle Rebuked'. Many agreed. 'The Archbishop's address over the wireless last night was magnificent', enthused one woman: 'each word so well chosen - each phrase so beautifully dovetailed in to convey an exact meaning. He spoke of all King Edward had been to us in the past - of the new King George & his stability of character - He said King Edward had unwise friends - Oh the Pity of it - the pity of it.'
¹³
A Bristol doctor thought that the broadcast address by the Archbishop was 'splendid'. Earlier that day, at the cathedral, he had heard 'a good sermon from the Bishop on the crisis', and even the singing was 'better than usual'.
¹⁴
George Trevelyan was delighted with Lang's message. 'I'm glad the Archb[isho]p said what he did about "the King's friends" ', he wrote in a letter, adding that

It wanted saying. I was very glad to find that the feeling of decency about not taking away other people's wives was so general and so strong in the country, after 40 years of writing down marriage by half the principal literary folks, Wells, Shaw, Bertie Russell and all the 'modern' chatter about it.
¹⁵

But there was also widespread disgust at Lang's speech. A contrast was drawn between his vengeful and unforgiving tone and the direct simplicity of the Duke of Windsor's broadcast. At a Foyle's literary luncheon in London on 15 December, the playwright and actor John Drinkwater strongly expressed his criticism of the Archbishop. 'My ancestors came from Canterbury,' he said, 'but thank God they were only publicans!'
¹⁶
Lang's speech produced a wave of anti-clerical feeling - not only in the weekly reviews, but even in Establishment papers such as the
Daily Telegraph.
John Gunther observed that after a tale of 'perfect propriety by everyone', these archbishops had added 'a vulgar note when it was all over'.
¹⁷
Lang was sent a torrent of crit­ical or abusive letters from outraged individuals - about two hundred and fifty in the first couple of days.
¹⁸
The author Gerald Bullett wrote a scathing quatrain on the broadcast. Playing on Lang's title, 'Can- tuar' (which is the standard abbreviation of
Cantuariensis,
the Latin word for the Archbishopric of Canterbury), his verse quickly became popular on both sides of the Atlantic:

My Lord Archbishop, what a scold you are!

And when your man is down, how bold you are!

In Christian Charity how scant you are!

How Lang Oh Lord, how full of Cantuar!"

Lord Brownlow, regarding himself as one of Edward's closest friends, immediately sent an indignant letter to the Archbishop.
²⁰
He received some letters of sympathy for his position from the public. 'We strongly condemn Primate's address as uncharitable and unchris­tian and causing gross insinuations', cabled a well-wisher to Lord Brownlow on 17 December.
²¹
Walter Monckton said he had not much enjoyed 'the comments which have reached me attributing the Archbishop's rebuke to myself.'
²²

Cecil Headlam was appalled, even though he shared much of Lang's antipathy to Edward. 'We did not think it a very happy effort; it was pontifical and unctuous and snobbish', he wrote in his diary after the broadcast, adding:

Disliking Edward VIII (as one knows he did), he did not refrain from rubbing it in. I fancy that a good many people will disapprove of this: once a man is down, it never does any good to kick him and people may well ask (unfairly perhaps) why if the Archbishop felt so strongly about the King and his entourage he did not speak out long ago.
²³

Some of those who had been eager for the abdication were suddenly made mindful by the Archbishop's unkind words of the terrible dilemma that Edward had faced: 'Prayed for "Edward up to now our King",' wrote a retired engineer in his diary.
²⁴
Alan Turing condemned the hypocrisy of the Archbishop, I consider his behaviour disgraceful', he told his mother. 'He waited until Edward was safely out of the way and then unloaded a whole lot of quite uncalled-for abuse. He didn't dare to do it whilst Edward was King. Further he had no objections to the King having Mrs Simpson as a mistress, but marry her, that wouldn't do at all.'
²⁵
Edward himself had been aware of Lang's lack of visibility during the period of crisis. 'He stood aside', recalled Edward later, 'until the fateful fabric had been woven and the crisis was over. Yet from beginning to end I had a disquieting feeling that he was invisibly and noiselessly about.'
²⁶

Bruce Lockhart spent most of the morning of 14 December writing a paragraph for the
Evening Standard
attacking the Archbishop of Canterbury. He had been astonished that Lang had not only rebuked the ex-King, but also called on the nation to rebuke Edward's friends. Many of those friends were people from the 'best' families, observed Lockhart:

The people who were closest to him during his reign were: Duff and Diana Cooper, Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, Lord and Lady Brownlow, Euan and Barbara Wallace, Mr and Mrs Fitzgerald, Lord Dudley, Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. Not heavy-weights, but certainly no more deserving of Archbishop's rebuke than ninety per cent of the population!
²⁷

'There has been a perfect storm of anger', wrote Churchill to the Duke of Windsor, 'raised against [Lang] for his unchivalrous reference to the late reign. Even those who were very hostile to your standpoint turned round and salved their feelings by censuring the Archbishop. All the newspapers were inundated with letters of protest.'
²⁸
Lloyd

George's former chief of staff and political adviser said that the King was 'now the victim of the malice of gossips, the hypocritical righteousness of the Bishops, and even, I am afraid, of the Non- Conformist conscience at its most nauseating sanctimoniousness.' This, he said, 'is a great score for the Church, for Morality and for organized Puritanism; and the whole business makes me want to vomit.

Baldwin received letters about the Archbishop's words. One 'ordi­nary honest working man' believed that the Archbishop had every right to speak his mind on 'the truth about that section of society gamblers who have caused this most terrible loss to us & "roped in" our beloved King.'
³⁰
A woman in Devon, who kept a little shop selling papers and books, said that she heard in her customers' conversations 'all people's views expressed & since your last triumph tis [sic] wonder­ful to hear so many changed opinions now expressed - No one but "Stanley Baldwin" could have done such marvellous tasks .. . God bless you always.'
³¹

But a woman in Leeds sent a furious letter to Baldwin, holding him responsible for slander. She was
'horrified',
she said, by the Archbishop's speech. 'You said you were [Edward's] friend in the House of Commons', she reminded him, then issued this reprimand:

Well! I ask you to prove that friendship to its limits. What is friendship worth if it cannot defend one who cannot - may not - or will not - speak for himself? Since the heartbreak of December ioth the people of England seem to have gone mad . .. Since the Archbishop of Canterbury's broadcast last Sunday -1 have not met one man, woman or child who has not made some terrible accusation against Edward VIIIth . . . Has not the nation had its 'pound of flesh'?

She quoted to Baldwin some of the ugly comments about Edward that her teenage daughter had brought home from school, and implored: 'Mr Baldwin,
I beg of you most humbly and earnestly
to
please do something
! Please repudiate publicly the people who utter these vile slanders ... I am so incensed at this evil thing in our midst, that I will leave no stone unturned to get this matter righted, but I have sufficient confidence in you and your sense of Justice.'
³²

A number of people sent letters to Churchill, complaining about the Archbishop. One man was worried that Edward might believe that the people had turned against him. He suggested that 'some form of testimonial might be arranged through you to Prince Edward, to show him what the Country really thinks of him, and not what the Archbishop of cant and the Prime Minister of humbugs think.'
³³
'I am writing to you,' said one woman, 'because you were with our dearly loved Duke of Windsor, only a few hours before he bade us farewell! . . . our hearts are still heavy with sorrow, that he is not in the land of his birth, the country he loved.' She bitterly resented the Arch­bishop's speech and - not realizing that Queen Mary had actually written to congratulate him on his words - asked, 'What must have been the feelings of our dear Queen Mother, and all the Royal Family? In more humble ranks, too, certain reflections on any section of the community, especially by radio, make it seem unsportsmanlike! The victim or victims cannot reply! Moreover, the Church should be above this.'
³⁴

It was all part of 'buttering up the new King at the expense of the old one', thought Geoffrey Wells. 'It's dreadful - not one honest voice.' Usually an enthusiastic cinema-goer, his last visit had made him miserable. 'The News
all
King - awful stuff', he complained in his diary. 'Played God Save the King, and all stood up, but
after
what had gone before I could have been kicked from one side of the hall to the other more bearably than standing in that solemn crowd. So I sat tight.' Wells believed that Edward had behaved 'like a man':

I can respect a King who acted, however dictatorially, as a King, even tho' I opposed him to the death: but I could
not
respect those (Baldwin etc) who set up a King and then demand that he behave like a dummy.
³⁵

Meanwhile, Society behaved as if there had been a royal death. The new King's family cancelled all invitations, as did many London hostesses. At a party for Sir Thomas Beecham, organized by Emerald Cunard, most women wore black
³⁶
(although according to one report, 'Lady Mountbatten looked almost startlingly gay in a dress of aquamarine blue, paillettes matching her aquamarine necklace and a wrap of bright blue ostrich feathers'
³⁷
). Back in London after a brief visit to Edward in Austria, Perry Brownlow was horrified to find himself ostracized. He telephoned Diana Vreeland late one night and asked her to come and see him and his wife, Kitty. Since his return two weeks before, he told Diana and her husband, Reed, everyone had been turning their back on him - 'This is my life: today I walk into White's and every man leaves the bar.' He was shocked to be snubbed in this way by his fellow members of White's, the grandest of gentlemen's clubs in London, in St James's. 'I walk down Seymour Street, where Kitty and I have lived all these years', he told them, 'and if I see a friend he crosses to the other side of the street. Nobody - but
nobody
- speaks to me in London. It's as if people really believed I was a party to the abdication - to a conspiracy!!'
³⁸
'I stayed there two days with him,' he sighed. 'Now I'm back in London, and this is my reward - I am completely,
totally
alone.'
³⁹
Brownlow soon received yet another punishment for his loyalty to Edward - dismissal from his position of Lord-in-Waiting. He was summarily replaced by the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, but was not even told officially - he knew only because he read about it for himself in the Court Circular.

Lord Brownlow 'came to see Stan', wrote Lucy Baldwin in her diary on 18 December, adding that he was 'Very harried & very worried at the odium he has earned by looking after Mrs Simpson for King Edward.'
⁴⁰
He also wrote to Lord Cromer, who was Lord Chamberlain, objecting in the strongest terms.

But Brownlow's loyal efforts on Edward's behalf were appreciated in some quarters. 'I, as one of the poor,' wrote a Towcester woman, 'wish to thank you for your brave deed in standing by the Duke of Winsor [sic] and Mrs Simpson, we have only praise for your good deed.'
⁴²
Wallis herself was grateful beyond measure. 'I can never make you realize my gratitude and appreciation for everything you did for me', she wrote from Cannes on 18 December - 'to go into it only brings tears so you will understand won't you?'
⁴⁵
Feeling hated by so many people in England, Wallis found great comfort in Brownlow's staunch support. 'There is nothing I can begin to say about Perry's friendship for us', she wrote to Edward. 'It has been absolutely marvel­lous in every way. Do tell him. I can't because I begin to cry, I have never seen anything like it.'
⁴⁴

Others were made to suffer for their friendship with Edward and Wallis. 'The other day in my presence', Queen Mary wrote to Prince Paul, the regent of Yugoslavia,

Bertie told George he wished him and Marina never to see Lady Cunard again and George said he would not do so. I fear she has done David a great deal of harm as there is no doubt that she was great friends with Mrs Simpson at one time and gave parties for her. Under the circumstances I feel none of us, in fact people in society, should meet her.

She was sure that

you will agree one should not meet her again after what has happened and I am hoping that George and Marina will no longer see certain people who alas were friends of Mrs S and Lady Cunard's and also David's ... As you may imagine I feel very strongly on the matter but several people have mentioned to me what harm she has done.
⁴⁵

George and Marina were picked out for this special attention because of the close friendship between George and Edward and because the Kents had often been in the company of Edward and Wallis at Fort Belvedere.

Everyone in Society understood that a purge was underway. 'Are we all on the "Black List"?' wondered Chips Channon. 'Are the Sutherlands, the Marlboroughs, the Stanleys?'
⁴⁶
Queen Elizabeth thanked Lady Londonderry for her 'thoughtfulness' in inquiring whether or not certain people should be invited to a party. She told her that 'Lady Cunard is really the only one that we do not want to meet just now. The bitter months of last autumn & winter are still so fresh in our minds.' Her presence, she added, 'would inevitably bring so many sad thoughts, that we would prefer not to meet her . . . There is nobody else on your little list, except possibly poor Mrs Corrigan [an American hostess], who one could take any exception to, and I do appreciate your tact and kindness in writing.'
⁴⁷

Whereas Brownlow was punished, Hardinge flourished under the new royal regime. 'For your ear only,' he wrote to Dawson, 'I am staying on as P.S. [Private Secretary] to our new King - to which, when I am rested, I am immensely looking forward.'
⁴⁸
Soon afterwards, at the beginning of 1937, Hardinge became one of the youngest Knights of the Bath on the Civil List. Wigram was rewarded, too. 'I am glad to see Clive Wigram is to be
Permanent
Lord in Waiting, a new post, that he may be always about the King', noted George Trevelyan. 'He was G V's prop and staff, but E had no use for him.'
⁴⁹
Almost from the start it appeared that Louis Mountbatten, Edward's cousin, 'was going to cross the chasm safely from one reign to the next.' He was appointed Personal Naval Aide-de-Camp to the new King and was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order.
⁵⁰
Charles Lambe, who became the sole attendant on the Duke of Windsor in January 1937, later returned to work in the Royal Household for George VI, at the King's special request. Joey Legh, who went with Edward into exile after his abdication broadcast, came back to England when the new King asked him to be his Master of the Household. Edward's second Assistant Private Secretary, Sir Godfrey Thomas, was transferred to the service of Harry, the Duke of Gloucester, as his Private Secretary.