The Peoples King (48 page)

Osbert Sitwell wrote a nasty poem, 'Rat Week', which claimed that as soon as the King had abdicated, all his friends - and Wallis's, too - deserted them. Sitwell adored Elizabeth, the new Queen. He had been a regular visitor at the Yorks' home on 145 Piccadilly and they shared many close friends, including Mrs Greville. Sitwell, who saw himself as an aesthete of the highest refinement, despised Edward, regarding him as a Philistine with no proper taste or appreciation of art. He shuddered at Edward's love for an American from Baltimore and he dismissed his interest in the life of working-class families as irrelevant and even unpleasant. Sitwell had already used poetry to savage his enemies, who ranged from Churchill and Beaverbrook to Aldous Huxley, D. H. Lawrence and his two prize foes, Noel Coward and Wyndham Lewis.
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Now he attacked the former King and his beloved, by disparaging their friends:

Where are the friends of yesterday

That fawned on Him,

That flattered Her;

Where are the friends of yesterday, Submitting to His every whim,

Offering praise of Her as myrrh To Him?
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'Rat Week' was accurate in so far as some people had indeed behaved very badly towards old friends. 'Ratting', it seemed, was de rigeur.
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' But Sitwell's poem was riddled with untruths. Despite Wallis's bad press - 'No one has been more victimized by gossip and scandal', said Churchill
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- her close friends did not desert her. It was true that the English 'set' on the Riviera generally shunned Wallis, but she and Sybil Colefax - a genuine friend - spent Christmas Day together, two weeks after the abdication, at Villa Mauresque, the home of the writer Somerset Maugham. In March 1937, Maugham wrote to a friend that in the early part of the previous winter,

We saw a certain amount of Mrs Simpson and as you know she came to stay here. I had known her years ago before she became a figure of world-wide importance and the strange thing about her is that she has not altered at all. She has always been very loyal to her old friends and that I think is one of the qualities that has done her most harm.

He added, 'I think she had a very difficult role to play and I doubt whether any woman could have played it successfully.'
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Daisy Fel- lowes was another old friend who was delighted to see Wallis in the South of France. And Wallis's old friends from Peking, Herman and Katherine Rogers, who looked after her at Lou Viei, remained loyal and loving even though their lives were thrown into disarray by the drama of Wallis's sudden arrival and her long stay, with an army of journalists continually camped outside their gates.

Nor was Edward rejected by his genuine friends. Duff Cooper, writing his memoirs in the fifties, fondly recalled Edward's 'sympathy with suffering, courage and sincerity'.
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Lord Brownlow, who had lost and suffered so much through his loyalty to Edward, remained defiant for the rest of his life. At Belton House, his country estate in Lincoln­shire, photographs of Edward and Wallis covered the desks and tables - and many of them have stayed there ever since.

Winston Churchill suffered from feelings of almost fatalistic depression, according to his daughter Mary.
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He was at an extremely low point in his political fortunes and was resented by the new King and Queen - for his loyalty to Edward, and for his energetic opposition to the policy of appeasement to Nazi Germany. He continued to look out for Edward's interests, and reported in a letter to his wife, Clementine, that 'HMG [Her Majesty's Government] are preparing a dossier about the D of W's finances, debts and spendings on acct of Cutie [Wallis] wh[ich] I fear they mean to use to his detriment when the Civil List is considered.' Churchill's letter ended with a postscript:
'
"O
di quem laeseris"
(Hate whom you have injured) as the Romans used to say—.'
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Clementine Churchill had not shared her husband's support for Edward as King, but she did share his revulsion at the way people suddenly turned their backs on their former sovereign. She made her feelings known at a dinner held by Chips Channon for a couple called the Granards which was attended by the Churchills and some other friends. Channon was in any case concerned that his guests were 'a little too Edward VIII for the Granards' - that it was 'a thoroughly "Cavalier" collection'. When, predictably, Lord Granard attacked the former King, Mrs Churchill 'turned on him and asked crushingly, "If you feel that way, why did you invite Mrs Simpson to your house and put her on your right?" '
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(By putting Wallis on his right, he had been treating her as the female guest of honour and therefore, by implication, as Edward's wife.)

Cinema-goers in America made their feelings known. At the Embassy Theater in Times Square in New York City, reported
Time
magazine, the newsreel reports on the abdication were watched noisily:

Prince Edward (cheers); Mrs Simpson (cheers); her first husband Commander Spencer, USN (boos); her second and present husband Mr Simpson (cheers and boos); new King George and Queen Elizabeth (boos); Prime Minister Baldwin (prolonged catcalls and boos); King Edward and Mrs Simpson bath­ing in Mediterranean (cheers).
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Well-meant offers of help were sent to Edward from the USA. 'Why in screaming thunder don't you marry Wally and come to Hobbs New Mexico. A welcome awaits you', urged one telegram.
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Another, from Mississippi, promised him 'true Southern hospitality and plantation life'.
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In Canada, people quickly forgot about the crisis of Edward's abdication, which worried Sir Francis Floud, the British High Com­missioner in Ottawa. Although this might simply have been because 'it takes a great deal to disturb the self-centredness of the Canadian', he wrote to the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs in London on 2.2 December, there was an obvious danger that respect for the Crown in Canada was deteriorating.
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Edward had arrived at Enzesfeld Castle in Austria on Monday 14 December, the day after the Archbishop's speech. He now had to endure a period of suffering that was even more terrible than the last few weeks. He could not see the woman he loved, for whom he had given up a throne, because their lawyers had advised them not to be together at any time until the decree nisi was made absolute. Not until then, in five months time, would they finally be able to marry. Even this was not certain. On the one hand, the affidavit that had been served just days before the abdication, alleging collusion in the Simpsons' divorce, had now been withdrawn as a result of Edward's farewell speech to the nation. The man who had submitted it did not 'feel justified,' he wrote to Goddard, 'in view of the Broadcast at 10 o'clock on Friday evening last to which I listened, in pursuing the matter further.'
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But on the other hand, a further affidavit had followed, and the King's Proctor was bound to launch an investigation.
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When Perry Brownlow went to see Edward at Enzesfeld, 'a footman took him though this cold, lonely castle to a room. He went into the room and there he saw the Duke - who looked just like a little schoolboy sound asleep, with sun coming across his blond hair. His bed was surrounded by chairs . . . and on each chair was a picture of his beloved Wallis.' His love, said Lord Brownlow, 'was an obsession. No greater love has ever existed.'
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For Wallis at Lou Viei, this further trial of waiting and worry was unbearable. 'Darling,' she wrote to Edward, 'I want to leave here I want to see you touch you I want to run my own house I want to be married and to you.'
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Her heart, she said, was 'so full of love for you and the agony of not being able to see you after all you have been through is pathetic. At the moment we have the whole world against us and our love ... I love you David and 1 am holding so tight.'
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In fact, the 'whole world' was
not
against them and their love - but it was impossible for her to know this. She hated the notoriety that had attached itself to her name and learned with horror that Madame Tussaud's had put up a waxwork of her. She asked Walter Monckton to investigate, and he reported back: 'The figure of Mrs S is in the Grand Hall. It stands alone in an alcove draped with black velvet cushions. She is represented in a standing position wearing a red evening dress. There is nothing remarkable about the figure.' She was placed between a group on one side which included Voltaire, Marie Antoinette, Joan of Arc and Louis XIV, and a group on the other side with Ailenby, French, Haig, Kitchener, Roberts and Wellington.
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To her friend Sybil Colefax, Wallis sent letters expressing her hurt and distress at Edward's treatment. 'I am more than discouraged', she wrote, 'by the propaganda allowed in England against the Duke . . . when the records of his speech were not allowed in England.' Surely, she added, 'it is an organized campaign and not very creditable con­sidering it is against one man who has shown nothing but loyalty to his country.' Every night, she said, 'in spite of bishops I pray to god not to let me become bitter.' The strain had been dreadful and seemed to be reflected in the storms shaking the house: 'The weather is not quieting - every day a wild wind rushing up the valley shrieking, screaming until I think I shall go mad.'
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She thanked Sybil for sticking by her. 'As you know,' she told her, 'your friendship makes me very happy.'
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Telephone calls between Austria and Cannes were frequently inter­rupted by line failure, and in any case it was difficult for Wallis and Edward to hear each other. In her loneliness, Wallis felt vulnerable and feared he might not love her any more. 'I look a hundred and weigh no [pounds],' she wrote in despair, 'you won't love me when you see the wreck England has made me.'
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Her love for Edward never wavered, but her confidence did, and at moments she even became jealous of Edward's hostess, Kitty, the Baroness Eugene de Rothschild. At first, Wallis had felt warmly towards her. Before Edward's arrival, she wrote to her, asking, 'Dear Kitty - be kind to him. He is honest and good and really worthy of affection. They simply haven't under­stood.'
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But shortly after Edward had settled down at Enzesfeld Castle, she began to suffer pangs of insecurity. 'I long for you and love you,' she told him, 'but become eanum suspicious of "all of you". It is odd the hostess remaining on. Must be that fatal charm!'
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Her jealousy was fed by the rumours that circulated about each of them. 'I have a letter from a woman in Paris,' she wrote in misery to Edward saying that Kitty

has arrived full of new rumours, additional gossip, etc. I can only pray to God that in your loneliness you haven't flirted with her (I suspect that) or told everything about yourself - finances, family matters or hurt feelings over your brothers [sic] treatment of you because Paris will be full of that and once on the telephone she hinted to me that London wasn't treating you well ... I know my sweet you have a way of telling too much to strangers and heaven knows the Rothschilds were that when you arrived.
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Edward replied with understanding and devotion. 'I know WE will so hold tight', he assured her. He knew she would trust him, and was certain that she would
never take any notice of anything or rotten gossip that any foul woman or women may try to spread. I hate them all darling and despise them all so. So you do so too and never never believe a word of it because it never never would or will be true.
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One great comfort to Wallis was the arrival of both her Aunt Bessie and Wallis's maid, Mary Burke, who left London together on 18 December for Cannes, bringing Wallis's clothes. Bessie stayed at the Carlton Hotel to be near her niece. The day before her departure, she sent Edward a letter telling him 'how constantly I have held you in my thoughts since you left, and, Sir, with what affectionate regard you will always remain there.'
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Edward replied with equally loving affection, happy that she would soon be with Wallis.
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An endless stream of mail arrived for the Duke, including telegrams of good wishes from individual branches of the British Legion.
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Edward was joined at the castle by his equerry, Charles Lambe, who handled much of the mail: 'letters, letters, letters - lovingly, honestly and dishonestly - the whole world profoundly moved or disturbed.' But Edward was in reasonable spirits, judged Lambe, all things con­sidered. 'He has been surprisingly settled and well in mind and body', he told a friend, and 'there is no looking back and apparently still not even a shadow of a question as to the rightness of his decision. He regards these few months till April as a period of "mourning" or penance and his whole being exists only for that not so distant date.'
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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang, wrote in his diary, 'My heart aches for the Duke of Windsor ... I cannot bear to think of the kind of life into which he has passed.'
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John Buchan, too, was unable to comprehend Edward's love for Wallis. On 15 December, he wrote to Edith Londonderry from Canada to say that he was 'desperately sorry for the late King. I detested the raffish set in which he moved, though I could not help liking him greatly as a human being.' He added that he could not 'get him out of my head,
for I do not see what possible happiness there is in store for him
.' Although Edward had made clear in his broadcast the depth of his devotion and his need for Wallis, Buchan still found it impossible to believe that Edward could or would be happy with her.
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Robert Bernays, too, believed that Edward was doomed to misery. 'I was terribly moved by his broadcast address,' he wrote in his diary, 'not because I had any sympathy for him but at the stark tragedy of his failure. It was like seeing a man of great promise committing suicide before one's eyes.'
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' But the priorities of the Duke were different, and he was looking forward to great happiness. He telephoned Norman Birkett, who had acted as counsel for Wallis in the divorce case, to thank him for his work in obtaining the decree nisi. 'I spoke to the Duke of Windsor in Austria last night', Birkett wrote to his cousin. 'It was strange to hear the voice that spoke to millions the other night just speaking to me. He was amusing about the Archbishops! I must tell you all about it sometime, but of course it is all
very private . .
,'
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Marrying Wallis and continuing as King would have been the most desirable outcome for Edward. But if it came to a choice between the two, he had no doubts - he chose the woman he loved over the crown. To many, this was the right thing to do - it was not a false act or a symptom of some pathology. Indeed, he had been encouraged to follow this path by many of his subjects, when the story broke at the beginning of December - 'Stick to your Gal: & as an ex Guardsman don't desert.'
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'I think you are so noble and a real man to stand by your Lady Love,' a girl in Cardiff had written to Edward. 'My daddy deserted my Mummie & I and we are so sad - I had to leave my nice school and friends . . . Your Lady Love must be proud of you.'
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An ex- serviceman sent his own congratulations: 'I too like countless other thousands went through those awe inspiring years of the War with you . . . your brave Abdication comes right home to me.'
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'I hate the thought of you leaving us,' wrote another veteran of the war. 'I fought with you in France & I know how you feel. Your heart has brought you a loved one & you have every right to her'.
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In one letter was a small packet containing one of a pair of four-leaf clovers. These clovers, explained the man who sent the letter, had been sent to him when he was at Gallipoli in 1915, where the Allies had suffered a terrible and brutal defeat with over two hundred thousand casualties. He had survived, thanks to the clovers, and had carried them with him ever since. Now he hoped the King would accept one of the clovers 'for luck'.
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