The Peoples King (49 page)

Cosmo Gordon Lang counted his blessings in the new regime of George VI. 'What a relief it was, after the strained and wilful ways of the late King,' he wrote in his diary, 'to be in this atmosphere of intimate friendship, and instead of looking forward to the Coronation as a sort of nightmare, to realise that ... I was now sure that to the solemn words of the Coronation there would be a sincere response.' At Christmas the new King wrote to him, he said, 'most kindly'. He observed that it would be difficult to see in his handwriting and especially his signature, 'George R I,' any difference from that of his father. '
Prosit omen!',
he declared with satisfaction.
⁹⁰

For the two lovers, waiting to marry and commit the rest of their lives to each other, the prospect of Christmas in 1936 was not a happy one. it's pathetic,' wrote Edward to Wallis, 'but we'll just have to write this Christmas off and make up for it by so many lovely happy ones in the future.' He added,

I will go to church in Vienna on Friday for eleven o'clock service and pray so hard that God goes on blessing WE for the rest of our lives. He has been very good to WE and is watching over US I know ... I love you love you Wallis more and more and more and am holding so tight."

Nor was it a happy prospect for many British citizens. 'I am actually blubbing now,' wrote a woman from Dorset, 'and trying hard to prevent the tears from spoiling this paper. The most useful present for everyone this Christmas will be handkerchiefs. England will indeed be called a "Wet Country", floods are not in it!!'
⁹²
'When glasses are raised to the King at Christmas,' wrote a Quaker, 'many will be to the King across the sea.'
⁹³
From a woman in North Wales came a letter of thanks to Edward for all the love and tenderness he had shown to his people. Her nine-year-old daughter Elaine sent a cross, painted with Balmain's Luminous Paint, so that it would shine out all night. On the front of this cross, which must have been a treasure in a poor house­hold, was written, 'Remembrance Christmas 1936' - and on the back, 'Love and Kisses from Elaine x x x God Bless You.'
⁹⁴

Edward's concern for the poor and his recent visit to South Wales were not forgotten. 'Three weeks ago we stood for two hours to catch a glimpse of Your Majesty as you passed through Blaina,' wrote a woman from Abertillery in Wales, it is now a most cherished memory,' she added - 'that glimpse of you. We shall now go on with the Social Service work instigated at your request - we will be faithful to the vision which Your Majesty was granted of "depressed areas" becom­ing transformed through fellowship arising out of voluntary service.' She was writing her letter, she added, in tears.
⁹⁵

‘It has been a terrible time here,' wrote Winston Churchill to David Lloyd George on Christmas Day, 'and I am profoundly grieved at what has happened. I believe the Abdication to have been altogether premature and probably quite unnecessary.'
⁹⁶
Lloyd George sent Christmas wishes to Edward. His cable from Jamaica bore greetings from

an old Minister of the Crown who holds you in as high esteem as ever and regards you with deeper loyal affection, deplores the shabby and stupid treatment accorded to you, resents the mean and unchivalrous attacks upon you and regrets the loss sustained by the British Empire of a monarch who sympathized with the lowliest of his subjects.

He received the following reply on Christmas Day:

Very touched by your kind telegram and good wishes, which I heartily recipro­cate.
Cymru am byth
[Wales for ever. Edward.'
⁹⁷

Wallis Simpson finally obtained her decree absolute on 3 May 1937. A comprehensive investigation had been carried out by the King's Proctor into the divorce suit of
Simpson
v.
Sitnpson,
most of it during February 1937. The Simpsons' servants,
¹
sailors on board the
Rosaura
and the
Nahlin,
the proprietor of a hotel in Felixstowe, and Ernest Simpson himself were all interviewed.
²
Simpson insisted that 'there was no arrangement between himself and the King or his wife with regard to the divorce proceedings.'
³
While the investigation was going on, Walter Monckton worried about its outcome. 'As you know,' he wrote to Sir Horace Wilson,

‘
I dined with the Prime Minister last week and yesterday I saw the King. I am very anxious that an impression should not get abroad that the powers that be would be glad if the decree were not made absolute. I do not suppose that Mr Baldwin wishes the decree not to be made absolute and I know the King hopes all will go smoothly.

He added that he was 'less certain of some of the others. Personally I feel that if there was a hitch we might well be in for a tragedy before the coronation - certainly for something extremely unpleasant.'
⁴
In the event, he need not have worried. The King's Proctor took the view that the Simpsons' divorce suit was probably an arranged one, but his enquiries had produced no evidence to support his suspicions.
⁵

Throughout this period, regular secret reports were being sent to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police from the Scotland Yard detectives who were guarding the Duke of Windsor and Mrs Simpson. Reports by Inspector Evans, staying at Cannes with Mrs Simpson, gave accounts of shopping trips and dinners, and also of the telephone conversations - sometimes almost word for word - between herself and Edward.
⁶
The Commissioner heard the humdrum details of Edward's routine at Enzesfeld Castle from Inspector Storrier: rounds of golf, skiing, visits to Vienna, and plans to visit Paris to consult his dentist.
⁷
On 28 April Storrier told the Commissioner that 'HRH is in good health and spends his time writing, telephoning, golfing, visiting towns in the vicinity and mountaineering, although I think interest in the latter is now on the wane.' He also mentioned a plan by the Duke to visit Wallis. The Duke was 'somewhat nervously excited', said Storrier, 'at the prospect of such a move which, so far, is being secretly arranged for Monday, 3rd May [the day Wallis's decree nisi was made absolute]. This is, of course, to Tours, to join Mrs Simpson, an action which I know, Sir, is not viewed in a favourable light by those in authority in the matter in London.' Storrier reported that 'the Press, as usual, are not far behind' and promised to find out more.
⁸

The Home Secretary, Sir John Simon, was briefed by Sir Philip Game, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, on the reports filed by Inspectors Evans and Storrier. Sir John sought further information about the Duke from Piers Legh, a former courtier of Edward's who had stayed with him for a while in Austria. In a conversation with Legh, Sir John 'observed that nothing was so certain to do injury both to the Duke and to the lady as any suspicion on the part of the British Public that they were attempting a "come back".' Colonel Legh's own view was that 'the lady should never expect to come back to this country at all'.
⁹

A month after her divorce had been made absolute, on 3 June, Wallis Warfield married Edward, Duke of Windsor at the Chateau de Cande in France. It was a warm and sunny day. Wallis's wedding ring had been fashioned from an ounce of Welsh gold, a present from one of Edward's former subjects, and the couple were 'delighted to think that the gold comes from Wales'.
¹⁰
The wedding ceremony was 'a supremely happy moment', wrote the Duchess in her memoirs.

Her aunt, who had returned to America in February, came back to Europe for the wedding and helped Wallis to dress in the outfit of blue silk crepe that had been designed for the occasion by Mainbocher. The guests included George Allen, Walter Monckton, Winston Chur­chill's son Randolph, the Baron and Baroness de Rothschild, and the First Secretary to the British Embassy in Paris. Herman Rogers gave Wallis away, and 'Fruity' Metcalfe, an old friend of Edward's, was his best man.

Edward had wanted his favourite brother, George, to be best man - but, to his and Wallis's huge disappointment, not a single member of the royal family came to the wedding. If any of them were to attend, Sir John Simon had warned the King, 'this would be regarded, and represented, as accepting the future Duchess
for all purposes
into the Royal circle ... If, for example, it is desired to discourage return to this country, absence from the wedding could be indicative of a desire to maintain a certain aloofness.'" The King dispatched a letter to this effect to the Duke on 11 April 1937. 'His Majesty has firmly told him', reported Wigram to Sir John, 'that no brother nor sister can attend the wedding, nor will His Majesty allow one of his chaplains to officiate.'
¹²
Edward had taken it for granted that a royal chaplain would be officiating. When he learnt that this had been forbidden, he sought another Anglican clergyman who would be willing to perform the wedding service. Each one who was approached refused, but eventually the Reverend J. A. Jardine, a priest from Darlington, offered himself for the role, and Edward gratefully accepted.

Royal courtiers and friends were also discouraged from accepting an invitation. Even Lord Brownlow, after much hesitation, stayed away. He had been firmly advised by a Lincolnshire MP that if he and his wife were to go, his position as Lord Lieutenant would become untenable and he would be forced by 'public opinion' to give it up." The Bishop of Lincoln had added his weight, predicting that 'the Lincolnshire side of your life would become very difficult' if he went.
¹⁴
Winston Churchill believed that the Brownlows should attend, saying that 'friendship stood on a higher plane than any other consideration'.
¹⁵
But Brownlow chose not to defy the warnings from

Lincolnshire: presumably, he and his family had suffered enough by now. He did, however, condemn the debarring of the Duke's family and friends from the wedding as 'short-sighted, foolish, uncharitable, and cruel'.
¹⁶

Just before the wedding, King George VI sent his brother a wound­ing wedding gift. He informed Edward in a letter that the title of HRH - 'Her Royal Highness' - could not be extended to his wife. She would be simply 'Duchess of Windsor'. Wallis was not allowed, therefore, to take her place within the royal family. Thus, in the end, Edward
did
have a morganatic marriage - even though Baldwin had insisted to Edward, while he was King, that no such thing existed in England. It was a bitter and painful blow, not least because the Duke of Windsor knew perfectly well that his wife was legally entitled to the status of HRH, just as Elizabeth, Duchess of York had become Her Royal Highness on marrying Albert in I923-
¹
' This was also the consensus of law officers at the highest level. They pointed out that 'the wife of an abdicated King who had been allowed himself after abdication to use the title would normally be also entitled.'
¹⁸

Sir John Simon knew this too. Unless appropriate action were taken, he argued at a meeting of the Cabinet, the woman whom the Duke of Windsor proposed to marry would by the mere fact of her marriage enjoy the title of Her Royal Highness. 'Something,' he added, 'must be done'.
¹⁹
Evidently, the phrase used by Edward in South Wales in November 1936, which was now world-famous, had crept into the consciousness of the Home Secretary.

Queen Elizabeth and King George were adamant that Wallis should be deprived of the title. 'You are aware how strongly the King and Queen desire this situation to be established,' wrote Sir John in a memorandum to Neville Chamberlain, who was now Prime Minister. 'I believe Queen Mary also has strong views that it should, if possible, be done.'
²⁰
Accordingly, letters patent were issued declaring that the King wished his brother personally to enjoy the title of Royal Highness, but that it was not extended to his wife or possible children.
²¹
Lord Jowitt, who was to become Lord Chancellor in 1945, argued in 1937 and later that the letters patent proceeded upon a misapprehension of the law. There had been no need for new letters patent to create the Duke HRH, he said, and the Duchess was entitled to an equivalent rank because she was his wife.
²²
Depriving Wallis of the title caused festering pain to Edward and Wallis for the rest of their lives - not so much because it took away her rightful style, as because it symbolized the refusal of Edward's brother and sister-in-law to accept his wife into their family.

The story of Edward's abdication for the woman he loved was the most celebrated love story of the decade. But the wedding was not covered in the newsreels because the British companies came to an agreement to keep the story from cinema screens. It was simply too risky to break the unofficial taboo against anything relating to Wallis and Edward. Gone was the chance to pack every cinema in the country, for days on end,
²³
and the people of Britain were not allowed to witness the happiness of the man they had adored as King. On the wedding day, a Londoner decorated the balcony of his Piccadilly flat with flowers and a banner which read 'Long life and happiness to the Duke and Duchess'. He was asked by the agents of the prop­erty to take the banner down, and when he refused the police were brought in.
²⁴

Ernest Simpson's love affair with Mary Kirk Raffray also led to a wedding. She divorced her husband, and in the autumn of 1937 she and Ernest were married. Two years later they had a son, and they stayed together until parted by death.
²¹