by Anne Edwards
A divorce decree nisi was granted to Mrs. Simpson on October 27, and on November 16 the King saw the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, and announced that he intended to marry Wallis Simpson and to do so would, if necessary, abdicate the Throne. On the evening of this day, he went to dine in white tie and tailcoat with his mother and sister at Marlborough House. Queen Mary, the Princess Royal, and his brother Harry’s wife, Alice, waited to greet him in his mother’s boudoir. He was surprised at Alice’s presence but was reassured when Queen Mary announced that Alice would leave soon after dinner. It became obvious to the King that a discussion was planned for that time and that Alice had been included in the dinner to keep the tone of the meal light.
For the troubled King, the meal, for which he had little appetite, “seemed endless. I was preoccupied with what I was going to say afterward,” he later confessed; “no matter how gracefully I proceeded, the evening was bound to be difficult for all of us. I tried to ease the tension by keeping the conversation on a light plane. I congratulated my mother upon the record contribution of garments to her favourite charity, the London Needlework Guild. She was glad to hear that I had arranged to have the outside of Buckingham Palace painted before the coronation next year. ‘It’s high time,’ she said. I asked Mary whether she and her husband had bought any yearlings at the Newmarket sales. But I felt especially sorry for poor Alice. Shy and retiring by nature, she had all unwittingly sat down at my mother’s table only to find herself caught up in the opening scene of one of the most poignant episodes in the annals of the British Royal Family. Never loquacious, this evening she uttered not a word. And, when at last we got up to leave the table, she eagerly seized upon the interruption to protest that she was extremely tired and to ask that she be excused. After making her curtsy she almost fled from the room. My mother, Mary, and I retired to the boudoir. We were alone.
“Settling down in a chair, I told them of my love for Wallis and my determination to marry her and of the opposition of the Prime Minister and the Government to the marriage. The telling was all the harder because until that evening the subject had not been discussed between us.”
What the King did not know was that only a few days before Mrs. Simpson’s divorce case came up for hearing, Queen Mary, in an unprecedented show of maternal concern, had in private urged members of the Cabinet to take some kind of action (presumably to block the divorce). Considering Queen Mary’s strict views on divorce, for her to sanction her eldest son marrying a woman with “two husbands living” would have been out of the question.
The more the King talked, the clearer his intention was made that he would abdicate rather than give up Wallis Simpson. Queen Mary became even more rigid and withdrawn, and he was to say, “My mother had been schooled to put duty in the stoic Victorian sense before everything else in life. From her invincible virtue and correctness she looked out as from a fortress upon the rest of humanity with all its tremulous uncertainties and distractions.”
To Queen Mary, the Monarchy was, indeed, “something sacred and the Sovereign a personage apart.” The steel gate of the word duty fell between mother and son. Desperation and the feeling that, if he could but win over his mother, she could then plead his case to the Prime Minister and Cabinet caused the King to press on: “Please, won’t you let me bring Wallis Simpson to see you?” he asked.
Her answer was a strong and deliberate, “That is quite out of the question.”
David rose to leave, and she walked him to the door of her boudoir. “I hope, sir, that you will make a wise decision for your future,” she said, adding, “I fear your visit to South Wales [the King was leaving for a short tour the next morning] will be trying in more ways than one.”
The King felt that what separated him and his mother “was not a question of duty but a different concept of Kingship.” Shockingly, either he did not understand or did not accept the fact that Britain was a constitutional monarchy and he did not have the inalienable right to do as he pleased. At this stage, he truly believed he could make Wallis Simpson his Queen without the consent of the Cabinet. In a man raised to be King, such a limited knowledge of English history is hard to believe. Most teen-aged British schoolchildren knew what their King did not—that the Sovereign was bound by the Constitutional Rule of 1688 and ultimately subject to the advice of Parliament through his Ministers. If he acted in direct opposition to Parliament and the Cabinet, like James II, he would have to forfeit his Crown.
But if he did not realise this, Queen Mary did. Therefore, when he returned from Wales, having decided, apparently, that he would marry Wallis Simpson and make her his Queen Consort, he pressed the issue with Baldwin. For though the Crown held no fascination for him and he had already seriously considered abdication, he thought it did have meaning to Mrs. Simpson and—if she could be Queen—would rectify the humiliation to which he believed she had been subjected. Queen Mary was patently exasperated at her “difficult” son. When the Prime Minister came to talk with her about the situation, she swept her hands before her in a gesture of despair and exclaimed, “Well, Mr. Baldwin! This is a pretty kettle of fish!” For two hours Queen Mary and the Prime Minister debated the question at hand. In the end, she agreed to speak with her son in what can only be termed “a last-ditch effort” to make him see where his duty lay. On November 24, at her request he came to tea at Marlborough House. At this meeting the King did indeed see his “duty,” but not from the same vantage point as his mother. Poor Bertie was Queen Mary’s argument. How could he do this to Bertie, for surely if he persisted on his present course he would have to abdicate, and Bertie was weak and not well and had never been trained to be King. The responsibilities of the Sovereign would kill Bertie. To remind her that his own father had not been raised to be King was hopeless, or that his brother and his wife were still young enough to parent a male heir.
The unfairness that Bertie should be expected to be free from the kind of responsibility the King had struck deep. Additionally, Bertie’s drinking habit, which often robbed him of lucidity, was not censured. His brother’s nervous nature was always an excuse for this weakness. David had neither the rights of the common man, nor those of any other member of the Royal family. And his mother neither saw nor empathised with his sense of injustice. He left Queen Mary determined to marry Mrs. Simpson and retreated to the security of Fort Belvedere, Wallis and her aunt, Mrs. Bessie Merriman, as “chaperone,” taking refuge there with him.
On December 3, the press, which had been “hypnotised by long habit into seeing not only no evil but no idiosyncrasy in the Royal Family, hearing none and reporting none,” broke the story of the constitutional crisis. The country was catapulted into immediate chaos. With no real warning, the public suddenly and in a matter of days had to reexamine their views on the Monarchy. What was at stake was the power of the people, through Parliament, against the power of the Monarchy.
Unlike the American Constitution, the British Constitution is mostly unwritten and is not much more than a “rhetorical abstraction.” Precedents have been set through the centuries that have become unwritten laws; no Sovereign in more than a century had dared to flout them. It is certainly correct that the King had the legal right to marry whomever he wished. Constitutional precedent had also been established in any crisis where there was a conflict of power. At such times, Parliament is above the King and he must accept the advice of Parliament through his Ministers on everything that affects public policy and the public interest.
A marriage that made Mrs. Simpson Queen Consort was simply not considered by Parliament to be in the public interest.
“Really! This might be Rumania!” Queen Mary remarked bitterly over the hysterical debates in Parliament and the ugly press coverage.
The day before the story broke, Queen Mary sent the King a note asking to see him as soon as possible. Though exhausted physically and emotionally at this point, he drove, late at night, from Fort Belvedere to Marlborough House. He found his mother, Bertie, and Bertie’s wif
e (who had accompanied her husband despite a case of the flu). The meeting was a dismal failure. If Queen Mary thought she could change her eldest son’s mind by creating a sudden sense of guilty duty in him, a silent plea that he must somehow save Bertie, she had calculated wrongly. He assured her that he did not wish to bring any of them pain, but that he had to handle this situation alone and in his own way.
The hour was too late when he left Marlborough House to return to the Fort, and so he ordered the car to Buckingham Palace.* As the immense walls of the palace loomed, he had great forebodings. A crowd was gathered, silent and ominous, at the gates, and he claimed that there came over him at that moment, “like a wave, a powerful resurgence of the intense dislike for the building” he had always felt. He was now questioning if he belonged there at all. And the answer came swiftly—“certainly not alone.” Within an hour, he set out again for Fort Belvedere. As he drove out of the gate, a cheer went up in the crowd, and he did not know if it was given in his support or at his departure.
The Cabinet refused to sanction a marriage where Mrs. Simpson became Queen and therefore entitled to all the status, rights, and privileges that the law and constitutional custom granted a Queen Consort. The King’s wishes were further doomed by the Statute of Westminster, which had been incorporated in the Constitution in 1931. This rule declared that “any alteration in the law touching the succession of the Throne or the Royal Style and titles shall hereafter require the assent as well of the Parliament of all the Dominions as of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.” Australia, Canada, and South Africa were resolved that they would not accept as Queen an American woman, twice divorced and with two living husbands. Nor would they approve a morganatic marriage. Clearly, the King could not “both remain on the Throne and marry Mrs. Simpson.”
Although the suggestion has often been made that the Government was using Mrs. Simpson as a means to remove the King from the Throne, this is unlikely. Edward VIII’s German sympathies were hardly suspected by a public that idolised him. To the youth he had become “an ideal figure which had captured their imagination and affection.” A fear of civil unrest that could follow in the footsteps of the King’s abdication existed among some members of Parliament. Youth was often unwilling to believe that their gods had any clay in their composition. The sticking point was that if the King married Mrs. Simpson and did not abdicate, he would be doing so without Parliamentary approval and would therefore be acting unconstitutionally, and he might well act independently in other matters. This possibility brought to the mind of the Cabinet the King’s views toward Germany and toward war. What was proved in the early days of December 1936 was that “the Sovereign is free to choose his own Consort providing his choice is approved by the Prime Minister and government of the day. If, on the other hand, he chooses someone generally regarded as unsuitable to be Queen, it in fact becomes a Constitutional matter.”
At a Cabinet meeting on December 2, only Duff Cooper pleaded that the issue be tabled until after the coronation and that the King be asked to delay any decision for a year. The rest of the Cabinet had been unanimous in rejecting all other alternatives to abdication, even postponement. The King had either to abdicate or renounce any plan to marry Mrs. Simpson. On December 3, Wallis Simpson took things in her own hands. She claims she was certain that there was only one solution, to remove herself from the King’s life. Her effort, however, was only a half-hearted one. On the day the King went to Marlborough House to see Queen Mary and Bertie, she left Fort Belvedere but retreated only as far as Newhaven, the home of Lord Brownlow, the King’s Lord-in-Waiting, reasoning that if she left the country the King would follow and a worse crisis would develop.
On December 7, with Mrs. Simpson tantalisingly near, yet removed, the King’s mood was one of confusion and desperation. A friend records in her diary for that day, “... the King’s one idea is Mrs. Simpson. Nothing that stands between him and her will meet his approval. The Crown is only valuable if it would interest her. He must have marriage because then she can be with him always.”*
From the night of the confrontation between the King and Queen Mary and the Duke of York, Bertie had been in a state of extreme agitation. Clearly, he would be the one most affected by his brother’s proposed abdication, and unlike the majority of heirs to the Throne before him, he had no taste or ambition for the position of King. The idea, in fact, was terrifying and abhorrent to him. The King knew this, and also that it was their mother’s fervent wish and his sister-in-law Elizabeth’s prayer that Bertie would never have to wear the Crown. Bertie’s dilemma is shown in his own chronicle of the crisis.
“[On December 3] I saw my brother (together with Walter Monkton) who was in a great state of excitement,† who said he would leave the country as King after making a broadcast to his subjects & leave it to them to decide what should be done.* The Prime Minister went to see him at 9.0 P.M. that evening & later (in Mary’s & my presence) David said to Queen Mary that he could not live alone as King & must marry Mrs.———. When David left after making this dreadful announcement to his mother he told me to come & see him at the Fort the next morning [Friday, December 4]. I rang him up but he would not see me & put me off till Saturday. I told him I would be at Royal Lodge [Windsor] on Saturday by 12:30 P.M. I rang him up Saturday. ‘Come & see me Sunday’ was his answer. ‘I will see you & tell you my decision when I have made up my mind.’ Sunday evening I rang up. ‘The King has a conference & will speak to you later’ was the answer. But he did not ring up. Monday morning [December 7] came. I rang up at 1.0 P.M. & my brother told me he might be able to see me that evening. I told him I must go to London but would come to the Fort when he wanted me! I did not go to London but waited. I sent a telephone message to the Fort to say that if I was wanted I would be at Royal Lodge. My brother rang me up at 10 minutes to 7.0 P.M. to say ‘Come & see me after dinner.’ I said ‘No, I will come & see you at once.’ I was with him at 7.0 P.M. the awful & ghastly suspense of waiting was over. I found him pacing up & down the room, & he told me his decision that he would go. I went back to Royal Lodge for dinner & returned to the Fort later. I felt having once got there I was not going to leave. As he is my eldest brother I had to be there to try & help him in his hour of need.
“I went back to London that night with my wife.
“I saw Queen Mary on Tuesday morning [the following day, December 8].”
What is interesting throughout this paper is the Duke of York’s reference to his mother as “Queen Mary,” and to his brother—who, after all, was still King—as “David” or “my brother.” His own frustrations and anger toward the King’s disregard of the duty of his birth intensified with each Royal snub and disregard for his own position in the crisis. Never in his lifetime would he forget his older brother’s actions during the abdication crisis, a fact that coloured their relationship from then on with a strong undercurrent of revenge on Bertie’s part.
Queen Mary did what she could to help Bertie regain his composure, for he was in a shocking state when she saw him on December 8. With his mother’s encouragement, Bertie forced a meeting that same afternoon with Walter Monckton, who was then closest to the King. Monckton spoke frankly to him and told him that there was no chance of the King changing his mind. He would indeed abdicate in Bertie’s favour. Bertie returned immediately to his mother at Marlborough House and told her what Monckton had said. Queen Mary as much as replied that in that case the duty was now his, and that he had to pull himself together and shoulder it with pride. He was stuttering badly and visibly upset, and the meeting ended without any of his anxieties being calmed.
That evening he was summoned by the King to dine at the Fort with the Prime Minister; Walter Monckton; Sir Edward Peacock (Receiver-General of the Duchy of Cornwall); Sir George Allen (private solicitor to the King); Major Thomas Dugdale (the Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary); and his younger brother, George, Duke of Kent. “A dinner I am never likely to forget,” Bertie recorded. “While th
e rest of us (8 in all) ... were very sad (we knew the final & irrevocable decision he had made) my brother was the life & soul of the party, telling the P.M. things I am sure he had never heard before about unemployed centres etc. [referring to King Edward’s visit in South Wales]. I whispered to W.M. ‘& this is the man we are going to lose.’ One couldn’t, nobody could, believe it.”
The next day, after meeting again with Queen Mary, Bertie had his first long talk with the King. “I could see that nothing I said would alter his decision. His mind was made up,” he noted. “I went to see Queen Mary & when I told her what had happened I broke down & sobbed like a child.” (The latter to Queen Mary’s embarrassment, for Walter Monckton was in the room with them.)
In her account, Queen Mary adds: “Bertie arrived very late from Fort Belvedere & Mr. W. Monckton brought him & me the paper drawn up for David’s abdication of the Throne of this Empire because he wishes to marry Mrs. Simpson!!!!!! ... It is a terrible blow to us all & particularly to poor Bertie.”
The dark, gloomy day following [December 10, 1936], with his three brothers as witnesses, King Edward VIII signed the Instrument of Abdication and announced that he would tell the people of his action in a radio address. Queen Mary, upon hearing from her other sons of this decision, dispatched a hurried letter addressed to the son who was now once again HRH Prince Edward of Windsor, exactly in that fashion. “Don’t you think that as [the Prime Minister] has said everything that could be said, it will not be necessary for you to broadcast this evening ... surely you might spare yourself this extra strain & emotion—Do please take my advice—Bertie tells me you wish us to meet you at dinner at Royal Lodge this evening, I hope there will not be any fog.”
But fog shrouded the route from London to Royal Lodge, where after his broadcast the ex-King met with his family. Some of the tension between them was eased by the indecision at least being over. Queen Mary and the Princess Royal, after a “dreadful goodbye,” left first for the ride back to London. “The whole thing,” Queen Mary wrote, “was too pathetic for words.” At midnight, the new King and the old King kissed and parted, and David bowed to Bertie as his King. Then, alone in the rear seat of the car (that was no longer rightly his), David rode at a creeping pace through the dark, dense fog to Portsmouth, where he boarded the destroyer H.M.S. Fury, which in less than half an hour was moving through the choppy waters of the Channel. He was on the first lap of a journey to Boulogne, then to Austria, and six months later to France again and to the side of the woman for whom he had forfeited the Crown.*