The Lisbon Route

by Ronald Weber

  In April 1940 he got a reprieve from his Paris assignment in the form of a six-week visit to the United States to report on attitudes toward the war. Coward was delighted to get back to familiar territory, though scurrying away from a war zone to lush neutrality did him no good as far as public comment went.

  The despatch of Mr Noël Coward to the States [wrote one London newspaper] can do nothing but harm. In any event, Mr Coward is not the man for the job. His flippant England—cocktails, countesses, caviare—has gone. A man of the people, more in tune with the new mood of Britain, would be a better proposition for America.

  Almost at once, though, the flippant Englishman was having drinks and dinner at the White House and discussions with President Roosevelt. In California he met with British actors working in Hollywood—Cary Grant, Ray Milland, Claude Raines, Charles Laughton, among them—and expressed his view to England’s ambassador in Washington that their absence from home in wartime was creating a bad impression in America.

  He himself left in early June by way of a Clipper to Lisbon, from where he intended to take rail service Paris to resume his propaganda work. The flight, he recalled, was the “acme of comfort” with good food, drink, and weather. “We might just as well,” he added, “have been sitting in a well-appointed bus that had become somehow embedded in the sky.” Some of the pleasure fell away when, between the Azores and Lisbon, the pilot informed passengers that Italy had joined Germany in the war.

  The news was not unexpected, but what Ambassador Walford Selby said the next morning over breakfast at the British embassy was. Coward had brought his overnight bag with him, expecting to leave directly for the railway station; Selby, however, strongly advised him to stay in Lisbon. The situation in Paris was deteriorating rapidly, with the embassy unable to establish any contact for the past ten days. Coward protested that he had to get back, if only to help with the evacuation of his office staff. The ambassador held firm: if Coward canceled his train reservation he would see to it that he had priority on an air flight to England. Coward reluctantly agreed—and later realized that Selby might have saved his life. The train he intended to take reached Paris just ahead of Hitler’s army.

  During Coward’s wait in Lisbon the ambassador put him to work giving a talk at a hastily organized affair at the Royal British Club before club members and a few journalists. Coward had no time to prepare his remarks, which left him—oddly for a seasoned performer—extremely nervous. He read to the audience a news report from the New York Times about the rescue at Dunkirk, talked about British-American relations, and ended up with hopeful comments about the outcome of the war. The Anglo-Portuguese News reported that his listeners were deeply moved by the talk—and added, surely to Coward’s delight, that he had been engaged in government propaganda work in Paris since the start of the war. Still ahead for Coward before he left Lisbon was propaganda work in the form of a broadcast over local radio and a cocktail party at the British Club for a group of Portuguese journalists.

  On Coward’s journey to England his plane made a stop in Bordeaux. He went to a café inside the airport, seeking coffee well laced with cognac, and found, with the Germans in Paris, an atmosphere of hysteria. When he returned to the plane it was surrounded by police holding off refugees desperately hoping to become stowaways on what might have been the last civilian flight to touch down in wartime France.

  Shortly ahead for Coward was more important and highly hush-hush government work, or so he thought. William Stephenson, the coordinator of British intelligence in the United States, who in the shadow world operated under the code name Intrepid, had offered him—as Coward recalled—“a job which, in his opinion and in mine, would be of real value to the war effort, and would utilise [sic], not only my celebrity value, but my intelligence as well.” He was again on a Clipper flight from New York to Lisbon when, during the stop in Bermuda, a telegram from Stephenson told him the job was over before it could begin—“nipped in the bud,” Coward recorded, “by High Authority in London.” He was badly disappointed but, in retrospect, consoled himself with the realization that, had be become one of Intrepid’s troops, he might never have written Blithe Spirit, the light comedy that opened in London on July 2, 1941—the audience crossing planks over rubble from a recent air raid to reach the seats—and ran there continuously until March 9, 1946.

  *

  Just after Noël Coward left Lisbon, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor appeared. For the former King Edward VIII and the woman he had given up his throne to marry, the chic American double-divorcée Wallis Simpson, there would be no gatherings or public remarks at the Royal British Club, nor a word about their presence in the Anglo-Portuguese News. If Coward was a figure the British were eager to showcase, the Windsors were best kept out of sight until they could be shipped elsewhere as soon as possible.

  Coward, who while on duty in Paris had been on the same social circuit as the famous couple, hinted in a letter at the reason for the cold shoulder. While dining with them one evening, the Duke had held forth on the Germans as “awfully dogged and capable of really surprising endurance in the face of practically anything, which is very important.” Herbert Pell was more forthright after a similar evening of dining with the Windsors in Lisbon. If the couple had any notion to moving on from Lisbon to the United States, the American envoy wanted his view on record—as he immediately cabled Washington—that their “presence in the United States might be disturbing and confusing” since they “desire apparently to make propaganda for peace.”

  The Windsors had lived in France since their marriage there in 1937, the same year they visited Germany at Hitler’s invitation. When the phony war ended, the Duke held the rank of major general and was acting as the British liaison officer at French military headquarters in Paris. With the Wehrmacht moving on Paris, he received permission to leave the city and joined the Duchess at their villa in Antibes. There was much dithering about what to do next until the British consul in Nice advised immediate flight. On June 19, 1940, a four-vehicle convoy set out for Spain, the consul in a Bentley with diplomatic plates in the lead, the Duke and Duchess following in a Buick. Bringing up the rear was a hired van carrying the Duchess’s maid and the Windsors’ voluminous luggage.

  At the Spanish border the van’s driver was refused transit papers, and he, the maid, and the cargo of luggage turned back to Antibes. The other vehicles ventured on without difficulty to Barcelona and then Madrid, where the Duke and Duchess were taken under the wing of Samuel Hoare. The ambassador was an old friend of the Duke, but his guests would prove troublesome due to the controversy surrounding the abdication and, of more immediacy, the Duke’s public association with a policy of accommodation with the Third Reich. The moment the Windsors reached Madrid, German propaganda had gone into high gear, as Hoare glumly informed Prime Minister Churchill.

  Under the pressure of the German machine the Spanish press declared that you had ordered his arrest if he set foot in England, that he had come here to make a separate peace behind your back, that he had always disapproved of the war and considered it an even greater mistake to go on with it etc., etc.

  Given the stories swirling about, it was wise to move the couple from Spain to Portugal. So it came as cheering news for Hoare when London told him that a British flying boat was leaving on June 22 for Lisbon, and he was to invite the Windsors to head there at once.

  But at this point Salazar intervened. The Duke’s younger brother, the Duke of Kent, was about to arrive in Lisbon for the centenary celebration, and the prime minister wanted nothing to draw attention from the importance the royal visitor lent to the event. It would be “inconvenient and undesirable,” Salazar told the Portuguese ambassador in London, to have the two royals in Lisbon at the same time, and pointedly added that “if the Duke of Windsor does come while his brother is here, I shall let him know by all means that we should be grateful if he retired for that period to another part of the country.” So Hoare was instructed by London to change plans and h
old the Windsors in Spain until the Duke of Kent was safely out of Portugal.

  Having the couple settled in the Ritz Hotel in Madrid while the Spanish rumor mill kept clanking away was worrying enough, especially when stories circulated that Hoare had joined the Duke in urging a separate peace. But the ambassador also had to confront the possibility that the Duke might dig in his heels and refuse to leave Spain. The British royal family was grimly opposed to having him—and especially “her,” as the Duchess was cuttingly known at court—back in England, and as result he had been assigned no new wartime work. Hoare suggested to Churchill that, given the Duke’s love of the sea, a naval command of some sort might entice him back. And he added darkly: “If the chance is lost [to get the Windsors back to England], there will be a prince over the water who will be a nuisance and possibly an embarrassment.”

  Unknown to Hoare and Churchill, the Germans were actively plotting to keep the Duke and Duchess exactly where they were. A Spanish friend of the Duke made it known that the Windsors could remain in the country as guests of Franco’s government and occupy a castle in Andalusia. Presumably the Duke had no knowledge of the German hand behind the invitation, but the possibility of wartime exile in a neutral Spain had appeal, especially if no position was forthcoming in England, the royal family continued putting up barriers, and Churchill held to the view that the couple should return home without conditions.

  A resolution of the situation was still in doubt when, after nine days in Madrid, the Windsors reached Lisbon on July 3 to find the city overflowing with refugees and visitors to the Portuguese exposition. They did not settle in Lisbon but in the secluded summer villa in Cascais of Ricardo Espírito Santo. Originally they had planned to take rooms in the Palácio in Estoril, but the hotel manager had informed the British embassy that he was short of space and adequate security and had made arrangements for them to go to Cascais. Their host was a young, dashing, immensely wealthy Portuguese banker who was apparently drawn to the social cachet of having the Windsors as guests.

  Although Espírito Santo had English connections and had recently entertained the Duke of Kent, he maintained friendly relations with the German minister in Lisbon and was generally thought by British intelligence, where he was referred to as “Mr Holy Ghost,” to be pro-German. Whatever the host’s political views, they were not enough of a stumbling block to prevent British Ambassador Walford Selby, yet another old friend of the Duke, to be on hand to greet the Windsors at the villa. Selby had reason to hope, in any case, that the couple would spend little time with Espírito Santo since two RAF flying boats had already reached Lisbon and were scheduled to leave within forty-eight hours, as required by Portuguese neutrality regulations. He also had in hand for the Duke a telegram from Churchill, dated July 1, that in effect was a military order to return to England under threat of a court martial. Angry but bowing to the inevitable, the Duke agreed to leave promptly. The travel schedule rapidly put together had the Windsors boarding a flying boat in Lisbon late on the night of July 4 and arriving in Britain the next day.

  The arrangement lasted only to the following morning, when the Duke drove to the British embassy in Lisbon and learned that Churchill had changed course. A telegram from the prime minister, dated early that morning, offered the Duke an appointment as governor general of the Bahamas. If accepted, Churchill added, the Windors might leave for the islands directly from Lisbon. Stunned by the sudden development, the Duke went back to Cascias and informed the Duchess; after lunch together he returned to the embassy and typed out a brief reply to Churchill: “I will accept appointment as Governor of Bahamas as I am sure you have done your best for me in a difficult situation.” News of the appointment was leaked by the BBC in London on July 9 and made worldwide headlines in morning papers of the 10th.

  A planned two days in Cascais now stretched to four long—and, as later would become apparent, perilously uncertain—weeks. British agents and the Portuguese secret police heavily guarded Espírito Santo’s villa, and the Duke and Duchess were instructed to leave the residence only in the company of armed escorts. The Duke made a courtesy call on President Carmona, who lived in a former royal palace in Cascais, and he was a regular on the golf course in Estoril. He also managed to attend a bullfight in Lisbon, where he was recognized and applauded by the crowd. But for the most part the Windsors remained sheltered in the villa in the company of embassy figures, Espírito Santo and his wife, and a small circle of friends.

  Marcus Cheke, the embassy’s press attaché, saw to it that nothing about the couple’s activities came to the notice of the British community in the pages of the Anglo-Portuguese News. David Eccles, highly placed in the embassy with the Ministry of Economic Warfare (and about whom more in a later chapter), often dined with the couple, his impressions of them swinging back and forth. Following one meeting, he wrote his wife back in England that “I wouldn’t give ten shillings for Wallis, she is a poor creature… . He’s pretty fifth-column, but that’s only for you.” But in a subsequent letter Eccles acknowledged “being seduced by the Windsors who have made a dead set at me, and by heaven when they turn their united charm on, it is hard to resist… . And he has a confiding manner of talking that is dangerous to a degree. Anyway I dine twice a week. They are the arch-beachcombers of the world.”

  London’s advice that the Duke make his own travel arrangements from Lisbon proved easier said than done. The Duchess preferred ships to planes, and the usual sea route to the Bahamas was to take an American Export Lines vessel from Lisbon to New York, then in New York make accommodations to move on to the islands. With the shipping firm’s vessels overwhelmed with refugees and others fleeing Europe, sailing arrangements could not be made before August 1. The Windsors had planned on a New York interlude before moving on to the Bahamas, but the British ambassador in Washington stepped in and told London it would be undesirable to have the couple pass through New York since it might set off bad publicity. London agreed and so informed the Duke, which brought forth a furious reply that he had been “messed about quite long enough.” Churchill nevertheless kept the door firmly closed. “His Majesty’s Government cannot agree to your landing in the United States at this juncture,” the Duke was told. “This decision must be accepted.” The British government made possible the diversion of the Excalibur from New York to a landing in Bermuda by paying the American Export Lines a fee of $17,500. And to try preventing any last minute weakening of the Duke’s resolve to board the ship, on July 28 it sent Walter Monckton, his close confidant and legal adviser, to Lisbon to remain with him in the final days.

  On July 30 the news blackout surrounding the Duke and Duchess was finally lifted with an announcement of their departure at a press conference in the British embassy. The Duke thanked Portugal for its hospitality and fielded a few innocuous questions before sherry was served. The next day he played his last round of golf, and that evening he and the Duchess gave a large party—a “great farewell to Europe,” as the Duchess described it in a letter—at the Aviz Hotel. On August 1 the Duke had a private meeting with Salazar, which had been arranged by Espírito Santo, before heading to the harbor in the company of Monckton and Espírito Santo. The Duchess had boarded the ship earlier, and a news story noted that she, other passengers, and well-wishers on the pier had “tapped their collective heels for forty minutes past sailing time … while waiting for the Duke of Windsor.”

  Unlike the mere mortals packed like sardines on the refugee ships leaving Lisbon, it was still possible in the early period of the war for the Windsors to travel in high style aboard the Excalibur. They had to themselves a suite of cabins enclosing a private veranda, where they entertained diplomats and their wives who were sailing home on the ship. Also with them on the vessel were their dogs, fifty-two pieces of luggage, four wicker crates of Madeira and port, and their Buick and a travel trailer.

  After reaching Bermuda, a Canadian cargo ship carried them to the Bahamas and a waiting group of American reporters and photographers
gathered in Nassau. Time magazine gleefully observed about the Duke’s new position that the former King of England was now the overseer of “29 islands, 661 cays, 2,387 rocks in the Northern Caribbean”; commander-in-chief of “six officers and 124 men in the native constabulary”; and ruler of 13,000 white subjects, 55,000 black, and a floating population of several thousand tourists—largely American.”

  *

  With the Windsors finally planted in Nassau, the royal family and the British government had accomplished a common aim of getting them safely tucked away for the duration. And the Duke now had an official position, if a demeaningly minor one, in his country’s wartime service. But left behind in Portugal was a tale of German intrigue that, up to the very moment of sailing, had sought to subvert just such a conclusion.

  What was known to the Germans as Operation Willi, a brainchild of Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was a plot to lure the Duke back to Spain and thereby have him readily available to German power in Europe. In Salazar’s Portugal he would be far less so, and in England or Nassau wholly beyond reach. To convince the Duke both of the benefits of residence in Spain and the perils of a journey to the Bahamas, the Germans had dispatched to Lisbon as their emissary Miguel Primo de Rivera, a son of the former dictator of Spain and a close acquaintance of the Duke. How the Duke responded to Primo de Rivera’s blandishments is uncertain, but in any case Ribbentrop did not leave the work of persuasion solely to the Spaniard. A rising young SS officer (and later head of the SD, the security and intelligence service of the SS), Walter Schellenberg, was sent to Lisbon with instructions from Ribbentrop that the Duke was in sympathy with the German cause and had to be pried from the grip of the British, by force if necessary. Schellenberg was also authorized to deposit fifty million Swiss francs in a Spanish bank if the Duke would issue a public statement separating himself from British war policy.