The Queen Mother

by William Shawcross

  The Duke and Duchess then went to stay with the Duke of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle. From there they drove with their friends Clare and Doris Vyner to the Fountains Abbey Settlement at Swarland, where Clare Vyner had created an environment of smallholdings for unemployed people from Tyneside. Each family was given an acre and a half on which to build a bungalow and very quickly a new community had been created of former industrial workers, shipyard craftsmen and clerks. The Duke and Duchess were both impressed; she wrote to Queen Mary about the trip, and he congratulated Clare Vyner on his personal efforts to give people new lives.33

  After a hard-working summer the Yorks embarked with their daughters on their annual visit to Scotland, to the intense pleasure of the Princesses. Two weeks at Glamis were to be followed by several at Birkhall. Meanwhile, in early August Queen Mary finally forced herself to return to Sandringham for the first time since her husband’s death. While she was there, sadly sorting through his rooms, the King flew up for lunch but immediately afterwards returned to London, leaving his mother to her mournful tasks.34

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  THERE WERE VERY different preoccupations and pleasures at Fort Belvedere. Mrs Simpson dominated the King’s life; most weekends she played the part of hostess at the Fort, with or without her husband. Helen Hardinge described in her diary an evening at Windsor Castle. The King had brought his party over from the Fort; they included Mr and Mrs Simpson, and an unknown American woman. They watched a film of the Grand National. ‘The unknown American lady was the one already selected to be Mr Simpson’s wife! Mrs Simpson was very friendly and agreeable, and admired my Victorian jewellery. It was from this evening that I felt sure the King and Mrs Simpson meant to marry.’35

  Many of the staff hated what was going on: Osborne, the King’s butler, was frightened he would lose his job because ‘Mrs S had got her knife into him and he felt he was doomed.’ He also said that he had picked up a label in Mrs Simpson’s writing which read, ‘To our marriage’ – and that this had obviously been attached to some present from her to him.36 The British press was still exercising remarkable self-control about Mrs Simpson’s very existence, but London’s great salons and the Houses of Parliament were buzzing with gossip about the King’s adventures and his friend’s requirements. The King was said to be less than diligent in reading the daily government papers sent to him in his boxes and, perhaps worse, to leave them lying around at the Fort for anyone to see. His sackings within the Household were also widely discussed. The Duchess of Devonshire, Queen Mary’s Mistress of the Robes, told Lady Airlie that there was a rumour that everyone over sixty would have to go. ‘I daresay’, she continued, ‘Mrs S. would have the good sense not to push really unsuitable men in. Can you think of a suitable office for Mr S.?? “Guardian of the Bedchamber” or “Master of the Mistress” might do.’37

  On 28 May 1936 the names of Mr and Mrs Simpson appeared for the first time in the Court Circular as guests of the King at dinner the previous evening. The Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, was also present and was introduced to the Simpsons for the first time. According to her own later autobiography, the King had persuaded Mrs Simpson to come by telling her, ‘It’s got to be done. Sooner or later my Prime Minister must meet my future wife.’38 In June the King was prevented by continued official mourning from attending Royal Ascot but he sent Mrs Simpson in a royal carriage. Shortly afterwards Ernest Simpson moved out of the marital home and the King rented Mrs Simpson a house in Regent’s Park. To the horror of even the King’s supporters, divorce proceedings were now imminent.39

  Helen Hardinge described a dinner which the King gave in July 1936. The Yorks were there, as were the Churchills. Mrs Simpson acted as hostess.

  The King was in good form. He circulated among his guests, talking to each of them for a while, and his social technique was admirable … Winston Churchill was one of the few people around the dinner table that night who found Mrs Simpson acceptable. Curiously enough, he considered that she just did not matter and had no great significance; he believed that, in the ultimate analysis of the Monarchy, she simply did not count one way or the other. Moral and social considerations apart, he considered her presence to be irrelevant to King Edward’s performance as Sovereign. The King thought the exact opposite. He considered she was the only thing that mattered.40

  Churchill’s support was perhaps surprising. He was greatly concerned about the growth of fascist power in Europe, and the King was widely suspected of being too sympathetic to the new Germany. The evidence for this has been thoroughly examined and convincingly analysed by King Edward VIII’s official biographer Philip Ziegler, and need not be revisited here.41 Many years later the publication of official German documents proved that in 1936 the Nazi leaders were already planning to exploit the King’s sympathy to achieve an Anglo-German entente and more. But the British Foreign Office gave little credence to reports of this nature at the time, and Churchill too may well have dismissed the rumours as exaggerated.

  Mrs Simpson was another matter: senior Whitehall officials thought her to be ‘in the pocket of the German Ambassador’, as Lord Wigram recorded in February 1936.42 Helen Hardinge noted in her diary that ‘one of the factors in the situation was Mrs Simpson’s partiality for Nazi Germans’.43 Her alleged pro-German views certainly cannot have endeared Wallis Simpson to the Duchess of York. In any event, suspicions about Mrs Simpson, combined with the King’s carelessness about official papers, were enough to give senior members of the Royal Household the impression that in both his public and his private conduct the King was not entirely sound.44

  In early August the King set off on a controversial, indeed damaging voyage around the Mediterranean on a chartered yacht, the Nahlin, with Mrs Simpson and a few friends. All over the Mediterranean the couple were cheered and photographed and the American papers published every detail. Not all was heavenly on board the Nahlin. The Duff Coopers were among the guests and Diana Cooper recorded an unhappy scene when the King got down on all fours to release the hem of Mrs Simpson’s dress from under a chair – to which Mrs Simpson responded by glaring at him and saying, ‘Well, that’s the maust extraordinary performance I’ve ever seen,’ and began to attack him for other aspects of his behaviour. Diana Cooper now felt that ‘Wallis is wearing very badly.’ She also thought that Mrs Simpson was beginning to tire of the pleasure of the King’s company.45

  After the cruise, the King returned to London but Mrs Simpson stopped in Paris to shop. There she fell ill and had ample time, in her room at the Hotel Meurice, to read all that the American newspapers had written about her and the King on their cruise. She appears to have been appalled by the enormity of what was happening and wrote to the King to tell him that it was all too much for her and she had decided to return to her husband. ‘I am sure you and I would only create disaster together,’ she wrote. ‘I want you to be happy. I feel sure I can’t make you so, and I honestly don’t think you can me.’ Whatever her real intentions, the King was horrified – he telephoned her immediately and threatened to cut his throat if she did not come to Balmoral.46

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  ON THE BALMORAL estate there was a good deal of concern about the King’s plans. He had already attempted to introduce efficiencies at Sandringham, on which he had asked the Duke of York to advise, and he planned to do the same at Balmoral. The Duke had sought to soften the pain of the job losses which the King imposed in Norfolk, but in Scotland he had not been consulted. Both he and the Duchess were worried about the King’s attitude.47 Queen Mary shared such concerns. With restraint, she wrote to the Duke, ‘What a pity David went abroad when there is so much for him to do here & at Balmoral.’48

  Unfortunately, the new King showed that his interests were elsewhere. Much has been made, and with reason, of the Aberdeen Infirmary incident. Earlier in the summer the King had been invited to open the new Aberdeen Infirmary in September. He had declined, on the grounds that he would still be in official mourning for his father. He deputed the Duke of York to d
o it in his stead on 23 September.49 A few days before the event the Duchess wrote to the Queen, ‘I do wish that David could have done it, as they have all worked so hard for so long … But he won’t, so there it is!’ She told the Queen that she and the Duke had been paying visits in the neighbourhood and asked if there were any tenants or others whom the Queen would like them to see. She was not really looking forward to the King’s arrival at Balmoral. ‘I am secretly rather dreading next week, but I haven’t heard if a certain person is coming or not – I do hope not, as everything is so talked of up here. I suppose it is natural, the place being empty for eleven months, that the time it is occupied every detail is discussed with gusto!’50

  Then, on the day that the Duke and Duchess were opening the Infirmary, an astonishing incident occurred. The King, who had arrived at Balmoral four days earlier, suddenly appeared in Aberdeen. He drove himself the sixty miles, wearing driving goggles, to the railway station, in order to meet Mrs Simpson and her friends Mr and Mrs Herman Rogers off the London train. He put Mrs Simpson in the seat beside him and Mr and Mrs Rogers in the back. In other words, mourning allegedly stopped him from carrying out a duty in the city that day, but it was no barrier to his indulging his caprices. He could not have expected to pass unnoticed. The Aberdeen Evening Express published a photograph of him, with the words ‘His Majesty in Aberdeen. Surprise visit in car to meet guests’. Next to it was a photograph of the Yorks opening the hospital. No clearer indication of the new King’s priorities, and of the contrast with his brother and sister-in-law, could have been given to the people of Aberdeen. It was damaging to his reputation.51

  Mrs Simpson’s arrival at Balmoral was announced in the Court Circular; even Winston Churchill deprecated her going ‘to such a highly official place upon which the eyes of Scotland were concentrated’.52 At the Castle her influence over the King was evident. Understandably, he put her in the best spare bedroom but to the surprise of his Household he refused to occupy the King’s room himself, preferring to be in the dressing room of her suite.53

  The Balmoral staff were concerned that the King would act in as draconian a way against them as he had against the workers at Sandringham. Queen Mary hoped the Duke of York would advise him ‘to do the right thing’ but in the event the King made sweeping changes on Deeside with no reference to his brother.54 The Duke was upset and wrote to his mother, ‘David only told me what he had done after it was over, which I might say made me rather sad. He arranged it all with the official people up there. I never saw him alone for an instant.’55

  The Duchess wrote to her mother-in-law to say that there was a great sadness and sense of loss on Deeside. ‘You & Papa made such a family feeling by your great kindness & thought for everybody, but David does not seem to possess the faculty of making others feel wanted.’56 The Duchess added that she felt more and more anxious; she knew where the problem lay, but there were so few people with whom she could discuss it all. ‘I feel that the whole difficulty is a certain person. I do not feel that I can make advances to her & ask her to our house, as I imagine would be liked, & this fact is bound to make relations a little difficult.’ She was quite certain that the Duke should not get involved. ‘The whole situation is complicated & horrible, and I feel so unhappy about it sometimes, so you must forgive me darling Mama for letting myself go so indiscreetly. There is nobody that I can talk to, as ever since I married I have made a strict rule never to discuss anything of Family matters with my own relations – nor would they wish it, but it leaves so few people to let off steam to occasionally!’ Thinking ahead, she asked, ‘Has anything transpired about Xmas? Can we all spend it together – do suggest it to David as he loves & admires you & I am sure would arrange what you wished.’57

  Queen Mary was grateful for this ‘dear long letter’ and replied at once, saying that the subject ‘grieves me beyond words’. The King, she lamented, was ‘so good in so many ways, & so ill-judged in others’. She knew that the Yorks had been very kind to the people on the Balmoral estate – she wished that the King had stayed there longer and had been ‘less encumbered by guests’, so that he could have dealt better with all estate matters. She had gathered that he did not want to spend Christmas or any part of the winter at Sandringham, so she had asked him to let her and the Duke and Duchess stay there for a few weeks; ‘we 3 must arrange to run it together as we think best but this is for us to discuss & to see how best it can be arranged, for I must confess I should like to have a family party there as usual for Xmas, & to have the Xmas tree for our people, who will be so much disappointed if we are not able to give them some kind of happiness at that festive time of year, & I feel strongly that dear Papa would wish this – I am sure you will both agree.’58

  But while the King’s family struggled to convince themselves that life could go on in the old way, the stage was being set for the inevitable tragedy. After Balmoral Mrs Simpson took up residence in Felixstowe, because the next convenient Assizes in which the divorce could be heard happened to be near by in Ipswich. This proceeding caused some panic among those who knew of the King’s friendship with Mrs Simpson; even Winston Churchill was alarmed at the prospect of her being free to marry again.59

  On 20 October the Duke and Duchess arrived back in London on the night train from Scotland with their daughters. That same day the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, after searching his conscience, finally confronted the King. He told him that thousands of letters had been received at Downing Street and elsewhere, many from British residents in the United States and most of them very critical of the King’s relationship with Mrs Simpson. The Prime Minister showed some of these letters to the King and asked him if he could not be more discreet and if Mrs Simpson’s divorce could not be postponed. The King refused, asserting that Baldwin had no right to interfere in the private matters of another person.60

  Shortly after this Alec Hardinge, the King’s Private Secretary, felt that he should inform the Duke of York of what was happening. Till now the Duke had convinced himself that, however strong his brother’s feelings for Mrs Simpson, he would not sacrifice the throne for her. Now Hardinge informed him that the King’s refusal to heed the Prime Minister suggested that he would indeed put Mrs Simpson before any other consideration. ‘The possibility of abdication could no longer be ignored,’ the Duke’s biographer wrote, ‘yet the Duke recoiled from it with consternation and incredulity. In his mind he sought to free himself from the nightmare web that was slowly enmeshing him, but in his heart he began to realise the inevitability of his destiny.’61

  It was not easy. The Duke and the Prince of Wales had been friends as well as brothers all their lives, and since 1923 the Duchess had added to the gaiety of their relationship. Now the King had completely cut them off. If he really planned to marry Mrs Simpson after her divorce came through, it was clear to most of his family, though not yet to the King himself, that he could not remain on the throne. The Duke would become king, his wife queen, and Princess Elizabeth would be the heir to the throne. The prospect for all of them – although as yet the Princesses knew nothing of what was happening – was terrifying, and until his conversation with Alec Hardinge the Duke had not really believed it could happen.

  Queen Mary was also suffering. In the country her public behaviour as dignified widow of the King won her admiration. Within the family, she relied more and more on her other children. So did they upon her: after visiting her at her new home at Marlborough House, the Duchess wrote, ‘In these anxious & depressing days you are indeed “a rock of defence” darling Mama, & I feel sure that the whole country agrees.’62 The Queen expressed her own anxiety to the Duke – ‘how unsatisfactory it all is, so underhand and unpleasant. How will it end, you may imagine how worried I feel.’63

  Mrs Simpson received her decree nisi on Tuesday 27 October. The people of Ipswich were astonished by the size of the international press corps which descended upon the town to cover the event, but they remained largely ignorant of the cause. Only the News Chroni
cle carried a story of any length about the divorce – without explaining its importance. The American newspapers had a field day talking of Mrs Simpson’s forthcoming marriage to the King. They spun stories that ‘Wally’ had dined with Queen Mary and that she was going to be created a duchess before the wedding.64

  At the Palace, there were formalities and illusions of normality to be maintained. Senior members of the Royal Household continued to plan the King’s Coronation and engagements for him even though they had begun to fear that he might not be there to take part. The Duchess wrote a long letter to ‘Darling David’, in which she made no mention of the crisis which obsessed them all. Instead she thanked him for lending them Birkhall, without which she did not think she could cope with all the problems of modern life. ‘I do thank you from my heart – you are always so sweet & thoughtful for us, and I wish that I could thank you as I would wish.’ She added a plea that in summer 1937 he might review the St John Ambulance Brigade.