Sybil did not meet Wallis until the summer of 19 3 5, but they quickly became friends. Not only did Sybil like Wallis, she also approved of her as Edward's companion in life: 'His first great love was always hard and in love with someone else . . . His second awful (Lady Furness). Wallis tactful, helpful and wise and I've seen her at it."11 Sybil hosted formal occasions for Wallis and Edward. To one dinner at Argyll House she invited Perry Brownlow and his wife Kitty, the Duchess of Buccleuch, Lady Diana Cooper and Duff Cooper, Lord and Lady Vansittart, and Mr and Mrs Artur Rubinstein. It was a summer evening, and through the great double doors, which were open, the guests could see the garden with its spreading lawns and a sea of green trees, lit by Chinese lanterns, 'pale moons of white' floating in the branches.112 Later in the evening, Lord Berners, Winston Churchill and some other men joined the gathering. Rubinstein played Chopin, which delighted Sybil (Rubinstein did not like playing for social gatherings) but also caused her some anxiety, as Edward was not keen on classical music. Bruce Lockhart wrote in his diary that the 'King sat down on a little stool beside Mrs Simpson. Seemed rather bored, but stayed on.' After he had finished, Noel Coward was asked to sing, which cheered the King immensely - he 'bucked up and looked quite amused. He did not leave till nearly one. Came with and left with Mrs Simpson. Quite unattended. No ADC etc.'113
It was by no means unusual at this time for social hostesses to lionize people with a particular claim to attention by Society. Albert, the Duke of York, and his Duchess, Elizabeth (the future King George VI and Queen Elizabeth), were cultivated by Mrs Ronnie Greville, who had a house on Charles Street in London and an immense country estate in Surrey, Polesden Lacey. Here, Albert and Elizabeth spent a part of their honeymoon. Born the illegitimate daughter of a Scottish millionaire brewer, Mrs Greville had managed to put this behind her and establish a position among the elite and many of the royal family. Edward disliked her and thought her behaviour to royalty was sycophantic. People such as the Coopers and Cecil Beaton held her in contempt because of her zealous pursuit of titles to attend her receptions (of sixty-one names mentioned on one evening, over fifty were titled, and on most occasions there was at least one royal). Cecil Beaton thought she was a 'galumphing, greedy, snobbish old toad who watered at the chops at the sight of royalty.'"4 Menus were presented in French, and at one large Christmas party, one of the seven courses was 'Oeufs Due d'York' in honour of the most important guest."5 Mrs Greville, like many of her circle, was an enthusiastic supporter of Adolf Hitler. She was fawned upon by Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German ambassador, and was present at a Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg; she was furious at the British Embassy for not sending a representative.116
Because of her intimacy with Edward, Wallis was eyed as a passport to the King. 'Of course anyone who can get hold of Mrs Simpson can now secure His Majesty', commented Jean Hamilton enviously in the summer of 193 6.117 Emerald Cunard, an American, was a keen contender for Wallis's favour. She was the estranged wife of Sir Bache Cunard, grandson of the founder of the Cunard shipping line. She was known for her affairs with the writer George Moore and then with Sir Thomas Beecham, the famous conductor, and had a particular interest in the patronage of musicians and writers. By the time Edward had started his reign, Lady Hamilton was observing in her diary that Emerald Cunard and 'all her crew' were 'tumbling after' Wallis. Their nickname, she added, was The Royal Racket'.118 Some resentment was felt at Lady Cunard's determination to win Wallis's favour. At a 'pompous, manque dinner' at Lady Cunard's in 1936, when she was 'looking like Pavlova in white', wrote Chips Channon, she slipped a crumpled note into his hand for him to read. It was an anonymous missive she had received. It began, 'You old bitch, trying to make up to Mrs Simpson, in order to curry favour with the King.' Emerald was frightened, thought Channon, 'and yet rather flattered. It was in an educated handwriting.'119
Wallis fully understood what was going on. 'One gets tired of having people make a fuss over you because they want to see HRH', she complained to her aunt.120 She knew, though, that it was important not to alienate anyone. 'I have tried awfully hard this year to be nice to the natives,' she wrote, 'answering thousands of notes, going to boring parties."21 With wry humour, she congratulated herself on managing to cope so well in Edward's world, given her limited means. 'I imagine anyway I am doing far far better than Thelma on far far less', she told Bessie, referring to Edward's previous lover, Lady Furness.122 'I enjoy meeting and seeing all these people', she wrote in another letter, adding that 'some times it seems strange to think of those days of struggle in Earl's Court [an apartment building in Baltimore] and the other flat where mother had the cafe and was forever working herself to death to give me things."21 In June 1935, Wallis told her aunt about a recent court ball at which the Prince had danced with her directly after the opening dance with the Queen. She had been thrilled by Edward's public display of devotion and by the attentions of the court. 'I really know them all now and must say they are grand to me', she reported with pleasure. But she was under no illusions. 'Naturally,' she added dryly, 'only for the duration of my length of service.’124
3 'The Spirit of the Age'
Wallis Simpson had never been heard of by the general public in Britain when Edward visited South Wales in November 1936. They knew nothing about the most important thing in his life - the woman he adored. But they did know about his concern for the welfare of the poor, which was further demonstrated on the royal tour. It wasn't only in South Wales that people witnessed Edward's ready sympathy with the unemployed of the valleys, for the following week newsreel reports of the royal tour were shown in every cinema of Britain. It had been filmed by all five of the newsreel companies - Gaumont-British News, Movietone News, Pathe, Paramount and Universal. The coverage of the tour was highly sympathetic to the King: it followed him as he walked among the poor, visited their homes, mixed mortar at their instruction, doffed his hat and nodded his head, and showed his evident distress at their sufferings. 'Bringing the whole problem of the Depressed Areas out of the shadows into the floodlight of world attention,' announced Pathe Gazette's The King Visits South Wales, 'His Majesty's visit to South Wales is not only a promise of new life but a gesture of sympathy.' It stressed the King's plea for urgent action:
But beneath all this His Majesty saw the disillusion and suffering brought by long workless years. His visit has cheered them as nothing else could. And as he leaves there is a new found faith that some solution will be found. Let no one belittle the magnificent work that is being done by the social services. But social service is not enough. These men want work. New industries must be brought to the stricken areas of South Wales.'
Through newsreels like these, people all over Britain were made aware of Edward's visit to South Wales.
In 19 3 4 there were over four thousand cinemas in England, Scotland and Wales, and going to the 'pictures' was the most popular form of entertainment for just about everybody except the very poor (who could not afford the tickets) and the very rich (who disdained it). By the middle of the 1930s, some twenty million people in Britain each week saw the newsreels, which were shown before the feature films. These newsreels gave suburban audiences and people throughout Britain all kinds of new knowledge about their own and other countries. Watching the reports of Edward's visit to South Wales, they learned not only about the latest exploits of their King, but also about the plight of the people living in the Special Areas. This was driven home to cinema-goers by the scenes of unemployed families and pale, thin children against a backdrop of disused pits and grassed-over coal tips. In the middle of these scenes was Edward, his slight but regal figure commanding viewers' attention. Without his visit, newsreel directors might not have sent film crews to South Wales to film this story of human suffering amid industrial decay. Edward had brought the distressed areas into the news.
Edward had been a dominant figure in the newsreels ever since the end of the Great War, first as Prince of Wales and then, when he ascended the throne on 20 January 1
936, as King. Audiences saw him on his numerous visits to the industrial areas and the inner cities, touring factories, visiting housing estates, opening hospitals and inspecting lines of ex-servicemen in Britain and in France. Films such as 50,000 Miles with the Prince of Wales showed his overseas tours.2 When he became King, commented Sir John Simon, who was then Home Secretary, Edward was the most widely known and most universally popular personality in the world.3
His popularity came not simply from his being the newsreels' favourite star. He earned it with his warm personality and genuine concern for people, whatever their background, age or status. He won Charlie Chaplin's esteem by sitting at a party with his host's mother, who was in her eighties, until she retired; only then, remembered
Chaplin years later, did he join the rest of the group and have fun.4 He was remembered for many such acts of kindness. A woman wrote to the King to tell him that
When you visited Sydney NSW it came to your knowledge that my late Aunt, one of the oldest inhabitants of that city, and who had seen the wedding of your Grandfather, was longing to see you. You caused her to be brought to you, yourself hand her to a seat, and chatted with her for some time. Such kindly consideration will never be forgotten by members of my family . . ,5
Another woman wrote to express her gratitude to him for 'listening to my appeal re the railway Arabs', who were homeless children living near railway lines.6 His interest in the poor was especially appreciated. One mother described him as
The man who moved among them with sympathy and with a Christ-like understanding, and in so doing compelled the people to learn of the terrible distress, bravely borne, by the peoples of the distressed areas . . . you had trod their slums, entered their homes, spoken to them words of hope, actions kindly and kingly, such as no High Church bishops, archbishops, and lesser Church lights had condescended to do.7
Marcus Garvey, the President of the General Universal Negro Improvement Association, told King Edward that 'the Negro race' regarded him 'as a true friend'.8
Edward was no socialist, though. His concern for the poor and his keen sense of social justice were genuine and heartfelt, but he shared the political attitudes of most of the upper classes: he did not support the Labour Party and he did not want to see any fundamental change in the structure of society. He put his faith in David Lloyd George, the Liberal Prime Minister from 1916 to 1922, and then, when the Liberals were no longer a political force to be reckoned with, in the Conservative Party. However, he objected strongly when the Conservative- dominated National Government failed to meet the most basic needs of the poor and the long-term unemployed. Like Harold Macmillan and other Tory paternalists, he felt a keen sense of obligation towards those who were less well off. In fulfilling his own responsibilities, notably for the vast estates of the Duchy of Cornwall in London and the West Country, he sought to act as a fair and decent landowner. His official biographer, Philip Ziegler, records that he invested a great deal of money in new machinery for the Cornish tin mines, and set up a farming concern run on cooperative lines. In London, he regularly visited his estates in Kennington, and the housing in areas of the borough which he owned was much better than in the parts for which the Council was responsible.9
He may not have been a socialist, but he was driven by democratic ideals. One ex-miner described him as 'a real democratic King, The Common People's King (as the snobbish aristocracy will have it)'. Using imagery that drew on the experience of his working life as a miner and a washer-up, he told the King, 'You have constantly been mining under the feet of the snobbish aristocracy. You have washed it up and dried and drained it wherever you went.10 Edward was seen to share the same concern for the poor as the Democrat President of America, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had been re-elected with a landslide victory in early November 1936. Roosevelt had promised 'a new deal for the forgotten man' and was the architect of the New Deal, a package of social reforms to benefit the poor and the unemployed. Certainly, the long-term problems created by the Depression were similar on both sides of the Atlantic. Charlie Chaplin's film Modern Times, which came out in 1936, drew attention to these problems - unemployment, poverty, strikes and riots.
To many Americans who supported the Democrats, King Edward VIII seemed to display the same qualities as their President. 'You & Roosevelt. What a Democratic combination! What a team!' wrote a man living in Birmingham, Alabama, to the King." An estate agent in Philadelphia told the King that 'you and President Roosevelt are the two Greatest men in the world, you and he believe in the good things for all of us'.12 Edward himself admired Roosevelt enormously. In 1934 he told the American Ambassador, Robert Bingham, that Britain needed leadership of the kind that Roosevelt was giving to the United States, with the aim of relieving poverty and distress.13 Edward could be 'a very serious young man on serious questions', said the American writer Alexander Woollcott in 1936, adding, 'That is what will get him into trouble one of these days with the Tory prigs and bigwigs.'14
Edward's personality would have been remarkable, observed the historian John Grigg, even if he had not been royal. 'Allied to his princely status it was irresistible.' There was about him, he added, 'the indefinable aura known as star quality'.15 This 'star quality' shone brightly during a visit to the Home Fleet at Portland in November 1936, in the week before Edward's visit to South Wales. He arrived exhausted. The day before, he had been to the Cenotaph in the morning for Armistice Day, and at the Albert Hall in the evening. He then caught a midnight train to Portland, which arrived in the middle of a storm at four o'clock in the morning. But despite this fatigue, reported a naval commander who was there, the King's words and manner went straight to the hearts of the men.16 Edward was accompanied by Samuel Hoare, First Lord of the Admiralty, an old friend from Oxford days. He noticed that Edward managed to make every officer and seaman in the fleet feel that he knew them personally. On one evening, at a smoking concert in an aircraft carrier, the underdeck was packed with thousands of seamen. In his long experience of mass meetings, said Hoare, he had never seen one so completely dominated by a single personality:
At one point he turned to me and said: 'I am going to see what is happening at the other end.' Elbowing his way through the crowd, he walked to the end of the hall and started community singing to the accompaniment of a seaman's mouth-organ. When he came back to the platform, he made an impromptu speech that brought the house down. Then, a seaman in the crowd proposed three cheers for him, and there followed an unforgettable scene of the wildest and most spontaneous enthusiasm.17
'Here, indeed', observed Hoare, 'was the Prince Charming who could win the hearts of all sorts and conditions of men and women and send a thrill through great crowds.'18 No wonder that so many people wrote to tell him of their love. 'When I go to the pictures or see your photo in books,' said one woman, 'I have bought them and loved them and you don't know what a sensation I have I almost want to shout out to you.'19
This massive popularity with the general public did not make Edward popular with his father, George V. When George came to the throne in 1910, Edward was sixteen. To the very natural dislike that a very conventional man often feels for an adolescent,' commented Diana Mosley, 'was added in this case an equally natural grain of jealousy of the physical beauty and winning manners of the Prince.' Many things about Edward annoyed the King, but 'above all his undoubted popularity'.20 Prince Albert, Edward's brother, noticed this too. 'Papa seems to think that anything you do which he doesn't like has been influenced by Fredie,' he wrote to him in 1920, referring to Edward's lover at the time, Freda Dudley Ward. 'This of course is due to the great popularity which you have everywhere, and Papa is merely jealous.'21
Edward had first met the ordinary men of Britain during the Great War, for much of which he served at the front. He joined up as an officer in the Grenadier Guards in 1914, at the start of the war. He had just completed two years at Oxford University and the president of Magdalen, his college, watched his departure for the army with regret:
The Prince, and this is what he would have wished, has suffered the common lot of his compeers. Like two-thirds and more of the men with whom he was up, like ever so many 'second year' men of 1914, he was swept off into the service of his country, and his second year of Oxford has proved his last.22
It was a terrible war, most of it fought from the trenches cut deep into the ground of the battlefield by both sides and protected by barbed wire and machine-guns. Many of the soldiers lived in these filthy, rat-infested trenches. Every so often they would be ordered to climb 'over the top' of their trench and advance over no man's land towards the enemy's trench, in an attempt - usually useless - to capture it. On just the first day of the Battle of the Somme, nearly twenty thousand men were killed and nearly sixty thousand were wounded. The death toll was increased by the epidemics that swept through the trenches. From 1916, all able-bodied British men between the ages of eighteen and forty-one had to go into the army, replacing the injured and the dead.
Edward had been determined to fight, but this was flatly forbidden on the grounds that he might be captured by the enemy. 'If I were sure you would be killed, I do not know if I should be right to restrain you', said Lord Kitchener, the Secretary for War. 'But I cannot take the chance of them ever taking you prisoner, which always exists.' Edward, though, was obsessed with the desire 'to be found worthy and to share in the risks and struggles of men'.23 He could not bear to stay safely behind the line while his compatriots were dying in their tens of thousands. Ziegler has recorded that he never stopped trying to get to the front line and never stopped hating it when he was there - he found the shelling terrifying and was ready to say so.24 After spending his first night in the trenches in July 1915, Edward wrote to his father:
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