The Peoples King

by Susan Williams

  The Special Branch officer at Folkestone had previously received a telephone message direct from Inspector Evans at Buckingham Palace notifying the journey and asking for assistance. On 6th June last Mrs Simpson, accompanied as above, returned to Folkestone from Boulogne, and Inspector Evans was at Folkestone to meet them. Remarks by railway and shipping officials overheard by the Special Branch officer at Folkestone indicated that the association of Mrs Simpson and the King was well known there.

  This report also refers to a dinner given by the King at St James's Palace and lists the guests, who included Mr and Mrs Simpson as well as the Prime Minister and his wife, Lady Diana Cooper and Duff Cooper, Colonel and Mrs Lindbergh, Lady Cunard and Lord Wigram. However, this information had been made freely available in the Court Circular, so was hardly confidential. The final statement of the report refers to a rumour 'that efforts are being made to get Mr Ernest Simpson a post in the diplomatic service. China has been mentioned in this respect.'36 A handwritten comment on the report, dated a few days after the report was filed, adds, 'There is also the question of when he goes abroad. ?No Special Branch man (unless asked for). ?Any official intimation to the French police.'37

  According to a further report by Canning, in October 1936, Wallis encouraged photographers to take pictures of her when she was with the King 'because it satisfies her vanity and provides a means of developing certain commercial undertakings in which she and her friends are interested.' There was no doubt, asserted Canning, 'that Mrs Simpson's association with the King is now being discussed and commented upon by the people generally, especially among the working classes.'38 He listed the magazines and newspapers (mostly American, but also Cavalcade in Britain) in which Wallis's name had appeared over the previous five months. '9

  Neither Edward's nor Wallis's memoirs, published many years later, suggest that they were aware at any time of being watched by Special Branch. It is unclear who gave the instructions to Special Branch to watch the Prince of Wales and then the King, why they did so, or to whom the reports might have been passed by the Metropolitan Police. What is certain, though, is that Sir Philip Game met with the Home Secretary, Sir John Simon, on a regular basis, so they would presumably have discussed these reports about the most important person in Britain and the Empire. However, there is no evidence that Canning's reports to Game about Wallis's alleged relationship with Trundle were disseminated to other Ministers, senior government officials or members of the royal household. If they were, they do not appear to have been used to persuade Edward against continuing his relationship with Wallis.

  At no time during this period did Edward turn to his brother Albert for comfort or counsel. There had been a substantial change in the relationship between the two brothers since the early post-war years, and as Albert moved into his mid-twenties, he identified more and more strongly with his parents. Shortly after Edward's return in 1922 from a long journey to the Far East, Albert wrote a letter to his mother saying that, 'We must all help him to get him back to our way of thinking.'4" Edward was away from home for many months at a time, on his overseas tours, which may have increased the emotional distance between himself and his family. Albert was abroad far less often, and, once married, he and Elizabeth visited the King and Queen on a regular basis. In July 1923, when Hardinge was with the royal family at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, he sent his wife a description of palace routine. While 'we all have our meals by ourselves which is a great relief', he wrote, the King and Queen 'have theirs with Elizabeth and D. of Y. who are staying here.'41 Elizabeth had quickly gained George V's approval, to the point where they could easily discuss controversial subjects. 'The King during dinner was busy talking to Lady Elizabeth about birth-control!' reported Hardinge in some surprise, adding, 'Of which I gathered that he was much in favour!'42

  Edward saw far more of Prince George, the Duke of Kent. In the late summer of 1936, George and his wife, Marina, joined Edward and Wallis at Balmoral; other visitors included Lord and Lady Mountbatten, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, and the Earl and Countess of Rosebery. Herman and Katherine Rogers, who were now living in the South of France, came too. Cosmo Lang, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had always been invited by George V to Balmoral in the late summer, was not on the guest list. But the Archbishop still got his holiday in Scotland, because the Duke and Duchess of York asked him to stay at their Highland home at Birkhall, which was on the Balmoral estate. The kind Yorks bade me come to them at Birkhall', he wrote in some notes, and were 'kindness itself'. After tea on the second day, 'The children - Lillibet, Margaret Rose and Margaret Elphinstone [a cousin] - joined us. They sang some action-songs most charmingly. It was strange to think of the destiny which may be awaiting the little Elizabeth, at present second from the throne! She and her lively little sister are certainly most entrancing children.' As he left Birkhall, the Yorks told him that he must come again, so that 'the links with Balmoral may not be wholly broken'.43 Edward was furious when he learned that his brother had invited Lang. Wallis later told a friend that Edward was upset not only because the Duke of York had seemingly gone against his wishes but also because he took it as a not-so-subtle declaration of war against his authority. In effect, she explained, the Yorks had chosen to follow the traditions established by [George V] and in doing so appeared to be setting up a rival court to that of the King.44

  On 15 November, Mr and Mrs Stanley Bruce, the Australian High Commissioner and his wife, lunched with Stanley Baldwin and Baldwin's wife, Lucy. Stanley Bruce, who had been Prime Minister of Australia between 19x3 and 1929, was a very conventional man and had a reputation of being anti-Labour. He was most perturbed about the royal crisis and had shared his concerns in a conversation with Queen Mary; he had also written a letter on the matter to the Duke of York.45 It was the chief topic of conversation during lunch with the Baldwins, according to some notes written by Bruce shortly afterwards. Baldwin believed, said Bruce, that the King's conduct was antagonizing the people and that his popularity was disappearing.46 If Baldwin thought he was reflecting the views of the general public, this was simply not possible since the public didn't know about Edward's relationship with Wallis. Moreover, the King's popularity had not waned in the slightest - as his visit to South Wales in the next few days would demonstrate. Bruce put it to Baldwin that the 'Prime Minister's job was to do everything possible to break the entanglement and to get Mrs Simpson out of the country, by appeals to the King's patriotism, sense of duty, etc.'4, Bruce appears to have been a powerful influence on Baldwin. Lady Milner certainly thought so: she went to see Bruce, she wrote in her diary on 2 December, and he gave her 'a really astonishing account' of his conversation and how he had forced Baldwin to 'take action on the great "Question of the Hour".'48

  It seems likely that Bruce was also a party to Hardinge's letter to the King. On the day he delivered the letter, Hardinge had lunched with Bruce. After this meeting, Bruce made some notes for Baldwin to assist him in his next talk with the King. They carried much the same message as Hardinge's letter - that if the King were to marry Mrs Simpson,

  The people of this country and the Dominions would never accept her as Queen, quite possibly the House of Commons would cancel the Civil List, the Throne would be imperilled, the Empire would be endangered, there would be a demand for the King's abdication, the Government would resign and it would be impossible to get an alternative Government. . ,49

  Galvanized by Hardinge's threat that the silence of the press was about to be broken, Edward sought out Max Beaverbrook, owner of the Daily Express, the Sunday Express and the Evening Standard. Beaverbrook was in no way an ardent monarchist, but the King had been pleased with his success in urging the British press to be discreet about Wallis. To his dismay, Edward discovered that Beaverbrook was on his way to America, to seek respite from his chronic asthma in the desert of Arizona and then to visit his home in New Brunswick, Canada. The King sent Beaverbrook a teleg
ram at sea on Monday 16 November, urging him to come straight back to London. Beaverbrook said he would, and he kept his word: he returned after just four hours in New York.50 Much as Beaverbrook liked to spend the winter free of asthma, he liked even better to be at the centre of the action and the news. Even more importantly, perhaps, he enjoyed the prospect of engaging in battle against his old foe, Stanley Baldwin. It was Beaverbrook's view, as he sailed back to Britain, 'that the King had only to persevere in order to prevail'.51

  Soon after midday on 16 November, the King telephoned Hardinge at Buckingham Palace, saying that he wanted to see Baldwin, Chamberlain and Halifax that evening. He added that he wanted Duff Cooper, a personal friend who was the Secretary of State for War, and Sir Samuel Hoare, a fellow undergraduate from Oxford days, also to be at the meeting. Certainly their presence might have resulted in a very different discussion from the one that actually took place. But the Prime Minister replied that it would not be right to take selected members of the Cabinet to see him on a matter that had not yet been considered by the Cabinet as a whole. He therefore proposed that it should be a private meeting between the two of them, and said he would come on his own.

  Once the meeting had begun, Baldwin said that he and senior Cabinet colleagues were disturbed at the prospect of the King marrying someone whose marriage had been dissolved by divorce. He was not, of course, speaking on behalf of the Cabinet as a whole or in any formal sense, since the Cabinet had not been consulted. The general public, said Baldwin, would never put up with the King's plan for marriage:

  You may think that I am an old man dating from the Victorian regime, but I do know public opinion in this country. Since the War there has been a lowering of the public standards and of public morals, but people expect even more of the Monarchy and they won't tolerate what they did tolerate in the early part of the last century.52

  Baldwin spoke, said Edward years later, like 'the Gallup Poll incarnate'.53

  Baldwin was undoubtedly right that some people - the forces of the Conservative Establishment, for example, and the gentry - were not likely to tolerate the idea of their King marrying a woman who was twice divorced. But 'the people' was not a homogenous group and included many other important strands, such as the working class, and more liberal members of the middle class, who were grateful to Edward for his democratic concerns. Baldwin did not include these classes, the great majority of the population, in his notion of 'what the people would tolerate and what they would not'. Nor did he ask himself if those people who identified themselves as the post-war generation, and who made clear their appreciation of Edward's modern style, would really object to a queen from a different social background and culture. Even support for the Church of England's position was uncertain - for, as Baldwin was aware, such was the Church's own crisis that the Archbishop of Canterbury was planning a national 'Recall to Religion' in 1937.

  Perhaps it is not surprising, in the light of Britain's history of electoral reform, that the Prime Minister should have overlooked whole sections of the population in his appraisal of the views of 'the people'. It had been less than two decades before - in 1918 - that the vote and the right to stand in parliamentary elections were extended to all men over twenty-one. Before then, these rights had been based on property and were limited to male householders, thus excluding large numbers of men. All women were excluded from the franchise until 1919, when women over the age of thirty were finally given the vote; the age limit was not lowered to twenty-one, the same as for men, until 1928. Universal suffrage, therefore, and the idea that every citizen was entitled to a political voice, was still a novel phenomenon in 1936.

  It is always possible, in any case, that Baldwin's emphasis on public opinion was not motivated by a simple concern for the feelings of the general public. It may also have been influenced by the Memorandum by Parliamentary Counsel sent by Fisher to Chamberlain on 7 November, which Baldwin most probably saw. in all matters of this kind, where there are no precedents to guide,' observed the author of the Memorandum, referring to the King's wish to marry Mrs Simpson,

  Ministers have to act as interpreters of public opinion; and if they are satisfied that public opinion generally is strongly behind the advice which they think that they ought to give, I cannot doubt that constitutional principle not only empowers, but requires, them to tender it.34

  In other words, Baldwin - in an age of universal suffrage - would be backed by Constitutional principle if he was able to claim that he was speaking for public opinion.

  At their meeting on 16 November, the King did not argue with Baldwin. Instead, he simply announced that he was going to marry Mrs Simpson. If the Government opposed the marriage, he said, then he was 'prepared to go'.55 This was a dramatic step: Edward was declaring his intention to abdicate. Baldwin's reaction, recorded Ramsay MacDonald in his diary, was 'ebullient'. He ran into the Prime Minister shortly after the meeting with the King, which had started at 6.30 p.m.:

  7.30 met PM ebullient. Put his arm in mine 8C to my enquiry if he had seen HM he said he had but that he must think over things & would tell me everything to-morrow. Meanwhile the King was determined to marry Mrs S and was prepared to abdicate. Nice kettle of fish!!56

  Hardinge heard the news, possibly from Baldwin himself, and rushed home to tell his wife, Helen.57 Helen's mother, Lady Milner, discovered what had happened from her friend, Geoffrey Dawson, who 'came to see me in the morning. Couldn't sit down. We neither of us sat down during a long talk.' Writing in French to discourage the prying eyes of servants, she observed in her diary that the Prime Minister had seen the king - that he was a complete idiot - 'Le roi est archifou5i Word spread rapidly through the Court. In his diary for 18 November, Cecil Headlam commented that Frank Mitchell, an Assistant Private Secretary to the King, had 'darkly hinted that a climax to the Simpson business was inevitable within a short space of time, and he seemed certain that HM would rather abdicate than give her up.'59

  Baldwin's wife, Lucy, was extremely distressed at the turn of events, summing them up in her diary entry for 16 November as 'Very grave news.'60 She blamed Wallis for sabotaging Edward's reign. Writing to Edith, Lady Londonderry, she exclaimed, it makes one sigh for the so called good old days when one could clap women as well as men in the Tower!!'6' But there were some who actually welcomed the idea of getting rid of the King - and who regarded his impossible wish to marry Wallis as a godsend. 'I had a talk to both SB and the Archbishop', wrote Lord Linlithgow, the Viceroy of India, in a secret letter sent to Dawson from New Delhi on 17 November. At this talk, which had taken place in London before he had sailed for India, he had told them

  that I was sure that one thing alone could steady [Edward], the knowledge that his popularity with the general public was at stake ... I said to both that I hoped the thing might be kept fairly quiet till after the coronation, but that when once the excitement of that ceremony had subsided, I felt sure the public would turn on him ... I gave it as my opinion that the public interest will best be served by bringing matters to a head as soon as possible. I think you should see SB and push him into calling into counsel: Neville; Halifax; Hailsham; Simon; Sam Hoare; and I suppose that old ass Ramsay Mac, by way of providing SB with support... I think, too, that the 'Times' should weigh in with a leader of unmistakable point.62

  The King joined Queen Mary for dinner 16 November, to tell her of his decision to abdicate from the throne. Punctually at 8.30 p.m., he appeared at Marlborough House in white tie and tailcoat; he found his sister, Princess Mary, there too. The women were appalled. 'The word "duty"', wrote Edward later,

  fell between us. But there could be no question of my shirking my duty. What separated us was not a question of duty but a different concept of kingship. I was, of course, eager to serve my people in all the many ways expected of the King as the head of the State . . . But I would stand on my right to marry on my own terms.63

  He asked his mother if he might bring Wallis to meet her, so that she would get to know the woma
n he loved so much that he was willing to renounce the throne for her. He was confident that once his mother knew her even a little, she would understand his decision. But she refused. She also made no attempt to dissuade Edward from the action he contemplated. When they parted, she expressed the hope that he would make a wise decision for his future, adding that she feared his imminent visit to South Wales would be a trying one.

  After speaking to his mother and sister, Edward set about taking his brothers Bertie, Harry and George, into his confidence. He saw them one by one. George, his favourite, was the most moved. Bertie said little. This was a momentous development for him, since he was the heir presumptive. Once Edward had given up the throne, then he, Albert, would be King and his wife, Elizabeth, would be Queen. It must have been impossible for him to engage with Edward's news with any kind of equanimity. Instead, after a few days, he wrote a letter in which he said that he longed for his elder brother to be happy, adding that he of all people ought to be able to understand his feelings. He was sure, he added, that whatever Edward decided would be 'in the best interests of the country and the Empire'.64

  Baldwin's meeting with Edward took place the day before the King departed for South Wales - and the day before a heated debate in the House of Commons on the renewal of the Special Areas Act. There was opposition to the Government from its own side. Sir Robert Home, a Conservative, spoke at length on conditions in South Wales. He was especially critical of the Government's failure to heed the recommendations of Malcolm Stewart, the former Commissioner for the Special Areas who had just resigned in protest. Home was supported in this view by about fifty of the younger Conservatives in the House, led by Viscount Wolmer, all of whom threatened to vote for the Opposition unless some better attempt was made to deal with the problem of long-term unemployment. Neville Chamberlain, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, was forced to respond. He promised to bring forward an amending Act 'which should embody such of Mr Stewart's recommendations as the Government found acceptable'.65