Meanwhile, Queen Mary, bewildered and still stunned by her son’s confession, received the prime minister at Marlborough House. “Well, Mr. Baldwin!” she exclaimed, hastening into the room, her hands held out before her in a gesture of despair and adopting a funny little voice: “This is a pretty kettle of fish.”77
That evening, Wallis dined at Emerald Cunard’s. Chips Channon declared it a “pompous, manqué dinner.” During the meal, Emerald slipped a crumpled note into Chips’s hand. It was an anonymous missive that she had received, which read: “You old bitch, trying to make up to Mrs. Simpson, in order to curry favour with the king.” According to Chips, “Emerald was frightened, yet rather flattered. It was an educated hand-writing.”78
After dinner, Chips sat with Wallis—whom he described in his diary as looking “very well tonight, like a Vermeer, in a Dutch way”—and with Prince Paul and Princess Olga of Yugoslavia. The conversation turned to tiaras, and “Princess Olga said hers gave her a headache. Wallis Simpson laughingly added: ‘Well, anyway, a tiara is one of the things I shall never have. . . .’ There was an embarrassed pause. Diana [Cooper] is convinced that Wallis and the king will marry in secret, immediately after the Coronation. I half hope so, half believe it is fated.”79
Meanwhile, Edward left London for what would be the last official engagement of his reign: a tour of the depressed coalfields of south Wales. This was a bold and seemingly deliberately provocative move; he was not going to be told what to do by Stanley Baldwin. As the king’s train rattled through the night, he lay in his berth reflecting on the turmoil that he knew gripped Whitehall. “Yet, I was at peace with myself,” he recalled. “My spiritual struggle was over. I had passed the climax. The public struggle remained, and in many ways it would be more pitiless. But I had declared myself.”80
7
* * *
The Last Hour
In 1936 there was still mass long-term unemployment and widespread poverty in Britain. This was the year that George Orwell lived among the poor of Wigan (as he famously chronicled in The Road to Wigan Pier). The areas worst affected were those associated with traditional heavy industries, such as south Wales and the north of England. Years of protest and hunger marches now culminated in the epic Jarrow Crusade of October 1936, when two hundred men marched from County Durham to London to deliver a petition to Baldwin’s government, pleading for help and asking for the reestablishment of industry following the closure of the area’s main shipyard.
On November 18 the king travelled to the impoverished Welsh heartlands of the Rhondda and Monmouth Valleys. Against a background of slag heaps and shuttered, empty shops, thousands of people turned out in their best clothes, hung Union flags and stood for hours in the cold on roadsides or at abandoned works to see their sovereign. Edward was given a euphoric and rapturous welcome. A few years earlier, when, as Prince of Wales, he had visited the same region, a banner had greeted him with the words “Welcome to Our Prince.” Now it read: “We Need Your Help.” Over the next few days, Pathé newsreels praised the king for “bringing the whole problem [of unemployment] out of the shadows and into the floodlight of world attention.”1 The “People’s Prince” had become the “People’s King.” Unloved by the establishment and a source of growing concern for the government, he was plainly adored by the masses. As with his visit to the Home Fleet, the occasion bought out the consummate qualities of the king. Edward moved amongst the crowds, speaking to dozens of men directly, showing open concern and sympathy for their plight. He deviated from the official schedule, ending his already long day late because he insisted on making a detour. After visiting a labor exchange, he called at the dismantled Bessemer Steel Works in Dowlais. Years earlier, it had employed over nine thousand men; now three-quarters of the workforce was unemployed and the plant derelict. Hundreds of men awaited him, sitting on piles of twisted, rusting metal. When the king arrived, they stood and sang the hymn “Crugybar.” Their monarch listened, bareheaded, clearly intensely moved. It was here that he turned to an official and uttered the now infamous words: “Terrible, terrible. Something must be done.”
Edward later explained that he had made this bold declaration in order to help “repair the ravages of the dreadful inertia that had gripped the region.”2 The following day, though uncertain of his own future, he promised the unemployed workers: “You may be sure that all I can do for you I will.” Afterwards, he explained that “the statement was the minimum humanitarian response that I could have made to what I had seen,” and was pleased that the liberal press took approving note. But in certain political circles, the king’s comments were seen as causing the government further embarrassment and shining a light on its unwillingness to help. Years later, Edward spoke of his conflict with Baldwin over his visits. “Mr. Baldwin was suddenly conscious of the fact that he and his government had actually done very little to alleviate the plight of the unemployed of which there were thousands at that time.”3
Alec Hardinge was nonetheless pleased to report to the prime minister that “the Welsh visit went extremely well. The reception was everywhere splendid and there was no discordant note.”4 That the king was genuinely moved by what he saw was never in doubt. Edward told Queen Mary that the trip had been “very strenuous and heart-rending but the spirit of these poor people is marvellous.”5 His authentic reaction, his anger on their behalf, his sympathy and his public charisma enhanced his already widespread popularity. “Nothing that ever happened afterwards ever altered the love that ordinary people bore King Edward VIII,” wrote Diana Mosley. “It was a fact, sometimes awkward, that had to be taken into account every time his future and in particular his place of residence was under discussion.”6
While Edward was away in south Wales, Wallis had been invited to lunch at Claridge’s by Esmond Harmsworth. After politely chatting, he asked her if she and Edward had considered a morganatic marriage. “His directness quite took my breath away,” said Wallis, who then asked the press baron to explain exactly what a morganatic marriage was. (“It was one whereby a king or a prince could contract a legal marriage with a woman outside the royal circle—with his wife, however, not sharing her husband’s position and titles,”7 she was told.) The idea had been mooted by Winston Churchill in discussions with Harmsworth’s father, Lord Rothermere. “I realise, Wallis, that this is not very flattering to you. But I am sure that you are one with us in desiring to keep the king on the throne,”8 Esmond continued. He urged Wallis to raise the idea with the king, leaving her with the notion that a suitable title for her might be the Duchess of Lancaster, an ancient and subsidiary title and in keeping with the alias used by the duke when traveling abroad.9 The scheme would become known as the “Cornwall plan” because Churchill’s original idea was that Wallis could be styled the Duchess of Cornwall.10
Wallis felt “completely at sea” after the lunch. Her position in society was a constant worry to her. Harold Nicolson reported that Lady Colefax had a heart-to-heart with Wallis “and found her really miserable. All sorts of people had come to her reminding her of her duty and begging her to leave the country. ‘They do not understand,’ she said, ‘that if I did so, the king would come after me regardless of anything. They would then get their scandal in a far worse form than they are getting it now.’ ”11
The evening that the king returned from Wales, the Channons held a party at their London mansion. Tout le monde attended, including Prince Paul and Princess Olga of Yugoslavia, the Duke and Duchess of Kent, Duff and Lady Cooper, and Wallis and Edward. Honor Channon sat next to the king, “who ate a lot, drank claret and laughed a lot.”12 The dining room was “a cascade of beauty,” according to Chips; “the table seemed literally to swim with Dresden . . . tiaras nodded, diamonds sparkled, the service was excellent and conversation flowed.”13
Wallis’s good influence was again illustrated when Prince Paul asked the king if he would telephone the Spanish infanta, Beatrice, who was staying at Claridge’s, to offer his condolences. Earlier that day her
second son, Don Alonso, had died in an air accident while fighting with Franco’s nationalists in Spain. “Can’t I do it in the morning?” pleaded the king. Prince Paul appealed to Wallis, who turned to Edward: “No, now, to please me, Sir.” Edward dutifully followed Chips into his study, where he found the number and put the call through to the infanta.14
Duff Cooper recalled of the evening: “The king was in the highest spirits. He talked to me about recruiting, about the Artillery Mess and about the BBC. I explained to him the measure of its independence. ‘I’ll change that,’ he said. ‘It will be the last thing I do before I go.’ He said this quite loud and with a laugh, as though he were looking forward to going.” Duff took Wallis aside at the end of the evening in a bid to persuade her to leave the country. She told Duff that the king wouldn’t hear of it and had said that wherever she went, he would follow.15
The following day, an anxious and still-shocked Duchess of York wrote to Queen Mary from Wilton House near Salisbury, where she was a guest of the Pembroke family. “Staying here, in a very normal English shooting party, it seems almost incredible that David contemplates such a step,” she wrote. “Every day I pray to God that he will see reason and not abandon his people. It is a great strain having to talk & behave as if nothing was wrong during these difficult days—especially as I do not think that anybody here dreams of what is worrying all of us . . . it is truly the sword of Damocles again. Ever your loving daughter-in-law, Elizabeth.”16
That evening, Wallis and Aunt Bessie joined the king at the Fort. According to Wallis, “he looked exhausted and, more than that, harassed; the tension of the inner struggle was obviously eating into his soul, and I felt that the appalling strain he was under could not be allowed to go on.” With “many misgivings,” she brought up the idea of a morganatic marriage.17
“My first reaction to the morganatic marriage proposal was one of distaste,” Edward recalled. “The term itself repelled me as one of the least graceful that might be applied to the relations between men and women.”18 But, as the weekend wore on, and the king’s options diminished, he rallied to the idea. On Monday he summoned Esmond Harmsworth to see if he would put the idea to Baldwin. The king had decided that “even without the formal symbolism of the two gilt thrones side by side,” Wallis “with her American charm and energy” would skillfully fulfil the role of king’s consort.19 At this stage, he was keen to find a way to marry while on the throne without precipitating a political struggle. Buoyed up by his popularity following his tour of south Wales, the king was also having second thoughts about the need for abdication. The next day, the Daily Mail published a leader with praise for the king “so fulsome and exaggerated as to be almost dangerous,” according to Chips Channon’s diaries. 20 Baldwin told Cosmo Lang that “on his return,” the king “seemed to waver.”21
Harmsworth visited Duff Cooper after dinner, at 11 p.m., to discuss the idea. It was proposed that the king should confer a ducal title on Wallis; that he should marry her but she should not become queen. Duff reiterated his view that the couple ought to wait awhile. He did not think that the public would accept the king marrying in such seeming haste, in the short period between the end of April, when Wallis’s divorce came through, and the coronation on 12 May. He stressed the importance of a year’s separation. Harmsworth agreed. The next step was to put the idea to the prime minister.
Unlike the bullish king, Wallis was keenly attuned to the complexities of the characters involved. She immediately sensed danger, fearing Edward could be playing into Baldwin’s hands. “David was obviously allowing his better judgment to be swept aside by his impatience to break the deadlock,” she wrote later. “I began to suspect that the whole idea, however well meant, would turn out in reality to be a trap. He would be putting his head on Mr. Baldwin’s chopping block.”22 She understood that the formal presentation of the morganatic proposal would give the prime minister the constitutional right to proffer the king advice, and that Edward would be given little choice but to take it.
Wallis’s fears proved to be well founded. When, on November 25, the king met with the prime minister to discuss the marriage proposal, Baldwin appeared determined to derail the scheme. He said he found the idea of a morganatic marriage repugnant. (Indeed, the mere fact that it had been proposed by Harmsworth, via Winston Churchill, was probably enough to make him reject it out of hand. Baldwin regarded Harmsworth as “a disgustingly conceited fellow” and told the king that Harmsworth’s paper the Daily Mail was “the worst judge in England of what people were thinking.”23) Besides, said Baldwin, the British public would never tolerate it. “I believe many people would be sorry to see me go,” Edward responded wistfully. The prime minister offered to put the idea before the Cabinet—at the same time expressing his private view that Parliament would never pass such a bill—and also the leaders of the Dominions. The king gave his assent. “Many were to argue afterwards that this was a tactical error on my part of the first magnitude,” Edward later confessed. “The automatic effect of my action was to deliver the imperial passkeys into Mr. Baldwin’s hands; once inside the door, he carefully locked me out.”24
Over lunch at the Fort, Edward updated his ally Max Beaverbrook on the meeting. Beaverbrook was immediately against the idea, suspicious of giving Parliament the power in the decision. He advocated presenting to the British people what he called the “king’s case for the marriage.” Yet it was too late: Edward had already handed all bargaining tools to the prime minister.
Beaverbrook was right about Baldwin’s influence over Parliament. Before his meeting with the king, the prime minister had sounded out the opposition. There was a strong emotional attachment among many socialists to Edward due to his long-term stand on poverty and unemployment. Francis Williams, editor of the Daily Herald, declared: “Good luck to the king, and let him marry whoever he pleases.”25 Yet there was a belief that many Labour voters would not accept Mrs. Simpson. “Our people won’t ’ave it,” claimed the trade union leader Ernest Bevin.26 Buoyed by this cross-party support, when Baldwin raised the matter with the Cabinet on November 27, the morganatic marriage proposal was overwhelmingly rejected.
The following morning, the king waited anxiously for the arrival of the red box containing the confidential minutes of the Cabinet meeting. He opened it with the gold key that had been his father’s. “But the solitary paper that I found inside, purporting to discuss the momentous decisions of the day, was blank except for a perfunctory paragraph relating to the carriage of arms to Spain.”27
Beaverbrook, on learning about the Cabinet meeting, hurried to Buckingham Palace, where he told the king: “Sir, you have put your head on the execution block. All that Baldwin has to do now is swing the axe.”28 Beaverbrook advised against sending telegrams to seek the consent of the Dominions. “I am Canadian, I know the Dominions,” he said. “Their answer will be a swift and emphatic no.”29 He also conveyed that he understood all too clearly how Baldwin would frame the question of the hour in his communiqués: “Do you recommend the king’s marriage to a woman with two husbands living, or do you recommend Abdication?”30
Wallis, meanwhile, waited with Aunt Bessie at 16 Cumberland Terrace, desperate for news, the tension and uncertainty becoming unbearable. “These complex, and for David, desperate maneuverings, were scarcely known to me,” she said. “What little I knew at the time came to me in bits and snatches from David, by now seemingly withdrawn even from me. But as that terrible week wore on, even I, remote as I was from the center of the storm, could feel the mounting menace in the very atmosphere.”31 Although the British press still remained silent on the king’s relationship with Wallis, and not a word had been breathed about the breach between the king and his ministers, Wallis felt that “it was as if some mysterious and silent means of communication was carrying the story of the hidden crisis into ever-widening circles of the British public.”32
Tensions were justly running high in palace circles too. The Duke and Duchess of York similarl
y awaited their fate based on the king’s decision. On November 23, the duchess wrote to Edward in a letter marked “Private”:
Darling David,
Please read this. Please be kind to Bertie when you see him, because he loves you and minds terribly what happens to you. I wish that you could realize how loyal & true he is to you, and you have no idea how hard it has been for him lately. I know that he is fonder of you than anybody else, & as his wife, I must write & tell you this. I am terrified for him—so DO help him. And for God’s sake don’t tell him that I have written—we both uphold you always, E.33
During this time, unable to venture out due to the constant gawping of strangers, Wallis and Bessie became virtual prisoners at Cumberland Terrace. Bessie would stand at the window and peer through the curtains at people staring up at the house. Worse, Wallis began to receive threatening hate mail, some signed, some anonymous. Already feeling like a “hunted animal” she was understandably alarmed when the king informed her—by note—that he had received news of a rumored plot to blow up her house. It was agreed that he would take them to the safety of Fort Belvedere, and that her staff should not disclose her whereabouts.
Early that evening, the king’s car came to collect them. Wallis and her canine companion, Slipper, sat in the back with Edward, who squeezed her hand reassuringly. “As the lights of London receded into the distance behind us, little did I know that this was the last time I was to see them for nearly three years,”34 she recalled.
The Real Wallis Simpson: A New History of the American Divorcée Who Became the Duchess of Windsor Page 17