Matriarch

by Anne Edwards

  If Queen Mary had sought out the Prince of Wales and addressed herself directly to the problem of Wallis Simpson early in 1934, would history have been altered? All that we know of modern psychiatry substantiates at least the possibility that the Prince of Wales would have welcomed and followed his mother’s directive. His entire childhood and youth had been marked by her inattention to him as an individual and his desire to obtain it. What ability Queen Mary had to give love to her children had now been turned to Bertie, his complacent wife, and the two little Princesses. With unerring inevitability, the Prince of Wales became attracted to a woman who filled his mother’s place in his life. Such a replacement could not have been a soft, compliant woman like his brother Bertie’s wife, for Queen Mary had been her complete antithesis—as was Mrs. Simpson.

  One day in June 1934, as had been her almost daily habit for years, Freda Dudley Ward put a call through to St. James’s Palace to speak to the Prince of Wales. The telephonist on the palace switchboard answered in tones of the greatest distress. “I have something so terrible to tell you that I don’t know how to say it.” When pressed by Mrs. Dudley Ward, she added in a shaking voice, “I have orders not to put you through.”

  For seventeen years, Angela Dudley Ward had regarded her mother’s lover, the Prince of Wales, as a father image. He had showered her with loving and extravagant gifts, and she had always had immediate access to him and had been able to discuss with him any problem she had, no matter how inconsequential. About the same time as the conversation between her mother and the telephonist, Angela had received a summons for driving without a license. Fearful that she might have to appear in court, she put a call in to the Prince of Wales at the Fort. His butler, who had known her since childhood, told her that His Royal Highness was out. She left an urgent message for him to return her call. When she did not hear from him, she wrote him a plea for help and then tried calling again, unsuccessfully. Puzzled and hurt, she turned to her mother for answers.

  “Haven’t you noticed that he hasn’t been here for weeks?” her mother replied.

  In fact, Freda Dudley Ward would never again either see or speak to the Prince of Wales. So sharply did he sever his alliance with her that he also cruelly cut from his life the one young woman who had been a daughter figure to him. Wallis Simpson had insisted on his sole loyalty to her. The fatal mistake that Queen Mary made at this time was not to recognise that Mrs. Dudley Ward’s ignominious exit from his life signalled the end for the Prince of Wales of any bond that would bind him to England and—in the future—to the Throne.

  Footnotes

  *Clair Angela Louise Ward (1917–) married in 1935 to Major-General Sir Robert Laycock, Chief of Combined Operations in the Second World War. There were (and remain) rumours that Angela was an illegitimate child of the Prince of Wales, but this story, like the ones circulating about Sonia Keppel Cubitt, have never been substantiated.

  *Louis Mountbatten married Edwina Ashley.

  †At the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Kent, Queen Mary, without realising what she had done, received Mrs. Simpson for the first and only time. The Prince of Wales had managed an invitation to the wedding for Mr. and Mrs. Simpson. At the reception he had brought Wallis Simpson up to his mother, exclaiming with a bright smile, “I want to introduce a great friend of mine.” The Queen had shaken hands without thinking much about it.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The Silver Jubilee was Queen Mary’s idea. Tradition had been to fete only golden anniversaries. Twelve previous monarchs had reigned twenty-five years without commemorating the occasion.* As she had shrewdly insisted on maintaining the dressiness of the Court during the Depression, so Queen Mary now instigated plans for a jubilee of such pomp and magnificence that it would overshadow the King’s illness and at the same time give Britain an opportunity for “the biggest money-spending festival since the war.” Only fourteen years had passed since the Allies had won, and rumbles of a new war were being heard. Hopefully, a jubilee would reassure the people of the strength of the Monarchy.

  Many in and out of government held a pessimistic view of Germany’s military revival and the rise of Adolf Hitler. In October 1933, Herr Hitler had ordered his delegation to leave the Disarmament Conference in Geneva. Still, men like Sir John Simon, the British Foreign Secretary, did not take this too seriously. “... time must be given to see how this works out,” he wrote King George on October 23. “Fortunately, time is available for Germany is at present quite incapable of undertaking aggression ...” Winston Churchill did not agree. On February 7, 1934, he vehemently warned against the danger of a powerful German Air Force, adding on March 8 that he “dreaded the day when the means of threatening the heart of the British Empire should pass into the hands of the present rulers of Germany.”

  On April 24, 1934, the King met Leopold von Hoesch, the German Ambassador, and asked outspokenly why Germany was arming when no one wanted to attack her, and why she was forcing all the other countries to prepare for an attack on her part. Von Hoesch replied that French fortification was impregnable and that Germany had no fortifications on her side. The King refused to accept this answer and reminded the Ambassador that in the last war “fortifications were useless and would be even more so in the next.”

  A few months later, through Sir John Simon, he wrote to Sir Horace Rumbold, British Ambassador in Berlin, “We must not be blinded by the apparent sweet reasonableness of the Germans, but be wary and not be taken unawares.”

  Early in February 1935, Hitler introduced military conscription, created an overt Air Force, and increased the German Army to thirty-six divisions. Winston Churchill warned an uneasy Parliament that Britain was entering “a corridor of deepening and darkening danger along which [she] should be forced to move, perhaps for months, perhaps for years.”

  This gloomy outlook was at least temporarily displaced by the increasing excitement over the Jubilee, set now for May 6, 1935. The King and Queen remained at Windsor for the month of April. King George was looking old and bent, and he had taken to dining alone in his room because the effort of dressing for dinner was too much. His intimate friends were concerned that he might not be strong enough to endure the strain of the Jubilee. Clearly, he was a man too tired and ill for parades, but the Queen did not back down. To delay or cancel the celebrations at this late stage would instantly have given rise to rumours that the King was dying. The Queen saw her dressmakers and went over the plans for the many functions comprising the celebration. Jubilee plans took over her schedule, and her diary for this period contains hectic, almost frantic notes.

  Queen Mary knew her husband was dying and that her days as Queen Consort were numbered. Would the King have lived longer without the physical exhaustion the Jubilee was to cost him? Perhaps, but the nation’s enthusiasm did give him great happiness. For Queen Mary, the Jubilee was a last chance for the applause and adulation that came with being Queen Consort.

  On April 24, David had tea at Windsor with his mother and his brother Harry, who had just returned from a visit to Australia. Harry had been away when his brother George had married Princess Marina, and the Queen had written him at the time, “Now you will have to follow suit, for marriage is in the air.” Unlike her attitude of silence where marriage and David were concerned, she had even appended the names of two princesses in order of priority for consideration and added, “I hope now my darling boy will think about marrying on your return.”

  Harry had not responded favourably to his mother’s suggestions, and the King had considered this issue of enough importance to write to his son, “Of course, Mama & I have always been anxious that you should marry & settle down & I am sure you could find someone who would make you a good wife & be a help to you in yr duties.” David and Bertie met his ship on March 28 and rode with him on the Royal train to Victoria Station, where they were met by their parents. The King’s appearance greatly shocked Harry. He looked emaciated in his full-dress field marshal’s uniform; his chest—albeit covered with
medals and ribbons—had become concave. The question of a bride for Harry was once more the subject of discussion with the family. More names were mentioned. Harry felt under pressure. His parents’ hope was that the high spirits generated by the Jubilee would be extended by an announcement of another Royal Wedding.

  Everyone knew, but did not say, that it was David whom the nation was anxious to marry off. Yet no member of the family felt like pressing him. Both the King and Queen were aware of his devotion to Wallis Simpson, for the Duke and Duchess of Kent had reported to them their many occasions in David and Mrs. Simpson’s company. The King and Queen sensed that unlike his relationships with Lady Furness and Mrs. Dudley Ward, this was different and that the wrong approach could end in a disastrous rebellion on David’s part. They still hoped that he would tire of Mrs. Simpson, who was, they had been told, pushy, but also extremely clever.

  The Prince of Wales at this time was attempting to launch his new love socially. Chips Channon,* who was to become a close friend of Wallis Simpson, wrote in his diary for April 5, 1935, “Mrs. Simpson ... has already the air of a personage who walks into a room as though she almost expected to be curtsied to. At least she wouldn’t be too surprised. She has complete power over the Prince of Wales.”

  Queen Mary was at Windsor Castle, with David nearby at Fort Belvedere, throughout April. They did not meet, except for the night Harry returned and for tea nearly four weeks later. Possessing neither the knack nor the language of intimacy with her sons, especially David, she was unable to encourage him to talk to her freely about his situation.

  The week of the Jubilee was one of ceaseless activity for the King and Queen. The day itself, May 6, was unseasonably warm, with the temperature reaching 79 degrees by ten o’clock when the first of the day’s carriage processions began to form in the courtyard of Buckingham Palace. The King and Queen left for St. Paul’s Cathedral for a Thanksgiving Service at 10:55 in an open carriage with six grey horses.

  Chips Channon saw the procession from the front of Sir Frederick Ponsonby’s house near St. James’s Palace.† “The Yorks in a large landau with the two tiny pink children,” he writes. “The Duchess of York was charming and gracious, the baby princesses much interested in the proceedings, and waving. The next landau carried the Kents, that dazzling pair; Princess Marina wore an enormous platter hat, chic but slightly unsuitable.† She was much cheered ... Finally the Prince of Wales smiling his dentist smile and waving to his friends, but he still has his old spell for the crowd. The Norway aunt [Queen Maud] who was with him looked comic, and then more troops, and suddenly, the coach with Their Majesties. All eyes were on the Queen in her white and silvery splendour. Never has she looked so serene, so regally majestic, even so attractive. She completely eclipsed the King. Suddenly, she has become the best dressed woman in the world.”

  Inside St. Paul’s Cathedral, sunlight gleamed down from the clerestory windows through the tranquil spaces and touched the uniforms and the bright clothes of the assembled congregation, evoking patches of brilliant colour. The King’s plumed hat rested at his feet; his shoulders were slumped, and his head bent slightly on his chest as he and the Queen listened to the Archbishop of Canterbury from their throne chairs directly below his podium. Queen Mary sat column-straight, her spine not touching the back of her throne chair. She wore a silver-and-white gown, a cape with a large white fox collar, and a white toque with a tall aigrette that was visible from almost any position in the cathedral. Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret sat on cushioned stools directly behind their grandparents, and beside them their parents, their Uncle David, Aunt Mary, and great-uncle Arthur of Connaught. Uncle George Kent, his wife, and Uncle Harry Gloucester sat behind them with their Aunts Maud and Toria. They were a solemn family group as they heard the words of the Archbishop’S Silver Jubilee Thanksgiving Service:

  “Twenty-five years have passed since the reign of our beloved Sovereign began. Looking back upon them we realise ... they have been years of almost unbroken anxiety and strain. They began in an atmosphere of embittered party strife. Into the midst of them came suddenly the fiercest ordeal which the nation has ever been summoned to face. Since then have followed years of toilsome effort in the midst of a world restless, bewildered, broken by the shock of war, to revive the trade and industry on which the lives of multitudes depend and to find the basis of a settled peace. Yet, beneath the troubled surface there has been in the life of our nation the deep overflow of a spirit of unity, confidence, and steadfast strength. That spirit has found a centre in the Throne. Elsewhere ancient monarchies have been swept away by the storms of revolution. Here the Throne has been established in ever stronger security ... As we lift our hearts in Thanksgiving, so let us bow them in humble prayer for our King and Queen that God may continue to bestow His blessing upon them ... Pray for this dear land and for the Empire which has grown around it, that by God’s help they may uphold before the world the cause of peace among all nations, the principles of liberty and justice, and a community wherein all the citizens are the willing servants of the common weal.”

  A difficult moment occurred at the end of the service when the King, having retrieved his hat, was unable to rise. Bertie, being the closest, placed his hand beneath his father’s arm. David also stepped forward to assist. The King, though unsteady, was already on his feet.

  The Royal Family rode back to Buckingham Palace amidst the tumultuous cheering of the crowds and made several appearances on the balcony during the afternoon. At eight that evening, King George broadcast a message of thanks to his people.* “How can I express what is in my heart ... I can only say to you, my very, very dear people that the Queen and I thank you from the depth of our hearts for all the loyalty and—may I say?—the love with which this day and always you have surrounded us. I dedicate myself anew to your service for the years that may still be given to me. I am speaking to the children above all. Remember Children, the King is speaking to you.” His voice was strong, clipped, emphatic, vibrant, devoid of all condescension, and its effect was intense.

  “Most moving,” Queen Mary wrote in her diary after listening to the King’s short message.

  His nurse, Sister Catherine Black, immediately helped him to his room after his radio speech. Despite his exhaustion, he took time for the ritual of writing in his diary, “A never-to-be-forgotten day.”

  The weeks that followed Jubilee Day were filled with activities. There were two state balls at Buckingham Palace, the first on May 14. To the King and Queen’s shock, David brought Ernest and Wallis Simpson as his personal guests. Mrs. Simpson recalls in rather purple prose that “after the King and Queen had made their entrance and taken their seats on the dais at the end of the room, the dancing began. As David and I danced past, I thought I felt the King’s eyes rest searchingly on me. Something in his look made me feel that all this graciousness and pageantry were but the glittering tip of an iceberg that extended down into unseen depths I could never plumb, depths filled with an icy menace for such as me. Also through the panoply of pomp I discerned that here was a frail old man. The King was then only a few days away from his seventieth birthday, and David had told me more than once of his concern over his father’s failing strength. A premonitory shiver ran through me at the thought of what his passing might bring, the startling and immeasurable changes that of necessity would come to all of us. In spite of David’s gaiety and the lively strains of a foxtrot, the sense of foreboding refused to lift; in that moment I knew that between David’s world and mine lay an abyss that I could never cross, one he could never bridge for me.”

  The Queen made no comment in her diary about seeing Mrs. Simpson. The Simpsons, however, were not at the second state ball on June 13. By this time, King George was noticeably fatigued. He had carried through as planned four ceremonial drives through North, South, East, and West London. Queen Mary had suggested that these be made on Saturday afternoons so that a larger number of people could see them. They travelled by motorcar to a subur
ban point, where they transferred to an open landau with an escort of Life Guards. At selected points, Mayors and local Councillors assembled to present addresses. For their procession through North London, Constitution Hill and the Mall were reserved for 70,000 London schoolchildren. After their much-cheered drive through the poorer sections of East London, King George, very tired but radiantly happy, said to Catherine Black, “I’d no idea they felt that about me. I am beginning to think they must really like me for myself.”

  Queen Mary had been right about the Jubilee. It increased the people’s pride in their monarchy and its survival, “unimpaired in dignity” for more than a thousand years. Observers believed that the Jubilee had reinforced the Crown as “a symbol of patriotism, a focus of unison, and an emblem of continuity in a rapidly dissolving world.” King George appeared to his people now as a “strong benevolent patriarch.”

  Queen Mary celebrated her sixty-eighth birthday on May 26, 1935. The Grenadier Guards Band played at a family luncheon, and in the afternoon she and the King drove round North London with Lilibet to look at the decorations that were still up. Age did not perturb her now. She had grown into her persona. Her appearance was formidable, her manner—“Well,” as one witness of her reign says, “it was like talking to St. Paul’s Cathedral...” adding, “she was magnificent, humourous, worldly, in fact nearly sublime, though cold and hard.”

  A family celebration on June 3, the King’s birthday, was held at Buckingham Palace. The King was not at all well. The Jubilee decorations were finally taken down on June 12, and the King, suffering a hacking cough and difficulty in breathing, went to Sandringham to rest, while the Queen moved to Windsor Castle with Harry, where the guests included Lady Alice Montagu-Douglas-Scott. And on June 21, Harry wrote his father that he “saw Alice Scott several times & met her out riding each morning. I think Mama liked her.” Mama obviously did, for she had arranged the meeting.