Sandringham Days

by John Matson

  At about 11 o’clock it was evident that the last stage might endure for many hours, unknown to the Patient but little comporting with that dignity and serenity which he so richly merited and which demanded a brief final scene. Hours of waiting just for the mechanical end when all that is really life has departed only exhausts the onlookers & keeps them so strained that they cannot avail themselves of the solace of thought, communion or prayer. I therefore decided to determine the end and injected (myself) morphia gr.3/4 and shortly afterwards cocaine gr.1 into the distended jugular vein: ‘myself’ because it was obvious that Sister B. was disturbed by this procedure. In about 1/4 an hour – breathing quieter – appearance more placid – physical struggle gone.260

  The Queen and family returned and stood round the bedside – the Queen dignified and controlled – others with tears, gentle but not noisy… Intervals between respirations lengthened, and life passed so quietly and gently that it was difficult to determine the actual moment.

  But there had been another consideration, perhaps a shade less worthy than the alleviation of suffering. Lord Dawson admitted that he had also weighed up ‘the importance of the death receiving its first announcement in the morning papers rather than the less appropriate evening journals’, and had telephoned his wife in London to advise The Times to hold back publication as the announcement could be expected.261

  Queen Mary herself wrote: ‘At 5 to 12 my darling husband passed peacefully away – my children were angelic.’262 It was then that she, sensing the importance of the succession, stooped and kissed the hand of her eldest son – a gesture of affection and of homage to the new King.262

  Lord Wigram, who was present when the King died, recorded that the Prince of Wales ‘became hysterical, cried loudly, and kept on embracing the Queen’.263 Dawson commented more moderately, putting the Prince’s state down to ‘an emotional outburst at the realisation & following strain of studies and preparation for what must follow the King’s death. A little later on he returned – stood quietly by his dead father’s bedside & went out to the anteroom & sd. “I hope I will make good as he has made good.”’264 But there was little respite for grief: the continuation of the Monarchy was essential and the new King must be proclaimed. ‘David and Bertie,’ Queen Mary wrote, ‘went to London for the Proclamation,’ which, with Mrs Simpson, he watched from a window at St James’ Palace. ‘David very brave & helpful – for he has a difficult task before him – Answered endless telegrams – the doctors and the Archbishop left.’265

  For some years a post office had been established at Sandringham, separated from the Chinese Room only by a thin partition, so that the clerks were sometimes admonished to make less noise. At the time of King George V’s death four additional teleprinters were installed to cope with the flow of cables from all over the world, and the clerks were kept busy taking them to the footmen, who would deliver them.

  For a little while the King’s coffin, made of oak from the Sandringham estate, lay upstairs and members of the Household were able to pay their last respects. Late in the afternoon the King’s coffin was carried out of the main door and brought on a bier, preceded by the King’s Piper and escorted by Grenadier Guards and Queen Mary, together with the family and some of the Household, to the church in the park. It was cold and dark, and someone with a torch guided the little procession along the paths until they could see the lych-gate brilliantly lit, where the rector in his robes awaited them. ‘The Guardsmen, with scarcely a sound, slung the coffin on their shoulders and laid it before the altar, and there, after a very brief service, we left it to be watched for thirty-six hours by the men of the Sandringham estate.’261 ‘ We had a very comforting short service,’ Queen Mary recorded, ‘– the church full of our own kind people – Such a sad sad day – It is curious my having been present in this house at the deathbeds of 2 brothers Eddy & George.’267 The following day Queen Mary returned: ‘Went to the Church after luncheon,’ she wrote. ‘It all looked very peaceful – but so sad.’268

  Two days later the body of King George left Sandringham. The weather was fine and clear as the new King and his brothers, accompanied by members of the Household followed the coffin to Wolferton station and thence to the Royal vault at Windsor. As the cortège wound through the woods where the young Prince George and his brothers had played as boys, Tommy Lascelles saw a cock pheasant fly directly over the gun-carriage. It was the end of a long chapter in the history of Sandringham.

  Queen Mary’s eldest son, whose hand she had kissed at his father’s deathbed, was proclaimed King Edward VIII. As Prince of Wales he had been enormously popular; energetic, charming and with a large capacity for enjoyment, he symbolised the modern age. His arrival by air at Sandringham was in itself symbolic; his father had never been in an aeroplane. His brief reign was marked by the idea of change – indeed, it was the keynote. One of his first orders was to have Greenwich time restored, an act that caused some dismay among the Household, for ‘the order for it was given while his father lay dying, and carried out while his body was still warm.’269

  Other, larger changes were in the air. Since 1930, the Prince of Wales had regarded Fort Belvedere at Sunningdale, on the edge of Windsor Great Park, as his real home. Sandringham had been the home of his father, of whom he had been so much in awe, and who had openly disapproved of his ‘modern ways’. Now, King Edward looked at the accounts of the Sandringham estate with dissatisfaction and sought more economical methods of running it. Accordingly, he asked the Duke of York to visit Sandringham and advise him on how the expense of running it might reasonably be reduced. In his mind the estate had become a ‘voracious white elephant’, and substantial reforms must be made. The Duke spent a fortnight in Norfolk touring the estate with a close friend, the Earl of Radnor, who was the owner of a very large and successful estate. The completed report was a masterpiece of good sense, written largely by the Duke himself, and some of his suggestions must have caused him distress. His feeling for Sandringham was greater than his brother’s, and with his own conservative outlook, he had been the closer to his father. The report consisted of an analysis of the cost of running the estate in 1935, with suggestions for possible reductions in 1936 and 1937. These included giving up some shootings and other economies in the game department; for instance, that no pheasants should be reared in 1936, that deer should be sold. There were also suggested reductions of staff in the house and gardens and various economies in the running of both and of the estate’s farms. Emphasis was laid on the need to avoid creating hardship among staff likely to be dismissed: they should be found other jobs first. The report ended by emphasising that the expenses of the estate, reputed to be £50,000 in 1935, were much increased by the services carried out for the house, and commented that although other expenses were also high, this reflected the late King’s insistence on Sandringham being a model estate, which could not be achieved without expense.270

  The Duke’s suggestions were made in good faith, and, although King Edward’s reign was too short to see them carried out, the majority were implemented during his own reign. The new King, however, revealed an extraordinary concern for his financial security: at the time of his abdication the sale of two large areas of the estate at Flitcham and Anmer was in hand, but cancelled by King George VI. In the event, only 25 per cent of the staff were laid off, rather than nearly half which had been rumoured. He had caused consternation by enquiring whether the late King’s will could be altered – he had asked in an aggrieved tone ‘Where do I come in?’271 He himself had been left nothing, as his father had provided for him amply in his lifetime and expected that he would have been able to save a considerable sum from his revenue from the Duchy of Cornwall. (In fact, he had privately amassed approximately 1 million pounds.)

  King George V’s staunch conservatism reached its zenith at Sandringham, and ‘his love for it had defied the encroachments of time. There… his private war with the twentieth century had ended with the almost complete repulse of the latter.�
��272 This outlook found its sympathetic echo, fainter perhaps but still recognisable, in the Duke of York. The Duke of Windsor was to write that his brother ‘was in outlook and temperament very much like my father. The patterns of their lives were much the same, with the steady swing of habit taking them both year after year to the same places at the same time and with the same associates.’273 Both the new King and the Duke of York had stood in considerable awe of their father, who was a somewhat exacting arbiter of their destinies and often successfully concealed his real affection for his children. Towards the end of his reign King George V sensed the significance of the appearance of Wallis Simpson upon the scene, though it was a subject which neither he nor the Prince of Wales could bring themselves to discuss such was the gulf between them. Not only was the King aware of this dangerous relationship but it caused him great anxiety. He met Wallis only once, in 1934, at Buckingham Palace. The King was furious: ‘That woman in my own house!’274 he exclaimed. He challenged the Prince directly about his relations with Mrs Simpson and was unlikely to have been mollified by his son’s assurance that he had never had any immoral relations with her. The King accepted this at its face value and Wallis was invited to a Jubilee Ball at the Palace. The Prince cannot have made the last years of his father’s reign easy or peaceful: their lifestyles were diametrically opposed and there was no indication that he had detached himself from Wallis. He told the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin: ‘After I am dead the boy will ruin himself in twelve months’275 and a few weeks before his death he said, ‘I pray to God that my eldest son will never marry and have children, and that nothing will come between Bertie and Lilibet and the throne.’276

  Thus it was not to Norfolk, but to Sunningdale that the King brought Mrs Simpson. During his brief reign he visited the estate only to bring a party of friends for the shooting from time to time. In mid-October 1936, the King was at Sandringham with friends, shooting partridge and noting the changes which were in progress following his brother’s report. But the visit was cut short; on his arrival he found a message from his Private Secretary asking the King to telephone him. The Prime Minister was seeking an audience to discuss the King’s growing friendship with Mrs Simpson and to apprise him of the rumours in the foreign press which might, if continued, endanger the Monarchy. Mr Baldwin might have come to Sandringham, but fears of further rumours brought the King to London for the interview. He left the Big House after only one night – his only period of residence there as King.

  Although the first hints of a crisis in the monarchy had been published in the provincial press on 2 December, the full impact did not reach the country as a whole until the following day. In fact, the Press had been effectively muzzled: as early as October the King’s friendship with Mrs Simpson had been the subject of comment in the American press; on 13 November Tom Jones, Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet, wrote: ‘There is only one topic of conversation in London – Mrs Simpson.’277 A cynical note was sounded, predictably perhaps, by Evelyn Waugh on 8 December:

  The Simpson crisis has been a great delight to everyone. At Maidie’s nursing home they report a pronounced turn for the better in all adult patients. There can seldom have been an event which caused so much general delight and so little pain. Reading the papers and even listening to announcements that there is no news took up most of the week.278

  Events moved swiftly. The King, advised that a twice-divorced woman would be unacceptable to the country and unwilling to relinquish her – it was impossible, he said, ‘to discharge his duties as King without the help and support of the woman he loved’ – made the decision to abdicate in favour of the Duke of York.

  The abdication created a number of problems for which there was no precedent: an appropriate title for the ex-King had to be devised – and rapidly, too, for he was to broadcast a message to the nation that evening, and would be introduced by Sir John Reith, Director-General of the BBC. (For this occasion he was announced as His Royal Highness Prince Edward.) One of King George VI’s first acts was to proclaim the ex-King the Duke of Windsor, though his title was not legalised until the following May. Then there was the matter of Balmoral and Sandringham, of which Edward VIII was the life tenant. It was impossible that he could retain any interest in these Royal properties, and therefore necessary that they should be transferred to his successor. Informed guesses put the figure for Sandringham and Balmoral at one million pounds and the yearly income paid by King George to his brother at £60,000. Such was the speed of events surrounding the abdication that it seems these transactions were only agreed on 10 December, the day on which the King signed the Instrument of his Abdication in favour of his brother, the Duke of York, and not completed until after the Duke of Windsor, as he was created, had sailed for France on board the destroyer Fury.

  Thus, by Christmas, another King was on the throne and the Duke of Windsor was in Austria preparing for his marriage with Mrs Simpson.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  KING GEORGE VI

  The new King was physically and emotionally exhausted by the abdication crisis. He had been dismayed by the prospect of his succession, fearful of the inherent danger to the Constitution of an abdication and unprepared for his responsibilities as sovereign. On the afternoon before King Edward signed the Instrument of Abdication, the Duke visited Queen Mary at Marlborough House. ‘He was devoted to his brother,’ Queen Mary told Sir Harold Nicholson, ‘and the whole abdication crisis made him miserable. He sobbed on my shoulder –’279

  In addition he had to survive his ordeal alone, because the Duchess was ill with influenza at their home at No. 145 Piccadilly. But there was some consolation. History has a way of repeating itself: when the new King protested, ‘David has been trained for this all his life. I’ve never even seen a State paper. I’m only a Naval officer, it’s the only thing I know about,’280 Lord Louis Mountbatten replied:

  This is a very curious coincidence. My father once told me that, when the Duke of Clarence died, your father came to him and said almost the same things that you have said to me now, and my father answered: ‘George, you’re wrong. There is no more fitting preparation for a King than to have been trained in the Navy.’

  After the initial shock of his succession, the new King accepted his role with courage and dignity. While reconstructing the temporarily tarnished image of the monarchy, he was busy mastering the intricacies of his role, achieved through his qualities of endurance, industry and integrity, which stood him in good stead throughout his short reign. The new King, lacking in experience and confidence, and strongly supported by the Duchess, now Queen Elizabeth, showed his true mettle as he picked up the threads of kingship. The young boy who had pulled M. Hua’s beard in the schoolroom in York Cottage had turned into a young man with a sense of humour and a capacity for enjoyment. What he may have seemed to lack of his elder brother’s undoubted charm and superficial brilliance, he made up for with moral integrity, determination and with a quality that was almost wholly wanting in his predecessor – a strong committment to duty. Subsequent memories of him tended perhaps to be overshadowed by the vitality of the Queen Mother, whose activities never ceased to fascinate people, and who remained very much in the public eye during the nearly fifty years of her widowhood. Only since her death in 2001 has his sterling contribution to the monarchy become more fully appreciated. Despite a serious stomach complaint he had served courageously as a midshipman at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. He played a hard game of tennis, enjoyed golf, hunted and shot with the rest of the family and spoke his mind with firmness and authority. At the time of his accession, Sir Claude Schuster asked the new King what his brother would be known as after his abdication. It had been suggested that prior to his abdication broadcast he would be introduced as Mr Edward Windsor.

  I replied:– That is quite wrong. Before going any further I would ask what has he given up on his abdication? S. said I am not sure. I said, it would be a good thing to find out before coming to me. Now as to his name. I suggest HRH D of
W[indsor]…’ and in a few decisive sentences he showed Schuster that for a variety of reasons any other title would be inappropriate.281

  King George VI and Queen Elizabeth and the two Princesses journeyed to Sandringham for Christmas with a sense of heartfelt relief from the enormous publicity that had recently surrounded them all. There was in 1936 to be no Christmas broadcast: too much had happened too recently, though shortly afterwards the King broadcast a New Year Message to the people of the Empire and Commonwealth. The nation had reacted to the abdication with a kind of shocked disillusionment which was followed by a wave of sympathy for King Edward’s successor. On Christmas Day, more than 6,000 well-wishers turned out to greet the King and his family as they left the little church in the park. This year Queen Mary joined the family party for Christmas and her presence there symbolised a kind of permanence which the nation, having undergone so much turmoil, greeted with great satisfaction. She had left Buckingham Palace in July to spend a month at Sandringham in preparation for her move to Marlborough House, which was to be her home until her death. On her arrival she wrote to King Edward: