by Diana Mosley
At the villa they listened to the King’s farewell broadcast. Wallis lay on a sofa ‘With my hands over my eyes to hide my tears.’
When Mr Baldwin addressed the House of Commons he told the whole story. He had been asked by the King to mention two things, firstly that the King had entire confidence in his brother as successor, and secondly that ‘the other person most intimately concerned’ had consistently tried, to the last, to dissuade him from the decision he had taken. Characteristically, Mr Baldwin made the first point about the Duke of York and omitted the second about Mrs Simpson. Walter Monckton says this was ‘a little hard’ on Wallis. The omission made the ex-King angry, and from that moment dated his, very natural, dislike of Mr Baldwin.
Next day he was at last permitted to broadcast to the nation; the whole world listened. He had written his speech with Walter Monckton’s help, and Winston Churchill had come down to the Fort, as he constantly did during those days, and added a few touches. Queen Mary did her best to dissuade him. ‘Don’t you think,’ she wrote to him ‘that as he [the Prime Minister] has said everything that could be said … it will not now be necessary for you to broadcast this evening … you might spare yourself this extra strain and emotion. Do please take my advice.’ But as we have seen, the Prime Minister had not said everything that could be said, and now the former King seized his opportunity.
The head of the BBC, Sir John Reith, introduced ‘His Royal Highness, Prince Edward’ and then left him alone with Walter Monckton and the microphone in a little room in Windsor Castle.
Edward leaving Windsor Castle after making his speech.
The Instrument of Abdication signed in the presence of his three brothers.
The Farewell Broadcast, Windsor Castle.
At long last I am able to say a few words of my own. I have never wanted to withhold anything, but until now it has not been constitutionally possible for me to speak. A few hours ago I discharged my last duty as King and Emperor, and now that I have been succeeded by my brother the Duke of York my first words must be to declare my allegiance to him. This I do with all my heart. You all know the reasons which have impelled me to renounce the Throne, but I want you to understand that in making up my mind I did not forget the Country or the Empire, which as Prince of Wales and lately as King, I have for twenty-five years tried to serve. But you must believe me when I tell you that I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love. And I want you to know that the decision I have made has been mine, and mine alone. This was a thing I had to judge for myself. The other person most nearly concerned has tried, up to the last, to persuade me to take a different course. I have made this, the most serious decision in my life, only upon a single thought of what would in the end be best for all. This decision has been made less difficult for me by the sure knowledge that my brother, with his long training in the public affairs of this country and with his fine qualities, will be able to take my place forthwith without interruption or injury to the life and progress of the Empire. And he has one matchless blessing, enjoyed by so many of you, and not bestowed on me, a happy home with his wife and children.
During these hard days I have been comforted by my Mother and by my family.
The Ministers of the Crown, and in particular Mr Baldwin the Prime Minister, have always treated me with full consideration. There has never been any constitutional difference between me and them and between me and Parliament. Bred in the constitutional tradition by my Father, I should never have allowed any such issue to arise.
Ever since I was Prince of Wales, and later on when I occupied the Throne, I have been treated with the greatest kindness by all classes wherever I have lived or journeyed through the Empire. For that I am very grateful.
I now quit altogether public affairs, and I lay down my burden. It may be some time before I return to my native land, but I shall always follow the fortunes of the British race and Empire with profound interest, and if, at any time in the future, I can be found of service to His Majesty in a private station, I shall not fail.
And now we all have a new King.
I wish him and you, his people, happiness and prosperity with all my heart.
God bless you all. God save the King.
This speech, and the idiosyncratic voice, had a strangely moving impact upon the millions who heard it; a brilliant, unforgettable performance.
After the broadcast, Prince Edward, now created Duke of Windsor by King George VI, went to Royal Lodge to take leave of his family, and then he and Walter Monckton drove to Portsmouth. Admiral Sir William Fisher bade him farewell for the Navy with tears in his eyes. He sailed for France in HMS Fury accompanied by Major Ulick Alexander and his great friend ‘Joey’, Captain Piers Legh; his destination was Schloss Enzesfeld in Austria where he was to stay with Baron Eugen Rothschild.
When the hurly-burly was done, Lord Beaverbrook was asked why, since he thought little of the monarchy and have never been a friend of the Monarch, he had decided to come back from America. He answered laconically: ‘To bugger Baldwin.’10 His idea had been that what Churchill used to call the ‘goody-goodies’ would resign and that a new administration led by Churchill and composed of ‘King’s men’, himself included, would then be formed.
Even among those (and they were not few in number) who heartily disliked and despised Mr Baldwin, this would not have been considered a proper course.11 It would have divided Parliament and divided the country and most likely have wrecked the monarchy. Beaverbrook cared nothing for the monarchy; he was disappointed that ‘our cock won’t fight’ as he said of the King. It was the King’s unflinching resolve not to allow any such fight on his behalf that made the transition perfectly smooth and easy. When he finally took leave of him Winston Churchill quoted the lines:
He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene.
On Sunday, 13 December Cosmo Lang, the Archbishop of Canterbury, broadcast a sermon castigating the former King and the King’s friends. Lord Birkenhead in his biography of Walter Monckton wrote: ‘There were no excuses for this lapse. The King had gone, as Walter Monckton said, like a great gentleman, refusing to be made the pretext for any action which might have endangered the State.’ Most people condemned the Archbishop, and a lampoon gave much pleasure:
‘My Lord Archbishop, what a scold you are’: Cosmo Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury.
My lord Archbishop, what a scold you are
And when your man is down, how bold you are
Of Christian charity how scant you are
Oh! Old Lang Swine! How full of Cantuar!
The Archbishop of York also attacked the Duke of Windsor, but nobody paid much attention to him. It was Cosmo Lang who bore the obloquy.
English hypocrisy, a national failing, was in evidence throughout the Abdication crisis. It was a dreadful disappointment to Mr Baldwin that the King never seemed to wrestle with himself. Baldwin had looked forward to a dark night of the soul, even when the outcome was decided. He felt cheated. ‘The King never went through Hell’ he told Victor Cazalet, who also quotes in his diary a letter from ‘a close friend of the royal family’: ‘I don’t think we could ever imagine a more incredible tragedy, and the agony of it all has been beyond words. And the melancholy fact remains still at the present moment that he for whom we agonized is the one person it did not touch. Poor soul, a fearful awakening is awaiting his completely blinded reason before very long.’ This lady (we are not told the sex of the writer, but it is safe to assume it was a lady) went on: ‘I don’t think you need feel the Archbishop failed to express the right thing.’
Leaving aside the oddly exaggerated style, it is the conviction that the Duke would soon be unhappy which is so striking. His continued happiness, year after year, must deeply have disappointed the ungenerous ‘close friend of the royal family’, who had so confidently and gleefully counted upon a ‘fearfu
l awakening.’
Notes
8 Harold Nicolson.
9 Victor Cazalet, a Tory MP, was a great personal friend of the Baldwins. He was a Christian Scientist and teetotaller.
10 Lord Beaverbrook’s biographer, Tom Driberg, points out how he failed in this endeavour.
11 Churchill, though in private he referred to Baldwin as ‘a contemptible figure’, would never have joined Beaverbrook in such an enterprise.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Marriage
For winter’s rains and ruins are over
And all the season of snows and sins,
The days dividing lover and lover
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
Swinburne
A FEW DAYS after he arrived in Austria the Duke was joined by Lord Brownlow who brought letters from Wallis. (He later described the Duke’s room, with sixteen photographs of Wallis in it.) Walter Monckton considered it was essential that they live in different countries until her divorce was made absolute, because it was rumoured that certain malignant persons still hoped to prevent the marriage for which the Duke had given up his crown. When the Duke of Westminster invited him to stay in Normandy even that was judged to be too near Cannes.
On Boxing Day a letter signed ‘A Londoner’ was printed in the New York Times:
Let the American people despise us, if they must, that we did not smash windows, lynch politicians and bring down in ruins the whole structure which our ancestors had so laboriously built up; but let not the foul lie be spread that we approved and applauded the disgraceful manoeuvre by which powerful interests removed from public life one of the most courageous, sincere and straightforward of living Englishmen …
In their sorrow at the loss of a beloved King, many people came to believe in a ‘hidden hand’ which, in fact, did not exist.
The early months of 1937 were extremely frustrating for the Duke, who, formerly so busy and active, now had nothing much to do, except to go skiing when the weather was right, a guest in somebody else’s house, parted from the only person he wished to be with, and looking forward to telephone conversations each evening which were usually more annoying than comforting, with bad lines and frequent cuts.
Major ‘Fruity’ Metcalfe, the Duke’s old friend and equerry, was his chosen companion for the weeks of waiting in Austria. To his wife, Lady Alexandra, Metcalfe wrote letters complaining of his lot.
The Duke’s old friend and equerry, Fruity Metcalfe, joined him in Austria, but it cannot be said that the presence of this former boon companion afforded much pleasure to either of them. Metcalfe wrote letters to his wife in which he rather often complained of his lot, though sometimes he admired the Duke, as, for example, when he went to a party at the British Legation in Vienna. There was music, something he could hardly bear, yet he pretended to enjoy every moment ‘and was wonderful as he always is when he really tries.’ The grumbles were about the Duke’s alleged stinginess.
No doubt, like many rich people, he was sometimes forgetful; royal persons are unaccustomed to handling money. Probably he would have been more careful if he had thought the Metcalfes were poor. With Bruce Ogilvy, for example, a penniless second son, he was the reverse of stingy. Ogilvy writes: ‘He was said to be mean about money; I can only say that I never found him so … When I left him, full of debts, he offered to pay them. He also gave me a substantial cheque for a wedding present.’ He adds that he did not allow the Prince (as he then was) to pay his debts, and ‘he certainly became mean in later life and I think Wallis’ influence had a lot to do with that.’ Like many, though not all, of the Duke’s old friends, Bruce Ogilvy did not like Wallis, the interloper who changed and spoilt everything from their point of view, and this is easily understood. But the notion that in after years the Duke, encouraged by the Duchess, was mean about money will strike those who knew him as a generous host as wide of the mark. It was well known in France that no charity approached the Windsors for money in vain. In any case there was no Wallis to urge meanness at Enzesfeld, so that she cannot be blamed for Metcalfe’s miseries.
While he was in Austria the Duke of Windsor often telephoned his brother, the new King, rather naturally thinking it might help to discuss this and that with his newly-installed successor. Apparently these telephone conversations upset George VI; he felt obliged to get Walter Monckton to ask the Duke to stop ringing him up, an episode which helps to explain his attitude in 1939. The Duke was simply surprised, and of course did as he was asked; he probably never realized the effect his strong personality had upon his brothers.
Meanwhile at Lou Viei Wallis was having a wretched time. The army of reporters outside the gate soon melted away, so that she felt free to go for walks. But every morning with her breakfast tray-loads of letters appeared many of them anonymous, most of them hostile, some of them threatening her life. She says the most abusive came from Canadians, and Americans of British birth. Although there were quite a few friendly letters, including one from Ernest Simpson, she became obsessed with the notion that a calculated effort to discredit and destroy her was being made. Herman Rogers gave her excellent advice: ‘You’ve got to learn to rise above all this. Put it out of your mind.’
Easy to say, hard to do, but by degrees Wallis did put it out of her mind. She became immune, just as everyone in the public eye has to become immune. She learnt, as famous people must, to obey her own conscience and pay no attention to attacks or spite from outside.
Mr Baldwin had complained that during the Abdication crisis the King ‘never went through Hell.’ As we know on the best authority, hell has more than one circle, and it is probable that before she succeeded in taking Mr Rogers’ advice Wallis did go through some sort of hell. No very powerful imagination is needed to see the situation from her point of view. Almost overnight she found herself. from having been the loved and envied, cast as a wily, black villainess. Then she must have asked herself over and over again whether she could live up to the image of her that the King carried in his heart. Could she continue to be the perfect woman, the inspiration, the heroine of this very unusual man who needed her so desperately that he had given up his throne? He had endured a chorus of advice from his ministers, his friends, his brothers, his mother, brushing it aside as if it were not of the slightest consequence or as if he simply failed to hear; but would not echoes of it remain to torment them both?
He was not an infatuated boy of eighteen but a man of forty-two whom she had known for six years, during which he had become ever more devoted to her. She certainly loved him too, but the very last thing she had wanted was for him to make enormous sacrifices for her, thus placing upon her a burden too heavy to be borne. She had wanted a divorce for Ernest Simpson’s sake; he had begun to look very foolish and he had found an ideal wife in his and her old friend Mary Kirk Raffray. But Wallis had emphatically not wanted to marry the King of England, or to be the cause of his abdication. Given the overwhelming nature of his devotion, only a monster of vanity and obtuseness could have surveyed the future without fear. Wallis was neither vain nor obtuse. Also, in addition to his love, there was nearly everyone else’s hatred and malice to be contended with.
As time went on she began to recover from these depressing thoughts. She was resilient, and no doubt friends helped her, particularly Herman and Katherine Rogers with their affection, tact and generosity, but there were others. Osbert Sitwell’s poem ‘Rat Week’, in which he pretends that no sooner had the King abdicated than all his friends and Wallis’ deserted them, denying ever having known her, is rather spiteful. One of the ‘rats’, described by Sitwell as ‘Colefax in her iron cage of curls’, happened to be on the Riviera and hurried to see Wallis, while the few people she knew with houses in the neighbourhood—Somerset Maugham, Daisy Fellowes—immedia
tely invited her. Nobody had been intimidated by the Archbishop’s attack on the King’s friends; most of the friends laughed, some (like Walter Monckton) were angry. Wallis was depressed and anxious for obvious reasons, but not deserted by her friends.
At that time, and for the rest of her life, people who had once or twice found themselves in her proximity were apt to dine out for ever on the subject of her shortcomings while her friends were ignored when they spoke of her qualities. She most likely never knew this. She knew she had a ‘bad press’; the newspapers always enjoyed publishing disagreeable tittle-tattle, and unbecoming photographs of the Windsors, but people she met were all ‘smarmy as be damned’ as the Duke once put it. This is one of the advantages, or disadvantages, that royal personages live with. It makes it fairly difficult for them to distinguish the true from the false.
The dreary months passed, spring came and Wallis began to prepare for her wedding. Both the Duke and the new King thought it would be a bad idea for the marriage to take place on the Côte d’Azur which sounded frivolous and flighty. They were determined to marry in France, because the French have strict laws about the privacy of individuals which would protect them from sightseers and journalists. When a French-American, Charles Bedaux, offered to lend his château in Touraine it sounded ideal and they accepted. The Château de Candé was hidden in a park, a big, comfortable old castle recently restored. Wallis drove there with the Rogers early in March: she was delighted with it. Candé had much to recommend it, sitting in the middle of its park it would be a simple matter to keep the hordes well away.
