Before Wallis

by Rachel Trethewey

  After Edward VII’s death Daisy antagonised King George and Queen Mary by threatening to publish the late king’s love letters to her. Needing money, she resorted to blackmail, getting a go-between to meet King George’s private secretary, Lord Stamfordham, to find out if the royal family could be persuaded to pay between £85,000 and £125,000 for the suppression of the letters. She then sent an ultimatum claiming that unless the money was paid her manuscript memoirs, including the letters, would be sold in America for £200,000. King George was not amused; his main motivation was to prevent his mother, Queen Alexandra, from being hurt by revelations about her husband’s infidelities. Relying on the law of copyright, which meant that although the letters were the property of Daisy, the copyright was vested in George V, as heir of the author, the king’s private secretary and solicitor served Daisy with an interim injunction, which stopped her from making her royal letters public.13 However, Daisy’s agent, Frank Harris – a seedy former newspaper editor who had been a friend of Oscar Wilde – had already left for America with some of her letters. In July 1915 an action was brought in the King’s Bench Division against Daisy, her husband and Harris, using the Defence of the Realm Act, which allowed the arrest of anyone engaged in activities likely to be detrimental to the nation’s war effort. On 5 July the action was suspended provided that the letters were handed over by Daisy to be destroyed.14

  Equally controversial were Daisy’s politics: she was an ardent socialist who criticised the wealthy and championed the poor. Nicknamed by Margot Asquith, the Liberal Prime Minister’s wife, ‘Comrade Warwick’, in 1904 Daisy became a leading light in the Social Democratic Federation, which favoured direct action and aimed to bring about a revolutionary change in society and the end of capitalism.15 Eight years later she joined a new group called the British Socialist Party, which included trade unionists and socialist intellectuals. During the industrial unrest of 1912 she supported the workers. Dressed in a large hat with ostrich feathers and a long black silk cloak, she spoke for the strikers and offered to pay for the cost of housing 1,000 strikers’ children while the strike lasted.16 When the Russian Revolution took place in 1917, Daisy declared, ‘Vive L’Internationale!’ She hoped that it might lead to the end of monarchies across Europe.17 As Rosemary and the prince’s courtship took place just months after the revolution, it would be understandable if such sentiments did little to endear Rosemary’s family to her potential in-laws. As Queen Mary wrote to Edward in 1917: ‘Altogether that Russian business is a tragedy.’18

  Rosemary’s mother Millicent was also a flamboyant figure. After her husband died in 1913 she had shocked society by marrying Major Percy Desmond Fitzgerald very quickly afterwards; such impetuous behaviour was considered indecorous for a matron of 47. In fact, Millicent had been having an affair with the dashing but unreliable Irish major for about a decade before her husband died. She had even travelled to Algiers and Morocco with him under a false name.19 However, by the time they married all passion was spent between them. During the war, they rarely saw each other and by the time of Rosemary’s courtship with the prince they were separated and on the brink of divorce. In an era when divorce was still rare and frowned upon at court, it seems likely that it would have been considered unsuitable for the daughter of a divorced woman to become Princess of Wales.20

  If the behaviour of Millicent and her sister threatened future controversy, Rosemary’s uncle, Harry, the 5th Earl of Rosslyn, was an even greater potential embarrassment. Once he inherited the earldom and a large fortune, he began a thirty-six-year-long gambling spree. Three months after his father’s death he attended the Newmarket thoroughbred sales in his late father’s fur coat with a long cigarette holder in his mouth and spent £6,000 on one horse and several thousand more on others. Within six years he had gambled away most of his £50,000 inheritance. In 1893 he faced financial ruin after betting £15,000 on his favourite racehorse, called Buccaneer, who, unfortunately, crossed the finish line fourth. The earl was forced to sell his stable of racehorses and the family home and silver. However, even this experience did not stop him from gambling. Within four years he was declared bankrupt and banned from taking his seat in the House of Lords.21 He continued to pay regular visits to the gaming tables of the south of France and so infamous was his addiction to casinos that it was said that the popular song, ‘The Man Who broke the Bank at Monte Carlo’, was written about him. The earl was open about his fatal flaw, calling his memoir My Gamble with Life.

  Like Millicent, he had also made some unsuitable decisions in his love life. He was divorced twice. In 1890, he married Violet de Grey Vyner, and the couple had a son and daughter together, but his gambling and infidelity broke up the marriage. Looking for a new career and wife, Rosslyn became an actor, forming a company of players called ‘Lord Rosslyn’s Theatrical Performances’, which toured the country. After launching himself on the New York stage, in 1905 he married an American actress, Georgina ‘Anna’ Robinson. Their relationship did not last long as the earl accused his bride of being ‘a drug fiend and addicted to drink’ while she described him as a philandering wastrel.22 In 1908 he married for the third time, an actress named Vera Bayley who was known as ‘Tommy’. She was eighteen years younger than her husband; the couple had two more sons and a daughter, but the earl continued gambling and drinking.

  Evidently there were quite a few challenging characters in Rosemary’s family. However, if strict moral standards were applied to the relatives of most aristocratic brides they would have been found wanting. According to Lady Victor Paget, once Rosemary heard of the king and queen’s opposition she retreated with dignity. From that time on, she always gave the impression that she had never wanted to marry the Prince of Wales. However, privately her family pride was deeply wounded.23 In agreeing to accept the prince’s proposal she had not been driven by ambition but duty: her motivation had been based on knowing that she had the strength of character and qualities which could have made Edward a better king. It seems that Millicent Sutherland was also very offended. There was to be no more correspondence or meetings between her and the king and queen for more than a decade.

  By discouraging the prince from marrying Rosemary, King George V and Queen Mary missed an excellent opportunity to update the royal family for the twentieth century. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, followed by an epidemic of rebellions and abdications which ousted monarchs across Europe, Edward realised that to keep the British throne secure his family needed to keep in the closest possible touch with the people. He promised his father that this need would always be at the forefront of his mind.24 The prince felt that he understood the changed post-war society far better than his father. His service in France had allowed him to get to know his future subjects from all classes and he was sure that he knew their hopes and aspirations. He believed that they were heroes who deserved a better society and if they were not given it they would reject their rulers.25

  Interestingly, Edward found an ally in his mother. After one of their long talks, Queen Mary wrote to him saying that she was glad to discover that he felt about ‘“the cause” as I do’. She added: ‘We shall have to work very hard to set self completely on one side, but one is ready to do just anything when it is for the sake of our people and country. It will be just everything having you to work with and to feel I can explain my views to you.’26 Like the prince, she also had doubts about her husband’s ability to adapt. She wrote to her son: ‘There will be so much to do and I sadly fear Papa does not yet realise how many changes this war will have brought about.’27 Showing a political astuteness that she could not express in public, she told Edward that she hoped the government would ‘hurry up and get the much needed reforms (which the working class need) passed’. She added that if they did this it would ‘take the wind out of the sails of the extremists and I trust they will be wise enough to realise this’.28 The prince wrote back to her saying that he was glad that they both understood the ‘general situation’ and that they had ‘
to work for all the changes that are so absolutely necessary for the future’. He added: ‘We’ve got some funny or rather serious times before us, but they’ve got to be faced and in the right and modern way and “to hell” with precedents!! They won’t wash nowadays!!’ 29

  Rosemary could have helped the prince modernise the monarchy as, despite her immensely privileged background, she had been brought up by her mother to have the common touch. Millicent Sutherland had a strong social conscience and she had proved herself willing to take on vested interests. As the daughter of a notable social reformer, if Rosemary had married the prince it is likely that she would have appealed more to ordinary people than many less compassionate aristocrats in the more democratic post-war era. As Millicent’s granddaughter, the Countess of Sutherland, wrote, the Duchess of Sutherland had a ‘deep sense of the equality of all human beings’.30 Her sister Lady Angela Forbes explained that her good looks and social position allowed her to ignore convention. In her houses ‘penniless artists, pensioned governesses or Presbyterian parsons’ might find themselves sitting next to members of the royal family or Cabinet ministers.31

  Known as ‘the Democratic Duchess’, Millicent had always found it easy to build a natural and unstilted relationship with working-class people. Before the war, the Duchess of Sutherland had been so involved in fighting a range of social injustices that she became known by her opponents as ‘Meddlesome Millie’. In the Potteries, near Trentham, she campaigned against the lead poisoning that was damaging local people’s health. The novelist Arnold Bennett caricatured her as an interfering lady bountiful, the Countess of Chell or ‘Interfering Iris’. In his novels, the character based on Millie frequently annoyed the conservative councillors of the Five Towns. However, although the Duchess of Sutherland was mocked by some, her crusade was successful, leading to new regulations which saved the lives of many pottery workers.32

  Another of her projects was to start a ‘Cripples’ Guild’ to help disabled children. In 1898, she opened a home at Hanchurch to provide a fortnight’s summer holiday for these children. The scheme was then extended to visiting disabled children in their own homes to provide medical treatment and surgical appliances. The project kept growing and eventually developed into an orthopaedic hospital at Hartshill, Stoke-on-Trent, which helped children with disabilities. Millicent wanted to make the most of disabled children’s talents. To enable them to earn their own living, she set up a workshop where instructors trained them in a trade or craft. By 1902 more than 100 boys and girls were being taught. The project transformed lives; one young disabled lad who had been living on the streets of Stoke, where he sold newspapers, was trained to be a skilled craftsman making silver vases.33 There were many other success stories, and their high-quality art-metalwork was sold locally and at a shop in New Bond Street, London, set up by the duchess.34

  Millie also helped her husband’s tenants in Sutherland with practical schemes that aimed to give them economic independence. One of the works she was most proud of was the opening of a technical school at Golspie that provided free education and boarding accommodation for about fifty crofters’ sons aged 12 to 16. The boys were given a good elementary education and taught practical skills, including running their own farm and market garden and repairing the buildings. The school allowed boys whose parents were unable to finance them to serve apprenticeships to trades, on the understanding that repayment would be made by them once they were earning enough to do so.

  Millie was determined to make a real difference in the lives of local people. Another of her projects was to reinvigorate the old traditional craft of handloom weaving by reorganising the industry in a more businesslike way, as the Sutherland Home Industries. She held annual sales of the crofters’ tweeds in the palatial gardens at Stafford House, where handmade goods were sold to their society friends on stalls manned by the duchess and Rosemary.35 Businesslike and determined, Millicent encouraged her circle to spend by telling them: ‘The success or failure of the scheme means life or death to these poor people.’36

  Since childhood, Rosemary had been involved in her mother’s many campaigns. From the age of 6 she was enlisted as a saleswoman for Scottish tweeds at Stafford House. When she was at Dunrobin her mother insisted that Rosemary was dressed in Scottish homespun cloths and thick knickerbockers. By the time she was a young woman, Rosemary shared much of the work with her mother. Under the headline, ‘Hardly in Homespun at the Homespun at Home,’ the Sketch published a photo of Rosemary wearing a fashionable picture hat with a large feather, an elegant gown and immaculate white gloves selling goods made by the Cripples’ Guild in one of her mother’s many sales.37 The charity work was an ideal apprenticeship for a future queen. As Rosemary’s brother Geordie, Duke of Sutherland, wrote in his autobiography, with their mother playing the dual role of society hostess and social reformer they ‘gained an early insight into the two extremes of life, and I think that, if only sub-consciously, that was very good for us. As witnesses to much of her welfare work, we grew to understand the meaning of poverty as well as wealth and instinctively began to share her interests.’38

  The culmination of Millicent’s public service was during the war. If the prince had been allowed to marry Rosemary, her work with her mother in France could have inspired popularity which would have more than compensated for any whiff of scandal. When war broke out Millicent had been among the first to establish an ambulance unit in Belgium. She left England on 8 August 1914 and three weeks after hostilities began she and her team of eight British nurses and a surgeon were nursing at a convent in Namur, a border town. Soon soldiers with injuries worse than she could possibly have imagined were arriving. However, she immediately rose to the occasion.

  As the Germans advanced, Namur was attacked. Millicent and her nurses were cut off and captured. There was no electricity or gas supplies and her team had to work using hand lanterns. Throughout the crisis, the duchess remained calm. She buried her revolver under an apple tree and then confidently negotiated with the enemy. Millicent and her team were soon released once German officers realised how well connected and determined the duchess was. Learning that she had entertained both the Kaiser and the Crown Prince of Germany before the war, they allowed Millicent and her staff to make their way to Holland where they were repatriated. Undeterred by this dangerous six-week interlude, the duchess was determined to continue her war work. After a brief break in England she travelled to France to set up her military hospital, taking Rosemary with her.

  At her hospital, the duchess once again showed her courage under fire. Whenever there was an air-raid warning or shelling Millicent would pull on a pair of trousers, put a tin helmet on her head and start a round of the wards.39 Accompanied by the nurses, she would try to keep morale up.40 Millicent was in her element. She made a lasting impression as she gracefully moved from bed to bed in her immaculate white nurse’s uniform. She was an inspiring figure for both her patients and nurses. During the four years of the war the Duchess of Sutherland’s hospital treated about 8,000 men; in recognition of the scale of her work during the conflict, she was awarded the Belgian Royal Red Cross, the French Croix de Guerre and the British Royal Red Cross.41 With a war record like that, the Leveson-Gowers were just the type of family the heir to the throne should have been marrying into. The British public would have been able to identify with a hard-working nurse more than most previous royal brides.

  The prince did not fight his parents’ opposition to Rosemary as strongly as he was to assert himself in later love affairs, first with Freda Dudley Ward and then Wallis Simpson. Perhaps this was because his fondness for Rosemary was just not deep enough. Over the previous years, Edward had constantly been infatuated with different women. His passion for Rosemary had been short lived and on the rebound from Portia’s rejection. He must also have known that she had doubts about their relationship and was not totally in love with him. As a mother who desired her son’s happiness, perhaps Queen Mary was concerned not only about ‘a tain
t’ in Rosemary’s blood but that the young couple’s affection for each other was not strong enough to survive the rigours of a royal marriage.

  Throughout his relationship with Rosemary, the prince was feeling particularly close to his mother, so he would have valued her opinion. Immediately after the royal visit to Millicent Sutherland’s hospital in July 1917, Queen Mary wrote to her son about the ‘wonderful time’ they had spent together in France. She added: ‘How nice it was our being together for so many days and having those interesting drives which will always stand out in my memory […] I confess I felt very low at parting from you at Calais and hated saying “good-bye”.’42 Edward felt the same, replying: ‘What a joy it was to me to be with you so long and I loved our long drives and talks together.’43 Edward’s diaries and letters at this time frequently mention confidential talks with Queen Mary about various aspects of his life.44 After Edward’s relationship with Rosemary had ended and when the prince was returning to France, Queen Mary wrote to Edward in April 1918: ‘It was a great grief taking leave of you after our delightful seven weeks together and we really did manage to see something of each other and to have some nice talks.’45 Having felt deprived of his mother’s affection as a child, Edward would have recognised the importance of such intimacy and would not have wished to jeopardise it.

  By not embracing Rosemary as their future daughter-in-law, the king and queen missed an opportunity that would not come again. It is possible that the younger woman could have done for Prince Edward what Queen Mary did for George V. Throughout his reign she had given him the unstinting support and a domestic life that made the burden of ruling tolerable. Rosemary and Edward also had the potential to build a partnership on firm foundations. In the photographs of Queen Mary and Rosemary on that fateful day in July 1917, when they met at Millicent Sutherland’s hospital, there is a similarity in the two women’s self-contained poise: both exude a calm, inner confidence which the Prince of Wales lacked. Rosemary was a match for the queen, and she could have been an ally in turning the Prince of Wales into a man fit to be king.