The vast bulk of MPs were happy to see Churchill humiliated, but even Bob Boothby, one of the tiny band who kept their loyalty to him through thick and thin, was struck by bitterness that Churchill had casually tossed aside the approach that he and Sinclair had agreed with him the day before. Boothby could not resist a venomous but telling analysis:
Now when a dog does that [glance around furtively], you know that he is about to be sick on the carpet. It is the same with Winston. He managed to hold it for three days, and then comes up to the House and is sick right across the floor.27
The King’s Party was dead and buried, and with it, almost, Churchill’s political career. Churchill had suffered many rebuffs at the hands of the House of Commons in the course of a long and bruising career, but this has a strong claim to having been his worst. Immediately afterwards, J. C. C. Davidson was reading the ticker tape in one of the corridors when Churchill joined him and said that his political career was finished. Days later he was still profoundly depressed by what had happened.28 All the effort that he had devoted to rebuilding his credibility around the ‘Arms and the Covenant’ campaign to counter Nazi rearmament had been destroyed: he had ‘undone in five minutes the patient reconstruction work of two years’.29 Curiously, it was one of his most dedicated critics through the crisis, Nancy Dugdale, who saw through the immediate setback and recognised his resilience, observing shrewdly, but not necessarily charitably, that he had received ‘a rebuff from which only a ferro-concrete man would recover’ and that ‘It is astounding you cannot kill Winston with any known political axe’.30
In their sudden enthusiasm for persuading Mrs Simpson to renounce the King, the men at Downing Street might be forgiven for not spotting the significance of something else that Monday. By perverse coincidence they had started thinking about persuading the King not to abdicate just at the moment when he was finally sending a signal that he had reached a firm decision to go. The King’s side had begun to talk about money, which had barely been mentioned before. The King had raised the question with his personal banker, Sir Edward Peacock, that morning, having told him that he would abdicate the evening before. He was ‘anxious as to financial arrangements’ and it was this, as much as getting certainty for Mrs Simpson’s divorce, which Peacock and Monckton came to Downing Street to discuss. Here the ministers were able to give the King’s emissaries much more comfort than on the question of divorce, although a sceptic might observe that politicians are always happy to offer money in principle, but become rather more elusive on precise terms. ‘Both cordially agreed to the principle of making provision for the King but they could not name a figure.’31 Even Chamberlain was prepared to be as generous as he ever got: ‘we would certainly do what we could.’32 Even to a Chancellor of the Exchequer almost obsessed with keeping a tight control on public finances, it might have seemed an acceptable price to pay for removing so unsuitable a monarch.
The money question had retreated into the background when the little convoy of lawyers arrived at Downing Street that afternoon at almost the same moment that Mrs Simpson’s statement appeared on the newswires. Goddard told Wilson what had happened between him and the King and explained how this placed him in the dilemma of reconciling his professional duty with royal command. Wilson went upstairs to pass this onto to the Prime Minister together with the text of Mrs Simpson’s statement. Whilst Wilson was away, Goddard got on the phone to his legal colleagues, who confirmed to him that intervention was a near certainty which made it all the more urgent that he advise Mrs Simpson. After talking to Wilson, Baldwin decided that he should take the unprecedented step of speaking directly to Mrs Simpson’s representative, and Goddard was thus shown upstairs. Baldwin was especially anxious to get an explanation for Mrs Simpson’s statement, which seemed to be quite at variance with the King’s continued commitment to marrying Mrs Simpson. Baldwin faced another layer of uncertainty created by the growing threat to the Simpson divorce, not knowing how she and the King would react if the case were blocked. Goddard might be able to help the government here.
Goddard’s interview with the Prime Minister features as one of the comic moments of the crisis in both the recollections of Dugdale and the more or less light-hearted account that Baldwin gave to his niece a year later. Both accounts emphasised how out of place Goddard not only felt himself to be, and was perceived to be in such august surroundings and company. Baldwin described him as ‘a big, burly chap with a large face, “plain and pale like a ham” … And he looked more like a ham than anything that I have seen that was not a ham.’33 It was the epitome of the small tenant farmer interviewed by the lord of the manor, nervously twisting the brim of his hat in his hands. Beneath the Wodehousian drollery lay a deeper truth: in social terms both Goddard and his client had come from another world. Snobbism was as potent a reason for looking down on Mrs Simpson as moral disapproval. Goddard’s opening remark was painfully class-conscious: ‘I hope you won’t think me a Bolshie, Sir.’34 This threw Baldwin and he spent the rest of the conversation working out what it meant. Goddard was afraid to be seen as having spoken out of turn and he was also keen not to be tarred with the same brush as his client, whose untrustworthiness was tantamount to outright sedition. It was much easier to deal with Goddard’s reluctance to disobey royal command than to help him cross the social minefield. Baldwin told him directly that his own duty as a solicitor took precedence over his sovereign’s wishes. It was the same advice that Goddard would have been given by anyone familiar with professional ethics, but in practice Baldwin’s approval lent an aura of official sanction to the mission.
Wilson and Dugdale set to the task of finding an aeroplane for Goddard to make the flight to Cannes. At that time of night, this proved to be difficult and the chief civil servant at the Air Ministry was brought in to help. Reading between the lines, Downing Street hoped that it would be possible to use a commercial charter, which would have implicated the government far less in the arrangements. Exactly which aeroplane was used remains one of the minor mysteries of the crisis. Dugdale specified that it was a private aeroplane, but Goddard later described it as ‘a small Government machine’. Perhaps he was anxious to emphasise the official aspect to his journey, but he might merely have assumed that because the government had made the arrangement, it was one of their own machines.35 Beaverbrook also referred to it as a government plane and he too had personal motives for presenting Goddard as the Prime Minister’s envoy.36 However, apart from RAF military machines, there is no evidence that the British government had any aircraft at its disposal at the time. Downing Street signed off one feature of Goddard’s mission, which soon acquired an equivocal but farcical element: Goddard was to be accompanied by his personal doctor. Supposedly, Goddard, who like many people in those days had never flown before, was sufficiently concerned at the medical consequences of a flight. Unknown to Downing Street, Dr Kirkwood also had something of a reputation as an obstetrician, which was soon to be the source of much comment. One of Goddard’s legal clerks completed the party. Early the following morning – Tuesday 8 December – Goddard set off for Cannes with an ample stock of things to do and discuss with his client.
Downing Street were happy to see Goddard on his way, but it is far harder to reconstruct what precisely they hoped that his mission would bring. Everyone seemed to have a rather different view of the affair. Perhaps the simplest motivation was the strongest: to find out what Mrs Simpson was up to in Cannes. Wilson and Dugdale ‘were anxious to find out the latest game which Mrs. Simpson was playing’.37 The planes scare of Saturday night was fresh in everyone’s mind and Downing Street would have wanted advance warning of any repetition. Since then Mrs Simpson had been putting pressure on the King not to abdicate, which increased the risk that he might simply leave the country. It was certainly Goddard’s intelligence-gathering task that stuck most firmly in the mind of Perry Brownlow, who had to handle him when he arrived in Cannes: ‘I have always understood and still believe that he was sent by Horace Wi
lson or Baldwin as a “Cloak and Dagger agent” to find out what [Mrs Simpson’s] statement of Monday night to the press really meant.’38 Moreover, the Downing Street staffers do not seem to have entertained very great hopes that any of Goddard’s other objectives would be realised. The idea that Mrs Simpson might renounce the King features in Wilson’s accounts solely in the context of Goddard’s thought that she might be bribed to do so. To Dugdale, the questions of intervention and the Cannes statement were merely pretexts that could be fed to the King to explain why his wishes had been disregarded.39 By contrast, Monckton believed that ‘it was agreed that he should fly out and pressure his client, Mrs. S., in that direction [to give up the King]’.40 Goddard felt that he had been working as much for the government as Mrs Simpson and actually proposed to charge the Treasury 500 guineas for his work, although the payment seems to have been laundered through Allen’s firm.41 This provides an interesting sidelight on the professed patriotism of Goddard’s conduct and on his loyalty to his original client.
As if all this does not leave sufficient confusion over the origins and motives of Goddard’s journey to Cannes, other accounts supplied even less reliable versions. Baldwin told his niece that Goddard was concerned that Mrs Simpson was talking to the press without reference to him, for which no other evidence exists.42 Beaverbrook supported the explanation that Goddard tried to persuade Mrs Simpson to renounce the King, but managed to confect an explanation for this that was discreditable to Baldwin: if Mrs Simpson renounced the King, this would get Baldwin off the hook of his (supposed) promise to resign if the Two Bills scheme were rejected.43
NOTES
1. NA PREM 1/466
2. Channon diaries, 6 December
3. Duff Cooper diaries
4. Chamberlain diary, 7 December
5. Chamberlain diary, 7 December
6. MacDonald diary, 2 December
7. Monckton narrative
8. NA PREM 1/466, Goddard section
9. NA PREM 1/466
10. Peacock narrative
11. Chamberlain diary, 7 December
12. Chamberlain diary, 7 December
13. Chamberlain diary, 7 December
14. NA PREM 1/466, draft, TS 22/1/1, P. H. Edwards to Barnes, 5 December
15. NA PREM 1/449, Gwyer to Wilson, 7 December
16. Memo by Wigram quoted in Ziegler, Edward VIII, p. 330
17. NA PREM 1/466
18. NA PREM 1/466
19. A King’s Story, p. 396
20. BBK G/6/23
21. BBK G/6/2-5, Brownlow memorandum, ‘The Beaverbrook Assignment, Additional Marginal Notes’
22. Mrs Simpson to King, 6 December
23. Monckton narrative
24. Monckton narrative, Peacock notes
25. Churchill papers, 2/264, Boothby to Churchill, 11 December; de Courcy papers, memorandum 10 December
26. BBK G/6/13, Megan Lloyd George to David Lloyd George, 14 December
27. Nicolson diaries, 9 December
28. Crathorne papers, ‘Kakoo’ Rutland to Peggy Wakehurst, n.d.; Blanche Dugdale diaries, 13 December
29. Nicolson to Vita Sackville-West, 9 December, p. 284
30. Dugdale diary
31. Monckton narrative, Peacock narrative
32. Chamberlain diary, 7 December
33. Windham Baldwin papers, 11/1/1, Monica Baldwin, ‘An Unpublished Page of English History’
34. Dugdale diary
35. Dugdale diary, Goddard narrative
36. Beaverbrook (ed. A. J. P. Taylor), The Abdication of King Edward VIII, p. 81
37. Dugdale diary
38. BBK G/6/30, Brownlow memorandum, ‘The Goddard Incident’, n.d.
39. Dugdale diary
40. Windham Baldwin papers, 3/3/8(iii), notes on lunch with Monckton, 27 August 1950
41. Bloch, The Reign and Abdication of Edward VIII, p. 187 fn.
42. Windham Baldwin papers, 11/1/1, Monica Baldwin, ‘An Unpublished Page of English History’
43. Beaverbrook (ed. A. J. P. Taylor), The Abdication of King Edward VIII, pp 81–2
CHAPTER 18
MISSION TO A MADHOUSE
* * *
S.B. went to the Fort this afternoon and returned about 11. As he went straight to bed I have not seen him (I was at the House until after 11) but J. Simon came into my room at No 11 about 11.30 and told me that he had had a very hard time saying that he had been in a madhouse.
NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN, DIARY, 8 DECEMBER 1936
THE DECISION TO endorse Goddard’s mission to Cannes presented the government with ticklish problems, not so much about the basic principle but about the potential ramifications. All manner of unwelcome constructions might be placed on what Goddard was up to; in particular, it might be argued that a royal command had been breached. Admittedly, the King had had no legal right to tell Goddard that he should not go to Cannes. As a solicitor, it was Goddard’s duty to advise his client on an important development in a legal action in which he was representing her. There was no legal or ethical reason why the government should not approach Mrs Simpson and reason or negotiate with her directly. To this extent, Downing Street could approach things with an entirely clear conscience, but after his conversation with the Prime Minister and the logistical help from the Air Ministry, Goddard was undeniably linked to the government. It was, of course, inevitable that the King would learn that his wishes had been defied with the government’s approval. He would have to be told, although it is unclear whether Downing Street recognised this rather obvious fact as soon as they despatched Goddard. No one imagined that he would be happy to learn about Goddard, but he would be even more aggrieved to hear about it from Mrs Simpson in Cannes.
Downing Street’s first idea had been to tell the King about Goddard’s journey at the very last moment, but this was changed.1 It was only when Wilson together with the government’s top law officers, Somervell and Gwyer, were reviewing legal points with Peacock on the Tuesday morning that a definite decision was taken as to how and what the King should be told. A short conclave of Baldwin, Chamberlain and Simon decided that Goddard was to be given discretion to disclose to Mrs Simpson that he had discussed his mission to Cannes with the Prime Minister before leaving, that in practice the Prime Minister had authorised him to ignore the King’s wishes.2 He could explain that the news of impending intervention imposed a professional duty on him to advise her and, for less obvious reasons, that her statement to the press made the matter urgent. What Downing Street was keen to avoid was any suggestion that Goddard might have been sent to Cannes with some message directly from the government. A telegram was duly despatched to reach Goddard en route giving him these extra instructions.3
The man who was deputed to perform the job of telling the King about Goddard’s journey was George Allen, the King’s personal solicitor. Allen is a far less prominent figure in the various accounts of the crisis than Monckton, but he was also a key adviser to the King. In the final phase of the crisis, Allen and the King’s banker, Sir Edward Peacock, came to the fore as the dialogue shifted to the negotiation of terms. Dugdale’s snapshot of Allen’s persona gives another small hint as to why Allen should have been chosen to bear the message rather than Monckton. He was ‘Tough No. 1’ in a group of hard men who had foregathered at Downing Street the previous evening to handle the affair, ‘Tough No. 2’ being Peacock and ‘Tough No. 3’ Goddard.4 Allen was a hard-nosed City lawyer who was in the process of building one of London’s most successful and high-profile firms of solicitors. The emollient Monckton was almost universally liked, whereas Allen was a man to respect, if not to fear.
Allen also had a far more sensitive message to take to the King. It was at least as important as the news of Goddard’s journey and probably far more. It was also much more delicate and potentially immensely compromising to the government. By some measures it could be read as applying pressure on the King. He was taking to the King a copy of a letter explaining a radical change in the way the g
overnment assessed the risk of intervention in Mrs Simpson’s divorce. The week before, it had been an abstract and unquantifiable possibility, albeit with a heavily veiled threat that it lay within the government’s power to make it happen. The previous Thursday, Sir John Simon, who as a distinguished lawyer had rather hijacked the role of giving the Prime Minister legal advice from any of the government’s formal law officers, had taken a sanguine view on both the risk from the official and the private legal fronts. He was ‘as an old Attorney General … quite satisfied that intervention by the Attorney General in the present circumstance would not take place at any rate unless some new and glaring evidence of collusion was forthcoming hereafter’.5 As to the risk of one of the Prime Minister’s hypothetical busybodies: ‘I do not think that it is likely that anybody would undertake such a burden or that he would succeed if he tried, but, as I have said, the risk is immensely reduced if the King became a private person.’ If the King abdicated, the risk was ‘negligible’.
The King Who Had to Go Page 32
