By the Tuesday, Simon had changed his opinion on every point. Intervention had become not only a near certainty, but was also seen as almost sure of succeeding.
I have now reason to believe that intervention with a view to stopping the divorce, prompted by private persons whose action cannot be controlled, is far from being unlikely. This would be independent of the King’s Proctor, but it seems to me that if this material [new evidence of collusion] was brought by these informants to the notice of the King’s Proctor, he might well find it necessary to intervene for the purpose of preventing Mrs. Simpson from getting her divorce.
And I wish most particularly to point out that this intervention would not be avoided by the summary abdication of the King. Indeed, so far as the King’s Proctor is concerned, he might well feel that his duty to intervene would be strengthened if the only matter to be considered was collusion between Mr. & Mrs. Simpson and that the Throne had passed to a new occupant.6
The previous week, Simon had addressed only the risk that the King might be accused of adultery with Mrs Simpson, but now he had to accept that the divorce might also be challenged on the grounds of collusion. Even more radically, Simon had abandoned the cosy and never very convincing fantasy that abdication would eliminate the risk that some ‘busybody’ would intervene.
Simon did not explain his volte-face in his letter. The only explanation in the record comes from Wilson and it is minimal and heavily understated: ‘…further information reached him that the position had somewhat changed.’7 The ‘further information’ was probably a combination of the letters to the King’s Proctor, notably the one offering evidence of collusion, and the appearance of Ernest Simpson, who could probably supply unarguable testimony that there had been collusion. Simon had also misread the dynamics working on the government’s law officers. His blithe confidence of the week before that no Attorney General would rock the boat by now appeared to have been misplaced. His current successor in that office, Sir Donald Somervell, whom Barnes and Gwyer had briefed on the letters demanding action from the King’s Proctor, ‘disclosed great anxiety as to intervention’ on the Tuesday morning.8 The legal calculus was different. When the possibility of intervention had first been mooted weeks before, Somervell had accepted that accusations against the King could not be heard in court, although he had qualified this as a ‘debatable point’.9 More important, ‘at that time the only suggestion [as grounds for intervention] was of possible adultery between the King and Mrs. Simpson’. This point was irrelevant to any accusation of collusion between Ernest and Wallis Simpson, which would be admissible in court as with any other divorcing couple, and this was precisely what the ‘reputable’ solicitors were claiming. Finally, Somervell was a relatively late entrant to politics and remained far more of a lawyer than Simon. He resented the fact that Simon had supplanted him as the government’s legal adviser and may have decided that it was safer for him to adopt the most conservative position possible. He showed great sympathy when his subordinate, the King’s Proctor Sir Thomas Barnes, found his professional conscience impelling him to investigate the Simpson divorce.
This climb-down was too embarrassing to be labelled as a cynical manoeuvre, but it did serve the government’s interests by keeping alive the threat of intervention to use as a lever to work on the King. Simon could already see how this threat might be deployed. The King had to accept the possibility that he might be abdicating for nothing: ‘His Majesty in my judgement must face the fact that whatever may be his decision as to abdication this course does not hold out any increasing prospect of his being able to marry the lady.’ On the face of it this was direct advice (though not in the formal constitutional sense) to remain on the throne and abandon hope of marriage. Simon’s letter was the springboard for one last attempt to head the King away from abdication.
The message that Allen took with him to Fort Belvedere was simple and brutal. The threat of intervention was now so strong that it could not be ignored and it was likely to change the entire situation. It explained why Goddard had set off for Cannes in spite of the King’s express wishes. In practice, Goddard was bearing the same message to Mrs Simpson that Allen was bringing to the King. The King himself had to be aware that he would be deprived of the possibility of marrying Mrs Simpson. Both were being told indirectly to abandon the idea of marriage. If Downing Street expected this to produce an instant change of heart in the King, it was sadly mistaken. Just as he had recognised that Hardinge’s letter had come ultimately from the Prime Minister, the King understood that Allen’s message came from Downing Street, and he reacted with similar fury. He paid no attention to the hard, practical question of intervention. All he saw was that Mrs Simpson was being pressured to abandon him and this had to stop. His immediate reaction was to call the Villa Lou Viei and to tell Mrs Simpson to pay a minimum of attention to Goddard, if she saw him at all. Neither on his own nor on Mrs Simpson’s behalf did he go into the question of intervention in any detail.
The threat of intervention drove Baldwin to make a final, last-ditch attempt to persuade the King not to abdicate. Almost alone of the men in Downing Street, he understood the depth of the King’s desire to marry Mrs Simpson and feared that he would be utterly thrown if her divorce collapsed. Baldwin decided to go to Fort Belvedere with a dramatic vision of having to reason with a King who was ‘sadly upset’ or ‘in an excited state’ and was willing to spend the night in the effort.10 Baldwin relished the drama of his mission: ‘Have my bag packed quickly. The King will be going through hell tonight, and I am going with him.’11 The agonising debate with the King imagined by Baldwin never took place, although something weirder and arguably more unsettling occurred. The evening at Fort Belvedere that followed had the feel of a drawing-room comedy, but comedy haunted by irresponsibility that verged on madness, and foreboding at what it would bring.
Baldwin’s moment of doomed self-dramatisation sparked the evening’s first moment of farce. When they arrived at Fort Belvedere, Dugdale, who had accompanied the Prime Minister, brought the overnight bag straight in from their car and left it, rather tactlessly, in the middle of the hallway to the horror of the King, who recognised what it implied. Even at the best of times he found talking to Baldwin irksome and his habit of cracking his finger joints grated on his nerves. The prospect of his Prime Minister as a self-invited house-guest was appalling. He was near exhaustion from stress as well and not in the mood for company of any kind. He had only agreed to Baldwin coming out of courtesy as he had decided firmly to abdicate come what may and saw no point in talking about it anymore.12 He also detected some of the self-dramatisation that was working in Baldwin, to which he ascribed a venomously cynical explanation: his Prime Minister was already preparing the speech that he would have to make in Parliament to explain the King’s abdication and was calculating that the image of him pleading through the night with his sovereign to reconsider would be a suitably colourful and moving adornment.13 The King quietly took Peacock aside and confirmed his suspicion that Baldwin did indeed propose to stay the night. The banker offered to get rid of the Prime Minister, but the King remembered his royal manners: ‘I could not do that. The Prime Minister has been so kind as to come here to help me, I could not let him leave without giving him dinner. He must stay.’14 It was agreed that he should have dinner and then return to Downing Street.
Baldwin knew quickly that his mission to Fort Belvedere was doomed. The King was utterly committed to marrying Mrs Simpson. Just as he had arrived, the King had come off the phone to Mrs Simpson. He entered the room
gesticulating with his arms above his head. ‘She is the most wonderful woman, I have the most wonderful woman in the world behind me in this, she does not mind, it will simply draw us nearer together. I mean to go & leave the way clear for my brother.’15
According to Baldwin’s later account, the King ‘had the most beautiful look I have ever seen on his face, like a young knight who has just seen the Holy Grail … It was hopeless to reason
with him.’16 All that was left was to go through the motions. Both men were in a state of near exhaustion during their final audience at which Monckton was also present. Baldwin delivered yet again his plea to the King to reconsider his decision, but the King refused and told him bluntly to stop trying. Baldwin’s tiredness exacerbated his deafness so he did not hear what the King told him and repeated his plea with even greater vigour and eloquence.17 It had no effect. The King told Baldwin directly that if Mrs Simpson’s divorce was blocked, he would go and that they were closer together as a couple than ever before.18
Baldwin had one other task to perform at Fort Belvedere, although he might not have been aware of it when he set off. It arose from a question that was looming large in Downing Street. The King’s resilience to the threat of intervention created a horrible possibility: that he might simply ignore all convention and decency by abdicating and simply cohabiting with Mrs Simpson. It would have been immensely scandalous, and to try to stop it happening, Downing Street deployed the oldest tool in the book: money. The hardliners saw that the threat of withholding money from the ex-King offered a lever to prevent this and felt no qualms about using it. Before he left Downing Street, Dugdale had been briefed by Wilson that the King should not be promised any money if he decided to abdicate.19 This would keep open the possibility of using money as a lever to prevent him cohabiting with Mrs Simpson. Getting the Prime Minister to deliver this message made for the next episode of farce. Immediately after the audience, he and the King re-joined the Duke of Kent and Dugdale for a brief conversation before dinner. The Duke had been entertaining Dugdale to a sustained rant against the iniquities of Mrs Simpson, prefaced by his amazement that none of his brother’s forty-five million subjects had killed her.20 Dugdale tried to manoeuvre the Prime Minister to one side to pass on quietly what Wilson had told him before leaving Downing Street, that he was not to promise the King any money. If he did, the government would have little left to force the ex-King to respect the decencies. Here again Baldwin’s deafness sabotaged the plan and Dugdale practically had to shout to make himself understood, but finally Baldwin heard. His immediate reaction was an affronted – ‘But you can’t let him starve’ – but he did not, in the event, make any commitment.21
None of the men around the table that night would ever forget the dinner that ensued. It began in an atmosphere of impending doom. Before sitting down, Baldwin had talked to the Dukes of York and Kent. Both were convinced that their brother was making a catastrophic mistake, ‘that this affair could end in nothing but misery and disaster’, but they knew they were powerless to stop him.22 It was only through a last, almost superhuman effort by the King that the dinner did not degenerate into a wake. Monckton had seen just how exhausted the King was and tried to persuade him to eat alone in his room, but the King insisted that he would be the host.23 He displayed thespian talents fully the equal of his Prime Minister, making his entry in the persona of an ageing juvenile lead with a breezy apology for having taken so long for his bath: ‘Just a tub. Sorry to be so long. Have a drink. I’m afraid I’m not much of a host tonight.’24 Whilst everyone else at table was weighed down by the gravity of the events, the King acted the life and soul of the party, talking as though it was merely the most ordinary of social events. He talked about his travels as Prince of Wales, in particular his visit to Latin America.25 He succeeded in avoiding any reference to the reason why they were all at Fort Belvedere. It was probably the only heavyweight dinner party anywhere in Britain that evening at which the crisis was not mentioned. It was a bravura performance and deeply impressed the Duke of York, who was in despair at what was happening and oppressed by fears of his own inadequacy to succeed his brother. Half in admiration, half in despairing hope that he himself would be saved from the test, he repeated ‘isn’t my brother wonderful, isn’t he wonderful?’ and whispered to Monckton ‘Look at him. We simply cannot let him go.’26
But the hope was futile as everyone knew, and the King’s effort was showmanship and nothing more. Like an actor seeking confirmation that he had delivered what he already knew to be a triumph, the King asked Peacock when the others had gone, ‘How was that?’ Peacock assured him, ‘Grand, Sir. An amazing effort…’ and told him to go to bed.27 Ever afterwards the Duke of Windsor was happy at the effect that he thought he had made on his Prime Minister as an ‘unbowed, unresentful if somewhat whimsical Sovereign’.28 He imagined that this was confirmed by Baldwin’s description of him to the following morning’s Cabinet as like a young man happily looking forward to his wedding and honeymoon. He was deluding himself entirely. In trying to convince the Prime Minister that he did not care about what was happening, he had created the impression that he was not even aware of it. The first thing that Baldwin said to his wife when he returned to Downing Street was, ‘Well I feel as though I have been in Bedlam, the King doesn’t seem in the least put out, he just wants Mrs. Simpson & doesn’t seem to grasp the gravity of the whole affair’.29 He told Simon the same thing.30
The dinner was all the more unsettling because of the contrast between the departing King and his successor. Dugdale was depressed by what he saw as the dullness of the Duke of York, which appeared in stark contrast to the effervescence of his older brother. He failed to grasp the depression into which the whole affair had thrust the younger brother, and his apprehension of what awaited him. Baldwin could see through the superficial discrepancy between the King’s meretricious skills and his brother’s more solid but unspectacular talents. It was a perception that he had already shared with Duff Cooper three weeks before when abdication had first appeared as the most likely outcome. Baldwin drew the comparison between the Duke of York and his father who was ‘most uninspired and dull, only by perseverance, reliability, example to his people, and a sense of duty did he gain for himself the much loved position he held when he died.’31 History was to prove Baldwin quite right, but others shared Dugdale’s initial pessimism. Baldwin’s perception of the true abilities of the man who would succeed Edward was one of the many factors that he had to balance through the crisis, in this case a positive one. His certainty that Edward VIII’s successor would be up to the task was a deeply hidden aspect of his calculation of what abdication might mean for the country. Beaverbrook’s claim that Baldwin conspired to replace Edward with his brother from the start is absurd and tells us more about Beaverbrook’s twisted mind than anything, but the prospect of the Duke of York succeeding was the silver lining in a dark cloud. His success as George VI was the consolation prize for the crisis.
By the end of dinner, Baldwin knew that further discussion was futile and got ready to return to Downing Street. His hastily packed suitcase was retrieved from behind the front door, unneeded. He took the King aside for final, definitive confirmation that his decision to abdicate was irrevocable in terms that suggested that the strain of the dinner had not weakened his sense of the dramatic: ‘I suppose if an Archangel asked you to give up Mrs. Simpson it would have no effect?’32 The King’s reply, ‘Not in the least’, put an end to any possible doubt in Baldwin’s mind that he was entirely determined to go. It was the moment that he knew for certain that he had steered the affair to the happiest outcome it might have had. The sense of drama and of his own contribution to great events with which he had begun the journey to Fort Belvedere had not left him. As they were setting off, he told Dugdale: ‘This is making history. This is what I like.’33 Baldwin knew that he could end his political career on a high note. Baldwin knew that the point of no return had been reached and that he had done all that he could have done. The only important decision that there had ever been to be taken, had been taken. Baldwin had patiently shepherded the King to the point, fending off his colleagues’ attempts to hurry the process along. The King was utterly determined to go and his Prime Minister knew it. He knew better than his colleagues and the woman for whom the King was leaving the throne. At the other end of Europe, Mrs Simpson had yet to travel the final few inches to recognising that there could
be no going back whatever. The combined accidents of poor communications and the redundant determination of two men with quite different motives to fight to the last were to keep the public appearance of crisis alive for another day.
NOTES
1. Reith diaries, 17 April 1937
2. NA PREM 1/466
3. NA PREM 1/466
4. Dugdale diary
5. Stanley Baldwin papers, Simon to Baldwin, 3 December
6. NA CAB 21/4100/2, Simon to Baldwin, 8 December
7. Stanley Baldwin papers, 175, Wilson note, 19 December
8. Monckton papers, Peacock notes
9. Somervell journal quoted in Montgomery-Hyde, Baldwin: The Unexpected Prime Minister
10. Stanley Baldwin papers, add. papers, Lucy Baldwin memorandum, 9 December; Monckton papers, Peacock narrative, 8 December
11. Windham Baldwin papers, 11/1/1, Monica Baldwin, ‘An Unpublished Page of English History’
12. A King’s Story, p. 398
13. A King’s Story, p. 231
14. Monckton papers, Peacock narrative, 8 December
15. Stanley Baldwin papers, add. papers, Lucy Baldwin memorandum, 9 December
16. Windham Baldwin papers, 11/1/1, Monica Baldwin, ‘An Unpublished Page of English History’
17. Monckton narrative
18. Peacock narrative
19. Dugdale diary
20. Dugdale diary
21. Dugdale diary
22. NA CAB 23/68, Dugdale diary
23. Monckton narrative
24. Dugdale diary
25. NA CAB 127/157, Dugdale notes
26. Dugdale diary, Monckton narrative
27. Peacock narrative
The King Who Had to Go Page 33
