Barnes was thus left investigating the relationship between the King and Mrs Simpson only, but he was extremely thorough in his task. He interviewed a wide range of individuals including crew of the Nahlin. He admitted that he had stopped short of paying the bribes that one of the letter-writers claimed would induce hotel workers from Hungary to come to England to give evidence.44 Quite apart from the uncertainty over whether their testimony would have been useful, it would have been tainted by being purchased. He had no legal power to compel anybody to talk to him so he could not force all of Mrs Simpson’s servants to provide information. He said it was impossible to interview Mrs Simpson’s long-serving lady’s maid, who would have be in a good position to detect adultery, on the grounds that she was still employed by her and owed a duty. He did interview Ernest Simpson and asked him why he had contacted Downing Street on the Tuesday before the abdication.45 He claimed that he had merely thought he ‘might assist on what he called the “psychological aspect of the matter.”’ He thought she was less in love with the King than he with her and might be persuaded to give him up. There was no connection with the divorce case. At that point Ernest Simpson was engaged in a lucrative lawsuit for defamation against an army officer’s wife who had accused him of collusion, so it is barely surprising that he had changed his story from the one he told Wigram before the abdication and would probably have told Downing Street. Ernest Simpson blamed the breakdown in his marriage on his wife’s attachment to the King, but stopped well short of a definite accusation of adultery. Nowhere did Barnes unearth any hard evidence of adultery between the King and Mrs Simpson and there was genuine disagreement amongst those close to the case as to whether they personally believed it had even occurred.46 The couple had certainly behaved sufficiently discreetly in this respect. Had the same level of discretion been applied to the relationship as a whole, the affair would have taken a very different turning. None of the letter-writers offered even a coherent explanation of why they thought the divorce was collusive.
With hindsight it is clear that Mrs Simpson’s divorce was not in doubt once the decision had been taken not to disclose the Trundle story. The only practical effect of Stephenson’s activities and the King’s Proctor’s investigation was to prolong and reinforce the uncertainty. This was all that the government really needed as it prepared for the coronation of King George VI in May, with half an eye on the danger of disruption from either Cannes or Austria. Stephenson’s appearance was easily laid to rest at a court hearing on 19 March 1937, albeit after a largely ritual examination of Mrs Simpson’s residence of convenience in Felixstowe and the identity of Ernest Simpson’s lover. It was again Norman Birkett who conducted the case for Mrs Simpson, although this time he had to work rather harder for a fee so large that Mrs Simpson complained it would ruin her.47 That still left almost six weeks before Mrs Simpson could file the formal application for the decree absolute on 27 April, which would have given ample time either for the King’s Proctor to be presented with new evidence or for anyone else to intervene. It would have raised false expectations of a smooth outcome to have disclosed that the King’s Proctor had completed his enquiries completely and drawn a blank. When the date came there were no grounds on which Barnes needed to intervene either on the question of collusion or adultery, so he could do nothing with an entirely clear conscience, but Mrs Simpson had to remain in uncertainty almost until the last moment.
The question of any government involvement in intervention remains one of the most obscure aspects of the crisis. In itself, intervention was a topic of great sensitivity and is discussed relatively little in even private accounts. Most strikingly of all, Walter Monckton does not mention it in his narrative at all, even though he saw the risk as a major consideration for the King. If Wilson had judged that national security demanded that Mrs Simpson’s divorce be blocked and initiated Stephenson’s actions, it is not surprising that no evidence should have remained. It would have laid the government open to the charge of manipulating the judicial process in a matter that was already immensely sensitive.
NOTES
1. NA PREM 1/452, Wilson to Chamberlain, 10 December
2. Higham, Mrs Simpson, p. 191
3. Reith diaries, 10 December
4. Chamberlain diary, 10 December
5. NA PREM 1/460, Wilson to Chamberlain, 10 December
6. Stanley Baldwin papers, 194, Simon memorandum, 6 January 1937
7. Chamberlain diary, 7 December
8. A King’s Story, p. 373
9. Hesse, Das Spiel um Deutschland, p. 81
10. NA WO 339/37027
11. NA WO 339/37027
12. NA WO 339/37027, Rickatson-Hatt to War Office, 24 June and 19 September 1923; Reuters archives, Rickatson-Hatt memorandum, 17 February 1930
13. Bank of England Archive, Montagu Norman diary, 8 April 1941
14. http://www.thebaron.info/archives/ultra-british-editor-who-loved-america-took-royal-bribes
15. Hennessy, A Domestic History of the Bank of England 1930–1960, p. 378
16. Reuters archive memo, 26 January 1967, The Times, 25 January 1967
17. Nachlaß Fritz Hesse, 1322/4/39, response to criticism in article by G. von Studnitz, Davidson, Memoirs of a Conservative, p. 417
18. Jeffrey, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909–1949, p. 317
19. Hesse, Das Spiel um Deutschland, p. 82
20. Public Record Office, The Security Service 1908–1945, p. 117
21. Andrew, Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5, p. 199
22. Hesse, Das Spiel um Deutschland, p. 83; Nachlaß Fritz Hesse, 1322/4/39, response to criticism in article by G. von Studnitz
23. Davidson, Memoirs of a Conservative, p. 417
24. DGFP, Series C, Vol. IV, p. 159
25. Public Record Office, The Security Service 1908–1945, p. 117, Nuremberg Trials evidence 075-TC, von Ribbentrop to Hitler, 2 January 1938
26. Cameron, Hitler’s Table Talk, p. 678
27. Schmidt, Statist auf Diplomatischer Bühne 1923–45, p. 376
28. Public Record Office, The Security Service 1908–1945, p. 117
29. NA PREM 1/460, Wilson to Chamberlain, 11 December
30. NA PREM 1/460, Wilson to Chamberlain, 11 December
31. NA PREM 1/460, Wilson memorandum, 12 December
32. NA PREM 1/460, Wilson memorandum, 11 December
33. Chamberlain to Hilda, 13 December
34. NA TS 22/1/2, statement by Francis Stephenson
35. NA TS 22/1/2
36. Francis Stephenson interview, Reading Eagle, 20 March 1937
37. BBK G/6/30, memorandum by Miss O’Callaghan
38. BBK G/6/30, Jenkins to Williams, 20 September 1949
39. Boca, She Might Have Been Queen, p. 150
40. The Times, law report, 20 March 1937
41. Somervell journal quoted in Montgomery-Hyde, Baldwin: The Unexpected Prime Minister, p. 570
42. Somervell journal quoted in Montgomery-Hyde, Baldwin: The Unexpected Prime Minister, p. 569
43. NA PREM 1/460, Monckton to Wilson, 2 February 1937
44. NA TS 22/1/2, interview with Mr Cox
45. NA TS 22/1/2, interview with Mr Ernest Simpson
46. Somervell journal quoted in Montgomery-Hyde, Baldwin: The Unexpected Prime Minister, p. 570
47. Mrs Simpson to Bessie Merryman, 22 March 1937
CHAPTER 22
PLENTY OF PEOPLE READY TO KNOCK HER ON THE HEAD
* * *
I told her that most people in England disliked her very much because the Duke had married her and given up his throne, but if she made him and kept him happy, all that would change, but that if he were unhappy nothing would be too bad for her.
WALTER MONCKTON TO THE DUCHESS OF WINDSOR, WRITTEN VERSION1
…plenty of people would be ready to knock her on the head if after all this she failed to make her husband happy, and he (M.) would be glad to do so also.2
WALTER M
ONCKTON TO THE DUCHESS OF WINDSOR, AS TOLD TO WINDHAM BALDWIN
NOT THE LEAST of the sacrifices that Mrs Simpson had had to make in order to keep her hold over Edward was to restrain her sense of humour. She is often described as witty, but almost no specimens of her wit have been handed down, so it is likely that it was her penchant for funny remarks rather than their quality that struck people. By contrast, Edward appears to have been entirely humourless. Just before her flight to France, dogged by stress and fear, she had confessed to the Channons that ‘she had not dared be funny for three years’.3 The remark gives a telling indication of the emotional cost of self-control that had been accumulating long before the crisis broke. It was a small consolation to her claustrophobic exile on the Riviera that she could resume the wise-cracking which had so appealed to people during her early days in London. She could even indulge it at the expense of the Duke of Windsor. On Christmas Day she was invited to lunch by Somerset Maugham at his home on the Côte d’Azur, the Villa Mauresque. Her fellow guests included, to his horror, Bob Boothby, who was staying with his parents in Monaco. The party played bridge after lunch and Mrs Simpson was partnered with Maugham against Boothby and another guest. Maugham so badly overbid his first hand that he felt he had to apologise for his poor play. As he put down his cards, leaving Mrs Simpson with the hopeless task of trying to fulfil the impossibly demanding contract with which he had lumbered her, he confessed how few decent cards he had held: ‘I’m afraid I am not a very good partner. I’ve only got a couple of Kings.’ The temptation was too great for Mrs Simpson who cracked: ‘What’s the use of them? They only abdicate.’4 Even Maugham, who seems to have invited Boothby and Mrs Simpson out of a spirit of perversity, bridled at this and stuttered, ‘I d-d-don’t think that’s in v-v-very good t-t-taste.’
Mrs Simpson’s growing bitterness and contempt was not only directed at the Duke of Windsor. Baldwin, the government and the rest of the royal family all came under her lash. A sense that the Duke was being ineffectual in defending his interests in saving what he could from the wealth and privilege that he had foregone was combined with a hypersensitive propensity to detect slights and hostility. A week after the abdication the police detectives who had remained to protect her were able to earn their keep by giving advance warning that she was already thinking of causing trouble in Britain if she was left feeling hard done by:
If they don’t get you this thing I will return to England and fight it out to the bitter end. The Coronation will be a flop compared with the story that I shall tell the British Press. I will publish it in every paper in the World so the whole World shall know my story. Your mother is even persecuting me now … On the front page of every paper is a black bordered notice stating that she has never seen or spoken to me during the past 12 months. I know it is true, but she need not persecute me. She could have helped you so much; you, the only son that matters.5
It is not certain what Mrs Simpson wanted the Duke of Windsor to obtain: possibly the title of Royal Highness for her, possibly the Civil List pension, but whatever it was, it is unlikely that she got it. The royal family was not inclined to be supportive. The letters that Mrs Simpson sent the Duke during their separation betray frustration, resentment and bitterness at her treatment.
The question of her reputation lay at the heart of the bitterness towards the royal family and British politicians that gnawed at Mrs Simpson in the months before the wedding. She knew that Queen Mary’s public statement was tantamount to an announcement that she was not considered to be fit for the Queen to have contact with. She understood that the refusal to accept her as Queen or even the morganatic wife to the King sprang from the feeling that she was unworthy as a person. She pressured the Duke to obtain as much recognition as possible from his family for her. She wanted the new King to do his best ‘to prove to the world that we still have a position’.6 From the start, she knew that the title of Royal Highness would be a particularly important symbol, although she was doubtful that she would be granted it.7 She believed that George VI’s mother and wife were opposed to her having the title and she worked assiduously to poison the Duke’s mind against them.8 As well as egging the Duke on to protect her, she began to look for allies in quarters even less reputable than the King’s Party had been recruited from.9 To counter what she saw as a hostile press, especially when the moment of the wedding came, she told the Duke to get Rickatson-Hatt to find a ‘good press liaison officer’.10
Mrs Simpson was also dogged by fears for her physical safety. She continued to receive abusive mail, which she feared was the precursor to some attempt to do violence to her. She depended on the presence of the Scotland Yard detectives to protect her, but she did not trust them all.11 She was too mean to pay for the services of private detectives.12 Her host in Cannes, Herman Rogers, told her that he slept with a pistol under his pillow, ostensibly to protect her if the need arose, more likely simply to reassure her. Her fears were so extreme that she was easy meat when Kenneth de Courcy arrived at Villa Lou Viei peddling a fantasy of a well-funded ‘anti-Simpson organisation’ dedicated to her murder, ‘Paying well for killing’.13 In reality, both Mrs Simpson and Wilson were exaggerating wildly in their fears of violence against Mrs Simpson. The ‘wave of fury’ that Wilson predicted never got further than the tutting exemplified by Nancy Dugdale and children up and down the country singing ditties like the following version of the popular song Ain’t she sweet?:
Walking down the street
Mrs. Simpson, ain’t she sweet?
She’s been married twice before –
Now she’s knocking on Edward’s door.14
The first months of exile were miserable for the couple. Both were guests in houses not ideally suited to the purpose. They let out their frustrations in long telephone calls. They spoke almost daily and Mrs Simpson delivered the same litany of complaint as in her letters. She was aggrieved that one of his first visitors was her bête noire ‘Fruity’ Metcalfe, and she nursed the ludicrous notion that the Duke might be unfaithful with his hostess. The Duke was bereft without Mrs Simpson, living in a guest bedroom with practically no possessions of his own. He, in turn, sought release in telephone calls with the new King, whom he nagged about what was happening to him and Mrs Simpson as well as insistently tendering advice on how to reign, as though his brother were merely acting as his regent. George VI’s stammer made these conversations an agonising trial and he eventually put an end to them, adding to the Duke’s growing list of grievances.
The uncertainty over the divorce put added pressure on Mrs Simpson and, to a lesser extent, the Duke of Windsor, particularly when she was told that the King’s Proctor had been formally instructed to investigate the case in late January. It is a constant refrain in her letters from France. Her complaints drip with self-pity. She nagged the Duke of Windsor to make his brother force the process along or at least find out what was going on.15 She imagined that a sign that the King wanted the divorce to go through would be enough to make the Attorney General back off.16 It fed her growing dislike of Britain: ‘it is a trying time especially with the horror of a hitch in the divorce. England would do anything to me in their smug fashion.’17
Mrs Simpson complained about it, but the fear of a successful intervention by the King’s Proctor was enough to torpedo a scheme to bring them closer. Both had been finding their first places of exile increasingly claustrophobic, in part because their hosts grew aware of the strain that their celebrated guests brought with them. Mrs Simpson was especially unhappy in the small quarters of the Villa Lou Viei, and found a refuge away from the Riviera, 900 kilometres to the north in the château of an extremely wealthy Franco-American businessman, Charles Bedaux. The Château de Candé at Monts near Tours had added attractions. It offered a more appropriate venue for the planned wedding than a showy villa on the Côte d’Azur. It would also allow Mrs Simpson to be reunited with Slipper, who had had to remain with the Duke of Windsor in Austria, because the Rogers’ ferocious Westies would have
resented his presence at the Villa Lou Viei. She moved north in early March. The next leg of the plan had been for the Duke of Windsor to move to the Duke of Westminster’s house at Saint-Saëns in Normandy, a mere 300 kilometres away. The couple spoke almost daily and they hoped that a line within France would be clearer than the international line between France and Austria. Calls would also be cheaper, although it is unclear whether this burden was falling on the Duke’s hosts in Austria.18 In the event, though, George Allen warned the Duke off living in the same country as Mrs Simpson and he had to settle for another house in Austria.19 Allen emphasised the symbolic importance of remaining in different countries, but there was an unspoken suggestion that the short distance between Monts and Saint-Saëns would have excited suspicions of clandestine visits. In fact, the fear of the King’s Proctor was strong enough to prevent this even being considered. Merely reducing the distance between them would have been comfort enough.
The move to Candé proved a great improvement for Mrs Simpson.20 The house was more spacious with very large grounds and the Bedaux had moved away, leaving their admirable servants to minister to her. It was a Renaissance house that had been much extended in the nineteenth century and then modernised at vast expense by the Bedaux. It provided the height of luxury for its period. The facilities included sumptuous bathrooms, a modern gymnasium and direct-dial telephones in most rooms. The crowning glory was a Skinner organ, the ultimate in home entertainment then available, imported at vast expense from the US (the manufacturer was a client of Bedaux). One wall of the house had to be removed and then replaced in order to install it. Neither of the Bedaux could play the organ, but its electro-pneumatic mechanism could work like a pianola, automatically controlled by punched paper rolls.
The King Who Had to Go Page 39
