The King Who Had to Go Read online

  Edward’s private life did not improve. In 1934, he had acquired another long-term girlfriend, who was several steps down from her predecessors in almost every respect. Mrs Wallis Simpson was again of American origin, of modest social and financial status. Her husband through whom she had acquired British nationality had had to apply for British nationality himself and abandon American citizenship in order to serve in the British Army. Worst of all, she was already a divorcee. In 1930s Britain, divorce carried an immense social stigma; divorcees were largely excluded from the higher levels of Society and public service. The legal process of divorce was complex and expensive, in part because of the innate conservatism of Britain’s legal system and in part because it served as a deterrent. Mrs Simpson’s drawbacks were clear to anyone aware of the relationship. Those close to him could see that he was utterly devoted to her and coming ever further under her thumb. Gradually she was monopolising him and cutting him off from his brothers and their families. He had turned from irresponsible womanising to ardent monogamy. He was determined to marry Mrs Simpson.

  He kept his intention firmly secret, but with hindsight there were clues that Edward saw a more permanent attachment. The most striking was a present he gave Mrs Simpson for Christmas in 1934. Struck by her interest in his own Cairn Terriers, Cora and Jaggs, he gave her one of her own. They called him Slipper and he became an important part of their lives. He also showered her with hugely expensive jewellery, but Slipper was almost a family member, destined to be seen as the ‘principal guest at the Wedding’.5 At around the same time he took Mrs Simpson to a palace reception to celebrate the engagement of his younger brother, even though his father had struck her name off a list of guests that he had proposed.6 He even succeeded in introducing her to his mother. It was the only time that they were to meet.

  Concern about Edward went further than distaste for his habits and attitudes; Edward’s personality was so erratic that a number of responsible people thought that he was downright insane. This was exaggerated, but it was noticeable to most people close to him that his personality was somehow not fully formed. Moreover, once the crisis that led to his abdication got under way, placing him under continuous stress, there were widespread fears that he would suffer some kind of breakdown or harm himself. Oceans of ink have been drained in attempts to analyse Edward’s character, but for the purposes of this story a few aspects that forcibly struck many of his contemporaries will suffice. To many he appeared never to have matured fully; his development seemed to have stopped in his early teens. His future wife, Wallis Simpson, arguably better placed than anyone to know, called him ‘Peter Pan’. Edward’s guiding principle seemed to be the child’s instinct to push the boundaries to find out what he could ‘get away with’.7 This phrase recurs too frequently in what Edward said and wrote for it to be written off as a mere truism; it hints strongly at an inability to develop rounded adult relationships of mutual comprehension, of give and take. He was by any standards a monster of egocentricity and breathtakingly stubborn. Once he had decided on something he would not accept argument or criticism. Those around him were expected to comply blindly. Anything else was disloyalty. Like Mr Toad in The Wind in the Willows, he moved from one dominating enthusiasm to another, pursuing them with blind and total devotion whilst they lasted. These included, variously, horse riding, golf, gardening, drink, casual sex and, finally, something that would change his life for ever: an unreasoning obsession with one woman.

  Had Edward been a wealthy aristocratic playboy and nothing more, none of this would have mattered to anyone but friends and family, but he was the heir to the throne, and in the first half of the twentieth century, the monarch played a far more important part in politics than today, even though it was very restricted and hidden to the general public. This gave a further edge to worries about Edward’s flaws: the fear that he might not be up to the job. On this score his father had set him a very high benchmark as a successful constitutional monarch. To many, George V seemed a relic of the past with his country-squire style, old-fashioned dress ideas and a quaint enthusiasm for stamp collecting, but in the eyes of Britain’s political and administrative elite, Edward had much to do before he matched his father. As Prince of Wales, Edward’s modernistic appeal struck a chord with the young and the populace at large, but the less conspicuous merits of George V ranked higher in Westminster and Whitehall, where he was revered for his impeccable handling of the succession of grave challenges he had faced from the moment he succeeded to the throne in 1911: the constitutional crisis triggered by Lloyd George’s ‘People’s Budget’; near-civil war in Ireland triggered by plans for Home Rule; the slaughter of the First World War; the collapse of his cousin’s Russian Empire into murderous communist revolution; the, to many, terrifying innovation of Britain’s first Labour government in 1924; the collapse of the second Labour government in 1931 and the formation of a coalition government to tackle the immense economic problems that had brought it down. Any one of these might have proved fatal to the monarchy or severely damaging to the country. George V’s deep-seated instinct for compromise and reconciliation was exactly what was required, and behind the scenes he strove in almost every case to apply it. Coupled with his personal rectitude, faith in the constitution and a usually sound judgement of character, this instinct had produced a pitch-perfect performance as King; his skills would one day be missed.8

  The real power of monarchy continued to dwindle, but in 1931, its symbolic importance had been boosted. In the wake of the First World War, the old structure of the British Empire firmly run from London was no longer tenable and the Statute of Westminster had given the Dominions – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and Southern Ireland – full legislative autonomy. They operated their own armed forces. A common allegiance to the monarch was the only formal tie that bound them. The Imperial Conference of 1932 in Ottawa had singularly failed to translate nebulous ideas of community into economic cooperation to tackle the Great Slump. The status of India was a running sore. After a bitter fight in Parliament it was to receive some autonomy, but this was only just in the process of being implemented and there was no certainty that it would satisfy the people of India, where the campaign for independence had not slackened. By the close of George V’s reign the British Empire was in a fragile state and the monarch faced unprecedented challenges.

  The scope for an inept successor to do damage was great. In the early 1930s, Britain faced a range of acute risks. Britain’s economic recovery from the Great Slump was precarious, and elsewhere in the world extreme politics were challenging stability and democracy. Less than ten years before, the General Strike had seemed to many to portend full-scale revolution. Home-grown fascism and communism lurked on the fringes. Stable democracies were in a shrinking minority in Europe. The international situation was growing steadily more desperate with all-out war on the horizon. It was up to the professional politicians to devise ways to tackle these problems, but the sovereign would have to support them. Above all, he had to avoid compromising their efforts in any way. As well as being a decorous figurehead, Edward would probably be faced with complex and demanding political choices. He showed little promise of being as effective as his father. Whilst George V was stable (to the point of being boring) Edward was erratic; he was far too willing to speak out publicly on topics that concerned him. Perversely Edward’s huge success as crowd-pleaser increased the risks. The powers that be always prefer an inconspicuous and unadventurous figurehead to one with stronger pulling power but less restraint.

  On occasion Edward appeared positively to relish striking an unconventional if not downright shocking attitude on political questions, as well as expressing his views openly and indiscreetly. In 1934, he attended a grand dinner for 200 or so guests given by a City of London livery company, the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers, of which he had been the Master since the previous year. It was attended by a number of diplomats and, quite conventionally, the Prince exchanged a
few words with each of them when they withdrew to the smoking room after the meal. Politeness dictated that these include Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador, although in the eyes of many he represented a blood-soaked tyranny that had murdered the Prince’s relatives. Edward went far beyond the requirements of diplomatic etiquette and ‘engaged [Maisky] in a long and inappropriately serious conversation’.9 He insisted to the ambassador that England was devoted to peace, but went well beyond the limits usually permitted to royalty in expressing their views on the diplomatic situation by saying the same of France and, remarkably, Germany. For a quarter of an hour or so the assembled diplomats and members of the British Establishment, headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, exchanged glances and whispers in a state of shock.

  Edward was certainly no one’s idea of a safe pair of hands – a few stray incidents gave a vivid foretaste of the kind of trouble he could cause if left to his own devices. As early as the late 1920s, concern had been expressed at his open sympathy for the wretched conditions of coal-miners, but these had come from mine-owners. There was far worse in 1935, when he made two speeches within three days that showed a frightening inclination to put his own stamp on foreign policy. Speaking to the British Legion, he advocated sending a delegation of members to Germany as ‘there would be no more suitable body or organisation of men to stretch forth the hand of friendship to the Germans than we ex-Servicemen who fought them in the Great War and have now forgotten all about that’.10 He was almost immediately criticised by his father for mixing in politics, especially foreign affairs, above all when his views conflicted with those of the Foreign Office.11 Edward was quite unabashed at the furore and made it clear to the German ambassador that he had wanted to influence policy by bypassing the government and overriding ‘the timidity and hesitation which … were characteristic of politicians, [and] were much slower in achieving results than a frank word spoken at the right moment, even though it might exceed the bounds of reserve normally maintained’.12

  As the speech coincided with a ticklish phase in the Anglo-German naval negotiations in which France was justifiably concerned that Britain might be looking after her own interest at the expense of France, it caused embarrassment on all sides. Two days later, the Prince compounded the damage with a speech at Berkhamsted School, in which he sounded downright militaristic to the extent of anticipating another war. He had been enraged by a report that the London County Council, then led by the prominent Labour politician Herbert Morrison, had forbidden the use of even wooden dummy rifles by the pupils’ military cadet groups (Officer Training Corps or OTC) within its jurisdiction:

  I was met by, and inspected, a very smart guard of honour. I understand that over 70 per cent. of the school are members of the Corps. and that you have done very well in shooting. We live in very interesting times now, and it takes people with different ideas to make up a community, but it is always a mystery to me that a certain number of misguided people – I will even go as far as to call them cranks – should feel that the only way in which they can express the feeling we all have of abhorrence of war, and of the appalling distress to the whole world which another war would bring, is by discouraging, and if they are in authority prohibiting, any form of healthy discipline and training.13

  The Berkhamsted speech enraged pacifist sentiment led by the veteran Labour MP George Lansbury and the British Legion speech was embarrassing enough to be discussed in Cabinet.14 To head the Prince off from assisting the government with further exercises in personal diplomacy, the Cabinet agreed that his father should show him the minutes of the meeting so he would know the complications that he had caused.15 George V had been very annoyed at the constitutional impropriety of the Prince’s speech but he would not have objected to the underlying sentiment.16 Far more discreetly he was lobbying the Foreign Office in favour of agreement with Germany.17 It is not even certain whether George V passed on the government’s concern, but from then on Edward abstained from further attempts at personal diplomacy.

  Edward’s flaws were clear to insiders from a very early stage and there was very serious concern as to whether he would be a disastrous liability when he became King. The most important of these insiders, Stanley Baldwin, was the Prime Minister during Edward’s brief reign and for much of his time as Prince of Wales. Long before Mrs Simpson came on the scene Baldwin admitted these fears as vividly as a senior politician can be imagined as doing. In 1927, he accompanied Edward on a royal visit to Canada and this gave the Prince’s chief courtier an opportunity discreetly to share his own doubts about him. Alan ‘Tommy’ Lascelles had started his long service to the royal family as private secretary to the Prince of Wales in 1920.18 To begin with, the Prince’s legendary charm had counted for far more than the huge differences in their characters and Lascelles had liked and respected his employer. Lascelles was intellectual, discreet, upright and moral; in short the epitome of a successful modern courtier; he was practically the only one of the Prince’s staff who went on to very senior office in the royal household. In a few years, Lascelles had come to resent Edward’s drinking, womanising and pursuit of selfish pleasure to the extent that he began to doubt seriously whether Edward was up to his duty at all. His concerns were so severe that he nerved himself to break with rules and protocol and share them with the Prime Minister. The group were staying at Government House in Ottawa, a rambling and gloomy palace. Baldwin had a small sitting room at the end of a passage on the first floor where he agreed to meet Lascelles for a ‘secret colloquy’.19 Lascelles began by telling the Prime Minister directly that ‘unless he [the Prince] mended his ways, would soon become no fit wearer of the British Crown’ and finished his comments with the melodramatic confession that he thought ‘the best thing that could happen to him, and to the country, would be for him to break his neck’. The Prince was a very aggressive horse rider who had already suffered a number of bad accidents, so this was not a remote possibility. Nonetheless it is a fair indication of the strain under which Lascelles had been placed that he gave way to such an outburst, for which he expected ‘to get [his] head bitten off’ by the Prime Minister. He was taken aback when Baldwin replied, ‘God forgive me, I have often thought the same’ and promised that he would ‘talk straightly to the Prince at an early opportunity’. However, there is no evidence that he ever delivered on the promise.

  Baldwin was not a malicious man, so it is unlikely that he actively wished harm to come to the Prince. He was just pessimistic as to whether Edward’s personality would allow him to be a successful monarch, and hoped that the country would somehow be spared the consequences. There was also an element of self-interest in Baldwin’s thinking. He knew that there was a fair chance that he would be Prime Minister when Edward succeeded to the throne, putting the question of his fitness or otherwise for the job to the acid test. Baldwin could see that whoever was Prime Minister would face an unprecedentedly difficult task. He might even have decided already that it was an impossible task, that there simply was no way that Edward could be brought to behave. If so, this might explain why Baldwin did not deliver on his promise to give the Prince a serious talking to. Nothing in the subsequent record suggests that Baldwin would have been wrong to have despaired. Lascelles stuck it out for another couple of years, but resigned in disgust in 1929 and allowed himself to deliver to Edward a frank account of his shortcomings. The Prince thanked him with every appearance of amiability and gave not the slightest sign that the diatribe had made any impression on him. Lascelles would not be the last to try to reform Edward and fail.

  The incident that provoked Lascelles’s resignation also showed how Edward had come to a less than flattering opinion of Baldwin. To begin with, he had gushed apparently sincere praise for his Prime Minister, but this had ebbed.20 George V fell seriously ill whilst Edward was in the bush on a tour of East Africa in 1928. Baldwin was then Prime Minister and sent Edward increasingly urgent cables begging him to return to Britain, but Edward did not believe them: ‘I don’t believe a word
of it. It’s just some election-dodge of old Baldwin’s. It doesn’t mean a thing.’21 The Prince was entirely wrong, but his outburst shows that he had somehow spotted Baldwin’s usually well-concealed capacity for self-dramatisation and linked it to the Prime Minister’s trade as a politician.

  The problem of Edward was still on the table in 1935, when Baldwin re-entered Downing Street for his third and final premiership. Indeed, it was at the very first Cabinet meeting that he chaired after becoming Prime Minister again that the Prince’s British Legion speech was discussed. He knew that he was at the end of his political career and could look at things in terms of the next generation. To Sir Horace Wilson, his closest civil service adviser and already a long-standing collaborator, Baldwin mapped out three tasks for his term in office: to postpone or prevent war through an understanding with Germany, to create ‘the most favourable conditions for his successor’ as leader of the Conservative Party and to ‘enable the Prince of Wales (should he succeed to the throne) to make a favourable start as King’.22 It would be a thankless and difficult task and not one that Baldwin relished. He freely admitted that ‘he had always hoped that the King [George V] wouldn’t die in his time as P.M.’23 It is also extremely striking that he had already considered the possibility that Edward might not become King. The exact words that Baldwin used to set out his tasks and how the conversation came about have been lost for ever; all that survives is Wilson’s paraphrase into cautious, non-committal civil service prose. Wilson’s notes were written with the benefit of hindsight after the event, but Baldwin had long had his doubts as to whether Edward ‘would stay the course’.24 It was a short step to recognising that Edward had no appetite for the throne, and Baldwin may have hinted this to Wilson. When the crisis broke, political calculation, if nothing else, dictated that Baldwin treat Edward as worthy of the throne, but there was no sign that he was optimistic that Edward would prove his doubts to be wrong.