Read The Duchess Of Windsor Online
Authors: Greg King
The Duchess Of Windsor (16 page)
Just before the outbreak of the First World War, David joined the Grenadier Guards. Eventually, he went to France, where he was assigned a job working for the general staff. But he was haunted by the thought that while his fellow soldiers were allowed to fight and die, he was trapped behind the front line.
I do hate being a Prince and not allowed to fight!!” he wrote.
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When his father and other officials protested that the heir to the Throne could not possibly fight, David insisted, “What does it matter if I am killed? I have four brothers. ”
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He was allowed to conduct inspections and visits as long as he himself was in no danger, and these often left unforgettable impressions. He once visited a field hospital and noticed that one patient had been hidden away behind some curtains. When told that the man had been so terribly disfigured that it was thought better to keep him out of royal sight, he immediately pulled the curtains aside, bent down, and kissed what remained of the man’s forehead.
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I do hate being a Prince and not allowed to fight!!” he wrote.37
When his father and other officials protested that the heir to the Throne could not possibly fight, David insisted, “What does it matter if I am killed? I have four brothers. ”
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He was allowed to conduct inspections and visits as long as he himself was in no danger, and these often left unforgettable impressions. He once visited a field hospital and noticed that one patient had been hidden away behind some curtains. When told that the man had been so terribly disfigured that it was thought better to keep him out of royal sight, he immediately pulled the curtains aside, bent down, and kissed what remained of the man’s forehead.
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Such shows of sympathy did much to endear David to his father’s subjects. They saw in him a champion, someone who recognized their problems and expressed a determination to do something to change intolerable conditions. He was a prince, but he also managed to combine his status with a human touch, to communicate freely and sincerely in ways which no member of the Royal Family had done before. The end of the war brought immense desire for change, and David seemed to understand the hopes and needs of the common man. “The young Prince of Wales,” wrote James Pope-Hennessy, “was swiftly coming to personify for millions the longings and the aims of the new post-war generation, with its driving wish for freedom from tradition and convention, whatever the costs. This was, to say the least of it, an unusual role for any member of the British Royal Family, and it was one which, naturally enough, Queen Mary could not altogether understand.”
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Indeed, David’s instincts stood in stark contrast to those of his parents. Throughout the war, the King and Queen had fulfilled their roles admirably, but always in a rather stiff, detached manner. They had little understanding of their subjects’ lives or daily concerns. Once, during a tour of run-down lodging houses in London’s East End, Queen Mary, rather embarrassingly, reacted with great horror and thoughtlessly asked the huddled family whose room she was surveying, “Why, why do you live here?”
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There had been times during the war when the future of the monarchy seemed doubtful. Fear for his own position led George V to campaign actively against the invitation of asylum his government had extended to his cousins Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra, a rather shameful effort which undoubtedly condemned his Russian relatives to a Bolshevik firing squad just over a year later. But George, by blood almost entirely German himself, knew that voices were being raised against his throne.
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In reaction to this anti-German sentiment, George V made a bold decision. On July 17, 1917, after a meeting of the Privy Council, the King relinquished all his German titles. He also changed the name of the family and the dynasty. At first, no one knew with any certainty what the family surname was. Any of the answers—“Whipper” or “Guelph” or “Wettin”—were distinctly Teutonic.
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Finally, at the suggestion of his private secretary, George V proclaimed the Royal House of Windsor.
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Finally, at the suggestion of his private secretary, George V proclaimed the Royal House of Windsor.
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Following the war, David was sent on a series of tours around the empire which were to intermittently keep him away from England for six years. In August 1919 he boarded HMS
Renown,
sailed to Canada, and began an extended journey that would take him from one side of the country to the other. It was during his visit to Alberta that he purchased a four-thousand-acre ranch forty miles south of Calgary. After the Canadian tour, he visited America for the first time, with stays in Washington, D.C., and New York, where he was given a ticker-tape parade.
Renown,
sailed to Canada, and began an extended journey that would take him from one side of the country to the other. It was during his visit to Alberta that he purchased a four-thousand-acre ranch forty miles south of Calgary. After the Canadian tour, he visited America for the first time, with stays in Washington, D.C., and New York, where he was given a ticker-tape parade.
After a break of several months in England, he set sail again on the
Renown,
this time headed for Australia and New Zealand. He was accompanied on this journey by a favorite cousin, twenty-year-old Lord Louis Mountbatten. Lively and boisterous, Dickie, as Mountbatten was called, joined David in boyish pranks which, though utterly harmless, caused great distress to the staid George V and Queen Mary.
Renown,
this time headed for Australia and New Zealand. He was accompanied on this journey by a favorite cousin, twenty-year-old Lord Louis Mountbatten. Lively and boisterous, Dickie, as Mountbatten was called, joined David in boyish pranks which, though utterly harmless, caused great distress to the staid George V and Queen Mary.
Further tours followed. In 1920, David traveled to India and Asia; over the next few years, he paid two extended visits to the United States, returned to Canada and his ranch in Alberta, and toured South America and Africa. During his September 1923 visit to New York, the Prince indulged his love of pleasure. He attended several nightclubs, watched polo matches, and frequently disappeared for hours at a time, much to the dismay of his bodyguards. However, there can be no denying that David worked hard during these years. He had visited forty-five countries within the Empire and racked up over 150,000 miles of travel. “I could have qualified as a self-contained encyclopedia on railroad gauges, national anthems, statistics, local customs and dishes, and the political affiliations of a hundred mayors,” he recalled. “I knew the gold output of the Rand, the storage capacity of the grain elevators at Winnipeg, and the wool export of Australia; and I even held my own on the subject of the chilled-beef trade of the Argentine.”
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The impact of these tours was enormous. For the first time, many people in the Empire came face-to-face with royalty, and what they saw was indeed a surprise. This was Prince Charming, smiling, jovial, handsome—a complete contradiction of what they had expected. Except for his noble birth, he seemed absolutely no different from those who turned out to see him. To David, too, travel was a revelation. As he visited country after country, he was amazed at the thousands of people who stood waiting for hours on end just to catch a glimpse of him. He was hailed in every city and town, feted, toasted, cheered, and photographed. So many hundreds of people shook his hand that doctors bandaged it and the Prince was forced to use his left, so enthusiastic was his reception.
The Prince’s hard work impressed his parents, and he received letters expressing their pride. However, this rare praise was mitigated by more numerous letters from his father and mother, which criticized much of what he had done, how he had dressed, and how he had acted. His parents made no secret of their disapproval. “I’ve seen all his letters from home,” Mountbatten wrote. “His father’s might be the letters of a Director of some business to his Assistant Manager and even his mother seems so stiff and unnatural. . . .”
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There was a clear clash of beliefs between David and his parents. Unlike King George and Queen Mary, the Prince did not believe that the monarchy must remain aloof and mysterious. Sir Frederick Ponsonby, keeper of the privy purse, once lectured the Prince on his duties: “If I may say so, Sir, I think there is risk in your making yourself too accessible.” “What do you mean?” David asked. “The monarchy must always retain an element of mystery,” Ponsonby replied. “A Prince should not show himself too much. The Monarchy must remain on a pedestal.” David disagreed strenuously with this reasoning, but Ponsonby warned, “If you bring it down to the people, it will lose its mystery and influence.”
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David was less concerned with the magic of the monarchy than with utilizing his power and position to help others. As Duke of Cornwall he had inherited the Duchy of Cornwall estates, including land in South London which housed low-income residents. One of his first concerns was improving their housing conditions, and he reduced rents to ease the strain. Although not always successful, he tried to remain sensitive to the impression he gave. He once arrived at a local train station to embark on a tour of working-class neighborhoods only to find a Rolls-Royce waiting to carry him and his party. Seeing the car, he shook his head and said with determination, “I’m sorry, I’m not going to ride in that.”
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His commitment was genuine enough. His cousin Prince Christopher of Greece recalled a conversation he had with David after the latter’s return from one visit to a working-class neighborhood in the north of England: “I can’t get those poor fellows out of my mind,” he told Christopher. “It’s terrible to see the despair in their eyes. I can imagine what I would feel in their place. So many of them have been through the War. What have they come back to? How can one tell them to go on hoping?”
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“From the time of his return to England the Prince of Wales chose an independent way,” wrote Hector Bolitho. “It led him far from the traditions of his father’s Court. He resented the old order, and conventional society did not amuse him. Like his grandfather, he found pleasure in a small coterie of friends, chosen for their amusing qualities rather than for their position or their intellectual gifts. In time, the dwindling ranks of society resented the originality of his choice of friends. He seldom went to stay in great country houses, where he might have met and known his contemporaries, and, as independence increased, he was almost stubborn in his habit of turning his back upon the conventions of polite society.”
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Bolitho was correct in saying that the Prince was fairly isolated. He had few friends and possibly no close male relationships. But the fact that David kept to himself was not, as Bolitho suggests, due to some conscious decision or character flaw on his part. He and his brothers had been raised to be suspicious of dose friendships, for royalty, unlike their subjects, could never be entirely certain of discretion on the part of confidants; his brother Bertie, the future King George VI, also had few close male friendships.
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David enjoyed a measure of independence. He moved into York House, a suite of apartments, corridors, and labyrinthine staircases occupying a portion of St. James’s Palace, just down the Mall from Buckingham Palace. He also acquired a household of his own, presided over by Godfrey Thomas, who acted as his private secretary. In 1920 a man who was to play a crucial role in the drama of the abdication joined the Prince’s staff: Alan “Tommy” Lascelles, who served as assistant private secretary under Thomas.
Lascelles, nephew of the fifth Earl of Harewood, was born in 1887 and was educated at Trinity College, Oxford. He twice failed the Foreign Office exam to become a civil servant, became a stockbroker instead, and enlisted in the army at the outbreak of the war in 1914. “It could be said,” writes Duff Hart-Davis, “that Tommy was the wrong person for the Prince of Wales: that his moral outlook was too severe, his idea of duty too rigid, his code of conduct too unbending, for him to be compatible with such a high-spirited employer. Yet it could equally be said that he was exactly the
right
person for the Prince, and that someone of precisely his calibre, with his powerful intellect and high principles, was needed to shape the future King for his role.”
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Lascelles himself was to have a mixed relationship with his royal master. He apparently thought little of him. He later said, “For some hereditary or physiological reason his mental and spiritual growth stopped dead in his adolescence, thereby affecting his whole consequent behaviour.”
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right
person for the Prince, and that someone of precisely his calibre, with his powerful intellect and high principles, was needed to shape the future King for his role.”
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Lascelles himself was to have a mixed relationship with his royal master. He apparently thought little of him. He later said, “For some hereditary or physiological reason his mental and spiritual growth stopped dead in his adolescence, thereby affecting his whole consequent behaviour.”
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In 1917, King George V had announced to his Privy Council that he and Queen Mary had decided to allow their children to marry suitable spouses of noble birth. No longer were David, his brothers, and his sister required to make political matches with foreign princesses or princes. In November 1921, David’s sister, twenty-four-year-old Princess Mary, became the first of the children to take advantage of this by becoming engaged to a man nearly forty, Viscount Lascelles, son of the Earl of Harewood. Both shared a love of horses and country life, although unfavorable gossip held that he had proposed after losing a bet. In February 1922 they were married.
Bertie was the next child to marry. He had fallen in love with Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, daughter of the Earl of Strathmore. Elizabeth, who was to play a pivotal role in Wallis’s life, was known for her good sense, concern for others, and rather carefree approach to the problems of everyday life. She was not exactly beautiful: Short, she had a tendency to stoutness, which would increase with the passing years, but her face was pleasant, and she used her sparkling blue eyes, warm smile, and genuine charm to win over those whom she encountered. Beneath this exterior there lurked another woman, however: overly protective, filled with steely determination, stubborn, and unforgiving. Elizabeth came to be the dominant partner in her relationship with Bertie. Chips Channon later wrote of Bertie, “He had few friends and was almost entirely dependent on her, whom he worshipped. She was his will power, his all.”
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