The Queen Mother (66 page)

Still convalescing from her pneumonia, the Duchess was prescribed a period of sea air, and in early March she and her daughters went to stay at the Duke of Devonshire’s house in Eastbourne, Compton Place. The Duke of York came to join her in between bouts of public engagements. She went up to London briefly to see the Gainsborough exhibition held by Sir Philip Sassoon at his Park Lane house. She was accompanied by Kenneth Clark, the director of the National Gallery and the Surveyor of the King’s Pictures, who was becoming an important adviser to her and was helping her build up a collection of pictures herself.
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He complimented her on her appreciation of art. ‘So few people seem to enjoy pictures: they look at them stodgily, or critically – or acquisitively; seldom with real enthusiasm,’ he wrote.
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After a month at Compton Place the family returned to London, and then went home to Royal Lodge for Easter, which was very different that year. The tradition of many years had been abandoned; the Court did not move to Windsor Castle as it had throughout the reign of King George V. The King spent Easter with friends at Fort Belvedere. Queen Mary, by contrast, moved into Royal Lodge with the Duke and Duchess for almost three weeks. The Duchess gave up her bedroom and bathroom for her mother-in-law, who was also given the Octagon Room as her own sitting room, so that she could be as independent as possible.

Queen Mary’s presence meant that Royal Lodge became in effect the focus of the Royal Family at this time, with the King and other members of the family coming and going, to lunch, dine or stay. The Duchess, like everyone else in the family, was keenly aware that, with the death of King George V, Queen Mary’s role had changed. ‘I feel that the Family, as a family, will now revolve round you. Thank God
we have all got you as a central point, because without that point it might easily disintegrate.’
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On Good Friday the King joined them at the Royal Chapel, immediately next to Royal Lodge, and next day, which was cold with showers of sleet, the Duke and Duchess and the Princesses arranged the flowers in the chapel as Queen Mary watched. On Easter Sunday they all exchanged eggs and gifts at breakfast and then went to a shortened matins in the Private Chapel at Windsor Castle with the King.
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On 25 May the entire family supported Queen Mary on one of her first semi-public engagements since the death of her husband: she had been invited by the Cunard White Star Company to see the
Queen Mary
the day before she departed on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York. All the Queen’s sons and daughters-in-law came; Princess Elizabeth was there too – her mother had asked if she could come as she was ‘
madly
keen’ to see the ship.
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The King flew down from Fort Belvedere; the rest of the family took the train. They had lunch on board with Sir Thomas and Lady Royden and the company directors.

Queen Mary recorded that it was a lovely day. They were shown all over the ship, from first class to third, inspecting the swimming pool and the Turkish bath, the restaurant adorned with a circus painting by Dame Laura Knight, the lounges, library and children’s rooms (where, according to the
Morning Post
, Princess Elizabeth played with the toys, slid down the slide, tried her hand at the toy piano and saw a Mickey Mouse cartoon), and the cabins, which Queen Mary pronounced very comfortable. On the King’s departure his scarlet and blue biplane circled over the ship and dipped ‘as if in salute to the world’s greatest liner’.
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Next day, 26 May, was Queen Mary’s birthday and, as every year, the family gathered at Buckingham Palace for lunch. For the Queen it was a sad occasion.

The loss of King George V’s dominating but reassuring presence, and the sense of unease brought by the new reign, sapped even the
Duchess’s positive spirit. She valued the efforts of her friends to support and cheer her. Dick Molyneux took her to see the paintings at Greenwich and in the Courtaulds’ collection at Eltham Palace in southeast London. She loved it all, writing afterwards, ‘I am deeply grateful to you, my dear old friend and fellow Wet, for arranging such a good outing, and honestly, it did me all the good in the world. I still feel a bit sad about everything, & last Wednesday was a really bright moment in a gloomy summer.’
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Other friends kept her up to date with more sombre events. Nineteen-thirty-six was another year in which the power of the dictators, Hitler and Mussolini, grew. Having watched the world, and in particular the League of Nations, fail to stop Italy invading Abyssinia, the Nazi government reoccupied the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland. Nothing happened and the continent continued its descent into the twilight of barbarism. D’Arcy Osborne, who had now arrived in Rome as British ambassador to the Holy See, began to send the Duchess letters filled with drumbeats of warning about the march of fascism. He was concerned that Britain was far too smug and complacent. ‘Disarmed to the gums, we can’t afford to go throwing our morals and ideals in the faces of gangster dictators.’
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T
HE
D
UCHESS’S
public life in the new reign was busier than ever; she was as much in demand, and her presence worked its familiar magic for charitable causes. She used her influence with the new King as she had with the old, appealing to Edward VIII on behalf of her charities. Not surprisingly, perhaps, she seemed more confident and more willing to express opinions and to intervene with friends in high places than she had been in the lifetime of King George V, in particular over the unemployment and poverty she saw on visits to industrial areas.

As patroness of the Toc H League of Women Helpers she went to several different events celebrating the group’s coming of age in June. The text of her handwritten speech for their festival at the Crystal Palace survives; she used the themes of family and home to welcome visitors from the ‘family’ of Empire to the home country. In one intriguing passage she said, ‘In these rather puzzling days [these words were underlined in red], it is both inspiring and comforting to feel, that all here tonight are united by the spirit of fellowship in the desire to keep burning the light of sacrifice & service, and to contribute by
personal effort to the common good.’
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It is not clear whether her ‘puzzlement’ referred to the worsening international situation or to events nearer home.

Later in June the Duchess was hostess at a tea party at 145 Piccadilly which she may well have approached with mixed feelings: the Duke was President of the Imperial War Graves Commission, and the Anglo-German-French Committee of the Commission was visiting England. At the beginning of June the Duke decided to invite the Committee to tea, together with the French and German Ambassadors. So the Duchess found herself entertaining the former Chief of the General Staff of the German army and several other German officials, as well as their French and British counterparts.
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At the end of July the Duke and Duchess visited Jarrow, the origin of one of the hunger marches. Much of Britain was by now recovering, but in Jarrow about 40 per cent of the people were still out of work. Feelings were running high in the area, and Walter Runciman, the President of the Board of Trade, was perturbed by the timing of this royal visit.
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In fact, it proved a public success, although a disturbing experience for the Duchess, who was horrified by the poverty she saw. ‘I always dread going up to Tyneside,’ she wrote to Duff Cooper, now the Secretary of State for War, ‘because I admire the people there with all my heart, & it darkens my thoughts for months afterwards, to know how desperate they are.’ But at least despair had not given way to apathy. She went to Palmer’s Shipyard, the only source of employment in the town, which she thought a scene of desolation. On the streets they drove ‘through large crowds of emaciated, ragged, unhappy &
undaunted
people, who gave us a wonderful reception’. Their courage made her weep, she said; she found it terrible that so many good men should be wasted. She wished that more of these unemployed young men could join the army – to that end she asked Duff Cooper if the standards of fitness for recruits could not be reduced to allow more men to benefit from army training. He replied that his Ministry would act upon her suggestion.
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The Duke and Duchess then went to stay with the Duke of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle. From there they drove with their friends Clare and Doris Vyner to the Fountains Abbey Settlement at Swarland, where Clare Vyner had created an environment of smallholdings for unemployed people from Tyneside. Each family was given an acre and a half on which to build a bungalow and very quickly a
new community had been created of former industrial workers, shipyard craftsmen and clerks. The Duke and Duchess were both impressed; she wrote to Queen Mary about the trip, and he congratulated Clare Vyner on his personal efforts to give people new lives.
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After a hard-working summer the Yorks embarked with their daughters on their annual visit to Scotland, to the intense pleasure of the Princesses. Two weeks at Glamis were to be followed by several at Birkhall. Meanwhile, in early August Queen Mary finally forced herself to return to Sandringham for the first time since her husband’s death. While she was there, sadly sorting through his rooms, the King flew up for lunch but immediately afterwards returned to London, leaving his mother to her mournful tasks.
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T
HERE
WERE
VERY
different preoccupations and pleasures at Fort Belvedere. Mrs Simpson dominated the King’s life; most weekends she played the part of hostess at the Fort, with or without her husband. Helen Hardinge described in her diary an evening at Windsor Castle. The King had brought his party over from the Fort; they included Mr and Mrs Simpson, and an unknown American woman. They watched a film of the Grand National. ‘The unknown American lady was the one already selected to be Mr Simpson’s wife! Mrs Simpson was very friendly and agreeable, and admired my Victorian jewellery. It was from this evening that I felt sure the King and Mrs Simpson meant to marry.’
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Many of the staff hated what was going on: Osborne, the King’s butler, was frightened he would lose his job because ‘Mrs S had got her knife into him and he felt he was doomed.’ He also said that he had picked up a label in Mrs Simpson’s writing which read, ‘To our marriage’ – and that this had obviously been attached to some present from her to him.
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The British press was still exercising remarkable self-control about Mrs Simpson’s very existence, but London’s great salons and the Houses of Parliament were buzzing with gossip about the King’s adventures and his friend’s requirements. The King was said to be less than diligent in reading the daily government papers sent to him in his boxes and, perhaps worse, to leave them lying around at the Fort for anyone to see. His sackings within the Household were also widely discussed. The Duchess of Devonshire, Queen Mary’s Mistress of the Robes, told Lady Airlie that there was a rumour that
everyone over sixty would have to go. ‘I daresay’, she continued, ‘Mrs S. would have the good sense not to push really unsuitable men in. Can you think of a suitable office for Mr S.?? “Guardian of the Bedchamber” or “Master of the Mistress” might do.’
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On 28 May 1936 the names of Mr and Mrs Simpson appeared for the first time in the Court Circular as guests of the King at dinner the previous evening. The Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, was also present and was introduced to the Simpsons for the first time. According to her own later autobiography, the King had persuaded Mrs Simpson to come by telling her, ‘It’s got to be done. Sooner or later my Prime Minister must meet my future wife.’
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In June the King was prevented by continued official mourning from attending Royal Ascot but he sent Mrs Simpson in a royal carriage. Shortly afterwards Ernest Simpson moved out of the marital home and the King rented Mrs Simpson a house in Regent’s Park. To the horror of even the King’s supporters, divorce proceedings were now imminent.
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Helen Hardinge described a dinner which the King gave in July 1936. The Yorks were there, as were the Churchills. Mrs Simpson acted as hostess.

Churchill’s support was perhaps surprising. He was greatly concerned about the growth of fascist power in Europe, and the King was widely suspected of being too sympathetic to the new Germany. The evidence for this has been thoroughly examined and convincingly analysed by King Edward VIII’s official biographer Philip Ziegler, and need not be revisited here.
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Many years later the publication of official German documents proved that in 1936 the Nazi leaders were already planning to exploit the King’s sympathy to achieve an Anglo-German
entente and more. But the British Foreign Office gave little credence to reports of this nature at the time, and Churchill too may well have dismissed the rumours as exaggerated.

Mrs Simpson was another matter: senior Whitehall officials thought her to be ‘in the pocket of the German Ambassador’, as Lord Wigram recorded in February 1936.
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Helen Hardinge noted in her diary that ‘one of the factors in the situation was Mrs Simpson’s partiality for Nazi Germans’.
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Her alleged pro-German views certainly cannot have endeared Wallis Simpson to the Duchess of York. In any event, suspicions about Mrs Simpson, combined with the King’s carelessness about official papers, were enough to give senior members of the Royal Household the impression that in both his public and his private conduct the King was not entirely sound.
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