The Queen Mother (76 page)

The Queen invited her own friends – she wanted Balmoral to be fun as well as formal. Osbert Sitwell loved the landscape, the gaiety, the comfort and the charming atmosphere that the Queen created. The King teased him for not being able to walk, like him, twenty-five miles over the hills. Sitwell greatly enjoyed the Ghillies Ball. ‘Such fun’, he told one friend. ‘The most complicated reels, valetas and odd dances, like Elizabethan times, quite devoid, the whole thing, of class feeling.’
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James Stuart’s American sister-in-law Barbara, Countess of Moray, stayed as well; she enjoyed herself ‘wildly’ – her only complaint was that no one asked her to dance the Spanish Gavotte at the ball. That aside, she told the Queen, she felt ‘one hundred times the better for seeing you’.
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So did the Queen’s friend Dick Molyneux and the artist Rex Whistler, who decorated his thank-you letter with a Scottish trophy and a thistle and rose bouquet. Molyneux behaved with his usual exuberance, and afterwards sent an appropriately nonsensical bread-and-butter letter, written in pidgin French. He closed in English, ‘Oh! Madam, besides all the fun, it was good to see you and the King so well – and everything I’ve prayed for.’
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EVERYTHING
was light hearted. The short time that they had to reign before war engulfed their kingdom and Empire seems at least in retrospect to have been filled with tensions, if not crises. The most painful for the family arose from continuing problems with the Duke of Windsor. This was not surprising. His predicament was unprecedented and complicated. Almost alone in Austria, while he waited for Mrs Simpson’s decree nisi to become absolute, he grew distressed. In mid-January 1937 he had written the King a long letter in which he said he wanted to do all he could to help and support him. But he begged the King to help stop the attacks upon himself and Wallis emanating from government and Court officials: ‘you and the family can help us so much by giving us your support just now and creating a dignified background for our marriage and our married life.’
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The Duke followed this letter with many others and, more painfully for his brother, with the constant telephone calls in which he laid out his advice, his problems and his demands. The King came to find the calls so upsetting that after a time he actually refused to take them. The Duke of Windsor was horrified to have his access cut off.
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Money was a source of endless argument, especially when the Duke’s lies about his financial situation emerged. In early 1937 opposition to a pension for him grew in the House of Commons and the King wrote to him to say he must now tell him the truth. ‘I understood from you when I signed the paper at the Fort that you were going to be very badly off.’
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Agreement was not reached until 1938. In the meantime much bitterness accrued.

Even more important than money to the Duke and his future wife were the manner of their marriage and the matter of her title. They were both determined that at least some members of his family should attend their wedding in order to give it the royal seal of approval. The Duke believed he had failed the woman he loved – instead of the throne she so obviously deserved, she was imprisoned by the hounds of the world’s press in an ignominious villa in the south of France. Their marriage must make amends. It must be as grand and as official as possible. Mrs Simpson’s decree absolute was expected to be granted on 27 April 1937, and she decided that they should wait till after the Coronation for their wedding. Then, she thought, the world’s attention could turn from that ‘event’ to them.
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As so often, the burden of seeking a solution fell upon the able shoulders of Walter Monckton. The couple were set upon having a
Church of England service, and the Duke instructed Monckton to find a suitable member of the priesthood to officiate. Mrs Simpson thought that the King should be able to depute a bishop to conduct the ceremony, notwithstanding the fact that the Church did not countenance divorce. Monckton suggested that one of the King’s chaplains could officiate. But that was out of the question. Lord Wigram, the King’s Private Secretary, told Archbishop Lang that he would ‘hound out’ of the College of Chaplains any one of them who agreed to such a thing.
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In the event a ‘scallywag clergyman’, as Owen Morshead described him, a parish priest from Yorkshire, volunteered his services.
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Wigram also took the view that for any member of the family to attend the wedding ‘would be a firm nail in the coffin of monarchy’.
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The King, the Queen and Queen Mary agreed absolutely: quite aside from their personal feelings, they were concerned about public opinion. ‘I suppose you get endless letters as I do,’ Queen Mary had written to the King, ‘imploring us not to go out for the wedding as it wld do great harm, especially after the terrible shaking the Monarchy received last Decr.’
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The King informed Monckton that no member of the family would attend the ceremony and none of his chaplains would undertake it. With great difficulty, the King composed a letter to the Duke setting out the bad news, and adding, ‘I can’t treat this as just a private family matter, however much I want to.’
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The Duke became even more embittered.

More contentious still was the matter of the future Duchess’s title. The Royal Family decided early on that she must not be granted the title of Her Royal Highness (HRH). This was a difficult and controversial decision if only because of the precedent of the Queen herself. Upon her marriage to the Duke of York in 1923, in accordance with the general rule that a wife takes the status of her husband, she had become ‘Her Royal Highness the Duchess of York’. In early 1937 the King’s Private Secretary was advised by Parliamentary Counsel that the same rule applied for Mrs Simpson, and that it would not be possible for her to hold a different rank from her husband. That was what the Duke assumed. He also believed that the title was essential. Mrs Simpson considered that the title HRH was ‘the only thing to bring me back in the eyes of the world’.
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Queen Mary was horrified. She wrote to the King in early February, ‘It is unfortunate that he does not understand our point of
view with regard to the HRH and that this rankles still, but there is no doubt you must stick to this decision as it wld make great difficulties for us to acknowledge her as being in the same category with Alice & Marina.’
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Wigram wrote to the Home Secretary, Sir John Simon, ‘His Majesty hopes that you will find some way to avoid this title being conferred.’
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The family did not expect this marriage to last and if the Duke married again, then the next wife would have to be an HRH too – so would any of his children. ‘This would mean that instead of confining the Royal Circle to those in the lineal succession all sorts of outsiders might be admitted and this would lower the dignity of the Crown.’
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The King told Baldwin the question was simple: ‘Is she a fit and proper person to become a Royal Highness after what she has done to the country; and would the country understand it if she became one automatically on marriage?’ He thought not, and his family agreed with him – they thought that the monarchy had been degraded quite enough already.
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A solution was devised, with some reluctance, by the politicians and lawyers, who feared the King might be seen to be kicking his brother when he was down. It was for the King to issue new letters patent based on the argument that the abdication created a situation entirely without precedent, that the Duke had renounced the throne not only for himself but also for his descendants and that the style and title of HRH had hitherto been attached only to members of the Royal Family who were within the line of succession.

In fact, the decision did not cause much concern in Britain. Winston Churchill, the Duke’s erstwhile supporter, was surprisingly emphatic in his support for the King’s position, saying no government would wish to create Mrs Simpson a royal highness. Clive Wigram lunched with the editor of
The Times
, Geoffrey Dawson, and was delighted when Dawson agreed that this was the proper course – the paper endorsed the arrangement as ‘a logical appendix to the events of last December’.
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The Duke and his fiancée were predictably angered and the Duke wrote harsh letters to his mother and brother. They chose 3 June as the day for their wedding – this was King George V’s birthday. Queen Mary told the Queen that the choice of date hurt her very deeply; ‘of course she did it, but how can he be so weak, I suppose it is out of revenge that none of the family is going to the wedding.’
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Inevitably the British papers were now dwelling at some length on the forthcoming ceremony. Queen Mary told the Queen that she found it all ‘sickening’.
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The Queen agreed with her that the bad newspapers were ‘too horrible’ and ‘so mischievous’ about David. But she gave him the benefit of the doubt, saying that he could not realize the harm that the newspapers were doing. As for the wedding, ‘It must be too ghastly for you, and I feel so enraged when I think of June 3rd that I can hardly speak.’
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On the day of the wedding the Queen wrote a line to her mother-in-law: ‘My darling Mama, We have been thinking so much about you today, with your memories of past days, and all the new anxieties added, and just send this little line of love to say how much we are with you in thought and sympathy & loving admiration.’
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Queen Mary could not bear to spend such an emotional day doing nothing and so she drove down to Sussex to see Lady Loder’s garden at Leonard’s Lee, where she found quiet and some peace. The Duke of Windsor sent her ‘a nice telegram’ but she was disgusted by the stories in the evening papers and by the fact that any clergyman, even a ‘scallywag’, had gone out to conduct the ceremony without permission. She took comfort in the fact that the family was of one mind over it all.
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Worries about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor continued to preoccupy both King and Queen. One concern was that the Windsors might soon try to return to Britain. Lord Beaverbrook was campaigning for this through his
Express
newspapers. The entire family was against it – at the very least it would cause controversy around the monarchy and, worse, it might well lead to demonstrations, perhaps some in favour of the Duke and some against the Duchess. Either way the prospect did not please. The King still felt vulnerable and informed Queen Mary that he had been worried about his brother’s return ‘for ages’ and had told Chamberlain and other ministers ‘that I did not wish to be let down, & that after all [is] said & done, I did step into the breach & that I was not the culprit for what had happened’. He thought they had understood the strength of his feelings and realized ‘how important it is to prevent any untoward & premature return’.
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In this, as in all such matters, the Queen agreed with her husband. Much later, in talking about the drama of the abdication, she identified the core of King George VI’s anxiety about his brother’s return to England. ‘He couldn’t come back. You can’t have two Kings.’ She
knew that the King had to ‘take hold’.
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Queen Mary was sympathetic. ‘Poor Bertie,’ she wrote to the Queen, ‘I fear D. still gives him & us all great trouble, he is terribly selfish & only thinks of his & her point of view & of their position in life, not a bit of this Country & of all of us – of course we know she is at the back of it.’
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Quite apart from fears over the Duke’s return, there were still complicated negotiations about the financial settlement to be made for him and a specific concern was a libel suit which the Duke had brought against the author of a book,
Coronation Commentary
. This alleged that Mrs Simpson had been his mistress and that he had been drinking too much before the abdication. The King, the Queen and their Household were appalled at the thought of the Duke being cross-examined in court. But the Duke was cockahoop, believing that he might make a considerable sum of money.
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Walter Monckton, who was still negotiating on behalf of the Windsors, wrote to the Queen in mid-September 1937 to say that he was ‘distressed to hear how much the King is worried over His brother & I do want You to know that nothing will be too much trouble to me if I can help in any way & at any time’. He wanted to reassure her and the King that there was no immediate cause for anxiety and suggested that ‘until these troubles are overpast’, he might send regular reports to the King indicating whether or not there were any troubles ahead.
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The Queen appreciated Monckton’s efforts. She said that she was ‘most touched that you should think of writing so sympathetically and with such understanding and I appreciate your thought most deeply. I think that it would be an excellent thing if you were to write to the King at fairly regular intervals, for I feel that one of the main sources of anxiety of mind is the difficulty experienced of getting authentic news from abroad.’ The possible libel case she thought degrading and damaging to the monarchy.
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In the end, with Monckton’s assistance, the libel case was settled without the Duke being cross-examined and he did indeed win substantial damages.
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But anxieties about the Duke and Duchess were always present, as the Queen told Queen Mary at the end of their Balmoral stay.
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Understandably so – at the beginning of October the Duke sprang another unwelcome surprise, and also committed a fundamental mistake. He went to Germany and met Hitler. The German trip was to be followed by a similar tour in the United States, and both were,
according to the press statement he issued on 3 October, ‘for the purpose of studying housing and working conditions’. Innocent sounding, but tensions with Germany were already high over Hitler’s expansionist ambitions. The news came to the King and Queen at Balmoral as ‘a bombshell & a bad one too’.
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‘He never sent a word to me about his plans,’ the King complained to Queen Mary, ‘& I have told my Ambassadors that the Embassy Staff cannot help him in any official sense … The world is in a very troubled state, & there is plenty to worry about, & D. seems to loom ever larger on the horizon.’
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