The Peoples King (50 page)

After visiting the Windsors in the South of France in January 1938, Winston Churchill wrote that, 'The Ws are very pathetic, but also very happy. She made an excellent impression on me, and it looks as if it would be a most happy marriage . . ,'
²⁶
He visited them again a year later and observed that, 'all accounts show them entirely happy and as much in love with each other as ever.'
²⁷
He had hoped they would return as soon as possible to live in Britain. 'The only thing now to do', he had written to Robert Boothby on 11 December 1936, 'is to make it easy for him to live in this country quietly as a private gentleman as soon as possible and to that we must bend our efforts.' The more firmly the new King was established, he added, 'the more easy it will be for the old one to come back to his house.'
²⁸

But the Windsors never returned to live in Britain. They spent the rest of their lives in exile in France, apart from the years of the Second World War, when the Duke was Governor of the Bahamas. Edward made repeated requests for useful employment at home and for his wife to be received by his family, but all were turned down. He was reminded of an alleged agreement to stay away - but, wrote George Allen, 'the Duke of Windsor is quite certain that he never volunteered that he would not return to England without the King's consent.'
²⁹
He was also told that he would get an allowance from the King only on condition that he did not come back to the country. 'I regard such a proposal as both unfair and intolerable', objected the Duke in a letter to Chamberlain on
22
December 1937, 'as it would be tantamount to my accepting payment for remaining in exile.' Edward was horrified by the thought of staying away from the country he loved. 'The treatment which has been meted out to my wife and myself since last December, both by the Royal Family and by the Government,' he told Chamberlain, 'has caused us acute pain.' He warned the Prime Minister that these injustices would anger the people of Britain and might re-ignite 'the very emotions which I was fortunate enough to be able to suppress a year ago'.
³⁰

The view was held by some of the circle around the royal family that, as Sir Horace Wilson had argued in a letter to Chamberlain in December 1936, Mrs Simpson intended

not only to come back here but (aided by what she expects to be a generous provision from public funds) to set up a 'Court' of her own and - there can be little doubt - do her best to make things uncomfortable for the new occupant of the Throne. It must not be assumed that she has abandoned hope of becoming Queen of England.
³¹

King George VI became increasingly worried at the prospect of any return by Edward, even a visit. 'The more I think about his coming here on a visit,' he wrote to Chamberlain, 'the less I like the idea, especially as some sections of the Press are behaving so stupidly about it.'
³²
King George and Queen Elizabeth were determined to keep the Duke and Duchess of Windsor out of Britain. 'I think you know', wrote George to Chamberlain on 14 December 1938, 'that neither the Queen nor

Queen Mary have any desire to meet the Duchess of Windsor, and therefore any visit made for the purpose of introducing her to members of the Royal Family obviously becomes impossible . . .'
³³

Many of Edward's supporters when he was King remained loyal to him as Duke of Windsor. In the USA, a society was formed called 'Friends of the Duke of Windsor in America'. 'He is a great democratic force for good,' said its president, 'but England won't use him. Our plan is to create an important international position for him so that he can serve humanity in the way he wants.'
³⁴
A society to defend the Duke's interests was set up in Britain, too, under the name of the Octavians (which was investigated by the police
³⁵
). The Duke's story, believed the Octavians, was a 'sad chapter in the nation's history'.
³⁶
Harry Becker, who had been MP for Richmond in the early 1920s and who identified with the 'lost generation' of men like himself - and Edward - who had survived the war, suggested a yearly pilgrimage to White Lodge in Richmond Park, where Edward had been born, to roast an ox in honour of his service to the country.
³⁷

When Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, the Windsors re­turned to London from France so that Edward could offer his services- 'in any capacity' - to King George VI. But according to Leslie Hore- Belisha, an old Oxford friend who was now Secretary of State for War, the King was very disturbed by Edward's return. All his ancestors, complained George to Belisha, had succeeded to the throne after their predecessors died. 'Mine', he said in dismay, 'is not only alive, but very much so.' He thought it better for the Duke to proceed to Paris at once.
³⁸
The Windsors had little choice but to follow this advice.

After the war, Edward renewed his efforts to come home, but he could make no headway against the intransigence of the King and Queen. The message was still the same in 1949, as George VI explained in a personal letter to Clement Attlee, the Prime Minister: 'I feel sure you will tell him [the Duke] that you will not encourage him to think that any alteration can be made at this time . . .'
³⁹
Some of the British elite in Paris, led by the British Ambassador, Sir Oliver Harvey, shunned Edward and Wallis. Churchill heard of this in 1952, and was appalled. As Prime Minister, he sent a brisk minute to his Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden. At social entertainments, he wrote firmly, I do not consider that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor should be given a second-class status. They are residents in Paris at the present time and should have that equality shown them which should be given to persons of distinction in the French capital.' He strongly objected to the Ambassador's 'insulting form of relegating him and the Duchess on social occasions to a position inferior to that of the unofficial notabilities of French society.'
⁴⁰

In 1964, eleven years after the coronation of Elizabeth II and twenty-eight years after the abdication, an investigation into opinions about the royal family was carried out by Mass-Observation. It found that the Duke of Windsor was the seventh most popular royal person. Among the over-sixty-fives, who would have remembered the abdi­cation crisis more clearly, he was the fifth favourite.
⁴¹
The report stated that:

A little ahead of the Queen Mother as someone who has done most for the country (but coming after the Queen, Prince Philip and George VI), coming next to her, and bracketed with Princess Marina as a favourite royal person, and still very occasionally mentioned as a member of royalty who might take a more prominent part in public affairs, is the Duke of Windsor.
⁴²

'Outstandingly,' continued the report, 'he is felt to have understood ordinary working-class people and to have demonstrated that a King is also a human being.' People interviewed in the survey had given their opinions of Edward:

He was more of a
public
man; more of an ordinary man.

He visited slums and met the
poorest
people in their homes.

He made himself one of his people and had no high ideas.

He did a lot for the miners and used to go out and see things for himself.

He had a good time but he used to visit everyone, even the out-of-work.

He exposed the poverty of unemployment.
⁴³

There were still misgivings about the treatment meted out to the Duke by his country. In 1971, the Conservative Prime Minister, Edward Heath, observed in a letter to his Private Secretary that, 'Some of us have long been worried about various aspects of the Duke of Windsor's position, especially in the evening of his life.'
⁴⁴
The follow­ing year, a Hertfordshire woman wrote to the Leader of the House of Commons, saying she had 'been made sad recently by the photographs of the DuKe of Windsor looking so frail.' Drawing on the phrase that had been so closely associated with him after his visit to South Wales in November 1936, she pleaded,

Please, please cannot
something be done
to bring him back here to live the rest of his life amongst his own people in the land he loves. Also, after all these years surely the Duchess deserves to be given the full title of HRH, as the wife of a royal duke.
⁴⁵

A similar message came from a woman in Lincolnshire, it has been most unjust', she objected, 'that he has been kept in a foreign land so long and we, as others, feel strongly about this.'
⁴⁶

'Some day - some day - the world will know the whole truth', Wallis had told Adela St Johns, a well-known journalist, in December 1940. She explained that she had not wanted Edward to abdicate, but had not been able to influence him against his own conviction of what was right. She dearly hoped, she said, that when the world knew the truth, it would understand and love Edward 'for his great courage, as I do . . . We have had such happiness - do you think, perhaps, that there are people in the world who cannot bear to see great happiness?'
^4,

It took their deaths for Edward and Wallis to return permanently to England. They lie next to each other in the royal mausoleum at Frogmore.

When Edward died in Paris on 28 May 1972, the bell of St Paul's Cathedral in London was tolled for one hour, beginning at noon. His body was flown back to England and lay in state for three days in St George's Chapel, Windsor. Nearly sixty thousand people came to Windsor to pay their respects, many from afar.
⁴⁸
At the wish of Queen Elizabeth II, there was a period of court mourning, and flags were flown at half mast from the day of Edward's death until his
funeral. Elizabeth invited the Duchess of Windsor to stay with her at Buckingham Palace.
⁴⁹

Wallis died in Paris on 24 April 1986, after fourteen lonely years without Edward. And with her, observed the Mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac, died 'the last symbol of a great love story which set the world dreaming'.
⁵⁰

References

Preface

1. John Grigg, 'Edward VIII', in
Political Lives,
p. 344

2.
    
George Eliot,
Middlemarch.
London, Penguin, 1994, p. 896 [ist edn Edinburgh, Blackwood, 1871-2]

3.
  
Godfrey Thomas to Miss Milsom, 18 June 1945, RA, PS/GVI/ABD, Box 5

4.
  
John Copeland to King Edward VIII, 11 December 1936, RA, PS/GVI/ ABD, Box 8

5.
  
Gwladys M. Alexander-Williams to King Edward VIII, 4 December 1936, RA, PS/GVI/ABD, Box 5

6.
   
A. Davies to King Edward VIII, 5 December 1936, RA, RS/GVI/ABD Box 1

7.
  
S. Underwood to King Edward VIII, n.d. [December 1936], RA, PS/GVI/ ABD, Box 4

8.
 
Note to Mrs Churchill, 19 December 193 6, Churchill Papers, CHAR 2/597-A

I

'Something must be done'

1.
   
The King Visits South Wales,
Pathe Gazette newsreel, November 1936

2.
   
W. F. Deedes,
Dear Bill,
p. 40. 'There is some discrepancy,' writes Nick Smart in his edited volume of
The Diaries and Letters of Robert Bernays,
'in accounts of whether the King had said "something will/ought to be/must be done", though the last version is probably the best remembered of what he said about unemployment at Blaenavon on 19 November 1936' (p. 278, note 57). Blaenavon was visited the day after the visit to Dowlais, but whatever Edward's exact words on that occasion, throughout the tour of South Wales he reiterated that something needed to be done for the unemployed.

3.
  
Duke of Windsor,
A King's Story,
p. 337

4.
  
Hansard,
10 December 1936

5.
  
Duke of Windsor,
A King's Story,
p. 338

6.
   
'Vote National' leaflet, 193 j, listed in Conservative Party Archive cata­logue, Vol. 8

7.
  
Alexander Hardinge, Memorandum, 7 October 1936, copy held at Merthyr Tydfil Public Library

8.
  
Thomas Jones,
A Diary with Letters,
p. 332.

9.
   
John Williams, Mayor of Merthyr Tydfil and others to
Daily Mail,
19 November 1930

10.
   
Lady Williams, 'How they live in the distressed areas',
Evening Standard,
21 July 1936

11.
    
Alfred Shaughnessy,
Sarah,
pp. 149-50

12.
    
Kath Nash,
Town on the Usk,
p. 35

13.
    
Quoted in Michael Foot,
Aneurin Bevan,
p. 239

14.
   
Oliver Warner,
Admiral of the Fleet,
p. 69

15.
    
Western Mail & South Wales News,
20 November 1936

16.
   
South Wales Argus,
19 November 1936

17.
    
The King Visits South Wales,
Pathe Gazette newsreel, November 1936

18.
   
H. Powys Greenwood, 'Can South Wales be saved? - 1. First impressions',
Spectator,
13 November 1936, p. 843

19.
   
W. F. Deedes,
Dear Bill,
p. 40

20.
   
Oliver Warner,
Admiral of the Fleet,
p. 68

21.
     
George M. L. Davies, 'Employment in the Rhondda Valleys', in Felix Greene (ed.),
Time to Spare,
p. 123

22.
   
South Wales Argus,
19 November 1936

23.
   
Merthyr Express,
21 November 1936

24.
   
W. T. Angell,
Some Observations and Notes
(pamphlet, 1946), p. 13

25.
    
Hywel Francis and Dai Smith,
The Fed,
p. 248

26.
   
Dame Janet Campbell
et al., High Maternal Mortality in Certain Areas

27.
    
Rhondda Urban District Council,
Report of the Medical Officer of Health for 1934,
p. 13

28.
   
Pilgrim Trust,
Men Without Work,
pp. 140-41

29.
   
South Wales Argus,
19 November 1936

30.
   
Hardinge to Chegwidden, 9 October 1936, copy held at Merthyr Tydfil Public Library

31.
    
Merthyr Express,
21 November 1936

32.
    
Mollie Pryce-Jones to King Edward VIII, 5 December 1936, RA, PS/GVI/ ABD, Box 3

33.
    
Letter to the
Spectator,
27 November 1936

34.
    
'One full 8c loyal heart from Wales' to King Edward VIII, I December 1936, RA, PS/GVI/ABD, Box 4

35.
    
Let Paul Robeson Sing!,
pp. 35-9

36.
   
Duke of Windsor in conversation with James Pope-Hennessy, late 1950s, quoted in Christopher Warwick,
Abdication,
p. 155

37.
    
Quoted in John Grigg,
Lloyd George: The People's Champion
, p. 305

38.
   
Mary Dixon to King Edward VIII, 3 December 1936, RA, PS/GVI/ABD, Box 4

39.
  
J. Evans to King Edward VIII, 8 December 1936, RA, PS/GVI/ABD, Box 1

40.
   
Agnes Sergeant to King Edward VIII, n.d. [December 1936], RA, PS/GVI/ ABD, Box 4

41.
    
Sarah Bradford,
George VI,
pp. 104-7

42.
   
Duke of Windsor,
A Family Album,
p. 23

43.
   
Alexander Hardinge to Helen Hardinge, 9 January 1925, Hardinge Papers, U2117, C 1/231

44.
   
Lady Airlie,
Thatched With Gold,
pp. 112-13

45.
   
South Wales Argus,
19 November 1936, p. 1

46.
   
Oliver Warner,
Admiral of the Fleet,
p. 69

47.
   
Ibid.,
pp. 65-7

48.
  
J. A. Chegwidden to A. N. Rucker, 29 October 1936, PRO, MH 58/309

49.
   
(Third) Report of the Commissioner for the Special Areas (England and Wales), 1936, Cmd 5303

50.
   
The King Visits South Wales,
Pathe Gazette newsreel, November 1936

51.
    
South Wales Argus,
19 November 1936, p. 1

52.
    
'Foreign comment',
Literary Digest,
28 November 1936

53.
      
Programme of 'Visit of H. M. The King to South Wales', PRO, MH 58/309

54.
    
Western Mail & South Wales News,
20 November 1936

55.
    
Philip Ziegler,
King Edward
VIII,
p. 182

56.
   
Duke of Windsor,
A King's Story,
p. 249

57.
   
South Wales Argus,
19 November 1936

58.
   
J. A. Chegwidden to A. N. Rucker, 29 October 1936, PRO, MH 58/309; emphasis added

59.
   
Hardinge to Chegwidden, 9 October 1936, copy held at Merthyr Tydfil Public Library

60.
   
South Wales Argus,
19 November 1936

61.
    
New Statesman and Nation,
21 November 1936, p. 798

62.
    
'WR's trip to Clyde with HM', diary entry for 6 March 1936, Hilda Runciman Papers, WR Add 10, 21 May 1935 to 20 March 1936