The Peoples King (8 page)

Some of the King's friends tried to exploit Mrs Simpson's influence
on him. For example, Lady Oxford and Asquith (Margot Asquith)
wrote to her at the start of Edward's reign about his churchgoing - or
rather his lack of it. 'Actually, he goes quite often to the simple little
chapel in Windsor Park,' replied Wallis in his defence,

but I am afraid this does not appear in the 'Court Circular'. As you know he
has been going to his country house for weekends since he has been King -
this form of relaxation I think he finds essential as he is so accustomed to
air
and
exercise
it would be difficult for him to give it up entirely and I personally
feel it makes him more fit for his great task.

But she would urge him, she promised, to show his religious feeling
more publicly:

I think however that perhaps if he went to St George's Chapel there would be
more publicity - and I heartily agree with you that though he may be deeply
religious within himself, the outward expression of this is very necessary to
his subjects. I shall try to suggest this to him tactfully - and I am sure he will
be only too glad to change his church - for no one is trying harder than he to
do all he can for us all.
⁸²

Lady Oxford was 'full of Mrs S's good sense and good influence on
HM', noted one observer.
⁸³
Winston Churchill saw the same benefits.
Since the King had met Mrs Simpson, he commented, he looked 'older
and harder - a little stiffer perhaps since he became King, definitely
more confidence in himself.'
⁸⁴
Monckton thought so too: 'She insisted
that he should be at his best and do his best at all times, and he
regarded her as an inspiration.'
⁸⁵

But Edward's father, George V, had been horrified by the unsuitability of Mrs Simpson. Edward and two of his brothers - Albert,
known in the family as 'Bertie' (and who later became King George
VI), and George - had already distressed their father by indulging in
relationships with married women. Mrs Freda Dudley Ward, who was
married to William Dudley Ward, Liberal MP for Southampton, had
been Edward's 'own beloved Angel'
⁸⁶
from 1918 to 1934. Her place
in Edward's affections was then taken by Thelma, Lady Furness. Prince
Albert, too, had been involved with a married woman. In 1919, he
fell in love with Sheila Loughborough, an Australian-born London
Society beauty who was married to Lord Loughborough, by whom
she had had a baby boy the previous winter. At this time, Edward and
Albert more or less shared the same social circle, and Albert prevailed
upon his brother to spirit Sheila away from her husband so that they
could spend some time together.
⁸⁷
George V objected strongly. 'Christ!
how I loathe & despise my bloody family' expostulated Edward to
Freda Dudley Ward from a sea voyage on 24 May 1920,

as Bertie has written me 3 long sad letters in which he tells me he's been getting
it in the neck about his friendship with poor little Sheilie & that TOI et MOI
came in for it too!! But if HM thinks he's going to alter me by insulting you
he's making just about the biggest mistake of his silly useless life ... God!
damn him!
⁸⁸

King George decided to tempt Albert away from Sheila with the carrot
of a dukedom. 'Now as regards old Bertie & Sheilie,' Edward told Freda,

B talks a lot of hot air about HM making him a duke on condition that his
name ceases to be more or less coupled with Sheilie's
.
. . Bertie may be a Duke
now for all I know, as I think that his rather pompous nature makes him want
to be one.
⁸⁹

On 5 June 1920, Albert was made Duke of York. The next year he
transferred his attentions to Helen ('Poppy') Baring, who had the
reputation of being 'fast' and fun-loving. He proposed marriage to
her while staying with her parents during Cowes week. She accepted,
but his mother, Queen Mary, swiftly made it clear that the match was
impossible. Six years later, Prince George also fell for Poppy and
proposed, but this marriage was not allowed either.
⁹⁰

Prince George had numerous affairs and one-night stands with both
men and women. 'I was told no one - of either sex - was safe with
him in a taxi', said one person who knew him well.
⁹¹
One of his lovers
was Noel Coward. In 1932 there was 'a scandal about Prince George
- letters to a young man in Paris. A large sum had to be paid for their
recovery.'
⁹²
He also became addicted to cocaine after an affair with
Kiki Whitney Preston, an American woman who belonged to the
decadent group of white settlers in Kenya known as the Happy Valley
set. To rescue George from Kiki, Edward forced her to leave England
in the summer of 1929. He then cancelled a holiday with Freda Dudley
Ward so that he could devote himself to the task of curing George of
his cocaine addiction, with the help of doctors. He told Freda that he
was forced to act as George's 'doctor, gaoler and detective combined'.
By the end of the year the worst was over: Kiki was safely abroad, and
the Prince was weaned off the drug.
⁹³

The 'fast' life of these princes was by no means at odds with the
customs of the English elite. Despite the strait-laced nature of George
V's court, it was perfectly normal for many of the upper classes -
married and unmarried - to enjoy sexual relationships with any
number of others - again, married and unmarried. Edwina Mount-
batten had a number of passionate affairs; but the only time this
became a scandal was when a magazine called
The People
insinuated
(mistakenly, it appeared) that she was having an affair with Paul
Robeson. Edwina's husband, Louis, also had many affairs, with both
men and women. Lord Londonderry had affairs with one woman after
another. Many of these women were American, including Consuelo
Vanderbilt, the heiress who had married his second cousin, the ninth
Duke of Marlborough. By another American, a married actress, he
had a child who was born just six weeks after his wedding; and his
most lasting affair was with yet another American woman, the wife
of the Earl of Ancaster.

Bertie settled down finally when he married Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon
in 192.3. Technically she was a commoner until her marriage to a
royal, but as the daughter of the Earl of Strathmore she belonged to
one of the oldest upper-class families of Britain. George settled down
when he married Princess Marina of Greece in 1934. And in his own
way Edward settled down too, when he fell irrevocably in love with
Wallis Simpson. But while everybody in Society could understand why
Albert had chosen Elizabeth and George had chosen Marina, they
were utterly baffled by Edward's choice. 'He is, I believe,' said Robert
Bruce Lockhart, a former diplomat who was the editor of the 'Lon­doner's Diary' in the
Evening Standard,
'suffering from
dementia
erotica.'™
Theories abounded of special sexual skills used by Wallis
to satisfy the King. It was said that she appealed to a latent homo­sexuality in Edward, because of her slim, boyish figure. Virginia Woolf
wrote in her diary on 27 November that Kingsley Martin, the editor
of the socialist magazine
New Statesman and Nation,
had earlier been
'approached by one of the King's circle, was asked to write an article,
revealing the facts from the King's side. Then he was told to wait. . .
The King's men told him in strict secrecy about the sexual difficulty.'
⁹⁵
Whatever this 'sexual difficulty' was, she did not explain; most prob­ably she had no idea and was simply repeating some of the gossip that
was doing the rounds.

Wallis was seen as simply too lower-class and too poor to qualify
for special attention - or, indeed, any attention - from royalty.
Edward's adoration only made sense if it was seen as an obsession -
as a pathology rather than love. The editor of
The Times,
Geoffrey
Dawson, recorded in his private diary on 2 November a conversation
about this with Lord Dawson of Penn, the royal doctor who had
attended King George V on his deathbed. Lord Dawson, he wrote,
'was interesting on the subject of HM's obsession from the medical
point of view. The Literary Society, with whom I dined that evening,
was also absorbed in the same subject (to the complete exclusion of
literature!).'
⁹⁶

An added difficulty for Wallis was her nationality, because the upper
class of Britain tended to look down on arrivals from America. 'The
Americans are funny,' said Jean, Lady Hamilton, 'titles go to their
heads - Society turns them into mere social machines - sort of climbing
tanks - funicular tanks
.
. ,'
⁹⁷
Nancy Dugdale, the newly married wife
of Thomas Dugdale, Baldwin's Parliamentary Private Secretary and
MP for Richmond in Yorkshire, was dismayed by Edward's 'marked
preference for American women as opposed to English women'.
⁹⁸
Wallis decided that the British seemed to cherish a sentiment of settled
disapproval towards anything American. She commented in her
memoirs later that 'The only contemporary Americans, outside Holly­wood, of whom British women appeared to have heard were named
Vanderbilt, Astor, or Morgan. By and large they seemed mildly regret­ful that the continent had ever passed from the control of the Indians.'
⁹⁹
Nancy Astor made fun of this attitude towards Americans. She was
the first woman to sit as an MP in Parliament and was herself an
American, from Virginia. Playing charades during Christmas festivi­ties at Cliveden, her family home, she invented 'an upper-crust British
woman with prejudices against Abroad and "Emmericans".'
¹⁰⁰
None­theless, she objected to Wallis on the grounds of her social inferiority.
When Edward invited Wallis and Ernest Simpson to dine at York
House in May 1936, Lady Astor was indignant. She told Harold
Nicolson that only the best Virginia families should be received at
court, and that the effect in Canada and the USA would be deplorable.
(Nicolson commented in a letter to his wife that he refrained from the
retort that, 'after all, every American is more or less as vulgar as any
other American'.)
¹⁰¹