Queen's House (43 page)

He made a few alterations.

One never tinkers much with palaces; like museums, they seem to resist change. Besides, a curious presentiment induced me to leave the rooms as they were. Somehow I had a feeling that I might not be there very long. About the only changes I made for my comfort were to add a shower to the bathtub and to replace the ornate four-poster bed with a single one of my own. I installed a small extra switchboard to handle my personal calls, and added a private line to The Fort. During the two months I lived at Buckingham Palace, I never got over the feeling of not quite belonging there. I felt lost in its regal immensity.
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In the last months of his reign, the Household became more and more irritated by the King's unprofessional attitude to his work. He called them at all hours, and when they wished to report to him at the end of the day, they would often be told ‘The lady is still there'. As she looked at the priceless furniture in the magnificence of the Palace, in the Never-Never Land of her imagination, did she see herself as Queen? Even if she did, she was tough and worldly-wise, and at the back of her mind was always the expectation that the magic would suddenly disappear. In the next weeks, when the press swarmed round her gates, she was often to wish that she could do just that.

In November, Chips Channon picked up hostile gossip in the House of Commons. On 10 November unemployed hunger marchers besieged Parliament, crowding into the Lobby. To them the King and his bejewelled lady were irrelevant, if not offensive. In the chamber for the first time Mrs Simpson's name was called out in a rowdy question time;
the smoking room and lobbies buzzed with rumours. ‘The Truth is', Chips wrote, ‘that the monarchy has lost ground in a frightening manner. Prince Charming charms his people no more.'
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A Conservative MP estimated that if a vote had been taken in the Commons, more than 100 MPs would have voted for a republic.

Still Channon and his friends, including Duff Cooper and Churchill, fêted the King in their elegant houses, where Mrs Simpson appeared, ‘dripping with jewels'. Why', wrote Channon, ‘should we forsake our Sovereign?' Yet even he admitted that the King had been foolish, and, as the King continued to seem blind and deaf, he and other loyal friends became alarmed: ‘The King is insane about Wallis, insane.'
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In mid November the King received a letter from his Private Secretary, Hardinge, which brought him down to earth: it was his duty to advise the King and he did so with bluntness. Hardinge appealed to the King to send Mrs Simpson away ‘without further delay'. As the King remembered, ‘I was shocked and angry – shocked by the suddenness of the blow, angry because of the way it was launched, with the startling suggestion that I should send from my land, my realm, the woman I intended to marry.'
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But the King no longer trusted Hardinge and sent for his old friend, the lawyer, Sir Walter Monckton, who generously gave up his work and until the end of the King's reign acted as his legal adviser and contact with the Prime Minister.

On the weekend of 14–15 November the King tried to explain to Wallis, who was with her aunt at the Fort, the dangers ahead. On 16 November the King returned to the Palace and sent for Baldwin, determined to have it out with him. There have been many meetings in Buckingham Palace between Prime Minister and monarch, but none so strained as that at 6.30 p.m. that Monday. Outwardly both were courteous, but the King could hardly conceal his dislike of Baldwin – his mannerisms, the irritating way he snapped his fingers, even the sound of his little black beetle of a car crunching on the gravel of the Palace courtyard. He told the Prime Minister that he was determined to marry Mrs Simpson and hoped he could do so as King; if not he was prepared to go. Baldwin replied, ‘Sir, that is most grievous news.'
Exasperated and worn out, he returned to Downing Street and went straight to bed, telling his Chief Whip, Margesson, ‘David, I have heard such things from my King tonight as I never thought to hear.'
³⁰
He could not even bring himself to see the King's Assistant Private Secretary, Alan Lascelles, who was waiting for his report.

That same evening the King went over to Marlborough House to see Queen Mary. He told her of his decision to marry Wallis and if necessary to abdicate. Queen Mary, who had always put duty before anything else, was deeply shaken but remained compassionate. During the next days he told his brothers of his decision.

Still he carried out some royal duties. It was as King that he went on a tour of the South Wales coalfields, meeting the unemployed, during which, in a famous speech, he assured them that ‘something must be done'. Yet at the same time he knew he was going to abdicate. On his return he consulted his friends in the government, especially Duff Cooper and Churchill. Both counselled delay: neither could imagine Wallis as Queen, but they hoped that after the Coronation the King would break with her.

At this stage a new way out – a morganatic marriage – was suggested. Baldwin, who now only wanted a speedy abdication, seized the opportunity. He consulted his Cabinet and the Dominion governments and none of them would consent to a morganatic marriage. Abdication was the King's only course.

On 1 December the dam broke. The Right Reverend A. W. F. Blunt, Bishop of Bradford, addressed an audience of clergy of his diocese and, in the course of his speech, criticized the King, not for immorality, but for his failure to attend church. The
Yorkshire Post
picked up the story and the rest of the press scrambled to follow suit. Now the editors, released at last, went into action.

Wallis now decided to escape. She telephoned her old friends Mr and Mrs Rogers at the Villa Lou Viei near Cannes and that night, secretly, she left for Newhaven and Dieppe.

The same night, after Wallis had left, the King returned to Buckingham Palace. Encouraged by Beaverbrook and Churchill, he had been persuaded to try to mobilize popular support, which he believed he had
in the country. Deciding to make an appeal over the head of the government, he drafted a broadcast. He sent for Baldwin and gave him the draft to present to the Cabinet the next day and also sent his legal advisers with copies to Beaverbrook and Churchill. Late though it was, while waiting for their replies he drove across to Marlborough House. His mother had written gently asking him to call, since she had not heard from him for ten days. He tried to explain his neglect: that he had to make his own decision and that was irrevocable. He must marry Wallis. ‘All that matters is our happiness,' he repeatedly told her. Then he drove back to the Palace. Now it symbolized all that he hated. He wrote in his memoirs:

The immense forbidding bulk of the Palace loomed up as the motor turned into the Mall. Few windows showed any light. My presence in London had evidently become known, for as I approached the gates I perceived, gathered around the foot of Queen Victoria's memorial, a small crowd staring at the edifice, thinking of God knows what. At that moment there came over me, like a wave, a powerful resurgence of the intense dislike for the building I had always felt. Did I really belong there at all? The answer came immediately – certainly not alone.
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Desperately tired, the King decided to return to the Fort and wait for the Cabinet's reply to his suggested broadcast. Monckton, who throughout these days had served him with efficiency and kindness, would not allow him to return to the Fort alone. So at 10 a.m., accompanied by Monckton, he drove out of the Palace.

Even at that hour, there was still a small cheering crowd outside the Palace. In a revealing passage in his memoirs he wrote:

In this simple, spontaneous demonstration I found consolation for a day of trial. And the episode gave rise to a fleeting and tempting thought – a notion so ephemeral and obviously so impossible that I mention it now merely as an illustration of a how hard-pressed mind will clutch at straws. The people at the gate were for me. Why not turn their undoubted affection to proper account? Manifestly, my Ministers were not going to let me speak to my people. What was there to prevent me from addressing them where they stood? My parents' practice of ‘showing' themselves on the balcony of Buckingham Palace provided a precedent. The spotlights playing on the façade, the lonely figure of the King
pleading his cause – the scene could have been extremely effective. But no sooner had the image formed in my mind than it vanished. For one thing, it smacked of balcony politics, of which there was already too much in the Europe of that era. What was more important, it would have meant driving a wedge into the nation.
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He had never enjoyed the balcony appearances, but he was aware of their power to unite the nation. ‘The car sped up Constitution Hill,' he wrote, ‘leaving the crowd behind. I never again set foot inside Buckingham Palace as King.'
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From now on the Fort became his headquarters. However, he kept his private telephone line through the Palace; it was to serve him in these last days as a link with Wallis in Cannes. Daily they talked for hours, keeping his telephone line constantly engaged, to the annoyance of his Household at the Palace. His loyal telephonist, William Bateman, kept watch over this phone, sleeping by it at night to protect the King's secrecy.

On Friday 4 December, Baldwin motored down, bringing the Cabinet's decision not to permit him to make a broadcast. Churchill, who still hoped for popular support, came to dine that night and tried to persuade him to delay decisions to allow time for ‘the battalions to march'. But after he had gone, the King spent a sleepless night facing the reality that there could be no ‘King's Party' without national division and possibly civil war.

That night, pacing the bedroom floor, he made his decision. On Saturday morning he sent Monckton to Baldwin to tell him of his decision to abdicate.

Throughout this dramatic weekend when the fate of the monarchy was being decided, the Duke of York, the one man most nearly concerned, was not consulted. It was not until Monday night that the King agreed to see his brother.

When Bertie arrived at the Fort the next evening, he found Baldwin there, righteously determined to make one more effort to persuade the King to give up Wallis. He wanted, he said, to help him ‘wrestle with his conscience – all through the night if necessary'.
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The King begged his aides to get rid of him. But, courteous as ever, he invited him to stay for dinner.

It was a strained dinner party that night. But, as Monckton wrote, it was the King's

tour de force.
In that quiet panelled room he sat at the head of the table with his boyish face and smile, with a good fresh colour while the rest of us were pale as sheets, rippling over with bright conversation, and with a careful eye to see that his guests were being looked after. He wore his white kilt. On Mr Baldwin's right was the Duke of York, and I was next to him, and as the dinner went on the Duke turned to me and said: ‘Look at him. We simply cannot let him go.' But we both knew there was nothing we could say or do to stop him.
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The Duke of York was silent, bowed down under the burden that he now had to take up. Only the King was lively; as Baldwin told the Cabinet, he was ‘happy and gay as if he were looking forward to his honeymoon'.
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For two days the Duke of Kent, also present, remained at the Fort, still trying by every means ‘to persuade the King to stay'. In London his wife, Princess Marina, confessed to her friend Chips Channon that she believed ‘if this issue had not arisen something else could have'. Two years ago, she said, the King had told the Duke that he did not know if he ‘could stick it'.
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In the House of Commons on Monday, MPs cheered Baldwin's statement. Thursday 10 December 1936 was a historic day in the history of Parliament and the monarchy. At 2.00 p.m. members of the House of Commons met, among them Chips Channon:

The House was full for there had not been an Abdication since 1399 … Baldwin was greeted with cheers … At last he went to the Bar, bowed twice – a message from the King and he presented a paper to the Speaker who proceeded to read it out. At the words ‘renounce the throne' his voice broke and there were stifled sobs in the House.
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Baldwin's statement that day, outlining the sequence of events leading to the abdication, was rambling and muddled, but he paid tribute to the King, who ‘had behaved in a constitutional manner'. Baldwin told how in October he had warned the King ‘that the respect grown up in the last three generations for the monarchy … might lose that power far more rapidly than it was built up, and once lost, I doubt if anything
could restore it'. One sentence revealed Baldwin's irritation at the King's immaturity. ‘It is difficult to realise that his Majesty is not a boy, although he looks so young.'
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Otherwise his references to the King were courteous, even complimentary.

In the House of Lords the next morning, 11 December 1936, the Bill accepting the King's abdication was passed. Chips Channon was there again.

Black Rod was sent to summon the Speaker from the House of Commons. The Clerk read the Royal Commission. The three Lords bowed and doffed their hats. The Bill was read. The King was still King Edward. The Clerk bowed ‘Le Roi le veult'
*
and Edward, the beautiful boy King with his gaiety and honesty, his nervous twitching, his flair and glamour, was part of history. It was 1.52.
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*
‘Le Roi le veult' is the Norman French command traditionally used on the final passage of Bills in the House of Lords.

CHAPTER NINE

King George VI and Queen Elizabeth

‘Elizabeth could make a home anywhere'.
¹

KING GEORGE VI