Chapter One‘The Other One’
For a man with no interest in religion, the Duke of Windsor’s public and private lives were inextricably bound up with the actions of clergymen. Walter Blunt, Bishop of Bradford, preached a sermon on 1 December 1936 that led to the media’s policy of silence on Edward’s love affair with Wallis Simpson being abandoned,* and the presence of the vicar Robert Anderson Jardine at his wedding to Wallis ensured that the event attracted even greater attention than it would otherwise have done. Had Jardine been less eager to thrust himself into the spotlight, the wedding would have been a quiet civil ceremony, and many of the difficulties of subsequent years might have been avoided. But action follows inclination, and so the Fighting Parson – who acquired his nickname through his time as an army padre in World War One – found himself out of his depth.
In his memoir, At Long Last, which was never published in Britain due to fears of libel, Jardine recounted the moment when he decided to support the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and thereby make himself notorious. The vicar of a working-class parish in Darlington in the north of England, he was in his late fifties in 1936. He admired the former Edward VIII and said of his relationship with Wallis that ‘many felt and saw that this constant companionship brought the King supreme happiness and that it might be a case of true love’.1
While Jardine’s daily business in ‘the Athens of the north’, as he termed Darlington, kept him remote from the discussions of Edward’s conduct during the abdication – ‘I was trying to mind my own business and leave that of the King alone … to my mind, this discussion of another man’s affairs was repugnant’2 – he was aware that to his parishioners, ‘Edward was and always had been their friend and idol’.3 He was himself sympathetic to ‘the Little Gentleman’, as he called him, and considered it a shame that the now Duke of Windsor was forced to endure ‘a long and lonely wait’ at the Schloss Enzesfeld, a castle near Vienna, as Wallis’s decree nisi had yet to become legal. Any reunion between the two of them would have jeopardised the legality of the divorce. If that had happened, the abdication would have been pointless.
Jardine enjoyed the reports of the coronation of George VI on 12 May 1937 (‘one of England’s greatest traditions of ceremony, grandeur and pomp’), but he was more interested in the predicament of the previous king. He was informed by his superior, the Bishop of Durham, that no ceremony for Edward and Wallis could be sanctioned in his or any other diocese, on the direct instructions of the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was therefore announced in the press by Edward and Wallis’s friend and official spokesman Herman Rogers that ‘there will be no religious ceremony when the Duke of Windsor and Mrs Wallis Warfield are married at Monts … Mr Rogers said he could give no reason why there would be no religious ceremony.’
Jardine professed himself ‘so upset and angry … that I lost all interest in my breakfast’.4 Retiring to his old army tent in the garden, he prayed for guidance, which duly arrived. He decided that it was his duty to write to Rogers and offer his services officiating at the wedding, consequences be damned. As he remarked to his wife, ‘[I am] only an unknown vicar of a working class parish [who offers] to perform a ceremony which should be held in a Cathedral and presided over by dignitaries of the church’, but the Fighting Parson remained a pugilist. He vowed that ‘with God’s help, I am fighting for the happiness of my one-time earthly King’.5
Although he was mistaken that ‘I was sure that the Duke of Windsor was a man of religious convictions’,6 his unsolicited approach led to a swift response from A. G. Allen, the duke’s solicitor. After ascertaining that Jardine was sincere in his desire and not an agent of the newspapers (or, worse, the royal family), Allen asked him to conduct the wedding at the Château de Candé in France, home of the Franco-American industrialist Charles Bedaux.
Jardine did not know that Edward’s lawyer and fixer, Sir Walter Monckton, had already attempted to recruit a pliable vicar to perform the ceremony. One man, W. F. Geikie-Cobb of Farnham Common, responded that ‘it would be presumptuous for me as an ordinary humble parson to consider myself suitable for the honour of marrying the Duke’, but agreed in principle to do so if the Bishop of London would authorise him to perform the ceremony. He did not. Another clergyman, C. E. Douglas, who knew Monckton slightly, suggested that there was no sacramental objection to the ceremony itself,* and wrote, ‘if there is any difficulty about finding a priest to administer the sacramental oath in this case, I feel so strongly about the principle that I should personally be willing to “defy authority” … by officiating’.7 But he ultimately found himself unable to offer such defiance.
Either Geikie-Cobb or Douglas would have been a preferable choice. But cometh the hour, and so Jardine made his way to France, weighed down by both responsibility and the consequences for his career. But he was resolute in his belief that God ‘had foreseen, provided and chosen a man to fill the breach created by hypocrisy, cant and un-Christ like action on the part of Parliament and prelate’.
Edward had left Britain on the night of 11 December 1936† with a sense of unfinished business. Less than a fortnight had elapsed between Blunt’s sermon and the abdication, and most of that time was consumed with political intrigue and constitutional wrangling. A few exhausted men, including the future king, attempted to come to terms with what his unlooked-for reign would involve. Edward was calm, unlike most of those working for him, but his serenity was disturbed by two concerns: recognition for Wallis, and a desire that appropriate financial support should be provided for them both.
The duke therefore wrote to his brother on 17 January 1937 that ‘The events of December are past history and you and I have now only the future to look forward to – you have your life as King and you know how hard I have tried to make your succession as easy as possible – and I will throughout your reign (which I hope will be a long and a grand one) and for the rest of my life do all in my power to help and support you to the best of my ability’, and suggested that ‘for the first time in my life I shall be very happy’.
But trouble lurked, even as Edward was quick to remind his brother that ‘Wallis and I have committed no crime.’ He asserted that ‘you and you alone can dispel and contradict any of the doubts and rumours that are abroad to the effect that you and Mama disapprove of us and that any one who does stick to us as friends will have a bad mark against their name in your “book” or with the “new regime” as they call it!’ He mixed man-of-the-world wisdom (‘You know how charming and charitable people are and I doubt your ever having heard that such gossip and rumours are being spread indiscriminately. But believe me they are Bertie, and it hurts like the dickens’) with straightforward pleading: ‘A lot of people are kicking us for the moment and you can stop it all – please do so quickly for our sakes and for our happiness and usefulness in the future – you can and you must do that.’8
Tension soon rose between the brothers. As Monckton recounted, ‘there were some difficulties to smooth over between the King and his brother who was troubling him a great deal on the telephone, and I was told to go out and persuade him to discontinue this’.9 The king was preparing for his coronation, amidst rumours that he suffered from epileptic fits and was unable to face the responsibilities of ruling. Hardinge later wrote of him that ‘he had no training for the task now thrust upon him … his health, together with the impediment in his speech, had placed him under a severe physical handicap’.10
The contrast with his elder brother, as well as his younger siblings, the Duke of Kent and the Duke of Gloucester, was unflattering. The king may not have been beset by ‘fainting fits’, as gossip magazines such as Cavalcade suggested, but he was a chronic stammerer, given to nerves at the prospect of any appearance in public and miserable at the burden that had been thrust upon him with inadequate preparation for the challenges he faced. Hardinge’s wife Helen called him ‘completely unambitious’ and stated that ‘he and his wife were appalled by the position in which they found themselves’.11 Likewise, his elder brother’s sleeve-tugging when it came to money was irksome. That the recently married Duke of Kent was exciting public attention due to his dalliance with the society model Paula Gellibrand (‘the next Mrs Simpson?’) was merely the rotten cherry upon a stale cake.
Socially, the king deferred to his wife, who combined charm with recognition of when her husband was uncomfortable. She had written to the socialite – and Hardinge’s mother-in-law – Viscountess Milner* during the abdication crisis to say, ‘we can only pray & hope that we may both have the health & willpower to do our job for this dear country whatever happens’.12 The fate that her husband had dreaded was upon them. She was determined they would both succeed.
Nicolson, who attended a dinner with the two of them on 17 March, was impressed by her bearing. He wrote of how ‘She wears upon her face a faint smile indicative of how much she would have liked her dinner party were it not for the fact that she was Queen of England.’ He praised her ‘charm and dignity’, and contrasted it with that of Wallis, remarking, ‘I cannot help feeling what a mess poor Mrs Simpson would have made of such an occasion … it demonstrated to us more than anything else how wholly impossible that marriage would have been’.13
When George inherited the throne in December 1936, he thought of continuity, rather than revolution. It did not help that, as Hardinge later wrote, ‘the scene on to which King George stepped … was not a happy one … the international situation was growing daily more precarious as the German and Italian dictators proceeded on their brutal and aggressive courses’.14 His first act as sovereign was to knight Walter Monckton in his house in Piccadilly, remarking afterwards, ‘Well, Walter, we didn’t manage that very well, but neither of us has done it before.’15 He stressed to Monckton, who had agreed to remain as his attorney general, that he wished him to be a counsellor and friend, as well as a go-between between him and the Duke of Windsor.
This soon presented the lawyer with a predicament. He wrote to the king shortly afterwards to acknowledge that ‘It is a comfort that you understand what a delicate position I am in: it is in one way quite impossible to hunt with the hounds & run with the hare but I have always determined to deserve the confidence both of you and your brother and to try and be what the Queen called last night “the link” that keeps you both friends. I am sure that link is important from the public as well as the personal point of view.’16 Maintaining warm relations with both siblings would occupy Monckton in both personal and official capacities for years to come.
Yet the king also cast off the baser elements with whom his brother had associated. Edward’s louche friend Emerald Cunard, who had referred to him as ‘Majesty Divine’, was banished from court. Queen Mary wrote to her cousin Prince Paul of Yugoslavia to say, ‘I fear she has done David a great deal of harm … I feel none of us, in fact people in society, should meet her.’17 And Peregrine ‘Perry’ Brownlow, Edward’s loyal lord-in-waiting, was dispensed with. This, however, was not from moral judgement, but because he was a buffoon. He was subsequently known, in a mocking reference to his country seat, as ‘the Lincolnshire Handicap’.
* * *
The Duke of Windsor lingered in Austria, bored by enforced indolence. Even his confidant, Edward ‘Fruity’ Metcalfe, who was by his side, remarked, ‘if he’s not doing something, he gets very moody & irritable & things are by no means easy’.18 The duke occupied himself by telephoning his younger brother to tell him what to do. Monckton observed that ‘this advice often ran counter to the advice which the King was getting from his responsible advisers in the Government’.
The conversations frequently ran into difficulty due to the king’s stammer, and Edward seized the advantage of his own fluency. As Monckton noted, ‘the Duke of Windsor was particularly quick in understanding and decision and good on the telephone, whereas King George VI had not the same quickness and was troubled by the impediment in his speech’.19 Edward’s intention seemed to be to bully his brother into giving him what he wanted through charm and coercion. Unsurprisingly, the king soon stopped taking the calls. Metcalfe recounted the duke’s shock when he was told that his brother could not speak to him until the following evening ‘as he was too busy to talk any other time’. He described his face simply as ‘pathetic’.20
The major discussions were about cash and Wallis’s royal status. The agreement between the brothers at the time of the abdication was that the Duke of Windsor would receive an annual allowance of £25,000, a sum paid directly from royal finances rather than by the nation. This would keep it a family matter and remove any danger of taxpayers subsidising Wallis. Yet as Monckton remarked, ‘the advice which the King was getting prevented him from making the immediate and unqualified promise which he would have wished and made the Duke suspicious’.21
It did not help that the details of the financial agreement had been leaked to the papers, something that made the king ‘very disturbed’. He complained to the duke, ‘I haven’t told anyone that we even signed [an agreement] … this is now public property & it is very unfortunate at this moment when the Civil List is just coming up’. He knew who he was dealing with. He suggested that ‘There is certain to be enquiry as to what has happened to the savings from the Duchy of Cornwall, before you came of age, & the rumour is that you have saved a very large sum from this source. You must tell me whether this is so, as I understood from you when I signed the paper at the Fort that you were going to be very badly off.’22
Edward responded angrily to this, as he always did when questions of finance and probity were concerned. ‘You now infer that I misled you at that time as to my private financial situation. While naturally not mentioning what I have been able to save as Prince of Wales, I did tell you that I was badly off, which indeed I am considering the position I shall have to maintain and what I have given up. You now ask me to tell you what my private means are, but I prefer not to do so for two reasons – firstly because the figure of £25,000 which you agreed to pay me in the event of Parliament not voting me this money in the new Civil List was in no way arrived at by reference to my private means, but solely as being the lowest provision that would be appropriate in the circumstances – we all thought at that time that Parliament would make at least that provision, and after all it is through no fault of mine that they are now going to fail us.
‘Secondly I am certain that it would be a grave mistake, if the private means of any member of the Royal Family were to be disclosed to the Select Committee and that it would only embarrass you and your advisers if I were to put you in the position of being able to answer questions on this subject.’ He suggested, with veiled threat, that ‘I have kept my side of the bargain and I am sure you will keep yours … I should be very sorry and it seems quite unnecessary that there should be any disagreement between us over this matter – but I must tell you quite frankly that I am relying on you to honour your promise.’23 He finally offered to rent his brother Sandringham and Balmoral for £25,000: a calculated insult that had the desired effect of angering the new monarch.
Edward remained in thrall to Wallis. She told him on 3 January that ‘I am so distressed over the way your brother has behaved from the first and is certainly giving the impression to the world at large that your family … do not approve of me … naturally we have to build up a position but how hard it is going to be with no signs of support from your family’. Anticipating the difficulties they would face (‘one realises now the impossibility of getting the marriage announced in the Court Circular and of the HRH’), she lamented, ‘I loathe being undignified and also of joining the countless titles that roam around Europe meaning nothing.’24
If her fiancé had been braver, he might have replied that they could have anticipated this predicament as soon as they left Britain. However, he could only agree with her. By the end of March, she referred to the king as ‘your wretched brother’ after he had informed the duke that ‘you have misunderstood the suggestion that I made to you in my last letter about our agreement … it is no fault of yours you say, it is likewise no fault of mine, but I do hope you realise that if this agreement comes to light, Parliament will at once say that it is providing for you indirectly. This means that the Civil List will be reduced by that amount, a contingency which will endanger my being able to carry out my part of our agreement.’25
Wallis, fearing penury, panicked. She suggested to Edward that ‘if he continues to treat you as though you were an outcast from the family and had done something disgraceful and continued to take advice from people who dislike you … there would be only one course open to you and that would be to let the world know exactly the treatment you were receiving from the people (family) you had placed in their present position’. If it sounded like blackmail, this was borne out by her resolution that her fiancé should screw his courage to the sticking place: ‘don’t be weak, don’t be rude, be firm and make him ashamed of himself ‘. She concluded, ‘I love you and want you here so badly.’26
Others attempted to intercede. Winston Churchill, then a backbench MP, had been a supporter and friend of Edward before and during the abdication crisis. He praised the duke on 24 March 1937 for how ‘very wise and prudent’27 his actions since leaving Britain had been. He also revealed that he and David Lloyd George, another partisan, were attempting to use their influence with the prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, to satisfy Edward’s requests.
While Churchill hoped that all could be settled ‘in an acceptable and agreeable manner’, he was less insouciant about the situation to Monckton. On 23 March, he remarked that ‘I am concerned about the financial position of the Duke of Windsor’, and that ‘it is evident that a proper establishment with due formality is required for His Majesty’s elder brother, and for one who has occupied the Throne’. Unlike the king, he was under no illusions as to Edward’s fortune, which he estimated in a note to Chamberlain as being between £800,000 and £950,000 in capital.* Much of this was settled on Wallis, although since the abdication she had been reduced to an annual allowance of £10,000 a year: barely enough to keep her in the jewels and couture that Edward had lavished on her while he was Prince of Wales. Churchill believed that allowing the duke to retain the capital and receive an annual allowance of £25,000, in exchange for his relinquishing any interest that he might hold in Balmoral and Sandringham, was a satisfactory resolution to the matter.
Others disagreed. At the beginning of April, Clement Attlee, leader of the Labour Party, asked embarrassing questions in Parliament about any financial arrangements that existed regarding Civil List provision for Edward. Churchill suggested to Chamberlain on 8 April that ‘the idea of a dispute between the two brothers upon the question of good faith, and still more of legal process, would of course be a disaster of the first order to the monarchy’.28
Chamberlain, who regarded Churchill as a ‘bandit’ and a ‘pirate’, believed that he was trying to force the king into a compromised position thanks to his ‘swindling arrangements’ and ‘threats to make trouble in Committee’,29 and did not believe such an allowance needed to be formalised. Therefore he refused to acknowledge or endorse any such request, and support for the duke’s petition remained fragmented.
To make matters worse, the former king remained without a country. Churchill wrote in a briefing note to Chamberlain that ‘it was stated to Parliament by the Attorney-General during the passage of the Abdication Bill that no condition of exile followed a voluntary abdication’, and that even if ministers felt that Edward’s free return to Britain was undesirable, they should be prevented from passing an Act of Parliament barring him from his former home.
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