Page 49 of The Gathering Storm (Morland Dynasty #36)
‘Well, there are very few people in Canada and Australia,’ the King snapped, ‘so their opinion doesn’t count for a great deal.’
Patiently, kindly, as though talking to a child, the Prime Minister tried to make him understand the responsibilities of the Crown, to see that there were things more important than his personal life, but he said stubbornly, furiously, that the only important thing was their happiness, his and Mrs Simpson’s, and that the people understood that, if the government didn’t.
He should make a broadcast, he said, place himself at the mercy of his people.
Baldwin paled, and said it would be unconstitutional to appeal to the people over the heads of their elected representatives.
It would be a threat to democracy itself.
The King’s reply was that Mrs Simpson was the most wonderful woman in the world and he was determined to marry her.
Two minds with such divergent templates could never come together. The audience limped to an end.
‘One more thing, sir,’ Baldwin said, as the King prepared to depart. ‘I think it only fair to warn you that Geoffrey Dawson, the editor of The Times , has told me he is to publish a very hostile leader tomorrow, a strong attack on Mrs Simpson.’
‘But you mustn’t let him!’ the King exclaimed. ‘You must have it stopped!’
‘Sir, I cannot do that. It is not within my power. We have a free press in this country. The government cannot interfere with it.’
Baldwin did not say ‘even if it wanted to’, but Eddie supplied it in his mind. Dawson was a staunch supporter of the government, unlike Harmsworth or Beaverbrook.
The King was silent on the way back to the Fort. At one point, Eddie dared to ask him, ‘Do you mean to abdicate, sir?’
‘Oh, no,’ the King said. ‘I think I might go to Switzerland, and let them have to call me back. Then I’ll say I’m only coming back if Mrs Simpson is by my side.’
At the Fort, he told her about the hostile leader expected in The Times the next morning, and said it was no longer safe for her to stay, even at the Fort.
He had evidently been thinking it out during the journey.
‘Kath and Herman Rogers keep offering us their villa at Cannes. You must go there, and stay until it’s safe to come back.
Perry Brownlow can travel with you, and the detective.
Ladbroke can drive you to Newhaven and you can catch the ten o’clock ferry to Dieppe.
You can be at the villa by Sunday afternoon. ’
Wally, white and exhausted, only nodded. She had nothing more to argue; she was only relieved to be getting away.
Tears flooded his eyes. ‘You must wait for me, darling,’ he said. ‘No matter how long it takes. I will never give you up.’
‘My patience with him is frayed to the limit,’ Eddie said, when he dined with Kit and Emma on Sunday night, his current period as equerry over, ‘but even I couldn’t help being moved when they said goodbye.’
‘Tears?’ Kit asked.
‘Floods. He clung to her hand until the last minute – she had to wind the window up to make him let go. And he said, “Wherever you reach tonight, no matter what time it is, you must telephone me. God bless you, my darling.” Then she drove off, and he watched until the car was out of sight.’
‘It sounds like something in a movie,’ Kit said.
‘All day yesterday he kept talking about her, wondering where she was, how far they’d got, when she would telephone.
I’ve been hoping that once she was out of the way he’d gradually return to normal and we might work on him.
But I’m not sure that’s going to happen.
Without her, he’s like a lost dog. He doesn’t seem to function at all.
He must have told me a dozen times that she was the most wonderful woman in the world, and the best friend he ever had. ’
‘Let’s hope the press don’t get on her trail.’
‘She’s terrified of assassination,’ Eddie said.
‘She wrote out her will before she left, you know, just in case.’ He brooded a moment.
‘I had a few words with her, while they were carrying her bags down. She said to me, “You and the others must find a way to make the King forget this marriage completely. He must end the crisis and keep the throne.” I said something noncommittal, and she looked at me pretty sharply, and said, “Do you think I wanted any of this? I have to get away to keep my sanity.” So I said I didn’t think any of us could change the King’s mind about anything, and she said, “You must try. The Coronation has to go ahead. And one day, perhaps, I can come back as royal mistress. That’s all I wanted. ”’
Kit shook his head. ‘I expect she really means it now. But it was open to her at any point to withdraw the divorce application. She still could.’
‘I don’t think she thinks of that,’ Eddie said. ‘I think she feels completely helpless.’
‘You men don’t understand what it is to be a woman,’ Emma said. ‘We have no power to direct our lives. Men command us, until we lose all will of our own.’
Kit startled them by bursting out laughing.
‘There speaks the woman who drove an ambulance at the Front amid shock and shell, ran her own decorating business, and uses her fortune to build blocks of flats to house the working classes. I am completely in awe of her, and hardly dare speak in her presence, unless she speaks first.’
‘You are a dreadful man,’ Emma said, shaking her head. ‘What am I to do with you?’
‘Anything you like,’ he said, grinning.
Events staggered on, with Cabinet meetings, speeches in Parliament, anguished telephone calls.
Influential figures scuttled in and out of Downing Street at all hours, collars turned up against the freezing fog.
There were articles in every newspaper, even some demonstrations in the streets: crowds gathered outside Buckingham Palace shouting, ‘We want the King.’ Others marched along Piccadilly with placards saying, ‘No to Mrs Simpson’ and ‘Remember the War Dead.’ As Kit remarked to Emma, ‘HM and Wally still believe the working classes are for them. But they, above all, want their monarch to be virtuous.’
‘A lot of the younger set are for the marriage. They think it’s romantic.’
‘But it’s the Dominions that matter,’ Kit said. ‘There’s no way past that.’
Preparations for the Coronation had been halted, dealers were trying to buy up Edward VIII postage stamps, and the King still would not make clear his intentions.
Even Baldwin had no idea – as he constantly had to tell ministers, ambassadors and high commissioners – when or even if the King would go.
The person suffering the most was the Duke of York, who pressed for an interview with his brother and was constantly put off.
Frail, desperately shy, and with a crippling speech impediment, he was terrified of having the throne thrust upon him.
To add to his troubles, his duchess, on whom he relied heavily, was ill with influenza and unable to support him.
Sick with dread, he called at Number Ten every day, going through the garden entrance to avoid being seen, to beg Baldwin for clarification.
The rest of the Royal Family might be starting to think that perhaps David had better go, since he couldn’t be trusted any more, but Bertie would have done anything to keep him on the throne, had there been anything he could do.
It wasn’t until the 9th of December that the King finally told the prime minister that he had decided to abdicate.
‘Apparently what made up his mind,’ Eddie told Kit, ‘was a visit from Goddard. He said someone might be about to make a formal application to the King’s Proctor to investigate the Simpson divorce.
HM was convinced it was part of a plot by the Beaverbrook press to scare Wally into giving him up, so he decided to pre-empt it by announcing his abdication. ’
So now frantic negotiations and preparations began.
‘You know,’ Kit said to Emma, ‘I don’t think he realises even now how serious this is.
Eddie told me he heard from Sir John Simon that he was cheerful and smiling when he told Baldwin his decision.
I think he believes that he can give up the throne without giving up the privileges, just go back to the life he enjoyed as Prince of Wales, while poor Bertie York does all the disagreeable duties.
He thinks he’ll have a honeymoon trip abroad with Wally, then come back refreshed to his old position.
I don’t think he understands that he’ll have to live in exile, that he will never be allowed to come back. ’
Emma thought about that. ‘Poor Wally,’ she said.
‘Yes, she’s for it, now. Imagine spending a lifetime with him, in exile, on a budget, with nothing whatever to do. Golf and shopping for all eternity.’
‘And not so very much shopping, either, on a budget.’
The Instrument of Abdication read:
I, Edward the Eighth of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King-Emperor of India, do hereby declare my irrevocable determination to renounce the Throne for Myself and My descendants, and My desire that effect should be given to this instrument of Abdication immediately.
‘To give up the throne and the Empire because he wants to marry Mrs Simpson,’ Emma said, wonderingly. ‘All that for so little.’
At 1.52 p.m. on Friday, the 11th of December, the Instrument took effect, and from that moment the Duke of York became King and Emperor.
His names were Albert Frederick Arthur George, and he’d always been known in the family as Bertie, but he’d been advised that Albert was too Germanic a name to sit happily with the British people.
So he was to be King George VI. The ex-King was to have the title Duke of Windsor.