A Brief History of the House of Windsor (15 page)

He left behind him something of a mess. Throughout the empire, stamps and coins and banknotes had been produced bearing his image. Now all of them would have to be destroyed, together with the dyes from which they had been made. The process of minting and printing would have to start again from the beginning for his successor. Only in Britain had stamps bearing Edward’s likeness appeared – in his other territories there had not been time to issue them – and these can still be bought from dealers. The Royal Mint melted down virtually all his coinage, and only a few of the new threepenny pieces escaped, to become a treasured find for collectors, as is the 1936 Maundy money. It was not only these government agencies that suffered such immense waste of time and effort, however. Hundreds of private firms had been manufacturing souvenirs for the coronation, and now they too had to cut their losses. One familiar image of the year 1936 is a photograph of workmen in the Staffordshire potteries smashing thousands of commemorative mugs. Despite this setback, there was widespread relief among those who knew the king. One of those who had seen the worse side of his nature, the playwright Noël Coward, commented that statues of Mrs Simpson should be erected in towns all over Britain for the service she had done the nation in saving it from Edward VIII.

The abdication is now familiar to all students of British history, and we take it for granted. It is worth remembering, however, that nothing like it had ever happened before. Edward’s departure represented the first time in eleven hundred years that a sovereign had voluntarily abandoned the throne. This happened, moreover, in the midst of an era (the thirties were to be dubbed ‘the devil’s decade’) that was characterized by political extremism and atrocious violence. Had the British been a more volatile people, had there not been a more suitable successor to Edward instantly to hand, there could well have been chaos and anarchy, and even an end to the monarchy itself. This was, without doubt, the institution’s worst moment in the twentieth century. It was a graver crisis by far than that which followed the death of Princess Diana in 1997. It was said at the time of the latter event that had the recently elected Labour prime minister not thrown the weight of his influence behind the queen, the royal family would have been abolished in the mood of public and political hostility that prevailed. Though this is a wild exaggeration, it is certainly the case that the atmosphere after Edward’s abdication was strained and volatile. It has been estimated that, had the House of Commons voted on the continuation of the monarchy at that time, at least a hundred MPs would have been against it. For the royal family, Edward’s betrayal of his heritage was a personal as well as a national disaster. Even a generation later – because several of those most closely affected were so long-lived – the repercussions of the event were still felt throughout the family.

Once Edward had left the throne, humiliation on humiliation was piled upon him. The financial arrangements for his future life, worked out with the Palace, were altered to become less generous, more punitive and more hedged about by conditions, one of which was that he might never return to live in the United Kingdom. His wife would not be accorded the same royal status as he himself was to retain, and no offspring from their marriage would have this style either. No
member of the family accepted an invitation to his wedding – which took place the following May at a château outside Paris – including Louis Mountbatten, who had previously agreed to act as best man. It was as if, now that he was safely out of the country and no longer in a position of influence, there was no further need to waste any politeness on him.

In the years that followed, Edward continued to be deprived of any useful role. He might be in exile but he could still embarrass his country, and he made a spectacular gaffe by accepting an invitation to visit Nazi Germany with his wife in 1937. She in particular was fawned upon by the leadership there. ‘What a queen she would have made!’ Hitler supposedly sighed after meeting the duchess. Their journey was featured in British cinema newsreels, where Edward was seen behaving much as he had at home when king – smiling, shaking hands, inspecting troops. His visit to a coal mine evoked memories of South Wales. Not only was the visit politically ill advised, it also reminded his former subjects of the better side of his nature, the things he had done so much more gracefully than his tongue-tied younger brother. He was thus further damned in the eyes of his family and of the British government. The visit also wrecked, for the time being, the Windsors’ relations with America. They had intended to go on there, but had to cancel because of the public odium they had earned through being seen with Hitler. Two years later, when the expected European war broke out, the duke and duchess were evacuated to Britain. Edward asked his brother for some useful war work. He was briefly appointed to the British military mission in France, and held a General’s rank, but when that country was overrun he immediately fled to Portugal.

He was eventually got rid of with an appointment as Governor of the Bahamas, a lilliputian territory for an ex-king to rule, far removed from great events or from any chance to do more useful work. The Windsors remained there until the return of peace, and then moved once again to France.
Provided with a house by the City of Paris, they lived there for the rest of their lives, a sybaritic existence that contained little other than golf and dinner parties, gardening and travel to the resorts of Europe and America. There was no full-scale reconciliation with their relatives in Britain (the Queen Mother would not have allowed this, it is believed), although they did return briefly to London in 1953 – not for the coronation, to which they were not invited, but for the unveiling of a memorial to Edward’s mother, who died that year. When he himself followed her – he passed away nineteen years later – he was at last brought back to his former realm. He lay in state at Windsor, where hundreds queued to see his coffin. (One of them, a woman interviewed by the BBC, was asked why she was there. She thought for a moment and answered: ‘He stuck to his convictions.’ There will always, perhaps, be a few romantics who insist on seeing him as a hero.) He was interred in the royal burial ground at Frogmore.

It is worth remembering that Edward lived until 1972. His reign could therefore have lasted thirty-six years. It is very unlikely, however, that he would ever have seen out his life as king. He was such a disaster, and for so many reasons, that had his marriage not caused him to go, something else most probably would have done. It is not difficult to identify another problematic aspect of his life. His Nazi sympathies – unless they could have been played down sufficiently or he had done something to redeem himself – would have made him useless as a British wartime figurehead, and he might even have had to be interned. His Household would, in any case, have been impossible to run, or to rely on, for a head of state who would impulsively cancel long-standing commitments would swiftly have lost any credibility and caused complaints from those taxpayers who had been promised his time and his attention. He would quite likely have made any number of indiscreet, offensive public pronouncements that, reported in the press, would have further undermined respect for the monarchy – and perhaps fatally destroyed its reputation for impartiality.
He would have antagonized every prime minister with whom he dealt (including the long-suffering Winston Churchill, who supported him in 1936), with his hectoring and abrasive manner as well as a marked inability to pay attention to official tasks. His occasional words of sympathy for the unemployed might have continued, but unaccompanied by any practical gestures, respect for him would have dwindled further.

While he was Prince of Wales, the flaws in his nature could just about be covered up or explained away. As king, with his every move observed and reported, he would have been exposed before long as the man he was, and would have been widely disliked. Even had his wife been able to win over public opinion and find acceptance – and that is extremely unlikely, given her own nature – the couple would have attracted odium for their lack of seriousness, their vulgar friends, their expensive tastes, their patent selfishness, and perhaps most importantly for their inability to have children (a fact that was of course not known to the public at the time of their marriage). Had his reign lasted much longer, Edward VIII would have been booed in the streets, savaged in the press, scorned by his own subjects and ridiculed by other nations. The worst and most unpopular monarch since King John, he would almost certainly have abandoned the throne – or perhaps been forced from it by a
coup d’état
, such as had occurred in 1688. His brother George would, in all probability, have had to replace him within a few years, and history would then have proceeded much as it in fact did. It is unlikely, at any rate, that Queen Elizabeth II would have had to wait a further twenty years to ascend the throne.

‘How I hate being king! Sometimes at ceremonies I want to stand up and scream and scream.’

George VI, shortly after ascending the throne

Perhaps the most unlikely candidate for kingship of any country in the twentieth century – though one of the most-loved monarchs Britain has had – was Prince Albert, the younger brother of the charismatic but flawed Edward VIII. He became king on the abdication of his brother a few days before his forty-first birthday, and remained on the throne for just over fifteen years until his death at fifty-six. ‘Bertie’, as he was known to his family, had none of his brother’s advantages. Excruciatingly shy, and modest to the point of invisibility, he grew up with a profound feeling of inadequacy. He suffered from a stammer that afflicted him, as all the world learned from the film
The King
’
s Speech
, well into adult life. He was deeply unpromising as a youth, showing little aptitude as a cadet in the Royal Navy (though the time he spent
in the Service gave him wide experience of people and places), but unlike his elder brother he saw wartime action. He was also a founder member of the Royal Air Force.

In a technical Service, there was no opportunity to avoid unpleasant chores or daunting responsibilities. A contemporary photograph shows Bertie, blackened from head to foot, during the filthy but vital process of ‘coaling’, when his ship took on fuel. The Navy also forced him to live at close quarters with others. This was highly useful training in dealing with all sorts and conditions of men. He was helped by an excellent memory for names and faces. Decades after his active career had ended, he was still able to recall former shipmates when he met them, not only among officers but ratings and stokers too.

He was aware of the power of monarchy to cast a spell over its subjects. He had seen Edward VII and George V, as well as his elder brother, exercise their different forms of charisma, and he knew that, whatever his own personal shortcomings, the institution he represented would exert its usual magic. He was to tell his daughter Elizabeth that whoever met her would remember the experience for the rest of their life. He expected others to recall meeting him and could become furious (his bad temper and sudden rages, like those of his father, were legendary) if they did not. During the Second World War, when visiting the theatre of operations in North Africa, he shook hands with a number of Generals. He asked one of them: ‘Have we met before?’ ‘I don’t remember,’ was the reply. The king exploded, his stammer returning: ‘Well, you b-b-b-bloody-well
ought
to remember!’

Bertie did not have academic intelligence – a characteristic he shared with his father and his brother David – but he possessed in full the sense of duty in which Edward had been lacking. What he would also bring to the role of king was a thorough, transparent decency that was to win over a number of those, such as left-wing politicians, or the leaders of independence movements, who had no reason to feel warmly
either toward the monarchy or to Britain. He was naturally obliging and conscientious: or ‘dutiful, and rather dull’ as he was summed up. This was one of the kinder things said about him. He was variously dismissed as a ‘nitwit’ (Lloyd George), a ‘dull dog’ (R. A. Butler), ‘a weak character and certainly a stupid one’ (Oliver Hardy), a ‘very stupid man’ (Kenneth Clark), and a ‘moron’ (Deladier, the French prime minister).

The empire did not need a man of great intelligence or even vision, however. Politicians can provide those things. A monarch needs patience, enthusiasm, and an ability at least to feign interest in what is around them; above all, perhaps, a proper appreciation of history and of their place in it. A sovereign cannot be too imaginative, for the job involves numbing monotony, endless repetition and ceaseless formality. They must also avoid having controversial, publicly expressed views on anything. Prince Albert, when he succeeded to the throne as King George VI, was able to summon these qualities. He sought to model his reign on that of his father. Though in many ways their natures were very different they had a certain amount in common, including the passion for shooting that was almost compulsory among the upper class of that time. Their handwriting was virtually identical, a reassuring symbol for those who yearned for continuity. Such people were not to be disappointed for the new sovereign copied, or simply manifested, the same dedication to duty, tolerance of protocol and irreproachable integrity that George V had done. To his subjects, his accession must have represented a return to reason after the short, turbulent rule of Edward VIII. The new King George was to prove that even a man whose personality and gifts seem unpromising can become an effective and respected sovereign if supported by able officials and sound advice and goodwill.

George VI began his reign in the glow of public favour. People were aware that he did not relish his new role. They knew he had not been trained for it and that he did not feel suited to it by nature. Though he was not regarded as a very
exciting individual, the majority sympathized with him and wished him well. The press deliberately built up a positive image of the new king, and helped him further by not giving coverage to his elder brother, who was now beginning a peripatetic life of exile abroad. That George was a family man, married to an eminently suitable wife and with children who at once secured the succession, helped considerably. After months of Edward VIII’s furtive love life and his betrayal of his destiny, this wholesome and straightforward family seemed a particular blessing. Its female members – his personable wife and photogenic daughters – provided any glamour that was necessary. Otherwise, his subjects were relieved to have a sovereign who was lacklustre and dutiful.