A Brief History of the House of Windsor (18 page)

Within a matter of days – hours – in December 1936, the storm broke. With a sense of sickening dread, Bertie realized that his taking over the throne was first likely, and then certain. Like others who had come to this position by default he had had no useful training, and felt absolutely no sense of vocation. Fortunately, this was a difficulty that could be overcome. In the same way that an incoming – and by definition inexperienced – government can rely on a permanent Civil Service to keep the country ticking over, a monarch can depend on a long-serving staff of courtiers, Private Secretaries and officials who know exactly how the monarchy functions – the ceremonies and the meetings and the dealing with dispatch boxes. They will normally be the same officials who served the previous sovereign (in Bertie’s case his
father rather than his brother) and the routine to which they are accustomed will continue until a new monarch has found their feet and developed their own habits. Bertie was not nearly as unprepared as he believed. He had had all around him throughout his life the example of other rulers, a store of remembered impressions, overheard conversations, pieces of advice. He had had half a lifetime of meeting the public, making speeches, opening things, attending parades. He had already carried out many of the tasks that would now take up all his time.

If he felt unprepared for his new role, it was an anxiety that was shared by the courtiers, advisers and Private Secretaries who now surrounded him. Like the ‘handlers’ who tell an American president what to say and do, they moved swiftly to ensure that he was seen to best advantage. They decided his biggest chance of success was to be as much like his father as possible, but they knew he lacked the gift for simple oratory that George V had possessed. It was decided that there should therefore be no Durbar – he would not journey to India to be proclaimed emperor – and he did not broadcast either at his accession or in the first Christmas of his reign. He must continue to be presented as a family man of simple tastes, and as little as possible of his real personality – the anguish and self-doubt, the rages – must be visible to his subjects.

He was, of course, personally likeable, and did not need to be packaged and sold to the public to the extent that some advisers wished. His athletic ability, his love of dancing, his cheerful philistinism where culture was concerned, his enjoyment of the Crazy Gang – a knockabout group of comedians – all made him seem refreshingly normal. Once the war had begun, he also proved more adept at broadcasting than anyone had expected, making speeches that were both inspiring and memorable. And he had an engaging sense of humour, as well as, on occasion, an endearing self-mockery. When bestowing the first knighthood of his reign, both he and the recipient, Walter Monckton, managed to bungle the operation. ‘Well,’
quipped the king, ‘we did not do that very well, did we? But neither of us has done it before!’

His greatest assets in this new life were both female. He had the backing, the devotion, of two determined women. One was his mother. Queen Mary would never forgive her son David for his behaviour, first in taking up with a foreign adventuress who made him a laughing stock throughout the world, and secondly in throwing away the role for which he had been trained and prepared for the whole of his life, without regard for the consequences to the family, the nation or the empire. She loved Bertie, who had been everything a son and a member of the royal family should be. Knowing the sense of dread with which he viewed the future, she felt immense sympathy for him. The first thing he had done, on the evening of the abdication, was to fall into her arms and sob. She was to help him with advice and support for the rest of his life, and was to outlive him by almost a year.

The second source of strength was, of course, Bertie’s wife. Elizabeth had shared his dismay as the events unfolded that led to her brother-in-law’s departure from the throne. She, like Queen Mary, was never to forgive him for leaving Bertie in the lurch like this, especially since she was later to believe that the strain of becoming king had shortened his life. The antipathy was mutual, and her hostility was more than somewhat responsible for the ostracism that the Windsors would meet with from the moment of abdication onward. It was dictated not only by personal dislike but by a shrewd understanding of the damage to her husband’s effectiveness that would be caused by any further association with Edward. Though Wallis Simpson was not, and never would be, someone with whom the British would feel empathy, her husband remained a threat to the stability of the throne. He had also embarrassed the Establishment and the public. More seriously, he could provide a rallying point for those who favoured appeasing Hitler. This was seen as a real danger as the 1930s came to an end. With war looming, differences would polarize between
those who wanted to resist at any cost and those who sought to buy off Germany. The whole country could be divided by this issue, with damaging results.

The new queen, whose name had a stirring resonance for those with a sense of history, had neither sought her role nor expected it when she had married, yet she was as perfectly suited to it as if she had been prepared for it all her life. She was designed by nature to be a public figure and the consort to a head of state, and more especially, to be the consort of
this
head of state. The historian Andrew Roberts has summed her up as: ‘Part business manager, part private secretary, part public-relations adviser’. She was accustomed to the protocol and formality involved in royal life, yet she had a sense of humour and of fun that enabled her to find enjoyment in it too. Her natural empathy was the ideal attribute in someone faced with the duties that were now hers. It would take her to heights of popularity that few monarchs of either sex have reached. She would save the credibility of the royal family with remarkable speed following the debacle of the abdication.

Edward had not been crowned. It takes many months to prepare a coronation, and the date had been set for the following year, 12 May 1937. With the Abbey already undergoing conversion and invitations being sent out, it was decided that this date would be adhered to for it would convey a sense of continuity. Bertie would adopt the same name as his father and become King George VI, suggesting that other vital ingredient in constitutional monarchy – stability. The alternative, King Albert, was in any case too Germanic for public taste.

The day itself was a great success. Though a good deal of affection for Edward lingered among the wider public, the new king and queen were popular too and the press worked assiduously to build upon this, informing their readers, among other trivia, that George was a better boxer than Edward. Once the royal party had returned to the Palace and
appeared on the balcony, the crowd was enchanted by the sight of the two princesses, attired in miniature coronets and trains. A film of much of the coronation ceremony (excluding the parts, such as the anointing with oil, that were considered too holy to be made public) was produced but not released until careful viewing had been performed by both Church and Palace. Given the king’s continuing personal awkwardness (he found the occasion an atrocious ordeal) there had been concern that he would make mistakes. He did not, however, and the resulting footage was a major breakthrough in royal public relations. For the first time since coronations had been staged at the Abbey in 1066, the population at large could see what went on inside, albeit only in retrospect.

The film was shown all over the world. It engendered a similar sense of participation among George’s subjects in the Dominions and the empire, and it was widely viewed in the United States. Hollywood, indeed, capitalized on the fascination with kingly ceremonial that this engendered by putting a very elaborate coronation scene into its production of
The Prisoner of Zenda
, which was released later that year. This was perhaps the first time that the splendour of the British monarchy – genuine but modified, updated, re-interpreted and, in part, simply invented – had competed in terms of mass appeal with the manufactured magic of America’s film capital. More people watched the
real
coronation. Incidentally, it cost well over half a million pounds to stage (twice as much as George V’s), and thus required a budget similar to that of a Hollywood epic.

The Windsors were not without magic of their own. In the interests of national recovery the press was overwhelmingly on their side, and they could rely on positive and almost universally uncritical treatment. Never had Fleet Street stressed so strongly the family’s likeable ordinariness – the king’s quiet modesty and struggle to do his duty; the charm of both daughters and the endearing earnestness of Elizabeth, the eldest, who was now heir to the throne. Above all the
press discovered in George’s consort what would vulgarly be termed ‘star quality’. A woman of small stature and inclined to dumpiness, she was photographed by Cecil Beaton in a manner that made her seem more statuesque. She was also dressed with an elegance that was to become her hallmark. The inspiration for her wardrobe came from the king. He took her designer, Norman Hartnell, on a tour of the royal portraits and pointed out those of ladies painted by the great German artist Winterhalter. These dated from the 1840s and 50s, the age of the crinoline. The subjects looked wonderfully feminine by the standards that would define the later twentieth century, with their cinched waists, flowing skirts, frills and ribbons. George wanted Hartnell to produce dresses that would be appropriate for the present while conveying a similar sense of style and dignity. The results were to be seen for decades in the gowns and dresses worn by Elizabeth, both as queen and as Queen Mother. Even without such trappings, her personality won her serious and deserved admiration. ‘One of the most amazing queens since Cleopatra,’ gushed one observer, Harold Nicolson.

The initial priority for the royal family was restoring its credibility in the wake of the abdication – steadying what George called ‘a rocking throne’. The tidying up of Edward VIII’s financial arrangements proved a lengthy and complicated process, and the king in the end allocated his brother a smaller allowance than had originally been agreed. The issue of how to address the Duchess of Windsor was quickly settled – she would not under any circumstances become an HRH. The impetus for this refusal, which was seen as wanton unkindness by sympathizers with Edward and his wife, would have come from Queen Mary as much as from her daughter-in-law. The king’s mother, always a formidable opponent, had lost none of her outrage over the behaviour of her eldest son, and would have vetoed any notion of his wife being treated as equal to those of her family who had done their duty. Further, and decisive, disapproval came from the
Dominion governments, which after all had a perfect right to express views on the monarchy and which made it clear they would not accept her having the status of HRH. It is believed that the king himself did not mind his sister-in-law having the title. Similarly, he did not object to the retaining of a home in Britain by the duke and duchess. Queen Elizabeth, however, refused to countenance this. She wanted Edward and his wife as far away from her husband as possible. Even as an occasional visitor the former king would be newsworthy. His movements would be followed in the press and his physical glamour, still intact, would appeal to a number of those who saw his picture in newspapers or on newsreels. If her husband was to win the complete confidence of his people, there must be no competitors for their loyalty.

There were, however, more serious concerns. The shadow of war was lengthening over Europe. Germany, which had come under the control of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist government in 1933, had cast off the restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles and was now openly re-arming. Conscription, forbidden by the Treaty, was reintroduced, creating at once a large army. The Rhineland, a western region of the country that had been ‘de-militarized’ by the Allies in 1919 so that France would not have German troops on its border, was now bristling with soldiery. The Western nations – the French themselves, Britain, the United States – took no measures to oppose the alarming resurgence of their former enemy, though it was plain to anyone who listened to Hitler that he was intent upon another European war. In fact he had predicted that it would start in 1936. The only reason it did not was that there was no need – other nations gave way or failed to protest, and he got what he wanted. With each step toward bloodless victory his own and his people’s confidence – and bellicosity – increased.

In 1938 Hitler absorbed Austria into the German Reich – a willing junior partner in the state he was creating. He also wanted the Sudetenland, a strategic border area within
Czechoslovakia that had a sizeable German population. Posing as a reasonable man who wanted only to unify the various German communities within the region, he announced that this was his final demand. Readers of his book
Mein Kampf
knew that it was in fact only the beginning, but there was a widespread willingness to believe him, for the alternative was war.

Like many of those who could remember 1914–18, the king desired at any cost to avoid another conflict. The appeasement of Germany, which was to seem in retrospect a shameful chapter in Britain’s national life, was largely viewed at the time as a pragmatic response. Nothing could be worse than a return to the horrors of the previous conflict; any efforts to avoid such an outcome were welcome, even if they meant humiliation. When Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain – whom the king and queen liked – returned from Munich in March 1938 with an agreement signed by Hitler to state that the German dictator had no further territorial demands to make, the welcome he received was rapturous. He was met by enthusiastic crowds at the airport. He was cheered under the windows of 10 Downing Street. He went to the Palace and appeared there on the balcony with the king and queen before an even greater throng. The national mood was one of relief and euphoria and gratitude for his statesmanship, and the monarch was as glad as anyone else. The prime minister had saved ‘peace in our time’, and the preparations for war, which had already begun, could now be discontinued.