Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe (61 page)

Panicked, Bertie tried to communicate with his older brother, but the king did not reply to his letters or return phone calls. “I do
so
[he double underscored the word] long for you to be happy with the one person you adore,” Bertie wrote to the king on November 23. “I feel sure that whatever you decide to do will be in the best interests of this Country and Empire.”

Always the angel on her husband’s shoulder, protective and supportive, Elizabeth took up the pen and wrote to the king herself on the same day.

Darling David,

Please
read this. Please be kind to Bertie when you see him, because he loves you, and minds terribly all that happens to you. I wish that you could realize how loyal & true he is to you, and you have no idea how hard it has been for him lately…& as his wife, I must write & tell you this. I am terrified for him—so DO help him. And
for God’s sake
don’t tell him that I have written—we both uphold you always. E.

Across the top of the page, she added, “We want you to be happy, more than anything else, but it’s awfully difficult for Bertie to say what he thinks, you know how shy he is—so do help him.”

On November 25, Bertie wrote to Sir Godfrey Thomas, “If the worst happens and I have to take over, you can be assured that I will do my best to clear up the inevitable mess, if the whole fabric does not crumble under the shock and strain of it all.”

Elizabeth channeled her contempt for Edward and hatred for Wallis into keeping the Duke of York calm in the face of his increasing anxiety about the terrifying prospect ahead. On November 29, as the Yorks left to fulfill a royal engagement in Edinburgh, Bertie commented that he hated to leave London, because he was so anxious about the imminent future. “I feel like the proverbial ‘sheep being led to the slaughter,’ which is not a comfortable feeling.”

Elizabeth was appalled by the way Edward had been treating his family throughout the Abdication Crisis. Seventy-year-old Queen Mary, so recently widowed, had become seriously depressed. The Yorks, who had the most at stake, could not fathom that the king had left them entirely out of his discussions with the government. “Everyone knows more than we do. We know nothing. Nothing!” Elizabeth exclaimed.

Edward announced his intentions to their mother on December 3, then dropped off the planet when Bertie tried to reach him. The duke humiliated himself by phoning him at Fort Belvedere nonstop for four days. Elizabeth never forgave Edward for the agony he put her husband through during those ninety-six hours. She also never forgot the humiliating rumors that serious consideration was being given to bypassing Bertie for the crown in favor of one of his younger brothers—who were not hampered by an embarrassing speech defect.

However, the Duke of Gloucester was an uninspiring boozer, and the Duke of Kent was notoriously bisexual. At least the Duke of York
had a secret weapon: his extremely popular wife—and the British adored their two little daughters. Additionally, Bertie had more experience than his younger brothers, and so it was determined that the order of succession would stand. “The Yorks will do it very well,” averred Stanley Baldwin.

Yet when Bertie saw the Instrument of Abdication on December 9, he broke down and sobbed on his mother’s shoulder for an hour. Elizabeth was so stressed that she came down with the flu. On December 10 at ten a.m., Edward VIII signed the Instrument of Abdication, and a few hours later, Prime Minister Baldwin informed Parliament and the rest of the world.

The Yorks were together as a family when a mob converged outside 145 Piccadilly. Elizabeth rose from her sickbed to see what the commotion was all about, then told Bertie he should show himself to his new subjects. “But what on earth am I to say to them?” he asked shyly.

At three p.m., Queen Mary came to see them. Her face was wet with tears after speaking privately with Elizabeth. The new queen told their daughters’ governess, “I’m afraid there are going to be great changes in our lives, Crawfie. We must take what is coming to us and make the best of it.”

On Friday, December 11, at 1:36 p.m., His Majesty’s Declaration of Abdication Act received Edward VIII’s own royal assent in the House of Lords. At that moment “Bert and Betty” were no longer Duke and Duchess of York but Their Royal Majesties, as well as Emperor and Empress of India. (The latter titles were relinquished on June 22, 1947, when India was granted independence.)

That night the former king took to the airwaves and made a radio broadcast to the nation, referring to his successor’s “one matchless blessing, enjoyed by so many of you and not bestowed on me—a happy home with his wife and children.”

The following day, Edward departed Britain’s shores aboard the
HMS Fury
. Bertie’s first act as king of England was to confer a dukedom on his elder brother, who was henceforth to be known as His Royal Highness the Duke of Windsor. The royal family’s—and Parliament’s—denial of HRH status to Wallis as his duchess after
they wed on June 3, 1937, would become a source of tension for the rest of the Windsors’ lives.

Nine hours after Edward’s departure, Bertie, now George VI, looking (in the words of his biographer John Wheeler-Bennett) “pale and haggard, yet with an innate dignity and integrity which compelled the respect and reverence, as well as the protective instinct of his hearers…in a low, clear voice, but with many hesitations,” addressed his Accession Council at St. James’s Palace. He told them, “With my wife and helpmeet by my side, I take up the heavy task which lies before me. In it I look for the support of all my peoples.”

Three days after their accession, on December 14, George VI’s forty-first birthday, he conferred the Order of the Garter on his queen. It was clear from the start of his reign that Elizabeth was to be a full partner. Although there was no traditional Christmas broadcast that year, Bertie released a New Year’s Eve message, dedicating himself to his subjects; and, referring to the burdens of kingship, he intoned, “I shoulder them with all the more confidence in the knowledge that the Queen and my mother Queen Mary are at my side,” adding, “[M]y wife and I dedicate ourselves for all time to your service, and we pray that God may give us guidance and strength to follow the path that lies before us.” The new sovereigns hoped their subjects would accept them with open arms, fearing that the popular and glamorous Edward VIII would be a tough act to follow. Elizabeth knew perfectly well that the über-svelte Wallis Simpson had mocked her unfashionably plump figure and nicknamed her “the dowdy duchess,” and that her husband’s stammer was a source of derision. Now, more than ever, a country that had been torn asunder by public opinion needed to be healed.

Mother knew best. A proud Queen Mary wrote to Lady Strathmore, “[D]ear Bertie and Elizabeth will carry out things in the same way that George V did…. Elizabeth is such a darling and is such a help to Bertie.”

And Bertie knew it. The Regency Act of 1937 made Elizabeth the first Queen Consort in English history to be eligible to serve as a Counsellor of State and to transact royal business in the sovereign’s name. It was proof of the king’s trust in her competence. His pride in
Elizabeth was further demonstrated when he insisted that she precede him on all but the most formal state occasions. It was the queen who would emerge from a car first, smiling and waving regally, acknowledging the cheers of the crowd, while at a respectful distance the diffident king followed as if he were the consort.

After their accession the royal couple also bonded more closely in other ways. The country had been riven by the Abdication Crisis. Politicians and subjects taking sides created a toxic situation that was bad for the kingdom. Elizabeth and Bertie socially ostracized the courtiers who had worked for Edward VIII and those who had been among the former king’s tight circle of friends, especially the individuals who had championed Wallis. From the continent, the newly minted Duke of Windsor remained a thorn in his brother’s side, perpetually offering unsolicited political advice that often ran counter to the guidance of Bertie’s ministers. Edward was always ringing up Buckingham Palace to ask Bertie for money and to pressure him to grant Wallis the styling of a Royal Highness. His blasé indifference to the havoc he had wreaked on the kingdom and upon his brother’s health, engendering no end of “gnashes,” infuriated Elizabeth. Her husband’s nerves became exceptionally frayed during the first year of his reign, no thanks to Edward’s antagonizing him. Elizabeth urged Bertie to tell his brother not to phone him anymore—and that the reason for it should be clear: That Woman.

On May 12, 1937, George VI and Elizabeth were crowned in Westminster Abbey as their two daughters watched in awe. Queen Mary broke with the tradition of a surviving monarch not attending the coronation of a subsequent sovereign, to see her second son crowned. At the moment the consort’s crown was placed upon the head of the diminutive Elizabeth, swathed in the purple and ermine trappings of queenship, a misty-eyed Winston Churchill turned to his wife, Clementine, and, referring to Mrs. Simpson, admitted, “You were right. I see now the ‘other one’ wouldn’t have done.”

Bertie had been anxious for weeks about the impending coronation, fearful of stammering during his public responses in the Abbey and even more so during the live broadcast he would make from Buckingham Palace after the ceremony. But the queen and Lionel Logue were on hand to see him through, as well as a BBC sound
engineer named Robert Wood, who coached the king on how to use the microphone to best advantage. “It is with a very full heart that I speak to you tonight. Never before has a newly crowned King been able to talk to all his peoples in their own homes on the day of his Coronation…the Queen and I will always keep in our hearts the inspiration of this day….”

Edward VIII had been a rock star to his subjects, and even though he had chosen to quit the throne (Wallis would have been perfectly happy to remain his mistress as long as he didn’t marry anyone else), he hated his new nonentity status. As a way of drawing attention to himself, he acted in ways that were not only dangerous to England’s foreign policy but, in the queen’s view, were deliberately calculated to steal her husband’s thunder. In 1937 the Duke and Duchess of Windsor announced a visit to Hitler’s Germany—for which Edward had received no permission from His Majesty’s government, and which ran counter to British interests. Bertie and Elizabeth supported Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement but privately had their misgivings about the fascist dictatorships of Germany and Italy. And in 1939, on the eve of Elizabeth and Bertie’s departure for Canada and America, marking the first visit ever of a reigning king and queen of England to the USA, the Duke of Windsor announced his arrangement with NBC to give a radio address to their primarily American audience.

Bert and Betty were a huge hit in Canada. The veterans exclaimed, “Ay, man, if Hitler could just see this,” when the queen insisted on mingling with them during the unveiling of the World War I War Memorial. The American journalists covering that event were duly impressed, hailing George VI as “a people’s king.” And in June 1939, when the monarchs visited Washington, D.C., to meet with President and Mrs. Roosevelt, a senator on Capitol Hill reached out and grabbed Bertie’s hand to tell him, “My, you’re a great Queen-picker.”

A local newspaper headline read, T
HE
B
RITISH
R
E
-
TAKE
W
ASHINGTON
, and called Elizabeth “the perfect Queen.” In New York City she was deemed “spell-binding.” Elizabeth was nominated “Woman of the Year” “because, arriving in an aloof, critical country, she completely conquered it and accomplished this conquest by being her natural self.” Decades later, people who had never seen Elizabeth in
action would think that the magic of Diana, Princess of Wales, was unique to the House of Windsor.

The queen would later say, “That tour made us! I mean it made us, the King and I. It came at just the right time, particularly for us.” No longer were they the reluctant understudies of Edward VIII. And they were about to be sorely tested.

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany, because they had a treaty with Poland in which they agreed to aid her if her independence were threatened by force.

During the first four months of the war Elizabeth projected an aura of calm reassurance to her subjects. Bertie’s first Christmas radio broadcast (coauthored with the queen, as all of his Christmas broadcasts would be) was profoundly moving, reciting a stanza from Marie Louise Haskins’s poem “The Gate of the Year.”

“I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year, ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way.’”

Functioning as a team, the monarchs bolstered their subjects’ morale. In January 1940, they began hosting Monday-night dinners for the War Cabinet and other government ministers. During the early months of the year, Elizabeth spent a considerable amount of time at Bertie’s side as he perused the daily reports, telegrams, and assessments. Consequently, she acquired firsthand knowledge of the war effort and the ongoing affairs and daily activities of the government.

On May 10, Germany invaded Holland, Luxembourg, and Belgium, and began their final assault on France. That day, Winston Churchill succeeded the discredited Neville Chamberlain—he of the appalling appeasement policy—as prime minister.

Germany’s air force, the Luftwaffe, began systematic attacks over England on August 12, bombing airfields and aircraft factories. The Battle of Britain was under way. On the night of September 7–8 the Blitz began in London, with the release of more than two hundred bombs over the capital. Although the initial damage was in the poorer neighborhoods, such as the capital’s East End, no target was immune, including the monarchs’ old residence at 145 Piccadilly,
Westminster Abbey, and Buckingham Palace, which was struck nine times during the Blitz.