The Peoples King (27 page)

By 3 December, the story was well and truly out, throughout Britain
and the Empire. 'Now, we are - without a King? With a Queen?
What? The Simpson affair is on the surface', wrote Virginia Woolf.
'All London was gay & garrulous - not exactly gay, but excited.'"
Lady Milner, who went to a 'news reel' to glean expressions of opinion,
wrote in her diary that the 'streets have been packed all day &
newspapers sold as fast as they were printed.'
¹²
Marie Stopes, the birth
control pioneer whose book
Married Love
had caused a storm when
it was published in 1918, hastened to offer the King the benefit of her
advice. Thousands of his subjects, she wrote in a letter to him, had
turned to her on every imaginable problem of marriage. She suggested
that a talk with her might be helpful - 'when I could place at your
disposal my unique experience and an ingenuity of mind which is
entirely devoted to Yourself. I hold myself entirely at Your Majesty's
immediate disposal at any time and place in the hope I may be of a
little help.'
¹³

All the morning papers sold out, and the headlines showed that
the lines of battle were clearly drawn.
The Times,
the
Morning Post
and the
Daily Telegraph
were against the King, and the headline of
The Times
warned grimly of a 'Constitutional Crisis'. However, the
Express
and the
Mail
backed the King with enthusiasm, reflecting the
opinions of their owners, Beaverbrook and Rothermere. The headline
of the
Daily Mail
insisted that, 'The People want their King'. The
Daily Mirror
and the
Daily Sketch
were also strongly for the King,
and the leader in the
News Chronicle
advocated a morganatic mar­riage. The circulation of the first group of newspapers was roughly
80,000, while that of the second group was close to nine million,
¹⁴
and it appeared, observed Beaverbrook with satisfaction, that the
King had a 'wider and more influential support in the Press than we
ever anticipated.'
¹⁵

The public queued up for the evening editions, which were illus­trated with photographs showing the King and Mrs Simpson together
at Ascot, at restaurants, on the yacht
Nahlin
and just about everywhere
else. For months now, wrote the journalists Frank Owen and R. J.
Thompson, these pictures had been stored in every newspaper office,
and now 'the public gasped at them'.
¹⁶
'Spain, Germany, Russia - all
are elbowed out', observed Virginia Woolf in her diary. 'The marriage
stretches from one end of the paper to another. Pictures of D of York
& the Princesses fill every cranny. Mrs Simpson is snapped by lime
light at midnight as she gets out of her car. Her luggage is also
photographed." A travelling salesman remarked to a woman who
was a book buyer for a department store in Kensington, London, that
he would never forget 'when going to business the day the news broke,
waiting on Earls Court Station - crowds of people all reading their
newspapers & dead silence. It was eerie."
^s
According to the London
daily, the
Evening Standard,
the Duke and Duchess of York returned
to London from Edinburgh in the early morning, then went to Marl­borough House to see Queen Mary. They had many engagements in
London but 'All were cancelled."
⁹

The newsreels had a story ready, too.
The Constitutional Crisis,
distributed by Universal, observed that, 'The strain is intense for
the King, his ministers, his people and for the lady of his choice.'
Photographs of 'the lady', looking sweet-natured and attractive, were
shown repeatedly in the newsreel. The King himself was pictured
looking handsome and thoughtful. The newsreel commented that the
'modern tendency for greater personal freedom is in sharp contrast
with the confines of constitutional latitude.' It ended with
God Save
the King,
and offered the opinion that 'One thing is in no doubt: the
sympathy of the British people goes out to him that as a man his
happiness be achieved and that as a king, long may he reign over us.'
²⁰
From Stanley Baldwin's point of view, thought Tom Dugdale, his
Parliamentary Private Secretary, this was the ideal way for the story
to break. 'Now we are in for an upheaval of public opinion,' he said
to his wife, Nancy, 'one which could not have been brought about
in a more desirable, and a less scandalous way; purely religious,
non-political, non-sectarian - just SB's luck!'
²¹
The Times
was at pains
to present Baldwin's position in favourable terms and to encour­age criticism of the King, I thank you for your admirable leader in
the "Times" this morning', wrote the Archbishop of Canterbury to
Dawson on 3 December. 'I note that the "Daily Mail" has broken lose
[sic]', he added, 'and ventilates the impossible compromise [that is, a
morganatic marriage]: also
News Chronicle.
I do most earnestly hope
that the Government will stand firm. The two essentials of the present
situation are swiftness and decisiveness.'
²²
At first, Francis Williams,
the editor of the pro-Labour
Daily Herald,
took the attitude of,
' "Good luck to the King" and let him marry whoever he pleases.'
²³
Soon afterwards, though, the paper argued that the King was bound
to abide by the advice of his Ministers.

Much of the press coverage blamed Baldwin for the fact that for so
long the people of Britain had been deliberately kept in the dark about
the story. 'May I suggest that if we are to believe the teachings of our
Church,' asserted a letter published in the
Daily Mirror,
'the All
Highest did not think it beneath His dignity to take unto himself
"a commoner" to wife, thereby giving us The Master - The King of
Kings.'
²⁴
'We do not believe', argued the
Evening News,
'that the
British people or the people of the Empire any longer consider it a part
of the kingly duty to forgo marriage with the lady of his choice - a
privilege enjoyed by the lowliest of his subjects - in the interests of
constitutional tradition.' More important than the maintenance of
any tradition, it added, was the need to keep on the throne a man
'whose kingly capacity has already stood the test of long and faithful
service.'
²⁵
The
Star
agreed:

Why should he |the King] be denied the common happiness of mankind? We
see no insuperable reason. The Cabinet may tender him advice in one direction,
but there is more than one way in which the interests of the State and of the
King can be reconciled. Talk of abdication does not alarm us, but it is folly, a
form of disloyalty to the King and the people.

It was up to the statesmen, insisted the
Star,
to find a way of keeping
the King on the throne and also to promote his personal happi­ness. 'There may be better Prime Ministers,' it added, but 'there is no
better King.'
²⁶

A particular disappointment for Baldwin was the view of the
News
Chronicle.
Since this newspaper was the traditional voice of Noncon­formists, who were generally seen as puritan in their approach to
sexual morality, he thought he had reason to expect its support. But
it was not forthcoming. There are 'many people in this country who
would not desire to see as Queen of England a woman who had
previously been married' and also some who would object to 'an
American citizen occupying that high rank', observed the
News
Chronicle.
'But,' it added,

if the King, who is of an age to know his own mind, is sufficiently in love to
persist in his intention, the public would, we think, wish that he should marry
the woman of his choice, but that he should do so in his capacity as Duke of
Cornwall. His wife's position would then be that of King's Consort, not that
of Queen of England.
²
'

Lady Milner, who was pleased to note that the
Morning Post
and the
Telegraph
were 'very good', was far less happy with the evening
papers, which 'are rather pro-Simpson - as is the
News Chronicle',
²⁸
Politically, thought Beaverbrook, Baldwin was 'in danger of being
killed stone dead. There appeared to be a tide now running with
immense and gathering force in favour of the King.'
²⁹

The 'King's crisis [is] now public property', commented Bruce Lock-
hart, who edited the 'Londoner's Diary' in the
Evening Standard
, in
his personal diary on 3 December. But the reaction of the public was
not, found Lockhart, what Baldwin had expected. 'For weeks,' he
observed, 'MPs have been saying that [the] whole country is seething
about [the] King's conduct and Mrs Simpson and that they were being
deluged with letters from their constituents. Probably true; but letters
came from Mrs Rector and Mrs Town Councillor.' It was now quite
clear, he said, 'that ninety per cent of [the] country had never heard
of Mrs Simpson. Now there will be - for [the] moment at least - a
reaction in favour of [the] King."" In the first days after the news
broke, 90 per cent of the letters received by the national newspapers
were said to be in favour of the King."

The King himself was sent thousands of letters, most of them offering
him support. Letters and telegrams, addressed to Buckingham Palace,
Fort Belvedere and St James's Palace, started to arrive daily, from all
over the nation and also from abroad. Within the next ten days the
King or his personal staff received nearly five thousand letters and
telegrams. 'My Dear Wife and myself having just read in the
Daily
Sketch
that your postal deliveries are now sent to you by motor van,
due to the quantity, the majority possibly from loyal subjects,' wrote
one man to the King, 'we also wish to express our loyalty likewise."
²