One of Mike Ripley’s Campion novels is Mr. Campion’s Abdication, harking back to that turning-point in the nation’s history. We know what Osbert Sitwell felt about the King’s withdrawal from his appointed role from his poem ‘Rat Week’, which could not be published at the time because of the libel laws. We also know what Mr. and Mrs. Carter thought about it.
Pip’s account is much the shorter and appears first, with gaps where Joyce’s terrible photocopy is unreadable. Margery’s is a substantial fragment that suddenly stops, though there must have been more to the letter she wrote. Margery writes from 2 Dawlish Mansions, 154 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1, which must have been the home of Aunt Maud and her husband.
Pip
“It is four o’clock on the afternoon of Wednesday the 9th of December 1936. I believe that in two hours the nation and the world will know to the full of the disgrace inflicted on us by King Edward VIII. On Saturday of last week, I lunched with a friend at the Savage Club. Their new home in Carlton House Terrace, once the London home of the Curzons, has not yet settled completely to the new owners.
One expects mighty and protesting shades upon great stone stairs and even the artistic gentry who are members subdue their voices as they (…) at the Adelphi. Or so it seemed to me; it may well have been that the sense of shock at the first official news of the King’s treason still prevailed. It was wet and cold. We watched the great curtains of grey rain sweep over St. James’s Park from the Palace on to the Admiralty.
People in the bar were discussing the situation with a humiliated bitterness so hard to convey. Presently a young man whom I thought I recognised came in. He looked a Guardee but lacks the slightly pompous stuffiness that brand affects. Several people eyed him carefully and…’Look, Clive, what’s your father up to now?’ It was the P.M’s Socialist son Clive Baldwin. I did not catch his reply.
Presently my friend enquired ‘What’s going to happen?’ ‘Abdication. Signed last night.’ I think that we all sighed though the fear had been in our hearts. Young Baldwin added ‘A damn good job.’ We went into lunch.”
Margery
“2 Dawlish Mansions,
154 Gray’s Inn Road,
London WC1
14th December 1936
Dear Mary,
What a momentous fortnight! On Monday 30th November the Crystal Palace – that ugly symbol of staid Victorianism, was burnt to the ground with flames that could be seen for forty miles. This last remnant of the nineteenth century going up in smoke heralded the shock which was to come to hundreds of English breakfast tables on Thursday 3rd December, when the Press broke its reticence and announced the King’s wish to marry Mrs. Simpson.
Although the activities of Mrs. S were well known by 99% of London, I doubt if 20% of the provinces had ever heard of her. The dated jokes and witticisms, such as ‘The importance of being Ernest’ and ‘Ever heard of the man who laid down his wife for his King?’ had been bandied about town long before the divorce was granted at Ipswich. Discretion was not in the King’s vocabulary.
The unfortunate King’s Proctor has been deluged with letters from irate citizens demanding that he did his job as Mrs S’s divorce could not be made absolute until April. When the news broke there was no other subject discussed. Strangers spoke to each other on buses and women lingered over their shopping to comment. The first opinion in London was inclined to be sentimental – why shouldn’t he have a private life, he’s got a lousy job, what does it matter who is Queen?
On the second day it began to be realised that this question involved more than the happiness of one man who wished to ease the burden of a trying position. The general public started to take sides. Both agreed that she could not be Queen, but one favoured a morganatic marriage while the dissenting party saw a split of the whole British Empire if this was carried through. The position looked really ugly. Parliament was worried.
The crisis reached its peak on Friday and Saturday. A large number of people held that the King must not be allowed to abdicate {a} because he had got the makings of the best King we had ever had, popular at home and abroad and trained as no King has ever been before {b} because it would leave us with the Duke of York who stammers, is very shy and is not known anywhere except in Australia and Austria {c} because thousands of pounds have been sunk in the Coronation {d} it would hurt our prestige, but this last did not carry much weight as Mrs S had done a lot of harm already and it now looks as if the affair has drawn the Empire closer together and strengthened constitutional government.
Here was an opportunity for the Opposition in Parliament to make trouble but as in times of real crisis to the nation they stood behind the Government, and it eased the situation to know that they were not prepared to form a Government because for one wild moment it looked as if the country might be split into ‘King’s men’ and ‘York’s men’. The Fascists demonstrated outside Buckingham Palace and in Whitehall yelling ‘We want E-d-w-a-r-d’.
They evidently saw themselves as the champions of the romantic Bonnie King Edward but they appeared as a rabble of overgrown boy scouts with their cries. This was the only noisy demonstration, London was too hurt, she was torn between the loyalty to a King she liked and admired and the loyalty, or rather the knowledge that if the British Empire was to remain intact and the Crown to be respected, the King could not marry Mrs S.
The Rothermere press tried to make it a political issue in the hopes of getting Churchill in and Baldwin out. Their papers {Daily Mail, Daily Sketch, Evening News} ran leaders on ‘Why shouldn’t the King marry Mrs S whose only crime is that she has taken advantage of the law of the land?’ but it is extraordinary how little real influence those papers have on the majority of their readers.
On Saturday it was known unofficially that the King would abdicate. The feeling against Mrs S grew slowly but definitely. Her offer to withdraw was made four days too late to make a good impression and that photograph of her simpering at Cannes did a lot of harm to her cause. Before the crisis broke London knew Mrs S as an attractive, witty social-climber who had little dignity and no sense of the decorum expected when going around with the King of England, but who amused the King and kept him from excesses of drink.
When the crisis broke some rather pertinent points came into view. It was known that the Prince of Wales never wanted to become King and some surprise was expressed when he accepted the Throne, and now it looked suspiciously as if Mrs S had urged him to take it, and then it became pretty obvious to the general public that there was only one person who could make him renounce Mrs S and that was Mrs S herself, but what does she do – issues a public statement four days too late.
Mrs Simpson’s name is mud over here at present but the secret prayer is that she won’t divorce him in eighteen months and write her memoirs! The more general feeling was that no woman had the right to deprive the Empire of a good King or to cause such trouble to thousands of people. G.B.S. made an ass of himself by writing a frivolous article on the subject, he mistimed it, people laughed at the beginning but were wounded later. G.B.S. made a statement that the King never wanted the Throne and this woman was just an excuse to get out of it, but no-one who listened to Edward’s broadcast could possibly doubt his feelings towards the lady.
His broadcast did a lot of good, the phrase ‘I have found it impossible…to discharge my duties as King, as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love’ was unanswerable and I doubt if there was a single person who was not deeply moved or who did not wish him well. But the fact remains that the majority of England thinks that he has let us down by his stubborn determination not to give her up.
Now that the worst has happened there is a general leaning towards the idea that perhaps it really is for the best, and all those points about Edward VIII which we glossed over when he was King seem very prominent. Baldwin’s reputation has gone up by leaps and bounds, the whole situation has been handled with dignity and very soberly. A sure proof of this is the fact that the Stock Exchange remained steady.
It was known that the Duke of York was extremely loath to take the throne and even suggested putting Princess Elizabeth there with a regency council under Queen Mary, but it was thought that with the ex-King still living, this might lead to trouble, as people would feel they hadn’t got a new King, and although it would be very popular with the Daily Sketch public it would probably undermine the monarchy. Queen Mary lost two stone in two weeks!
The English press as a whole has behaved admirably and with great restraint. There has been no panic-mongering, in fact it would have been hard to create one, people were too depressed. Also, the weather did not help matters. On Thursday 10th December it was slightly foggy, one of those dull days which only London knows how to produce.
The press were preparing the public for abdication, large posters were out stating ABDICATION RUMOURS, ABDICATION FEARS.
Large dumb crowds collected all day outside 10 Downing Street, along Whitehall and outside Parliament – it had been a week of these silent crowds gathering outside buildings. Just after four I went out to buy a paper and the gloom of the crowd gazing at the billboard which said ABDICATION OFFICIAL might have been taken for apathy.
On Saturday George VI was proclaimed, it was a wretched day, damp and cold. Bill and I went down to the Royal Exchange, and quite in keeping we got what we thought was an excellent position right opposite the Mansion House but the proclamation is made from the steps of the Royal Exchange just round the corner! So except for the procession and the trumpeters we saw nothing. I was so low that I couldn’t even feel cross at being such a fool. Saturday night crowds gave the new King a good cheering.
There is a great feeling of sympathy for him. The fact is remarked that he comes to the Throne at a time which is on a par with his father’s accession. He is about as unpopular as George V was. There is a strong feeling growing that this lad will make a better constitutional king than his brother, and having a family certainly does help. That he has no charm of manner and cannot improvise a speech {or so the papers say} will not be such a burden.
He’s got an excellent private secretary who is well travelled and very intelligent. England has settled down perfectly calmly and it is difficult to realise it was such a crisis. I’ll be sending you a few papers on the crisis. Another interesting fact is that Mrs S was asked to leave the country by the American Ambassador and she did not go of her own accord. Some EastEnders nailed a board across her front door on which was painted LEAVE OUR KING ALONE, and I believe her mail contained hundreds of threatening letters, but, of course, nothing of this got in the papers.”
And there it ends, frustratingly since Margery perhaps had more to say. It’s a rollercoaster of a letter which must have delighted its recipient. (BP)
margeryallingham.org.uk 