It is impossible to prove the contrary; where motives are in question it must always be a matter for surmise. The theory, however, does not seem to be supported by what facts there are. He had once been anxious to marry Portia Cadogan; when the time came he was resolved to marry Mrs Simpson; everything he said or did indicated that he would have liked nothing better than to make Freda Dudley Ward his wife. Far from seeking to avoid commitments he sought them with relentless fervour. The lesson to be learnt from the last thirty-five years of his life is surely that, though he might not have been particularly happy as a married man, he was far unhappier as a bachelor.
And if he had been allowed to marry Freda Dudley Ward, or Portia Cadogan, or any other strong woman whom he could have loved; if, like his luckier brother, he had found his own version of Elizabeth Bowes Lyon; would it have made any difference? Might he have become, to use the simpliste but by no means valueless terminology of 1066 and All That, a ‘good king’? One has, of course, not the remotest idea. All that can be said with certainty is that in 1919 the potential was there: the charm, the good will, the enthusiasm, the readiness to learn, the enquiring mind. So too, of course, were the corroding weaknesses; but with the support and encouragement of the right wife the weaknesses might have been overcome and potential become reality. At the least, the reign of King Edward VIII would have taken a very different course.
6
The Role of the Prince
DON’T THINK YOU CAN ACT LIKE OTHER PEOPLE, THE KING warned his son at the end of the war. ‘You must always remember your position and who you are.’ But, the Prince asked himself, ‘who exactly was I?’1 He was a man apart, that much was clear, and he loathed it. He did what he could to mitigate his isolation, to treat others and to be treated himself as if he were a normal human being; but though a normal human being was what he was, he would never win acceptance of the fact. Even by those who knew him best he was treated with gingerly deference, as a freak with a touch of the divine, an improbably animated refugee from Madame Tussaud’s. His jokes would be greeted with sycophantic fervour by those who were amazed a prince could joke at all; his peccadilloes were met with extravagant censure by those who did not believe a prince should be vulnerable to the weaknesses of the flesh. Part at least of the sympathy he felt towards Americans came from his conviction – rarely justified – that they would not view him with the curious compound of reverence and resentment that the average Briton adopts towards its monarchy.
That veteran courtier Fritz Ponsonby placed all the Prince’s qualms firmly into focus when he remonstrated with him for making himself too accessible. ‘The Monarchy must always retain an element of mystery,’ he maintained. ‘A Prince should not show himself too much. The Monarchy must remain on a pedestal.’ The Prince flatly disagreed. The last place he wished to be was on a pedestal, he wanted to be down among the people, getting to know them and letting them know him.2 There was more truth in both points of view than either party was ready to concede. But the argument was anyway academic. Every time the Prince of Wales tried to descend from his pedestal the British people put him back again. Wherever he went, whatever he did, he was walled around by deferential affection, a barrier imperceptible sometimes but inexorably setting him apart. Even when he first went out with the Pytchley hunt, six stalwart followers were secretly deputed to escort him and to ensure that he returned unharmed.3 If he could not be treated as an equal on the hunting field, where a man is traditionally worth no more than his courage, his prowess as a rider and the quality of his horse, then where could he hope to find the sort of acceptance that he craved?
To be isolated was bad enough, to be isolated in inactivity was insupportable. The designated successor to the leadership of some great company or institution will be fully occupied with the specialist duties that fall to him while he is waiting to take over. The heir to some great estate, even in 1919, could busy himself in whatever career he chose until the title and the land became his. The Prince had no specialist duties, yet the tasks that were imposed upon him effectively prevented him pursuing any serious career. His life was divided between furious bouts of what he described as ‘princing’ – opening hospitals, addressing dinners, receiving addresses, smiling, smiling, smiling – and tracts of emptiness which it was up to him to fill as best he could. Geddes, the British Ambassador in Washington, suggested that the Prince would make an ideal Governor General of Canada.4 The King insisted that he was needed nearer home. The Queen said that he must ‘learn how to govern’.5 Yet little indeed was done to teach him. He was denied access to all but a limited range of state papers, never encouraged to talk to politicians or civil servants. He told Lady Airlie that he realized he must work to keep his job, but was given no work and was not even sure he had a job.6
In the middle of the nineteenth century Bagehot had written perceptively of what was now the Prince’s problem: ‘Whatever is most attractive, whatever is most seductive, has always been offered to the Prince of Wales of the day, and always will be. It is not rational to expect the best virtue where temptation is applied in the most trying form at the frailest time of human life.’7 The Prince had done no more than taste the flavour of the fleshpots before the war, there had followed four years of dour privation, now everything was his for the taking. If his life had developed as had been expected in 1914 he would have had time to adjust to the heady and dangerous delights of liberty. As it was, he was almost entirely inexperienced. In 1921 he told Freda Dudley Ward that he had been reading Max Beerbohm’s essay on King George IV.8 ‘I’ve found a sentence in it that I think must be amazingly suitable and applicable to me and somewhat an apology for my doings and behaviour … “He was indeed still a child, for royalties not being ever brought into contact with the realities of life, remain young far longer than other people.” No one realizes how desperately true that is in my case [more] than I do.’9 When he surveyed the monstrous banquet of pleasures which the world laid in front of him, and the unsubstantial restraints placed upon his capacity to gratify himself, he might have been inclined to cry with Clive that he stood astonished at his own moderation.
‘I think David ought to return home before very long,’ wrote Queen Mary to the King three weeks after the armistice, ‘as he must help us in these difficult days.’10 In a letter that must have chilled the Prince’s heart, Lord Stamfordham sketched out the sort of help that was in question. The King had decreed he should take over the Presidency of the King Edward VII’s Hospital Fund. ‘Then there is the Royal College of Music. The University of Wales is the most pressing as the King really constitutionally ought not to be the Chancellor. Then Your Royal Highness is to be elected a Trustee of the British Museum.’11 And so the dismal catalogue went on.
The first essential was to find him a private secretary. Lord Cromer, a former diplomat and banker turned courtier, was the Prince’s original choice, but the King ruled that he could not be spared from his present duties. Next to be canvassed was a former journalist and much-decorated officer in the Brigade of Guards, Edward Grigg, who seemed to accord admirably with Stamfordham’s prescription: ‘someone with brains, with some Colonial knowledge: a facile pen – a nice fellow …’12 Grigg, however, hankered after a career less restricted than he would find in royal service. Eventually the job went to Godfrey Thomas, whose diplomatic career had already been interrupted by the Prince’s demands on his time. In his diary the Prince described Thomas as a ‘topper’ and a ‘ripper’ and he wrote to him as ‘my greatest friend and the one man I can trust and who really understands me’.13 It was perhaps a feeling that the two men were too close to each other that led the King to question the wisdom of the appointment. The Prince stuck to his guns. Thomas was ‘very able, full of tact, and popular with everyone …