The King's Speech - Mark Logue [48]
The Duke was grief stricken. The consequences for his own life were also dramatic. Although he was carrying out his fair share of royal duties, he had hitherto remained largely in the background. With his elder brother’s accession to the throne as Edward VIII, Bertie was elevated to become heir presumptive, which meant he had to take over many of the activities Edward had hitherto carried out. ‘All we at 145, Piccadilly knew in the schoolroom was that all of a sudden we saw much less of handsome golden-headed Uncle David,’ wrote Marion ‘Crawfie’ Crawford, the children’s nanny. ‘There were fewer occasions when he dropped in for a romp with his nieces.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Edward VIII’s 327 Days
Edward VIII at the beginning of his short reign
No British sovereign ascended the throne with more accumulated goodwill than Edward, the eldest son of George V. Whether because of his courage, his radiant good looks or his avowed concern for the ordinary man (and woman), the new King seemed to embody all that was best about the twentieth century. ‘He is gifted with a genuine interest . . . in all sorts and conditions of people, and he is rich in a study that is admirable and endearing in any man and inestimable in a sovereign – the study of mankind,’ enthused The Times on 22 January 1936. His reign was to last less than year, however, ending in one of the greatest crises the British monarchy has ever endured – obliging his younger brother to take a throne he had not wanted and for which he had not been prepared.
Although noted from an early age for his charm and good looks, Edward had been a shy youth. Then in 1916, at the age of twenty-two, he was introduced by two of his equerries to an experienced prostitute in Amiens who, according to one account, ‘brushed aside his extraordinary shyness’.58 From then on, he seemed to be making up for lost time.
Like his grandfather Edward VII before him, Edward adored London night life. Diana Vreeland, a well-connected fashion columnist, appears to have coined the term the ‘The Golden Prince’ and declared that all women of her generation were in love with him.59 Edward showed little interest in the attempts of his strait-laced parents to find him a suitable bride, and instead indulged in a series of affairs, most scandalously one that lasted sixteen years with Freda Dudley Ward, the wife of a Liberal Member of Parliament. After ending the relationship simply by refusing her telephone calls, the Prince moved on to Thelma, Lady Furness, the American-born wife of Viscount Furness, the shipping magnate, and twin sister of Gloria Vanderbilt. The couple had a brief affair.
It was at her husband’s house, Burrough Court, near Melton Mowbray, either in 1930 or 1931 (depending on whose account you believe) that Thelma introduced the Prince to her close friend, Mrs Wallis Simpson. A fairly attractive, stylishly dressed woman in her mid-thirties, she had been born Bessie Wallis Warfield in 1896 into an old Pennsylvania family that had fallen on hard times – an experience that appeared to have left her with an acquisitive streak. In 1916, aged just twenty, she married Earl Winfield Spencer, an American airman, but he was a drunk and they divorced in 1927. A year later she moved up in the world, marrying Ernest Simpson, an American businessman based in London with connections in smart society.
As the Duke of Windsor was later to recall in his memoirs, their relationship got off to a curious start. Casting around for a bland topic with which to start a conversation, he asked whether, as an American, she suffered from the lack of central heating while visiting Britain. Her reply surprised him. ‘I am sorry, Sir,’ she said, a mocking look in her eyes, ‘but you have disappointed me.’
‘In what way?’ replied the Prince.
‘Every American woman who comes to your country is always asked that same question. I had hoped for something more original from the Prince of Wales.’60
The directness of her approach endeared