The Only Thing That Counts Is Me

A REAL Twist of Fate

A fortnight ago, I went to see A Twist of Fate at the Esplanade Theatre. It is billed as “The Original Murder Mystery Musical Comedy”. It was absolutely splendid. Easily the best local production I’ve ever seen and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

The story is in 1937 and takes place entirely in the house of Lim Chin Boon who is 60 years old and dying fast. His only surviving wife (his second wife) expects to inherit his fortune but her plans are disrupted by the sudden arrival of Emma West, an English girl claiming to be the long lost granddaughter of Lim Chin Boon and his first wife.

At one point in the musical, Emma encourages Alice (Lim’s daughter from his second wife) not to give up her love for the house servant boy, Ah See. Emma cites King Edward VIII’s abdication from the throne of England the previous year to marry the woman he loved as a beautifully romantic example of how love can be more important than even a kingdom.

It set me thinking again about Edward VIII’s abdication. The woman he gave up the throne to marry was Wallace Simpson, an American divorcee. When my parents first told me the story as a child, it was portrayed in that same romantic way – the King was not allowed to marry a divorcee but he loved her so much that he gave up the throne to marry her. As I grew up however, I began to think that it was a disgraceful dereliction from duty on the part of Edward VIII to have demoralized his country by abdicating when Britain and Nazi Germany were on an obvious collision course, heading towards war.

After watching A Twist of Fate, I decided to find out more about the true circumstances of the abdication. As it turns out, papers belonging to Sir Walter Turner Monckton (King Edward VIII’s personal lawyer during the abdication crisis) were released by the Bodleian Library in Oxford in 2003 and they paint a shocking picture of extra-marital affairs, sexual domination, a constitutional crisis and rumours of Nazi sympathies. Hardly the stuff of a romantic story at all!

The Charming Prince

Edward VIII was a handsome, charming and publicly popular Prince of Wales in his youth. He was the toast of London society in the roaring twenties and his life was an endless procession of parties. The young Prince never lacked attention from women but apparently, he was known to have developed a taste for affairs with married women in particular.

In 1931, at a house party thrown by his mistress at that time, Edward met Mrs. Bessie Wallace Simpson (she decided to stop using her given first name because “so many cows are called Bessie”). Wallace Simpson was an American socialite living in London and was at that time married to her second husband (after having divorced her first husband). It is not certain when the Prince of Wales and Mrs. Simpson started their affair but by 1934, it was quite clear that the royal family knew of the affair. In November that year, Wallis Simpson attended a party at Buckingham Palace in honour of the Duke of Kent. Prince Edward introduced her to his mother, the Queen, but his father King George V was so outraged that he refused to be introduced to Simpson.

By 1935, the British Government became so concerned about the Prince’s strong affection for Simpson that the Special Branch assigned an agent to follow her every move to investigate her. The Special Branch found that in addition to having an affair with the Prince of Wales which her husband didn’t know about, Simpson was also having an affair with a married car salesman from York, Guy Trundle, which neither her husband nor Prince Edward knew about!

On 20th January 1936, King George V passed away and Edward succeeded him to the English throne, becoming King Edward VIII. That same year, Simpson and her husband agreed to a divorce and Edward announced to the royal family and Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin his intention to marry Simpson as soon as her divorce was finalized. Both the royal family and the PM disapproved of the match.

As Simpson would be twice divorced and was having affairs with other men besides King Edward, the royal family felt that she would not have made a suitable Queen. The royal family also suspected that there was something sick about Edward’s relationship with and affection for Simpson. She was not particularly beautiful and by the time they met in 1931, she was already 35 years old. Philip Ziegler, Edward VIII's official biographer said "There must have been some sort of sadomasochistic relationship. He relished the contempt and bullying she bestowed on him."

As for Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, he had an even more serious reason to disapprove the marriage. The Special Branch had been reporting for some time that Wallace frequently expressed views which were pro-Nazi. The real bombshell came in 1936 however when the American FBI alleged that in addition to her affairs with King Edward and Guy Trundle, Simpson was also having a third affair – this time with Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Nazi German Ambassador to Great Britain! The FBI even claimed that everyday at one stage, Ribbentrop sent Wallace 17 carnations, one for each time they had slept together! Historian Andrew Roberts (an expert on the abdication crisis) has dismissed the FBI’s claims as “absurd” because it is “impossible … on many different levels” but even if that is so, the Monckton Papers released in 2003 clearly reveal that the British Government had been told Wallace Simpson was a “Nazi agent”. Given the reports the Prime Minister was getting, it appears that he had no option but to prevent Simpson from becoming Queen of England as a matter of national security.

Stanley Baldwin’s Political Manoeuvres

To do that, the PM first informed the King that if he married Simpson against the government’s wishes, the entire cabinet would resign en masse. When pressed, the PM next told the King that he saw only 3 possibilities:
1. They have a royal marriage and Simpson becomes Queen;
2. They have a morganatic marriage and Simpson receives a courtesy title without becoming Queen; or,
3. Edward abdicates from the throne of England to marry Simpson.

The PM told the King that he would seek the opinions of the King’s other Prime Ministers in the British Commonwealth on which option they preferred. The suggestion was that if the other Prime Ministers disagreed with Baldwin, he might change his mind and consent to the marriage.

By that time, however, it appears that Baldwin already knew what the other Prime Ministers’ opinions were. A 2nd December 1936 Cabinet Minutes of Meeting released by the National Archives in Britain together with the Monckton Papers states that the PM told Cabinet the following:
1. The King wanted to see the PM at 6 that evening;
2. The PM wanted to be able to tell King that the Cabinet did not consider a morganatic marriage practicable.
3. The Leader of the Labour party (in opposition at that time) had already confirmed to the PM that not a single Labour MP would vote for such legislation.
4. The Prime Ministers of Australia, Canada and South Africa were also against legislation for a morganatic marriage (in addition to a marriage where Simpson becomes Queen).

The Prime Minister of New Zealand thought a morganatic marriage might be acceptable given the King’s popularity with the people. Baldwin appears to have taken care of that because the Minutes then show a handwritten addition by the Cabinet Secretary, Maurice Hankey, that the New Zealand PM would nevertheless defer to the opinion of the Government of the United Kingdom.

The only outright exception was that of Prime Minister Eamon de Valera of Ireland. He took the position that since Anglican Protestanism allowed divorce, the King should be allowed a royal marriage with Simpson becoming Queen. This may have been a mischievous dig against Protestanism on the part of de Valera since Ireland was a Roman Catholic country which did not allow divorces. Baldwin appears to have taken care of that as well because the Minutes then record that Sir Harry Batterbee of the Dominions Office met with de Valera who soon “found himself placed in a very awkward position [and] had been rather staggered when he discovered that if the King were to abdicate and this was rendered possible by legislation in every other part of the Empire, he would be left with King Edward VIII still as King”!

Whilst Baldwin managed to corner de Valera, the fact that de Valera supported a royal marriage on those grounds suggests to me that Baldwin may not have shared with the other Commonwealth Prime Ministers the Special Branch reports that Simpson was a Nazi sympathiser. It is hard to imagine de Valera being in favour of a Queen who had Nazi sympathies. In any event, Baldwin was able to report to the King that neither the Cabinet, nor the Labour opposition nor any of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers (save de Valera) supported a royal marriage or even a morganatic marriage.

Around the same time, the British press ended their self-censorship on the King’s affair with Simpson (mostly because the affair was already so widely published in the European and American media). The intense media scrutiny that followed forced Simpson to leave England for France to avoid further adverse publicity to the King. With the crisis becoming very public, the King summoned the PM to another meeting the following day, on 3rd December 1936. The King proposed that he make a public broadcast via BBC radio to the people of Great Britain and the Commonwealth about his relationship with Simpson. Baldwin agreed at first, believing that the King intended to explain to his subjects why he was abdicating. However, Baldwin was shocked when he received the draft text of the King’s intended broadcast.

In the draft text, released for the first time in 2003 in the Monckton papers, the King intended to say:
“I could not go on bearing the heavy burdens that constantly rest on me as king unless I could be strengthened in the task by a happy married life; and so I am firmly resolved to marry the woman I love, when she is free to marry me … It has taken me a long time to find the woman I want to make my wife. Without her, I have been a very lonely man. With her I shall have a home and all the companionship and mutual sympathy and understanding which married life can bring … Neither Mrs Simpson nor I have ever sought to insist that she should be Queen. All we desired was that our married happiness should carry with it a proper title and dignity for her befitting my wife … Now that I have at last been able to take you so fully into my confidence, I feel it is best to go away for a while, so that you may reflect calmly and quietly, but without undue delay, on what I have said … Nothing is nearer to my heart than that I should return …”

Despite its subtleties, Baldwin grasped the true meaning of the King’s draft speech – the King intended to marry Simpson and remain King of England despite the objection of the British Government and all the Commonwealth Prime Ministers (save de Valera). The King sought to achieve this by appealing to the people directly through his speech and thereby hopefully whip up sufficient public support to force Baldwin and the other Prime Ministers to back down. That’s what the King intended when he proposed to say “Now that I have at last been able to take you so fully into my confidence, I feel it is best to go away for a while, so that you may reflect calmly and quietly, but without undue delay, on what I have said.”

The PM’s Countermeasures

To prevent the crisis from challenging the Government of all the Commonwealth Countries, Baldwin had to act fast. Upon reading the draft speech, the PM told the King that he would not approve the speech in those terms. He immediately returned to Downing Street and telegrammed his counterparts in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa. Baldwin suggested all the Prime Ministers should agree that as a matter of Constitution, there was a "fundamental difference" between the position of the King and that of a private person. In the King's case, his every utterance had to be approved by Ministers because of his constitutional position as the figure uniting the nations, Empire and Commonwealth. This agreement amongst the Prime Ministers was then communicated to the King.

Next, to prevent the King from addressing the people in defiance of the Government’s wishes, the Prime Minister’s office contacted the Director General of the BBC, Sir John (later Lord) Reith. Reith gave his assurance that the BBC would reject any proposal by the King to make a public address without the prior approval of the Government.

The next day, the Government’s constitutional experts gave their opinion which concurred entirely with the position Baldwin and the other Prime Ministers had taken. The opinion said:

“The sovereign can make no public statement on any matter of public interest except on the advice of his ministers … The king's ministers must take responsibility for every public act of the King. This is the basis of the constitutional monarchy … If the King disregarded it, constitutional monarchy would cease to exist. The King is bound to accept and act upon the advice of his ministers ... for the King to broadcast in disregard of that advice would be appealing over the heads of his constitutional advisers … The last time when this happened in English history was when Charles I raised His Standard at the beginning of the Civil War on 22 August 1642.”

The Abdication

Within 24 hours, Baldwin had the Commonwealth Prime Ministers, the constitutional experts and the BBC on his side and thus succeeded in completely out manoeuvring the King’s last ditch attempt to marry Simpson and keep his throne. A week later, on 10th December 1936, witnessed and attested to by his 3 brothers, the King signed the Instrument of Abdication which was drafted by Sir Walter Monckton and read:
“I, Edward the Eighth, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Emperor of India, do hereby declare My irrevocable determination to renounce the throne for Myself and for My descendants, and My desire that effect should be given to this instrument of abdication immediately.”

Upon Edward’s abdication, his brother, Prince Albert the Duke of York, became King George VI. Edward did make a public address on BBC radio thereafter but it was to explain his abdication because of his inability to do his job "as I would have wished" without the support of "the woman I love”. It was this public address which the world heard and which led people like my parents to believe it was simply a romantic case of a King who gave up his throne to marry the woman he loved. The perverse true nature of their relationship, the rumours of Simpson’s Nazi sympathies, the constitutional crisis which Edward tried to precipitate and the deft political manouevring of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin were things which the World only learnt about when the Monckton Papers were released in 2003.

After abdication, King George VI made his brother Edward the Duke of Windsor with the style “His Royal Highness”. The following year, on 3rd May 1937, Wallace Simpson’s divorce from her 2nd husband was finalised. A month later, Edward married Simpson, making her the Duchess of Windsor but to Edward’s lifelong dismay, the royal family consistently refused to grant Simpson the style “Her Royal Highness”. In October 1937, Edward and Simpson, as the Duke & Duchess of Windsor, visited Nazi Germany. They met with Adolf Hitler and dined with his deputy, Rudolf Hess. It appears that they even visited a concentration camp.

Perhaps for those and other reasons, when World War II broke out, the Duke & Duchess of Windsor were transferred to The Bahamas where Edward was made Governor for the duration of the war. To their credit, the couple remained married till Edward’s death in 1972 although observers have said that throughout their married life, he remained very much under her thumb. Simpson passed away in 1986.

As for Stanley Baldwin, he retired shortly after the Coronation of George VI in May 1937. In the words of historian Robert Blake "no prime minister has ever chosen a better moment to bow out"but his reputation did not last long as he took some of the blame for not standing up to Hitler and Mussolini early enough. When World War II began in September 1939, Baldwin was blamed for having left Britain with insufficient defences.

The Monckton Papers, from which we learn of all the above intrigues, holds one last card yet. A letter dated 14th August 1940 from the then Queen (i.e. the current Queen Elizabeth II’s late mother) to Sir Walter Monckton has been left out of the collection released in 2003. It will be embargoed up to 2037.

Monckton was a brilliant lawyer with a large and lucrative legal practice when in 1932 he was asked by his old Oxford colleague, the Prince of Wales, to be his legal adviser. Monckton may have remained in obscurity even in that role but for the abdication crisis of 1936. He is widely credited with having given King Edward VIII sound legal advice and help in the King’s negotiations with Baldwin’s government and the royal family. Sir Walter Monckton was such a revered friend that when Edward ascended the throne, he was the first person knighted by the King who nearly sliced his ear off when dubbing him with a sword. The King then quipped "Well Walter, we did not manage that very well, but neither of us had done it before."

Sir Walter remained a close and trusted friend of both the Duke of Windsor (which Edward became after his abdication) and the royal family and must have been at the centre of the storm when the royal family steadfastly refused to grant Simpson the style “Her Royal Highness”. It is speculated that the letter of August 1940 contains particularly vitrolic statements from the then Queen against Simpson and remains embargoed so as to avoid embarrassment to the royal family. Until 2037 then, when we may see one last twist of fate in the abdication of King Edward VIII.