In defence of Wallis Simpson
Philip Ziegler
reviews The People's King by Susan Williams
12:01AM BST 18 Aug
2003
Susan Williams's
somewhat venturesome subtitle suggests that she has discovered some
hitherto undiscovered truth about the abdication.
Whatever this may
be, it is certainly not based on new facts. There is no material in
her book that was not already available - to this biographer at least
- except for the Special Branch reports. These are of interest in
that they show the police considered it their duty to monitor the
activities of the Prince of Wales and his mistress, but otherwise are
no more than modestly entertaining. The most pungent charge they
contain is that Mrs Simpson, while married to Ernest Simpson and in
hectic pursuit of the prince, was simultaneously conducting an affair
with a raffish motor-car salesman, Guy Trundle, on whom she lavished
expensive gifts and cash.
Williams very
reasonably doubts whether Wallis Simpson could have found time to fit
Trundle into her life. She might also have pointed out that giving,
rather than receiving, expensive presents was not Mrs Simpson's
style, but references to the Duchess of Windsor's meanness would not
have fitted comfortably into Williams's master vision.
This book is an
exercise in rehabilitation. As such it is overdue. The Duke of
Windsor has been spectacularly traduced in recent years; the
culmination being a programme called Edward: the Traitor King,
without even the courtesy of a question mark. Williams reminds one of
Edward's extraordinary charm, his ability to talk with people of
every kind, his wit, his genuine concern for the underprivileged. But
she lays it on a bit thick. To refer to the "democratic
leanings" of a man who believed in strong and authoritarian
government is wholly to misinterpret Edward's political opinions; the
real dismay that lay behind his comment on the horrors of
unemployment in South Wales - "Something must be done" -
needs to be set against his conspicuous failure to do anything about
it when preoccupations about his love life absorbed his energies.
The author's
determination to present the Windsors in a favourable light leads to
occasional unfairness to other people. Cosmo Gordon Lang is perhaps
fair game, but Williams does less than justice to Stanley Baldwin's
affection for Edward and anxiety to keep him on the throne. When Mrs
Simpson took on the role of hostess at Balmoral, and stepped forward
to greet the Yorks, Williams describes her behaviour as being a
"gesture of friendship" and reprimands the future Queen
Mother for snubbing her sister-in-law-to-be. Others might feel that
only a woman of extraordinary insensitivity would not have thought it
better to keep discreetly in the background at such a moment.
Williams's most
energetically exploited source is the mountain of letters written by
members of the public to Edward VIII, as well as letters to
Churchill, Baldwin and other dignitaries, contemporary diaries and
other manifestations of vox populi. Williams's contention is that
Baldwin "misjudged the feelings of the British public";
that there was more support for the King and readiness to accept Mrs
Simpson than was acknowledged by the Establishment; and that the
working classes and the liberal elements of the bourgeoisie believed
that Edward VIII should follow his heart and marry the woman he
loved.
There is quite a lot
in this; she assembles a dossier to suggest that, if there had been a
plebiscite in 1936, the result might not have been as conclusively
against the King as ministers assumed. But again she weakens her case
by its tendentious presentation. Voices expressing the other point of
view are from time to time audible. "Dear Ted. I think you are a
bugger. Bill" was one succinct example, but the King's
supporters get the lion's share.
It is interesting to
speculate whether, if Edward VIII had stuck to his guns, Baldwin had
resigned, and Churchill had led the Cavaliers into an election, the
King's party might have won the day.
Probably not, but
Williams's book suggests that it might have been a close-run thing.
Her thesis is not totally convincing, but it is well worth presenting
for all that.
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