Power and Glory, page 14
Unfortunately, something as incendiary as the suggestion of the former monarch’s treachery was hard to keep out of the public gaze. Although General Eisenhower concurred with the British wish to keep a lid on the files, a microfilm copy of them had already been sent from Marburg to the US State Department, and their existence became sufficiently common knowledge for Newsweek magazine to run a suggestive story hinting at their contents on 4 November 1946. As a much later memo by the then deputy prime minister Anthony Eden to Churchill tartly stated, ‘the position became more difficult as the Anglo-United States project, agreed in June 1946, for the joint publication of a series of volumes of documents selected from the German Foreign Ministry archives developed’.
It did not help that the agreement contained a so-called ‘escape clause’, by which, in Eden’s words, ‘either Government could publish separately any documents upon which agreement between them could not be reached’.14 It became clear that the publication of the Marburg papers was inevitable, and on 30 June 1947, Bevin wrote to Attlee to warn him of such an event, and to discuss what could be done to mitigate the damage. Bevin alluded to a conversation that had taken place between them on 28 February, saying, ‘you took the view that it would be dangerous to forewarn the Duke since that would probably lead him to put out precautionary stories by way of defending himself and these in turn might provoke a leakage’. Anticipating that the Americans would wish to push for the full publication of the documents on 3 July, on the grounds that ‘they feel that the withdrawal of the file at the instance of one of the Governments in the work of editing constitutes a dangerous precedent’, Bevin was uncertain as to whether to acquiesce in their publication or ask the British representative,† John Wheeler Bennett, to ‘adopt stone-walling tactics and seek to postpone the issue’.
Bevin now saw the inevitability of what he called ‘the evil day’ coming to pass, saying, ‘I cannot think of any valid argument with which to confute the [American] arguments.’15 Nonetheless, he knew that it was obligatory to consult the king or his courtiers and, ultimately, the Duke of Windsor, and warn them that the dam was about to break. It was agreed that he would discuss the matter with Lascelles, who suggested that if the papers were to be selected for publication, the duke, along with Churchill, need only be informed shortly before the actual point when they would enter the public domain: as Bevin wrote, ‘I approve this course … It assumes that, in the interval, there will be no leakage, but that is a risk that I think we must take.’16 Attlee scrawled, ‘I agree’ on the document.
The reason for the acceptance of the document’s publication lay in part with something that had occurred earlier that year. On 15 March, the American Secretary of State, George Marshall, together with Bevin, was attending a meeting of foreign ministers in Moscow when he was alerted to the existence of an incendiary document. Accordingly, he sent a top-secret telegram, marked ‘For Your Eyes Only’, to Under-Secretary of State Dean Acheson that read, ‘Bevin informs me that Department or White House has on film a microfilm copy of a paper concerning the Duke of Windsor. Bevin says only other copy was destroyed by Foreign Office, and asks that we destroy ours to avoid possibility of a leak to great embarrassment of Windsor’s brother [the King]. Please attend to this for me and reply for my eyes only.’17
It remains uncertain as to precisely what this document – which presumably was destroyed at Bevin’s request – was. Given the damning nature of the existing material that relates to the Duke of Windsor, the fact that there should be something so damaging that it would have to be destroyed by the Foreign Office can lead to the wildest speculation as to how extensive the duke’s Nazi sympathies and contacts were. Whatever happened in March, it was clear by the summer of 1947 that little could be done to prevent the appearance of the remaining files, whatever was contained with them.
Accordingly, the king reluctantly consented in July to the Marburg papers being returned to the archives in Berlin, in the knowledge that their eventual publication would be inevitable. The duke was informed of their existence, but he refused to take the possibility of public humiliation seriously, commenting to Godfrey Thomas that ‘the German Ambassador was making up a good story on the lines that he thought would please his chief, Ribbentrop’. That Ribbentrop had once been a friend to both Edward, when he was king, and Wallis was unmentioned; Thomas loyally suggested that this ‘had already occurred to us as a possibility’.18 The story that the art historian Anthony Blunt – later exposed as a Russian agent – and the Windsor librarian and archivist Owen Morshead had been sent on a top-secret mission to Germany to retrieve the documents relating to the duke, and that the contents of these documents enabled Blunt to use his knowledge as a bargaining chip to prevent his imprisonment when his own nefarious activities were exposed, is an amusing piece of Boys’ Own intrigue, but, alas, entirely false.
If Edward was concerned about the documents being made public, he was at least distracted in July by the arrival of Murphy at La Croë. It soon became clear to the ghostwriter that the duke intended these initially uncontroversial pieces of journalism to act as a Trojan horse of sorts, and that his truer intention was to begin work on a memoir that would articulate his own story. As Murphy later wrote of their collaboration, ‘Edward VIII was becoming as dim and insubstantial as Edward II … those handsome features, recently so clear and sharp in the public memory, had begun to blur. To arrest that process, to restore the lustre of his reputation, to assure that his side of the story was presented fairly, and to regain some measure of his self-respect, he decided to write an apologia, although it would be disguised as his autobiography.’19
Murphy was struck by the sense of how desolate the lives of the duke and duchess were. They were given over to self-aggrandising theatricality, as if in compensation. He recorded that a couple of his acquaintance remarked how ‘a tiny little white table for us four was set on the huge lawn. There were rows of footmen … the night was furiously hot, but the Duke was in full Scottish regalia. I thought he was staging a production of some sort.’ Murphy was similarly dismissive about the relationship between the duke and his wife. When remarking of their presence at a Monte Carlo gala, he wrote, ‘she had on every jewel. He wore a kilt. It was like watching a couple in pantomime – the studied gestures, the automatic smiles.’20
The collaboration soon became tense. As Murphy later wrote, ‘The Duchess managed to keep the Duke amused at La Croë, but it was at [my] expense.’ He became ‘increasingly disheartened to see how much time the Duke devoted to idleness and frivolity, and how little he could find for his autobiography’. The duchess wished to become a grande dame of Parisian society, and so would uproot the household to the French capital almost on a whim; Murphy had little option than to go along with the couple. It reduced him to frustration and fury by turns. Had he known that he would continue to work with the duke for several more years, he would have thrown up his hands in despair and left him to it.
Still, they managed to find enough time together to complete the four contracted Life articles, even if the duke complained to Thomas that he had never worked as hard or with such concentration. Ominously for his family, he also commented that he had enjoyed the experience and was prepared to write a fuller autobiography. When the Life pieces began to run, from 8 December 1947, there was no cause for criticism, given their innocuous nature, but Queen Mary, who considered it deplorable that any member of the royal family should commit their thoughts to public view, wrote to her son to criticise his decision.
His response was both suave and combative. ‘I was surprised you thought it a pity I wrote of so many private facts … I would submit that the personal memoir of Papa undertaken by John Gore at your and Bertie’s request contains far more intimate extracts from Papa’s diaries and glimpses into his character and habits than I would have dared to use or thought suitable to include in the story of my early life.’21 This was something of a shift in his attitude towards his mother, and his wider family. In October 1947, he had been on the defensive, writing in the usual sentimental fashion about his wife. ‘I am always hoping that one day you will tell me to bring Wallis to see you as it makes me very sad to think that you and she have never really met. After all ten years is a long time since all the commotion of my abdication and as we are not growing any younger it would indeed be tragic if you, my mother, had never known the girl I married and who has made me so blissfully happy.’22
Now, buoyed by the Sunday Express editor John Gordon’s comments to Allen that the articles, which he had published in Britain in his newspaper, had done the duke’s reputation ‘immensely more good than anything in years’ and that ‘in 20 years of editing this newspaper I recall nothing which aroused keener reader interest’,23 he resumed his partnership with Murphy. He was hell-bent on writing his autobiography. The two men came up with A King’s Story as a working title, and for want of anything pithier, that remained its name. It would first exist as a series of exclusive articles in Life, and would then be released in expanded book form.
It should have been a harmonious collaboration, but the relationship between the two men would soon worsen. Yet the duke’s difficulties with his ghostwriter would soon be the least of his problems, as his total estrangement from his family was publicly demonstrated once more.
Chapter Nine
‘I Felt That I Had Lost Something Very Precious’
As Lascelles returned from the South African trip, and confided his thoughts about the tour to his wife, he could not refrain from a minor indiscretion. ‘My impression, by the way, is that we shall all be subscribing to a wedding present before the year is out.’1 The separation between Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip had been an attempt to see whether the much-discussed romance could last such distance and, on the part of George VI, to attempt to delay the loss of his elder daughter. Yet although the couple’s contact had been sporadic, no estrangement had taken place. Elizabeth returned to England hoping that she would be married before long.
However, not everyone was as excited by the prospect as she was. Queen Mary remained uncertain about Philip, and although Crawfie’s account of their conversation paints her in a self-consciously out-of-touch light – ‘You think Lilibet will marry him? I know nothing. No one has told me. He seems a good boy, I think … we must wait and see, and hope for the best’2 – she was opposed to the match: at least one account suggests that she was open about her doubts about the engagement. Given the influence and power she wielded within the royal family, it would take an equally determined woman not to be deterred from her wishes.
During Princess Elizabeth’s absence, Prince Philip finally secured his British citizenship, on 18 March 1947. His presence at Mountbatten’s farewell party that evening, at the Royal Automobile Club on Pall Mall, therefore doubled as a celebration of his own naturalisation. Although he was not present to welcome the royal family back to England upon their return on 11 May* – which led to press speculation that his relationship with Elizabeth was over, not helped by regular formal denials† from the palace that any engagement was planned – he now wrote to the queen on 10 June and said explicitly that while he appreciated the delay, he was still intent on marrying her daughter, and that this was the princess’s desire as well. He remained a regular visitor to Buckingham Palace – Crawfie observed that ‘his small sports car was again to be seen constantly at the side entrance … the old routine began’, and she spoke for all in the royal household when she wrote, ‘Surely, we all thought, something must be arranged now.’3
The delay came from the royal parents. While the king’s reluctance to let his daughter go was balanced by the respect he felt for Philip, the queen remained ambivalent about the match, perhaps influenced by her mother-in-law. Shortly after she received the 10 June letter from Philip, she wrote to Lascelles‡ to say, ‘You can imagine what emotion this engagement has given me … It is one of the things that has been in the forefront of all one’s hopes & plans for a daughter who has such a burden to carry, and one can only pray that she has made the right decision.’ Describing her future son-in-law as ‘untried as yet’, the greatest endorsement she could offer of the wisdom of her daughter’s decision was ‘I think she has’, indicating lingering doubt about Philip’s suitability.
Nonetheless, after several weeks during which Elizabeth and Philip made conscious efforts not to be seen together in public, the queen wrote to her sister on 7 July to confirm that the worst-kept secret in royal circles would no longer remain covert information. ‘This is one line to tell you very secretly that Lilibet has made up her mind to get engaged to Philip Mountbatten.’ The use of language was interesting – ‘has made up her mind’ hardly connoted romance, or approval, just as the queen’s weary ‘As you know, she has known him ever since she was 12, & I think that she is really fond of him, & I do pray that she will be very happy’ sounds less like a mother truly happy about her daughter’s decision and more like someone resigned to seeing a headstrong young woman about to make a mistake.
Although the news was to be announced imminently, the queen counselled caution: ‘we are keeping it a deadly secret, purely because of the Press, if they know beforehand that something is up, they are likely to ruin everything’.4 Yet the following day, Princess Elizabeth entered Crawfie’s room ‘looking absolutely radiant’, and without the appearance of strain that had defined her since her return from South Africa. She said, ‘Crawfie, something is going to happen at last!’ and when her counsellor and guide responded, emotionally, ‘It’s about time’, she announced, ‘He’s coming tonight’, kissed her and waltzed away. On 9 July, Elizabeth, of whom Crawfie said that she had ‘never [looked] lovelier than she did on that day’, walked in and showed off her engagement ring, ‘a large square diamond with smaller diamonds either side’5: it had been chosen in secret by Elizabeth and Philip, and, although slightly too large, represented the binding commitment between the two.
It was, by then, inevitable that the announcement would be made that evening that ‘It is with the greatest pleasure that the King and Queen announce the betrothal of their dearly beloved daughter The Princess Elizabeth to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten … to which union the King has gladly given his consent.’ It was a popular match, lifting spirits at a time of national gloom. The Daily Express declared that ‘today, the British people, turning aside from the anxieties of a time of troubles, find hope as well as joy in the royal romance’.6
Every single newspaper – primed by the efforts of Driberg and Mountbatten – was laudatory about the match; as Jock Colville wrote in his diary, ‘an effort had obviously been made to build [Philip] up as the nephew of Lord Louis Mountbatten rather than a Greek Prince’.7 If anything, press reports sought to make Philip more English than the average Englishman; one especially gushing account declared, ‘[He had] that intense love of England and the British way of life, that deep devotion to the ideals of peace and liberty for which Britain stands, that are characteristic of so many naval men.’8 Had the famously no-nonsense Philip been shown such a report, he would undoubtedly have rolled his eyes to heaven at the hyperbole.
The international reception to the news was similarly warm. The American diplomat Robert Coe reported to Secretary of State George Marshall that ‘the engagement of Princess Elizabeth … to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten RN has met with the general approval of the British public’. Coe was not deaf to the gossip –‘the rumours that have been current since last summer were sufficiently strong to have made the British people conscious that this engagement eventually would be announced’ – but underneath his professionalism was a touch of sentimentality. ‘There was little element of surprise when it took place, as it was widely known that the young couple were in love with each other … The press has accorded a generous amount of praise of the Princess for her execution of public duties, and to Lieutenant Mountbatten for his meritorious record in the British Navy.’
After (accurately) speculating that Philip would be given a dukedom upon marriage, Coe praised him as ‘an agreeable young man, displaying certain characteristics which stamp him as exceptional … It may be said that the Princess’ fiancé has met with general popularity, as he fulfils the requirements of the British public in that he belongs to a Royal House, has been brought up in England, has taken British citizenship, and has a fine record of service in the British Navy.’ His fiancée, meanwhile, was described as being ‘a firm character … an intelligent young lady, and a pleasing personality’, and was likened to Queen Victoria in her strong-willed disposition.
Evidence of this willpower could be seen by Coe’s observation that ‘some six months ago it was learned that Princess Elizabeth had determined to marry Lieutenant Mountbatten and declared that if objections were raised she would not hesitate to follow the example of her uncle, Edward VIII, and abdicate’.9 Although this seems a fanciful assumption for the dutiful Elizabeth, it was nevertheless testament to the strength of her attachment to Philip that such a bold – if no longer unprecedented – action could be considered possible.
Whether or not the queen was wholly delighted about the engagement, she put on a show of contentment about its resolution. She wrote to her friend Sir Osbert Sitwell on 10 July that ‘we feel very happy about [the engagement], as he is a very nice person, & they have known each other for years which is a great comfort’. She acknowledged the national joy at the announcement (‘Everyone has been so kind’) and suggested, in contrast to the international sense of pessimism largely wrought by the Soviet Union, that ‘I think that people feel like a moment of rejoicing over a young lady’s “Yes!”’10
She also knew that she had to assure her future son-in-law of her family’s amity towards him. After her brother’s continual rudeness and hostility, and whispers that courtiers did not believe that Philip was ‘quite the thing’, it was necessary to be explicit about his welcome into the royal family, and also hint at expectations now raised of his behaviour in both public and private spheres. Accordingly, while bedridden with laryngitis, she wrote to Philip on 9 July – presumably moments after the official announcement – to say, ‘I particularly wanted to see [you] & tell you how happy we feel about the engagement, and to say how glad we are to have you as a son-in-law. It is so lovely to know you so well and I know that we can trust our darling Lilibet to your love and care.’
