Free The Peoples King by Susan Williams

difficult to see how she could have looked 'up' into his eyes. But comments like these must have helped him to feel vigorous and manly. Wallis also helped him with those parts of his job that he found wearisome, and many people recognized her usefulness in this respect. At a party, Prince Paul of Yugoslavia went up to Wallis and begged her to persuade the King to telephone his sympathy to the Infanta, Beatrice of Spain, whose second son had just been killed. When the King pleaded, 'Couldn't I do it in the morning?', she intervened firmly - 'No, now, to please me, sir.' He obediently made the call. 81
    Some of the King's friends tried to exploit Mrs Simpson's influence on him. For example, Lady Oxford and Asquith (Margot Asquith) wrote to her at the start of Edward's reign about his churchgoing - or rather his lack of it. 'Actually, he goes quite often to the simple little chapel in Windsor Park,' replied Wallis in his defence,
    but I am afraid this does not appear in the 'Court Circular'. As you know he has been going to his country house for weekends since he has been King - this form of relaxation I think he finds essential as he is so accustomed to air and exercise it would be difficult for him to give it up entirely and I personally feel it makes him more fit for his great task.
    But she would urge him, she promised, to show his religious feeling more publicly:
    I think however that perhaps if he went to St George's Chapel there would be more publicity - and I heartily agree with you that though he may be deeply religious within himself, the outward expression of this is very necessary to his subjects. I shall try to suggest this to him tactfully - and I am sure he will be only too glad to change his church - for no one is trying harder than he to do all he can for us all. 82
     
    Lady Oxford was 'full of Mrs S's good sense and good influence on HM', noted one observer. 83 Winston Churchill saw the same benefits. Since the King had met Mrs Simpson, he commented, he looked 'older and harder - a little stiffer perhaps since he became King, definitely more confidence in himself.' 84 Monckton thought so too: 'She insisted that he should be at his best and do his best at all times, and he regarded her as an inspiration.' 85
    But Edward's father, George V, had been horrified by the unsuitability of Mrs Simpson. Edward and two of his brothers - Albert, known in the family as 'Bertie' (and who later became King George VI), and George - had already distressed their father by indulging in relationships with married women. Mrs Freda Dudley Ward, who was married to William Dudley Ward, Liberal MP for Southampton, had been Edward's 'own beloved Angel' 86 from 1918 to 1934. Her place in Edward's affections was then taken by Thelma, Lady Furness. Prince Albert, too, had been involved with a married woman. In 1919, he fell in love with Sheila Loughborough, an Australian-born London Society beauty who was married to Lord Loughborough, by whom she had had a baby boy the previous winter. At this time, Edward and Albert more or less shared the same social circle, and Albert prevailed upon his brother to spirit Sheila away from her husband so that they could spend some time together. 87 George V objected strongly. 'Christ! how I loathe & despise my bloody family' expostulated Edward to Freda Dudley Ward from a sea voyage on 24 May 1920,
    as Bertie has written me 3 long sad letters in which he tells me he's been getting it in the neck about his friendship with poor little Sheilie & that TOI et MOI came in for it too!! But if HM thinks he's going to alter me by insulting you he's making just about the biggest mistake of his silly useless life ... God! damn him! 88
    King George decided to tempt Albert away from Sheila with the carrot of a dukedom. 'Now as regards old Bertie & Sheilie,' Edward told Freda,
    B talks a lot of hot air about HM making him a duke on condition that his name ceases to be more or less coupled with Sheilie's . . . Bertie