Free The Peoples King by Susan Williams Page A

may be a Duke now for all I know, as I think that his rather pompous nature makes him want to be one. 89
    On 5 June 1920, Albert was made Duke of York. The next year he transferred his attentions to Helen ('Poppy') Baring, who had the reputation of being 'fast' and fun-loving. He proposed marriage to her while staying with her parents during Cowes week. She accepted, but his mother, Queen Mary, swiftly made it clear that the match was impossible. Six years later, Prince George also fell for Poppy and proposed, but this marriage was not allowed either. 90
    Prince George had numerous affairs and one-night stands with both men and women. 'I was told no one - of either sex - was safe with him in a taxi', said one person who knew him well. 91 One of his lovers was Noel Coward. In 1932 there was 'a scandal about Prince George - letters to a young man in Paris. A large sum had to be paid for their recovery.' 92 He also became addicted to cocaine after an affair with Kiki Whitney Preston, an American woman who belonged to the decadent group of white settlers in Kenya known as the Happy Valley set. To rescue George from Kiki, Edward forced her to leave England in the summer of 1929. He then cancelled a holiday with Freda Dudley Ward so that he could devote himself to the task of curing George of his cocaine addiction, with the help of doctors. He told Freda that he was forced to act as George's 'doctor, gaoler and detective combined'. By the end of the year the worst was over: Kiki was safely abroad, and the Prince was weaned off the drug. 93
    The 'fast' life of these princes was by no means at odds with the customs of the English elite. Despite the strait-laced nature of George V's court, it was perfectly normal for many of the upper classes - married and unmarried - to enjoy sexual relationships with any number of others - again, married and unmarried. Edwina Mount- batten had a number of passionate affairs; but the only time this became a scandal was when a magazine called The People insinuated (mistakenly, it appeared) that she was having an affair with Paul Robeson. Edwina's husband, Louis, also had many affairs, with both men and women. Lord Londonderry had affairs with one woman after another. Many of these women were American, including Consuelo Vanderbilt, the heiress who had married his second cousin, the ninth Duke of Marlborough. By another American, a married actress, he had a child who was born just six weeks after his wedding; and his most lasting affair was with yet another American woman, the wife of the Earl of Ancaster.
    Bertie settled down finally when he married Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in 192.3. Technically she was a commoner until her marriage to a royal, but as the daughter of the Earl of Strathmore she belonged to one of the oldest upper-class families of Britain. George settled down when he married Princess Marina of Greece in 1934. And in his own way Edward settled down too, when he fell irrevocably in love with Wallis Simpson. But while everybody in Society could understand why Albert had chosen Elizabeth and George had chosen Marina, they were utterly baffled by Edward's choice. 'He is, I believe,' said Robert Bruce Lockhart, a former diplomat who was the editor of the 'Lon­doner's Diary' in the Evening Standard, 'suffering from dementia erotica.'™ Theories abounded of special sexual skills used by Wallis to satisfy the King. It was said that she appealed to a latent homo­sexuality in Edward, because of her slim, boyish figure. Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary on 27 November that Kingsley Martin, the editor of the socialist magazine New Statesman and Nation, had earlier been 'approached by one of the King's circle, was asked to write an article, revealing the facts from the King's side. Then he was told to wait. . . The King's men told him in strict secrecy about the sexual difficulty.' 95 Whatever this 'sexual difficulty' was, she did not explain; most prob­ably she had no idea and was simply repeating