The Peoples King by Susan Williams Page B

get hold of Mrs Simpson can now secure His Majesty', commented Jean Hamilton enviously in the summer of 193 6. 117 Emerald Cunard, an American, was a keen contender for Wallis's favour. She was the estranged wife of Sir Bache Cunard, grandson of the founder of the Cunard shipping line. She was known for her affairs with the writer George Moore and then with Sir Thomas Beecham, the famous conductor, and had a particular interest in the patronage of musicians and writers. By the time Edward had started his reign, Lady Hamilton was observing in her diary that Emerald Cunard and 'all her crew' were 'tumbling after' Wallis. Their nickname, she added, was The Royal Racket'. 118 Some resentment was felt at Lady Cunard's determination to win Wallis's favour. At a 'pompous, manque dinner' at Lady Cunard's in 1936, when she was 'looking like Pavlova in white', wrote Chips Channon, she slipped a crumpled note into his hand for him to read. It was an anonymous missive she had received. It began, 'You old bitch, trying to make up to Mrs Simpson, in order to curry favour with the King.' Emerald was frightened, thought Channon, 'and yet rather flattered. It was in an educated handwriting.' 119
    Wallis fully understood what was going on. 'One gets tired of having people make a fuss over you because they want to see HRH', she complained to her aunt. 120 She knew, though, that it was important not to alienate anyone. 'I have tried awfully hard this year to be nice to the natives,' she wrote, 'answering thousands of notes, going to boring parties." 21 With wry humour, she congratulated herself on managing to cope so well in Edward's world, given her limited means. 'I imagine anyway I am doing far far better than Thelma on far far less', she told Bessie, referring to Edward's previous lover, Lady Furness. 122 'I enjoy meeting and seeing all these people', she wrote in another letter, adding that 'some times it seems strange to think of those days of struggle in Earl's Court [an apartment building in Baltimore] and the other flat where mother had the cafe and was forever working herself to death to give me things." 21 In June 1935, Wallis told her aunt about a recent court ball at which the Prince had danced with her directly after the opening dance with the Queen. She had been thrilled by Edward's public display of devotion and by the attentions of the court. 'I really know them all now and must say they are grand to me', she reported with pleasure. But she was under no illusions. 'Naturally,' she added dryly, 'only for the duration of my length of service.’ 124
     
     
3 'The Spirit of the Age'
     
     
    Wallis Simpson had never been heard of by the general public in Britain when Edward visited South Wales in November 1936. They knew nothing about the most important thing in his life - the woman he adored. But they did know about his concern for the welfare of the poor, which was further demonstrated on the royal tour. It wasn't only in South Wales that people witnessed Edward's ready sympathy with the unemployed of the valleys, for the following week newsreel reports of the royal tour were shown in every cinema of Britain. It had been filmed by all five of the newsreel companies - Gaumont-British News, Movietone News, Pathe, Paramount and Universal. The cover­age of the tour was highly sympathetic to the King: it followed him as he walked among the poor, visited their homes, mixed mortar at their instruction, doffed his hat and nodded his head, and showed his evident distress at their sufferings. 'Bringing the whole problem of the Depressed Areas out of the shadows into the floodlight of world attention,' announced Pathe Gazette's The King Visits South Wales, 'His Majesty's visit to South Wales is not only a promise of new life but a gesture of sympathy.' It stressed the King's plea for urgent action:
    But beneath all this His Majesty saw the disillusion and suffering brought by long workless years. His visit has cheered them as nothing else