King Edward VIII. Philip Ziegler

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СКАЧАТЬ in his diary: ‘I’m utterly fed up with visiting temples and never want to see another one again.’ He found an itinerant snake-charmer decidedly more interesting than Karnak by moonlight. The ancient and eminent Egyptologist Professor Le Grain lavished his learning on the young visitor but gained little gratitude for his pains. ‘I wasn’t sorry to see him go, for he … nearly killed me with his detailed descriptions.’¹³ It is unlikely, however, that the professor guessed how little pleasure he had given; the Prince’s manners rarely fell below excellence and he would have gone to great pains to put a good face on his sufferings. When Ronald Storrs conducted the Prince round Cairo a few days later, he wrote that he had never met a visitor ‘who entered more swiftly into the spirit of the place … I have met none with equal vitality or with more appreciation of Eastern life’.¹⁴ Perhaps Storrs was a more congenial cicerone than the professor, certainly the Prince found Cairo much jollier than the Upper Nile and agitated to be allowed to pay it a second visit. The King for some reason objected and the Prince wrote in injured innocence: ‘I don’t want to go galivanting about in Cairo, far from it. I’m not even going to ask you for a night there … just a few hours so that I may go to the bazaars and do some shopping for you and Mama.’¹⁵

      In Cairo he met Lord Edward Cecil, a fellow Grenadier, shrewd judge of character and author of the exquisitely witty The Leisure of an Egyptian Official. ‘He is a nice boy of fifteen, rather immature for that age,’ Lord Edward wrote to his wife. ‘He cannot get in or out of a room except sideways and he has the nervous smile of one accustomed to float. I hope he will grow up, but he is leaving it till late. He is curiously decided, even obstinate, and happily there is no sign of weakness of character. His main terror is getting fat. He adores the Regiment and would talk all day about it, but beyond love of all military matters, an outspoken hatred of politicians and a very fine English accent when he speaks French, he has no apparent special characteristics. I think one day he will fall in love and then he will suddenly grow up.’¹⁶

      He never got back to Cairo nor was he allowed to stay on in the Middle East after the onset of the hot season. Malcolm Murray direly prophesied sunstroke and probably enteric fever if he lingered on, and the King ordered his return: ‘You have had a nice change and have enjoyed some nice warm weather; think of the many thousands of poor fellows who are obliged to remain in France without a break …’¹⁷ The Prince might justifiably have retorted that he thought constantly about them, that he had done all he could to be treated like them, and that his return to a job on the staff would not improve their lot by an iota. Instead, he accepted his recall with moderately good grace. On the way back, in May 1916, he called on King Victor Emmanuel at his headquarters near the Italian front at Udine. He found the King a ‘dear and charming little man’ but it was the same story as in France; as soon as the royal party got anywhere near any scene of possible action, the cars would turn round and speed back to a safer section of the line.¹⁸

      On his return he submitted a report on the supply and transport arrangements in the Canal Zone which Kitchener forwarded to the King; it did the Prince great credit, commented Kitchener, ‘and shows his grasp of details, and military knowledge’.¹⁹ ‘A really excellent report,’ George Arthur, then an official in the War Office, described it.²⁰ The praise seems high for a somewhat cursory statement of the existing position, in twelve hundred words, with little detail and no recommendations, but it showed at least that he had kept his eyes open and not treated the expedition as a joy ride. The King had good reason to be pleased with his son’s performance. Wingate had written that the Prince’s visit had done enormous good in the Sudan; the GOC reported that the morale of the troops in the Canal Zone had been notably improved; it was not the sort of war the Prince wanted to wage, but this time even he had to admit that he had been of use.

      Back in France the Prince rejoined Lord Cavan’s staff with the 14th Army Corps. He was no nearer having a proper job. ‘He holds a very junior appointment of course,’ commented the future Field Marshal Montgomery loftily, ‘and I can’t imagine that he does much real work.’²¹ Lord Newton, then a junior minister at the Foreign Office, found him ‘an undeveloped youth with pleasant and unassuming manners’ and ascribed his lack of any important staff job to the fact that he could not be induced to read.²² The charge of immaturity was certainly justified, but when the Prince was given something to do, he did it conscientiously. His complaint was that he was left in idleness or burdened with unnecessary and clearly improvised duties. After less than a week back in headquarters he was exclaiming bitterly that he was ‘thoroughly fed up’. ‘God knows how long the Lord Claud and I will be stuck here,’ he wrote to Captain Bailey; ‘it couldn’t be very long as I sh’d go mad after a few months … How I do grouse … !!’²³

      Claud Hamilton was at first his only real friend at Corps HQ. The Prince recognized that Hamilton’s military career was jeopardized by his absence from his regiment and readily agreed to make up his pay to the level it might have reached in other circumstances. ‘Of course I should hate not to help him as I ought to,’ he wrote to Stamfordham, ‘and am only wondering whether £150 is sufficient.’²⁴ Hamilton repaid this generosity with loyalty and an unflinching readiness to tell his master the truth, however unpalatable it might be. One of the Prince’s more attractive characteristics was his readiness to accept any amount of criticism from those whom he liked and who, he believed, had his interests at heart. In May 1918 he ran foul of Hamilton over some unspecified matter, probably relating to an escapade with some women from the Voluntary Aid Detachment. ‘I have had a straight talk and said it must stop or I shall go,’ Claud Hamilton told Lady Coke. ‘He thoroughly realized he was in the wrong and promised to turn over a new leaf. Now it is much better.’²⁵ Some months later he was still gossiping to his friends about ‘the Prince and the VADs, which, if known, would cause some trouble’, but the offence seems to have been in the past.²⁶ Hamilton remained with the Prince for several more years, though in the end the two men decided they could not work together.

      Early in 1917 Hamilton was reinforced by the arrival of Piers ‘Joey’ Legh, another Grenadier and a son of Lord Newton. Legh was to remain with the Prince for twenty years and accompany him into exile after the abdication. More than ten years again after that he was still talking of the man ‘whom he had loved and whose charm was so great that he would thrill with emotion if the Duke entered the room just now’.²⁷ As with Claud Hamilton, the Prince accepted from him rebukes which a vainer or more touchy man would have resented. In June 1917 General Cavan told him off for devoting too much time to his interminable runs, neglecting the newspapers and paying no attention to world affairs. ‘Of course he is right really and I don’t attempt to be a P of W or prepare for being so,’ the culprit admitted ruefully, ‘but how I hate all that sort of thing and how unsuited I am for the job!!’ Yet he persisted with his runs. Legh spoke to him ‘like a father’, and threatened to report him to Cavan. The Prince continued to offend, whereupon Legh did report him and Cavan categorically forbade further runs. ‘That old shit Joey,’ the Prince wrote in his diary, ‘but I’m none the less fond of him and forgive him all as he’s only done it for my good …’²⁸

      Hamilton and Legh, the Prince told his mother, were ‘my 2 great friends who are and have been real friends to me; I’m devoted to them!!’²⁹ Without their companionship he would have found intolerable the gloom and, as he saw it, uselessness of his life in Cavan’s headquarters; even with them his depression sometimes almost overcame him. One day when he had been refused a visit to the front line, he remained in his room, writing letters till 1 a.m. ‘I could not face … any company. I wanted to be alone in my misery!! I feel quite ready to commit suicide and would if I didn’t think it unfair on Papa.’³⁰ He no doubt over-dramatized his misery, but he was an unhappy and frustrated man. More and more he dreaded the next ‘push’, when he knew there would be yet further massacres, more friends killed, more shame for him. He went to a staff meeting at which an attack was ordered on a certain hill. The General involved protested, but Cavan insisted the hill must be taken. ‘He must have hated doing this as I could see he was worried. Several people have told me that the whole СКАЧАТЬ