King Edward VIII. Philip Ziegler

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СКАЧАТЬ talks about every aspect of his life: ‘It’s so wonderful to feel that we can really talk things over now, and vital and intime things, and I can assure you, darling Mama, that this makes all the difference to me.’⁵⁴ The Queen responded warmly: ‘I think I do understand and can enter into other people’s feelings,’ she wrote in mingled gratification and surprise.⁵⁵

      She seemed to relish the fact that she was closer than the King to her sons, and was not beyond making a little mischief to emphasize the difference. She complained to the Prince that she had not been present when important decisions were made about his future, ‘such a pity, as first of all I ought to know and secondly it makes it more difficult for me just to hear in a cursory way from Papa’. She urged her son to write his ‘secret and intimate views’ on a separate sheet of paper, so that the King should not realize he was being kept in the dark. She evolved an elaborate plot to get the Prince back on leave for Christmas: ‘I cannot help laughing to myself at the mystery which surrounds any new plan which … we have to put before Papa, it all requires such a lot of thought, writing, choosing the right moment etc, really comical in a way but so tiresome.’⁵⁶ Yet though she would enter into conspiracy with her sons, an open confrontation with the King was still out of the question. Never did she doubt that his will must prevail.

      One issue on which she consulted her son without reference to the King was the future of Princess Mary. The Prince constantly pressed the Queen to allow his sister friends of her own age and greater liberty to move around outside the palaces. Princess Mary bravely insisted that life at Buckingham Palace was not too bad: ‘You need not feel so sorry for me … The only things I object to are those rather silent dinners you know so well, when Papa will read the paper.’⁵⁷ Her brother knew that she was lonely and, in everything except material terms, underprivileged. He joined eagerly in what his mother called the ‘all important matter’ of finding the Princess a husband who would be both socially acceptable and tolerable to live with.⁵⁸ Hopefully he put forward the names of friend after friend, only to find that his mother always shrank from proposing them to the King. Princess Mary did not find a husband until 1922 and then it was by no doing of the Prince of Wales.

      Early in 1919 his epileptic brother, Prince John, finally died. The young invalid’s always frail grasp on reason had been failing rapidly and it had been obvious for some months that he could not survive for long. The Prince of Wales hardly knew him; saw him as little more than a regrettable nuisance. He wrote to his mother a letter of chilling insensitivity. She did not reply but he heard from others how much he had hurt her. He was conscience-stricken. ‘I feel such a cold hearted and unsympathetic swine for writing all that I did …’ he told the Queen. ‘No one can realize more than you how little poor Johnnie meant to me who hardly knew him … I can feel so much for you, darling Mama, who was his mother.’⁵⁹ His overture was gratefully received. At first she had thought his attitude a little hard-hearted, she confessed, but now felt that he was only taking the common-sense view.⁶⁰ The King fully shared his attitude: ‘the greatest mercy possible,’ he called John’s death, his youngest son had been spared endless suffering.⁶¹

      Stamfordham had urged the King to bring the Prince back to London in the winter of 1917. ‘Time is slipping away and these years are valuable and important ones in His Royal Highness’s life. He should be mixing with leading men other than soldiers, doing some useful reading and gradually getting accustomed to speaking in public.’⁶² Cavan concurred. Then suddenly the Italian line collapsed. German troops, set free by the collapse of Russian resistance, had come to the aid of their Austrian allies and quickly turned the tide of the campaign. It seemed that Italy might be knocked out of the war if British and French reinforcements were not rushed south. The 14th Army Corps was chosen for the task. Cavan pleaded that if the Prince of Wales accompanied the Corps the moral effect in Italy would be great. Against this, he had to admit that the Corps might arrive too late to save the Italians, in which case anything might happen and the risk to the Prince be considerable.⁶³ The King decided the risk must be run and by 8 November the Prince had joined the Corps HQ at Mantua. ‘… and here we stay indefinitely,’ he told Lady Coke. ‘The whole show is the vaguest thing on record and we know nothing of our future … as it all depends on where the Italians stop the Huns.’⁶⁴

      At first it was uncertain whether the Italians would stop the Huns at all. The Prince arrived in time to see the wreckage of the Italian 2nd Army retreating by way of Treviso and Padua. It was a kind of mobile warfare which he had never witnessed, and even though the allied forces were patently coming off worst, he found it irresistibly exciting: ‘This is real campaigning, not the stale old warfare in Flanders, and it’s all a great experience for me.’⁶⁵ His initial opinion of the Italian armies could hardly have been less favourable: ‘contemptible soldiers,’ he described them, who didn’t understand the elements of modern warfare and retreated so fast that the enemy was unable to keep contact with them.⁶⁶ Inevitably his opinion changed when the Italians made a stand: ‘fine stout-hearted fellows’ they then became, though of course ‘one mustn’t forget that they are a Latin race!!’⁶⁷ He complained about those French and British officers who criticized the Italians too overtly, and though he referred to them privately as ‘Ice-creamers’, was at pains to speak of them politely in public. But a constant refrain of his diary and letters was the superiority of the French, Britain’s leading and natural ally. ‘They are a grand people, the French, and I’m more fond of them than ever now,’ he told the King; ‘what a far finer and nicer nation than the Italians. If only they had a monarchy!!!!’⁶⁸

      His views of Italian cuisine and culture were as jaundiced as of their military prowess. He could not stand macaroni, spaghetti or Chianti and hadn’t seen a single pretty woman, he told Lady Coke, so ‘I’m rather off Italy just now’.⁶⁹ The monuments were little better: Mantua was ‘a deadly dull and antiquated little town’, Bologna had lots of picturesque buildings ‘tho I can’t say that I spent much time looking at them’; the Veronese paintings in the Villa Giacometti were ‘interesting as being over 300 years old … but I can’t say that actually they appeal to me enormously, and are, of course, typically Italian’.⁷⁰

      He was more impressed by Rome, which he visited in May 1918 to attend the celebrations of the third anniversary of the Italian declaration of war (a cause for jollification which the Prince was not alone in thinking somewhat far-fetched). The main function took place in the Augusteum, and in the course of his speech the Italian President, Orlando, spoke of the Prince as having come to Italy to share their dangers and defend their country. ‘The whole audience rose, faced the Prince and cheered madly,’ Henry Lygon told the Queen.⁷¹ The Prince’s speech from the royal box was delivered, wrote the Ambassador, Sir James Rodd, ‘in a clear voice which carried well, with just a little touch of boyish shyness that went straight to the hearts of his audience’.⁷² Claud Hamilton told Lady Coke that he had done it very well, ‘everybody could easily hear him, he received a great ovation’.⁷³ It was a period at which Hamilton was inclined to be critical of his employer so his judgment that the Prince ‘played his part better than I have ever seen him do before’ can be taken seriously. The Prince was no less ready to judge his own performances harshly but he told the King that he felt his visit had done some good and had helped cement the alliance with Italy; ‘it has been rather a trying week but very interesting and it has taught me a lot’.⁷⁴ His parents were delighted by his achievements: the King told him how much he appreciated the excellent way he had carried out the visit, while the Queen wrote of his ‘wonderful success … I feel prouder of my dearest son than ever.’⁷⁵

      The King had objected to the proposal that the visit to Rome should include a call on the Pope but Balfour, the Foreign Secretary, insisted that this was essential.⁷⁶ Dutifully, the Prince paraded at the Vatican. He was not greatly struck by what he saw: he found Pope Benedict XV unprepossessing in his appearance, ‘tho intelligent and well informed and he talks fairly decent French’. The Prince kept the conversation to generalities; ‘and I most certainly did not kiss his ring,’ СКАЧАТЬ