King Edward VIII. Philip Ziegler

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      7

      The First Tours

      THE PRINCE’S HAPPINESS, ALMOST HIS SURVIVAL, ON HIS gargantuan tours depended as much as anything on the people who accompanied him. For the trip to Canada Stamfordham recommended a man who, like Thomas and Legh, was to serve him until his reign was over. Admiral Halsey – ‘the Old Salt’ as he was derisively but affectionately nicknamed – was something of a Hansell; sound, honourable, humourless, unimaginative. He was ‘the ideal Chief of Staff’, the Prince told his mother, ‘and I know we are going to be a very happy family’. Needless to say they were not; friction in such a party was almost inevitable, and became completely so when Halsey was matched by a political adviser with unspecified responsibilities, the energetic and somewhat impatient Edward Grigg. Grigg, by family background as well as predilection, was destined to devote the greater part of his life to the service of the British Empire. He was ‘a very exceptional man’, the Prince went on, ‘so clever and able and he has such splendidly broad-minded and far seeing ideas, a great imperialist …’¹ He was all that, but also assertive, suffered fools badly, and considered Halsey something of a fool. The prospects for harmony were not bright.

      In a memorandum which Grigg prepared for the Colonial Secretary, Milner, he observed that the main object of the Prince’s visit was ‘to create an atmosphere. He will do this largely by natural tact and charm.’ But he would have to overcome the feeling in North America that the monarchy was no more than an ‘interesting feudal anachronism’. His speeches should emphasize his ‘appreciation of the political institutions of the Empire and of the very vital place which the Crown takes as the nodus of the whole web. That line is, I think, good for the Canadian as well as the American market.’ Lloyd George minuted dubiously: ‘There must be nothing that would look in USA like a challenge to republican institutions’; an indication of the many tightropes the Prince was going to be required to walk over the next few years as he teetered between America and Canada; Westminster and Dominion governments; federal capital and state capitals; French Canadian and Anglo-Canadian; Boer and rooinek.²

      When he left Portsmouth, however, the Prince was looking not forward to such problems but backward towards Mrs Dudley Ward. At one point he had tried to persuade her to accompany him to Canada, or at least to meet him there. She had taken the possibility seriously enough to consult Piers Legh’s fiancée about it, but had wisely decided to stay behind.³ The Prince was disconsolate and only began to regain his spirits when the battle cruiser, HMS Renown, arrived at St John’s and the demands of the tour left less time for brooding.

      ‘No enthusiastic mob – seems a dead place on the whole,’ commented Sub-Lieutenant Hutchinson gloomily. ‘Went ashore, but the only thing they seem to sell here is ice-cream.’⁴ He failed to note the Prince’s favourite feature of his arrival, the triumphal arch composed largely of drums of cod-liver oil and festooned with the carcasses of dried codfish.⁵ Nor was the Prince disturbed by the relatively meagre crowds, proudly describing his ‘rapturous reception’ to the King: ‘The fact that my first day in the Dominion was a success has given me confidence for the future.’⁶ What gave him greatest confidence was that he was performing well in public. Godfrey Thomas, who was also in the party, told the Queen, ‘I cannot describe … how well the Prince is speaking.’ The Canadian Prime Minister, Sir Robert Bordern, had been ‘immensely struck and talked of nothing else after the St John visit’.⁷

      The Prince was less struck by Sir Robert Bordern. ‘Quite pleasant, but rather a dull old stick,’ he described him to the Queen.⁸ Sometimes the Prime Minister was worse than that. When the Prince was about to make the most important speech of his Canadian visit, Bordern noted that he was nervous and distrait: ‘I endeavoured to divert his attention by recounting some amusing anecdotes, but he quite frequently consulted his notes.’ In spite of his no doubt well-intentioned sabotage, the speech, Bordern concluded, was ‘admirable in every way’.⁹

      The Prince’s next important stop, Quebec, introduced him to what he had been told would prove the greatest impediment to a successful tour, the hostility between anglophone and francophone Canada. Expecting the worst, he was pleasantly surprised. ‘They are a curious people and very touchy, but they seemed quite pleased and certainly gave me a good welcome,’ he wrote of the French Canadians to the King.¹⁰

      In Montreal, speaking half in French and half in English, he claimed that the union of the two races was more than a matter of political convenience, ‘it was, and will always remain, an example of the highest political wisdom’.¹¹ The French Canadians, an anonymous lady assured the King, likened the Prince to ‘L’Enfant Jésus’.¹² One may doubt whether many French Canadians spotted the similarity but the Prince went down well with a public disposed to be critical and captious.

      It was Toronto which offered the most turbulent welcome. The Prince’s stay there, Thomas told the Queen, ‘were the most extraordinary days I have ever seen’. Things began relatively quietly, enthusiasm mounted by the hour, and the scenes when he drove through the city on his final day made Thomas think ‘that half the people had taken leave of their senses’.¹³ To the Prince it was overwhelming. For the СКАЧАТЬ