2110-8-3-12

Bankhead Saturday, 19th Dec. 1936

My dear John,

My best thanks for the splendid Christmas card and kindly message from across the Atlantic. You may be interested to know how we were affected. It began with people joking and talking about an intimacy & high jinks on a yacht trip. Our press had been discreet & silent but the American paper "Time" was being smuggled over & a friend of mine use to regale my astonished ears with titbits. Then came the blundering bishop of Bradford & the fat was in the fire. But I think the trouble was brewing & ripe for a row. Johnnie Jameson says that I said then that it must mean abdication but, if he is right, my immediately following reflections were to hope & pray that 'he' would take a pull, part from the lady, & go in whole heartedly for his allotted regal life. Then came the suspense and it was all very sad

and gloomy and the weather matched it. I was up in London on Monday 7th for a consultation in an appeal & was glad to bolt to Northamptonshire for a couple of nights (with old Bradenell at Deene) where the chill of the fog & foreboding & anxiety for the Empire were kept at bay with the aid of Montrachet, Rüdesheimer Deidesheimer, Riehebourg (1919) & Clos de TART (1906) and English good cheer. We had on Thursday night a sub-jovial dinner in Edin^h of the Naval Club at which I was Glaneston's guest & the toast was given "The reigning Sovereign" coupled with the Royal Family. I actually heard of the abdication at Carlisle Station on the way home. The feeling was one of intense regret it had worked out like this but a feeling that no other solution was possible.

I did not like the Canterbury homily

I prefered my old good old minister who thanked for the many good qualities and actions & prayed for his future, and then switched right on to the new monarch. I think of him as I saw him in 1912 late for our drive from Holyrood to Dalkeith via Hopetoun & Rosslyn, brilliant complexion, a bonny boy of a somewhat feminine cast of feature & a look of petulance & waywardness. So that was the future king. In 1925 or '6 I welcomed him to Muirfield sat next him at lunch and really enjoyed his company, condoled with him over his bad play, which had almost reduced him to tears, & had some very pleasant talk about lots of things & people (Looking at Dunedin's photo in a noble, stag-at-eve, sort of attitude as an ex-captain he murmured: "You knew him I suppose - damned old bore!")

I remember declining a cigarette

which on second thoughts I should never have done on the truthful but inadequate ground that I never smoked till after dinner, which didn't appear to annoy him in the least, because he asked a question or two & then started off about something else.

Altogether I left him with a feeling of devotion & got him to consent to be our Honorary Member. Latterly some of the photographs of the P. of W. in a golf circle round a green in company with Tom, Dick & Henrietta made me think there was a bit of a keely (in the best sense of which that word is capable) - unconventionality carried down beyond what marks the caste of Vere de Vere or even Coburg-Guelf - about him. But then one assumed it was done ad hoc & put away when a return was made to palaces & peers.

Now the "on dit"s are that

3

"es steckte weit mehr dahinter", in which the king, & Winston & Mosley & the distressed areas came in & Mrs S. was only a pretext. The articles in L'Illustration for 10th of this month show what peril a well-informed French writer thought we - and if we, they - were in, writing just before the actual abdication. What there is in all this I know not. I am just thanlful it happened as it did & to let the incident drop into oblivion.

I was reminded (by Ld George Scott) of the story familiar to both of us about Arthur Douglas and Queensberry (the bruiser). The latter had quartered himself at Comlongon for many weeks & after he left, wrote some letters, which provoked A.J.D. into writing a hot reply, which wound up with a resignation of the agency