The monarchy is more than the monarch

356 Pages·2017·17 MB·English

by  Laura Breen

The monarchy is more than the monarch:

Australian perceptions of the public life of Edward,
Prince of Wales, 1916-1936

Laura Kathryn Cook
Research School of Humanities & the Arts
Australian National University Canberra

A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the Australian National
University
September 2016

© Copyright Laura Kathryn Cook, 2016
All Rights Reserved
Declaration

This is to certify that:
i. The thesis comprises only my original work toward the PhD.
ii. Due acknowledgement has been made in the document to all other material used.
iii. The thesis is fewer than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of figures, plates, tables,
bibliography and appendices.

Signature:
Date:

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Acknowledgements

It is my pleasure to thank all those who have made this thesis possible. I am hugely
grateful to my primary supervisor, Paul Pickering, who has been a tremendous advisor
and mentor throughout the last three years. The support and advice of my supervisory
panel, Frank Bongiorno, Karen Fox and Alexander Cook, has been both inspiring and
heartily appreciated.
My research experience was most enjoyable thanks to the assistance of the many
librarians, registrars, curators and archivists who manage the wonderful collections held
by the National Library of Australia, the National Archives of Australia, the National
Film and Sound Archive, the National Archives at Kew and the Imperial War Museum.
To my colleagues at the National Museum of Australia, thank you also for the many
useful suggestions. My gratitude also extends to the staff at the Royal Archives at
Windsor Castle for their assistance. I would like to acknowledge the permission of Her
Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to make use of material held therein.
Finally, special thanks are owed to those who shared the journey alongside me. I
could not have found more companionable office mates than Isa Menzies and Priya
Vaughan. My beloved husband Steven Cook has offered constant reassurance and
energetic support as we added not only a draft thesis but two babies to our family.

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Abstract

This thesis contributes to present inter-war historiography on Australians and the
monarchy by providing a narrative for the previously under-researched evolution of the
public life of Edward, Prince of Wales, in this country between approximately 1916 and
1936. The objectives are twofold: firstly, to provide an Australian account of what has
been most commonly presented as a public life that resonated mainly within Britain,
and in doing so illustrate the potency of the relationship that existed between Australia,
as one of the Dominions, and the Crown. Secondly, through identifying the changing
nature of Edward’s appeal as espoused by the public, the press and political rulers over
time, I aim to establish fresh insights into the localised preoccupations of Australian
society and contribute to a greater understanding of the centrality of the monarch in the
inter-war imperial imagination.
I conclude that Edward’s supposedly democratic characteristics both enhanced
and conflicted with inter-war Australian ideals of nationhood, and were founded on a
fixed suite of expectations for the private and public life of the monarch. His persona
was remarkably disassociated from religious or class-based affiliations, meaning that his
personal appeal flourished in public, press and political perceptions. Nonetheless, I
establish that contemporary Australians perceived the monarch as central to the survival
of the Empire. Although the legal and political elements of the Kingship were flexible
according to the best interests of Australian independence, traditional attitudes prevailed
in matters of sexual modernity. Ultimately, for Australians, as part of an Empire caught
between the devastation of two world wars, the survival of the monarchy prevailed over
the survival of the monarch.

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Table of Contents

Declaration ........................................................................................................................ ii
Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................... iii
Abstract ............................................................................................................................ iv
Table of Contents .............................................................................................................. v
Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1
Edward’s early life ........................................................................................................ 6
The first royal tours ....................................................................................................... 9
The abdication ............................................................................................................. 16
Australia and the abdication ........................................................................................ 28
Australians and the monarchy ..................................................................................... 32
Australia and the Empire ............................................................................................. 38
Summary .................................................................................................................. 41
Methodology ............................................................................................................ 43
Outline ..................................................................................................................... 45
Chapter 1: The heir presumptive ................................................................................ 47
A symbol of the Crown ............................................................................................... 48
An inspiration for peace .............................................................................................. 56
A modern exemplar ..................................................................................................... 74
A member of the family .............................................................................................. 79
Chapter 2: The Empire’s salesman ............................................................................. 86
The British preparations .............................................................................................. 87
From the Australian perspective .................................................................................. 96
Aboard H.M.S. Renown ............................................................................................. 122
Chapter 3: Our Digger Prince ................................................................................... 128
Establishing a popular precedent in Victoria ............................................................. 129
Wooing the workers in New South Wales ................................................................ 139
Accommodating nationalism in Western Australia ................................................... 146
Promoting expansion in South Australia ................................................................... 152
Instilling military patriotism in Tasmania ................................................................. 160
Subduing political tension in Queensland ................................................................. 164
Chapter 4: The bachelor King ................................................................................... 172
Declining public and official estimation ................................................................... 173
A brief revival of popular affection ........................................................................... 187

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Impending trouble ..................................................................................................... 191
The High Commissioner steps in .............................................................................. 198
Lyons contains the matter .......................................................................................... 202
All is revealed ............................................................................................................ 211
Chapter 5: A condemned man ................................................................................... 217
Press commentary gathers pace ................................................................................. 218
The Australian public respond .................................................................................. 225
Political tensions increase ......................................................................................... 240
The abdication is officially confirmed ...................................................................... 246
Chapter 6: Plain Mr. Windsor ................................................................................... 255
Lyons breaks his silence ............................................................................................ 256
The formalities are completed ................................................................................... 266
Australians resign themselves ................................................................................... 273
The transfer of affection to a new King .................................................................... 283
Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 296
Appendix ...................................................................................................................... 305
Bibliography ................................................................................................................ 325
Primary sources ......................................................................................................... 325
Archival material ................................................................................................... 325
Edited volumes of contemporary correspondence, memoirs and biographies ...... 329
Newspaper articles ................................................................................................. 329
Records of Australian parliamentary debates and proceedings (Hansard) ........... 341
Secondary sources ..................................................................................................... 342
Books ..................................................................................................................... 342
Book chapters and sections .................................................................................... 346
Journal articles ....................................................................................................... 348
Online resources .................................................................................................... 350
Theses and conference papers ............................................................................... 350

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Introduction

Here was a man who plainly needed to express himself as a human
being in order to be prince then king in his own way.
-The Canberra Times, 31 May 1972.1

When Edward, Duke of Windsor, died on 28 May 1972, the Australian government was
at first unsure how to respond. Although official procedure upon the demise of members
of the royal family was well established, there was no obvious precedent for the case of
a former King scandalously exiled from Britain almost forty years before. Records held
by the National Archives of Australia (NAA) reveal how Labor leader Gough Whitlam
struggled with the delicate balance between offering condolences to the ranks of the
Duke’s immediate relatives, and to his wife Wallis, who in an ‘out of date and
vindictive decision’ had been deliberately denied her rightful title and position as a
member of the royal family.2 In the end, Whitlam decided against ‘stirring the matter’,
and so after some deliberation Liberal prime minister William McMahon and his
colleagues settled on a formulaic message of sympathy. This was communicated to
Windsor, for the attention of the Duke’s niece, Queen Elizabeth II, and to Paris for the
grieving Duchess. McMahon’s message to the latter incorporated a personal addendum,
noting that as a consequence of the ‘brilliant success’ of his royal tour of Australia in
1920, Edward was ‘remembered here with respect and affection.’3
The government’s trouble with the Duke did not end with the issue of titles. The
notorious matter of Edward’s 1936 abdication of the throne, as prompted by the

1 ‘What might have been’, The Canberra Times, A.C.T., 31 May 1972, p. 2.
2 NAA, A1209, 1972/6551. Note for file regarding telephone conversation between Whitlam
and E.J. Bunting, 30 May 1972.
3 NAA, A1209, 1972/6551. Telegram to British High Commission from Department of the
Prime Minister and Cabinet, 28 May 1972.

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couple’s relationship, also had to be tactfully dealt with. In a press release, McMahon
simply alluded to an incident that ‘deeply moved’ the Commonwealth, moving quickly
to draw attention instead to the royal tour of some five decades before. It was then, he
stated, that the young Prince of Wales first ‘captivated this country with his youth and
charm’, continuing subsequently to command respect due to his particular ‘personal
qualities.’4 Beyond these gestures, it was unclear what else was expected of the
Australian government. The British High Commission in Canberra was tasked with
finding out if any further action would be taken in the House of Commons, reporting
back that the official acknowledgement in Britain was likely to be ‘fairly low key’,
possibly even ‘a token gesture only.’5 Accordingly, tentative plans for an Australian
memorial service or a lengthy parliamentary adjournment were abandoned, apparently
to the relief of all concerned.6 McMahon worried that ‘we would be laughed at’ for such
a profligate gesture, although whether he meant by the British or the Australians, or
both, is not clear.
In the Senate the next day, Liberal Tom Drake-Brockman offered a simple
eulogy that also emphasised the success of Edward’s 1920 tour and the ‘qualities of
essential humanity’ that underpinned his early popularity with the Australian people.7
On the whole, the speeches in Parliament that day followed McMahon’s lead and
pointedly evaded any mention of the international uproar of 1936. The lone voice of
Labor’s Lionel Murphy was heard to offer the opinion that the couple had been treated
‘miserably and shabbily’ following the abdication.8 After standing for a few moments of
silence, senators moved debate swiftly on to other business. It was by any estimation a
forlorn farewell for a man once superlatively hailed as ‘the most popular personage

4 NAA, A1209, 1972/6551. Statement by McMahon for the press, 28 May 1972.
5 NAA, A1209, 1972/6551. Note for the Secretary from K.W. Pearson, 29 May 1972
6 NAA, A1209, 1972/6551. Note for file by J.H. Sholtens, 1 June 1972; note for file by E.J.
Bunting, 29 May 1972; note not intended for file by K.W. Pearson, 30 May 1972.
7 Parliament of Australia, Senate, ‘Debates’, 30 May 1972, p. 2223.
8 Ibid.

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Australia has ever known.’9 Of course, the decision of an Australian government of the
early 1970s to effect a ‘low key’ response to matters royal should not come as too great
a surprise, considering the impassioned contemporary debates over Australia’s
independence. It is also certain that this would not be the first obituary to favour
discretion almost to the point of misremembering.
Nonetheless, the nuances discernible in these politicians’ treatment of the
Duke’s death do raise some interesting questions. From a contemporary standpoint,
these retrospective views tend to privilege Edward’s ‘personal qualities’, and were less
eager to acknowledge the ignominious failure of his Kingship. The effect is of a public
life that played out between two defining moments, from widespread approval in 1920
to an uncomfortable apathy following 1936. What is the basis for this perception of his
character? Present historiography on the topic has little to offer on the topic, but even
the most perfunctory foray into the contemporary press record reveals the heightened
emotions that seem to confirm McMahon’s estimation of Edward’s early popularity as
the beloved Prince of Wales. In July 1920, for example, Adelaide songwriter Ellie
Wemyss was confident in her assertion that Edward was ‘a prince of men, and of all our
hearts!’10 What then, can we make of the blunt appraisal made in December 1936 by the
Rev. F. Barclay, a Presbyterian clergyman in Wentworth, New South Wales, that
Edward had ‘failed the British Empire’?11 It seems that by and large, despite over two
decades as the celebrated Prince of Wales, Edward had forfeited with his throne the
enduring affection of Australians. An obvious explanation might be that the shock of
the abdication and the uneasy legacy of Edward’s later political ambitions simply
eclipsed the remarkable success of his public life as a young man, but even so this can
only be part of the story.

9 ‘Prince Of Wales At Randwick’, Sydney Mail, N.S.W., 23 June 1920, p. 39.
10 ‘OUR PRINCE OF HEARTS’, The Register, Adelaide, S.A., 20 July 1920, p. 9.
11 ‘“FAILED EMPIRE”’, The Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate, Parramatta,
N.S.W., 17 December 1936, p. 7.

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It is this shift in Australian perceptions of Edward’s public persona, or the wax
and wane of sentiment between the 1910s and 1930s, which this thesis aims to
reconcile.12 The objectives are twofold: firstly, to provide a chronological narrative for
the previously under-researched evolution of Edward’s public life in Australia, and
secondly, to turn the lens of this examination on the key localised traits of Australian
society of the time. What can these perceptions reveal about the cultural dynamics of
the time? I have set out to identify the contours of this connection and in doing so draw
wider inferences about the attitudes of Australian society as a whole towards their inter-
war relationship with the British monarchy. Such a case study will contribute to present
historiography on Australians and the monarchy by adding to a greater understanding of
the importance of the monarch in the Australian imagination. Furthermore, although this
thesis is not intended to be comparative, many of the themes highlighted therein also
resonated widely across the other white settler Dominions of New Zealand, South
Africa and Canada.
These objectives address a gap in present scholarship relating to Edward’s early
public life in Australia. As I will show, although the biographical literature is extensive,
neither his royal tour nor abdication have been examined from an Australian
perspective. Edward was among the most controversial and oft-chronicled figures of the
twentieth century and hence his life has generated hundreds of publications. Perhaps the
first biography was published as early as 1916, and they would appear with increasing
regularity throughout the 1920s, in even greater numbers following 1936 and yet again
after his death in 1972.13 Later twentieth century publications present almost
exclusively the perspective of British or North American authors focusing on the British

12 This thesis explores a chronology of events occurring, in the main, between 1916 and 1936,
and so encompassing the Edward’s first encounter with Australians to the period immediately
following his abdication. I also draw upon contextual material outside of this timeframe.
Edward was known throughout this period by three differing titles: Prince, King and Duke.
13 Among the earliest works is David Williamson’s The Prince of Wales: a biography (London:
George Newnes, 1916).

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