Edward's Friend

In 1920 a likely young New Zealander named Henry Hector Bolitho* made the friendly acquaintance of Edward of Wales, then aged 25 and dutifully touring the Dominions "down under" at the zenith of his infectious charm. Soon a book, With the Prince in New Zealand by Hector Bolitho was selling nicely, but not for a while did the author turn up in England, doing in 1929 a modest volume called The Later Letters of Lady Augusta Stanley and branching out from the Prince of Wales, who remembered him, into quiet purlieus of the Royal Family where a few not very exciting private papers began to be at his disposal.

In 1932 came Albert the Good, a dual biography of Victoria and Albert by Mr. Bolitho which first caught everyone's eye because it was illustrated with gaudy, excruciating Victorian color plates and valentines--these discreetly printed with not a single reference to them in the text. This clever method of flash-sale got people to buy what they found to be just about the best Royal Family book since Strachey's Queen Victoria. Next year Biographer Bolitho did England's affluent Jew, a stuffily imposing Alfred Mond: First Baron Melchett. By last year he was the Royal Family's pet biographer, with Victoria the Widow and her Son and The Romance of Windsor Castle to his credit.

Then Edward, his friend and original benefactor, came to the Throne. Promptly swank Mayfair's slick-papered smartchart bi-weekly Leisure bought and ran in serial installments excerpts from his forthcoming biography, "The New King . . . Exclusive . . . Intimate Life Study ... by Hector Bolitho." The series ran for four months. Last week just about the biggest biographic surprise Mayfair has had came when a few people bought what they casually supposed was only the binding up in book form of the Leisure sketches, a friendly series of bi-weekly pieces about Edward VIII seemingly penned in deepest, sincerest admiration by his friend Hector.

It now suddenly appears in Mr. Bolitho's new book that King Edward "was harassed, unreasonable and vain," whereas in Leisure of last spring he was remarkable for "the gentleness of his judgments" and "his standards were as rigid as those of his father" although Biographer Bolitho of course knew then about Mrs. Simpson.

In last week's Bolitho book, the New Zealand friend writes that as long as ten years ago Edward of Wales was estranged from King George and Queen Mary. "His son's friendship with Mrs. Simpson was a perpetual grief to him [George V]. . . .

They [Their Majesties] shared distress and disappointment over him . . . secretive, stubborn . . . self-willed." King George V died in January, and in May Bolitho wrote of Edward VIII that "his balanced judgment and dislike for self pity made him turn to the problems of the living as much as to the veneration of the dead." This had changed by last week into Biographer Bolitho's conviction that "conceited . . . disloyal [Edward] expressed his real feeling for the past when he hit a golf ball from the summit of one of the pyramids." Bolitho continues that after the death of George V the "unfortunate friendship" of Edward VIII for Mrs. Simpson "was not allowed to suffer in deference to sorrow." In fact His Majesty merrily chartered a yacht and New Zealander Bolitho was finally able last week to give the honest English emo tional reaction to seeing their King consorting with an American: "The pity of it was the photographs showed a happy King!" So recently as the end of last June, Leisure printed "If compassion ruled his [Edward's] heart, common sense ruled his head. . . . He was equipped, in perception and knowledge, to be a leader and not merely a grand name. . . He was in the line of his great-grandmother, his grand father and his father. He was morally brave. His conscience was his guide. . .

Whatever muddles and distresses may come, there is continuity in what we know as British character and that its shrine is still the throne." Of this same period last summer, Biographer Bolitho's new book says: "The power in his [King Edward's] hands was terrible to measure and the Government and those who knew him well were keenly afraid. . . . Many members of the Government resented his campaigns among the poor. . . . He blundered on fiercely, loyal to his poor ideal . . . distraught . .

unreasonable no matter whither his twisted reason led him. . . . Every hour he stayed in England was an injustice to his brother's assumption of the responsibilities of the Crown." Today popular Henry Hector Bolitho, more than ever pet of the Royal Family, is writing a new biography of King George VI, is reputed to be describing His Majesty in substantially the identical terms he used in Leisure to describe His Majesty when the king was Edward VIII.

With a pleased backward glance at his work and that of 100% of British journalism in keeping the facts about Edward VIII from the 493,000,000 people of the Empire for as long as tender untruths could, Mr. Bolitho boasts: "English journalism showed its best in involuntarily keeping a barrier of silence between the Prince's [Edward's] private life and their readers."

With the Royal Family, the peerage, the landed gentry and the Old Etonians in mind, Biographer Bolitho in his new book discloses that the United Kingdom is "a country which knows neither the dark state of peasantry nor the rule of a rich and idle aristocracy."

In London the Sunday Express committed the surpassing blatancy of spreading clear across two pages the 14 column headline: WHAT HAPPENED TO EDWARD THE EIGHTH, ONE OF THE FRANKEST ROYAL BIOGRAPHIES EVER PUBLISHED. By this time two editions of Friend Bolitho's book had been sold out in London, a third was on the presses, and as the week opened he seemed well on the way to wealth.

*No kin to the late, able and incorrigibly oblique English-Dutch playwright and journalist, William Bolitho (Ryall).

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