almost missed going in any capacity. The King had been against the visit from the start – mainly, believed the Prince, because of his anti-American views.35 When the President, Woodrow Wilson, fell seriously ill, King George V at once insisted that the tour must be called off.36 The Prince, supported strongly by Grigg, felt that the cancellation of the visit would give the Americans the impression that he had leapt at any excuse not to go: ‘I realize the spirit in which the American public has welcomed the proposed visit too highly not to regard any such possibility with deep dislike.’37 The King held to his view, but left the matter to the government to decide, and the Foreign Secretary felt the visit should take place.38 The Prince went to Washington and dutifully visited the President on his sickbed. He also managed to attend a dance or two which Grigg had arranged: ‘He holds very strongly that he can influence American feeling even better by dancing with Senators’ daughters than by talking to Senators, and I am sure he is right.’39
There was still greater doubt whether the tour should be extended to New York. Godfrey Thomas felt that the risk of a hostile reception from the Irish more than outweighed any possible advantage, and the King fully shared his doubts.40 The Prince, though, was determined to go, the American Ambassador in London supported him, and the Cabinet concluded that ‘a good deal of the magnificent results to be expected from the visit might be thrown away’ if it seemed he was avoiding contact with ‘the real American people’.41 The American press then published stories announcing that the Prince was planning to stay at notoriously opulent Newport, with the still more notoriously opulent Mrs Vanderbilt, and that lavish entertainments were being planned. The Secretary of the Interior took the rumours seriously enough to raise the matter with the British Ambassador, and the Acting Counsellor urged that the Prince should steer clear of the Newport crowd which was synonymous with ‘all that is most extravagant and frivolous in American life’.42 ‘There never was the faintest intention of the Prince going to Newport,’ Stamfordham reassured the Counsellor. ‘It was a pity that the American press almost exceeded itself in concocting absolutely fabulous stories of what HRH was going to do and of the different young women that were to be submitted to his choice as his future wife!! It is difficult to conceive how newspapers can give way to such vulgarity.’43 The Prince nevertheless contrived to see something of New York’s young women; at least one ball was given in his honour and he never returned to the ship before two or three in the morning.44
New York gave him the same almost hysterical welcome as he had received in Toronto. ‘It was not crowd psychology that swept him into instant popularity but the subtle something that is personality,’ wrote the New York World.45 Whether New York’s love – traditionally fleeting – would matter in the long run, was a difficult question to answer. Edward Grey, then British Ambassador in Washington, believed it would. ‘It has done more good than any number of political speeches,’ he reported to the Foreign Office. ‘His Royal Highness has created in New York a feeling of personal affection so strong that, though it may have no direct influence on politics, it must do something to create kindly feeling in New York itself.’46 British Ambassadors must be expected to laud the prowess of their future monarch; M. Jusserand, the French Ambassador, had no such axe to grind. ‘Son succès a été complet auprès des gens les plus divers,’ he wrote to the Quai d’Orsay, ‘les Anglais n’ont jamais rien fait qui ait pu si utilement servir à effacer les anciennes animosités.’47 Sub-Lieutenant Hutchinson was amazed when he saw the size of the crowd that assembled to see the Prince depart. ‘The Yanks seem quite enthusiastic about him,’ he wrote in his diary, a laconic understatement that did not conceal the immense pride the crew of Renown took in the Prince’s triumph.48
The Prince was to spend only three months in England before he set off on his next, still longer, tour to Australia. He was exhausted and flat after his efforts, and distraught at the thought that he would so soon be separated again from Freda Dudley Ward. The last straw was that he found himself expected to sacrifice three weeks of this precious interval to stay with his parents at Sandringham. On Christmas Day 1919 he wrote in desperation to Godfrey Thomas:
A sort of hopelessly lost feeling has come over me and I think I’m going kind of mad!! … I’m simply not capable of even thinking, let alone make a decision or settle anything!! I’ve never felt like this in my life before, and I’m rather worried about it and feel incapable of pulling myself together … How I loathe my job now and all this press ‘puffed’ empty ‘succès’. I feel I’m through with it and long and long to die … You’ll probably think from this that I ought to be in a mad house already, tho’ this isn’t necessary yet: I’m still quite sane and very much in earnest, but I don’t know for how much longer!! Of course I’m going to make a gt effort to pull myself together, and it may only be that I never realized how brain weary I returned from the ‘Other Side’ … But my brain has gone and I can hardly think any more … What you must think of me, and you and all the staff have been and are working so desperately hard for me … How can I even try to thank you, my dear Godfrey?49
Thomas had received many such cris du coeur in the past, but this struck him as worryingly unbalanced. He replied with a dose of robust common sense. The Prince was not destined for a mad house, but he would find himself in a nursing home if he did not change his idiotic train of life. ‘It is inconceivable to me that anyone who has got such sound, if perhaps somewhat exaggerated ideas about health from the point of view of exercise … should be so utterly insane and unreasonable about the elementary rules of health as regards other things. How you survived Canada I cannot imagine … You are highly strung and nervy to begin with. You never allowed yourself a moment’s rest the whole time. You sat up every night, often quite unnecessarily, till godless hours … You smoked far too much and you drink a great deal too much whiskey.’ Only a change of heart would ‘stop you being thoroughly bloody minded, irritable and impossible when you start for Australia (a nice prospect for your Staff) and [you] will crack up by the time you reach the Panama Canal’. He would do better if he sometimes let off steam ‘and got cross and irritable instead of pathetic’. Of course his was bound to be ‘a more or less bloody life, but give it a chance. It’s certainly a life worth fighting through, not one to chuck away.’50
This letter, which the Prince described as ‘marvellous’, and the enforced tranquillity of Sandringham, together worked wonders. ‘I’m feeling a new and completely sane man,’ he told Thomas. ‘I promise to take things easily and not make a B F of myself any more.’51 Rest, and the attentions of those who cared for him, almost always sufficed to rescue the Prince from the blackest of his depressions. But Thomas recognized his extreme fragility and was alarmed by it; under the stresses of the Australian tour, with Freda Dudley Ward ten thousand miles away, might he not crack more seriously, perhaps even irrecoverably? It was a distant but daunting menace.
Back in London, the Prince first tried to defer the tour by three weeks on the plea that Renown could not be ready in time – an argument which the Under Secretary at the Colonial Office, Leo Amery, disposed of with alacrity52 – and then engaged in a wrangle with Amery and the Prime Minister over the composition of his staff. Halsey, said Amery, was incompetent to handle the most important aspects of the tour, he was ‘difficult to deal with, indifferent to political considerations and indeed incapable of appreciating them. He upset the Press badly on the Canadian tour.’53 The Prince liked Halsey and had serious reservations about Grigg, whom Amery wanted to put in charge: ‘We are not in any way kindred spirits and for this reason I do not regard his presence on my staff [as being] of any value whatsoever.’54 He argued that, since his was not a political tour, there was no need for it to be managed by an expert in politics. ‘Its consequences are of the highest political importance both to the Throne and the Empire,’ retorted Lloyd George. Grigg must have complete control over the programme and relations with the press.55 In the end the Prince and the Prime Minister met in Downing Street, with Stamfordham, Halsey and Grigg to act as referee and seconds. ‘If you are one day to be a constitutional King,’ said Lloyd George, ‘you must first be a constitutional Prince of Wales.’56 The Prince swallowed his medicine, but it did not make him any the more cheerful about the prospects