2110-8-3-9

Station Billingham, D. C. R. Telephone. Stockton, 66667

Wynyard Park, Stockton on Tees.

Private

14th Dec [1936] Lady Londonderry

My dear B. B.

I have been meaning to write to you for ages - to tell you of our trip - but everything has fled from heart and mind during the Crisis. You, who will have seen all the American papers - can well believe on what tenterhooks every one has been. The Balmoral party was the crowning point. It is difficult not to blame those of his household or friends, who as the papers say - were highly

placed and in any case were not dependent on the King's favours. They at least should have warned him. Sutherlands - Rosebery, ^ Sefton, Duff Cooper perhaps more than all - but Diana led him by the nose and was content to tell all her friends that she was pursuing Mrs S. to enhance Duff's prospects!! At Balmoral all the guests were upstairs. The Roseberys, according to Harry himself, occupying the late King's and Queen Mary's rooms. A guest list and their respective bedrooms were on the table of every bedroom and there plain for all to read - were down below in adjoining rooms H. M. the King

2 next to Mrs S on the ground floor and further along in another suite Mr and Mrs Herman Rogers!! The King had given the strictest orders that the usual custom of the page being stationed in the antiroom of the downstairs suite was to cease - and no servant was to go there at at all unless summoned. The old butler told Princess Helena - that the whole of the gold plate was take up to Balmoral for the week - a thing which has never

been done before in all the weeks the late King was there. In fact more stuff went up that one week than at any previous time - all in order for Mrs S. to dine off the gold plate belonging to the British Sovereign, surrounded by Dukes and Duchesses!! All kept waiting until any hour of the morning, before they knew what the King wished them to do. Did ever you hear of anything so humiliating. It is quite true that someone chalked up on the walls of Aberdeen as they would have done in Belfast - "Down with the American harlot". I think we are really well out of it all - as anything might have happened - and then it would

3 have been too late to repair the damage. The King is so obsessed with the woman that he is distinctly insane on the subject. In old days she would have been burnt as a witch. She is too, an extremely dangerous woman and very clever up to a point - but being an American, she utterly failed to distinguish between the loose, smart set she lived in - and the general mass of the population. She had Esmond Harmsworth in her pocket. Beaverbrook was run by Diana - and