Beschreibung:

Abdication of Edward VIII. An important and historical Autograph Letter Signed, ‘Sam’, from Samuel Hoare, (1880-1959, First Lord of the Admiralty 1936-37 and Home Secretary 1937-39), Admiralty House, 10 December [1936], to Lord Beaverbrook ('Dear Max’), written on the day that King Edward VIII signed the Instrument of Abdication, Hoare announces 'I have not telephoned or come round today or yesterday as I was, on your advice, sitting back in the final acts of this tragic farce' and continues 'It was clear to me yesterday that the denouement was inevitable. I tried my best to the end to make renunciation possible, but the King would not move an inch. To what depths can folly descend!' Hoare further states 'In any case I am glad and grateful that another crisis brought us together again. It is almost a year to a day since my resignation. The first friendly word from outside came from you. I never forget these things nor shall I forget our talks of the last fortnight, and your manifest wish to help me in my career’, marked ‘Personal’ at head, short clean, marginal split to right edge of central fold only very slightly affecting one word of text, 2 pages, 4to (Qty: 1) A letter of interesting content written on a pivotal day in the history of the British monarchy. Max Aitken (1879-1964), 1st Baron Beaverbrook. Anglo-Canadian business tycoon, politician & writer, owner of the Daily Express and London Evening Standard newspapers. In June 1936 Hoare became First Lord of the Admiralty and in November 1936 he was (with Duff Cooper, the then Secretary of State for War) sought out by Edward VIII to provide independent advice and counsel on the King's constitutional problems. Initially the King attempted to convert him into a champion of his cause hoping that Hoare would speak up in defence of his right to marry when the matter came up for formal discussion in the Cabinet. In the King's memoirs A King's Story (1951) he recounted this first meeting, ‘But I failed to win him as an advocate. He was sympathetic; but he also was acutely conscious of the political realities. Mr. Baldwin, he warned me, was in command of the situation: the senior Ministers were solidly with him on this issue. If I were to press my marriage project on the Cabinet I should meet a stone wall of opposition. I saw Mr. Duff Cooper at the Palace later the same day … He was as encouraging and optimistic as Sam Hoare had been pessimistic and discouraging.’ Hoare's second meeting with the King took place at the end of November, about which the King wrote, 'At this juncture, the scene shifted momentarily to Stornoway House where Max Beaverbrook, ever since his return from America, had worked feverishly to rally support for me in whatever quarters it might be found.....Mr. Baldwin was aware of what Max Beaverbrook was up to; and no doubt hoping to check the forces beginning to rally round my cause, he despatched Sir Samuel Hoare on Sunday, the 29th, to explain the attitude of the Government towards the King. The message which the First Lord of the Admiralty bore was ominous indeed. It was that the Ministers stood with Mr. Baldwin---"no breach exists: there is no light or leaning in the King's direction." Then the First Lord fired his second salvo. "The publicity," he said, "is about to break." Many Ministers, he added, were restless and dissatisfied over the failure of the Press to publish facts of a crisis already the talk of the rest of the world. He stressed Mr. Baldwin's desire that the Press, like the Cabinet, should form an unbroken front against the proposed marriage. It was an undisguised invitation for Max Beaverbrook to change sides. His answer was: "I have already taken the King's shilling, I am a King's man.”' On 4th December the King learned of an earlier meeting between Beaverbrook and Hoare, of which he commented, 'So the day had not been all debits as far as I was concerned. From Stornoway House Max Beaverbrook, sensing the favourable upsurge in public opinion