A letter by controversial monarch Edward VIII in which he moans at being 'fed up and bored' with a 'ghastly' Royal tour of Devon and Cornwall has come to light. Then as David, Prince of Wales, he described how he had to force himself to 'look happy and pleased' upon stepping off the train at Newton Abbot to be met by a 'loyal reception' of wellwishers.
He also delivered a withering critique of the Bishop of Exeter, who he had just met, calling him 'mad and revolting'. And looking ahead at his 'depressing prospect' of one day being King, he wrote: "This life of mine is a sordid one and no mistake and it's never going to improve."
The letter was written 17 years before he became King and is an early demonstration of how he was never cut out for the job. David famously went on to cause a constitutional crisis by abdicating the throne after less than a year so he could marry divorcee Wallis Simpson.
But in 1919 it was not the American socialite he was pining for, but his first love - married mistress Freda Dudley Ward who he had started an illicit affair with the year before. David put pen to paper while staying overnight at the Duchy Hotel in Princetown on Dartmoor during a two day tour of Devon and Cornwall in June 1919.
Belittling the people who had turned out to greet him, he wrote: "I started my sordid day at 6 a.m. when I had to step out of the train at Newton Abbot and look happy and pleased with a 'loyal reception'!! But it was some strain sweetheart and the same thing happened at another little town called Ashburton which I passed thro. (sic) in car on my way to Prince town (sic) where I had to attend a fearful service in the church."
It was here he met Lord William Cecil, the Bishop of Exeter. The man who would be King Edward VIII wrote how the senior clergyman 'looks quite mad and is anyway revolting with a scraggy beard; so that besides nearly slapping my sides I was almost sick.'
Looking ahead to a trip to Cornwall the next day he added that he was 'so lonely and bored and fed up and depressed and I've got a ghastly day to face tomorrow with about a 1/2 dozen speeches to let off at Truro, Budmin etc." The love-struck prince gushingly referred to his mistress as 'darling beloved little Fredie Wedie.'
The hand-written letter, which covers four pages and has folding marks in it, is now being sold at auction by a private collector. It comes with the original envelope it was sent in.
Valentina Borghi, a books and manuscripts specialist at Chiswick Auctions of west London, which is selling the item, said: "I think it is very obvious by reading this letter why Edward VIII was never cut out to be King. "He didn't like what he was doing and he felt it was boring. He wanted to spend time doing what he wanted and not lead the life of heir to the throne.
"Yet at the time he wrote this letter he was perceived by his subjects he went to visit and shake hands with as being a very modern Royal figure and one that was very different from his father and grandfather. He was painted in a very positive light at the time.
"But privately he came across as a very bored and needy individual. His attention span was narrow and there was no filter in him; he just spilt out all of his feelings and thoughts in his letters.
"This was almost 20 years before he abdicated but even then you can tell that his heart was not in it."
The letter is being sold on Thursday.
