Today it seems clear that becoming queen was far from what she wanted. "I who had sought no place in history would now be a.s.sured of one an appalling one, carved out by blind prejudice," she wrote in The Heart Has its Reasons. The self-pity may grate. But while it is easy with hindsight to see why "Queen Wallis" would never have been acceptable as consort to a monarch of the British Empire, it is also important to remember that when Edward VIII came to the throne in 1936 he was hailed as the most widely travelled man of his time, with so much excitement and hope based on his perceived glamour and youthful charm, his daredevil smile, his apparent ability to connect with ordinary people, that anyone not familiar with Britain might easily have a.s.sumed he would win through. Lloyd George had declared in 1922 after his 41,000-mile tour as Prince of Wales: "Whatever the Empire owed him before, it owes to him a debt which it can never repay today." Wallis may not have known the speech but she was aware of the sentiment. She had grown up with it. What she totally failed to understand, as she frankly admitted later, was the King"s true position in the const.i.tutional system. For not only had she lived in Washington and London circles where divorce was acceptable at the highest echelons, she had never thought her relationship with Edward would last longer than a few years. When it did, and she suddenly found herself the King"s adored favourite, she believed that: the apparent deference to his every wish, the adulation of the populace, the universal desire even of the most exalted of his subjects to be accorded marks of his esteem all this had persuaded me to take literally the maxim that "the King can do no wrong". Nothing that I had seen had made me appreciate how vulnerable the King really was, how little his wishes really counted for against those of his ministers and parliament.
And the British const.i.tution is, after all, famously unwritten.
By December 1936, when she realized that the King was going to forfeit the throne in order to possess her the only British monarch to have voluntarily renounced the throne since the Anglo-Saxon period14 she knew that the cost for her was the total destruction of her reputation. Hardly comparable sacrifices, some might think. But Wallis, who owned little, did make that comparison and made sure the ex-King did too. She remained convinced that she had been used by the politicians. As she wrote to one of her closest London friends two weeks after the abdication: "The pitiful tragedy of it all is that England still remains in the hands of the men that caused the tragedy using a woman as their means." She was not alone in such views. Lloyd [vie thGeorge, away in Jamaica throughout the crisis writing his memoirs, was furious at the way Baldwin and his allies had "got rid of a king who was making himself obnoxious by calling attention to conditions which it was to their interest to cover up. Baldwin has succeeded by methods which time and again take in the gullible British public. He has taken the high line in order to achieve the lowest of aims." Lloyd George did not hold "the woman Simpson" personally in high regard, considering that she "is not worth the price the poor infatuated King was prepared to pay". Nor was he without bitter personal prejudice against the Conservative leader. But he had a natural sympathy with a man whose love life was unorthodox, believing "all the same if he wished to marry her it could have been arranged, quietly, after the coronation ... if the King wants to marry his American friend Why not? I cannot help thinking the Govt. would not have dealt so brusquely with him had it not been for his popular sympathies. The Tories never really cared for the little man."
If there is a sense in which, as Wallis persuaded herself, the abdication crisis appears as a government plot to be rid of a difficult king, it is sharpened by the speed with which events unfurled after 27 October, at a time when communications were normally difficult and slow. As early as 1927, Lascelles had remarked in desperation to Baldwin: "You know, sometimes when I am waiting to get the result of some point-to-point in which he is riding, I can"t help thinking that the best thing that could happen to him, and to the country, would be for him to break his neck." "G.o.d forgive me," said Baldwin, "I have often thought the same."
However, at the beginning of 1936 Baldwin and his ministers, and experienced courtiers such as Hardinge, Wigram and Lascelles, who all knew each other and understood each other well, were neither plotting nor acting in unison. They all wanted to retain the King, but on their own terms. And they wanted to do this not for themselves but as a matter of duty to the public interest. By November that year, however, they saw that the problem was not simply that the new King might be difficult or interfering; that could be managed. What made Edward VIII worryingly unsafe was his total lack of a sense of public duty, without which a workable relationship seemed impossible. These men and their wives all had a high moral agenda. Wallis Simpson clashed irredeemably with that and in doing so played a valuable role in focusing them on what sort of monarchy Britons wanted and needed to face the looming European crisis.
One other reason should not be overlooked in explaining why the drama played out so swiftly. Edward VIII was at the top of a hereditary system, yet what greater failure could be imagined than the failure to provide an heir? If he believed he was sterile, or if he knew that Wallis was infertile, abdicating could be seen as a welcome release for him. Giving up was something he had contemplated before, as his father recognized when he said to Ulick Alexander: "My eldest son will never succeed me. He will abdicate."
Having failed to detach herself from the King and realizing that she was doomed to a life of exile as despised consort to an ex-king, Wallis now fought for every penny she could, an overwhelming recurrence of her childhood insecurity. As well as being overheard, her telephone was being tapped (by the Metropolitan Police), which she appears not to have known, and her conversation with the Duke at midnight on 14 15 December two days after he had undergone the ma.s.sive emotion of abdication was recorded.
Mrs S: If they d [ S: lion"t get you this thing [presumably money] I will return to England and fight it out to the bitter end. The coronation will be a flop compared with the story that I shall tell the British press. I shall publish it in every paper in the world so that the whole world shall know my story. Your mother is even persecuting me now. Look in all the Sunday papers, you will see what she has done. On the front page of every paper is a black bordered notice stating that she has never seen or spoken to me during the past 12 months. I know it is true but she need not persecute me. She could have helped you so much, you the only son that matters. Did you get a good picking from Ulick? After all I am a British subject and ent.i.tled to protection from Scotland Yard. You must change one of these men not the new one he is an honest type of fellow but the other one is not loyal and is anxious to get back ...
Concentrate on the legal side now. That is the side that counts. We must have that fixed up because of April. Harmsworth has been so helpful and promises to do all he can. He has a villa in Cannes and was here during the few vital days.
"I told him I didn"t want to be Queen," Ralph Martin, one of her earliest biographers, quotes her as telling him in an interview. "All that formality and responsibility ... I told him it was too heavy a load for me to carry. I told him the British people were absolutely right about not wanting a divorced woman for a Queen." The version may have been polished with the years but the truth was, as she understood, "that if he abdicated every woman in the world would hate me and everybody in Great Britain would feel he had deserted them ... we had terrible arguments about it. But he was a mule. He didn"t want to be King without me ... if I left him he would follow me wherever I went."
Had the crisis not arisen in December, with Christmas looming, Wallis might, perhaps, have won more time and been able to escape her fate. But Baldwin always maintained that it would be impossible for politicians to go away for Christmas without a settlement. Far from wanting to be queen, she had a vaguely sketched plan to escape, but it was too late. Blinded by fear, she was also aware of the King"s fragile state of mind and health, aggravated by lack of sleep and fitful or non-existent meals. In addition to the concern shown by Churchill, Piers Legh was so worried about him that he insisted that the Surgeon Commander for the royal yacht should travel with them on the Fury in case he needed medical attention while at sea.
From pity, Francis Stephenson, the clerk, withdrew his intervention with the King"s Proctor after hearing the broadcast. Monckton went back to Fort Belvedere, now abandoned, to clear up and in the room used by Wallis found a biography of George IV"s mistress, Mrs Fitzherbert.
But, as 1936 drew to a close, Wallis was still writing to Ernest and, even more extraordinary, Ernest was writing to the King. "My heart is too full for utterance tonight," he insisted on the eve of the King"s abdication. "What the ordeal of the past weeks has meant to you I well know, and I want you to know that my deepest and most loyal feelings have been with you throughout!"
From Lou Viei Wallis wrote five days after the abdication: Ernest none of this mess ... is of my own making it is the new Peter Pan plan. I miss you and worry about you in spite of the fact that due to the letters [the hate mail] I shan"t live very long [ve s the new and in fact am a prisoner. Four detectives. Oh dear, wasn"t life lovely, sweet and simple.
Wallis.
Isn"t everything awful including the pen?
Finally she apologized to her second husband: "I have nothing for you for Christmas because I can"t move on account of threats so sit all day." It was in Wallis"s interest to tell the world that she had not wanted a divorce until Ernest"s adultery with her best friend forced her hand, a story that was both true and untrue. What was true is that she had not wanted to divorce Ernest. And Ernest, although grateful for Mary"s loving support and comfort, never really fell out of love with Wallis.
"I know that somewhere in your heart there is a small flame burning for me. Guard it carefully, my darling, and don"t let it go out," he wrote to her in October after leaving Bryanston Court for the last time, "if only in memory of the sacred lovely things that have been."
If the King acted greedily, was it fair to blame Wallis? "Money was an obsession," wrote Alastair Forbes of the Duke, an obsession that grew worse with the years, "and he was obsessively mean about it. To the last this was a "royal" who counted his royalties." When Sir John Wheeler-Bennett wrote his official life of George V he told the author and diplomat Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart that a key concern was that "he would have to put in writing how greedy for money the Duke of Windsor had been and what demands he made on King George VI, who had generously responded at considerable sacrifice to himself".
If the King lied, was it fair to blame Wallis for teaching him? How truthful had he ever been in his relationships with previous women? Yet the establishment and most of the royal family did blame her; whatever failings the King had, he was one of theirs and, just as at Ipswich, essentially beyond reproach. It was she and she alone who was responsible for the near-disastrous opprobrium heaped on the British throne in the last months. The true feelings of the royal family and especially those of the new Queen Elizabeth ab
out the woman shortly to become her sister-in-law is revealed in a letter sent from Windsor Castle to the Dominions Secretary, Lord Lloyd, in 1940 and only recently released with the agreement of the Royal Archives and after the Queen Mother"s death in March 2002.
The views expressed in this sternly worded memorandum sent from the Queen via Alec Hardinge, who was "sure you shared H.M."s sentiments as most of us do", include the a.s.sertion that a woman such as Wallis with "three husbands alive" could never "lead or set an example" and therefore represented an inevitable lowering of standards since "the people in our lands are used to looking up to their King"s representatives". Wallis, according to this letter, is "looked down upon as the lowest of the low". This att.i.tude bedevilled all future relationships between the British Court and the departed uncrowned King.
10.
Wallis in Exile "Mummy dear, isn"t it nice to have a Royal Family again"
In a controversial broadcast the day after the abdication Archbishop Lang denounced the sovereign for giving in to "a craving for private happiness": From G.o.d he had received a high and sacred trust. Yet by his own will he has abdicated he has surrendered the trust.
Even more strange and sad it is that he should have sought his happiness in a manner inconsistent with the Christian principles of marriage and within a social circle whose standards and ways of life are alien to all the best instincts and traditions of his people.
Let those who belong to this circle know that today they stand rebuked by the judgement of the nation which had loved King Edward.
Although Baldwin insisted that the broadcast was "the voice of Christian England", and the BBC"s Sir John Reith wrote, "Few more momentous or impressive messages have ever been delivered ... we are honoured to have been the medium," the speech was generally considered a disaster, appearing as "clerical vindictiveness towards a beaten and pathetic figure". Lambeth Palace was deluged with more vituperative letters than the staff had ever known. Gerald Bullett, the popular novelist, wrote a widely circulated poem: My Lord Archbishop, what a scold you are
And when your man is down how bold you are
In Christian charity how scant you are
Oh Auld Lang Swine how full of Cantuar
A strong letter to the New Statesman from the drama critic Ivor Brown helped explain why such a lack of compa.s.sion was causing nervousness on all sides: The departure into exile of Mrs Simpson and the Duke of Windsor is a smashing clerical victory and the c.o.c.k-a-hoop tone of the bishops last Sunday, led by the primate, seems to me thoroughly sinister. You may say that Parliament won so did the prudes and the Pharisees; a dangerous victory ... no doubt according to their principles the Churchmen had to fight the proposed marriage ... we may be sure that clericalism will now fight harder than ever to hold all its forts of intolerance and obscurantism.
Lang had truly believed for months that the ex-King had "a pathological obsession which completely unbalanced his mind". He and his Chaplain Alex Sergeant seriously considered that Edward was "definitely abnormal psychologically if not mentally or physically. Drink or drugs may have contributed to the result which is that he became a sort of slave to this woman and cannot do without her. It is not a case of normal love." Because of Edward"s "disastrous liking for vulgar society and infatuation for this Mrs Simpson", the Archbishop had been dreading the Coronation "as a sort of nightmare". He was now confident in the new King and Queen"s regard for traditional morality and "sure that to the solemn words of the Coronation there would be a sincere response", and his broadcast left no one, least of all Wallis, in any doubt of that.
The Archbishop"s personal csast of allsense of relief that he could now proceed with a meaningful Coronation was surpa.s.sed by an even greater sense of relief within the royal family at how smooth the transition to the new King and Queen had been and how readily the nation took to the new family with their photogenic young daughters. The country rejoiced that such an unpleasant episode was now behind it, a delight expressed clearly by a seven-year-old Welsh girl: "Mummy dear, isn"t it nice to have a Royal Family again."
But such relief did not signal a general relaxation in att.i.tudes to the exiled former King, sympathy for whom was considered highly dangerous politically in case he proved more popular than the socially awkward, less glamorous George VI. It was generally agreed that should the Duke return to London his presence would be an embarra.s.sment both to the government and to the royal family. But he was well within his rights to return had he wished. As the Attorney General had told the House of Commons on 11 December 1936, a king who voluntarily abdicated was not compelled to leave the country. The new Queen was concerned about further stress for her husband, who had not been brought up to be the centre of attention and whose stammer was a serious problem when it came to public speaking; she was concerned too for their young daughters, whom she wanted shielded from comment and scrutiny. But others worried about more sinister elements who might look to exploit the situation. On the eve of the abdication the British Union of Fascists had made an abortive attempt to rally popular support for King Edward VIII, their leader Sir Oswald Mosley always claiming that he was in direct communication with the King hoping to be asked to form a government. However unlikely this scenario, since Mosley was not then in the House of Commons, the Fascists, while outwardly proclaiming loyalty to King George VI, made no real secret of their support for the Duke of Windsor and for any move for him to return to this country and if possible the throne. Since the Fascists looked forward to any visit with enthusiasm and were certain to arrange some sort of welcome, the Metropolitan Police feared a situation which might serve Communist purposes, as the Communists would be watching and, if there was support for their opponents, would immediately attack both Fascists and the Duke.15 Virginia Woolf understood the volatility of human emotions, noting in her diary the views of her grocer"s young female a.s.sistant, "We can"t have a woman Simpson for Queen ... She"s no more royal than you or me," before commenting, But today we have developed a strong sense of human sympathy: we are saying Hang it all the age of Victoria is over. Let him marry whom he likes. Harold [Nicolson] is glum as an undertaker and so are the other n.o.bs. They say Royalty is in Peril. The Empire is Divided ... never has there been such a crisis ... The different interests are queueing up behind Baldwin or Churchill. Mosley is taking advantage of the crisis for his own ends ...
In this febrile time of swift realignments, the writer Osbert Sitwell cleverly captured the mood in his cruel satirical poem "Rat Week", which was not printed at the time for fear of being found libellous. Was the ex-King "quite sane", he asked or merely weak and obstinate and vain? Was Lady Colefax "in her iron cage of curls" one of the rats to desert the sinking ship? Copies were circulating privately and Attlee typed up on his own typewriter all eight verses.
Where are the cWheinking sh friends of yesterday That fawned on Him And flattered Her Where are the friends of yesterday Submitting to His every whim Offering praise of Her as Myrrh To him?
What do they say, that jolly crew?
Oh ... her they hardly knew,
They never found her really nice
(And here the sickened c.o.c.k crew thrice) ...
The apprehension of the new Court, and antipathy towards anyone thought to have been part of the ex-King"s circle, was made painfully clear to Perry Brownlow when he returned from France at the end of the month and found his services no longer required. He complained at being "hurt and humiliated more than I have ever known before ... I am afraid that when I came back last week I did not realise the depth of personal feeling against myself in certain circles: perhaps you should have told me more frankly or maybe I should have understood your hint in the "formula of resignation" shown to me," he wrote to the Lord Chamberlain, the Earl of Cromer. "My resignation from His Majesty"s household was both obvious and desirable, " he agreed, but was it necessary to be demanded "in such a premature and unhappy manner"? Lord Cromer tried to rea.s.sure Brownlow that the request was not personal as the new King was very grateful for his loyal service in escorting Wallis abroad. But the reality was that he was criticized severely for helping her and remaining friendly to the Duke, who was after all G.o.dfather to his young son. Baldwin at least accepted that Brownlow "had a difficult row to hoe", and Wallis, who understood that any intervention from her would only make matters worse, wrote: "You know my dear that if there was anything I could do about it I would have done it long ago." Spurned by the new Court, Brownlow offered to visit the Duke, brooding at a castle in Austria, Schloss Enzesfeld.
"The strain here [at Enzesfeld] is pretty great, as you can imagine, and the Archbishop"s outburst hasn"t helped," wrote Piers Legh, who, firmly out of sympathy with the Duke and Mrs Simpson and not able to speak German, was hoping to be relieved as soon as possible. Brownlow put it more strongly to Alan Don after visiting the Duke in Austria. He thought the Duke was "a pathological case. If Mrs Simpson now lets him down anything might happen." But, as the Duke saw it, the only people letting him down were those in England, mainly his own family. When Dudley Forwood replaced Legh to become sole equerry he described the Duke as "a broken man, a sh.e.l.l, yet he still expected a full service, a monarch"s service". If Forwood forgot to bow on arriving in the Duke"s bedroom in the morning to announce the day"s business, he would receive a reprimand.
Schloss Enzesfeld, owned by Baron Eugene de Rothschild, had been chosen in hasty desperation in December as it was clear the Duke could not be in the same country as Wallis. At least it had a golf course, skiing was near by and he could get around by speaking German. His grandfather, King Edward VII, had stayed there on a visit to the Baron"s father. The introduction now came thanks c caerman. Hito the Baroness, Kitty de Rothschild, a thrice-married friend of Wallis. According to a newspaper cutting sent to Archbishop Lang, heavily underscored and with exclamation marks in the margins, Kitty (nee Wolf) had left Bavaria as a child and emigrated to America with her parents. An uncle educated her and at twenty she married for the first time a Mr Spotswood, a Philadelphia dentist. She divorced him, went to Paris in 1910 and became a Catholic in order to marry Count Erwin Schonborn-Buchheim, a wealthy diplomat. Later she divorced Schonborn and in 1924 "accepted the Jewish faith" in order to marry Baron Eugene de Rothschild. What really irked courtiers who knew the Duke well was hearing how enthusiastically he read the lesson at a Vienna church on Christmas Day when they recalled how resistant he had always been to going to church when it was required of him. Wallis spent Christmas Day at Somerset Maugham"s Villa Mauresque at Cap Ferrat, with Sybil Colefax attempting to cheer her up.
Bored and unable to amuse themselves knitting was only so much fun both Wallis and the Duke were finding fault with those who were trying their best to entertain them. Boredom at least gave Wallis time to read the first of many books published about her. By December 1936 the New York publishers E. P. Dutton had managed to release a biography of her by one Edwina H. Wilson. This superficial and rather breathless account of Mrs Simpson"s furs, nail varnish, jewellery and accomplishments was hugely successful and went into three printings in a fortnight. "She can complete a jigsaw puzzle in half the time the average person takes," readers were informed. They were then told not to despair, as "those who envy Wallis Simpson her success" could be given hints to guide them, for example on how to emulate her: "A wise hostess never entertains at the same time her bridge-playing friends and those who shun the game." Wallis, who read it immediately, was furious to find the amount of inside knowledge it contained and concluded that Mary had had a heavy hand in it.
"Have you read Mary"s effort at literature called "Her Name was Wallis Warfield"? ... It is written by Mary and one other b.i.t.c.h," she wrote furiously to Ernest. "Charming to make money out of one"s friends besides sleeping with their husband. Everyone in London says the amount of stuff she has sold is the top ... I warned you of this ages ago but you wouldn"t believe me. I am very sad." Even more upsetting was the appalling waxwork effigy of her in Madame Tussaud"s, where she was grouped not with the royals but with Voltaire, Marie Antoinette and Joan of Arc. She begged Walter Monckton to do something about it. "It really is too indecent and so awful to be there anyway." But he was powerless.
Walter Monckton, ever the emollient diplomat, was trying to keep the peace on all sides and generally advising patience and turning the other cheek, his tact and usefulness evidenced by the fact that he was the first knight of the new reign, dubbed KCVO by George VI on 1 January 1937. Sir Walter, as he now was, had to fly to Austria, which he found extremely frightening in a small plane in horrible weather, to appease the Duke, who was bombarding his brother, the new King, with what he thought was advice as well as demands for future status and income. Numerous stories did the rounds about how Wallis would telephone from France berating and shouting at the Duke, mostly about money but also about position. And she was once, apparently, heard to accuse the Duke over the phone of having an affair with his hostess, Kitty, even though she had written to her friend in advance imploring her to "be kind to him. He is honest and good and really worthy of affection. They simply haven"t understood." Now she remarked: "It is odd, the hostess remain costfriening on. Must be that fatal charm!" She told him she had heard terrible rumours, but "I can only pray to G.o.d that in your loneliness you haven"t flirted with her (I suspect that)." As the atmosphere at Enzesfeld deteriorated dramatically, Kitty left the castle in early February, appalled at the cost of the long phone calls 800 after three months which the Rothschilds were expected to pay. The Duke failed to say goodbye to her. Most nights as he sat down for dinner with whomever was staying, he would hold forth to a baffled audience about what a wonderful woman Wallis was.
She was certainly a jealous and frightened woman, convinced that she was more than ever a target for royalist fanatics. In her memoirs she admits that even in her most depressed moments she had never antic.i.p.ated the enormity of the hatred she would arouse "and the distorted image of me that seemed to be forming in minds everywhere ... there can be few expletives applicable to my s.e.x that were missing from my morning tray", she explained. There had been "a spot of bother" with Lord Brownlow and the two police officers a.s.signed to her in Cannes even before the abdication, and in a memorandum of 10 December 1936 it was stated that the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Philip Game, had instructed the unhappy officers to stand by pending further orders. "The senior officer then said, what was understood from guarded language to be, that Mrs Simpson intended to "flit" to Germany. [This is underlined in pencil and marked with three vertical lines and a cross.]" According to the memorandum, the Prime Minister informed Sir Horace Wilson of this at once and confirmed with the Commissioner "That there is no question of the officers moving without further orders". The two detectives were therefore asked to stay on, more now as informers than to offer protection, "though it"s a most unusual measure to be kept as quiet as possible there or questions would be asked in Parliament. The new King suggested today that he should pay."
But although Wallis"s phone calls were bugged there is no other evidence that Germany was her intended destination. She simply wanted to escape her predicament and, no doubt recognizing that she would be something of a prize in Germany, was also playing with ideas of where else she might go if the English courts set aside the decree nisi and so obliged her to seek a valid divorce in another jurisdiction. In fact, as the letters to Sibyl Colefax indicate, China "the only other distant country that I knew ... seemed the best choice". She still had friends there who she believed would "take her in". However, as Stephen Cretney points out, she was probably unaware that "at that time a married woman"s domicile was dependent on her husband and so long as Mr Simpson remained domiciled in England a divorce obtained by her elsewhere would have been ineffective in English law". When it was too late to escape anywhere for good, all she could contemplate were shopping trips to Paris couturiers for her wedding gown and trousseau, and for her hair, face and nails. Intense anxiety always led to dieting for Wallis, and Aunt Bessie, who had been to stay, thought she was "too thin and should put on six pounds". Thinner than ever, she at least enjoyed buying eighteen pieces from Elsa Schiaparelli"s summer collection that year and several from Molyneaux, who showed in Cannes. Nonetheless she was writing to the Duke about how much weight she had gained and how heavy she now was. But in early 1937 having a wedding of any kind was still not a certainty for them.
In February she wrote to Ernest, a letter expressing some of her deepest fears and regrets and for once acknowledging how much flak he too was facing as the authorities examined whether or not he had been paid to keep quiet, a ckeeeight shn accusation he decided to fight vigorously asas contrary to all notions of gentlemanly behaviour. His solicitors argued that such allegations had damaged his standing in the City. He could not avoid being aware of "current luncheon table gossip ... and widespread rumours that I was paid handsomely (some reports put the figure as high as 200,000!) to allow myself to be divorced. Needless toto say none of my friends believe it and I have scores of people batting for me," he rea.s.sured his elderly mother in New York. But when he discovered that Mrs Arthur Sutherland, a woman he did not know, had made an offensive comment "she"s the only one I have been able to catch red handed since she made the remark at a luncheon in front of Maud, not knowing that M. was my sister. It is villainous, malicious slander and must be stopped" he decided he had to sue her.
"Ernest dear," Wallis wrote, sending "my dearest love to you": I am really so sorry about all the unjust criticism you have had. I feel your suit will change things. I am sorry you have Patrick H. [Sir Patrick Hastings KC] against you he"s so clever & v lucky besides however I have perfect faith in your abilities as a witness.
I"m in a fog about the US bank account ... Life here is one colossal bore. I don"t go places as I think it more dignified to be quiet. One hopes to keep the name from the papers but even doing nothing is no protection against their intentions.
In a remarkably frank account of her own emotions Wallis admitted to Ernest, "It never should have been like it is now." She went on: ... I am so illogical and so groomed by my pride that when that is touched nothing will stop what I"m capable of doing and this situation shows the truth of that remark because if I had told you I would go to such lengths you wouldn"t have believed it humanly possible, and of course you had every right to have a flirtation. So really you see what a queer girl I am.
I think Peter Pan should have written you too, but then you see he doesn"t understand ...
Write me sometime please & above all make your life again with care. You are so good and sweet. The IOU"s are in a tin box at Windsor but you can consider them torn up.
And she was desperate to leave Cannes, as she confided to Ernest: "I am going to move from here n.o.body knows it so please don"t tell ... I"m going to a house belonging to some friends of the Rogers near Tours, a change from their climate is also needed. You can imagine how much I want to kill Katherine by now ... !"
Although most courtiers agreed that for the King"s Proctor now to disallow the divorce would be unnecessarily cruel, no one could say with certainty, least of all Wallis, that he would not be obliged to do so as the angry letters continued to pour in. Mary and Ernest were worried too. Mary wrote to her sister that "E was such an angel if only that d.a.m.n King"s Proctor doesn"t upset the divorce. We are staying very quiet on purpose ... I have been mentioned many times as having been the corespondent [sic] in the Simpson divorce case which is unpleasant ... and no one would have wanted to take a chance on being nice to me if they [the Windsors] hadn"t left the country, which is a great brea c a asant k for me ... but I love my life and E and I am happy." She told her sister that she dreaded the idea that she might ever again meet Wallis in case she should have to curtsey to her. "But as bitterly as I feel towards her for what she did to me, I do not envy her her life with that nervous difficult little man. They say he doesn"t realize at all that he is no longer King." And she believed the rampant rumours that Wallis had somehow made off with Queen Alexandra"s emeralds, jewels apparently bequeathed to the Duke by his grandmother but in fact spread among various female members of the royal family. The gossip about Wallis"s jewellery was a hot issue. The former Constance Coolidge, Comtesse de Jumilhac, who stayed with Wallis immediately before her wedding, wrote to a mutual friend: About those emeralds ... Queen Alexandra never left any emeralds. The only emeralds in the royal family all belong to Queen Mary, who bought them or acquired them from the Tzarina. She still has them. The Duke never had any jewels at all. He even had to buy his own silver when he went to Belvedere. The jewels that Wallis has are all new jewels he has bought for her here in Paris some at Cartier"s and mostly at Van Cleef and Arpels. She has lovely jewels but no great stones except her emerald engagement ring which I find a little dark. I like her sapphire one better and also the diamond. The ruby is small. She has several sets of jewels but they are all modern. After all she would have told me if they had come from the royal family. I asked her and she said no none of them, that the Duke had not been left any jewels at all.
In her determination to quash rumours, Wallis exaggerated. Of course the Duke had some family pieces but whatever Wallis wore was newly set or new stones entirely.
Some courtiers felt a nagging doubt that Wallis might not actually go through with a wedding. On 5 March Lascelles spotted an announcement in the evening newspaper about the activities of the King"s Proctor and the Simpson divorce which disturbed him. "But I tracked Walter Monckton down in the Savoy and he rea.s.sured me as to its being only formal routine," he told his wife. "Just when I finished talking to him HM sent for me to know what it was all about and I was able to rea.s.sure him in turn."
So, when Sir Thomas Barnes eventually announced the results of his enquiries on 18 March and ruled that in spite of gossip and hearsay he had not been presented with any actual evidence to indicate why the decree absolute should not go ahead, there was huge relief. He was criticized for not having interviewed the one servant who could possibly give more information Wallis"s maid, Mary Burke. But as he explained in his instructions to counsel: "By reason of the fact that she is still in the employ of pet.i.tioner it is impossible to interview her ... it is not the practice of the King"s Proctor to endeavour to get information from such servants."
But had Barnes chosen deliberately not to pursue information which would have shown the ex-King to be involved in a collusive divorce? There were those who offered him evidence of the King"s adultery but only if he paid for it. For example, when Wallis and the then Prince had stayed in Budapest in 1935, returning from their skiing holiday, hotel staff as well as detectives on duty observed their behaviour and (according to an unsigned three-page memorandum in the King"s Proctor files at the National Archives) "there appears to be no doubt that the evidence which is being sought exists ... even a cursory enquiry showed that evidence going to the root of matters does in fact exist. cn fional"
"Whilst there is a possibility of obtaining confidential and oral information from them none of them would take the risk of making a statement in writing or of giving evidence before a commissioner of court" for fear of losing their jobs, unless they were offered compensation. Barnes decided not to proceed with seeking their story on the grounds that "it would not be proper to pay witnesses to give evidence." Not only that, unless they had actually been in the room, what evidence could they give beyond stating that Wallis and the Prince had shared a room?
In early March Wallis had left for the Chateau de Cande in the Loire Valley with loyal Mary Burke and twenty-seven pieces of luggage. Thanks to an introduction from Katherine Rogers, with whom she was now fed up, she went to stay with Charles Bedaux, the French-born American industrial millionaire, and his second wife Fern, who had offered their castle as a wedding venue, thrilled by the publicity that such an ill.u.s.trious guest would bring them. Charles Bedaux was a mysterious self-made entrepreneur who, after a spell in the Foreign Legion, had made his money by inventing a labour management efficiency system for industry. Not surprisingly this earned him the hostility of organized labour, but it held great appeal for the n.a.z.i German leadership and he was under surveillance from the British and French security services, both of which were aware of his German contacts. The only condition insisted upon by M. and Mme Bedaux was that they be given full publicity as hosts for the royal couple. "For I am a hard working businessman and in these critical times if the erroneous thought were to penetrate the public that we rented Cande for the purpose intended, it would be sure to have a disastrous effect on my business career." Charles and Fern Bedaux, who had bought the castle and surrounding estate ten years previously and had lavishly modernized it, were to prove dubious hosts for the Windsor wedding. When allegations of collaboration were made against Charles in 1941, it was Fern"s old friend Katherine who supplied the Americans with evidence. Facing a trial for treason, he committed suicide.16 But for the moment Wallis was enamoured with Fern"s hostessing skills and her attention to detail as well as with the up-to-date American plumbing and central-heating system. A bathtub that could be filled and emptied in less than a minute and a telephone, which at the time was almost unheard of in a French residence (it was directly connected to the exchange in Tours, and therefore required an operator to be present inin the castle), were luxuries that mattered more than Charles Bedaux"s politics. Fern even had her own gymnasium with all the latest exercise equipment at the castle.
There was another month to wait before the news that a decree absolute would be granted, but the day that the announcement was made 3 May the Duke immediately left Austria, where he felt he had been imprisoned, to be with Wallis, similarly fractious even in her luxurious confinement at the chateau. It was no coincidence that the announcement was made a week before the Coronation, the date of which 12 May had been chosen months previously when it was a.s.sumed that it was Edward VIII who would be crowned (with Wallis by his side, Edward himself had once hoped). The new King and Queen agreed to do what King Edward had refused to attend a great Empire Service in St Paul"s after the Coronation.
Ernest and Mary watched the Coronation from a first-floor balcony at 49 Pall Mall, "one of the best places in London to see the show", which had been quietly arranged for them by well-connected friends. Mary was e cs. w Kinthralled by the pageantry and sent her family detailed accounts of the uniforms, carriages and costumes: But finally came the gold coach drawn by the eight white horses called the Windsor Greys ... and the King and Queen looking so young and pale and grave, unsmiling and not bowing ... looking as if they were taking on their responsibilities with the greatest seriousness.
Ernest said to me, once we were listening to the service in the Abbey, when the Queen was crowned: "I couldn"t have taken it if it had been Wallis" [a rare insight into the man"s otherwise stoic performance]. But that is of course not for publication. We all had a terribly good time. Marvellous food sent up from Fortnums.
That same day, making no reference to activities in London, Wallis was writing to Ernest from the Chateau de Cande: "I have taken back the name of Warfield as I really felt I had done the name of Simpson enough harm. Now the target can be Warfield as I don"t expect the world will let up on its cruelty to me for some time ... It"s impossible to have anyone here & also impossible to move literally surrounded by press and photographers etc ... The publicity has practically killed me."
And when the Duke eventually sent out a paltry handful of wedding invitations he announced his bride imaginatively as Mrs Warfield, which she never was. Those who received one felt as if they had been sent a poisoned chalice, whether the bride was Mrs Simpson or Mrs Warfield. G.o.dfrey Thomas, declining the invitation, wrote of how terribly sorry he was that, "largely owing to this d.a.m.ned press, things have developed in this way", while John Aird, who had written to accept, hurriedly recalled his letter when he realized the consequences, admitting in his diary: "Feel a slight s.h.i.t at leaving HRH to be married with only the Metcalfes [Edward "Fruity" Metcalfe, the Duke"s close friend and former equerry, and his wife Lady Alexandra "Baba" Metcalfe] and Walter Monckton at the ceremony." As Philip Ziegler observes: "No one emerges with great credit from this episode except for Hugh Lloyd Thomas, who made it clear he would attend the ceremony whether given permission or not, and the Duke, who met these humiliating rebuffs with stoical dignity."
The Duke had filled much of his time in Austria trying to organize his financial affairs, his wedding and a royal t.i.tle for Wallis. He insisted that the desire for a religious service was mutual. But what Wallis wanted was not so much the religion per se as an occasion that would be spoken of as a rival coronation, a notion she revealed in letters to the Duke. It was he, rather than Wallis, who was adamant that, after all he had given up, he was not prepared to make do with some hole-in-the-wall ceremony solely at a French registry office. While various friends and members of his circle had been deputed to sound out the likely response from the new King, Walter Monckton went directly to Lambeth Palace to see Alan Don to find out the best arrangements that could be made. He told the Archbishop"s chaplain that the Duke was very obstinate and determined to satisfy his bride with the dignified ceremony he thought she deserved, conducted by a royal chaplain. But Don pointed out that all four Houses of Convocation had lately pa.s.sed resolutions deprecating the use of the marriage service where groom or bride had a former partner still living. At one stage it had seemed possible that Canon Leonard Andrews, a rector in the diocese of Truro, and therefore having an official connection with the Duchy of Cornwall, might be willing to go to France and officia ce arurte. However, as Wigram reportedly told Monckton when the latter tried in early April to organize some sort of religious service, he would "hound Andrews out of the College of Chaplains for suggesting such a thing". Not surprisingly, the rector withdrew.
Monckton also pressed for another of the Duke"s wishes to be met: that some of the royal family might be present at the wedding. Wigram responded by telling him, as he reported to Archbishop Lang: that if any of the King"s family were present with the approval of HM this would be a firm nail in the coffin of monarchy. I have told the King that he can shelter himself behind Baldwin and the Dominion Prime Ministers and I am sure they would never advise HM to allow any of his family to be present at such a mock ceremony. Fortunately Alec [Hardinge] and I are hand in glove and he says he wants me to continue to deal with this. Excuse this outburst but my religious feelings are really hurt by such monstrous suggestions.
The new King, by retaining the services of both Hardinge and Lascelles, could not have been surprised to be given the sort of advice he was. But the Duke felt that his brother"s weakness was being exploited by men who were his old enemies and were still kicking him because they disapproved of Wallis. This was a close-knit group of friends many of whom had been to Harrow and, as Monckton pointed out, Baldwin and Churchill were Old Harrovians too. Edward wrote to his brother begging him to help give him and Wallis a "dignified background" for their marriage. "Of course a great deal of the bunk is levelled at Wallis and I can"t take it because you must always think of Wallis and myself as one from henceforth ... and anything said or aimed against her hits me a thousand times harder." Nonetheless King George VI steeled himself to what he perceived his duty, insisting that this was not simply a private family matter and writing to tell his elder brother that none of the family could come out to his wedding: this was something "I loathe having to do ... but you will appreciate the fact that I cannot do anything else".
As the Duke searched in vain for a royal chaplain, one man now bravely offered himself for the job: the eccentric vicar of St Paul"s, Darlington, the Reverend R. Anderson Jardine. Jardine had been apprenticed to an architect when, aged nineteen, he had experienced a sudden conversion and became a street preacher. After he had taken charge of a chapel in a Yorkshire mining village, his father apparently disinherited him and attempts were made on his life. But he persevered in his chosen calling and, in 1923, was ordained into the Church of England and four years later appointed to the living of St Paul"s with a parish of 13,000 souls. But he was a controversial preacher and sometimes described himself now as a faith healer. Jardine explained that when he read in a newspaper that the ex-King could have no religious blessing on his marriage he was so shocked that he could not even finish his breakfast. He went immediately to the bottom of his garden and prayed in an old army tent he kept there. He said he heard a voice telling him he must go to France and offer his services. He wrote to Herman Rogers and learned that the Duke was overjoyed at the prospect of being married by an English clergyman according to the Book of Common Prayer, even if it would not be the full church wedding he might at one time have wished for.
Jardine had already crossed paths with his bishop, Dr Herbert Hensley Henson, Bishop of Durham, and one of the most notable intellectuals of his day. Henson, by deliberately remaining silent when Lang uttered c Laf D his post-abdication broadside, had earned the respect of the new King and Queen, who did not wish to be seen as part of an establishment attack on their own family. Whatever they thought privately about Lang"s comments, they recognized that the speech had not been well received in the nation at large, and Henson was invited to stay at Windsor Castle. Henson himself, although far from being an admirer of the Duke of Windsor, was equally no bigot and in fact was a supporter of A. P. Herbert"s divorce Bill. Nonetheless, he declared that "if any clergyman of his diocese were to marry the Duke he, Henson, as Bishop, would inhibit the man at the doors of his Parish Church" a threat that in the end he failed to enact.
Henson explained to a small group of influential politicians "in the quietest and most friendly manner in the world ... that in the eyes of the church the Reno divorce of Mrs Simpson (for incompatibility of temper) is not recognised as a divorce by the Church of England [for which adultery was still the only grounds for divorce] and that a marriage with the Duke of Windsor will therefore be doubly bigamous". Churchill, one of those present, was deeply perturbed "and said plaintively "but why were we not told this before?" " Aside from the fact that her divorce was granted in Warrenton, Virginia, not Reno, Nevada, and was on the grounds of Win Spencer"s (alleged) desertion, the conversation ill.u.s.trates further the depth of misunderstanding about Wallis. In secular American society her divorce from Spencer was legally valid and she had every reason to believe that it ent.i.tled her to marry Ernest Simpson. But the Church was another matter and the King"s Proctor had been sent a cutting from the Washington Herald dated 7 December 1936 which a.s.serted that, in the eyes of the US Protestant Episcopal Church, Wallis was still the wife of Commander Spencer. "We neither recognize her divorce from him nor her subsequent marriage and divorce from Ernest Simpson ... Regardless of what the English authorities may hold in this diocese she must remain Mrs Spencer until divorced from Commander Spencer under the canons of the church or separated from him by death."
The violent reaction in the British establishment was provoked by Wallis herself, not merely because she was either American or a double divorcee but because she was also brash. The constant rebuffs made her even less guarded. She wrote to the Duke: "I blame it all on the wife [Queen Elizabeth] who hates us both." But she had little sympathy for the brother either. "Well who cares, let him be pushed off the throne." She did not trouble, at the various dinner parties to which she was invited, to hide her views, views which made their way to London where it was noted that she never referred to her future sister-in-law as the new Queen but always as the d.u.c.h.ess of York or by a variety of unflattering nicknames to do with her dress sense or figure. The fact that it had long been recognized, even at the Palace in George V"s day, that Americans had different rules for divorce and sometimes "the ladies being American seems to be sufficient justification for exceptional treatment" was conveniently ignored where Wallis was concerned. She knew of other twice-divorced women an old friend, Dottie Sands, was one who were married in church. "So what?" was her reaction. In a letter addressing the former King as "Dearest Lightning Brain" because he never seemed to appreciate what the Palace was doing to him she asked: "Why you have been singled out to be crucified I can"t see."
Nonetheless Henson, however much he may have wanted to take a tough line with Jardine, could actually do little. He issued a statement saying: "The Rev R. A. Jardine has no authority to officiate outside his parish a c hiess nd diocese. If the Duke"s marriage were to take place within the diocese of Durham, the Bishop would inhibit him but the Bishop has no jurisdiction [elsewhere] ..." So Jardine made his way to Tours. Also on the road to Cande was the photographer Cecil Beaton, the Duke"s lawyers, George Allen and Walter Monckton, and the society florist Constance Spry, a woman who, partly because of her own irregular romantic entanglements and a failed marriage, was a long-standing and sympathetic ally of the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess in their plight and was determined to do all she could to make the day special. Spry had been one of the first to know of the Prince"s relationship with Mrs Simpson as they were two of her best customers, and she had firmly insisted to her staff that they must be "absolutely silent and loyal".
Immediately after the abdication, Spry"s close a.s.sociation with the former King meant that she missed out on the prestigious and lucrative Coronation work. Nonetheless, when she received an invitation at very short notice from Wallis to do the floral display for her wedding at the Chateau de Cande on 3 June she did not hesitate, even though she knew that this would result in further years of lost commissions from the royal family. She went with her a.s.sistant Val Pirie to the Paris flower markets and ordered dozens of Madonna lilies and peonies and then went to Val"s family home near Tours and picked enough to cram the car with wild flowers, roses and more peonies. Cecil Beaton described the two women as "laden Ganymedes" who decorated the whole castle with "magnificent mountains" of flowers. "The flowers were out of all proportion to the scale of the house and the small numbers of people who would see them," he recalled. For although the whole place was under siege from a motley crew of well-wishers, reporters, dogs and delivery vans, there were embarra.s.singly few friends.
Brownlow, believing until a few weeks before the wedding that the Duke might ask him to be his best man, had been helping to advise Wallis with press arrangements for the wedding, suggesting that the journalist Frederick Lonsdale would be the man to come out to the chateau with him because he is "as you know a gentleman" who could be relied upon to write the account "in good style and good taste". But then he started to receive letters, including one from the Lincolnshire MP Harry Crookshank and one from the Bishop of Lincoln, suggesting that if he or Lady Brownlow attended the wedding "the Lincolnshire side of your life would become very difficult". Brownlow was lord lieutenant of the county, a post undertaken by his family for eight generations and one which he valued highly. At the end of the month the Brownlows received their invitation to the wedding as well as a suggestion that they should come out early. Before accepting, Brownlow decided that it would be courteous to obtain the King"s consent. But two days later, having learned that the invitation had been refused by courtiers on his behalf, he told Hardinge that he was no longer asking His Majesty for a ruling and had decided to decline the invitation. He always insisted his decision had nothing to do with fears of losing the lord lieutenancy.
Spry did not let the small number of guests dictate how she would decorate the castle and her magnificent floral displays took two days of preparations. She could not help noticing that the ex-King spent hours on his knees pathetically reading old and damp copies of The Times, which she had spread out underneath her arrangements.
The wedding day itself dawned warm and sunny. At noon everything stopped while Charles and Fern Bedaux and Herman and Katherine Rogers went out for lunch, braving the waiting crowd at the gat cwd on everes. Among the hundreds of jostling international journalists, two, Randolph Churchill and Charles Murphy of Reuters, were invited in after the ceremony. The small bridal party remained in the castle to eat, with Wallis trying to inject some jollity into the occasion by recounting the story of her maid, who thought that all the palaver was enough to put anyone off getting married. "I couldn"t let the poor girl be put off matrimony for life. I felt it my bounden duty to say: "Oh it"s not always as bad as this, but it just happens to be if you"re marrying the ex-King of England." " An embarra.s.sed silence met this remark the irony of a woman embarking on her third marriage explaining why hope continued to triumph over experience presumably was not lost on the a.s.sembled diners.
Jardine, "a comic little man with a red bun face, protruding teeth and a broad grin", according to Beaton, arrived on the morning of 3 June and was immediately introduced to the bridegroom. As they shook hands the ex-King said: "Thank G.o.d you"ve come thank G.o.d you"ve come. Pardon my language, Jardine, but you are the only one who had the guts to do this for me." There followed a small crisis over the makeshift altar an oak chest ("bogus renaissance", according to Cecil Beaton) with carved fat female figures, dragged from the hall into the music room. Wallis shrieked that "the row of extra women" must be covered up and suggested a tea cloth they had bought as a souvenir in Budapest. There was a further crisis as Jardine refused to have a crucifix on the chest, but no one could immediately produce a plain cross. Then someone remembered the nearby Protestant chapel which obligingly offered theirs. After that was found there appeared to be no more hurdles and the service could get under way.
Wallis"s tight pale-blue crepe dress and small matching jacket with a halo-style hat by Reboux has become a defining image of the twentieth century. The colour was chosen by Mainbocher to match her eyes in a shade henceforth called "Wallis blue", while the style was designed to make her look impossibly thin. At her neck she wore an Art Deco clip of sapphires over a fan of baguette diamonds made for her earlier that year by Van Cleef and Arpels. Such clips became part of Wallis"s personal style, copied by others. But in fact Beaton had taken some photographs the day before, mostly outside, as the green walls and pink upholstery did little to set off the pale-blue dress. The most vivid account of the day itself came from Lady Alexandra Metcalfe, daughter of Lord Curzon and wife of the Duke"s best man, Fruity Metcalfe, who stepped in belatedly to perform that task when the royal brothers could not attend as supporters. In her unpublished diaries Baba Metcalfe admitted frankly that she was dreading the day and would have "given a fortune for the train not to stop". She arrived the night before the wedding and on greeting Wallis noted that she "had forgotten how unattractive is her voice and manner of speaking". The Duke, she thought, looked well and in high spirits, but he "sees through Wallis"s eyes, hears through her ears and speaks through her mouth". Although sad that his staff were unable to come, he "took badly Perry Brownlow backing out. Wallis not being HRH was the worst blow."
For weeks both Wallis and the Duke had feared this final rebuff, the likelihood of which was being openly discussed in England. Mary Raffray, still awaiting her own divorce, was following her old schoolfriend"s difficulties closely. "Much as I loathe Wallis, I can"t help feeling half pleased half sorry for the slap in the face she"s had not being Royal Highness and to me much worse, none of their friends or sycophants going to the wedding. The Brownlows felt it bad for home work and so did mo candba Metcst people and I think she was too proud to ask her American friends."
But the Duke had not been told formally that Wallis was to be refused the status of HRH until Walter Monckton arrived with a letter from the King. In it he tried to explain that, far from taking anything away, the Duke not being in the line of succession was not automatically HRH, and he (the King) had actually given him a t.i.tle by issuing Letters Patent even though the honour was specifically limited to him alone. This formula was contrived by Sir John Simon after an appeal from Wigram, as "HM hopes you will find some way to avoid this t.i.tle being conferred". King George had admitted to Baldwin that he and his family "all feel that it would be a great mistake to acknowledge Mrs Simpson as a suitable person to become Royal".
"This is a nice wedding present," the Duke said when he read the letter. Baba Metcalfe saw the bitterness in both of them. "He had an outburst to Fruity while dressing for dinner," she recorded. "He is through with the family. He will be loyal to the crown but not to the man, his brother. He blames him for weakness in everything." It was in this mood that a wedding present from the Kents, a Faberge box, was returned with anguish and disappointment. The Duke felt betrayed by his entire family and had no interest in accepting objects such as this when the one thing he craved, recognition of his wife, was not forthcoming.
The Duke"s initial reaction had been to give up his own HRH, but Monckton, who insisted he had always been in favour of granting the honour to the d.u.c.h.ess, together with Wallis, dissuaded him from doing that on the grounds that it would achieve nothing except arouse further satisfaction in London. Eventually they agreed that they would fight the decision, and thereafter the Duke referred to Wallis as Her Royal Highness; household staff were told to address her thus and to curtsey. This confusion created awkwardness for everyone, and the orders were occasionally ignored.
"Wallis has lots to say about the behaviour of friends and family and realises there is no insult they have not heaped on her," observed Baba. The Metcalfes alone among their friends were always stalwart allies. Wallis kept repeating to Baba her effusive thanks for being there. And there were some who, while critical of the Duke, nonetheless opposed such implied punishment. As Sir Maurice Gwyer, First Parliamentary Counsel and the ultimate authority on const.i.tutional matters, told Wigram: "I should have thought myself that an attempt to deprive the Duke"s wife of the t.i.tle of HRH would have the most disastrous results."