To what extent is it fair to see the grumblings of the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess as undermining morale and the war effort and, in addition, to describe them as pro-Hitler or n.a.z.i puppets in waiting? "I suppose," Wallis herself explained frankly on the eve of their autumn 1941 visit to America, even though everybody wants the sufferings of so many to end, one"s own personal feelings can"t help but creep in and I do most devoutly pray for the end of the war so that the Duke may be released from the difficult situation of being in a firm whose head is an arch enemy. Everything so far has gone well with the Emba.s.sy in Washington regarding us ... Canada is another thing; the family element again and we have had the usual snub from "The Great Dominion". Strange that an Englishman is treated with politeness in a foreign country like the US but Canada, his own land, is rude. So you see what I mean when I pray for the day when the Duke is free once more.
These feelings, his as much as hers, were not to change throughout their time in Na.s.sau and, in the current atmosphere in Britain, were inevitably seen as defeatist. But then, as she confessed to her princ.i.p.al New York correspondent Edith Lindsay, ""Les Anglais" are very strange people, I find." The tone of her letters, even those to officials, was defiant, never deferential. As she wrote to her aunt in July 1940: We refused to return to England except under our own terms as the Duke is quite useless to the country if he was to receive the same treatment as when he returned in September ... one humiliation after another ... Can you fancy a family continuing a feud when the very Empire is threatened and not putting every available man in a spot where he would be most useful? Could anything be so small and hideous? What will happen to a country which allows such behaviour?
Shortly after Wallis wrote that letter, the Duke foolishly gave an interview to the American novelist Fulton Oursler, which was published in Liberty magazine in March 1941. Appearing at this critical moment in the battle to persuade America to join the Allies, the article could scarcely have been worse timed. Discussing whether an outright victory was ever possible in modern warfare, Oursler opined: "I am inclined to doubt it ... The Germans might say there will always be a Germany so long as one German remains alive." The Duke responded rhetorically: "And you can"t execute the death sentence on 80,000,000 people?"
However much the Duke insisted that he had been fed the answers, the interview greatly angered Churchill. It coloured all their subsequent wart sbsebt iime exchanges. Churchill told the Duke that the article: gives the impression and can indeed only bear the interpretation of contemplating a negotiated peace with Hitler. That is not the policy of the Government and vast majority of the people of the United States ... later on, when the atmosphere is less electric, when the issues are more clear cut and when perhaps Your Royal Highness"s public utterances ... are more in harmony with the dominant tides of British and American feeling, I think that an agreeable visit [to the US] for you might be arranged.
This exchange deteriorated when the Duke pointed out that a recent American edition of Life had carried an article in which his sister-in-law, the Queen, referred to the d.u.c.h.ess as "that woman". But eventually, after a three-month silence, the Duke ate humble pie and wrote to Churchill a.s.suring him that as long as he held an official position, "I play the game of the Government that appointed me." Six months after the disastrous article in Liberty, "chaperoned" by MacColl, the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess were allowed to make their first official visit to the American mainland.
Yet the Duke never gave up bombarding Churchill with requests for Wallis to have minor medical treatment in the US or about staffing arrangements at Government House, as well as reverting to the one major request that was consuming them both: her royal status, or lack of it. In an eight-page letter to Churchill in November 1942 he not only reminded the British Prime Minister that "I asked you to bear me in mind should another suitable appointment fall vacant". He also urged that "after five and a half years, the question of restoring to the d.u.c.h.ess her royal status should be clarified". He went on to explain that he had been officially requested by the Secretary of State for the Colonies to submit the names of local candidates for the New Year honours list. "I am now asking you, as Prime Minister, to submit to the King that he restores the d.u.c.h.ess" royal rank at the coming New Year not only as an act of justice and courtesy to his sister in law but also as a gesture in recognition of her two years of public service in the Bahamas. The occasion would seem opportune from all angles for correcting an unwarranted step."
The King replied to Churchill on 9 December that he was "sure it would be a mistake to reopen this matter ... I am quite ready to leave the question in abeyance for the time being but I must tell you quite honestly that I do not trust the d.u.c.h.ess"s loyalty." There was a part of Wallis which also longed for the whole issue to be dropped or just kept in abeyance. It was tiring to go on and on fighting. As she wrote to Edith Lindsay in 1943: "I can"t see why they just don"t forget all about the Windsors and let us be where we want to be in obscurity ..."
But as the King expanded his views in a separate memorandum, addressed to the Prime Minister and marked "private and confidential", there was "no question of the t.i.tle being "restored" to the d.u.c.h.ess because she never had it. I am sure there are still large numbers of people in this country and in the Empire to whom it would be most distasteful to have to do honour to the d.u.c.h.ess as a member of our family ... I have consulted my family, who share these views."
While it may be open to debate whether the royal family seriously questioned her loyalty to Britain or whether this was a convenient umbrella, several British politicians before the abdication believed, as Sir Horace Wilson state s Wiherd, that Wallis Simpson was a woman of "limitless ambition" with a desire to "interfere in politics" and who was in touch with the n.a.z.i movement. In 1940 Churchill, in writing to Roosevelt, had said of the Duke, "though his loyalties are unimpeachable there is always a backlash of n.a.z.i intrigue that seeks to make trouble about him now that the greater part of the continent is in enemy hands".
The Duke"s close involvement with Axel Wenner-Gren, the Swedish millionaire owner of Electrolux, was part of this backlash. Wenner-Gren, a suave white-haired businessman, part-educated in Germany, had made his money through patenting a type of vacuum cleaner and a refrigerator. Having built his fortune in the early part of the century it suited him now to preach a doctrine of peace in order to protect his worldwide interests and to continue dealing with n.a.z.i Germany as well as Britain and the United States. A friend of Charles Bedaux and Hermann Goring, he also had an interest in the German arms manufacturer Krupp, and manufactured munitions for the Germans through another Swedish company, Bofors, which was protected by Swedish neutrality. Before the war he bought one of the world"s largest and most lavishly appointed yachts, the Southern Cross, once owned by Howard Hughes, and set sail for the Bahamas with his American wife and children in 1939. There he took up residence in an impressive mansion, which he named Shangri-La, founded the Bank of the Bahamas and used the island as a base from which to continue his business activities.
Wenner-Gren was tipped off in a cryptic message in 1940 that the new family arriving in Na.s.sau would be of interest to him and his friends. This message, intercepted by Washington, was a.s.sumed to mean that Wenner-Gren was a German sympathizer and would quickly recruit the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess to his cause. British and American diplomats were from the first deeply worried about this connection as the Duke, pleased to find a man who was not only cultured but offered a chance to build up investment on the island, did indeed nurture the friendship. Wenner-Gren a boastful man would often brag about having friendships with other unsavoury political figures, such as Mussolini and Mexico"s pro-Fascist General Maximino Camacho, and in fact may not have been as important as he made out. The American government was so concerned it placed Wenner-Gren on the black list of those to be treated as enemy aliens, which effectively put a stop to his friendship with the Windsors. The Duke"s biographer, Philip Ziegler, commented that "it is not hard to feel that in this case he as well as the unfortunate Swede was misused. On other points he is less easily defended." And his friendship with Charles Bedaux was equally dubious. For the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess to befriend such questionable characters at this dangerous time was ill advised at the very least.
Throughout the war, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation kept a sizeable file on the couple, now largely decla.s.sified but with names redacted, mostly comprising unsubstantiated denunciations from outside sources explaining why they believed the loyalty of either the Duke or d.u.c.h.ess, or both, was suspect beliefs based on little more than gossip or hearsay. There are many notes in the file insisting on a pre-war affair or relationship between Wallis and Ribbentrop and on the Windsors" pro-German tendencies. Others express apprehension about the couple"s friendship with Wenner-Gren or even suggest that, as the d.u.c.h.ess sent her clothes for dry cleaning in New York, she doubtless used this as a method of sending secret messages.
Later in the war, in August 1944, when there was a revival of interest in the d.u.c.h.ess, the FBI undertook a survey of opinion sey ther in the literary and publishing world to ascertain the att.i.tude of publishers and others in the US media to the Windsors. They concluded "that the Dutchess [sic] was of extreme news interest and that she was exceedingly unpopular in certain political circles of the US and England because of her social contacts prior to her marriage ... however no sources could give evidence of a concerted effort to campaign against her". Moreover, an influential New York advertising executive stated that "she and her husband are considered a pathetic couple by the leading publishers and editors". The couple were well aware they were being watched when they travelled to the United States they were accompanied not only by bodyguards but by FBI special agents "to exercise discreet observations", but they believed they were being spied on in Na.s.sau as well. At a formal dinner in Government House, after the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess had been piped in, "the d.u.c.h.ess made some remark to a dinner guest and then turned to the piper and said: "you can also report that to Downing Street", an indication to everyone present that they thought the piper was some kind of spy for England". They were "forever making remarks like that which were out of place".
Once America entered the war, the Windsors took a more positive view of the likely outcome. Yet, throughout the years she was in Na.s.sau, Wallis never stopped worrying about whether she would have enough money once the war was over, only now "enough money" was a rather different proposition as she needed enough to live in the style to which a king and his consort were accustomed. She admitted to Monckton her anxieties about "money in the years ahead". She asked him what would happen if "the Windsor holdings are perhaps lost in the shuffle". She reminded him of "the need to keep our heads above water in the long pull ahead ... unless we take a job in the U.S. There seem to plenty of those dangling in front of the Duke"s eyes." But by the end of the war, with doubts about his loyalty circulating freely, jobs in the US for the Duke were no longer being dangled. There was some discussion about finding him "a high level job" at the Washington Emba.s.sy. But it was hard to specify precisely what task he was best fitted for other than a vague desire to further Anglo-American relations, and the proposal was apparently abandoned because Clement A
ttlee, who became Prime Minister in July 1945, and his Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin were adamant that it was not a good idea. Churchill continued to hope that there might be an amba.s.sadorial job available for the ex-King and insisted that he was "very sorry about this foolish obstruction by Bevin and Attlee and I wish I had it in my power to overcome it" a comment which, the Duke told Monckton, "has amused us a good deal for, after all, he wasn"t all that cooperative himself during his five year residence at Number 10".
The Windsors left Na.s.sau on 3 May 1945 ahead of another sweltering summer, and went first to America with no clear idea of where they would settle or what they would do. Relations with Churchill were from now on edgy, although he remained always respectful towards his former monarch, and in 1948 he and Clemmie spent their wedding anniversary staying with the Windsors at La Croe. But there are known to be letters, kept secret at the request of the royal family, which reveal his anger and frustration with the Duke, exacerbated by the ex-King offering unsolicited advice about the prosecution of the war. Churchill did not flinch from telling him he could not accept advice from someone who "had given up the greatest throne in world history".
13.
Best-Dressed Wallis "The Windsors" prestige is not what it used to be"
After six years of uncertainty following the end of the war, Wallis still felt rootless and "homeless on the face of the earth". The Windsors rented and borrowed houses until there could be no possible doubt that returning to England was out of the question. It was Wallis who finally recognized that there would never be meaningful work offered to the Duke anywhere in the world and that they would never be able to make their home in England. She had summoned up the necessary courage to face the future life of which she had been the cause. She had always shown remarkable self-awareness of her own shortcomings, even if she was unable to change them, and now she tried to give the Duke some of the courage she was sc.r.a.ping together as he, often depressed or ill, faced a still-hostile family and an ever colder world. She was now determined to create in France, where they felt welcome, an environment fit for a former monarch and attended to the Duke"s emotional and physical needs in minute detail. All their guests and visitors attested to her extraordinary resolve to make wherever they lived as regal as possible. But how, as well as where, to fill their remaining days was the immediate post-war priority.
Their first trip to England together in the autumn of 1946 was a disaster. They stayed with their friends the Earl and Countess of Dudley at Ednam Lodge near Sunningdale, hurt that the Fort was clearly not available19 and that no other royal residence was on offer. On 16 October a burglar broke into the house, apparently through an open window, and stole more than 25,000 worth of Wallis"s jewellery, which she had decided to bring with her in a small trunklike jewel case and had left unsecured when they went out for the evening. Wallis was distraught; the jewellery had defined her romance with the then Prince and given her security. An exotic bird of paradise brooch, with a cabochon sapphire breast and a plumage of diamonds, had just been made for her by Cartier that year. She never saw it, or any of the other stolen pieces, again.
The household was in turmoil, as police taking fingerprints jostled with reporters seeking interviews. The quiet visit with a minimum of publicity that they had promised an "unrelenting royal family" was now splashed all over the British newspapers. In a country hard hit by post-war austerity, discussion of such a fabulous haul of jewellery (estimated by the Windsors to be worth $80,000) elicited little sympathy. According to Lady Dudley, Wallis in the hours after the robbery showed "an unpleasant and to me unexpected side of her character ... She wanted all the servants put through a kind of third degree. But I would have none of this, all of them except for one kitchen maid being old and devoted staff of long standing ... the Duke was both demented with worry and near to tears."
The next day there was another drama. Before going out for a stroll Wallis, according to Laura Dudley, who told the story in her memoirs, asked the Duke to put away a small brooch of sapphires and rubies with their entwined initials and an inscription "G.o.d Bless WE Wallis", which had been an early gift in 1935 and had eluded the burglars only because she had been weari {ad Gng it. When they returned from the walk he could not remember where he had put it. "We stayed up most of the night; he obviously feared to go to bed empty-handed. At about 5 a.m. by some miracle we found it, under a china ornament. Never have I seen a man so relieved."
Lady Dudley, indignant at the way Wallis had behaved, wrote later that the haul had included "a great many uncut emeralds which I believe belonged to Queen Alexandra", a comment that caused, yet again, an enormous brouhaha over why the d.u.c.h.ess had had these in the first place. Most likely she did not, but the rumours were reignited and the friendship with the Dudleys came under severe strain.
Ten days later, Kathleen (Kick) Kennedy, daughter of the American Amba.s.sador and now the widowed Lady Hartington, who met the Windsors at that time, wrote: "The d.u.c.h.ess continues to talk of nothing but her robbery [the words "and is really nothing but a bore" are crossed out but remain visible] and how she has nothing left so far I haven"t seen her with the same jewel. He seems so pathetic but full of charm ... Really no one here takes any notice of them and the extraordinary thing is that I actually feel that she is jealous of what I, an American, have got out of England20 and which has always been denied to her."
The Duke never gave up trying to rectify that which had been denied his wife. Insurance money helped him to start a new collection of jewellery for her and in April 1949 he again consulted Viscount Jowitt for a legal opinion on the question of her t.i.tle. In 1937 the then Sir William Jowitt had based his opinion on the view that "he became "His Royal Highness" not by virtue of any Letters Patent, but for the simple reason that he was the son of his father who was the Sovereign of this country". He went on to declare "that the d.u.c.h.ess of Windsor is, by virtue of her membership of the Royal family, ent.i.tled in the same way as other royal d.u.c.h.esses, to be known by the style and t.i.tle of "Her Royal Highness" ". This time, while not wavering from that opinion, he concluded in a clever note for the record, "that the marks of respect which the subject pays to Royal personages are, as I said, in no source a legal obligation. They are rather a matter of good manners." Yet while insisting that it was simply a matter of good manners he nonetheless pointed out that the present situation, however erroneous, could be formally and effectively reversed only by fresh Letters Patent and since these would not be issued by the King save on the advice of his ministers it was unlikely they would be issued at all. This meant, effectively, that the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess were permanent, half-royal exiles arguably the desired effect. Notwithstanding this, their staff in France, thirty in all spread between two houses, learned to refer to her as "Son Altesse Royale" (perhaps SAR sounded less threatening than HRH and certainly fell into the category of "good manners"), footmen wore royal livery and Wallis"s notepaper had a small crown above a "W".
And the British royal family could not prevent the Duke buying Wallis gifts of jewellery fit for a royal highness. The Duke had visited Cartier in Paris just before the fall of France with pocketsful of stones, some of Wallis"s bracelets and a necklace, together with instructions to make up at least one piece, a remarkable indication of his obsession with pleasing one woman above all the terror, privation and dislocation surrounding him in France. He was apparently oblivious to the notion that his requirements for the production of such a jewel in wartime might strike some as insensitive. The bold diamond flamingo clip, with startlin {wit thg tail feathers of rubies, sapphires and emeralds, was made in Paris in 1940 according to his instructions that the brooch should have retractable legs so that Wallis could wear it centrally without a leg digging into her chest if she bent down. Wearing this magnificent three-dimensional flamingo with its brilliant plumage would have been audacious at any time. Wallis, who used jewellery not simply as a display of wealth but to express her bold style and above all her personality, wore it as she set off on her controversial October 1941 visit to the United States with the Duke. Where clothes or jewels were concerned, she was never fearful. She had some magnificent jewelled powder compacts "and was always making up at table, which of course is very s.e.xy", according to the high-society interior designer Nicholas Haslam. The Duke"s habit of providing the stones by breaking up existing pieces in order to create an original object in a modern setting resumed as soon as the war was over in 1945. Together he and the d.u.c.h.ess became major jewellery buyers and connoisseurs. Wallis loved daring colour combinations and original designs, such as the two so-called gem-set bib necklaces made by Cartier, one in 1945 with rubies and emeralds, the other in 1947 with amethyst and turquoise, both large, strikingly modern pieces and stunning pieces of jewellery at any time. In those post-war years, when many in Europe were concentrating on basic necessities such as food and homes, they were especially remarkable. Although Wallis patronized different jewellers, she was lucky to find in Jeanne Toussaint, Louis Cartier"s intimate companion, a woman who understood her position as an outsider and with whom she developed a strong personal and professional relationship. Toussaint and the Duke collaborated on many jewellery projects for the d.u.c.h.ess, and her post-war "Great Cat" jewels were the inspiration of Toussaint, herself known as La Panthere, and Cartier designer Peter Lemarchand. One of the most striking of these brooches features a sapphire and diamond panther astride an enormous Kashmir sapphire; bought and made in 1949 "for stock" but with the d.u.c.h.ess in mind. Wallis chose to wear on her coat this beautiful, strong panther sitting proudly on top of the world when she attended the 1967 unveiling in London by Queen Elizabeth II of a memorial plaque to Queen Mary at Marlborough House in Pall Mall.
In the photographs taken at this event Wallis appears soignee with her bouffant hairstyle and well-cut coat, although a fur wrap around her neck is a somewhat odd choice for June. But, perhaps not surprisingly, she looks worried and drawn. She seemed to be in good health but by this time had had at least two serious internal operations and long-standing problems, apparently from an ulcer. Philip Ziegler writes of stomach cancer in 1944 followed by cancer of the womb in 1951. Charles Higham specifies cancer of the ovaries in 1951. Others commented on the d.u.c.h.ess being hospitalized for a major internal operation, the nature of which was never disclosed. Without access to hospital records, which have never been made available, all that can be stated for certain is that Wallis had serious problems which necessitated internal surgery. Quite possibly she was suffering from a complication arising from an internal abnormality which had been treated earlier and now flared up again but which it was imperative to keep secret. But the idea of her having a cancer as life threatening as ovarian cancer in 1951 and surviving into her ninetieth year is insupportable. Without the chemotherapy regime available today, women diagnosed with ovarian, stomach or womb cancer rarely lived ten years and most managed only five. Whatever the problem, she made a good recovery.
There is another interpretation of her frequent operations. It is not uncommon, according to clinical psychiatrist Dr Iain Oswald, "for a patient who {a pon is preoccupied with her body to undergo a series of investigations and even operations in an attempt to attend to these feelings. This can be seen as a form of displacement where attention is shifted from one part of her body felt to be defective (for instance where she is unable to have a child) to a hyper-attention to correct another part of her body. This, of course, could include cosmetic surgery as well as other forms of surgery."
At all events by 1952 the Windsors had reached a decision about where they should base themselves: France. They would live informally at the Mill, a house they bought at Gif-sur-Yvette, forty-five minutes outside Paris to the south of Versailles and the only house after the war that they owned, and in formal splendour in Paris itself at a house in the Bois de Boulogne, 4 Route du Champ d"Entrainement, loaned to them for a peppercorn rent by the City of Paris. It was Wallis who arranged the decor of both, making sure the town house appeared as imposing a mansion as possible for a building that was not an actual palace. In the drawing room hung a full-length portrait of Queen Mary, the mother-in-law who would never agree to meet her daughter-in-law, as well as one of the Duke, equally resplendent in Garter robes. His red and gold silk banner, with coat of arms, hung over the galleried marble entrance hall where other royal memorabilia were also displayed.
Just as the Windsors were deeply involved in expensively refurbishing both houses, the Duke"s brother, George VI, died, aged just fifty-six, in February 1952. A heavy smoker, he had been suffering from lung cancer. But the perception now hardened that somehow the premature death had been Wallis"s fault as the burdens of state, for which unlike his elder brother he had not been groomed, had hastened his death. The Duke went to London alone for his brother"s funeral. The accession of the Duke"s twenty-five-year-old niece, Queen Elizabeth II, was to make little difference to the Windsors" standing in the eyes of the remaining royal family, even though Elizabeth had been a child at the time of the abdication, because both her grandmother, Queen Mary, and her mother, Queen Elizabeth, now known as the Queen Mother, were still alive. But with the King"s death went the personal allowance from him agreed at the time of the abdication. "They are beasts to continue to treat you the way they do ... I am afraid Mrs Temple Sr. [the Queen Mother, whose elder daughter they had nicknamed Shirley Temple] will never give in," Wallis wrote to the Duke who, in reply, told her that while some Court officials were friendly and correct on the surface there was "only granite below".
Wherever the Windsors lived and they also retained Suite 28A in New York"s Waldorf Towers, part of the Waldorf Astoria hotel they were both locked in stasis. There were a few new friends providing an occasional shot of circulating blood. But most of their visitors wanted to talk about the past. Every day from now on was lived in the shadow of 1936, with no possibility of moving forward as money worries, the inevitable illnesses of old age and bitterness against the British royal family all jostled for attention.
Such new activity as they embarked on inevitably evolved around reliving the old. The Duke was, almost as soon as peace descended in Europe, approached to write his memoirs. He started by writing a series of articles for Life, helped by the former Reuters journalist Charles Murphy, now a staff writer on the magazine. The collaboration was stormy almost from the outset because Wallis disliked Murphy. But the money was useful and the Duke described Murphy as "a good egg and quite brilliant journalist". Life was pleased with the fin { wiukeished work, which led to a lucrative book and, a decade later, to the doc.u.mentary film, both called A King"s Story; it also led to Wallis herself writing her own volume of memoirs, The Heart Has its Reasons. Wallis may not have been familiar with the source of this famous quotation, taken from the work of the French mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal. And those who knew her well may have queried its suitability. But she liked what it implied. She told Ernest when writing to ask for his cooperation with the book that she had not intended to write her memoirs but had "been forced into this uncomfortable position by no less a person than solicitor Sir G. Allen. He feels that with all that has been written, a bit of truth should be forced to the top."
In spite of their earlier differences, she too tried to work with Murphy as her ghostwriter. When that arrangement broke down in disagreement, she hired the American author Cleveland Amory, but he likewise did not prove as pliable as she wished. When he withdrew in 1955 she decided to complete the ma.n.u.script herself. But she needed time on her own for this, undistracted by the Duke"s undiminished and constant need for her. She went off to the Mill, alone, to put the finishing touches to the ma.n.u.script, and the book was published in 1956 by Houghton Mifflin in New York. In spite of much that was obscured or omitted, many people were surprised by how much of Wallis"s personality it revealed. The following year, to celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary, the Duke gave Wallis a diamond-encrusted, heart-shaped brooch with "W" and "E" in entwined emeralds and determined that she should have her emblem a ruby and gold crown perched on top of the heart.
The American author Maxine Sandberg read The Heart Has its Reasons while recuperating from depression and told the d.u.c.h.ess it gave her strength to overcome her illness. For years following the publication of the book Sandberg kept up a virtual bombardment of the d.u.c.h.ess, hoping to be granted access and permission to write the first authorized biography. She sent presents of slippers and bed covers and flowers, as well as letters in which she recounted in detail the history of her stays in various hospitals. The d.u.c.h.ess"s secretary wrote polite letters to thank her for all the presents and insisting that "Her Royal Highness" had been most interested to read about her attempts to write about her experiences in hospitals. In due course, Sandberg was invited to meet the d.u.c.h.ess, with a view to exploring the possibility of collaboration. But after the meeting, according to Sandberg, the d.u.c.h.ess changed her mind and said she thought it would be unwise to ask friends to give interviews. Sandberg nonetheless continued with the writing but promised not to publish in Wallis"s lifetime, then, in 1965, she made a renewed attempt to work with the d.u.c.h.ess. But eventually the project petered out.
Walter Monckton, as official gatekeeper, still played a part in their lives and occasionally came to stay in Paris with his wife. He had negotiated the deal for them on their townhouse in the Bois de Boulogne, but the friendship cooled somewhat after he was created a viscount in 1957 and she accused him of managing to get a t.i.tle for himself "but you didn"t get me one". And he was only moderately successful in keeping at bay the hordes who wished to write about them, as the Sandberg story indicates. Linda Mortimer, daughter of Fruity and Alexandra Metcalfe, and therefore an acceptable insider, was brought in to help with the film of A King"s Story. With such direct connections to the dramatis personae, she was able to smooth a variety of b.u.mpy paths and ruffled feathers, but she rema { bu Charles Pick, the publisher who oversaw publication of The Heart Has its Reasons, had several meetings with the d.u.c.h.ess, whom he "certainly did not find witty or endearing in any way, but a rather brittle hard and vain person". Having been warned in advance by the Foreign Office that he was not to refer to her erroneously as Her Royal Highness, he was on his guard when they first met. She was, he recalled, lying full length on a chaise longue, with a large round box of Charbonnel et Walker chocolates within reach, but probably untouched. "As she rose to greet me her opening remark was: "Can you tell me who Marilyn Monroe"s publicity agent is? I have all the newspapers each day and I was generally on the front page. But now I see that Marilyn Monroe is ... Well, somebody has pushed me off." " Pick, recognizing that he was in for a difficult time, had to explain that he was not able to help her in displacing Monroe from the headlines.
Elsa Maxwell, the gossip columnist and professional party hostess who got to know Wallis after the war, had a very public falling out with her partly in connection with jealousy over Marilyn Monroe stealing headlines. There was eventually something of a reconciliation but, in an article previewing The Heart Has its Reasons, Maxwell wasted few opportunities to attack her former friend. She pointed out that as the d.u.c.h.ess "seeks to compensate for all she hoped for and lost with an almost feverish pursuit of pleasure ... many of the things she has done in this search, largely because of the high-handed selfish way in which she has done them, have contributed to her final frustration the fact that the Windsors" prestige is not what it used to be and the Windsors" romantic aura is sadly diminished". She went on: When you see the d.u.c.h.ess today it is difficult to picture her as the heroine of one of the greatest love stories of all time. She"s so brittle, hard and determined. Her hands, which were always large, never compliant or feminine, are less attractive than ever ... one incident, which stands out unpleasantly in my memory, is the d.u.c.h.ess" reaction to the death of Iles Brody shortly after he auth.o.r.ed his unflattering book Gone with the Windsors.21 "See," she said snapping her fingers, "see what happens to them when they go against me!"
Maxwell had seen at first hand how much time and effort the d.u.c.h.ess devoted to planning menus and consulting with markets and cooks about what was fresh and available. "One of her favourite dishes, I remember, was bacon cooked in mola.s.ses ... a reflection of the d.u.c.h.ess" southern background ... Only a woman with a will of iron could resist the food she serves. But she does. I doubt she will tell you [in her memoirs] about the Spartan diet she follows for the sake of her appearance." This, coming from Maxwell, was rich but true: neither she, nor the Duke, ever let up on their s {up saktrict dieting.
In March 1953, the Duke"s mother, Queen Mary, died, little more than a year after the death of her second son, George VI. Again the Duke went, alone, to England for the funeral, bitterly aware of all the pain that his mother"s refusal ever to accept Wallis as her daughter-in-law had caused and desolate that the acceptance he craved for his decision to marry Wallis had been withheld until the end. "My sadness was mixed with incredulity", he famously wrote to Wallis, "that any mother could have been so hard and cruel towards her eldest son for so many years ... I"m afraid the fluids in her veins have always been as icy cold as they are now in death." Wallis wrote to him while he was away like a fussing mother: "Please eat and take care of yourself ... don"t fetch and carry for everyone including servants." But she also begged him to "Work [for the restoration of the allowance] on Cookie [the Queen Mother] and Shirley [Temple, that is the new Queen]."
With or without the allowance, Wallis and her team of interior decorators went ahead with plans to make 4 Route du Champ d"Entrainement as palatial as possible. Yet, in spite of the Windsors" beautifully appointed home and fine cuisine, the number of important and interesting people who sought them out rapidly diminished. Wallis did little to conceal her fury and frustration that the brilliant Court of statesmen and artists glimpsed for just a few tantalizing months in 1936 had evaporated. The Mill, in contrast, was neither magnificent nor particularly elegant. Diana Mosley (nee Mitford), wife of the British Fascist leader Sir Oswald, who became a close friend in the 1950s, was critical of the rather garish interior decor. "It was very bright with patterned carpets, lots of apricot and really more Palm Beach than English or French." Cecil Beaton called the Mill "overdone and chichi ... Medallions on the walls, gimmicky pouffs, bamboo chairs. Simply not good enough." And the American decorator Billy Baldwin was even more dismissive: "Most of the Mill was awfully tacky but that"s what Wallis had tacky southern taste, much too overdone, much too elaborate and no real charm." Both the Windsors were keen collectors of a variety of objects, and where Wallis"s taste was left unfettered by decorators, this often resulted in a kind of cluttered vulgarity at the Mill. But, as most of their entertaining was done in the city, only their closest friends saw this. Wallis always preferred town life, while the Duke was happier at the Mill than anywhere else and once again took up the gardening activities which had given him so much pleasure at the Fort.
Susan Mary Patten, wife of an American diplomat who became an acquaintance at this time, described the problem: I never saw a man so bored: He said to me "you know what my day was today? ... I got up late and then I went with the d.u.c.h.ess and watched her buy a hat and then on the way home I had the car drop me off in the Bois to watch some of your American soldiers playing football and then I had planned to take a walk but it was so cold that I could hardly bear it. In fact I was afraid that I would be struck with cold in the way people are struck with heat so I came straight home ... when I got home the d.u.c.h.ess was having her French lesson so I had no one to talk to ..."
Harold Nicolson was similarly embarra.s.sed when asked to give some editorial help on an article the Duke was writing. According to Nicolson"s biographer, James Lees-Milne, there was much in the article he thought best left unsaid, but, more troubling than that, "Harold was ever more distressed {re ere by the fading charm of the Duke and the aimlessness of his life in exile."
By the mid-1950s the Windsors had established a routine. In addition to their two French homes, they would spend three months of the year in America and summer holidays staying with friends or going somewhere warm such as Biarritz, which became a favourite destination for a while, or Spain. But whether in Paris or New York, their life varied little, consisting of shopping, formal dinners and answering occasional demands to be patron of a charity. What jewels she was buying or had been given, what clothes she wore, how her hair was coiffed or her make-up applied was still a regular source of newspaper interest, which pleased her as she tried to regain some control of her circ.u.mstances and environment. This was the only way she knew to keep her many fears and phobias at bay and neither a hair on her head nor a cushion on her sofa was allowed to be out of place. Her sheets were ironed every night and the water in her vases was always crystal clear. The one exception in this highly regulated universe was the freedom allowed their scarcely house-trained pug dogs Trooper, Disraeli and Diamond were the favourites who ate their dinner from solid silver bowls on the lawn, had attention constantly lavished on them and were rarely reprimanded whatever they did inside or out. These were their subst.i.tute children, discussed and addressed in the special invented baby language of the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess. In 1936 the then King even referred to the dogs as "the babies" who "send you eanum flowers". At home they had pug statues, pug sculptures and paintings of pugs and in 1952 Cartier created for the d.u.c.h.ess a gold and enamel pug-dog brooch with sad, citrine eyes.
Wallis sometimes wore a tiny gold notebook on a chain around her wrist and would use it to write down instructions. According to some stories, she would dab face powder on the walls of her home and demand of the decorators that they match the colour. Her rules for living were widely quoted "If you can afford it, then there is no pleasure in buying it," or "You cannot be too rich or too thin" apocryphal, perhaps, but it was how she talked. Those who admired her, such as the interior decorator Nicholas Haslam, found her quick wit refreshing. He recounted how in 1960, when the engagement of Princess Margaret Rose to Anthony Armstrong Jones was announced, the d.u.c.h.ess quipped that these days: "She"s dropped the Rose and picked up the pansy."
Her desire to be thin took on a new urgency once the eyes of the media began watching to see how she fared in the harsh light of the post-war world. If one day she weighed a pound more, she would starve that day. According to a journalist who knew her well, she weighed ninety-seven pounds (approximately seven stone) as she left the Bahamas and looked thinner than when she had arrived. But such weight loss resulted in "her jaw becoming squarer ... her smile more downward and her eyebrows more satirical in their upward rise". From now on breakfast for both of them was grapefruit juice and black tea, and lunch perhaps one egg or, for the Duke, one piece of fruit. She gave her chef written instructions about the weight of her portion of grilled meat: 190 200 grams, no more. And it was quickly noted by hostesses that she ate hardly anything and that even tiny portions were mostly just pushed around her plate while she talked. She understood the need to be in command of her image and generally had a surer touch with the style of her clothes than with her decor. She had a front-row seat at most of the Paris haute-couture shows with Dior, Balenciaga, Givenchy and Schiaparelli, as well as Mainbocher and Vionnet, among her favourites. Nonetheless, her craving to be first with the latest fashion led to one or two ghastly faux {spamonpas such as sequinned hot pants on one occasion and a Paco Rabanne ultra-modern s.p.a.cesuit on another, and her muscular shoulders were less than ideal when it came to strapless evening dresses. But mostly she was impeccably chic and meticulously groomed, choosing plain clothes better to show off her enormous jewels, and (relatively) short skirts to show off her good legs. She was one of the first to make knee-length evening dresses acceptable for this reason. Whenever she was in New York she shopped at Bergdorf Goodman, ate at the Colony Club on the Upper East Side with her few women friends, and called at Elizabeth Arden"s salon for beauty treatments and ma.s.sages. Stories of how her multiple facelifts had left her with an immobile face and eyes that could never close even when she was asleep did the rounds.
When Wallis attended a Pillsbury Grand National bake-off compet.i.tion in December 1950, held in the Waldorf where they were living at the time, she apparently wrote her own speech and the one quote that was remembered was "there is one thing we all have in common ... we"ve all cooked a meal for the man we love". It was a very American type of event in which the unsung heroine the home-maker was honoured for her kitchen skills. At the time it was a new and rather special event organized by the Pillsbury foodstuffs company and important for Wallis because she was hardly considered a home-maker more a home-breaker and she struck just the right note. During the war she had produced a cookbook of her favourite Southern recipes with royalties going to the Red Cross and now she became an adviser to a dress-pattern company. But it was still hard to convince the British public that this was a woman interested in domesticity of any kind.
Frank Giles, who had seen the couple in Bermuda, met them again in the 1950s when he was the Times correspondent in Paris and was invited to dinner. "It was a large dinner party, rather unsavoury characters ... sort of blue rinse American widows and jet setting Europeans and hangers on. I thought the atmosphere was not very nice. But a very good dinner." Giles recalled the Duke discussing Prime Minister Anthony Eden as "a bad man, a hopeless man ... he helped precipitate the war through his treatment of Mussolini ... that"s what he did, he helped to bring on the war ... pause ... and of course Roosevelt and the Jews ... When he was not making remarks about the Jews he could be charming. My opinion of her was that she had become rather coa.r.s.e and raucous with a tw.a.n.ging yankee voice. Her opinions and her sort of cackling laughter were very unattractive she had become, I thought, far less admirable if admirable at all."
Her wit, sharpened by the bitterness of exile, was rarely appreciated by visiting Britons, and Giles was not alone in his views. The diplomat Jock Balfour once sat next to her at a dinner in Biarritz. When she dropped her handbag he bent down to pick it up a gentlemanly gesture which elicited the sharp response: "I like to see the British grovelling to me." He may not have been amused, but she had a circle of American friends who relished her company.
From time to time, though, Wallis went too far, behaving disgracefully to the Duke in public. Many of their friends, even as the relationship began, observed her occasionally cruel verbal abuse, which the Duke had always appeared to need and respond to, presumably because the moment of forgiveness was sublime. Those who saw them now, in the last phase of their lives, remarked on the Duke"s total devotion, the way his eyes would follow her around a room and take on a deep sadness when she was not there. Kenneth de Courcy, one-time confidant of Cabinet ministers and a controversial dining {ersdee companion of the Duke of Windsor who had favoured appeas.e.m.e.nt, recalled a typical occasion shortly after the war: I was staying near La Croe and the prefect of the Haute Maritime laid on a dinner for us ... [Wallis] was sitting down the table, quite a long way down, and he was sitting almost opposite me, next to the wife of the British Consul in Cannes. The munic.i.p.ality was building a new golf course in Cannes and the Duke of Windsor started talking to this woman about the new golf course. Perfectly harmless conversation but he played golf. Suddenly, in front of forty people, the d.u.c.h.ess yelled across the table: "Oh do stop talking nonsense, David, you know nothing whatever about golf courses, do stop lecturing that woman."
I lost my cool and said "If I may say so, His Royal Highness presided over one of the greatest real estate concerns in the world, the Duchy of Cornwall, and knows all about golf courses and property." She piped down at once.
Much more shocking was Wallis"s flirtation with the millionaire h.o.m.os.e.xual playboy Jimmy Donahue. The Windsors first met the outrageous Donahue, heir to the Woolworth fortune, in 1947, and Wallis, always restless and often bored, was intrigued by his salacious conversation and often sordid actions. The Windsors and Donahue became a well-known threesome for a while, even though many in society were scandalized by their friendship with such a character. Wallis may have initially responded to Donahue out of jealousy, seeing a mutual attraction between the two men, and then deliberately set about making the Duke jealous in turn by embarking on some sort of a relationship with Donahue herself which excluded the Duke. Many concluded that she had acted out of boredom. Nicholas Haslam"s view was that "Donahue had originally caught the eye of the Duke and a sisterly rivalry developed with Wallis ... having known Jimmy later and spent weekends at his country house Broadhollow (known as Boyhollow) on Long Island, I can"t think he could ever have touched any woman let alone one as rigidly un-undressable as Wallis." But as Michael Bloch recognized: "There can be no doubt of the d.u.c.h.ess"s preference for gay men: her favourite people included Cecil Beaton, Chips Channon, Somerset Maugham and indeed Coward himself ... many of her favourite moments were spent in the largely h.o.m.os.e.xual world of the great decorators and couturiers."
Whatever went on between them, the Duke was publicly humiliated and privately hurt and the relationship ended suddenly. According to some this was because the Duke demanded it and Wallis obeyed; others claim that Donahue was eating so much garlic that his breath became offensive to the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess. "Quite apart from other differences," Wallis wrote in her memoirs, "women seem to me to be divided into two groups: those who reason and those who are for ever casting about for reasons for their own lack of reason. While I might wish it to the contrary, the record of my life, now that I have for the first time attempted to see it whole, clearly places me with the second group. Women, by and large, I have concluded were never meant for plans and planning."
Charles Pick, who published these memoirs, understood as well as anyone why Wallis concluded that planning was futile. Her own determination to lead a life of financial security had brought her neither great happiness nor satisfaction. Some years after publication of that book Pick and his wife were returning from New York on the Queen Mary when he heard that the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess were also on board, and were due to disembark at Cherbourg.
ight="0"> I spoke to the captain to ask if perhaps the Duke would like to meet. He explained that the d.u.c.h.ess was ill and that he had been given strict instructions that neither the Duke nor the d.u.c.h.ess were going to come out of their state room. All their meals were to be sent up and they didn"t want to meet anybody.
When we arrived at Cherbourg at about 6 o"clock in the morning I was up and looking over the rails at the few pa.s.sengers who disembarked. One was the Duke of Windsor, carrying a plastic carrier bag full of dirty laundry, and as he waited at the quayside various other items bought in America were unloaded and piled up beside him. He looked such a sad figure and I thought how pathetic that this once King of England should be taking his own laundry off the Queen Mary.
At the Mill, "our only real home", as Wallis insisted, the d.u.c.h.ess had a mural painted on the main wall of the upstairs reception room showing a stone watermill wheel entwined with the words "I"m not the miller"s daughter but I"ve been through the mill." The Duke enjoyed showing visitors a map displayed in his room with small lights which lit up to ill.u.s.trate the places where he had travelled as Prince of Wales. But what he really treasured, on the opposite wall, was a framed collection of the regimental b.u.t.tons of every British unit which fought in the trenches in the 1914 18 war, a further indication of his abiding sense of guilt at not being allowed to stay longer at the front and do more himself. His punishing physical regime and profound need for Wallis"s harsh words make sense in this context. Nothing else in his life gave him any sense of achievement other than his marriage to Wallis. For him it was enough, almost. Wallis provided him with a mother"s love and a mother"s chiding. He genuinely saw no other way to continue his life and adored her to the end. It was an obsession. For her, the slavish devotion was at times claustrophobic and she was not afraid to show it. But love is famously impossible to define and in their case especially so. Few who knew them well described what they shared as love.
The Duke died, on 28 May 1972, after six months of acute pain from throat cancer, Wallis, as ever, his only solace. She was summoned to his bedroom at 2 a.m., took his hand and kissed his forehead, whispering "My David". He was seventy-five and, like his brother, had been a heavy smoker all his life. Just ten days earlier he had had a meeting with his niece, Queen Elizabeth II, who was then making a state visit to Paris. The d.u.c.h.ess received the royal party graciously, took tea with them, and then left the desperately ill Duke to meet the Queen of England alone, upstairs. The two women met again in England for the Duke"s funeral on 5 June.
The Duke, like all old people, had worried about arrangements for his funeral. But in his case it was imperative to have a watertight agreement for himself as well as for Wallis, and he was relieved two years before he died to learn that permission had been granted by Queen Elizabeth for both his and Wallis"s remains to be buried in the royal burial ground of Frogmore, the secluded Georgian house in the grounds of Windsor Castle where many of the British royal family had been buried since 1928. The d.u.c.h.ess, having long since conquered her fear of flying, flew over on 2 June 1972, accompanied by her French maid, American doctor and Grace, Lady Dudley, the 3rd Earl of Dudley"s third wife, now one of her most loyal friends and a widow herself. She spent three nights as a guest of the Queen at Buckingham Palace and later told friends that although everything was correct she found the att.i.tude of t {att ofhe royal family cold. Little had changed, even now.
At almost seventy-six, Wallis looked as elegant as ever in her mourning clothes, a plain black Givenchy coat with matching dress and waist-length chiffon veil, made in twenty-four hours especially for this occasion. She could not resist remarking to friends later how amusing she found her sister-in-law"s outfit, especially the hat which she described as looking as if a white plastic arrow had been shot through it. In the morning at St George"s Chapel, Windsor, she looke
d bewildered but showed dignity and composure, just as she did after lunch as she watched the Duke"s coffin being lowered into the burial plot at Frogmore. Once again all those who saw her either face to face at the small private ceremony before lunch or in the televised proceedings of the afternoon could not escape their thoughts dwelling on 1936.
Over lunch itself, as Wallis told friends later, both Prince Philip and Lord Mountbatten, seated on either side of her, wasted no time in asking her what she intended to do with the Duke"s possessions and papers and where she proposed to live. "Don"t worry. I shan"t be coming back here," she retorted, sharp as ever. She knew that wherever she lived it would be a kind of h.e.l.l. She had long been terrified of a life alone and revealed in those frightening days in London that she had always hoped she would die first. Any thoughts she might have entertained about being brought back into the royal fold now that the Duke had gone were dashed when it became clear that no member of the royal family was prepared to accompany her to the airport, behaviour which the British press was not slow to pa.s.s comment on. The enduring image of Wallis alone, still in her elegant Givenchy silk mourning outfit, walking across the tarmac to the plane that would take her back to Paris, was for many in Britain the last they saw of her.
14.
Wallis Alone "All the wicked things she"s done in her life"
In one of her last diary entries the former Mary Kirk wrote: If I believed in that sort of thing, I might say that my getting cancer again was a judgement on me because I once wished that when Wallis came to die she"d be fully conscious and know it because she is the most arrant coward I ever knew and terrified of dying. I had hoped she knows it is to pay her back for all the wicked things she"s done in her life for I think of her as people think of Hitler, an evil force, for force she is in her way, not really intelligent or clever because there is no intellect, but full of animal cunning how she would panic if forced to live now in England. I can just imagine what her terror of bombing would be. So now it is me that has to face dying ... and although up to now I am not in the least afraid of dying I do want awfully to live.
Mary"s anguished pencilled words, written in 1941, forty years or so before Wallis"s eventual death, are one of the most tragic and chilling indictments imaginable no less for ~ orthe hate and pain embedded in them than for the accurate prophecy they contain. Mary knew and understood Wallis better than anyone and her closeness arguably skewed her final verdict. "If anyone could have damaged another person she damaged me. I who had never done an unkind act or treacherous thing to her in the many years we had been friends."
There are many accounts of Wallis"s long, lingering death, fed by tubes as she lay on her narrow iron hospital bed, with her few remaining friends such as Linda Mortimer, Grace Dudley, Aline, Countess of Romanones and Diana Mosley prevented from seeing her. One of those who did described her as turning wizened and black, "like a little monkey". The British diplomat Walter Lees, who retained a fondness for the d.u.c.h.ess, was distressed when his glimpse of her lying in bed revealed a lifeless form with a tube in her nose.
Wallis, by then too ill to show fear, had lost any vestige of the control over her life which she so craved. Maitre Suzanne Blum, an elderly French lawyer, who through her first husband had had a connection with the Duke"s legal advisers at Allen and Overy and in her own right had successfully prosecuted a number of high-profile and celebrity cases in the late 1950s and 1960s, a.s.sumed total control of Wallis"s life in her final decade. Wallis"s friends blamed Maitre Blum for refusing them entry. How did this happen?
Wallis returned to France after the Duke"s funeral with all the ancient insecurities revived. She was terrified that she might now be bankrupt, that the French would terminate the arrangement on the house and that she would be thrown out on to the streets in poverty. In spite of an emotional attachment to the Mill several of her pug dogs were buried under its trees she quickly sold it for nearly 400,000, dispensed with a number of staff and then discussed her financial situation with Lord Mountbatten. He rea.s.sured her that as the Duke had left her everything a fortune of around 3 million and there was also a small discretionary allowance from the Queen, she would have plenty to live on. But she was not rea.s.sured, and when Mountbatten continued to pay her visits, urging her to make out a new will in favour of the Duke"s family, it increased her anger and her neuroses. She told her friends that Mountbatten would sweep through the villa, picking up this and that, and exclaiming, "Ah this belongs to the Royal Collection," behaviour which made her adamant that it did not.
In 1973 Wallis visited England for the last time. She laid flowers on her husband"s grave at Frogmore, took tea with the Queen at Windsor Castle and immediately returned to an empty life in Paris, frail and alone. With no family of her own in Europe, she was keenly aware of her continued exclusion from her late husband"s family and of a lack of advisers to help her. Charles, Prince of Wales, wrote her a warm letter of condolence praising his great-uncle, and for a short time Wallis found this a comforting sign that relations might improve. She even considered leaving some of her jewellery to Prince Charles, hoping that his future wife might wear it. But her enthusiasm for this act of generosity petered out in the face of Mountbatten"s aggressive campaign to get as much as he could returned to England.
For a while she had the services of the distinguished lawyer Sir G.o.dfrey Morley, of Allen and Overy, with whom she was on good terms, as well as her private secretary, John Utter, with whom she was not. There was also a personal secretary, the multilingual Johanna Schutz. Wallis dined out occasionally at Maxim"s and received friends at home. Symbolically, she no longer wore her big, bouffant hair creatent uald by her trusted coiffeur, Alexandre, but reverted to the flatter style, with a middle parting, of her younger days. She ate less and drank more, often on an empty stomach. Alcohol had become her closest friend long before the Duke"s death, and the writer Lesley Blanch had memorably described the Windsors as "tiny twins with large bottles of drink".
Within a year of the Duke"s death, Wallis was in hospital with a broken hip. But, just as this was mending, she fell again while in hospital, apparently demonstrating the Charleston to a bemused nurse. A few months after she was finally discharged she fell once more, this time against a bath, and cracked several ribs. The nurses now found her confused and senile, asking the same questions dozens of times. Friends noticed that she would speak of the past as if the Duke were still present, even begging him not to abdicate. When she was discharged after this accident her doctor, Dr Jean Thin, advised that all alcohol be removed. But it was too late. At the end of 1975 she was back in the American hospital with either a perforated ulcer or Crohn"s disease, or possibly both, seriously debilitated and ill. She recovered enough to be released the following year to a house where most of the staff had now been dismissed, only to be readmitted in February 1976 this time diagnosed with a near-total physical collapse, according to some reports, following a ma.s.sive intestinal haemorrhage.
It is impossible not to imagine that she wanted to die, that she was now terrified of living. Yet, according to a young doctor who attended her at the hospital at this time, although she was confused she still looked immaculate, her hair coiffed and raven black and her lips reddened, thanks to the ministrations of a hairdresser and beautician. In the autumn of that year, the Queen Mother was in Paris on a state visit and proposed a meeting with Wallis, by then slightly recovered but still in a weak and fragile state. Dr Thin and Maitre Blum decided that after all these years of silence this was not the moment. Instead, the Queen Mother sent a bouquet of two dozen red and white roses with a card signed, "In Friendship, Elizabeth". Although according to the author, Hugo Vickers, the visit was never going to happen but was merely "a sop to the press".
The formidable Maitre Blum now became the d.u.c.h.ess"s spokesman and declared herself the d.u.c.h.ess"s friend as well. Blum, born into a provincial French Jewish family as Suzanne Blumel, had survived the war by fleeing with her then husband to the US, where she studied law at Columbia University. She was tough and now saw her role as not only to protect the d.u.c.h.ess"s material interests by preventing the British royals from acquiring the Duke"s possessions, but also to defend the Windsors" reputation, which she felt had been unjustly maligned. Another responsibility was keeping the d.u.c.h.ess alive as long as possible, which proved an expensive business over more than a decade and, to the horror of friends, necessitated selling off some of the Windsor trinkets. Those who crossed Blum in an attempt to get directly to the d.u.c.h.ess often ridiculed her, but they did not win. For another decade the d.u.c.h.ess lived on, with only occasional moments of semi-lucidity, scarcely able to do anything for herself. Initially she was lifted into a wheelchair for much of the day, bathed and spoon-fed mouthfuls of food. Cruelly, even the weighing continued, although no longer as part of the attempt to shed pounds. Her personal maid, Senora Martin, who had been with the Windsors since 1964, recounted how, just before the final collapse, she would lift the d.u.c.h.ess into her arms like a limp rag-doll and then stand on the scales with her. Senora Martin"s weight would then be deducted from the total in order to a.s.sess the dwindling weight of the d.u.c.h.ess.f t of But the decline was steep and soon her long hair was allowed to grow white; she was almost totally blind and paralysed so severely that she could neither speak nor swallow. Still, she was not in a coma and her eyes were said occasionally to flicker into life. Could she have been aware of her suffering and abandonment?
Wallis Warfield, so full of fun and life as a child, had outlived three husbands and most of her women friends. Now she lay in a darkened room, hallucinating, desperately emaciated and bedridden. The house was almost as dilapidated as its former owner with a leaking roof and rising damp. It would be hard to imagine a more desperate, lingering death than hers, just as her erstwhile friend Mary had once imagined for her. She died finally, aged ninety, on 24 April 1986. There was no autopsy.
The Lord Chamberlain, Lord Airlie, flew to Paris to escort the body back to an England which had refused to welcome her when she was alive. Nearly 200 people attended her funeral service in St George"s Chapel, Windsor. The d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, a friend although no longer a close one, observed: "I went to look at the flowers ... It was tragic. They wer