That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor (16 page)

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Authors: Anne Sebba

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Royalty, #Rich & Famous

BOOK: That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor
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The new year of 1936 started with exceptionally cold and snowy weather and on 16 January the Prince was out shoot Kwasm">ing in Windsor Great Park when he received a restrained message from his mother suggesting he might ‘propose’ himself for the weekend at Sandringham. He flew up immediately with his own pilot – flying was part of the Prince’s glamour – and, as soon as he arrived, was shocked to find his father had only hours to live. He immediately wrote to Wallis, terrified that the new situation might change her feelings, imploring her to keep faith. ‘You are all and everything I have in life and WE must hold each other so tight.’ On 20 January at five minutes to midnight King George V died, his end hastened by an overdose of morphine and cocaine injected by the royal physician, Lord Dawson, to ensure that the death announcement was in time for the quality newspapers. The Queen’s first act was to take her eldest son’s hand and kiss it, offering fealty to the new King. He was embarrassed by such subservience and broke down, weeping hysterically and noisily with dread at what the future might hold as much as for the passing of his father. Wallis was at a charity gala in a London cinema with some friends, the Lawson Johnstons, when she heard the bulletin. ‘I am so very sorry,’ she told the new King, adding later, ‘God bless you and above all make you strong where you have been weak.’ Ernest, the next day, wrote ‘as a devoted, loyal subject’ offering ‘the warmest sentiments that friendship can engender … in the ordeal through which you have passed’.
‘I miss him dreadfully,’ the Duchess of York wrote to Dawson. ‘Unlike his own children I was never afraid of him, and in all the 12 years of having me as daughter-in-law he never spoke one unkind or abrupt word to me, and was always ready to listen and give advice on one’s own silly little affairs.’ Two days later the will was read to the family and the former Prince was shocked to discover that his father had left him a life interest in Balmoral and Sandringham, but no cash, because it was expected that he had considerable reserves from his Duchy of Cornwall estates – which, as it transpired later, he did, although he failed to admit it then. Alan Lascelles described how, with a face like thunder, he strode out of the room and immediately telephoned Mrs Simpson to tell her the bad news.
The next few days were a shock to many as the new King, believing he was on a mission to modernize the monarchy, constantly breached protocol. The first important ceremony was his own proclamation by Garter King of Arms at St James’s Palace. Not only did Edward VIII arrange for Mrs Simpson to view the proceedings from a highly visible front window; he then, at the last minute,
decided he wanted to stand next to her there and watch his accession being proclaimed. Chips Channon, like many of those in the know, was enthralled.
Afterwards I saw a large black car (the King’s) drive away, with the blinds pulled half down. The crowd bowed, thinking that it contained the Duchess of Kent, but I saw Mrs Simpson …
We are all riveted by the position of Mrs S. No man has ever been so in love as the present King but can she be another Mrs Fitzherbert?
6
If he drops her she will fall – fall – into the nothingness from whence she came.
 
A desire to gainsay this nothingness prompted Wallis to ask her aunt to have ‘one of those family tree things’ made up of the Warfields and the Montagues, reminding Bessie that in England Montague with an e meant the Jewish family – ‘the swell spell it without an e!!’ She did not specify why she wanted this genealogy but said she hoped her Khe the Jewown family histories ‘would stand up against these 1066 families here’. Meanwhile the Duchess of York spent the day of the proclamation travelling to Sandringham to be with the widowed Queen.
There were trivial aspects to the modernizing, too, all of which aroused comment. For example, Wallis liked the King to call a taxi for her at St James’s Palace. Lady Carlisle, who saw him doing this, commented: ‘anything more undignified than the King going past sentries to call a taxi is difficult to imagine’. And the same ‘democratic’ approach was introduced at the Fort where Wallis, acting as hostess, would say ‘We don’t dress for dinner.’ This caused the women much embarrassment as often they had not brought the appropriate clothes. For example Lady Diana Cooper, arriving late for dinner, began gushing apologies whereupon Mrs Simpson said: ‘Oh cut it out. David and I don’t mind.’
Others were more deeply offended by her easy, proprietorial attitude. Lascelles told his wife, Joan, how the Wigrams had been invited to see a film show at Windsor:
When it was over Mrs S said to Lady W (who has lived at Windsor for 20 years and knows everything in the castle as well as she knows her own drawing room) ‘wouldn’t you like me to show you the pictures in the long corridor’ and when they left ‘Goodbye,
we
were so glad you and Lord W were able to come.’ That shows an incredible lack of elementary tact. Don’t leave this about!
 
Lascelles concluded that this indicated that Wallis ‘cannot really be a very clever woman’.
‘Clever’ was not the issue as far as hostesses such as Emerald Cunard, who had never been on good terms with the old regime, were concerned. Almost immediately the invitations turned from a trickle to a flood. In 1935 Lady Cunard had enjoyed what she believed to be a position of pre-eminence among those chasing after the Prince and his paramour. Partly hoping the Prince would become a patron of the opera so important to her lover, Sir Thomas Beecham, she had pursued Wallis from the first. Wallis responded, believing that some musical culture would be of benefit to the future monarch. But Edward always loathed opera and took every opportunity to escape into the corridor
and smoke. Emerald genuinely liked her fellow American, describing ‘little Mrs Simpson’ as ‘a woman of character who reads Balzac’ – a questionable boast.
When the Prince and Mrs Simpson expressed a desire to see a play called
Storm over Patsy
, a light romantic comedy based on a German play by Bruno Frank which had just opened at the Theatre Royal Haymarket and which they, solipsistically, believed had echoes of their own story, it was Emerald who arranged for them to see an abridged version privately at her house to save them the embarrassment of going publicly.
7
She rashly told friends she hoped to be appointed mistress of the robes and preside over a court where poets, musicians and artists held sway, a remark which may have reached Queen Mary who always singled Lady Cunard out – not entirely justifiably – as having played a mischievous role by encouraging Wallis to believe she was accepted in society. ‘I fear she has done David a great deal of harm as there is no doubt she was great friends with Mrs S and gave parties for her … several people have mentioned to me what harm she has done.’
Other hostesses, notably Lady Colefax and Lady A Kax .stor, vied with each other to entertain the woman they assumed would be queen, but older money invited her as well, including the Marlboroughs, Sackville Wests, Buccleuchs and Sutherlands. Noël Coward, exhausted by the chase, refused one of Emerald’s invitations, telling her acidly: ‘I am sick to
death
of having quiet suppers with the King
and
Mrs Simpson.’
From the first, the new Court caused deep consternation among the old guard. ‘I think he will make a great King of a new era,’ Wallis told her aunt, ‘and I believe the country thinks the same.’ The old regime, she believed, ‘was a little behind the times … the late King was not sociable nor the Queen and I’m sure this one will entertain more at the Palace.’ What the old guard objected to was not so much the new King’s awkwardness or obstinacy – a monarch was entitled to that and after all George V had often not been easy. What they minded was the obstinacy devoid of any sense of duty or service. Men like Lascelles had been aware of the chasm since 1928, constantly hoping that Edward would mature. In fact the reverse now seemed to be the case. On 12 February there was tea with Lord and Lady Brownlow, where Chips Channon recorded ‘Mrs Simpson [as being] very charming and gay and vivacious. She said she had not worn black stockings since she gave up the Can Can,’ a remark some felt out of order so soon after the King’s death, but which Channon considered was typical of her ‘breezy humour, quick and American but not profound’. While some courtiers were optimistic that Wallis would have a positive effect on the King, encouraging him to take his job more seriously, and were therefore prepared to overlook her brashness, others quickly despaired. Philip Ziegler believes that by 1936 it was too late for anyone to effect any change, that by then Edward ‘was corroded by idleness. He may have had a better brain than his brother, and a capacity to communicate and charisma … but the charisma was wasted by the time he had met Wallis and the charm had become a dangerous attribute.’
‘Wallis must not get too bossy,’ wrote Diana Cooper, having heard her reprimand the King in front of his guests for wanting to have his papers and documents read to him instead of reading them himself. She told him he simply had to learn to master the points in them. ‘She is right of course as he made haste to say. “Wallis is quite right. She always is. I shall learn it quite soon.”’ The King was used to having information fed to him and if, as Prince of Wales, he appeared well informed this was because he had been well briefed. Reading an entire book was so low on his list of priorities that in 1936, fitting out the hired yacht that was to take Wallis and him cruising for the summer, instructions were given for all the books to be removed from the yacht’s library as they would not be needed. This is not a matter of intellectual snobbery; it meant in practice that he drained Wallis as his sole source of information and, when he needed to draw on his own emotional reserves, he was not supported by any books he had read. When Baldwin had to have serious discussions with Edward in November 1936 he felt the lack of reading acutely disadvantaged him. He described him as an ‘abnormal being, half-child, half-genius … it is almost as though two or three cells in his brain had remained entirely undeveloped while the rest of him is a mature man … he is not a
thinker
. He takes his ideas from the daily press instead of thinking things out for himself. He never reads – except, of course, the papers. No serious reading: none at all …’
Of greater concern, however, to those around him was the way he now deferred to Wallis in everything, including matters of state. Within weeks of his accessio K hie an he was no longer reading state papers at all but leaving the task entirely to Alec Hardinge, his despairing Private Secretary. Not only were the papers unread, much to Baldwin’s horror they were apparently left lying around the Fort during his ever longer weekends, now often from Thursday to Tuesday. If scrutinized by anyone it was Wallis’s eye that fell on them. When they were returned they were decorated by rings from wet glasses left on top of them. Despatch boxes were sometimes lost entirely. But it was not only at the Fort that work was neglected. Even in London, according to Alan Lascelles, the King shut himself up giggling with Mrs Simpson for hours on end while the royal footmen would say to the waiting secretaries ‘The Lady is still there.’ Hardinge fed Baldwin a tale of ever increasing dereliction of duty, resulting in the Prime Minister’s decision to restrict the documents made available to the King to those requiring the royal signature.
Within weeks, as he felt the loneliness and boredom of his new job, his infatuation and desperate need for Wallis increased. Exhausted, frustrated and even angry, she escaped to Paris in the early spring with her divorced, redheaded friend Josephine ‘Foxy’ Gwynne. The trip was partly to stock up on her couture wardrobe; she was especially keen to buy from the Chicago-born Main Rousseau Bocher, known as Mainbocher, her latest favourite, whose haute-couture gowns were endorsed by an exclusive clientele that included Syrie Maugham, Diana Vreeland and many Hollywood stars. But another reason for the visit was that she hated the pressure on her, with the King constantly telephoning her, relying on her; she felt she was losing control of the situation and wanted to get Ernest back as her husband. As she admitted to her aunt, ‘I have of course been under a most awful strain with Ernest and H.M.’ What the King’s mother called his ‘violent infatuation’, which she hoped would pass, had turned into an obsession so all consuming that he could concentrate on nothing more than how he could arrange to marry Wallis Simpson as quickly as possible. Wallis now felt trapped.
Nineteen-thirty-six was a critical year throughout Europe as dramatic events with enormous consequences unfurled with lightning speed and the rise of the far right was allowed to go unchecked. In Spain, a Popular Front government was elected in February but almost immediately came under pressure from strikes and violent uprisings, and by July the country was locked in a bloody civil war. France, too, had elected a socialist prime minister in February but the Popular Front of Léon Blum was weakened from constant and vicious attacks from both the extreme left and the extreme right. On 7 March German troops marched into the Rhineland, an action in direct contravention of the Treaty of Versailles which had laid out terms which the defeated Germany had accepted. It was Hitler’s first illegal act in foreign relations since coming to power in 1933 and it threw the European allies, especially France and Britain, into confusion. Yet public opinion in Britain was strongly opposed to going to war with Germany over this. No politician wanted to unleash another great war in Europe.
However, it was now clear that Hitler had no qualms about repudiating treaties which he argued had been imposed on Germany by force. As Baldwin’s Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden commented: ‘We must be prepared for him to repudiate any treaty even if freely negotiated (a) when it becomes inconvenient; and (b) when Germany is sufficiently strong and the circumstances are otherwise favourable for doing so.’ But although no one expected (or wanted) the King to be directly involved, the fact remains that during this year of unprecedented turbulence in Europe, the British sovereign was concentrating on one matter only: how to mar Ky: ng ry Wallis and make her his queen. His obsession impacted on his government.

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