That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor (4 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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But with US involvement in the war felt to be imminent, the mood at the wedding was slightly sombre and there followed only a small reception for the two families and members of the wedding party held at the Stafford Hotel. The
Baltimore Sun
commented: ‘since being presented to society two seasons ago the bride has been a great favourite and has spent much time in Washington with her aunt, Mrs D. B. Merryman, and her cousin Mrs George Barnett, wife of Major General Barnett USMC’.
The Spencer family had arrived from Chicago earlier in the week. Win’s younger brother, Dumaresq Spencer, was best man and his sister Ethel one of the bridesmaids. Wallis was always a man’s woman and was never close to her sisters-in-law let alone to her new mother-in-law. She was not looking for intimate friendships with her new family, in fact was slightly stunned by them, and considered her place at the centre of the family she already had quite enough.
Win had just two weeks’ leave, so the honeymoon was spent partly at the Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia and partly in New York. Win never wrote about his marriage to Wallis – he found the way his subsequent life was made public as the ex-husban.
So when Win revealed a bottle of gin packed between the shirts in his suitcase it was clear he had known there was likely to be difficulty in finding enough alcohol to fuel his needs over the coming days. Wallis, having grown up in a household which had strong convictions about the evils of alcohol, was shocked. She must have noticed during the previous few months that drinking was a habit of many men in the navy. But, in her hurry to marry, she was blind to the consequences. Only half jokingly, Win accused her of being a prude – and quite possibly the tone of their marriage was set. But Win had a redeeming sense of humour and after two weeks they moved back into government accommodation at Pensacola where Lieutenant Spencer was an instructor at the Aviation School.
Wallis spent her days painting the inside of the small bungalow white, putting up chintz curtains and enjoying the luxury of having a cook and a maid while she embarked on the ritual of socializing with navy wives. The cook was a fortunate addition to the household since Wallis knew nothing about the important art of cooking but, recognizing the need to please her husband in all ways, set about learning to master it. Cooking was easier than learning to play golf and perhaps easier than having sex at this stage in her life. And so Wallis began to develop her talents as a hostess, deciding that some of the top naval brass needed to be entertained.
Four months later, in April 1917, the US joined the war and the couple moved for a short time to Boston, where Spencer was in command of the Naval Aviation School at Squantum, Massachusetts, training other men to go overseas or undertake dangerous missions. While Win brooded over what he perceived as a demotion, perhaps even punishment for his heavy drinkin
g, Wallis had taken to playing poker. Both were gambling with their futures.
 
Understanding Wallis
 
‘I am naturally gay and flirtatious’
 
 
 
T
here is a deeply revealing line in Wallis Simpson’s autobiography where she states her ‘private judgment that when I was being good I generally had a bad time and when I was being bad the opposite was true’. She had an appalling time for much of the eight years that followed her marriage in 1916 and, on balance, it is probably fair to conclude that she was trying her best in these years to be good.
From the first weeks back at the base at Pensacola she saw how superficially she had known Win Spencer before plunging into marriage with him and she learned to look upon the raucous Saturday-night parties full of drinking, dancing and carousing into the small hours as ‘a kind of thanksgiving that another week was safely past’. That was hardly the language of young love, albeit written some years afterwards. But in 1916 she knew as little about life as she did about her new husband. In order to make sense of Wallis it is important to understand the horror of her marriage to Spencer. While they were courting they grabbed every opportunity to be alone. But Corinne,
in loco parentis
, had to make an attempt at chaperoning, so there had been few opportunities for them to be alone and talk about their hopes and ambitions for a life together, let alone about their feelings for each other. When they did manage to grab a quiet few minutes somewhere deserted, Win would immediately seize Wallis and kiss her passionately. But, according to Wallis, that was all; ‘spooning or petting’ was impossible, however much either might have wished even for that. Ever keen to push the boundaries, she knew while she was being watched that she had to put the brakes on or be labelled ‘fast’. She admitted later that she was ignorant of the facts of life when she married. Cousin Lelia once remarked to her only a little in jest, ‘you know perfectly well you just married him out of curiosity’. Oldfields may have taught her the difference between an oyster fork and a lemon fork or the easiest way to do up an arm-length, seven-button glove. But these were skills of little use to her in the bedroom with Win. All her schoolfriends remember Wallis as exceptionally flirtatious from a very young age – not just charming in a typically Southern way but teasingly and unusually enticing. The Kirks, who knew her best, were profoundly concerned by her influence on their daughter.
There is now evidence to indicate there may have been sound medical and psychological reasons for Wallis behaving in this way which were not understood at the time and certainly would never have been discussed. She may have been born with what is currently labelled a Disorder of Sexual Development (DSD) or intersexuality, a term which embraces a wide range of conditions. Some are so subtle that even today doctors delivering babies with ambiguous genitals cannot be immediately certain if they are holding a boy or a girl. Since one baby in 15,000 is born with some degree of DSD – which amounts to approximately 4,000 in the UK and 400,000 globally per annum – the problem can no longer be considered rare. This does not mean that Wallis was a man, in fact the reverse, and she was certainly not a freak. Wallis herself, if she were born with some degree of DSD – and there is no medical proof that this is an accurate assessment of her case – would not have known that anything was wrong, at least for many years, and even then might have been given confused information unless she had cause to undergo an operation. Yet the diagnosis is more than wild conjecture because there is strong circumstantial and psychosexual evidence that Wallis fits into this category. Michael Bloch, Wallis’s biographer, who lived and worked in her house in Paris for years while his subject lay largely comatose, came to believe after discussing her case with doctors that she may have suffered from Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, or AIS, which is at the milder end of the spectrum. He reached this view based on extensive personal knowledge.
Patients with AIS are born genetically male as they have the XY chromosome and produce testosterone. Because the body’s receptors in this case are insensitive to testosterone the individual develops outwardly as a woman, although at puberty therse pubert testosterone buildup may result in strong muscles giving her athletic prowess, long legs or large hands. Such a child to all purposes appears female and only later can it be discovered that their karyotype is XY if a DNA test is carried out, and that of course was not an option during Wallis’s childhood. The first clue for Wallis that something might be different would have been at puberty if she did not have periods. But even this might not have seemed unusual, nor would it have been an easy subject for discussion given the frequent absences of her mother at this time in her life.
Another possibility is that she was born a pseudo-hermaphrodite, the term itself only coined in 1886, ten years before Wallis was born, indicating how little was known and understood about that condition. At the end of the nineteenth century there would have been very little discussion around such a risqué subject, even in medical circles, least of all with the parents of the newborn baby. A patient with pseudo-hermaphroditism has the internal reproductive organs of one sex while exhibiting the opposite in their external genitalia so a man has female characteristics which may include small breasts and a woman some form of male genitalia that are possibly barely noticeable, as well as usually a shallow vagina, but no uterus, cervix or ovaries (though this is variable). Full hermaphroditism, a term now considered offensive, where individuals carry both types of gonad, is extremely rare. For the Victorians, already confused by the Woman Question, the term used to convey the challenge to traditional notions of a woman’s place, merely trying to grapple with such a concept was deeply disconcerting. ‘So much of what is repulsive attaches to our ideas of the condition of an hermaphrodite that we experience a reluctance even to use the word,’ wrote one doctor, Jonathan Hutchinson, in the year of Wallis’s birth. Hermaphroditism challenged notions of what defined a woman or a man and the whole social order depended on these clear definitions. A person who could not be defined was a dangerously disruptive presence. For whatever reason, Wallis was certainly that.
Without a full ultrasound or scan the condition could not possibly have been detected at birth. Young Dr Lewis Allen, fresh out of medical school, who came to deliver the baby in Blue Ridge Summit, might have noticed that the baby had slightly strange-looking genitalia: the most common description is of slightly larger labia than usual or slightly enlarged clitoris resembling a small penis; in some cases the child would have testicles which do not descend (today they would be removed since they could pose a serious medical risk later in life). But in 1896 there was no question that such a child would have been brought up as female; there was no available means of checking chromosomal abnormality. What usually happened in such cases is that the doctor would have done his best to reassure the parents that although the baby might appear unusual, they should not worry. ‘She’ll grow out of it,’ he would have told them, or ‘Everything will be normal in a few years.’ And indeed before puberty such individuals would easily pass as normal pre-pubescent females. After puberty there might be a noticeable drift towards the external features of a male including bone structure, muscle development and voice change, but even these features might be easily missed and obvious signs such as facial hair are usually prevented by the condition’s inability to convert the testosterone.
James Pope-Hennessy, visiting the Windsors in 1958 in the course of writing the official biography of Queen Mary, commented in his journal that Wallis was ‘one of the very oddest women I have ever seen. She is, to look at, phenomenal. She is flat and angular and could have been designed for a medieval playing c waal playard … I should be tempted to classify her as an American woman
par excellence
… were it not for the suspicion that she is not a woman at all.’ It was not just her physical characteristics that came under scrutiny. In 1936 Nancy Dugdale, wife of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, Tommy Dugdale, sent a letter written by Wallis to a well-known German graphologist, Gusti Oesterreicher. Mrs Dugdale insisted the analysis had been done in complete ignorance of the writer’s identity and that Oesterreicher did not speak English. Oesterreicher’s report concluded that the author of the letter was:
A woman with a strong male inclination in the sense of activity, vitality and initiative. She
MUST
dominate, she
MUST
have authority, and without sufficient scope for her powers can become disagreeable. In a narrow circle without big tasks to perform and the possibility for expansion her temperament would be impatient, irritable … but not without some instincts of nobility and generosity. She is ruled by contradictory impulses … In the physical sense of the word sadistic, cold, overbearing, vain.
 
According Dr Christopher Inglefield, a plastic surgeon specializing in gender surgery, Wallis’s known physical and behavioural characteristics clearly fit the stereotype. He explains:
The problem for these individuals is how do you confirm that you are female if your biological responses are not like other girls? How do you come to terms with this strange situation? Often these individuals don’t understand what or who they are so, for a female lacking female organs, being boy mad is one typical response, another is to get married as quickly as possible, thereby telling your peers you are a normal female.
 
Marriage, according to Dr Inglefield, is thus seen as a reaffirmation of being female.
Not only is early marriage often the norm but so is the urge to dress in the most feminizing way because of the need to fit into society. Dressing is just one way of behaving in an ultra-feminine way. Another is sexual behaviour. There is a strong need to do everything in the most feminine way possible. ‘Look at me, I’m a woman,’ Wallis is saying. ‘I’m not the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen but I am so elegant. I’m the epitome of womanhood.’ The clothes and the sex are all of a piece.
 
Thus a deeply significant characteristic for women with some form of DSD is the realization that one of the most powerful ways to reaffirm their womanhood is the ability to give men intense sexual pleasure. Giving intense pleasure can easily lead to manipulating men in order to please them. Vaginal intercourse is often possible, even where the vagina is shallow, but so, of course, are other activities, including oral sex.
Dr Inglefield, through advising patients who seek his advice on corrective surgery, is experienced in assessing a number of factors, including facial and bodily characteristics, to determine if an individual is predisposed to survive as one sex or the other. Wallis, he believes, had an angular, almost square-jawed and masculine-shaped face which indicates a lack of oestrogen. Looking at photographs of Wallis alongside her girlfriends gives an especially good comparison. ‘Oestrogen is very softening. You can see it clearly next to the very rounded face of Mary Ki/ble of Mark. Today a course of oestrogen therapy can transform facial features. Had it been available in Wallis’s day it would have dramatically changed her appearance.’
So there are clues in the behaviour, bone structure and build, as well as in the facial shape. When cousin Corinne shouted out for ‘Skinny’ to come here or go there she was acknowledging, without knowing it, that lack of ovaries affects body shape and breast development. Several successful models with an impossibly lean, rangy look are known to be women born with Disorders of Sexual Development. Keeping slim, which became a lifelong mantra for Wallis, was always of critical importance in avoiding a masculine, solid appearance with no waistline. It was something she appears to have understood intuitively. Once she was in the public eye, controlling her weight with rigid discipline was a matter of survival.
The ultimate confirmation for Wallis of being totally female would be to get pregnant, which is not possible without a uterus. Yet, extraordinarily, this is a subject she never broaches while telling the story of her life. Almost all childless women writing reminiscences, especially those who are married, born a century or so ago when birth control was not readily available, manage in some way or other to refer to their deep longing for a child with which they were not blessed. Or else to insist that a choice was made not to bring children into the world for whatever reason. Wallis’s decision not to cover this subject, even if she had to lie about gynaecological adventures or miscarriages, is striking. On the last page of her book, almost as an afterthought, she writes starkly of a ‘continuing regret. I have never known the joy of having children of my own.’ Yet the assumption must be that, for an ordinary couple marrying in the early part of the twentieth century where the wife had neither career nor desire for one, starting a family would have been the expectation, especially in the Spencer family. So when, after several months, Wallis did not become pregnant it is quite possible that she consulted a doctor and underwent an examination. At that point the doctor might have been suspicious if he could not see a cervix. But even that could have been confusing and, since there was so little scientific knowledge available about what to do in cases of infertility, the embarrassed doctor might not have known what to advise his young patient other than to hope. Contemporary advice in such cases included old wives’ tales such as the importance of drinking the first morning milk of a particular type of cow. Given the unhappy state of her marriage, Wallis may not have been very concerned. But, just as likely, her inability to conceive or difficulties the couple may have encountered having intercourse could have been a contributory factor in the disintegration of her first marriage. Ralph Martin, one of Wallis’s earliest biographers writing about her in 1974, claimed that Alice Montague had said on her deathbed that her daughter could never have children. If that is the case, and if it was something Wallis always knew, she may have steeled herself very early on to the idea of being childless. At all events, she seems by her twenties to have resigned herself rather easily to the idea that she could not have children and, with similar ease, taken the next best algorithm for her life – the discovery that she could use her sexuality to get the status she was denied as a child without risking an unwanted pregnancy, a serious problem for sexually active women at the time.

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