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Authors: Greg King

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The friendship between Lady Thelma Furness, and Wallis Simpson was a casual one. They met infrequently at parties or luncheons given by mutual friends. But it was this slim connection which was to lead Wallis straight into the orbit of her future husband.
8
 
The Prince of Wales
 
I
N THE SUMMER OF
1894, Queen Victoria was at the height of her glory. She had occupied the British throne for fifty-seven years, presiding over an England which had led the Industrial Revolution and an empire that embraced a quarter of the world’s population. At no other time had England’s influence been so pervasive, her reach so vast, her navy so powerful, and her position so respected.
Victoria dominated her family as she dominated her empire. Even as an elderly widow, wrapped in the comforting blanket of incessant mourning for her long-dead husband, Prince Albert, she was formidable. Her children were as intimidated by her forceful nature as politicians and princes.
Her son Albert Edward had been Prince of Wales for half a century. His mother persistently refused to allow him any real responsibilities, and as a consequence, the Prince grew bored, indolent, and somewhat promiscuous. He could only wait for his seemingly indefatigable mother to die before he could ascend the throne himself. Bertie, as he was known within the family, had always been something of a disappointment to his parents. The strict and censorious Prince Consort had expected much of his first son, but Bertie had few intellectual capabilities, and whatever talents he may have possessed were stifled under the unbelievably strict educational regimen imposed by his parents. Knowing that he was a disappointment, Bertie instead focused his efforts on pleasure.
By 1894 the Prince of Wales was a bearded gentleman whose enormous appetite for life was matched by his immense stomach. His main pleasures were food, which he managed to consume in astonishing quantities; cigars, which he smoked incessantly; and a string of personable, beautiful, though somewhat vapid, mistresses, including Lillie Langtry and Alice Keppel. He was not without his talents: He possessed a keen understanding of international politics, and his skill as a diplomat would earn him the epitaph of Edward the Peacemaker. But his accomplishments were largely overshadowed by the scandals that constantly plagued both him and his Marlborough House set, culminating in his two courtroom appearances: the first when he was called as a witness in a divorce case and the second after a friend had been caught cheating at baccarat during a house party attended by the Prince.
In 1863, two years after his father’s death, Bertie married Princess Alexandra of Denmark, a beautiful woman whose natural charm and style endeared her to the British public. Her education had been largely neglected, and as a result, she remained at heart simple and rather childlike, a quality that enhanced her vulnerability and made her seem all the more sympathetic. As a result of otosclerosis, inherited from her mother, she rapidly lost her hearing, a condition accelerated by a case of rheumatic fever in 1867. Increasingly unable to communicate freely with her husband’s sophisticated friends, Alix, as she was called, retreated to a small circle of family and friends. Above all, she possessed an extraordinary understanding and patience, qualities necessary in a woman well aware of her husband’s repeated and flagrant infidelities. Together, Bertie and Alix had three sons, Albert Victor, George, and Alexander, who only lived for a few hours, and three daughters, Louise, Victoria, and Maud.
Their eldest son, Prince Albert Victor, known as Eddy, was a disappointment. Born two months premature in 1864, he grew up curiously devoid of any intellect or interest in anything beyond his army regiment, shooting, and pleasure. Throughout his education, his tutors agonized over their inability to instill in him even the slightest affinity for learning. He grew into a pleasant, if aimless, young man, charming, handsome in a slightly epicine way, but utterly unsuited to inherit the British throne. He was notoriously dissipated, probably bisexual, and was involved in a scandal surrounding the police raid on a homosexual brothel. He may very well have been infected with syphilis during one of his many amorous adventures.
1
His family repeatedly tried to find a strong-willed wife to guide him. He himself fell in love with his cousin Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine, but she refused him, only to later marry the last Tsar of Russia. Another woman with whom he fell in love was Helene de Orleans, daughter of the Comte de Paris, but her Catholicism prevented the relationship from progressing.
Finally, his family decided on Princess Victoria Mary, the only daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Teck. Her father, Prince Franz, was haunted by the fact that his father, Duke Alexander of Wurttemberg, had married morganatically, a union which deprived him of his claim to the throne of Württemberg and entitled him and his children only to the style of “Serene” rather than the more important “Royal” Highness. All of his life he attached great importance to rank and precedence, a trait he passed on to his daughter. His wife, Mary Adelaide, was a granddaughter of King George III. She was so large—250 pounds was the estimate of the American minister to the Court of St. James’s—that she was known in the family as “Fat Mary.”
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Her daughter, called May in the family, dreaded dance recitals, at which her mother was forced to sit on two gilt chairs pushed together to accommodate her bulk, a sight which provided the other girls in the class with no end of humiliating jokes and stories.
3
Her frivolous habits and uncontrolled spending finally forced the family to temporarily flee England to avoid creditors; they took up residence in Florence, and it was here that young May cultivated a love of art and collecting.
Back in England, the Tecks were allowed to occupy rooms in Kensington Palace and enjoy the grace and favor of White Lodge in Richmond Park. The Princess of Wales was fond of the Duchess, and thus May’s name was raised as a possible bride for the wayward Eddy. The Tecks were thrilled at the idea that their daughter might one day become Queen. Romantic feeling mattered little: She was certainly not in love with Eddy; indeed, she scarcely knew him, and the prospect cannot have been a terribly happy one for May. But she was shrewd enough to recognize the golden opportunity at hand, and propelled by her family’s slightly mercenary attitude, as well as her own, she accepted his proposal.
May was saved from whatever trauma a marriage to Eddy might have caused when, in January 1882, he contracted pneumonia and died at Sandringham in Norfolk. But all was not lost: Eddy’s brother George took his place in the line of succession, and soon plans were afoot to marry May off to the new heir to the throne. May’s father spent the greater part of his time wandering about muttering loudly, “It must be a Tsarevich, it must be a Tsarevich!”
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(This was a reference to the marriage of Alix’s younger sister Dagmar, who, some thirty years earlier, had been engaged to Tsarevich Nicholas, heir to the Russian throne. When Nicholas died before the wedding could take place, his younger brother Alexander inherited both his position as future emperor and his fiancée.)
George, like his brother, was no intellectual; however, unlike Eddy, he was conscientious and devoted to the idea of duty. His only real education came from his tenure in the Royal Navy; here he learned that it was best to conform. He was bored with most music, cared little for art, regarded most reading as a waste of time, and was highly suspicious of new ideas. George’s first son, David, had written of his father: “He had the Victorian’s sense of probity, moral responsibility, and love of domesticity. He believed in God, in the invincibility of the Royal Navy, and the essential rightness of whatever was British. At the same time, he had the Edwardian flair for clothes and fondness for sport—from partridge to tiger shooting, from deer-stalking to fishing.”
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Although George and May had almost nothing in common, he understood what his family expected and duly proposed. May, much fonder of George than she had been of Eddy and certain that a third chance to become future Queen would not come her way, accepted. When one relative protested the proposed match, Queen Victoria replied indignantly, “Well, you know May never was in love with poor Eddy!”
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George was created Duke of York, and they were married in July 1893.
George and May undoubtedly loved each other, but it was a curious sort of love: He adored her from a safe distance, and she, in turn, treated him with an almost Oriental subservience. Whatever passions they felt were kept strictly confined to paper. Just before their wedding, May wrote to him: “I am very sorry that I am still so shy with you, I tried not to be so the other day, but alas failed, I was angry with myself! It is so stupid to be so stiff together & really there is nothing I would not tell you, except that I
love
you more than anybody in the world, & this I cannot tell you myself so I write it to relieve my feelings.”
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George himself replied: “Thank God we both understand each other, & I think it really unnecessary for me to tell you how deep my love for you my darling is & I feel it growing stronger & stronger every time I see you; although I may appear shy & cold. But this worry & busy time is most annoying & when we do meet it is only [to] talk business. . . .”
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Not that this remarkable set of circumstances was the result of simple shyness, for it continued on throughout their forty-two years of marriage. As a middle-aged woman, May could still be found writing sadly to her husband:
What a pity it is you cannot tell me what you write for I should appreciate it so enormously. . . .”
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On June 23, 1894, their first child was born at White Lodge, Richmond. He was christened Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David, the last four names after the patron saints of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. His family called him David. Among his godparents were Queen Victoria, King Christian IX of Denmark, King William of Württemberg, the future Tsar Nicholas II and his fiancée, Princess Alix, of Hesse and by Rhine, and the Queen of the Hellenes. The contrast with the humble world into which Wallis would be born could not have been greater.
The occasion of the new Prince’s birth was greeted with much enthusiasm. But one lone voice rose out in protest at the adulation, leaving remarks forever destined to be quoted in relation to the Duke of Windsor, so prescient do they seem. The Scottish socialist leader Kier Hardie declared in the House of Commons: “From his childhood onwards this boy will be surrounded by sycophants and flatterers by the score and will be taught to believe himself as of a superior creation. A line will be drawn between him and the people he is to be called upon some day to reign over. In due course, following the precedent which has already been set he will be sent round the world, and probably rumours of a morganatic alliance will follow and the end of it all will be the country will be called upon to pay the bill.”
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David was followed by a brother, Albert (called Bertie) in 1895; a sister, Mary, in 1897; and three more brothers: Henry (called Harry) in 1900; George in 1902; and the youngest son, John, born in 1905. When it was discovered that John suffered from epilepsy—a still-somewhat mysterious and disgraceful illness—he was hastily dispatched to Sandringham, to spend his life in isolation from his family.
It would be difficult to imagine a more disastrous set of parents than George and May. Both were essentially good people and certainly loved their offspring, but they had absolutely no understanding of, or sympathy for, their own children. As parents, they were distant, aloof, unemotional, and very often intimidating.
May, in the words of historian David Duff, “was out of touch with the human side of life.”
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She harbored an intense dislike of both pregnancy and childbirth, which she once described as “the penalty of being a woman.”
12
With such an attitude, it is not surprising that her husband’s aunt, Empress Frederick of Germany, described her as “very cold and stiff and very unmaternal.”
13
There can be little doubt, as Frances Donaldson has written, that this ”almost total estrangement from their mother, the coldness with which she rejected them,“ greatly affected her children.
14
May found it extraordinarily difficult to express any normal love, affection, or warmth toward them. It was not merely a question of simple Victorian reserve at work; even by the standards of the day, she was, in the words of Kenneth Rose, “an uncommonly detached mother.”
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Years later, David himself was to declare, “My mother was a cold woman, a cold woman.”
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