Read The Duchess Of Windsor Online
Authors: Greg King
The Duchess Of Windsor (21 page)
Finally, completely contrary to such speculation is the proposal that Wallis never had sexual relations with any of her husbands, the Duke of Windsor included. Such an assumption rests entirely on several offhand statements Wallis is alleged to have made. According to one source, she told Jack Aird in 1936, “I have had two husbands and I never went to bed with either of them.”
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Maitre Suzanne Blum, who would act as the lawyer for the Duchess during her last years, more than once expressed the idea that Wallis remained a virgin until her death, a belief apparently passed on to her protégé, Michael Bloch, who repeated it in his last book on the Duchess.
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Maitre Suzanne Blum, who would act as the lawyer for the Duchess during her last years, more than once expressed the idea that Wallis remained a virgin until her death, a belief apparently passed on to her protégé, Michael Bloch, who repeated it in his last book on the Duchess.
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Such an idea, however, strains credulity. Win Spencer was a virile, sexually charged man, given to drunken rages and abusive displays of his power over Wallis. It seems highly unlikely that such a man would have been content to remain married to a woman for five years and fail to take possession of her, whether consensually or not. Indeed, Wallis later confessed to a friend that when drunk, Win Spencer had often forced himself upon her.
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Nor was Ernest Simpson any more likely to have been ambivalent about ordinary sexual relations with a wife whom he loved and clearly found attractive.
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Nor was Ernest Simpson any more likely to have been ambivalent about ordinary sexual relations with a wife whom he loved and clearly found attractive.
Fortunately, the idea that the Duchess of Windsor remained a virgin until her death can be dismissed. Dr. Jean Thin, who treated Wallis for the last fourteen years of her life, was clearly astounded at Bloch’s assertion. “How, I wonder, could he know if the Duchess remained a virgin or not until the day she died?” he says. “I, on the contrary, am qualified to certify that she was not a virgin.”
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The truth of the sexual relationship between Wallis and David is undoubtedly much less shocking than the years of rumor would have it. No one can be said to have been in a reliable position to speak with authority on what went on in their bedroom except for the Duke and Duchess. As Ralph G. Martin pointed out, “These were not two people who would ever discuss such things with anyone.”
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The simple truth is that those who look to the bedroom in an attempt to explain the strength of the bond between Wallis and David have overlooked entirely the emotions that drove them together. If the Prince simply wanted to possess Wallis sexually, surely his need for her would have waned with the passage of time. Nor is any speculative examination of their sexual bond likely to yield the answer. It was not the act of lovemaking—or any exotic techniques or practices on Wallis’s part—which drew the pair together; rather, the love itself.
Other women could supply the Prince with sex, but Wallis was the first woman who managed to combine intimacy with a true emotional understanding and indulgence of him. She provided reassurance. She paid attention when he spoke in a way which no one had before her. Courtiers, Freda Dudley Ward, Thelma Furness listened, but through ears which heard a prince speaking; Wallis heard the man first and answered not with sycophantic assurances but thoughtful replies. She took an interest in his work and responded to his needs in exactly the way she had always been taught. He adored her gaiety and sense of fun, her independence and compassion for him.
Above all, she recognized his need to be loved and accepted unconditionally. David had continually sought out support and reassurance from older women who served not only as lovers but as slightly maternal figures as well. Having been denied close parental bonds in his childhood, he wanted nothing more than that which he had never had in his life: affection and protection. The relationship between him and Wallis was overwhelmingly based on her intuitive understanding of his desires. He sought to give affection, to have it received openly, to be protected and guided, and to establish, with her, in whatever fashion he could, the one thing he had never known: a happy family life.
Perceptively, Wallis indulged his desires. Although others would look on in horror as she openly chastised him or spoke to him sharply, the truth is that this treatment was no more than what David himself wished. All of his life David had been subject to the sterile criticism of his parents and court officials, rebukes which did not appear to be based on anything more than tradition and concern for appearances. Wallis, on the other hand, provided criticism based on love. In her authoritarian role, he knew, Wallis demonstrated her feeling for him. It cannot have been easy for her to have assumed such a peculiar role, which often became matron, mother, lover, and friend at once, but this only made her all the more valuable to the Prince. David was left with little doubt that in her comforting words, her reproachful tone as she corrected him, and her sympathetic encouragement of his duties, he had found in Wallis the one woman who not only understood his needs but loved him enough to indulge them as well.
Wallis noted a change in Ernest upon her return to London. Not surprisingly, he chose not to question her about her adventures with the Prince. Nor did he seem to have much interest in discussing what both of them knew was quickly becoming a serious threat to their marriage. Instead, he became withdrawn and silent and spent more and more of his time at his office.
The trip had also changed Wallis. She had previously been cautious, protective of her marriage, careful of her actions. Now her carefully maintained emotional distance from the Prince had faded. She was far too enraptured with both him and his enchanted style of life to consider at all the dangerous territory into which she had ventured.
Her relationship with David now took on a slightly reckless quality They spent long evenings together at the Embassy Club without Ernest, in full view of London society, and together attended parties and receptions given by the great hostesses of the era. David also began to shower her with expensive jewels. Finally, they were photographed together, as a couple, in formal portraits by society photographer Hugh Cecil, the surest sign that their relationship had indeed reached a new, deeper stage during their winter holiday.
In time, London society opened its doors to the Prince’s new favorite. She and Ernest were often entertained by Sir Philip Sassoon, a tall, thin homosexual with dark hair and eyes and pale skin. Sassoon hosted elaborate parties in his luxurious flat at 25 Park Lane, decorated with Lalique chandeliers and art-deco motifs, or at his country estates of Trent Park and Port Lympe. Lady Portarlington hosted receptions in Wallis’s honor; Helen Fitzgerald, former sister-in-law of Lord Beaverbrook’s, became a fast friend; and Margot Asquith, widow of Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, also issued frequent invitations to the Simpsons. The guest lists at these parties staggered the imagination: the most brilliant politicians of the day—from Ramsay MacDonald to Winston Churchill—could often be found chatting in the drawing rooms, along with famed artists like Rex Whistler; members of the Bloomsbury circle; society photographer Cecil Beaton; playwright Noel Coward; and aesthetes, such as Harold Acton and Stephen Tennant.
Wallis realized that most of these invitations were issued out of curiosity, and also in the hope that her presence might ensure that of the Prince of Wales. Ernest, still disgruntled but silently complacent, was usually at her side. No matter what his personal feelings might have been, he was always charming and genial in public.
This was a different world entirely, and at first Wallis moved carefully. She tried, unsuccessfully, to contain her enthusiasm, but her rapid-fire talk—“like the tack-tack-tack of a machine gun,” in the words of one fellow guest—often left unfavorable impressions of brash and bold behavior.
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Finally, several women, in particular Margot Asquith, took Wallis under their wing, warning her that she must guard her actions as well as her words, as they were now certain to be taken as representative of the Prince of Wales.
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Finally, several women, in particular Margot Asquith, took Wallis under their wing, warning her that she must guard her actions as well as her words, as they were now certain to be taken as representative of the Prince of Wales.
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At first, Wallis often failed to find favor. Sir Steven Runciman recalls a luncheon with the Aga Khan and Wallis, at which David was not present, in May 1935. “I can’t say I was favorably impressed. She was very elegantly dressed, but had a very hard face. It was a small lunch party, and she was hardly allowed to say a word by the old Aga Khan, who clearly disliked her and interrupted her every time she opened her mouth—indeed he behaved very badly but what he said was full of interest.”
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Three particular members of these social circles were to prove important friends of Wallis’s, especially during the abdication crisis. The first was a fellow American, Henry Channon III, who went by the nickname Chips. He had been born in Chicago, the son of wealthy parents, and had come to England to live. There he had married Lady Honor Guinness, eldest daughter of the second earl of Iveagh; in 1935 he was elected as a Member of Parliament.
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Chips was a great snob. He did as much as possible to forget his hated American background and deliberately cultivated his aristocratic connections in England. He was renowned for his biting wit, his unbridled social ambition, and his eye for detail, this last characteristic brought fully to fruition in his famous diary. Invitations to the Channons’ London house, with its glittering blue-and-silver rococo dining room, were particularly sought after by members of society.
He first met Wallis in the beginning of 1935. “She is a nice, quiet, well-bred mouse of a woman with large startled eyes and a huge mole,” he wrote of his first impressions. “I think she is surprised and rather conscience-stricken by her present position and the limelight which consequently falls upon her.”
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Two months later, he noted, Wallis had already begun to change: “We had a luncheon party here, and the plot was to do a ‘politesse’ to Mrs. Simpson. She is a jolly, plain, intelligent, quiet, unpretentious and unprepossessing little woman, but... she has already the air of a personage who walks into a room as though she almost expected to be curtsied to.”
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Two months later, he noted, Wallis had already begun to change: “We had a luncheon party here, and the plot was to do a ‘politesse’ to Mrs. Simpson. She is a jolly, plain, intelligent, quiet, unpretentious and unprepossessing little woman, but... she has already the air of a personage who walks into a room as though she almost expected to be curtsied to.”
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The other two important friends were Duff and Diana Cooper. Lady Diana, one of the daughters of the eighth Duke of Rutland, was known for her vibrant personality and her “fog-horn voice,” in the words of Chips Channon.
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In 1919 she had married Duff Cooper, a poor but rising clerk in the Foreign Office whose mother was a sister of the first Duke of Fife. Their married life together was an endless string of torrid affairs. “Both had passion to spare,” writes Kenneth Rose, “and there have been more eternal triangles in their joint lives than in the whole of Euclid.”
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Duff himself was a rather calm, quiet, astute man, thoughtful and diligent about politics. It was Diana, with an amazing, almost ethereal beauty, brilliant wit, and great charm, who sparkled.
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In 1919 she had married Duff Cooper, a poor but rising clerk in the Foreign Office whose mother was a sister of the first Duke of Fife. Their married life together was an endless string of torrid affairs. “Both had passion to spare,” writes Kenneth Rose, “and there have been more eternal triangles in their joint lives than in the whole of Euclid.”
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Duff himself was a rather calm, quiet, astute man, thoughtful and diligent about politics. It was Diana, with an amazing, almost ethereal beauty, brilliant wit, and great charm, who sparkled.
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This was the age of the great social hostesses in London, and theirs was the world which Wallis now entered. These women fell into roughly two groups—the political and the social hostesses. The political arena was dominated by the Marchioness of Londonderry, whom Wallis came to know quite well. She had been born Edith Chaplin, a granddaughter of the third Duke of Sutherland; in 1899 she married Charles Henry Vane-Tempest-Stewart, the seventh Marquess of Londonderry, and became chatelaine of the immense and grand Londonderry House. During her famous parties, Lady Londonderry would stand on the landing of her sweeping grand staircase, receiving a long line of important visitors.
Her chief rival was Mrs. Ronald Greville, who presided over a glittering London house in Charles Street and an immense country estate, Polesden Lacey, in Surrey. She was born the illegitimate daughter of a Scottish millionaire brewer, John McEwen, and did as much as possible to put her less-than-aristocratic beginnings behind her.
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In time, she came to believe herself immensely powerful and influential; although the Prince of Wales found her sycophantic fawning distasteful, other members of the Royal Family adored her. She was particularly beloved by Queen Mary and by the Duke and Duchess of York, who had spent a part of their honeymoon with her at Polesden Lacey. Aside from these royals and those with social ambition who sought out her favor, however, Mrs. Greville was roundly despised in London circles. Those who frequented the great London houses in the 1930s—Harold Nicolson, Chips Channon, the Coopers, and Cecil Beaton—disliked her intensely. Her wit was nonexistent; her tongue, bitter and biting. In the words of Brian Masters, she was “quite simply malevolent. ”
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In time, Mrs. Greville would become one of Wallis’s most vehement enemies in society.
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In time, she came to believe herself immensely powerful and influential; although the Prince of Wales found her sycophantic fawning distasteful, other members of the Royal Family adored her. She was particularly beloved by Queen Mary and by the Duke and Duchess of York, who had spent a part of their honeymoon with her at Polesden Lacey. Aside from these royals and those with social ambition who sought out her favor, however, Mrs. Greville was roundly despised in London circles. Those who frequented the great London houses in the 1930s—Harold Nicolson, Chips Channon, the Coopers, and Cecil Beaton—disliked her intensely. Her wit was nonexistent; her tongue, bitter and biting. In the words of Brian Masters, she was “quite simply malevolent. ”
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In time, Mrs. Greville would become one of Wallis’s most vehement enemies in society.
Another of the great hostesses to befriend Wallis was fellow American Laura Corrigan, daughter of a Wisconsin carpenter. She was perhaps the most eccentric and bizarre of the great hostesses and also the most beloved. She was married when, in 1913, she met steel heir James Corrigan; he was so taken with her that he paid her current husband an immense sum of money to divorce her so that he could take Laura as his wife. He died a few years later, leaving his young widow with millions of dollars to spend on parties and balls. She moved to London and tried to infiltrate society but found its doors closed. Determined to succeed, she rented a house on Grosvenor Street from Mrs. George Keppel, former mistress to King Edward VII, on condition that Mrs. Keppel’s guest list accompany the house. Once ensconced, she dispatched hundreds of invitations to dinner parties and balls; at first, London society declined. Then she brilliantly struck on the idea of offering great prizes to those who attended. Curious guests accepted and were showered with Cartier watches, gold cuff links, and uncut gemstones. Word soon spread, and thereafter society flocked to her entertainments.
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