The Duchess Of Windsor (22 page)
Read The Duchess Of Windsor Online
Authors: Greg King
Laura had gone bald and was known for her number of bizarre wigs: a stock of party wigs arranged in different styles; windswept wigs for yachting parties; rain-dampened wigs for outdoor excursions; and disheveled wigs for the unexpected appearance of sudden guests. Anyone who arrived at her door—whether an invited guest or the postman—was instantly presented with a cocktail. She once received the Duke of Kent standing on her head. Her malapropisms were legendary: Speaking of a great cathedral she had visited, she startled her guests by announcing, “The flying buttocks were magnificent.” On another occasion, upon returning from a trip to Turkey, she was asked if she had seen the Dardanelles. “I did have a letter of introduction to them,” she said, “but I haven’t sent it.”
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Lady Sibyl Colefax became another important friend. From Argyll House on King’s Road, she presided over a circle of artistic friends, which included Ivor Novello, Kenneth Clark, and John Gielgud. It had been Sibyl, almost single-handedly, who had promoted the talents of Noel Coward to her society friends. The daughter of a civil servant, she was married to Sir Arthur Colefax, a patent lawyer and a man generally regarded as one of London’s greatest bores. Chips Channon described Lady Colefax as “obsidian or onyx—shiny and metallic.”
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He also added that she was “garrulous, gracious and absurd.”
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It was Sibyl, along with business partner John Fowler, who pioneered and made popular the vogue for chintzes and the interior-decoration style which would come to be known as English country.
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He also added that she was “garrulous, gracious and absurd.”
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It was Sibyl, along with business partner John Fowler, who pioneered and made popular the vogue for chintzes and the interior-decoration style which would come to be known as English country.
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Syrie Maugham was another London decorator who had a profound influence on Wallis. Syrie had left her husband, author Somerset Maugham, for his secretary and soon became renowned for her white-on-white interior designs as well as the use of browns, beiges, and mirrors. Another woman, society florist Constance Spry, taught Wallis how to arrange masses of banked flowers and passed along her love of all-white floral displays.
The exotic Elsie de Wolfe, wife of Sir Charles Mendl, virtually transformed Wallis during this period. An American who had come to Europe, she was known for her eccentricities, which ranged from her blue-tinted hair to her flair for memorable parties. Elsie took Wallis under her wing. She taught her how to host a large dinner party, how to select a guest list which ensured a successful and interesting evening, and how to plan menus and ease conversation along. She worked with those skills Wallis already possessed, sharpening her innate ability to take charge of a situation and dedicate herself to ensuring the enjoyment of others.
Lady Mendl also introduced Wallis to new fashion designers. She advised Wallis to dress in simple gowns, with straight lines which accentuated her boyish figure. Elsie took Wallis to Molyneux, Schia-parelli, and above all, Mainbocher. Born Main Rousseau Bocher in Chicago, the young designer had run his first and last names together, settled in Paris, and took up work in the couture houses there before finally coming into his own. His clothes—angular, stark, and luxurious—suited Wallis and formed the perfect backdrop to the impressive collection of jewels with which the Prince had begun to shower her. Cecil Beaton, who had first encountered Wallis a few years earlier, noted that she had now changed considerably. “I liked her immensely,” he wrote. “I found her bright and witty, improved in looks and chic.”
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Perhaps the most important of these new friends was Emerald, Lady Cunard, the greatest of London’s hostesses. Born in San Francisco, the former Maud Burke had married Sir Bache Cunard, grandson of the founder of the Cunard Line, after which she changed her name to the more evocative Emerald. A slight woman, she was constantly on the move through the great rooms of her mansion at the corner of Grosvenor Square. It was, in the words of Oswald Mosley, a place where one could find “the cleverest men, together with the most beautiful women.”
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Oswald Mosley later described Lady Cunard as “a bright little bird of paradise.” Her dinner parties were legendary. She orchestrated conversations like a conductor, although she herself rarely participated. Her role was to provoke discussion, and in this she had no equal. A few words, dropped in the middle of a silence at her dinner table would guarantee an entertaining and often passionate discourse.
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“I was constantly struck by Lady Cunard’s faculty of producing, in a theatrical sense, the people who entered her orbit,” said Harold Acton. “It was like the action of sunshine on a garden. Not that she could make Lytton Strachey garrulous, but whatever he said was intensely characteristic.”
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Emerald Cunard was to have a great influence on Wallis and her life. It was at her house, for better or for worse, that Wallis was first introduced to the political topics then currently making the rounds of London intellectual society. Germany and Adolf Hitler; Mussolini and his Fascist government in Italy; and the Labour government in the United Kingdom and its leader, Ramsay MacDonald, were all topics of conversation in Lady Cunard’s house. Emerald cultivated these talks and encouraged controversial, diverse opinions, welcoming powerful and influential proponents to her table. Many of them were exiled Russian aristocrats, who, understandably, saw in Hitler not a bigoted madman but a rabid anti-Communist whose expressed ambitions would save their former country.
It was Lady Cunard who first introduced Wallis to German diplomat Joachim von Ribbentrop, who had come to London as Hitler’s special envoy. Emerald enjoyed these encounters with Ribbentrop and loved nothing more than watching him squirm under her relentless grilling at the dinner table. True to form, she was forthright. “What does
Herr
Hitler truly think about
God?
” she once inquired. More famously, she stopped Ribbentrop dead in his conversational tracks by asking, “We all want to know, dearest Excellency, why does Herr Hitler dislike the
Jews
?”
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Herr
Hitler truly think about
God?
” she once inquired. More famously, she stopped Ribbentrop dead in his conversational tracks by asking, “We all want to know, dearest Excellency, why does Herr Hitler dislike the
Jews
?”
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It has frequently been reported that Ribbentrop, having met Wallis and understanding the important position which she held in the life of the heir to the throne, carefully cultivated a special relationship with her. This is said to have included his regular dispatch of long-stemmed red roses to her flat at Bryanston Court in an apparent effort to curry her favor. In fact, Ribbentrop was but one of many who sought out Wallis in these months, believing she had access to the Prince of Wales.
It has also been speculated that Wallis and Ribbentrop became lovers. This is a highly doubtful scenario. Wallis was undeniably involved with the Prince of Wales; perhaps more important, having seen an admirable demonstration of David’s jealousy over the relationship of Thelma Furness with Aly Khan, she would be unlikely to risk her privileged position by having an affair with a German diplomat. Wallis herself would later recall only two meetings with Ribbentrop, although they undoubtedly attended the same social occasions from time to time.
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But the rumors of this alleged liaison with the German diplomat so unnerved Wallis that in May 1937 she granted an interview to American journalist Helena Normanton in which she again declared that she had only met Ribbentrop twice and denied that she had in any way been used as a tool by the Nazis in London.
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But the rumors of this alleged liaison with the German diplomat so unnerved Wallis that in May 1937 she granted an interview to American journalist Helena Normanton in which she again declared that she had only met Ribbentrop twice and denied that she had in any way been used as a tool by the Nazis in London.
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Ribbentrop was but one of a number of Wallis’s highly controversial friends and acquaintances in London. Often these friendships were initiated by the Prince himself. One such example was Sir Oswald Mosley. Mosley was a dapper man with a small mustache and a slightly receding hairline. He was head of the British Union of Fascists and had founded the New Party to combat what he perceived as the unfair unemployment policies of the Labour government. In 1932, he had founded the British Union of Fascists, an organization largely composed of ultraconservative monarchists. They, like Mosley himself, were virulently anti-Communist. The Blackshirts, as Mosley’s organization came to be called, impressed a great many people in the first years of its inception. Along with Lady Cunard, supporters included the Sitwells, George Bernard Shaw, and most famously, two of the daughters of Lord and Lady Redesdale.
Mosley’s first wife had been Lady Cynthia Curzon, daughter of Lord Curzon. (Cynthia’s sister Alexandra was married to Fruity Metcalfe.) In 1932, when Lady Cynthia died after a short illness, Mosley received much sympathy, including a supportive message from the King and Queen.
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Mosley soon became romantically involved with the stunningly beautiful former Honorable Diana Mitford (daughter of Lord Redesdale), who was at the time married to the Honorable Bryan Guinness. Diana was a member of the immensely charming and talented Mitford clan, one of the most fabled aristocratic families, whose brilliant members included authors Nancy and Jessica Mitford, as well as Deborah, the present Duchess of Devonshire. Diana divorced Guinness and in 1936 she and Mosley were married in a secret ceremony which took place in the drawing room of the Berlin house of German minister of propaganda Josef Goebbels and his wife, Magda. Among other guests, Hitler attended the wedding to honor Mosley. It was through this connection that Diana’s sister Unity came into the orbit of the Führer and became one of his most devoted admirers.
Wallis and the Prince were also guests in the home of the German ambassador Leopold von Hoesch, who, on Hitler’s orders, lavishly entertained the pair and tried to press German interests and policies. His house in Carlton House Terrace had been completely redesigned by Nazi architect Albert Speer to impress those who walked through its doors. There has been much speculation that the Germans made overtures to the Prince through Wallis and that she became a paid conduit to ensure that Hitler’s policies and proposals were given an audience with the heir to the throne. But there is no evidence that Wallis was used by these men to try to influence the Prince in any pro-German stances; in truth, she had no need to do so, because the Prince of Wales was almost completely sympathetic to the German cause.
In May 1933, Hitler had launched his campaign for German renewal. He gave a celebrated speech in which he frequently quoted from the Versailles Treaty’s own tenets of national self-determination and a just peace in an effort to make his case for the rebuilding of the German state. “So great was the general gratification at Hitler’s moderation that no one detected the warning contained within his speech,” writes Joachim Fest. “Along with the London
Times
many influential voices throughout the world supported Hitler’s demand that Germany be treated on a footing of equality with the other powers.
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Times
many influential voices throughout the world supported Hitler’s demand that Germany be treated on a footing of equality with the other powers.
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Hitler then boldly withdrew from both the League of Nations and the Disarmament Conference. In June 1934, he consolidated his power in the Night of the Long Knives, the bloody massacre of Ernest Röhm’s storm troopers. He followed this in March 1935 with a plebiscite in the Saarland, then administered by the League of Nations; the results indicated overwhelming support for incorporation into the Reich. On the strength of this vote, Hitler repudiated the arms provision of the Treaty of Versailles and reintroduced German conscription.
He was moving cautiously, step by step, carefully watching and waiting to see how each of his decisions was accepted by the rest of the world. Above all, he was concerned with British reaction. Hitler hoped to reach an understanding with England and was willing to do whatever was necessary to achieve it. He was determined not to go to war with England. Hermann Goering’s second wife later recalled a remark Hitler made at a private dinner party given for several English guests: “I am so happy because I believe that we shall come to an understanding with the English, which is what I want above anything else.”
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Hitler was convinced that in the Prince of Wales he had found his best guarantee for British support. In June 1935, David gave a speech at the Annual Conference of the British Legion. He declared that the best way to ensure the future peace of the world was for the British veterans of the Great War to “stretch forth the hand of friendship to the Germans.” Afterward, public opinion had it that this speech was “the seal of the friendship agreement between the two countries. ”
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But the reaction was far from favorable. In a memo to the U.S. State Department, Ambassador William E. Dodd wrote: “It is difficult to conceive of any announcement better calculated to appeal to the prevalent German conception than the announcement by the Prince of Wales.... Hardly had the news been published in Berlin than statements in support were elicited from Goering, Hess, and Ribbentrop. All the press, on June 12th, seized up the statements of the Prince of Wales with the greatest avidity.”
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But the reaction was far from favorable. In a memo to the U.S. State Department, Ambassador William E. Dodd wrote: “It is difficult to conceive of any announcement better calculated to appeal to the prevalent German conception than the announcement by the Prince of Wales.... Hardly had the news been published in Berlin than statements in support were elicited from Goering, Hess, and Ribbentrop. All the press, on June 12th, seized up the statements of the Prince of Wales with the greatest avidity.”
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King George V was livid when he learned of the speech. Not only had the Prince failed to seek prior authorization from the Foreign Office for what he undoubtedly knew were controversial remarks, but he had willfully crossed the line separating the Royal Family from political questions. Although his son’s speech was not very different from his own personal views, the King warned the Prince that he was never to discuss political questions again.
But David, having witnessed firsthand the destruction of war and the random loss of life among the men who formed the fighting ranks, was determined to do all he could to prevent such carnage again. His sensibilities hinged far more on this desire to maintain the peace and not on any real support for Hitler, even if he did see—as did many others—a welcome opportunity to finally stop the Communist threat. But to Hitler the Prince’s remarks had indicated something more: He was utterly convinced that here, at least, was one man who would prove pliable when it came to reaching an understanding with Germany. Such delusions were to play havoc forever with the reputations of both the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
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