The Duchess Of Windsor (26 page)

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Authors: Greg King

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In hindsight, of course, the decision proved disastrous, opening a path of opportunism which Hitler would follow to the outbreak of the Second World War. But the King’s desire for peace and his government’s policy of appeasement happened to coincide—a fact conveniently ignored by Edward VIII’s critics. Nor did the King interfere in diplomatic matters in any way out of the ordinary: He did nothing where the Rhineland crisis was concerned, nor did his father previously when Mussolini had invaded Abyssinia. And yet no one has accused George V of improper conduct over the Italian incident.
In the midst of such German overtures toward the King, it is only natural that allegations should have been leveled against Wallis. There were rumors, which have only gained currency with time, that she was supplying the German government with British state secrets. It is said that Sir Robert Vansittart, who unofficially headed up the British Intelligence Service MI6, had proof of her complicity. The source of this allegation, however, was not Vansittart himself but a second party, who claimed that the intelligence chief received his information from a Russian secret agent; the Russian agent, in turn, is said to have received his information from Wallis’s dressmaker in London, Anna Wolkoff.
The sheer logistics of such a circle tend to militate against its existence; are we really to believe that Wallis would be so indiscreet as to confide state secrets to her dressmaker, who just happened to be friendly with a Russian double agent, who in turn was feeding secrets to the British government? It has also been suggested that Wallis was channeling information through the Italian embassy in London, another peculiar theory in view of the fact that Hitler and Mussolini were still at odds over issues of European supremacy and it is known that the King, as well as his government, had been playing very real negotiating games over the struggle for power. It seems most unlikely that the Italian embassy would have featured passing any British state secrets to the Germans by way of a Russian spy. But it is typical of the sort of unsubstantiated rumor which has managed to attach itself to both Wallis and the King.
37
14
 
The King’s Mistress
 
A
S WALLIS HAD FORESEEN
, life had seemingly changed overnight. David’s new position and responsibilities threatened to overwhelm what little time he could now manage to spend with her, and she felt increasingly isolated. “As I watched David becoming absorbed in his duties, it seemed to me there was little left of Peter Pan; he had become the prisoner of his heritage.”
1
She saw no reason to believe that her privileged position would last. Inevitably, she thought, now that David was King, he must marry and provide an heir.
But David’s feelings for her only intensified with the passage of time. The strain of his new office and the increasing duties which consumed him made him long all the more for company, Wallis’s in particular. The more deeply he plunged into the duties of the throne, the more he prized his private life. Wallis was at the center of his emotional well-being; she was the only person with whom he could relax and in whom he felt able to confide.
The last British king to keep a mistress so openly had been David’s grandfather Edward VII, who had indulged his passions with a string of paramours drawn from the ranks of the aristocracy and the stage. His most famous mistress had been Alice Keppel, wife of the Honorable George Keppel, a younger son of the Earl of Albemarle. She first met Edward in 1898, when he was still Prince of Wales: he was fifty-six, portly, and prematurely aged; she was twenty-nine, vibrant, and beautiful. Although her physical charms had initially drawn to her the Prince of Wales, it was her understanding, affection, and companionship which he came to value most. She was kind, charming, and discreet—“the most perfect mistress in history,” as Anita Leslie has called her.
2
Their relationship was to last for twelve years, until his death in 1910. As Edward VII lay dying, his long-suffering wife, Queen Alexandra, had summoned Mrs. Keppel to his bedside so that her husband might bid farewell to his favorite.
Inevitably, Mrs. Keppel and nearly all of those who came before her had shared certain qualities as royal mistresses: discretion, unobtrusiveness, and social position. With Wallis, however, polite society was confronted with the complete antithesis of previous royal mistresses. As yet, no one had any idea that the King was contemplating marriage, and little concern was expressed over her marital record. Wallis was judged on visible factors. She was not particularly beautiful, and many wondered what the new King saw in her. Her American outspokenness differed greatly from the retiring manners the court expected. Above all, Wallis was far too brash not only in behavior but in appearance as well. Her now carefully cultivated and modern glamour stood in complete contrast to, in the words of Valerie Cumming, “the bourgeois domesticity of family life which George V and Queen Mary, and the Duke and Duchess of York and their two daughters had represented for nearly ten years.”
3
When the aged Alice Keppel said of Edward VIII’s liaison, “Things were done differently in my day,” she spoke for a majority of the old-guard aristocracy and members of the court.
4
Against this mounting disapproval were the voices of those confidants who had first embraced Wallis: Duff and Diana Cooper, Emerald Cunard, Sibyl Colefax, and Chips Channon. She received numerous letters praising her influence on the King and imploring her not to abandon him. “Of course I am very fond of him,” she confided to Aunt Bessie, “and proud, and want him to do his job well and he is so lonely and needs companionship and affection, otherwise he goes all wrong. Ernest has of course been marvelous about it all.”
5
At the same time, Chips noted, there was increasing pressure from certain elements of the court to isolate Wallis. “We are concerned that some of our friends should be trying to poison the Kents against Mrs. Simpson and hence the King, and are attempting to drive a wedge between the Royal brothers,” he noted early in the King’s reign.
6
In some circles, there was indeed a growing dissatisfaction with both Wallis and the King. On February 2, the Earl of Crawford wrote: “The King again spends the weekend at Belvedere and one assumes that Mrs. Simpson is there. If the emotions of the past fortnight have not been strong enough to bring that liaison to an end, we must contemplate its continuance until she is supplanted by some younger rival. ... Criticism may become insistent, bitter; then he may do something fatuous by talking of abdication: he had done so
en famille
before now.”
7
David himself was under constant pressure from his mother and family to marry and provide an heir, but he managed to ward off such concerns. “Oh, Mama, let’s not bother with that now,” he would tell Queen Mary. “You know that I’ll get around to it at the proper time.”
8
Queen Mary was greatly upset at such developments. In February 1936 she said to Lady Airlie, “Your sons are about the age of mine, Mabell, and you have had to bring them up without a father. Tell me, have they ever disappointed you?”
“I answered,” Lady Airlie wrote, “that I thought all sons—and daughters too—disappointed their parents at some time or other, and that when this had happened in the case of my children I had always tried not to be possessive, and to remember that their lives were their own and not mine.”
“Yes, one can apply that to individuals, but not to a Sovereign,” Queen Mary answered slowly, “He is not responsible to himself alone.” She turned once again to her needlework, then said quietly, “I have not liked to talk to David about this affair with Mrs. Simpson, in the first place because I don’t want to give the impression of interfering in his private life, and also because he is the most obstinate of all my sons. To oppose him over anything is only to make him more determined to do it. At present he is utterly infatuated, but my great hope is that violent infatuations usually wear off.”
9
Queen Mary was well aware of the progress of her eldest son’s relationship. Although David and his brother Bertie were no longer very close, the King did maintain frequent contacts with his favorite brother, George, the Duke of Kent, and his wife, Princess Marina, whom he and Wallis often visited in London and at their country house, Coppins. David’s other brother, Harry, Duke of Gloucester, and his wife, Alice, occasionally visited the Fort, but neither were enthralled to inevitably discover Wallis in residence as well. “This was awkward,” Alice recalled, “as we were unhappy with the liaison as the rest of the family, but as a brother Prince Henry felt obliged to go.”
10
Increasingly, these weekends at the Fort were provoking much gossip and dissatisfaction. David’s behavior left little doubt that he was absolutely enamored of his mistress, and his behavior was often distressing to those unprepared for such devotion. Lady Diana Cooper said of one weekend in February 1936: “Wallis tore her nail and said, ‘Oh!’ but forgot about it, but he needs must disappear and arrive back in two minutes, panting, with two little emery-boards for her to file the offending nail.”
11
A footman, asked by a prospective employer why he had left the King’s employ at the Fort, replied, “Well, Madam, the butler, Mr. Osborne, sent me down to the swimming pool with two drinks. When I got there what did I see but His Majesty painting Mrs. Simpson’s toenails. My Sovereign painting a woman’s toenails. It was a bit much, Madam. I gave notice at once.”
12
By the end of February 1936, the delicate balancing act which Wallis had been performing between Ernest and David had taken its toll on her health and nerves. Hoping to have time to consider her situation, she told both men that she wished to leave England for a week. She traveled alone to Paris, where she had booked a room at the Hotel Meurice. Although she could not have known it, this was the worst possible decision Wallis could have made, for while she was gone, Ernest and David, acting without her knowledge, came together to decide her fate.
13
In the fall of 1935, Ernest had gone to New York alone on business, and Wallis, in a curious twist on the actions of Thelma Furness, had asked her friend Mary Kirk Raffray to look after him. Mary had recently left her husband, Jacques, and was now living in an uptown New York apartment. What began as quiet evenings together quickly blossomed into a romance. There is no reason to believe that they were not intimate, for Ernest was apparently spied creeping out of her flat early one morning, and they are known to have spent a weekend together in Atlantic City.
14
It is doubtful that this affair with Mary Kirk Raffray was more than just a casual liaison, but it was to become the impetus for the dissolution of the Simpsons’ marriage. Previously, Ernest had listened to his wife’s repeated assurances that she had no interest in, or desire to seek, a divorce. The deeper her relationship with David had become, however, the less inclined Ernest had been to believe her. He thought Wallis was deluding herself about the strength of her feelings for David and that given the opportunity, she would be far more willing to abandon her husband than her lover.
It was while Wallis was away that Ernest and David met at York House. Ernest told the King that Wallis would have to make a choice between them and asked what he intended to do about it. Without hesitation, David declared that he was going to marry Wallis, saying, “Do you really think I would be crowned without Wallis by my side?”
15
Ernest apparently made his decision. After this talk, Ernest joined Wallis in Paris, where he informed her that he and the King had reached an understanding. He finally told her of his feelings for Mary Kirk Raffray, a piece of news which cannot have come as a complete shock to Wallis. It is impossible, however, to know if she realized the full extent of their affair; her written memoirs indicate that she did not, while her published private correspondence seems to suggest that she had at least some idea as to what had been taking place.
According to their agreement, Ernest would agree to a divorce. The King had assured Ernest that he would take care of her. Wallis was devastated by this news. “She was completely taken by surprise,” a friend later recalled. “Can you imagine? Her whole future, decided by these two men, and both without even discussing it with her! It left her absolutely shaken. And the terrible thing was, she hadn’t any intention of divorcing Simpson—and there it was.”
16
But neither Ernest nor David was prepared for Wallis’s reaction. Not only was she outraged that these two men would attempt to manipulate her future in such a manner without previously discussing their plans with her, but such a course of action ran absolutely counter to what she herself wanted. For a year, Wallis had insisted that she had no wish to divorce Ernest, and there is no reason to doubt her sincerity. The Simpsons returned to London, she angry and upset and their marriage in a shambles. But she stubbornly clung to the illusion that everything could continue as it had been before.
Ironically, on their return to London, Mary Kirk Raffray came to stay with Wallis and Ernest on a previously arranged visit. Her time with the Simpsons at Bryanston Court was strained; Wallis seems to have had at least some idea as to the liaison between her friend and husband, and Mary left rather quickly, moving on to France. From here, she dispatched two letters, the first, a thank-you note to Wallis, the second, a love letter to Ernest. Unbelievably, she placed the two letters in the wrong envelopes and had dropped them in the post before she finally realized what she had done. Quickly, she sent Wallis a cable, warning her that a letter addressed to her was not written for her and saying that she should not open it. Needless to say, Wallis opened both letters when they arrived at Bryanston Court.
17
Here, for apparently the first time, she had conclusive evidence not only of Ernest’s feelings for Mary Kirk but also of their affair.
For the moment, however, Wallis refused to act. Stubbornly, she clung to the delusion that things could continue on exactly as they had in the past. Ernest was still willing enough to maintain the deception, and Wallis honestly believed that she could remain the King’s mistress until such time as she should be supplanted in his affections either by a new, younger lover or, more likely, by a suitable bride who would become his queen.
But such an arrangement was not what David had in mind. Now, for the first time, she learned the extent of his plans. He wanted nothing less than Wallis as his bride; she would become his queen. If he could not marry her and remain king, he would abdicate the throne. Although Wallis would later claim that the question of marriage was not raised until several months later, it is apparent from her letters that both the marriage and the idea of his abdication were discussed shortly after her return from Paris.
David was impetuous and simply refused to accept any option other than marriage to Wallis. Her protests went unheeded. In his own mind, David had already begun to plan their future together. He continued to shower her with gifts of jewelry, although now they bore inscriptions which spoke of the stress of their relationship. On March 27, he gave Wallis an extravagant piece ordered from Van Cleef & Arpels: an exquisite ruby-and-diamond bracelet with the words “Hold Tight” inscribed on the clasp. He also bestowed on Wallis a substantial amount of money, drawn from his private fortune, so that, no matter what happened, she should always be financially comfortable.

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