Read The Duchess Of Windsor Online
Authors: Greg King
The Duchess Of Windsor (27 page)
Wallis, however, continued—at least for the time being—to stand her ground. She reciprocated his sentimental gifts, but hers were marked with a certain sadness, which undoubtedly reflected the pressures which were overwhelming them both. In April she presented him with a gold memorandum case mounted with his monogram; inside the cover, engraved in a copy of her own handwriting, was a children’s poem by Eleanor Farjeon:
King’s Cross! What shall we do?
His Purple robe is rent in two.
Out of his crown he’s torn the gems.
He’s thrown his sceptre into the Thames.
The Court is quaking in every shoe.
King’s Cross! What shall we do?
Leave him alone for a minute or two.
April 1936 WE.
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On March 28, David gave a party at Windsor Castle, to which he invited the Hardinges and Lord and Lady Wigram. These courtiers were waiting at the sovereign’s entrance to the castle when the King arrived from Fort Belvedere. He was accompanied by his other guests, including the Simpsons (Ernest still, for appearance’ sake, at the side of his wife), and Colin and Gladys Buist.
The King and his guests went to the White Drawing Room, where a projector had been set up, and watched a newsreel of the Grand National Race, followed by an Eddie Cantor film. When the film was over, they walked down the grand corridor. “Mrs. Simpson was very agreeable to everyone, and she admired the Victorian settings of my jewelry,” Lady Hardinge noted.
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“Gradually, from desultory talk,” Lady Hardinge recalled, “the story of George IV and Mrs. Fitzherbert seemed to detach itself and as a theme made its way into the conversation. And as we wandered among the paintings that night, perhaps because of the hints and talk about them, their presence became very real, and George IV and Mrs. Fitzherbert seemed to emerge and join us. They seemed more solid, less brittle, than ourselves. Our little group bristled with unspoken confidences about the present, as we discussed the personal affairs of George IV.”
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A few weeks later, Wallis was staying with David at the Fort when a new station wagon he had ordered from America arrived. After inspecting the vehicle, he said to Wallis: “Let’s drive over to Royal Lodge. I want to show Bertie the car.” He and Wallis, along with some other guests, drove through Windsor Great Park to the Royal Lodge, where his brother the Duke of York and his family were staying.
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The Duke and Duchess of York met the King at the door of the Royal Lodge. David took his brother over to see the new station wagon. Wallis noted that the Duke seemed “quiet, shy, obviously dubious of this newfangled American contrivance.” Wallis had previously met the Duke and Duchess of York at both York House and at the Fort.
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Wallis and David stayed to take tea in the saloon of the Royal Lodge, where the Duke and Duchess’s two daughters, Princess Elizabeth, then aged ten, and Princess Margaret, six, joined them, brought in by their governess, Marion Crawford. “They were both so blonde, so beautifully mannered, so brightly scrubbed,” Wallis wrote, “that they might have stepped straight from the pages of a picture book.”
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Marion Crawford later recalled her meeting with Wallis: “She was a smart, attractive woman, already middle-aged but with that immediate friendliness American women have. She appeared to be entirely at her ease; if anything, rather too much so.... She had a distinctly proprietary way of speaking to the new King. I remember she drew him to the window and suggested how certain trees might be moved, and a part of a hill taken away to improve the view.” This seemingly innocent action caused great distress to both the Duke and Duchess of York; the Duke had himself helped plan the garden at Royal Lodge and taken particular care in the placement of the trees and lawns. Wallis’s comments were met with stony silence. “The atmosphere was not a comfortable one,” Marion Crawford later wrote.
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The Duchess of York eventually turned to the governess and said, “Crawfie, would you like to take Lilibet and Margaret into the woods for a while?” As they left, Princess Elizabeth, having encountered the woman whose love affair would one day place her on the British throne, turned to her governess and asked, “Crawfie, who is she?”
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The afternoon had been anything but a success. If the Duchess of York had previously harbored a dislike of Wallis, her ill-conceived gardening suggestions and easy treatment of the King only intensified Elizabeth’s feelings. “I left,” Wallis wrote, “with a distinct impression that while the Duke of York was sold on the American station wagon, the Duchess was not sold on David’s other American interest.”
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Wallis continued to operate under considerable strain. Although she and Ernest appeared to have reached something of an understanding, David remained insistent. This was terribly wearing on Wallis, who found the strain almost unbearable. By the beginning of May, it was apparent even to Wallis that things could no longer continue as they had in the past. In a letter to her aunt Bessie, she explained that her former life with Ernest at Bryanston Court had now slipped away forever; Ernest might be content to let the situation continue, but she was not. “I’ve outgrown it and Ernest,” she admitted candidly. She knew there was no going back. If she gave up the King, she would always be haunted by a string of what-ifs; at the same time, she realized that one day it would all come to an end. “Should HM fall in love with someone else I would cease to be as powerful or have all I have today ...” she wrote. “I should be comfortably off and have had a most interesting experience . . . .”
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On May 10, Chips Channon wrote: “It appears that the King is Mrs. Simpson’s absolute slave, and will go nowhere where she is not invited, and she, clever woman, with her high pitched voice, chic clothes, moles and sense of humour is behaving well. She encourages the King to meet people of importance and to be polite; above all she makes him happy. The Empire ought to be grateful.”
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Two days later, Wallis and David attended a party given by Col. Mike Scanlon, assistant military attaché for air at the U.S. embassy, and his wife. Among the guests were Col. Charles Lindbergh and his wife, Anne, who left a detailed account of her meeting with Wallis: “Mrs. Simpson beautifully dressed with the poise and ease of knowing that whatever she does is right and that she is the person in the room that people will turn to.... She at least is honest and playing her own part, not someone else’s. She is one of the few authentic characters in a social world—one of those who
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fashions, not one of those who follow them . . . . She is not beautiful and yet vital and real to watch. Her vitality invests her movements with charm or a kind of beauty. I like watching her.”
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fashions, not one of those who follow them . . . . She is not beautiful and yet vital and real to watch. Her vitality invests her movements with charm or a kind of beauty. I like watching her.”
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One day in May, David told Wallis he was inviting the prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, to join him for dinner at the Fort. He asked Wallis to act as hostess. “It’s got to be done,” he said with a smile. “Sooner or later my Prime Minister must meet my future wife.”
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Wallis later wrote that she was startled at this piece of information and protested that such a marriage could never take place. But her letters make quite clear that the issue had already been discussed between them, at least in some cursory fashion, and so, at least on this count, her memoirs must be dismissed.
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From this point forward, irrespective of what she would later claim, Wallis was fully aware of David’s designs to make her his queen. Whether she herself wished this or thought there was any likelihood of this happening is another matter entirely.
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From this point forward, irrespective of what she would later claim, Wallis was fully aware of David’s designs to make her his queen. Whether she herself wished this or thought there was any likelihood of this happening is another matter entirely.
The dinner took place at York House on May 27. The guests included not only the prime minister and his wife but Lord and Lady Louis Mountbatten; Lord and Lady Wigram; Duff and Lady Diana Cooper; Emerald Cunard; the King’s equerry, Sir Piers Legh, and his wife, Sarah; Admiral of the Fleet Sir Chatfield; and Col. and Mrs. Charles Lindbergh. Ernest also attended. During the dinner, Lindbergh, who had just returned from Germany, reported on the state of affairs under Hitler. Both Baldwins seemed curious about Wallis, and she noted that they seemed to exchange meaningful glances as the evening wore on.
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Afterward, Lucy Baldwin commented sadly, “Mrs. Simpson had stolen the Fairy Prince.”
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Afterward, Lucy Baldwin commented sadly, “Mrs. Simpson had stolen the Fairy Prince.”
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The dinner, having been an official function, was duly noted—along with the names of those present—in the court circular the following day “It was ironic,” wrote Lady Hardinge, “that the Press which had steadfastly restrained itself from linking HM’s name with Mrs. Simpson was now obliged to do so at his insistence. Great efforts were made to stop the King from doing this, by those members of his staff who were trying to protect him.... If Mayfair society had shown any self-restraint before in speculating about King Edward’s private life, it had no cause to do so now.”
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Queen Mary showed the court circular to Mabell Airlie. “He gives Mrs. Simpson the most beautiful jewels,” she said quietly. Then, after a pause, she continued: “I am so afraid that he may ask me to receive her.” Lady Airlie recalled: “Bright spots of crimson were burning on her cheek bones. It was easy to imagine what such a demand would represent to her all-pervading loyalty to the Monarchy.”
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Nancy Astor, born in America and the first woman to sit in the House of Commons, was horrified when she read the court circular. Harold Nicolson found her
terribly indignant at the King for having invited to his first official dinner Lady Cunard and Mr. and Mrs. Simpson. She says that the effect in Canada and America will be deplorable. She considers Lady Cunard and Chips Channon as “disintegrating influences,” and she deplores the fact that any but the best Virginian families should be received at Court. I stick up for both Emerald Cunard and Mrs. Simpson, but I refrain from saying that, after all, every American is more or less as vulgar as any other American. Nancy Astor herself, by her vain and self-conscious behaviour in the House, cannot claim to be a model of propriety In any case, she is determined to tell the King that although Mrs. Simpson may appear at Court, she must not appear in the Court Circular. I suggest to her that any such intimation would be regarded by HM as a gross impertinence. She says that when the dignity of the United States and the British Empire is involved, it is her duty to make such sacrifices.
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By the beginning of June, not even Wallis was able to withstand the constant pressure from David, and she agreed to seek a divorce from Ernest. The King himself was working against the calendar: he wished to marry Wallis before his coronation, which had just been announced for May 12, 1937. If she began proceedings immediately, the case would most likely be heard in the fall. There was, according to British law, a six-month waiting period between the decree and its formalization, a span of time which would mean that Wallis would be free to marry again by April.
Once she had made her decision, Wallis asked David if he could recommend a lawyer. He arranged for her to see his solicitor, Sir George Allen. Allen himself sought out another lawyer to handle the case; eventually, he settled on Theodore Goddard, a specialist in divorce.
Throughout the proceedings, David consulted his friend Walter Monckton, solicitor for the duchy of Cornwall, and one of his few intimates. Monckton, the son of a family from Kent, had made a great success of his time at Balliol College when he was president of the Oxford Union. A man of medium height, with thinning hair and thick glasses, Monckton resembled nothing so much as an Oxford don. A brilliant barrister, he had also advised the nizam of Hyderabad. That summer, he came to know Wallis particularly well. She told Monckton that she wished to pursue a divorce. The King himself complained to Walter that he in no way wanted his friendship with Mrs. Simpson to bring unwanted publicity to her divorce. “I was convinced that it was the King who was really the party anxious for the divorce,” Monckton noted, “and I suspected that he felt some jealousy that there should be a husband in the background.”
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On Wednesday, June 10, David and Mrs. Simpson attended a dinner given by Lady Colefax at Argyll House. Among those present were Kitty and Perry Brownlow; the Duchess of Buccleuch; Lady Diana Cooper; Lord and Lady Vansittart; Mr. and Mrs. Artur Rubinstein, Harold Nicolson, and Robert Bruce Lockhart. Lockhart noted that Edward “looks older and harder—a little stiffer perhaps since he became King, definitely more confidence in himself since he met Mrs. Simpson.” He continued: “Afterwards Artur Rubinstein played to us. King sat down on little stool beside Mrs. Simpson. Seemed rather bored, but stayed on.” At half-past twelve, Winston Churchill, Noel Coward, Daisy Fellowes, and the Kenneth Clarks arrived. Rubinstein had been playing classical pieces on the piano for nearly an hour, and the King had had enough. As he prepared to play another, Edward stood up, walked across to the piano, and said loudly, “We enjoyed that very much, Mr. Rubinstein.”
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Instead, the King asked Noel Coward to entertain, and for the next half hour, Edward, Wallis, and the other guests sang along while Coward thumped out such tunes as “Oh, Mrs. Worthington, Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage” and “Mad Dogs and Englishmen.”
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Lockhart recalled that the “King bucked up and looked quite amused.”
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Instead, the King asked Noel Coward to entertain, and for the next half hour, Edward, Wallis, and the other guests sang along while Coward thumped out such tunes as “Oh, Mrs. Worthington, Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage” and “Mad Dogs and Englishmen.”
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Lockhart recalled that the “King bucked up and looked quite amused.”
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