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Authors: Greg King

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Resentment was bound to surface, and the Royal Family was, in the words of a close friend of the present Queen Mother, “in a state of unbelievable shock.”
27
The abdication was a terrible ordeal—perhaps not unexpected, but a seeming dismissal of every principle they themselves held dear: loyalty, honor, tradition, and duty. They only seem to have realized the impact of the abdication after it had taken place and by this time simply could not bring themselves to understand or accept David’s behavior. And that the cause of such distress should be a twice-divorced American woman only added to the feeling of public disgrace.
The new King appeared haunted by the shadow of his brother. It was not quite true that Bertie was utterly unprepared and ill equipped for his new role. Early in his reign, Edward VIII had begun to initiate his brother into state affairs; Bertie had had access to certain government secret telegrams and papers.
28
As Frances Donaldson points out: “Nor, although one can understand the feelings of the Duke of York on his elevation to the Throne, need one sympathize too greatly with him for his ignorance of state papers, partly because as King he would have a first-class secretariat to instruct and advise him, but even more because the duty ‘to advise, to encourage and to warn’ is surely one that can be learned only in its performance, not by watching from the sidelines in a state of total discretion.”
29
Instead, the new King was overwhelmed with self-doubt. His insecurity was such that he constantly compared his performance with that of his exiled brother. It is true that George VI suffered by comparison with his more charismatic and charming brother. The new King was plagued with a difficult stutter, which, though he had worked hard to overcome it, still remained a prominent and unwelcome trait. He was shy and known to possess a fierce temper. He was more nervous in public, less intelligent, and less personable than David had been. Brooding about these facts, Bertie would become angry over his accession to the throne, and his resentment grew, eventually to find voice in a series of petty reprisals against his brother and Wallis. In this, he was strongly supported by his wife, who could never forgive either Wallis or David for what she regarded as the unwelcome burden of the throne. Doubting himself, Bertie turned against his brother, and the Queen followed this, naturally overly protective of her husband and herself aware of his shortcomings and doubts.
Despite the furor that preceded it, the actual political impact of the abdication was minimal. The transition between monarchs had gone smoothly. But the real changes brought on by the abdication came not from David himself but from the new King and Queen. Fearing for the stability of the throne and, perhaps more important, their own popularity, George VI and Queen Elizabeth made determined efforts to reinvent the British monarchy in ways which moved the institution not forward but rather back to the days of Queen Victoria. Bertie and Elizabeth carefully crafted public images designed not only to reassure their subjects of their private virtues but also to make direct overtures, with the assistance of the press, to laying claim to the idea that they, and their very photogenic daughters, were the nation’s family. The results have pervaded the monarchy throughout the last fifty years; Edward VIII can be said to have been the last British monarch to jealously guard his private life and relationships. Indeed, his brother and sister-in-law, and his niece Elizabeth II, deliberately cultivated press attention in the presentation of idealized family life. When the truth began to seep through this carefully erected façade, the resulting shocks staggered the monarchy in ways and on levels which the abdication had never approached.
Members of the court, following the lead of King George VI, Queen Elizabeth, and Queen Mary, were quick to turn on their former sovereign. “It was nearly impossible to believe how swiftly they cut him loose,” recalled a former courtier. “Edward was anathema. Period. One day, I overheard a conversation between Lascelles and another member of the Household. The Coronation of the new King was fast approaching, and my friend, who was no great fan of the former sovereign, casually remarked, ‘One can only wonder what a mess we might have had if Edward stayed on.’ Lascelles quickly cut him off. ‘Wonder on your own time!’ he bellowed. “And don’t mention him again.’ It was shocking how quickly he became a nonperson.”
30
Hector Bolitho was one of the first authors to write about the former King. His book
Edward VIII, His Life and Reign
, appeared in March 1937, just three months after the abdication. A native of New Zealand, he was attached, at the age of twenty-two, to the Prince of Wales’s suite when HMS
Renown
brought David to Auckland in 1920 and had written a flattering book called
With the Prince in New Zealand.
Before the abdication, he began writing an official life of the new King and was given access to the Royal Archives at Windsor and the Royal Family’s private correspondence. When the abdication occurred, however, Bolitho quickly rewrote entire sections of his authorized biography according to the general feeling among the court. As Warre Bradley Wells says, “His book about King Edward may therefore be taken to express the views of Court and Church circles.”
31
Halfway through the King’s reign, portions of Bolitho’s book had been serialized in the magazine
Leisure
, but when the final version appeared, the former King was depicted as “increasingly stubborn and conceited over his popularity”;
32
“a distraught, unreasonable man”
33
who was hostage to “his fantastic vanity”
34
and who “had no friends”;
35
and “who came to disaster through the slow disintegration of his character.”
36
In the portions serialized, Bolitho had written: “The newspapers . . . called him Galahad. He was not made dizzy by this praise . . . indeed, it has been said that he hated the signs of his popularity and sought more and more to escape from compliments and cheers.”
37
In the published book the same passage read, “The newspapers ... called him Galahad. At first he was not made dizzy by this praise. He tried to escape from the flattery and cheers.... Although the Prince did all that was asked of him, his modesty was slowly shaken. ... His slimmest platitude was printed in big letters in the newspapers. It is little wonder that he fell into the harmless conceit which afterwards grew dangerously, so that it destroyed his self-judgment and made him over-assured; which made him lose all capacity of knowing the difference between wild popularity and calm esteem.”
38
Compton Mackenzie was only one of a number of critics of the book. He referred to it as “that tarnished weathercock of a narrative” which “swings true to the veering wind of public opinion.”
39
He remarked on “the thoroughness of the
volte face
: it has the gymnastic, nay, the acrobatic precision of a perfect sommersault.”
40
Others who wrote about Edward VIII were a bit more charitable.
The House of Windsor
, by Capt. Eric Acland and E. H. Bartlett, declared that the King had been “a strong man who has weighed carefully every conceivable angle. When the final chapter is written this second king of the house founded by his father will have achieved greatness by having been big enough to have realized his limitations.”
41
Not surprisingly, Alexander Hardinge was chosen by King George VI to continue in his role as principal private secretary; he also received a knighthood two months after the abdication. Alan Lascelles, the King’s other main court antagonist, also retained his position as assistant private secretary and, six years later, succeeded Hardinge in the senior post. The second assistant private secretary, Sir Godfrey Thomas, who had been sympathetic to the King, was transferred to the service of the Duke of Gloucester as private secretary.
Some were not quite so fortunate. Lord Perry Brownlow, who, on the direct orders of Edward VIII, had escorted Wallis to France, held his position as a lord-in-waiting. He was due to go into waiting at Buckingham Palace on December 21 for the new king, George VI. The following day, however, he read in the court circular that the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava had succeeded as lord-in-waiting in his place. The new King had not even bothered to inform him. When he telephoned Buckingham Palace, Brownlow was curtly told that his name could never again be mentioned in the court circular. He demanded to speak with Lord Cromer, the Lord Chamberlain. When he got on the phone, the Lord Chamberlain told him that the new King had been pleased to accept his resignation even though Brownlow had never offered it. “Am I to be turned away, like a dishonest servant with no notice, no warning, no thanks, when all I did was to obey my Master, the late King?” he asked.
“Yes,” Cromer replied bluntly, and hung up.
42
Brownlow remained defiant. At Belton, his great house in Lincolnshire, visitors to one of England’s great stately homes were sometimes shocked to wander through the rooms on open days and enter the library, where the desk and tables were absolutely covered with dozens of framed photographs of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. There were also busts of the former King as well as the only known portrait made during his reign, by Frank Salisbury.
43
“Are we all on the ‘Black List’?” Chips Channon wondered. “Are the Sutherlands, the Marlboroughs, the Stanleys? I cannot believe that it is Queen Elizabeth’s doing. She is not so foolish. . . .”
44
But the usually well informed Channon was wrong about the new Queen, who, with Queen Mary, had joined together in a powerful conspiracy to both erase the memory of the former King and his friends and to punish him and his American mistress.
After the abdication, Queen Mary wrote to Prince Paul, the regent of Yugoslavia:
The other day in my presence Bertie told George he wished him and Marina never to see Lady Cunard again and George said he would not do so. I fear she has
done David a great deal of harm
as there is no doubt that she was great friends with Mrs. S. at one time and gave parties for her. Under the circumstances I feel none of us, in fact people in society, should meet her. I am sure you will agree one should not meet her again after what has happened and I am hoping that George and Marina will no longer see certain people who alas were friends of Mrs. S. and Lady Cunard’s and also David’s.... As you may imagine I feel very strongly on the matter but several people have mentioned to me what harm she has done.
45
 
As this letter aptly demonstrates, the old Queen was not above resorting to emotional blackmail to ensure the ostracism of her eldest son’s friends. Prince Paul, who had also frequented Lady Cunard’s drawing room, certainly took the unsubtle hint, for he joined in the legions of those who now avoided Emerald Cunard at all costs.
Chips Channon wrote of Queen Mary: “Certainly she and the Court group hate Wallis Simpson to the point of hysteria, and are taking up the wrong attitude; why persecute her now that all is over? Why not let the Duke of Windsor, who has given up so much, be happy? They would be better advised to be civil if it is beyond their courage to be cordial.”
46
But the elderly Queen, setting the tone which the Royal Family would slavishly follow for decades to come, refused to consider even the slightest concession. A year after the abdication, she declared, in response to a question as to when her eldest son would return to his country, “Not until he comes to my funeral.”
47
24
 
“The Whole World Against Us and Our Love”
 
T
HE ABDICATION
was a great shock to Wallis; but with typical resolution she quickly recovered her composure. Within hours of listening to the farewell broadcast, she wrote what was to become the first of many letters which passed between her and the former King: “My heart is so full of love for you and the agony of not being able to see you after all you have been through is pathetic. At the moment we have the whole world against us and our love. . . .”
1
This set the tone for the correspondence which was to follow. Her letters reveal a complex character different from her public image. On paper, she is not the ambitious adventuress depicted by the Royal Family; rather, a caring, thoughtful, smart woman, missing her lover and contemplating a future together with him. Occasionally, when frustrated, her letters transformed themselves into spiteful wails of mistreatment, which, however justified, do little to endear her. But overwhelmingly they are filled with thoughts of David. More than anything else, she appears a woman who, in her own way, loved David greatly. A gentle side, carefully hidden from the prying eyes of the public, emerges, lightly admonishing at times, watchful, protective, but undoubtedly filled with genuine affection for the man who had given up so much to be with her.
After the initial excitement of the abdication, the reporters who had maintained a twenty-four-hour vigil around the villa gradually began to fade away. Both Herman and Katherine Rogers insisted that Wallis remain with them. Mary Burke, her maid, soon arrived with more of her belongings, and Aunt Bessie, who arrived on December 19, booked herself into a hotel at Cannes to be near her niece.
2
Every day, stacks of letters arrived in the post. Some were supportive, but most, as she had feared, blamed Wallis for the King’s abdication; many even threatened physical violence.
3
Several were filled with such anger and expressions that Wallis could not read them; at least one was simply addressed to “King Edward’s Whore.”
4
Among the letters was one from Ernest: “I did not have the heart to write before. I have felt somewhat stunned and slightly sick over recent events. I am not, however, going into that, but I want you to believe—I do believe—that you did everything in your power to prevent the final catastrophe. My thoughts have been with you throughout your ordeal, and you may rest assured that no one has felt more deeply for you than I have. For a few pence each day I can keep
au courant
with your doings.”
5
At least once a day, Wallis tried to telephone David in Austria, where he had gone to stay with the Rothschilds. These telephone calls, with their bad connections, proved a terrible strain, and often Wallis was so frustrated that she would slam the receiver down on the telephone on the dining-room table in exasperation. Inevitably, the table shook, and several pieces of Katherine Rogers’s coral-handled silver were broken as a result. “She was an angel to put up with me!” Wallis recalled. “I must have been the most exasperating guest in history, what with breaking her spoons and monopolizing her dining room just when dinner was ready to be served.” Still, she said, she “lived for” the talks with David during those six months.
6
Wallis occupied her time by taking walks along the beach or visiting friends. She spent Christmas with author Somerset Maugham in his Villa Mauresque at Cap Ferrat, where she was reunited with her friend Sibyl Colefax. Occasionally, there were run-ins with the press, and once Wallis had to escape from a shop in Cannes through the back door to avoid reporters.
7
On New Year’s Day, she and David spoke at length on the telephone; he broke down and sobbed during much of the conversation. She was so touched that she immediately wrote a quick note to comfort him. “Darling sweetheart: I couldn’t bear hearing you cry—you who have been through so much and are so brave. My baby it is because I long to be with you so intensely everything becomes so magnified. Darling I love you. Come to me soon.”
8
Her feelings were dearly sincere. But she also worried about their life together. She knew that any slight toward her would rankle her future husband and worried that David, accustomed to his position of power, would suffer during his exile. Wallis was determined that she would protect them both against a Royal Family which had made it painfully obvious that they were to be accorded no place. “One realizes now the impossibility of getting the marriage announced in the Court Circular and of the HRH,” she wrote to the Duke on January 3, 1937. “It is all a great pity because I loathe being undignified and also of joining the countless titles that roam around Europe meaning nothing. To set off on our journey with a proper backing would mean so much—but whatever happens we will make something of our lives. . . .”
9
Such letters have often been cited as evidence of Wallis’s overwhelming concern not only with obtaining a title for herself but also of her determination to drive a wedge between the two brothers who had shared a throne. Yet it is absurd to think that Wallis wished to further alienate her future husband from his family in England. She knew only too well how he longed to return and live at the Fort. Her letters seem more a commentary on facts and on their likely consequences than an exhortation to battle.
Wallis spent many sleepless nights reflecting on her situation. “My personal folk tale,” she wrote, “had gone disastrously awry. Given the circumstances under which it began, I had never been certain what the ending would be, but I had at least been encouraged to believe that it would be reasonably happy. In my darkest moments at the Fort, I had never visualized anything like this—David by his own choice a virtual outcast from the nation over which he had ruled, and each of us condemned to wait in idleness and frustration on our separate islands of exile until my divorce became absolute in early May.”
10
The Duke was just as miserable. Upon arriving in Vienna on December 13, he had been met by Sir Walford Selby, the British ambassador. Dudley Forwood, who had previously attended the Prince of Wales during his skiing holiday at Kitzbühel with Wallis, was also present, and David now asked that he join his staff. Selby temporarily put Forwood in charge of the various royal arrangements, including the Duke’s stay at the Rothschilds’ Schloss Enzesfeld. Dina Wells Hood, who later acted as the Duke of Windsor’s secretary, wrote of Forwood: “He was young, witty, amusing and always immaculately dressed. Though frank and unconventional in conversation, he was almost ultra-conservative and conventional in his attitude toward royalty and to the aristocracy into which he was born.”
11
The Honorable John Aird, who had accompanied the Duke, was recalled to England on the new King’s orders, and the Duke of Windsor found that he did not get on at all well with his other equerry, Sir Piers Legh. Legh was an older man, not at all sympathetic to the former King or to his relationship with Mrs. Simpson.
David was hopeless in this new world. He had not even brought with him a valet. Baron Eugene Rothschild once entered his room and found the Duke unpacking his clothes, which were draped over chairs, laid out on the bed, and thrown in heaps on the floor. “I’m not very good at this,” he admitted with a smile. “You see, I’ve never done it by myself.”
12
When Perry Brownlow arrived at Schloss Enzesfeld, he found David sleeping alone in a room with no fewer than sixteen photographs of Wallis. He was hugging a pillow which had belonged to her and which was sewn with her initials.
13
Although they spoke to each other every evening by telephone, neither Wallis nor David could risk meeting face-to-face for fear that someone would lodge a protest against her decree nisi and try to prevent the divorce. According to the technical terms of the law, there was nothing to keep the pair apart, but they needed to avoid any potential claims for complaint in the divorce action and the issuance of the decree absolute. A solicitor’s clerk, Francis Stephenson, had already gone to the Divorce Registry insisting that the Simpson divorce must not be final and saying that he had some new information. He refused to say whom he represented or just what information he possessed, but his claim sufficiently worried both Wallis and David that they were determined to give no cause for any intervention. Then, just as suddenly as he had lodged the complaint, Stephenson withdrew it, saying, “I was asked to do so.”
14
The faithful and trusted Fruity Metcalfe also arrived at Schloss Enzesfeld the third week of January. He wrote: “Of course he’s on the line for hours & hours every day to Cannes. I somehow don’t think these talks go so well sometimes. It’s only after one of them he ever seems a bit worried and nervous. She seems to be always picking on him and complaining about something that she thinks he hasn’t done or ought to do. . . .”
15
It is difficult to judge these talks. Many observers were often struck by what they perceived to be Wallis’s brutal dominance over the Duke; undoubtedly, at times, she could be brittle. But it must be remembered that David himself cherished her for these very reasons: She was the one woman who had not only taken an interest in his life but actively helped guide him, providing him with love, support, and reassurance. Above all else, Wallis provided his strength. Such criticism as she offered was undoubtedly difficult for others to understand. The mixture of emotional security and care with which she framed her arguments was unique to her relationship with David. Then, too, circumstances were difficult: The enforced separation, the discomfort of being a guest, the bad telephone connections, the uncertainty of their future together and particularly of her status as his wife—all of these factors certainly influenced the tone of their conversations. Particularly at this time, David seemed to many to be utterly lost, and it is reasonable to assume that Wallis was attempting to watch over their interests with his blessing. Again, a more positive light is shown in her letters, sentiments which by nature she was reluctant to express in public but which reassured David of her love for him: “Darling—I want to leave here I want to see you touch you I want to run my own house I want to be married and to you,” she wrote in February.
16
David, meanwhile, was fast realizing that he was now an outcast where his family was concerned. He had believed that once the furor over the abdication had passed, he could simply return to England and assume the role of younger brother to the King. If this seems somewhat naive, it should be remembered that in the weeks leading up to the abdication—and even on the day he left England—David had received warm, loving letters from Bertie and Elizabeth assuring him of their support and understanding of his feelings for Wallis. Bertie had made it clear, even when he knew that abdication was the most likely resolution to the crisis, that he believed David would make the right decision where the Crown and Empire were concerned. These letters were undoubtedly genuine, but unfortunately the sentiments expressed within them were not to last. Almost as soon as David had left England, both Bertie and Elizabeth began to turn against the former King, no doubt influenced by Queen Mary. As a result, David felt horrified and deceived when, in exile, he came to understand the strong feeling which now existed against both him and Wallis. He suspected, quite rightly as things turned out, that both Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth were twisting the arm of the new King. In this, they were supported by the court, those members who had disliked David for fear of his proposed and assumed changes and innovation and who now closed ranks around George VI.
Along with telephoning Wallis every day, the Duke soon developed the habit of ringing his brother, offering him advice in an effort to smooth his transition. These incessant telephone calls, however, quickly annoyed Bertie. Although the former King was simply hoping to assist his brother in his new duties, George VI, already uneasy and insecure, felt certain that in reality David was trying to regain some sort of foothold in the palace. Abruptly, George VI told his brother that the telephone calls would have to stop.
“Are you serious?” David asked, obviously hurt.
“Yes, I’m sorry to say that I am,” his brother replied. “The reason must be clear to you.”
17
“My father,” Fruity Metcalfe’s son David recalls, “was with the Duke when George VI told him not to ring any more. He said he would never forget the look on the Duke’s face. He was completely devastated.”
18
The new King was determined, pushed by his wife and his mother, to ensure that his brother never returned to England. He once met with former prime minister David Lloyd George for lunch and discussed David and Wallis.
“She would never dare to come back here,” the King declared.
“There you are wrong,” the former prime minister said.
“She would have no friends here,” said Bertie.
“She has friends,” Lloyd George insisted.
“But not you or me?” the King asked anxiously.
19

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