Read The Duchess Of Windsor Online

Authors: Greg King

The Duchess Of Windsor (8 page)

BOOK: The Duchess Of Windsor
13.38Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
Wallis was devastated by this announcement, but she did not suffer for long: Lelia Barnett soon arranged for an elaborate tea dance to be given in her honor. For the occasion, Lelia transformed the Band Hall of the Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C., with bunting, flags, and immense bowers of flowers. Debutante friends came down from Baltimore, and Wallis was greeted at the front door by a guard of honor, dressed in smart blue uniforms covered in gold braid. Within, Lelia had arranged for the sixty-man-strong presidential marine band, attired in their blue and red coats, to provide the music. It made for an impressive afternoon, with a touch of institutional grandeur which the other debutantes envied.
31
Along with Wallis’s triumph came sadness. Anna Emory Warfield had not been well for some time. She had fallen and broken her hip earlier that year, and her injury confined her to her house. In the chill Baltimore winter, she grew weaker; when she caught pneumonia, she was too weak to battle its debilitating effects. In December she died.
The funeral was an elaborate one, and Baltimore society turned out in force to drape itself in black and watch as one of the city’s last great dowagers was buried. Afterward, Wallis was surprised to learn that her grandmother had left her four thousand dollars in her will—an enormous sum for a nineteen-year-old girl in 1916. But she was not to be allowed the sum until her twenty-first birthday and was reliant on her uncle Solomon even then for its distribution.
Even though she had loved her grandmother, Wallis found the prolonged mourning a stifling experience. She had just taken her first, heady plunge into the exciting social world of the debutante and had no wish to alter her taste for entertainment. She longed, more and more, to escape from the closeted, shrouded atmosphere of her relatives in Baltimore.
Once again, Wallis was rescued by understanding relatives. Lelia Barnett’s younger sister, Corinne, had, in 1907, married a handsome U.S. Navy aviator named Henry Mustin, and the pair lived in Florida, where Captain Mustin had recently been appointed commander of the Pensacola Naval Air Station. In the midst of family mourning, Corinne asked Wallis to join them for a holiday. The Warfields were horrified at the idea, considering a vacation both improper and disrespectful to the memory of her recently deceased grandmother. But after many scenes Wallis prevailed. In April 1916, she left Baltimore for Florida, a momentous trip on which she would meet her first husband.
4
 
Win
 
W
ALLIS WAS HAPPY
to escape both her mourning family and the cool Baltimore spring. She had always been fond of her cousin Corinne, whom she treated like an older sister, and she greatly admired Corinne’s accomplished husband, Lt. Comdr. Henry C. Mustin. Mustin, some years older than his wife, was a distinguished member of the U.S. Navy. He was master of the battleship USS
Mississippi
and had been appointed to help establish the new U.S. Naval Air Station at Pensacola.
Pensacola was a new experience for Wallis. She was captivated by the tall palm trees, miles of white sandy beaches, exotic Spanish architecture, and blue skies filled with the burning sun. The Mustins lived on the naval base in a modest white frame cottage perched along a sloping street lined with similar bungalows. At the end was the base itself, with its long hangars and constant roar of airplanes; in the sheltered bay beyond, rows of battleships lay at anchor. Wallis spent long, lazy mornings sitting in the sunshine, reading, watching the ocean, or visiting shops, old Spanish missions, and museums with Corinne.
Several times a week, Henry Mustin brought his fellow officers home for luncheon; although she never admitted complicity, Wallis later suspected that Corinne had, in fact, secretly asked her husband to invite the men to entertain and amuse her.
1
One balmy day, Wallis was standing on a corner of the front porch, looking down at the bay, when Henry, accompanied by three officers, rounded the corner. Wallis immediately noticed their regal bearing, their sleek figures in crisp white uniforms, and their golden tans from hours in the Florida sunshine.
2
Wallis was introduced to all three men, but she only recalled one, Earl Winfield Spencer Jr. Known to his friends as Win, the twenty-seven-year-old was a junior-grade lieutenant. His quick smile and dashing uniform worked their magic. Wallis saw only the gold stripes on his shoulder boards, the dark hair, closely cropped mustache, and shining eyes. That Spencer was short, a bit thick round the middle, and had a dissipated look in his dark-circled eyes was completely lost on her.
Wallis knew nothing about airplanes, which seemed to be the chief topic at the luncheon table, but she forced herself to participate when she could. She repeatedly turned to Spencer, asking him questions about his work and the dangers of flying; the effect was immensely flattering. As he spoke, Wallis continued to size up Win Spencer. “I gained an impression of resolution and courage,” she later wrote. “I felt here was a man you could rely on in a tight place.”
3
The luncheon party eventually broke up. As Win Spencer stepped through the Mustins’ door, he turned around to face Wallis, and asked if he could call on her the following afternoon. She was startled at this direct approach and haltingly suggested that her cousin might have other plans for her. But Win seemed not to care as long as he was included in them. With that, he was off, leaving a slightly stunned Wallis standing at the door.
4
If Win Spencer had hoped to provoke an interest from Wallis, his calculations proved successful. She had never before encountered a man so confident, so sure of himself, so commanding, as Win Spencer. His strength was intoxicating. True to his word, Spencer appeared the following afternoon clad in another striking uniform. He greeted Wallis warmly but did not fawn over her as the evening progressed. This peculiar mixture of fascination and disinterest on his part was utterly different from anything Wallis had experienced. The young men she had known back in Baltimore were eager for her attentions; Spencer seemed to pride himself on studied indifference. “By the end of the evening,” Wallis later wrote, “I knew I was in love—in love at first sight, yes, but nonetheless completely, totally, and helplessly.”
5
To her mother, she happily wrote, “I have just met the world’s most fascinating aviator. . . .”
6
He had been born on September 20, 1888, in a small Kansas town, one of six children in a comfortable, though scarcely wealthy, family. His father, Winfield Spencer Sr., eventually went on to become a Chicago stockbroker, although he had once dabbled in big-game hunting; the walls of the family home, in fashionable Highland Park, Illinois, were hung with his trophies. His British wife, Agnes, was a quiet, reserved woman, subject to bouts of depression and sudden changes of mood.
In 1905, Win entered the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, near Baltimore. His career was checkered with petty misdemeanors and demerits, from unpolished shoes and unclean laundry to dirty quarters and high-spirited rebellion. However, ordinary incidents aside, Win Spencer did well and was popular with his fellow cadets. Following his graduation in 1910, he went to sea aboard the battleship USS
Nebraska
and first became fascinated by the idea of flight. After returning to shore, Win Spencer actively threw himself into the navy’s flight-training program. He received his wings and in November 1914 was posted, along with a small group of fliers, at that time just twenty-five, to the U.S. Naval Air Station at Pensacola. Among the men, Win was commonly believed to be one of the best fliers in the field.
Win Spencer was a novelty. Not only was he confident, mature, and distinguished; his position was a unique, privileged, and glamorous one to the impressionable young woman from Baltimore. The American military was still less than certain about the merits of flying; the U.S. Naval Air Station at Pensacola was the only one in the nation, and Win was one of only a handful of trained and recognized aviators.
7
Pensacola, at heart, remained a quiet little southern town, and there were not many activities to keep Wallis enthralled. Each morning, she and Corinne walked through the officers’ compound to the long white beaches and watched the fighters take off on their daily assignments. The distant chugging of a motor broke the silence over the placid bay, and one after another, a string of fragile-looking biplanes, their fabric-covered wings crisscrossed with wire struts, soared into the sky. Wallis witnessed firsthand the dangers involved in this daring, new defense field; after several crashes killed some of Win’s fellow aviators, Wallis developed a fear of flying, one which would last all of her life.
8
Win, who enjoyed golf, spent long afternoons at the scrubby little course, its green lawns dried brown from the hot southern sun, trying to impart both a love of the sport and a knowledge of its play to Wallis. She found golf boring but continued the lessons, for it was one of the few occasions on which she could be alone with Win.
9
Suitably chaperoned by Henry and Corinne Mustin, Wallis frequently joined Win for Saturday evening dinners at the San Carlos Hotel, where they danced together on the terrace beneath the waving palm fronds in the light of the low orange moon.
10
During the week, when evening came and Win escaped his duties at the station, he collected Wallis, and the two strolled along the beach, watching the sun set in a fiery burst of crimson as they stooped to pick up shells. Once night fell, they set off in Win’s Ford for the local cinema, watching silent comedies in the flickering light after quietly slipping into seats in the back row and holding hands in the dark along with the other young lovers. Dances at the Pensacola Country Club ended on the long, dark veranda. There, in the blackness of night and the warm air perfumed with the semitropical flowers and alive with the soft chirping of crickets and dancing of fireflies, Win first kissed Wallis.
11
Wallis was only nineteen, little more than a high-spirited schoolgirl, still uncertain of both herself and her feelings but enjoying the relatively innocent thrill of her new relationship with an older, more mature man. She knew little of the facts of life “beyond the whispered conjecture” of her former schoolmates. She had never before been drawn so quickly to a member of the opposite sex, and her confusion over the situation into which she had unexpectedly plunged mounted with each passing day. Wallis knew she had rushed into the romance. She suffered occasional pangs of doubt and halfheartedly tried several times to slow the progress of the relationship. Nevertheless, she later recalled her impatience with the hovering presence of a chaperone and her longing to break free of the constraints preventing her relationship with Win from progressing. That he was also something of a mystery was not lost on Wallis, who, with stubborn determination, believed she would somehow single-handedly crack through his veneer of reserve and discover the man she assumed was hidden beneath. Wallis would tame his rugged spirit.
12
Her determination seemed to be matched by both Win’s affection and his desire to possess her. If she spent the evenings with other young officers, Win was quick to express his jealousy.
13
With no experience in such affairs, Wallis failed to recognize Win’s darker side, but the clues were clearly visible. She was surprised at his sudden bursts of anger, his penchant for brooding, and the speed with which he often turned against her over the most minor misunderstanding. Sometimes the mood passed, and he returned to his carefree manner; but, she began to learn, just as often he would persist in his gloomy silence, his anger unspoken but barely contained.
As a young, eligible officer, Win Spencer suffered no shortage of beautiful female admirers and must have had something of a reputation at the air station. One wonders what, if any, objections Henry and Corinne Mustin, who had known Spencer for some time and had therefore been aware of some of his less pleasant traits, expressed to Wallis; on this issue, Wallis’s memoirs are utterly silent.
With a promising career and success at his important post, Win could have attracted any number of potential wives. The demands that went with the position were daunting and certainly required great skill and an easy spirit. On the surface, at least, there was little to recommend Wallis as the perfect mate. She was young, immature, and self-centered. Nor could she be called beautiful: Corinne jokingly referred to her cousin as “Skinny.”
14
But Wallis was also from a good, if not wealthy, family. Her brash and adventurous spirit, so unlike that of the women Win Spencer usually encountered, attracted him immensely. In addition, she possessed an important measure of breeding and was clearly cultured, considerations not to be underestimated in an officer’s wife.
There was also another consideration. Win Spencer, for all his flattering attentions, was a dominant man. Little given to intense contemplation, he needed a partner who would bow to his authority. Although he valued Wallis’s independent spirit, her youth and inexperience suggested that she might suitably be molded to fit Win’s own version of an ideal wife.
One evening, Win collected Wallis from the Mustins’ and took her to the movies. To Wallis’s surprise, as soon as the lights began to dim, Win stood up, took her hand, and led her from the theater. He seemed suddenly overcome with some unspoken determination. In silence, he drove Wallis to the Pensacola Country Club and led her through the crowded rooms to the darkened veranda. There, in the warm spring night, with the flames of the gas torches dancing on the distant terrace, he asked Wallis to marry him.
15
If Wallis was stunned at this development, she did nothing to let on. She told Win that although she loved him, she needed to be certain of her feelings. In any case, she declared, she would have to receive the permission of both her mother and her uncle Solomon.
16
“I never expected you to say yes right away,” he answered with a smile, “but don’t keep me waiting too long.”
17
After nearly two months, Wallis was finally due to leave Pensacola; during the few short days leading up to her departure, she and Win were nearly inseparable. On the day she left, Win escorted her to the train station and helped her climb aboard her carriage, telling her that he would come to Baltimore on his summer leave and expect a final answer when he arrived. He reached up, took her in his arms, and kissed her goodbye. He stood, watching and waiting, as her train slowly steamed north.
18
Before leaving Pensacola, Wallis had dispatched two letters to her mother describing her whirlwind romance with Spencer. When Wallis arrived home, Alice had prepared her arguments carefully. Wallis had only known Win for two months, she declared. His career was a dangerous one, and Wallis might easily end up a young widow, and with growing tensions in Europe, there was every chance that Win might be posted overseas and killed in action. The navy had high expectations for its officers’ wives, and Wallis’s streak of independence would not be appreciated, Alice warned. Moreover, she and Win would have to move frequently and would have little money and few permanent friends. Nor was this the grand society match Alice had anticipated for her daughter: The years of ensuring that Wallis attended the best schools, made the right friends, and had a proper debut would all go for naught if she married a simple lieutenant who had no money of his own and none coming from a wealthy family.
19
BOOK: The Duchess Of Windsor
13.38Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Son of Sobek by Riordan, Rick
Coronation Everest by Jan Morris
Fracture by Amanda K. Byrne
Magicide by Carolyn V. Hamilton
Harvest of Stars by Poul Anderson