The Woman Before Wallis

by Bryn Turnbull

  She walked into the ballroom, where silk chairs had been set up in rows facing two empty thrones on a platform. She made her way to the front of the room and filed into the row of seats reserved for Victoria Cross families. She chose a chair off to the side, knowing that, within moments, she would be facing the monarchs she’d once known as friends.

  She nearly smiled at the incongruity of it all: Thelma, representing the family she’d abandoned for David; Bertie, standing in place of the brother who’d tossed him a crown as easily as he might the reins of a horse. She could see, now, that David had always intended to reject the throne and push the burden onto his younger, infinitely nobler brother. He’d told her as much, once—she hadn’t believed him, but here they were, Bertie and Elizabeth, in circumstances of David’s making. Perhaps he would laugh, to know the old Fort Belvedere crowd had gathered together, jumping to his tune for one final dance. Wallis, at least, would find it amusing. Thelma found her seat, settling her handbag on her lap. Perhaps she’d send the Duchess of Windsor a clipping of the day from the court circular.

  As people filed into their seats, Thelma saw a familiar-looking man with slicked-back hair emerge from a side door. He made his way toward her, head lowered, glancing around the room in a futile attempt at inconspicuousness. Thelma had heard Piers Legh had become Master of the Household—a lofty position for one who’d once been so devoted to the Prince of Wales. She was pleased he’d done so well in Bertie’s employ. It would have been a shame to visit David’s sins upon a loyal friend.

  Legh sat next to her. “Lady Furness,” he said, “What a pleasure to see you again.”

  “It’s been too long, Piers,” said Thelma. “How are you?”

  He looked up at the chairs. “As well as can be expected,” he replied, “though I’ll admit we have a rather long to-do list before things settle down properly.”

  Thelma thought to her ride to the palace: the crater they’d had to navigate in the quadrangle, the tarpaulins and rubble marking the remains of the north lodge. “How times have changed.”

  “Indeed,” said Piers. She and Piers had never been close, but he’d always been there, as much a part of her life back then as anyone else. “Lady Furness, I wanted to pass along a message from Their Majesties. They were hoping they might find time to meet with you in private, but it seems the newspapers have caught wind that you’re here. Perhaps, for all involved...”

  “I understand,” said Thelma.

  “If it were a more private venue... They were always so fond of you.”

  “I understand. Really, I do,” she said, and patted Piers’s hand. Then, before she could help herself, she spoke again. “How is he?”

  Legh stiffened; he seemed to retreat into the dignity of his position, but Thelma held his gaze until he leaned in and lowered his voice further. “He writes. Frequently. Much of his correspondence goes unanswered.”

  The band at the back of the room fell silent, and Piers, catching the eye of one of the liveried attendants along the side wall, stood. “Lady Furness, I must dash. My deepest condolences for your loss. Your stepson was a brave man.”

  “Thank you. Please pass along my regards to Their Majesties,” said Thelma, and Piers vanished once more through the side door.

  He writes... Thelma thought of the notes they once passed, sentimental and sweet and needy. What had happened to the ones she’d sent back? Burned, most likely. According to a few of her old friends, Wallis had destroyed all of Freddie’s correspondences to David. Thelma doubted that her own would have survived the purge.

  The band trilled a fanfare and the room rose to its feet. Thelma half-expected David to walk through the door, smiling that old, familiar grin that had broken hearts around the world, but the king and queen that entered were old friends nonetheless, and Thelma caught Elizabeth’s eye. She smiled, too quickly, and shifted her gaze up and over the crowd. Thelma, with a pang, understood: the digging up of ghosts was never a pleasant business, and Thelma’s ghost—David’s ghost—would always loom large for Bertie and Elizabeth.

  The king and queen would never allow Wallis and David to return to England: not with their tacky tabloid tell-alls and their appalling prewar sympathies, their single-handed attempt to destroy the fabric of the British monarchy. Thelma wasn’t surprised that David had painted himself as victim of the whole sorry business, unfairly maligned by a monarchy blind to the eclipsing nature of true love. She stared at the silk crest behind Bertie and Elizabeth, knowing just how cold it would have been for David to have fallen into the shadow of the world where he’d once belonged.

  The band played “God Save the King”, and Thelma sang along with the rest, attempting to mask the sudden, frustrating sorrow that made her cheeks grow hot. It wasn’t fair, that she was the only one left to watch Tony receive Dickie’s commendation—that Averill and Duke both had perished under the weight of heartache and strain. It wasn’t fair that Dickie couldn’t be lauded for his bravery in person, rather than buried in some far-off field in France. It wasn’t fair that Bertie, up on his dais, looked so old; that Elizabeth had finally aged into the matron she’d always been, the weight of the nation resting heavily—jointly—on their shoulders. It wasn’t fair, what Wallis had done all those years ago: letting David indulge his selfish impulses and run away from a responsibility he never truly wanted.

  The anthem came to an end and Thelma sat back down. She didn’t regret a single decision she’d made, all those years ago—not the decision to take up with David, nor the decision to leave him. She’d lived with the consequences of her choices—they’d all had to, Gertrude and Gloria and Mamma; Thelma and Wallis and David. She thought of David, exiled to France; Wallis who was anathema to the House of Windsor, and would likely remain so until the end of her days; Gertrude, whose relationship with Little Gloria had never truly grown into one of love.

  Perhaps there was a little fairness in the world after all.

  The court attendant read out Dickie’s name, and Tony—fifteen years old, tall and handsome, his straw-blond hair pulled back from his sharp features—walked up. Thelma held her breath as her son bowed in front of the King of England. Did he remember meeting Bertie before, as a toddler at Burrough Court?

  Bertie presented Tony with the Victoria Cross, its iron glint visible within its black velvet box. He leaned in as Tony accepted it, and murmured something; Tony replied, and Bertie looked up, searching past Tony’s shoulder.

  His smile hadn’t changed in the years since Thelma had last seen him: she’d seen it a hundred times, from across the dining table at the Ritz or in the drawing room at Fort Belvedere. She inclined her head, returning affection with affection, seeing in the king’s face the warmth of his brother’s smile.

  Bertie turned back to Tony, and with a final bow, Tony walked on. The court attendant read out the next commendation, the king picked up the next medal and the ceremony continued.

  * * *

  Author’s Note

  Thelma Morgan Furness died of a heart attack on January 29, 1970. According to her niece, Gloria Vanderbilt, Thelma collapsed in the street in New York City on the way to a doctor’s appointment. In her handbag, Thelma was carrying one of the green bears that she and David had exchanged so many years before.

  Thelma’s story is one of many contradictions, and while I’ve taken some artistic license with it, I hope that she and Gloria would recognize themselves in the characters I’ve created. For the purposes of the plot, I changed a few key dates in Thelma’s story. In reality, Thelma took two trips to the United States in 1934: one in January, and one in October, for Gloria’s trial. It was on the first trip that Thelma and David grew apart; their relationship was already over when Thelma journeyed back to New York to stand in Gloria’s defense in the custody trial. That said, according to Barbara Goldsmith, author of Little Gloria... Happy At Last, Nadejda Milford Haven did send Theobald Mathew to represent her at the t
rial—and to keep the Prince of Wales’s name from being raised in connection with Thelma and Gloria. Gloria’s defense was indeed ruined by a list of names that Mathew provided in exchange for keeping “a certain royal party’s” name out of the courtroom.

  On November 21, 1934, Justice Carew issued his decision on the Matter of Vanderbilt, giving Gertrude Whitney primary custody of Little Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt. Gloria was granted weekend custody of her daughter in an arrangement that left Carew with the nickname The Socialites’ Solomon. He directed the courts to seal the record of the Matter of Vanderbilt, but the trial continued to be a topic of public speculation. His ruling was roundly criticized by the press, who saw Gloria as the victim and Gertrude as the villain, and felt that his decision served only to prolong an untenable, unworkable living arrangement for the child:

  What kind of provision for the child’s welfare is all this, anyway? The judge has taken the child from its mother and awarded it to the woman whom the mother probably hates most in the world, and who probably returns the mother’s hate with interest. How can either of these women refrain from trying to poison the child’s mind against the other, and what will that do to the child?

  -Mirror editorial, reprinted in Goldsmith, p. 474

  The trial made Gloria Vanderbilt a notorious figure in New York society, and it made Little Gloria an object of constant, unrelenting fascination. For years, Little Gloria was hounded by reporters and hangers-on; weekend visits between mother and daughter were attended by private detectives, and in the wake of several kidnapping threats Gertrude Whitney hired a team of bodyguards to protect Little Gloria at school. In 1936, the United States Supreme Court declined to review the Matter of Vanderbilt, and with no more legal options open to her, Gloria stopped fighting. Her relationship with her daughter remained strained throughout the rest of her life.

  After the trial, Thelma moved back to the United States to support her sister, financially and emotionally. In 1935, they started a dressmaking business—a company that, three years later, was so heavily in debt the business folded, and Gloria filed for bankruptcy. With no business experience or acumen, Gloria’s subsequent business ventures also failed. In 1940, she was diagnosed with glaucoma; by the mid 1950s, she was almost completely blind. Thelma took on the role of Gloria’s carer, and when Gloria died in February 1965, it was with her twin sister by her bedside.

  Marmaduke Furness never truly forgave Averill for eloping with Andrew Rattray, though Thelma continued to fight in her stepdaughter’s corner. After her marriage, Averill Furness—Averill Rattray—remained in Kenya with her husband, though their happiness was short-lived. In 1933, Andrew Rattray died of a sudden illness; and though Thelma persuaded Duke to forgive his daughter and welcome her back to England in the wake of the tragedy, Averill refused to go. She remained in the hut that had been her marital home and died a year later, at the age of twenty-seven, of heart failure. In her memoirs, Thelma maintained that her beloved stepdaughter had died, quite literally, of a broken heart.

  After his divorce from Thelma was finalized Duke wed a third time, but the marriage—to Australian-born widow Enid Maud Cavendish—was not a happy one. In 1940, Duke received word that Dickie, fighting in the Battle of France, was missing in action; the strain of the news, combined with the untimely death of his daughter, caused him to turn to drugs. He died a broken man at the age of fifty-six, leaving his title and fortune—totalling £20 million—to his second son, Tony.

  Dickie Furness died in Arras in May 1940, fighting as a lieutenant with the Welsh Guards, covering the withdrawal of a large transport column to Douai. As enemy fire advanced on the transport vehicles, Dickie spearheaded an attack, inflicting heavy losses on the German troops and wounding himself in the process. When all of the tanks, carriers and crew under his command were gone, Dickie kept fighting, engaging the enemy in hand-to-hand combat until he finally fell. He was awarded the Victoria Cross for his sacrifice; in his commendation, he was praised for having “displayed the highest qualities of leadership and dash” and “imbued his command with a magnificent offensive spirit.”

  As for Wallis and Edward—theirs is a well-known story. Upon George V’s death on January 20, 1936, Edward ascended to the throne, but he didn’t stay there long; less than a year later, on December 11, 1936, Edward gave the speech for which he is best remembered: “You must believe me when I tell you that I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love...”

  The abdication crisis rocked the British establishment. As a divorcée, Wallis was ineligible to marry the Head of the Church of England; as a brash and opinionated American, she was considered a crass and unsuitable partner for the Head of State. The Royal Family was mired in a scandal they’d hoped they could avoid—a scandal that had been brewing ever since a lunchtime meeting in the Ritz Hotel, when Thelma Furness asked a fateful favor of a close friend.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As a first-time novelist, I entered the writing world with complete naivete, eyes wide open and shining at the possibility of being a WRITER. It wouldn’t take more than a year to finish it, I told people, shrugging off their looks of incredulity. Just a year, I said, as I began plugging away at the earliest drafts of what would become The Woman Before Wallis.

  As everyone in this acknowledgment section can attest to, it took me far longer than a year to write this book, and I count myself so very fortunate to have had such an incredible network of people helping me bring Thelma’s story to life.

  First, to my Scottish writing family in the Creative Writing department at the University of St. Andrews. To John Burnside, my academic advisor, and my colleagues Devon Stark-MacLise, Tamara Mathias, Esther Nisbett, Francesca Bellei, and Queenie Au, whose advice, support and creativity made this book better than I could ever have done alone. To my favourite Scottish bookstore, Toppings and Company in St. Andrews: I promised to have a book for your shelves one day and here it is.

  I’d like to offer my deepest gratitude to my agent, Kevan Lyon, for being my champion and guide through this whirlwind industry. I count myself so fortunate to have you and your incredible team at Marsal Lyon in my corner.

  This book simply would not be what it is without the insight, support, and steady hand of my editor, April Osborn. Thank you for believing in me, and for seeing the potential in Thelma’s story. To the entire team at Mira for putting their considerable talents behind my book—especially Elita Sidiropoulou and Kathleen Oudit, who provided me with my beautiful cover: Thank you for making this debut writer’s dreams come true.

  Thank you, as well, to the Lyonesses. I’m honoured to be in your company, inspired by the remarkable stories you tell about strong women, and awed by the strength of your support. I promise I will pay it forward in my career.

  While a complete bibliography of the resources I consulted to write this project would constitute another book in its entirety, I’m heavily indebted to the following: Barbara Goldsmith’s Little Gloria... Happy At Last, which gave me a glimpse into a court case where the records were otherwise sealed; Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt’s The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and a Son on Life, Love and Loss; Anne Sebba’s That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor; Frances Donaldson’s Edward VIII: The Road to Abdication; Philip Ziegler’s Edward VIII; Gloria Vanderbilt’s Once Upon a Time: A True Story; and Thelma and Gloria’s co-written autobiography, Double Exposure. I’d also like to thank the New York Public Library, the Toronto Reference Library, and the University of St. Andrews Library for their incredible newspaper archives. A more robust list of resources and works consulted can be found at brynturnbull.com.

  I’d also be remiss if I didn’t express my gratitude to Madonna, whose 2011 movie W.E. led me to Thelma in the first place.

  This book is, at heart, a love story—but it’s not a royal ro
mance. It’s about the unbreakable bond between sisters. I am immeasurably lucky to have a sister who inspires me to keep pushing forward, every day. Hayley, I dedicate this book to you.

  I am so pleased to be welcoming another sister into my family this year—one who embodies Nada’s joy, Thelma’s sensibility, and Averill’s adventurousness. Coretta King, I look forward to forging our bonds of sisterhood today and all the days to come.

  To my brother Alec, whose late-night plot twists help me think through any challenges my characters might face. To Brenda Doig, Derek Plaxton, Sally Dakers, Jill and Michael, Louise Claire Johnson, Amber Crawford, my McGill crew, Kealy Simpson, and Mike Schneider, who have all been constant voices of support. To my grandparents: Don, Dorothy, and Mary: Thank you.

  Finally, to my parents. Mom and Dad, this book belongs to you. Every single day, I’m thankful for whatever alignment of stars led me into your remarkable lives. When I finally screwed up the courage to tell you I was leaving my job to become a WRITER, you gave me the best response I could have ever hoped for: “What took you so long to figure that out?”

  It took me a while, but I got there in the end.

  The Woman

  Before

  Wallis

  Bryn Turnbull

  Reader’s Guide

  Discussion Questions

  How does Thelma’s relationship with her mother fundamentally shape her attitudes towards men and money?

  Thelma’s abusive first marriage occurs in the years before the book begins. How does that experience impact her relationships, not only with David and Duke but with all of the people in her life?