That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor

by Anne Sebba

  It was all over in fourteen minutes and Birkett asked for a decree nisi to be granted with costs. Hawke hesitated at first, apparently puzzled by the request, but concluded: ‘I suppose I must in these unusual circumstances. So you have it with costs.’11

  ‘King’s Moll Reno’d in Wolsey’s Home Town’ was one of the less lurid headlines that appeared in the American press. ‘Cutie Simpson cuts out bloodless British women in royal choice’ was another. Others announced that the King, who as long as he remained on the throne was immune from investigation himself, was to ‘Wed Wally’ and some even gave a date for the forthcoming nuptials.

  Wallis returned immediately to London and dined that night with the King. Only now did he tell her of the visit he had had one week previously from Prime Minister Baldwin. His deliberate shielding of this fact from her until after the hearing reveals his awareness of Wallis’s nervous and volatile state. On 20 October Baldwin had been summoned from Downing Street ‘and made aware of the King’s firm intention of marrying Mrs Simpson. As can well be imagined,’ wrote Nancy Dugdale, ‘the shock was severe. This twice divorced woman of low birth with an intermittent career of coquetry behind her, whose first marriage was dissolved in America; whose second marriage took place in England where it is doubtful if her first divorce would be acknowledged as legal, whom the king now proposed should take Queen Mary’s place.’ Nancy Dugdale, of all those close to events, might have been expected to be sympathetic towards Wallis since she was divorced herself, following a painful and abusive first marriage. That even she so bitterly opposed the idea of Wallis Simpson marrying the King is indicative of the widespread reverence for the institution of the monarchy and of the views of most who met Wallis at this fraught time that she was ‘a third class kind of woman … but no heart’ or ‘a hard bitten bitch’.

  In the autumn of 1936 Stanley Baldwin was sixty-nine, hard of hearing and, as he had told close colleagues, ready to retire. He had only recently returned to active politics after three months’ rest following exhaustion and felt that his duty was to remain at the helm in a crisis, if at all possible. His private view of Wallis was relatively broad-minded; he ‘wouldn’t mind if she were a respectable whore … kept out of the public view’. But he did not relish the prospect of discussing with the King his personal life and had declined earlier suggestions from Palace officials and government ministers that he should do so. ‘Poor Stan how he hated the idea,’ his wife recorded in her diary. Nonetheless he u Sethernment minderstood the necessity of facing the King and so on 20 October he went to Fort Belvedere and did his duty. He urged the King, who was ‘at his most courteous and nicest’, to call off the divorce. Later, recounting the events of that day to the influential Australian High Commissioner, Stanley Bruce, Baldwin told how the the King had insisted that he could not possibly interfere in a private decision taken by Mrs Simpson which he had nothing to do with whatever. ‘This statement, the PM said quite bluntly, was a lie.’ ‘Poor S’, wrote Lucy immediately afterwards, ‘asked for a whisky and soda in the middle of the confab for he felt the strain of it all intensely.’ There are various accounts of this first meeting, which the Prime Minister kept secret ‘except for 3 or 4 of his elder colleagues’. According to his niece Monica Baldwin, recounting the conversation as told to her by her uncle:

  I said to him, was it absolutely necessary that he should marry her? In their peculiar circumstances certain things are sometimes permitted to Royalty which are not allowed to the ordinary man.

  To this he replied immediately: ‘Oh there’s no question of that. I am going to marry her …’

  Baldwin’s suggestion to the King that he could keep Mrs Simpson as his lover, just not marry her, may not have been made on this occasion. 12 But it was certainly what he felt. He had even discussed it with Archbishop Lang, who responded, not unreasonably, that this would be a difficult line for a man of the cloth to advocate. The King himself affected, somewhat disingenuously, to be shocked by the hypocrisy of the suggestion. But in fact the exchange reveals a deep-seated belief in the 1930s in the importance of maintaining public standards, just as it indicates the distance between private mores and public values, a distinction that was considered virtuous until the 1960s. Thus Violet Bonham-Carter, daughter of the former Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and an active Liberal politician herself in the 1930s, was echoing the views of many in 1936 Britain when she admitted to Churchill that the King faced ‘a dilemma that many human beings have had to face and meet with less at stake. Many after all have died for this country not so long ago. The sacrifice now demanded falls far short of life.’

  If the King’s Proctor were to be involved in investigating that the decree had not been obtained by agreement or even by faked evidence, that the wife had not herself committed adultery and that there was no omission of material facts, it would be now, once the first stage of the divorce had been granted. Any private citizen could (on the payment of half-a-crown) intervene to ‘show cause’ why any decree nisi should not be made absolute. It was not long before Mr Francis Stephenson, an elderly gentleman described as a solicitor’s clerk, did exactly that, writing to object on the grounds that he believed this was a collusive divorce and that the petitioner had committed adultery with King Edward VIII. And so Sir Thomas Barnes, the King’s Proctor, had the unenviable responsibility of investigating whether or not Wallis Simpson was ‘innocent’. If Barnes found that anything was suspicious, he could intervene to put the facts he had discovered before the court. The court then had the power to rescind the decree nisi, thus leaving Wallis in a permanent state of limbo, separated from one husband but not free to marry another. It was a ghastly prospect and Wallis had good reason to be terrified, for although only a tiny proportion of divorces overall were blocked at the second stage S seother, the overwhelming majority of cases where there were proctorial interventions did indeed result in cancellation of the divorce. For example, in 1935 Barnes intervened in twenty-three cases, twenty-one of which were rescinded, and in 1936 he acted in twenty-six, leaving twenty-five individuals without their final decree.

  Nearly seventy years after they were written, the public may today view the files of letters written to the King’s Proctor preserved in the National Archives at Kew in south-west London and closed until 2003. Once I have been granted special permission to read them, just three at a time, I am placed in a closed invigilation room, locked behind double doors under supervision and with video cameras trained on me. The King’s Proctor files contain such sensitive material, I am told, that they come into the same category as files on Jack the Ripper. But, as I puzzle over what I am reading, I realize that the sensitivity derives not from pornography, criminality or espionage. What it reveals is much more shocking, especially given the self-censorship of the British newspapers until December 1936. For even though the royal affair had been hidden from the general public, enough was known for Barnes to be deluged with angry letters. Reading these mostly well-argued and articulate letters from a range of social classes, from both men and women, shows clearly that there was a powerful belief that the law had been subverted so seriously that the entire legal structure had been brought into disrepute and threatened the continuance of the monarchy. As Elspeth Huxley, the author and journalist, wrote in an American newspaper: ‘There is a letting down all over the world but one looks to England to preserve its highest standards.’

  There was a furore that the King had not been named as corespondent, that less than a week before the hearing he had stayed the night at Mrs Simpson’s rented house in Felixstowe, that there was no discretion statement by the petitioner (a formal admission of her own adultery but asking the court to take this into sympathetic consideration and still grant a decree) and, if there had been, the case could not have been tried in Ipswich. There were letters calling Wallis a prostitute, a Yankee harlot and worse. None seems to have complained that Wallis’s first divorce in the United States, on the grounds of desertion, would not be recognized by the Church of Engla
nd and, if challenged, might have been rejected under English law where adultery was the only grounds for divorce. According to this argument, her marriage to Ernest would have been bigamous and invalid. But above all there was enormous public resentment, especially among women, arising out of the belief that Mrs Simpson was being allowed ‘to get away with a divorce which would certainly not have escaped the attentions of your staff if the position of the Crown had not been indirectly involved’. Many complained that the decree smacked of one law for the rich and another for the poor. Others expressed a deep-seated view that Britain could not possibly have as queen a woman who should prima facie be in the dock at the Old Bailey for perjury and that if the King’s Proctor did not intervene in this case he should intervene in none. Some wrote insisting they had names of servants who had evidence that the King had been seen leaving Mrs Simpson’s house many mornings at 8 a.m.

  While these investigations were under way, preparations for the Coronation were simultaneously if somewhat nervously proceeding with hoteliers and other British businessmen who had an interest in souvenirs of the event suddenly worried by the possibility that it might be postponed. Desperate for news of what was going on, many were making costly transatlantic telephone calls to have American newspapers read to them and London insur S Lo goance brokers were suddenly swamped with an avalanche of anxious customers. Finally the market became so top heavy that brokers were unwilling to take at any price the risk of what Edward VIII might do. It was not only trade but numerous charities and voluntary organizations that regarded this prospect of the King being married to that woman most unsettling.

  Hilda Runciman, wife of President of the Board of Trade Sir Walter Runciman, and a formidable Liberal politician in her own right, was another who kept a diary at this time. Hilda was deeply involved in issues of education, housing and welfare and, as a leading Methodist, had served as president of the Women’s Free Church Council. She wrote in measured tones of her concerns: ‘ever since Mrs Simpson’s divorce in Ipswich we have felt really anxious about their future relations, because there seemed no adequate reason for the disadvantage of the divorce scandal unless marriage was intended’. Walter, who ‘as a member of the cabinet and a Christian feels his responsibility acutely’, was having discussions with both Baldwin and Archbishop Lang about what all three perceived as the dangers for the monarchy if the King persisted in his plan to marry Mrs Simpson. Hilda wrote of a meeting on 15 November between her husband and Sir Frederick Maurice, one of the founders of the British Legion, of which he was now president, at which Maurice said frankly that his organization ‘certainly would not tolerate W.S. as a Queen of England’. He then wrote to Runciman to make it completely clear that the British Legion ‘could not stand the shock of the proposed marriage of the King and Wallis Simpson’.

  The Church had been worried about the new King long before the accession. ‘One trembles to think of the loneliness of his position. Things will inevitably be very different here,’ Don recorded after the old King’s funeral. That the new King did not attend church was a serious problem for the Archbishop, who admitted that ‘the thought of my having to consecrate him as King weighed on me as a heavy burden. Indeed I considered whether I could bring myself to do so.’ In association with the Coronation, the Church was also planning an evangelical campaign, ‘A Recall to Religion’, which would urge the people of Britain to rededicate themselves to serving God and country. This was not just a question of ‘religion’ narrowly interpreted. The King was meant to serve and sacrifice and help. Previous coronations and special thanksgiving services held in St Paul’s Cathedral had been with kings who did attend church. The monarch had responsibilities to the Dominions and his or her regular church attendance was seen as a means of bringing people in, making them feel they were part of the British Empire. The throne was the vital link. Yet now there was fear that the new King would break that.

  Even as those at Lambeth Palace were reading all the American newspapers, sickened by what they read and heard, most churchmen still believed that restraint and making no criticism was the best policy. ‘And yet HM protests that Mrs S is not his mistress but he spends immense sums of money on her – is he quite normal?’ Alan Don asked rhetorically. That was precisely the question worrying Lord Wigram as well. He believed that the King was not ‘normal … and might any day develop into a George III’. He thought it was necessary to pass a Regency Bill as soon as possible ‘so that if necessary he could be certified’.

  Westminster now buzzed with politicians clamouring to know what was going to happen. At the state opening on 3 November the King looked ‘like a young, happy Prince Charming’, serene and dignified, according to Chips Channon. But several people commented on his str Sed youange American accent – he said ‘rowts’ instead of ‘roots’ and ended with ‘And Moy the blessing of Almoighty God rest upon your deliberoitions,’ an affectation considered to be yet another unattractive result of Wallis’s influence. Not unnaturally, Wallis wanted to watch the proceedings, ‘and was in the Royal Gallery in the House of Lords yesterday … in full view of everybody. She must be a brazen-faced woman to appear thus among the assembled aristocracy within a week of the divorce,’ wrote Don, voicing widespread criticism of those who felt she should demonstrate contrition at the breaking of such a serious promise by staying quietly at home.

  But it was not until 10 November – when (as Chips Channon recorded) the Labour MP John McGovern answered a question about the forthcoming Coronation by shouting, ‘“Why bother, in view of the gambling at Lloyd’s that there will not be one?” There were roars of “Shame! Shame!” and he called out, “Yes … Mrs Simpson”’ – that her name was actually uttered publicly in the House of Commons. November was an agonizing time for Wallis as she could no longer fail to be aware of how much she was disliked, not just in royal circles but by the small but ever widening section of the public who knew about her. She had her defenders and flatterers who still wrote to her supportively, believing that she was good for the King – at least she had controlled his drinking, a merit even Queen Mary acknowledged. But they were few in number and dwindled as the crisis progressed. Perhaps she derived a shred of comfort from her old friend Herman Rogers, who wrote warmly to her: ‘You are still my one living example of a perfectly wise and complete person.’ And she had Aunt Bessie, who had now arrived in London to help.

  Events moved swiftly after 13 November when the King opened a letter from Alexander Hardinge, written with the backing of senior ministers, warning him that the British press would not keep its silence about his relationship with Mrs Simpson for much longer and that the effect would be ‘calamitous’. Until now Mrs Simpson’s affair with the King had been a problem for Palace officials rather than government ministers. That was no longer the case. Hardinge warned that the government might have to resign, in which case the King’s private affairs would be the chief issue in any election. He therefore recommended that the best course of action would be for Mrs Simpson to go abroad without further delay, and ‘I would beg your majesty to give this proposal your earnest consideration before the position has become irretrievable.’

  The King was furious. He responded, typically, by ending all contact with Hardinge, but without sacking him, and increasingly turned to Walter Monckton, a lawyer he had known since university days, to act as intermediary and adviser. The King had always had his way and until now never allowed the idea to enter his consciousness that this time would be any different. Instead, he summoned Baldwin, who the day before had had a meeting at Chequers with Stanley Bruce, the influential Australian High Commissioner, at the latter’s request. Bruce passed on the views of his Prime Minister, Joseph Lyons, who, as a devout Catholic, could not support the marriage of a divorced person, that if there were any question of marriage with Mrs Simpson the King would have to go as far as Australia was concerned. Now he told Baldwin forcefully how offensive the King’s behaviour was to ordinary Australians, as reflected by an old Anzac soldier who had
said ‘it’s a bit thick, his taking that woman with him to Gallipoli’. This was a reference to a stopover the King made while cruising in the Nahlin a few months earlier to enable him to visit the cemeteries and battlefields on the peninsu Sn t thla where thousands of Australian and New Zealand soldiers had lost their lives in 1911.

  Bruce came to believe that his conversation with Baldwin, who until that time ‘had not got the thing clearly in his own mind’, had been decisive. He maintained that he had warned him over lunch on 15 November of ‘the alarming and devastating possibility that the King should marry the woman … the people of this country and the Dominions would never accept the woman as Queen, quite possibly the House of Commons would cancel the Civil List, the throne would be imperilled, the Empire would be endangered, the Government would resign and it would be impossible to get an alternative government. ’

  Baldwin put to the King the feelings of both Bruce and William Mackenzie King, the Canadian Prime Minister, that marriage to Wallis would break up the Empire, but the King responded by telling him: ‘I want you to be the first to know that I have made up my mind and nothing will alter it. I have looked into it from all sides. I mean to abdicate and marry Mrs Simpson.’ Baldwin was stunned. He simply could not imagine that the King would insist on marriage to this woman with such a high cost attached. And, in spite of the divorce, Wallis had continued to reiterate even to close friends that she was not intending to marry the King and that the action had been forced on her by her husband’s adultery. It was a necessary answer in view of the law, but she also believed that marriage to the King would eventually be prevented by those more powerful than her. According to Lucy Baldwin, who made ‘a faithful record’ of the meeting as soon as her husband told her about it on his return: