by Anne Sebba
‘What followed now seems fantastic and perhaps even a little silly,’ Wallis wrote later reflecting on events.
But David’s pride was engaged and he was deadly serious. When after some time he felt it nece
ssary to tell me what was going on he put the situation in approximately these terms: ‘I won’t have them push us into a bottom drawer. It must be the two of us together – man and wife with the same position. Now, I am only too well aware of the risk of my being misunderstood in pressing for this at such a time. Some people will probably say that with a war on these trifles should be forgotten. But they are not trifles to me. Whatever I am to be I must be with you; any position I am called upon to fill, I can only fill with you.’
In mid-July the Windsors were informed that the King was pleased to appoint his brother the Duke governor of the Bahamas. The Duke, who had offered to serve anywhere in the Empire, accepted, but then threatened ‘to reconsider my position’ if the travel arrangements he had made for himself and Wallis were not acceded to. Churchill would not change his position and Alan Lascelles and Walter Monckton advised that the Duke be treated ‘as a petulant baby’. The couple finally sailed from Lisbon on 1 August 1940, in the first available ship, the Excalibur, crowded with desperate refugees.
12
Wallis Grits her Teeth
‘“Les Anglais” are very strange people, I find’
The twenty-nine islands known collectively as the Bahamas were, even in total, half the size of Wales. Most of the 70,000 inhabitants – 60,000 of whom were black or of mixed race – lived in Nassau, the capital, on New Providence Island, a town which boasted three historic buildings, high unemployment and a heavy dependence on rich American tourists. The Bahamas were well known as the British Empire’s most backward-looking colony and the Duke and Duchess, as they viewed one of these buildings, the semi-derelict Government House built in 1801 and designated as their new home, can have had no doubt that they were being fobbed off with one of the least important positions available for such a high-ranking former soldier and member of the royal family and one that would keep them out of Europe for as long as possible. Michael Bloch describes it as ‘a kind of punishment station in the Colonial Service, combining a minimum of importance with a maximum of frustration’.
The climate was unbearably hot and humid in summer, often reaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Centigrade), and the Duke, as Wallis wrote vividly in her memoirs, was sweating so profusely in his thick khaki uniform on the day they arrived in mid-August 1940 that there were several black patches of wet to be seen on his tunic as he dripped his way down the receiving line. The rest of the year was mild, dry and pleasantly temperate, in fact perfect weather for the Duke to enjoy the local golf course. But for Wallis neither the golf course nor the Bay Street shops held much appeal, and almost the only attraction of the post was its proximity to Miami, where she had to make an emergency visit in December for treatment on an impacted wisdom tooth. Never one to miss an opportunity for a wisecrack, she told one reporter: ‘all my life I’ve disliked hot weather and coming to Nassau has been like taking a permanent slimming cure’. What they called ‘the Nassau Drip’ soon became something of a mantra for them both; the one thing they both liked about the post was that it was ‘certainly good for the figure’. Publicly she did not complain, and many remember her working hard and efficiently in a variety of capacities as the Governor’s wife, for the Red Cross, of which she was automatically local president, and for the local branch of the Daughters of the British Empire. But she was, in many ways, far from her natural comfort zone.
Frank Giles, later editor of the Sunday Times but then working as ADC to the Governor of Bermuda, Sir Denis Bernard, encountered the couple during their week-long stopover en route to Nassau and was struck by how ‘extraordinarily nice Wallis was to people as she went around inspecting homes and crèches, and always had the right word for everyone, always able to make whomever she was talking to feel they were the person she’d been waiting all her life to meet, which was very flattering’. As Giles observed at the time, this was not something she had learned from experience: she was naturally very good at it. ‘Now this is a trick, obviously, but it’s a very flattering trick when it happens to you.’
And this was in spite of the cable sent by Lord Lloyd to Sir Denis with instructions, noted Giles, that ‘the Duke should receive a half curtsey and the Duchess none at all and to be addressed as “Your Grace” not “Your Royal Highness”. This made him angrier than ever and he said he’d never heard of a half curtsey and as for ad sand youdressing her as “Your Grace” only servants did that, whereupon he turned on his heel and strode off in a passion.’ Wallis was, as Giles and others noticed gratefully, very good at calming the Duke or ‘nannying’ him. On this occasion, for example, she reminded him that he must go and work on the speech he was to make on arrival at Nassau, but she nonetheless wrote to Monckton herself later. ‘Also the title, or lack of one, is an issue and Lloyd took pains to issue a telegram to Bermudans and here to say how I was to be treated thus stressing for all concerned the whole sorry story. I doubt if he would wish his own wife to have been the subject of such orders.’
After less than a week in Nassau it was clear when a chunk of ceiling fell to the floor in a room where Wallis was sitting that Government House was in need of urgent reconstruction and that the Windsors would have to move out while this happened. It was not simply a question of the decor being a little shabby or the cracked swimming pool being filled with debris, the house was structurally unsound and infested with termites. This involved further difficult negotiation, through Lord Lloyd, with a government in London that had rather more critical concerns on its mind. And so although the local legislature eventually voted – grudgingly, according to Philip Ziegler – about £4,000 for essential repairs, the Windsors paid for most of the internal redecoration themselves.
Wallis instinctively understood, over and above any need for her own comfort, that if her husband was to be successful in his job – and he did make a spirited attempt to build up the economy of the islands so that they were not exclusively reliant on American tourism – they would need to entertain the few extremely wealthy white traders, such as Harold Christie and the Canadian goldmining millionaire Sir Harry Oakes, lavishly and with style. She knew she needed to develop friendships with the merchants’ wives, cemented over the dinner table. While the extensive repairs and refurbishments were being carried out the Duke had suggested to London that he and Wallis might stay at his ranch in Canada for three months. They were also worried about La Croë, their abandoned home in France, which housed everything they had taken from the Fort. Like thousands of others in wartime they had no idea what would become of their possessions, but, not surprisingly, the proposal that they take temporary leave of absence was met with horror. Both the royal family and the government professed shock and outrage that no sooner had they arrived than, once again, they were abandoning their post.
It was this perceived dereliction of duty that marked a serious shift in Churchill’s attitude to the former King. He was, Monckton told the Duke, ‘“very grieved” to hear that you were entertaining such an idea when the people of Britain were suffering so much and at the very least had thought you would be willing to put up with the discomfort and remain at your post until weather conditions made things less unpleasant’. In a lengthy letter, which also tried to address some of the Duke’s pressing concerns about money and the tax status of the Duchess as an American citizen married to an Englishman, Monckton reminded them that now, while the rest of Europe was grappling with the devastating privations of war, was scarcely a propitious moment to urge such a request.
And so the gulf in understanding was only to widen. Wallis, finding herself with no other channel, took to writing long and heartfelt letters to Monckton. He may have dreaded the sight of her large round handwriting on the familiar blue paper telling him ‘this hot little hell is so far from the war and how one misse
s Europe’s air raids and all we have known for the snow height=past months’, but he continued to do his best for them. Those who knew her at this time admired the element of Southern nobility in the way she was standing by her man and getting on with the job in hand, however distasteful to her. She tried to explain matters from their point of view:
The place is too small for the Duke. I do not mean that in any other way but that a man who has been Prince of Wales and King of England cannot be governor of a tiny place. It is not fair to the people here or to him. The spotlight is on an island that cannot itself take it and the appointment is doomed to fail for both concerned. One can put up with anything in wartime in the way of discomforts, even if one knows one is not contributing to the war effort, as we cannot from here, but it is really impossible to live in a house that has been so neglected for years that insects are eating it away … I do wish we were not so far away from you, dear Walter.
In the event the Windsors remained in Nassau, staying in one of Sir Harry Oakes’s homes until the refurbished Government House and gardens were ready. Wallis, using bright chintzes, imported French wallpapers and a pale-green carpet, managed to fill the old, dark rooms with a feeling of light. Her own portrait, painted by Gerald Brockhurst, took pride of place above the drawing-room fireplace. But she was not able to put all her redecoration schemes into practice. Before their arrival a portrait of Queen Elizabeth had been ordered for the Red Cross headquarters and the Duchess, as president, made a convincing acceptance speech stating what a great honour it was for the office to have a portrait of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.
They both believed that the blocking of their travel plans was further evidence of continuing ill-usage. ‘I am amazed’, Wallis told Monckton in October 1940, ‘that in the middle of a life and death struggle the government still has time to continue its persecution of us. These actions do not increase the prestige of the royal family in the US and this I have straight from American journalists, of which we have seen any number.’ A few weeks later she wrote to him again:
There is no doubt that England carries on propaganda against us in the States in a sort of whispering campaign of the most outrageous lies about us – such as the hairdresser [it was rumoured that she had one regularly flown in from New York] – and as Government House was uninhabitable it had to be repainted not decorated. There are many ways to twist things … There will always be the court and the courtiers engaged in fifth column activities against us … it makes tears come to my eyes to see the Duke doing this ridiculous job and making good speeches as though he were talking to the labouring classes of England and inspiring them on to work … better to be in a shelter or called anything than buried alive here. Do write, Walter, and, if I have any friends, remember me to them.
Privately, no one was in any doubt that she viewed what was to be a five-year stay on this ‘charming little isle’ as her banishment to Elba where torrid summers were followed by vile hurricane warnings and the Duke had ‘a worrying little job with no future’. She asked her aunt Bessie ‘where did you stay when you came to this dump and why did you come here? I hate this place more each day … we both hate it, and the locals are petty-minded, the visitors common and uninteresting.’ At least in 1940 and 1941, while the United States was still not at war, there were visitors and tourists. Wallis was to hate it even more once that sre whichanged.
In 1941 the Duke and Duchess made two separate visits to North America. The first, in April, was a brief, unofficial visit to Miami where the Duke consulted with Sir Edward Peacock and Wallis socialized at Palm Beach. The new British Ambassador in Washington, Lord Halifax, who had replaced Lord Lothian after the latter’s premature death in December 1940, had warned the Foreign Office in London that to refuse them permission for this might encourage meddlesome elements in the US press to write articles depicting the Windsors as martyrs. Nonetheless Churchill deeply disapproved of the visit and plainly told the Duke so, advice which was ignored.
‘I note what you say, Walter my dear,’ wrote Wallis, ‘about Your Man over here, but I can’t feel that any Englishman understands, or shall we say wants to understand, my husband because if they did “something would be done” and “difficulties” and “position” would be solved.’ But they continued to press for a much longer and more controversial tour which, they hoped, would include a visit to Washington and a planned lunch with the President and Mrs Roosevelt. In those fateful months of 1941, before America entered the war, what the Windsors did or did not say was critical. Wallis was sharp enough to know that she was being exploited: ‘The feelings of Americans are very intense at the moment and everything that gives the “stay out of war” groups a chance for a crack at the whip … is used by them and so I have become an American who was badly treated by England and am used by them as such.’ But equally she was so frustrated that she had only Walter to whom she could explode. She sent him copies of American articles that were complimentary about the Duke, and more especially about her:
because I know that no English person in the US would send on anything along these lines to London because it isn’t in line with British policy. However, the fact is there is none of this sort of idea among the people in America … Winston, Duff [Cooper, now Minister of Information] , Halifax go on with their wishful thinking and the trash of the US articles are allowed to be published in your daily papers, which to me is proof of London wanting BAD publicity for us and which Winston did not deny in the last flurry of cables with the Duke.
Wallis believed fiercely that powerful voices in London were actively campaigning against them and that Winston and his colleagues were frightened of allowing them near official America from a belief that they were not reliable, ‘and the last exchange of cables has surpassed those of Lisbon – which raises the standard quite high as you know’. On the subject of whether or not America would enter the war, Wallis made her position clear: ‘I think it’s all hideous and if one’s in it one must pull for it. I am in complete disagreement, however, with the idea that if you mention peace you are pro-Nazi and there is no relation between the two that I can conjure up. And when free speech is taken from us it is alarming.’
Churchill was deeply concerned about this sort of attitude, which smacked of defeatism to him and thousands of others, and he well understood the dangers of the Windsors’ comments being misused at such a critical time. In a letter marked ‘secret’, he wrote to the Colonial Secretary on 11 June 1941 about the urgent need to find the Duke a press secretary before he went to America as ‘I hear from various quarters of very unhelpful opinions being expressed both by Duke and Duchess.’ Monckton sympathized; the Duke had been writing to him in appallingly gloomy terms about s teorsthe catastrophic losses in Europe17 that rivalled blunders made in the First World War and blaming the strategists. Churchill proposed ‘a competent American publicist who’d come down from time to time to Nassau and try to instill sound ideas into that circle. It doesn’t matter if there is a row. We want someone of sufficient character and standing to say “this sort of stuff you put out in your interview has done a great deal of harm. I can only tell you the opinion in the US. It will affect your influence there, or again, language of this kind would cut you off from the great mass of the American people” … the less there is on paper the better.’
As it happened Wallis, in defiant mood, was also in favour of a press secretary. ‘Every prominent American be they politicians, café society, movie stars or just too rich men – employ what is called in the US a public relations man,’ she explained to Walter. ‘He keeps unpleasant items out of the press and for those who want it (as we do) the minimum of publicity.’ The problem was the enormous salary paid to such people. According to Wallis, Viscount Astor paid a hefty $25,000 a year:
So you see we simply could not afford one. What we had in mind was that publicity regarding us would be handled in the same manner that England has conducted publicity regarding its royal family for many years and has been most successful – beca
use any of those members would have a difficult job with the US press were they left on their own, as we have been for four years. The real truth, Walter, is that the government simply do not care what sort of stuff is printed and hide behind or blame us by saying ‘what a pity such things are written’ … it really is a waste of your time to beat around the bush with the idea of anything being done to help us because we realise it won’t be. Anyway such requests are like a thermometer of the powers that be’s policy regarding us. It’s always the same and will never change. However if we didn’t have to work for them it wouldn’t be so difficult. Alas we shall have to carry on I suppose for the duration but with victory won, we’re off!! Best of luck, Walter dear, and what a shame Duff was only ill two weeks.
The man they found to coach the Duke before and during his American trip was René MacColl from the British Embassy in Washington. ‘MacColl arrives next Friday,’ Wallis told Walter. ‘I understand he’s very nervous over it all. I believe he thinks HRH is for “appeasement”, “negotiated peace” and all the rest of the lies pinned on the Duke.’ Monckton, tactful as ever, replied with the suggestion that they should go to the theatre to see Coward’s Blithe Spirit while they were in New York – such a refreshing antidote to war, he told them.