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

by Anne Sebba

  Just as the Windsors were deeply involved in expensively refurbishing both houses, the Duke’s brother, George VI, died, aged just fifty-six, in February 1952. A heavy smoker, he had been suffering from lung cancer. But the perception now hardened that somehow the premature death had been Wallis’s fault as the burdens of state, for which unlike his elder brother he had not been groomed, had hastened his death. The Duke went to London alone for his brother’s funeral. The accession of the Duke’s twenty-five-year-old niece, Queen Elizabeth II, was to make little difference to the Windsors’ standing in the eyes of the remaining royal family, even though Elizabeth had been a child at the time of the abdication, because both her grandmother, Queen Mary, and her mother, Queen Elizabeth, now known as the Queen Mother, were still alive. But with the King’s death went the personal allowance from him agreed at the time of the abdication. ‘They are beasts to continue to treat you the way they do … I am afraid Mrs Temple Sr. [the Queen Mother, whose elder daughter they had nicknamed Shirley Temple] will never give in,’ Wallis wrote to the Duke who, in reply, told her that while some Court officials were friendly and correct on the surface there was ‘only granite below’.

  Wherever the Windsors lived – and they also retained Suite 28A in New York’s Waldorf Towers, part of the Waldorf Astoria hotel – they were both locked in stasis. There were a few new friends providing an occasional shot of circulating blood. But most of their visitors wanted to talk about the past. Every day from now on was lived in the shadow of 1936, with no possibility of moving forward as money worries, the inevitable illnesses of old age and bitterness against the British royal family all jostled for attention.

  Such new activity as they embarked on inevitably evolved around reliving the old. The Duke was, almost as soon as peace descended in Europe, approached to write his memoirs. He started by writing a series of articles for Life, helped by the former Reuters journalist Charles Murphy, now a staff writer on the magazine. The collaboration was stormy almost from the outset because Wallis disliked Murphy. But the money was useful and the Duke described Murphy as ‘a good egg and quite brilliant journalist’. Life was pleased with the fin { wiukeished work, which led to a lucrative book and, a decade later, to the documentary film, both called A King’s Story; it also led to Wallis herself writing her own volume of memoirs, The Heart Has its Reasons. Wallis may not have been familiar with the source of this famous quotation, taken from the work of the French mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal. And those who knew her well may have queried its suitability. But she liked what it implied. She told Ernest when writing to ask for his cooperation with the book that she had not intended to write her memoirs but had ‘been forced into this uncomfortable position by no less a person than solicitor Sir G. Allen. He feels that with all that has been written, a bit of truth should be forced to the top.’

  In spite of their earlier differences, she too tried to work with Murphy as her ghostwriter. When that arrangement broke down in disagreement, she hired the American author Cleveland Amory, but he likewise did not prove as pliable as she wished. When he withdrew in 1955 she decided to complete the manuscript herself. But she needed time on her own for this, undistracted by the Duke’s undiminished and constant need for her. She went off to the Mill, alone, to put the finishing touches to the manuscript, and the book was published in 1956 by Houghton Mifflin in New York. In spite of much that was obscured or omitted, many people were surprised by how much of Wallis’s personality it revealed. The following year, to celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary, the Duke gave Wallis a diamond-encrusted, heart-shaped brooch with ‘W’ and ‘E’ in entwined emeralds and – determined that she should have her emblem – a ruby and gold crown perched on top of the heart.

  The American author Maxine Sandberg read The Heart Has its Reasons while recuperating from depression and told the Duchess it gave her strength to overcome her illness. For years following the publication of the book Sandberg kept up a virtual bombardment of the Duchess, hoping to be granted access and permission to write the first authorized biography. She sent presents of slippers and bed covers and flowers, as well as letters in which she recounted in detail the history of her stays in various hospitals. The Duchess’s secretary wrote polite letters to thank her for all the presents and insisting that ‘Her Royal Highness’ had been most interested to read about her attempts to write about her experiences in hospitals. In due course, Sandberg was invited to meet the Duchess, with a view to exploring the possibility of collaboration. But after the meeting, according to Sandberg, the Duchess changed her mind and said she thought it would be unwise to ask friends to give interviews. Sandberg nonetheless continued with the writing but promised not to publish in Wallis’s lifetime, then, in 1965, she made a renewed attempt to work with the Duchess. But eventually the project petered out.

  Walter Monckton, as official gatekeeper, still played a part in their lives and occasionally came to stay in Paris with his wife. He had negotiated the deal for them on their townhouse in the Bois de Boulogne, but the friendship cooled somewhat after he was created a viscount in 1957 and she accused him of managing to get a title for himself ‘but you didn’t get me one’. And he was only moderately successful in keeping at bay the hordes who wished to write about them, as the Sandberg story indicates. Linda Mortimer, daughter of Fruity and Alexandra Metcalfe, and therefore an acceptable insider, was brought in to help with the film of A King’s Story. With such direct connections to the dramatis personae, she was able to smooth a variety of bumpy paths and ruffled feathers, but she rema { bu

  Charles Pick, the publisher who oversaw publication of The Heart Has its Reasons, had several meetings with the Duchess, whom he ‘certainly did not find witty or endearing in any way, but a rather brittle hard and vain person’. Having been warned in advance by the Foreign Office that he was not to refer to her erroneously as Her Royal Highness, he was on his guard when they first met. She was, he recalled, lying full length on a chaise longue, with a large round box of Charbonnel et Walker chocolates within reach, but probably untouched. ‘As she rose to greet me her opening remark was: “Can you tell me who Marilyn Monroe’s publicity agent is? I have all the newspapers each day and I was generally on the front page. But now I see that Marilyn Monroe is … Well, somebody has pushed me off.” ’ Pick, recognizing that he was in for a difficult time, had to explain that he was not able to help her in displacing Monroe from the headlines.

  Elsa Maxwell, the gossip columnist and professional party hostess who got to know Wallis after the war, had a very public falling out with her partly in connection with jealousy over Marilyn Monroe stealing headlines. There was eventually something of a reconciliation but, in an article previewing The Heart Has its Reasons, Maxwell wasted few opportunities to attack her former friend. She pointed out that as the Duchess ‘seeks to compensate for all she hoped for and lost with an almost feverish pursuit of pleasure … many of the things she has done in this search, largely because of the high-handed selfish way in which she has done them, have contributed to her final frustration – the fact that the Windsors’ prestige is not what it used to be and the Windsors’ romantic aura is sadly diminished’. She went on:

  When you see the Duchess today it is difficult to picture her as the heroine of one of the greatest love stories of all time. She’s so brittle, hard and determined. Her hands, which were always large, never compliant or feminine, are less attractive than ever … one incident, which stands out unpleasantly in my memory, is the Duchess’ reaction to the death of Iles Brody shortly after he authored his unflattering book Gone with the Windsors.21 ‘See,’ she said snapping her fingers, ‘see what happens to them when they go against me!’

  Maxwell had seen at first hand how much time and effort the Duchess devoted to planning menus and consulting with markets and cooks about what was fresh and available. ‘One of her favourite dishes, I remember, was bacon cooked in molasses … a reflection of the Duchess’ southern background … Only a woman with
a will of iron could resist the food she serves. But she does. I doubt she will tell you [in her memoirs] about the Spartan diet she follows for the sake of her appearance.’ This, coming from Maxwell, was rich but true: neither she, nor the Duke, ever let up on their s {up saktrict dieting.

  In March 1953, the Duke’s mother, Queen Mary, died, little more than a year after the death of her second son, George VI. Again the Duke went, alone, to England for the funeral, bitterly aware of all the pain that his mother’s refusal ever to accept Wallis as her daughter-in-law had caused and desolate that the acceptance he craved for his decision to marry Wallis had been withheld until the end. ‘My sadness was mixed with incredulity’, he famously wrote to Wallis, ‘that any mother could have been so hard and cruel towards her eldest son for so many years … I’m afraid the fluids in her veins have always been as icy cold as they are now in death.’ Wallis wrote to him while he was away like a fussing mother: ‘Please eat and take care of yourself … don’t fetch and carry for everyone including servants.’ But she also begged him to ‘Work [for the restoration of the allowance] on Cookie [the Queen Mother] and Shirley [Temple, that is the new Queen].’

  With or without the allowance, Wallis and her team of interior decorators went ahead with plans to make 4 Route du Champ d’Entraînement as palatial as possible. Yet, in spite of the Windsors’ beautifully appointed home and fine cuisine, the number of important and interesting people who sought them out rapidly diminished. Wallis did little to conceal her fury and frustration that the brilliant Court of statesmen and artists – glimpsed for just a few tantalizing months in 1936 – had evaporated. The Mill, in contrast, was neither magnificent nor particularly elegant. Diana Mosley (née Mitford), wife of the British Fascist leader Sir Oswald, who became a close friend in the 1950s, was critical of the rather garish interior decor. ‘It was very bright with patterned carpets, lots of apricot and really more Palm Beach than English or French.’ Cecil Beaton called the Mill ‘overdone and chichi … Medallions on the walls, gimmicky pouffs, bamboo chairs. Simply not good enough.’ And the American decorator Billy Baldwin was even more dismissive: ‘Most of the Mill was awfully tacky but that’s what Wallis had – tacky southern taste, much too overdone, much too elaborate and no real charm.’ Both the Windsors were keen collectors of a variety of objects, and where Wallis’s taste was left unfettered by decorators, this often resulted in a kind of cluttered vulgarity at the Mill. But, as most of their entertaining was done in the city, only their closest friends saw this. Wallis always preferred town life, while the Duke was happier at the Mill than anywhere else and once again took up the gardening activities which had given him so much pleasure at the Fort.

  Susan Mary Patten, wife of an American diplomat who became an acquaintance at this time, described the problem:

  I never saw a man so bored: He said to me ‘you know what my day was today? … I got up late and then I went with the Duchess and watched her buy a hat and then on the way home I had the car drop me off in the Bois to watch some of your American soldiers playing football and then I had planned to take a walk but it was so cold that I could hardly bear it. In fact I was afraid that I would be struck with cold in the way people are struck with heat so I came straight home … when I got home the Duchess was having her French lesson so I had no one to talk to …’

  Harold Nicolson was similarly embarrassed when asked to give some editorial help on an article the Duke was writing. According to Nicolson’s biographer, James Lees-Milne, there was much in the article he thought best left unsaid, but, more troubling than that, ‘Harold was ever more distressed {re ere by the fading charm of the Duke and the aimlessness of his life in exile.’

  By the mid-1950s the Windsors had established a routine. In addition to their two French homes, they would spend three months of the year in America and summer holidays staying with friends or going somewhere warm such as Biarritz, which became a favourite destination for a while, or Spain. But whether in Paris or New York, their life varied little, consisting of shopping, formal dinners and answering occasional demands to be patron of a charity. What jewels she was buying or had been given, what clothes she wore, how her hair was coiffed or her make-up applied was still a regular source of newspaper interest, which pleased her as she tried to regain some control of her circumstances and environment. This was the only way she knew to keep her many fears and phobias at bay and neither a hair on her head nor a cushion on her sofa was allowed to be out of place. Her sheets were ironed every night and the water in her vases was always crystal clear. The one exception in this highly regulated universe was the freedom allowed their scarcely house-trained pug dogs – Trooper, Disraeli and Diamond were the favourites – who ate their dinner from solid silver bowls on the lawn, had attention constantly lavished on them and were rarely reprimanded whatever they did inside or out. These were their substitute children, discussed and addressed in the special invented baby language of the Duke and Duchess. In 1936 the then King even referred to the dogs as ‘the babies’ who ‘send you eanum flowers’. At home they had pug statues, pug sculptures and paintings of pugs and in 1952 Cartier created for the Duchess a gold and enamel pug-dog brooch with sad, citrine eyes.

  Wallis sometimes wore a tiny gold notebook on a chain around her wrist and would use it to write down instructions. According to some stories, she would dab face powder on the walls of her home and demand of the decorators that they match the colour. Her rules for living were widely quoted – ‘If you can afford it, then there is no pleasure in buying it,’ or ‘You cannot be too rich or too thin’ – apocryphal, perhaps, but it was how she talked. Those who admired her, such as the interior decorator Nicholas Haslam, found her quick wit refreshing. He recounted how in 1960, when the engagement of Princess Margaret Rose to Anthony Armstrong Jones was announced, the Duchess quipped that these days: ‘She’s dropped the Rose and picked up the pansy.’

  Her desire to be thin took on a new urgency once the eyes of the media began watching to see how she fared in the harsh light of the post-war world. If one day she weighed a pound more, she would starve that day. According to a journalist who knew her well, she weighed ninety-seven pounds (approximately seven stone) as she left the Bahamas and looked thinner than when she had arrived. But such weight loss resulted in ‘her jaw becoming squarer … her smile more downward and her eyebrows more satirical in their upward rise’. From now on breakfast for both of them was grapefruit juice and black tea, and lunch perhaps one egg or, for the Duke, one piece of fruit. She gave her chef written instructions about the weight of her portion of grilled meat: 190 – 200 grams, no more. And it was quickly noted by hostesses that she ate hardly anything and that even tiny portions were mostly just pushed around her plate while she talked. She understood the need to be in command of her image and generally had a surer touch with the style of her clothes than with her decor. She had a front-row seat at most of the Paris haute-couture shows with Dior, Balenciaga, Givenchy and Schiaparelli, as well as Mainbocher and Vionnet, among her favourites. Nonetheless, her craving to be first with the latest fashion led to one or two ghastly faux {spamonpas such as sequinned hot pants on one occasion and a Paco Rabanne ultra-modern spacesuit on another, and her muscular shoulders were less than ideal when it came to strapless evening dresses. But mostly she was impeccably chic and meticulously groomed, choosing plain clothes better to show off her enormous jewels, and (relatively) short skirts to show off her good legs. She was one of the first to make knee-length evening dresses acceptable for this reason. Whenever she was in New York she shopped at Bergdorf Goodman, ate at the Colony Club on the Upper East Side with her few women friends, and called at Elizabeth Arden’s salon for beauty treatments and massages. Stories of how her multiple facelifts had left her with an immobile face and eyes that could never close even when she was asleep did the rounds.

  When Wallis attended a Pillsbury Grand National bake-off competition in December 1950, held in the Waldorf where they were living at the time, she appa
rently wrote her own speech and the one quote that was remembered was ‘there is one thing we all have in common … we’ve all cooked a meal for the man we love’. It was a very American type of event in which the unsung heroine – the home-maker – was honoured for her kitchen skills. At the time it was a new and rather special event organized by the Pillsbury foodstuffs company and important for Wallis because she was hardly considered a home-maker – more a home-breaker – and she struck just the right note. During the war she had produced a cookbook of her favourite Southern recipes with royalties going to the Red Cross and now she became an adviser to a dress-pattern company. But it was still hard to convince the British public that this was a woman interested in domesticity of any kind.

  Frank Giles, who had seen the couple in Bermuda, met them again in the 1950s when he was the Times correspondent in Paris and was invited to dinner. ‘It was a large dinner party, rather unsavoury characters … sort of blue rinse American widows and jet setting Europeans and hangers on. I thought the atmosphere was not very nice. But a very good dinner.’ Giles recalled the Duke discussing Prime Minister Anthony Eden as ‘a bad man, a hopeless man … he helped precipitate the war through his treatment of Mussolini … that’s what he did, he helped to bring on the war … pause … and of course Roosevelt and the Jews … When he was not making remarks about the Jews he could be charming. My opinion of her was that she had become rather coarse and raucous with a twanging yankee voice. Her opinions and her sort of cackling laughter were very unattractive – she had become, I thought, far less admirable if admirable at all.’