The usual epidemic of anonymous threatening letters now broke out, all written by people who had failed to make the best of life; and as the rumor of a plot to blow up Wallis’s house reached David, she and her aunt were asked to stay at the Fort. The question of a morganatic marriage was put up to Baldwin, who dispatched cables to the various Dominions requesting the views of their governments on the subject. The King dined with his mother and sister, opening his heart to them. Queen Mary disapproved, placing the monarchy before all else. He wished her to see Wallis, but she refused. He then confided in his brothers, all of whom received his decision with comparative calmness. Later he heard from Baldwin that the Dominions were opposed to a morganatic marriage, and he realized that it was now a question of sacrificing his love or his throne. Then the balloon went up.
The Bishop of Bradford, Dr. Blunt, made a speech in which he regretted that the King had not shown himself sufficiently aware of the need for divine guidance in the discharge of his high office. In reporting the speech, the press became articulate and there appeared to be two parties in the state, those who thought the King should do as he liked and those who thought he should do as he was told. On one hand he was advised to take a firm stand against his ministers. But he had no desire to do so, hating the idea of dividing the nation on a personal issue. Baldwin arrived at Buckingham Palace, a place the King disliked on account of its musty smell, and told him in effect that his marriage with Mrs. Simpson would mean abdication. The Government and Parliament were behind him, said the Prime Minister. But not the whole of Parliament, because Winston Churchill pressed a waiting policy on the King, saying that Baldwin had no authority to compel a decision on a matter of no immediate urgency, since the divorce could not be made absolute for another five months. Churchill even made a final effort on the King’s behalf in the House of Commons, but was howled down by a mob of M.P.s who would soon be fawning on him; and the only other big figure in Parliament, Lloyd George, deplored “the shabby and stupid treatment” and “the mean and unchivalrous attacks” to which the King had been subjected throughout the crisis.
Baldwin did his best to make the King change his mind, and Wallis insisted that he should remain on the throne at whatever cost to themselves. Before the crucial decisions were made she was secreted out of the country, traveling through France with the King’s friend, Lord Brownlow, as “Mrs. Harris”—which somehow recalls the declaration of Betsey Prig in Martin Chuzzlewit: “I don’t believe there’s no sich a person!” To avoid the press they went a roundabout way to Cannes. Near Lyons someone recognized her and yelled, “Voilà la dame!” The reporters caught up with them and kept close to their car. Cornered at Vienne they managed to escape through a small window into an alley, but found the gentlemen of the press encamped around the house of their hosts when they arrived at 2:30 A.M. on December 6th. To escape notice, Wallis crouched on the floor of their car, covered by a rug. For days they were surrounded by several hundred reporters and photographers. She was besieged, long-range lenses taking the place of long-range guns.
Brownlow advised her to renounce the King. She agreed, and issued a statement to the press expressing her willingness to retire from an unhappy and untenable situation. She read it over the phone to the King, who said that it would make no difference. Her solicitor arrived and asked her to withdraw her action for divorce, which would settle everything. Again she agreed, but when she rang up the King she learned that he had already decided to abdicate. She heard his farewell broadcast, after which she heard from the many half-crazy people who seize such opportunities to vent their self-hatred on some victim who is temporarily incurring odium. The abdication had been caused by social as well as political pressure. Persons of royal blood and peeresses of the realm were dismayed at the prospect of walking behind an American commoner. On such trivialities, as Shakespeare knew, are determined the grave issues of mankind.
The Church, always on the side of convention, publicly rebuked the ex-King in the person of Cosmo Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury, who spoke solemn words in a broadcast to the nation. After saying how strange and sad it was that Edward should have abandoned his great trust for the sake of private happiness, his Grace continued: “Even more strange and sad it is that he should have sought his happiness in a manner inconsistent with the Christian principles of marriage.”
But not everyone in holy orders can have agreed with the Archbishop, because the Rev. R. Anderson Jardine, vicar of St. Paul’s, Darlington, married Wallis to Edward, now the Duke of Windsor, at the Château de Condé near Tours on June 3, 1937, after her divorce became absolute. On the sound principle that it is safe to kick a man who cannot kick back, pressure was brought to bear on the new King, George VI, who wrote to tell his brother that he could not extend the title of Royal Highness to the Duchess of Windsor. Though he knew that George was not responsible for this final insult, Edward was angry, and for a while the relationship between the brothers cooled.
The Duke being interested in housing problems, he and his wife visited Germany, where they were shown both sights and sites by Dr. Ley and met the notable Nazis—Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, Hess and Hitler—the British Ambassador being instructed by his Government to ignore the visit. Having taken tea with Hitler, the Duchess concluded that he did not care for women. Since the Duke liked the country while she liked the town, they compromised by living at Versailles, afterwards taking a house on the Riviera and another in Paris. The outbreak of war in 1939 brought them to England, where the King offered his brother a job and the Royal Family proffered a cold shoulder to the Duchess. Back at Versailles, she worked for a French relief organization, while he joined the British Military Mission at Vincennes as a Major-General. Soon they returned to Paris, where she served with the French Red Cross. With the help of the Spanish Ambassador, they managed an exit to Spain when the Germans entered France. Without his servant, the Duke made havoc with his clothes, and the Duchess reflected that “it is almost impossible for a Prince to be a hero to his wife without a valet.”
When Winston Churchill became Prime Minister, he wanted the Duke in England and placed the necessary air transport at his disposal. But the Duke insisted that, if he went, his wife should be received at Buckingham Palace. Hearing that the Royal Family declined to consider his terms, he would not go. Winston did his best to soften their attitude, but they refused to be softened. An agreement was reached with the Duke’s appointment to the Governorship of the Bahamas. Winston believed that the Germans intended to capture the Duke and, when they had conquered England, to make him King again, thus disuniting the people and sapping their resistance. To be on the safe side a company of Cameron Highlanders guarded them across the Atlantic, in case the crew of a German submarine made an attempt to kidnap them.
They sailed from Lisbon on August 1, 1940, and arrived at Nassau on the 17th. Throughout his period of duty, both of them were engaged in war work, and the Duke quelled a riot by a show of force. When the tide of war turned, the Duke applied for another post closer to the scene of hostilities. Churchill offered him the Governorship of Bermuda, which was scarcely an improvement on his then position, and he rejected it. Clearly his family wished to keep him at a distance.
In the hope that the trials and horrors of war, operating upon the natural emotions, had made her husband’s relations more permeable, the Duchess wrote to Queen Mary, stressing the significance of family ties, and she asked the Bishop of Nassau to hand the letter personally to her mother-in-law. But Mary froze at the mention of the Duchess’s name, though in a letter to her son the Queen sent “a kind message to your wife.”
After the war the Duke and Duchess of Windsor took a house in the Bois de Boulogne and a country residence in the valley of the Chevreuse, both places no doubt being more peaceful than were Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle during the tensions of 1936. The Duchess can certainly claim to have caused more stir in the world than any other of our Pilgrim Daughters.
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{1} The Age of the Moguls by Stewart H. Holbrook, 1954.
{2} Free Love and Heavenly Sinners by Robert Shaplen, 1956.
{3} The Saga of American Society by Dixon Wecter, 1937.
{4} Chronicles of Holland House by the Earl of Ilchester, 1937.
{5} Letters of the Hon. Mrs. Edward Twisleton, Written to Her Family, 1852-62, with a Preface by Ellen Twistleton Vaughan, 1928.
{6} The Fabulous Leonard Jerome by Anita Leslie, 1954.
{7} Lord Randolph Churchill by Robert Rhodes James, 1959.
{8} The Reminiscences of Lady Randolph Churchill by Mrs. George Cornwallis-West, 1908.
{9} The Glitter and the Gold by Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, 1953.
{10} The Life of Lord Curzon by the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Ronaldshay, 1928.
{11} Curzon: The End of an Epoch by Leonard Mosley, 1960.
{12} Reminiscences by the Marchioness Curzon of Kedleston, 1955.
{13} Curzon: The Last Phase by Harold Nicolson, 1934.
{14} Confessions of the Marquis de Castellane, 1924.
{15} Heiresses and Coronets by Elizabeth Eliot, 1959.
{16} The Life of Joseph Chamberlain by J. L. Garvin, vol. 2, 1933.
{17} Beerbohm Tree by Hesketh Pearson, 1956.
{18} On the morning of the death of King Edward VII, she was found crying over the letters she had received from him. (Private information from her theater manager.)
{19} Mrs. Frank Leslie: New York’s Last Bohemian by Madeleine B. Stern (reprinted from New York History, 1948).
{20} Private information from R. H. Sherard.
{21} Free Love and Heavenly Sinners by Robert Shaplen, 1956.
{22} Child of the Twenties by Frances Donaldson, 1959
{23} A Silver-Plated Spoon by John, Duke of Bedford, 1959.
{24} The Light of Common Day by Diana Cooper, 1959.
{25} The Light of Common Day by Diana Cooper, 1959.
{26} I Am My Brother by John Lehmann, 1960.
{27} Lost Splendour by Prince Felix Youssoupoff, 1953.
{28} One Man in His Time: The Memoirs of Serge Obolensky, 1960.
{29} Heiresses and Coronets by Elizabeth Eliot, 1959.
{30} History of the Great American Fortunes by Gustavus Myers.
{31} Heiresses and Coronets by Elizabeth Eliot, 1959.
{32} The Life of Sir William Harcourt by A. G. Gardiner, 1923.
{33} Double Exposure by Gloria Vanderbilt and Thelma Lady Furness, 1959.
{34} With Dearest Love to All: The Life and Letters of Lady Jebb by Mary Reed Bobbitt, 1960.
{35} Nancy Astor by Maurice Collis, 1960.
{36} The New York Times, May 19, 1959.
{37} Private information from Philip Gosse.
{38} Rudyard Kipling by Charles Carrington, 1955.
{39} Memoir by Kipling’s daughter, Mrs. George Bambridge (Vide Rudyard Kipling by Charles Carrington, 1955).
{40} The Cloak That I Left, A Biography of Rider Haggard by his daughter, Lilias Rider Haggard, 1951.
{41} Hugh Walpole by Rupert Hart-Davis, 1952.
{42} “Kipling and the Vermont Feud,” lecture by the Earl of Birkenhead, published in Essays by Divers Hands, Being the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, vol. 30, 1960.
{43} Private information.
{44} Private information.
{45} Private information.
{46} Harley Granville Barker by C. B. Purdom, 1955.
{47} The Heart Has Its Reasons by the Duchess of Windsor, 1956.
{48} A King’s Story by H. R. H. the Duke of Windsor, K. G., 1951.
{49} The Light of Common Day by Diana Cooper, 1959.
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