Traitor King

by Andrew Lownie

  Atop the villa was a penthouse, reached by a lift, which the Duke called ‘The Belvedere’, a mixture of office, private sitting room and Fleet Admiral’s quarters, where a telescope allowed him to look out to sea. It was decorated with a ship’s chronometer, which had belonged to George V, ship’s brass bell and a barometer, together with golf and hunting trophies, photographs of his parents and about half a dozen pictures of Wallis.

  ‘Two low built-in shelves of unvarnished oak held the Duke’s collection of tiny toys and mementos – the result of a life-long hobby,’ remembered Dina Hood, who worked as the Duke’s secretary in this period:

  Many of the little figures were amusing; some were rather touching, like the little set of doll’s house furniture in black and gold, which included a grandfather clock, a screen and a writing desk with a bookcase above it. There was a tiny toy tea service on a tray, a miniature table with a cocktail shaker and glasses on it, and a minute bookcase full of books. One shelf was entirely devoted to toy animals: a dog in a kennel and a dog on a chair, two funny little pigs, a small white frog and a tiny green hedgehog with pink quills.23

  Outside the house was a crescent-shaped terrace with six columns facing the sea. Steps down the cliff led to the sea where a swimming pool was cut into the rocks and there were two small pavilions for changing, with large red-and-white awnings. Above them flew the Prince of Wales’s standard.

  The Windsors employed sixteen servants, including two chauffeurs, a butler and a famous French chef, Pinaudier, all dressed in a personal livery designed by the Duke of scarlet coats with gold cuffs for formal occasions and black suits with crimson, white and gold striped waistcoats during the day. There were lightweight dress suits of pale grey alpaca for summer, whilst in Paris they wore black suits with crimson, white and gold striped waistcoats with silver buttons and gold-collared scarlet waistcoats for formal dinners.

  WE was entwined with the Duke’s coronet on the silver buttons of the grey alpaca livery worn by the butler and footmen and on everything from the uniforms, writing paper, menu cards, bed linen to the lifebuoys hanging by the pool. Most nights they dined out of doors at a W-shaped table on the terrace overlooking the sea with elaborate meals, such as melon with tomato ice, and eggs in crab sauce. A hairdresser came daily, a manicurist twice a week.

  Royal protocol was insisted on, with guests bowing or curtseying to both Windsors on first seeing them in the morning, whilst the Duke’s secretary had to stand whilst she took dictation. Wallis referred to her husband as ‘the Dook’ and she was always ‘Your Royal Highness’. This fantasy sustained their relationship. Everything, in short, was an attempt to recreate the life they had lost.

  ‘I sat next to the Duchess. He sat opposite. They called each other “darling” a great deal. I called him “Your Royal Highness” a great deal and “Sir” the whole time. I called her “Duchess”,’ wrote Harold Nicolson to his wife, after dining with the Windsors at Somerset Maugham’s house in August 1938:

  One cannot get away from his glamour and his charm and his sadness, though, I must say, he seemed gay enough. They have a villa here and a yacht, and go round and round. He digs in the garden. But it is pathetic the way he is sensitive about her. It was quite clear to me from what she said that she hopes to get back to England. When I asked her why she didn’t get a house of her own somewhere, she said, ‘One never knows what may happen. I don’t want to spend all my life in exile.’24

  There were recurrent attempts by the Palace during this period to try and give the Windsors some position. ‘Both the King and the Queen have talked to me recently about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and have mentioned the feeling of bitterness which they are understood to feel towards their majesties and the other members of the royal family,’ Lord Halifax wrote to Sir Eric Phipps, the British ambassador in Paris, on 3 May 1938. ‘They suggested it might be a good move, and do something to remove some of this feeling, if the Duke and Duchess were to be asked to dine on some suitable occasion at the embassy.’25

  But the concern remained that the Windsors might upstage the new king. In July 1938, when George VI and Elizabeth paid a state visit to France, the Windsors diplomatically chartered a 200-ton motor yacht for six weeks and cruised down the west coast of Italy with Herman and Katherine Rogers, though they were dissuaded by the Foreign Office from staying with Wallis’s friend, the architect Georges Sebastian, in Italian-dominated Tunisia.

  ‘You will remember how miserable I was when you informed me of your intended marriage and abdication and how I implored you not to do so for our sake and the sake of the country. You did not seem able to take any point of view but your own’, wrote Queen Mary to her son in July, adding, ‘My feelings for you as your Mother remain the same, and our being parted and the cause of it, grieve me beyond words. After all, all my life I have put my Country before everything else, and I simply cannot change now.’26

  But relations within the family remained strained, not helped by the mutual antipathy between the new Queen Elizabeth, whom Wallis called ‘Cookie’, and Wallis, whom Elizabeth could never go beyond calling ‘That Woman’.

  At the end of August, Monckton was summoned to Balmoral, joining Neville Chamberlain, who had succeeded Stanley Baldwin as Prime Minister, to discuss a possible visit of the Duke to Britain in November 1938. Chamberlain wanted him ‘to be treated as soon as possible as a younger brother of the King, who could take some of the royal functions off his brother’s hands,’ recorded Lord Birkenhead in his life of Monckton, which was based on private papers. The King ‘was not fundamentally against the Prime Minister’s view’, but the Queen was against giving him ‘any effective sphere of work’ on the grounds he was a threat to her husband, who was ‘less superficially endowed with the arts and graces that please.’27

  The discussions rumbled on throughout the autumn, with no change of attitude by the Royal Family and growing concerns that the Duke might become a rallying point for Mosley’s fascists and other organisations.28 ‘I have been warned in the most emphatic terms . . . that such a visit . . . would evoke strong protest and controversy,’ wrote Chamberlain to the Duke, reporting on public opinion towards a Windsor visit in spring 1938. He had received almost 200 letters and ‘of these letters, over 90 per cent, in one way or another, express opinions adverse to the proposal.’29

  This was supported by a Special Branch report. ‘It is openly stated in circles connected with the Press that the Duke of Windsor has been in touch with certain newspaper proprietors with the object of starting a publicity campaign in this country, in order to create an atmosphere favourable to the return of himself and the Duchess of Windsor.’30

  It was clear the Windsors were to be kept out of Britain.

  1 The equivalent today would be about $550.

  2 Michael Bloch, Secret File, pp. 124–5.

  3 It is now a luxury private hospital. There had been rumours they would take the Château de Grosbois, which Napoleon had given to Marshal Berthier, but Wallis thought it ‘too royal’. New York Times, 20 February 1938.

  4 Constance Coolidge diary, supplied by Andrea Lynn, but available at reel 5, Crowninshield-Magnus papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

  5 Constance Coolidge diary, 23 March 1938. This was a different stalker from the one in chapter 5.

  6 Constance Coolidge diary, 26 March 1938.

  7 Charles Higham, In and Out of Hollywood (University of Wisconsin Press, 2009) p. 279.

  8 It was the chateau, Villa Leopolda, built for King Leopold of the Belgians and then owned by the American architect Ogden Codman. Later owners included Gianni Agnelli and Edmond and Lily Saffra. It is regarded as the most expensive property in the world.

  9 Coolidge diary, 5 April 1938. The inference was that Wallis’s suspicions about Kitty Rothschild were true. The Prefect of Police was Roger Langeron.

  10 In and Out, p. 279.

  11 Caroline Blackwood, The Last of the Duchess (Macmillan, 1995), p. 211.

  12 One w
as an affair with Pinna Cruger, the actress wife of a New York haberdashery millionaire, on a trip to the United States in 1924, whilst travelling as Lord Renfrew.

  13 Pierre’s son makes the case in L’homme qui aurait dû être roi: L’incroyable récit du petit-fils caché d’Edouard VIII by Francois Graftieaux with Jean Siccardi, and Helen Grosso (Cherche Mido, 2016). A British version of the story is The King’s Son: The True Story of the Duke of Windsor’s Only Son by J.J. Barrie (privately published, 2020).

  14 The story was optioned for film by Todd Allen.

  15 Peter Macdonald to the author, 25 February 2021.

  16 Sunday Times, 11 July 1999.

  17 Sunday Times, 11 July 1999.

  18 Anthony Camp, Royal Mistresses and Bastards: Fact And Fiction 1714–1936 (Society of Genealogists, 2009), p. 398, and John Parker, King of Fools (St Martins, 1988), pp. 71–2. Seely contributed a foreword to the latter. Family members have suggested that it was actually Elizma who was the Duke’s child.

  19 Camilla Seely to author, 25 August 2020.

  20 26 March 1938, Simon Heffer, Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries 1918–38 (Hutchinson, 2021), p. 846.

  21 27 March 1938, N.J. Crowson, Fleet Street, Press Barons & Politics: The Journals of Collin Brooks (Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 202–3.

  22 The Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis owned the chateau from 1950 to 1957, selling it after his wife, Athina Livanos, found him in bed with her friend, the socialite Jeanne Rhinelander. The house was then acquired by Onassis’s brother-in-law and business rival Stavros Niarchos, who bought it for his wife, Eugenia Livanos, Athina’s sister. Since 2001 it has been owned by the Russian businessman Roman Abramovich, who is believed to have spent £30 million restoring the chateau.

  23 Dina Wells Hood, Working for the Windsors (Wingate, 1957), p. 61.

  24 5 August 1938, Nigel Nicolson (ed.), Harold Nicolson: Letters and Diaries 1930–1939 (William Collins, 1966), pp. 351–2.

  25 F0 800/326, TNA.

  26 James Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary (Allen & Unwin, 1959), p. 575.

  27 Birkenhead, p. 169.

  28 In June 1938, Henchmen of Honour founded by a retired barrister Robert Elton had unsuccessfully tried to have the Abdication Act repealed and ‘Friends of the Duke of Windsor in America’ had begun a campaign to ‘cut short the oppression against him and restore him to rightful, useful place among the nations.’ Sunday Dispatch, 8 January 1939.

  29 Monckton Trustees, Box 16, folio 214, Balliol College.

  30 5 January 1939, MEPO 10/35, TNA.

  CHAPTER 7

  Countdown to War

  In October 1938, the lease having expired at Château de La Maye, the Windsors took on a ten-year lease of a mansion close to the Bois de Boulogne and the Saint-Cloud Golf Club. No. 24 Boulevard Suchet, in the 16th arrondissement, was a four-storey town house on a small corner lot, overlooking a paved square and surrounded by a tall iron fence and thick hedges. The imposing front door led into a pillared entrance hall with a black-and-white Carrara-marble floor and white columns, from which led several rooms used by the secretaries and detectives. At each corner of the hall in a mirrored recess stood a tall white caryatid, bearing on her head a crown of candles.

  There was a small lift to their apartments on the left and on the right a curved white marble staircase with green carpet led to four interlocking reception rooms built round a big central landing – a formal drawing room, small salon, dining room, and a lounge known as the banquette room.

  There were sixteen servants including: James Hale, the English butler who had previously worked for Charles Bedaux and who was known as ‘the butler with the golden voice’; a French chef, Monsieur Dyot, previously chef to the Duke of Alba; an Austrian valet, Rudolf Kopp, and chauffeur, Karl Schafranek; French and English footmen; two English housemaids; and for Wallis, an English chauffeur, Tony Webster, and a Swiss lady’s maid.1

  Protection remained a big issue, with several British and French police officers always with them, even when the Duke played golf. When the couple lunched or dined in restaurants or with friends, or they paid visits to couturiers, milliners, jewellers or antique shops, an officer always waited outside and a Gendarme always stood guard at the front door of their home.

  The new house became their project, a way of demonstrating their love for each other. ‘Tirelessly she searched for exactly the right furniture, rugs, materials, lamps and bibelots. She came to know intimately every antique shop, large and small, in Paris,’ recollected Dina Hood. ‘Everything that concerned the house was of absorbing interest to the Duchess. Besides the furniture and bibelots, she collected fine porcelain, glassware, silver and linen.’2 She thought nothing of paying £8,000 for a single Meissen figure or £30,000 for a pair of canary diamonds – generally bought with cash to avoid tax.3

  The couple ate little during the day, the Duke preferring to spend the lunch hour on the golf course, knowing that few Frenchmen would venture out at such a time. Instead, Hood remembered, he might have a light brunch, which ‘consisted of stewed fruit or open fruit tart served with cream, accompanied by digestive biscuits and weak tea. He was very fond of fruit tarts, especially of Apfelstrudel, which he had learnt to know in Austria.’4

  Their focus was on the evening, giving two dinner parties each week and out most other nights. ‘Never in my life have I worked so hard,’ remembered the butler James Hale, who worked at both La Croë and Boulevard Suchet:

  The Duchess, I soon discovered, graded the villa, not so much as a home, but as the stage on which to present an unending show of hospitality and entertainment. She was the producer; I was her stage manager. On my arrival . . . I found house telephones not only in the butler’s pantry, not only in my bedroom – but in my bathroom and lavatory as well. It was clear that when the Duchess insisted on instant communication with the staff at all times, she meant, at all times.5

  They were demanding and not always popular employers. ‘A dropped plate, a careless intrusion, or a slip in attentiveness could be counted upon to bring a swift dressing down, followed often by peremptory sacking,’ remembered Charles Murphy, who worked for the Windsors. ‘The hours were long, praise was scanty. It is doubtful that any household staff in all Paris was driven as hard as the one that served the Windsors.’6

  Each morning Wallis discussed the menus for the day with the chef. ‘She examined these minutely, sometimes approving, sometimes altering or adding to his suggestions,’ Hood remembered.7 She continued:

  Into every branch of expenditure she enquired exhaustively. Household accounts were kept with scrupulous exactness in accordance with the cash book and ledger system into which Mr Carter had initiated me that day at Buckingham Palace. In the ledger, payments were grouped under various headings which were sub-divided in such minute detail that a close watch could be kept on every kind of disbursement.8

  With little else to occupy them, the devil was in the detail. ‘They decided the exact shade and size of their personal notepaper and how it should be engraved,’ Hood later wrote. ‘The same for their menu cards. Their luggage labels were printed according to their own instructions. Together they chose the designs and colourings of their Christmas cards.’9

  * * *

  In October 1938, Valentine Lawford, a young diplomat at the Paris Embassy, wrote to his mother: ‘Last night I had quite a historic time, as I was asked to a musical evening at Elsie Mendl’s, and found on my arrival (with the dessert) the men of the party sitting around the table being held forth to by the Duke of Windsor.’ He continued:

  HRH was in a marvellous mood and made me come and sit beside him and tell him every detail of my (rather humdrum) life . . . After we moved out of the dining room, he told me to come and sit by him on a sofa in a corner of one of the rooms, and there we sat for half-an-hour, while he held forth on politics and pumped me all that time about what the younger generation thought about everything. He’s very Nazi in his ideas and seems to have a hor
ror of Bolshevism . . . he was quite charming to talk to and obviously means well, though I think he’s very wrong-headed and prejudiced, for all his experience. Of course he wanted to know what the FO thought about Chamberlain’s foreign policy (of which he entirely approves) . . . Please, keep the Windsor dope to yourselves. People talk so much that it might get back to HRH that a certain 3rd Secretary had said he was a ‘Nazi’, etc.10

  Lawford, then in his late twenties, became a regular part of the Windsors’ and Mendls’ entourage. On 1 February 1939, he described a film viewing that included Somerset Maugham’s wife Syrie amongst the guests. ‘It was amusing to see HRH watching his great-grandparents gambolling about at Balmoral, and he seemed to enjoy it . . . We went back after, to supper at Elsie’s, where the Duke spoke fluent Spanish and became quite jolly . . .’11

  The next night he dined with them:

  The Windsors were very kind and nice and jolly the other night and I had quite a heart-to-heart talk with the Duchess. We dined at Maxim’s, where we were joined by Alexandra Metcalfe and the Sacheverell Sitwells . . . The Duke found that the orchestra got in the way of his talking – and he talks a great deal – so we left Maxim’s and drove back to their house on the Boulevard Suchet. Incidentally, his French is appalling: he calls it the Bwaa de Boolone. The house is so far only half furnished; but it looks as if it would eventually be extremely pleasant: high rooms with tall windows and, of course, beautiful furniture.

  His bedroom is also Empire, darkish red and gold; and he has a passion for little helmets. His chairs have helmets at both corners of the back; and his bedside-clock is enclosed in a helmet of metal and mother-of-pearl . . . His bed – on which were laid out the royal pyjamas and dressing-gown – is also Empire, dark red . . . The Duchess has a bedroom of very dark blue, and white . . . I can’t help feeling that he is sadly wasted . . . But the Duchess said they were in no hurry to go back to England if they weren’t wanted . . . I am dining on Saturday at the Ritz with [Lady] Bertha Michelham, when the Windsors will be her guests of honour. I don’t seem to be able to get out of their orbit; but I must admit that I honestly enjoy being with them both. HRH is astonishingly plain-spoken, simple and straightforward; and she is marvellously good company.’12