The Real Wallis Simpson: A New History of the American Divorcée Who Became the Duchess of Windsor

by Anna Pasternak

  The moment she entered the Fort, Wallis was hit by the tense change in atmosphere: the servants’ faces looked strained; the telephone was constantly ringing. Wallis realized with sadness that this “was no longer the enchanted Fort; it was the Fort beleaguered.”35

  That weekend, Belvedere was abuzz with the constant comings and goings of palace aides, government advisors and couriers. The king was either on the phone or locked in his study. He had five private lines installed, one direct to Lord Beaverbrook.36 On Sunday afternoon, after a lengthy conference with Sir Walter Monckton and the king’s solicitor, George Allen, Edward took Wallis into the library and told her the truth of the situation. The government, he said, would not approve a morganatic marriage, and he did not want to follow Winston Churchill’s and Duff Cooper’s advice to temporarily forsake her in order to be crowned king, and to reunite with her after a suitable length of time.

  “I was crushed,” Wallis recalled. “I felt unutterably sorry for him in the dilemma into which his love for me had brought him so early in what had promised to be a glorious reign.”37

  The shock of Edward’s stance triggered a huge physical and psychological collapse. Desperate and forlorn, Wallis was ordered to rest, there being genuine fears for her health and her heart. According to Honor Channon, Wallis sent her a “charming note” during this time in which she described having “a sort of break-down.”38 She also wrote two letters to her closest girlfriends, the first to Sibyl Colefax:

  Dear Sibyl,

  I have been put to bed for a week’s isolation policy. I am very tired with and of it all—and my heart resents the strain—so I am to lie quiet. I am planning quite by myself to go away for a while. I think everyone here would like that—except one person perhaps—but I am planning a clever means of escape. After a while my name will be forgotten by the people and only two people will suffer instead of a mass of people who aren’t interested anyway in individual feelings but only the workings of a system. I have decided to risk the result of leaving because it is an uncomfortable feeling to remain stopping in a house where the hostess has tired of you as a guest. I shall see you before I fold my tent.

  Much love,

  Wallis39

  To her American friend Foxie Gwynne, she wrote more openly:

  Darling Foxie,

  Everything is wrong and going more wrong—and I am so tired of it all. Even the heart has been acting up and I have been put to bed for a week’s rest—no calls, no callers. The US press has practically ruined two people’s lives however—they go on pounding away—it does get one’s morale down. I think I shall remove myself when I am well enough for a small trip and give it all time to die down—perhaps returning when that d---d crown has been firmly placed. I want to see you so much and hear your news which must be cheery and happy. So when I can I’ll ring you.

  Much love, Wallis40

  Wallis had finally made the decision to remove herself from the scene, regardless of Edward’s protestations. She needed a few days’ bed rest to recover her health and garner strength. Sadly for her, events were moving too quickly for her to gain control of the situation.

  On December 2, Edward motored to London to meet Stanley Baldwin at Buckingham Palace. There he was told, unequivocally, that the government would not sanction the necessary legislation for a morganatic marriage and that the support of the Dominions would not be forthcoming. More blows were to follow. That same day, an inflammatory speech was delivered at the normally sedate Diocesan Conference in Bradford. The bishop of Bradford, the Right Reverend A. W. F. Blunt, gave a sermon lamenting that the king was not a more diligent churchgoer. In his dissertation on the religious nature of the coronation ceremony, he made some highly pointed remarks about Edward: “The king is a man like any other—if he is to do his duty properly. . . . We hope that he is aware of this need. Some of us wish that he gave more positive signs of such awareness.”41 This was taken to mean that the king needed divine guidance in his marriage.

  The bishop’s open criticism, in such a charged atmosphere, proved to be the catalyst. For weeks, the editor of the Times, Geoffrey Dawson—whom Edward regarded as an archenemy and in the pocket of Stanley Baldwin—had had a leading article ready to be printed, demanding that the king reply to the claims made about him in the foreign press. When Edward heard that the Times was also about to come out with a fierce attack on Wallis, he asked Baldwin to get it stopped. Baldwin replied that he could not control the press, but offered to pass on the king’s request to the editor.

  In his meeting with Baldwin, Edward had made it clear that he would not contemplate remaining on the throne without Wallis by his side as his wife. “Whether on the Throne or not, Mr. Baldwin, I shall marry; and however painful the prospect, I shall, if necessary, abdicate in order to do so.”42 Edward later wrote of this decision: “My whole life—the ordered, sheltered existence that I had known since birth—had blown up and was disintegrating. And in the chaos around me I had three distinctive desires: to dampen the uproar if I could; to avoid the responsibility of splitting the nation and jeopardising the Monarchy on the issue of my personal happiness; and to protect Wallis from the full blast of sensationalism about to overwhelm us both.”43

  The king arrived back at the Fort for a late dinner with Wallis and Bessie. “One look at his face told me that the worst had happened,” Wallis said. Characteristic of his chivalrous nature, not wishing to alarm Aunt Bessie, Edward made no mention at the dining table of that afternoon’s earth-shattering events. After dinner he suggested that he and Wallis take some air. It was a cold, foggy night, and as they walked up and down the flagstone terrace, Edward told Wallis that “it has been a bad day” and that there had been an emphatic rejection of the morganatic marriage.44 “A damp fog had rolled up across from Virginia Water; peering in the direction of London, I could almost feel the vibration of the Fleet Street presses,” he said. “So it comes to this. Either I must give you up or abdicate. And I don’t intend to give you up.”45

  Wallis reiterated over and over that abdication was unthinkable. That his place was at the head of his people. “He was scarcely listening. His mind was far away, Now, with everything on the brink of disaster, with the Throne tottering and David beyond my reaching, I realized that the time had come for me to take matters into my own hands to the extent that I could.”46 Standing in the darkness, Wallis calmly and firmly told him that she was going to leave the country. She had already stayed too long; she wished that she had gone after he had showed her Hardinge’s letter. To her great relief, in fear of what the next day’s press onslaught would bring, Edward did not try to prevent her. “It will be hard for me to have you go,” he finally said. “But it would be harder still to have you stay. Your situation here would become harrowing beyond belief. You are right to go. I must handle this in my own way, alone.”47

  Edward later wrote: “I suppose that every actor in the Abdication drama has his own idea of where and when the real turning point occurred. For me, scanning across the years, it came, I am sure, that evening on the flagstones at Fort Belvedere. For in agreeing with Wallis that it would be better for her to leave Great Britain I must have unconsciously made up my mind that the struggle to save my Throne was hopeless, and that in the end, come what may I would follow her.”48 That night, he “felt grievously responsible for the trouble and sorrow that” his love “had brought down upon her head.”49

  In the early hours, unable to sleep, Edward rang Max Beaverbrook. “He told me that he meant to retire into private life,” recalled Beaverbrook. “If this statement was final, there was no sense in carrying on the struggle. But I did not believe it was final. For though the king often spoke of abdication he always indicated that he was anxious to stay on the throne.”50

  The following day, Beaverbrook and Churchill busied themselves in a campaign to secure favorable press for the king. “When the lines of battle were clearly drawn, the newspaper support for the king was certainly more powerful in the country than the
opposition,” said Lord Beaverbrook. “The Times, Morning Post, Daily Telegraph and Daily Herald were against him. On the other hand, the Express and the Mail groups were strongly for him, along with some of the provincial papers.”51

  Although Wallis thought that she “was braced for the blow,” she was unprepared for what faced her in the papers on her morning breakfast tray on December 3. “There in black type,” in newspaper after newspaper, “were the words ‘Grave Constitutional Issue,’ ‘Grave Crisis’ and ‘Constitutional Crisis.’ The dam was broken; I felt unnerved; self reproach flooded through me. Everything that David and I had created between us—everything that David in his tenderness had seen in me—was about to be rendered public and common.”52

  The king himself felt “really shocked” by the press. “Could this be the king or was I some common felon?” he wondered. “The press creates, the press destroys. All my life I had been the passive clay that it had enthusiastically worked into the hackneyed image of a Prince Charming. Now it had whirled around me and was bent upon demolishing the natural man who had been there all the time.”53

  Wallis dressed hastily and sought Edward, whom she found at his writing desk in the drawing room. Hearing her enter, he quickly pushed aside the heap of newspapers at his elbow. She told him that she had already seen them all. As he took her in his arms, Wallis said: “Dearest David, I am sorry I’ve done this to you.”54 They decided that she should leave that day and discussed Wallis going to stay with Katherine and Herman Rogers in the South of France. True intimates, the Rogers responded immediately to the request for sanctuary: “of course you must come to us.”55 Bessie would stay behind, then return to America.

  Edward insisted that his lord-in-waiting, Lord Brownlow, accompany Wallis to France. Wallis was well acquainted with Perry Brownlow and his wife, Kitty, as they were frequent visitors to the Fort. Anticipating that every road from Belvedere was being watched by the press, the king arranged for Ladbroke, his chauffeur, to drive Wallis’s Buick to Newhaven and board the night ferry to Dieppe as a decoy. Inspector Evans of Scotland Yard was to accompany Ladbroke, and together they would then meet up with Perry Brownlow and Wallis in France. Perry would come to the Fort later that evening under the cover of darkness to chaperone Wallis. But on “the one day in history when the king really needed Lord Brownlow, he was nowhere to be found,” remembered Diana Vreeland, who was related to Perry. “Finally, they found him in a Turkish bath. He’d been a bit of a toot, and was having a good old massage when the message came through: would he please go directly to Fort Belvedere, bringing a change of clothing?”56

  Unable to return to Cumberland Terrace, which since rumors of the king’s abdication had broken had been besieged by a baying, stone-throwing mob,57 Wallis nervously sent a maid to fetch some clothes on her behalf. She then summoned George Allen to her bedroom, to draw up a new will.

  Before leaving the Fort, Wallis discussed with Edward a final plan which it was hoped might keep him on the throne. Because of his huge popular appeal across the country, Wallis implored the king to broadcast a personal appeal to his people and put his case directly to them. The plan was to make the broadcast the following day, after the king had spoken with the prime minister. His plan was to then withdraw from the country for a period to allow public opinion to form on the subject of his marriage, delegating his authority to a council of state. Wallis, however, wanted the king to simply tell the people in the broadcast that he was giving her up. With help from Sir Walter Monckton and Allen, Edward drafted his “appeal to the hearth and the home.” Sadly, it was never delivered. It contained the following paragraph: “Neither Mrs. Simpson nor I have ever sought to insist that she should be queen. All we desired was that our married happiness should carry with it a proper title and dignity for her, befitting my wife.”58

  Chips Channon wrote on this day: “The country and the Empire now know that their Monarch, their young King-Emperor, their adored Apollo, is in love with an American twice divorced, whom they believe to be an adventuress. The whole world recoils from the shock; but very few know that she is a woman of infinite charm, gentleness, courage and loyalty, whose influence upon the King, until now, has been highly salutary.”59

  At dusk on December 3, Lord Brownlow arrived in his Rolls-Royce, driven by his chauffeur. He found the king “rather pathetic, tired, overwrought, and evidently dreading Wallis’s departure, almost like a small boy being left behind at school for the first time.”60 Wallis, the king, Aunt Bessie, Perry Brownlow and Ulick Alexander, the king’s courtier who had made the arrangements for the trip to France, sat around the supper table looking desolate. Too fraught and miserable to eat, they ran over the arrangements for Wallis’s departure. Brownlow recorded the scene: “Wallis deeply oppressed, the king nervous and, as ever, over-attentive to all of us, such as mixing the salad, pouring out soda-water, and lighting cigarettes for all of us.”61 After dinner, the king took Perry aside to thank him, and to entreat him to take care of his precious consignment. This, Lord Brownlow realized once they were en route, was indeed extremely precious in other ways: Wallis was traveling with part of her jewelry collection, estimated to be worth around £100,000 (£2 million today).

  “Our last moments together were infinitely sad and forlorn,” the king later wrote. “Nothing was said between us as to when or where we should meet again.”62 Though her last moments at the Fort were hurried, for Wallis “they were nonetheless poignant,” she recalled. “I think we all had a sense of tragedy, or irretrievable finality. As for me, this was the last hour of what had been for me the enchanted years. I was sure I would never see David again.”63

  Almost as difficult as saying good-bye to Edward was Wallis’s parting from Aunt Bessie. Bessie Merryman had loyally supported Wallis throughout everything, and Wallis felt that she was now leaving her behind “in the forlorn wreckage of my life.”64 They had decided that it would be best for Wallis not to take Slipper, her adored cairn. He would stay with the king. “In the bitter days that followed, I was grateful for his companionship,” said Edward. “He followed me around the Fort, he slept in my bed; he was the mute witness to my meetings with the prime minister.”65

  At 7 p.m., Wallis came out of the front door of the Fort, as the chauffeur was packing away her bags. Perry discreetly moved to the far side of the car to give Wallis and Edward a last minute together. “David embraced me. His parting words were: ‘I don’t know how it’s all going to end. It will be some time before we can be together again. You must wait for me no matter how long it takes. I shall never give you up.”66 Edward then “leant across to her to get one last touch of her hand,” observed Brownlow. “There were tears in his eyes and on his cheeks, and his voice was shaking.”67

  Edward stood on the terrace and watched the dimmed lights of the Rolls disappear as it took the back drive down towards Virginia Water. Before Aunt Bessie left for Cumberland Terrace, she pleaded with the king not to abdicate. “Wallis will be blamed, perhaps even more than you,” she told him. “She is bewildered. This terrible uproar has frightened her and not for herself alone. You can always marry someone else, but you can never again be king.”68

  Wallis, meanwhile, had left Edward one last note of instructions, written on Fort Belvedere paper. A servant delivered it to the king. “Be calm with B[aldwin],” she beseeched, “but tell the country tomorrow I am lost to you but Perry and myself can discreetly manage. We will let BatemanI know. A big big oo’oh.”69

  As Wallis was ferried to the Sussex coast, sitting in silence, trying to gather herself, the king motored to London to have his late-night meeting with the prime minister at Buckingham Palace. The king immediately “thrusted” the idea of the broadcast at Baldwin. The prime minister, who seemed startled, told the king that constitutionally he could not broadcast to the nation without the consent of his ministers. He would, however, put it to them the following morning, though again, he said it was unlikely that their consent would be forthcoming.

  As the king
left Buckingham Palace, a small crowd gathered to cheer him, which lifted his spirits. There was a sense that most people wanted to keep Edward VIII, “the People’s King,” on any terms, much to the horror of the establishment, the Church, the royal court and sections of the Tory press. The following morning, the Daily Mail led with the headline “The People Want Their King.” A few people even expressed a liking for the fact that Wallis was not drawn from the ranks of the aristocracy. “It is character that Counts here, & in Great Britain, not a Tytle [sic],” a woman from south Wales wrote to the king.70

  That night, the House of Commons was “astir as it had probably never been before,” wrote the MP Chips Channon. “Baldwin rose amidst cheers and said that as yet there was no constitutional crisis, and that it was inexpedient to say more. Winston Churchill then got up, his voice breaking, and with tears in his eyes, said he hoped nothing irrevocable would be done before reflection, and the din of cheering was impressive.”71 Baldwin “answered noncommittally, but the sentiment in the House of Commons is pro-Government and pro-Baldwin,” added Channon. “It feels that the king has no right to plunge us into this crisis and feels the Dominions would not stand Wallis as queen, even if England did.”72

  In a very uncharacteristic outburst, reflecting the high emotions of the situation, Winston Churchill shouted at Baldwin: “You won’t be satisfied until you’ve broken him, will you?”73—and then left the chamber.

  The exhausted king then had to go to Marlborough House to see his mother. She had written him a note at 2.30 that afternoon: “Darling David, this news in the papers is very upsetting, especially as I have not seen you for 10 days,” and signing off: “Ever yr loving Mama, Mary.”74 She asked Edward to call in on her that day.