I considered how history hangs like an invisible mist in these legendary rooms. Here the king had met Queen Mary for the last time before abdicating. He had sat with his mother, sister and three brothers in the formal drawing room before dinner. I imagined them stunned yet scrupulously polite, each nursing abject fear of what the future would hold when their beloved David left England that night. Only he was unwavering in his resolve.
The greatest surprise to me writing this book was how much I warmed to the Duke of Windsor. I already knew that I liked and related to Wallis. No one forced her to begin a relationship with the Prince of Wales but when she could not extricate herself, she must have felt devastatingly alone prior to the abdication. Most of the time she was viewed by the world as hard as granite, and the severe look she cultivated did not help. But it is too easy to write her off as manipulative and domineering, when inside she often felt vulnerable and afraid. She was powerful—in her effect on Edward—but powerless, in her inability to prevent events from spiraling out of control.
I felt disappointed in Wallis when she embarrassed the duke with her foolish flirtation with Jimmy Donahue and wished that she had not belittled him in an overly domineering way in public. But I could see that it was hard for her to live with that kind of obsessive, suffocating devotion. After his death, it was even harder to live without it. Wallis’s loyalty to Edward was unquestionable. Before he abdicated, she genuinely wanted him to reign as a successful and fulfilled sovereign. Once she was entrapped in marriage to him, she determined to do her best by him because she had grown to love him. In this endeavor, against the backdrop of psychological assassination from the rest of the world, she triumphed.
The deeper I got into researching his story, the more I felt for Edward; I liked him, despite his wild inconsistencies of character. He was both public hero and private coward; ostentatious and wincingly mean, overindulged and emotionally neglected; weak, rash and infuriatingly stubborn. He knew that royalty promises a palace but delivers a cage. His endless torment was that he caged Wallis without any of the expected gilded trappings. However, he deserves respect for never giving up on his quest to have his wife accepted by his family. His love for Wallis was as selfish and as crucial to his survival as a child’s; it would have been the more loving act to have relinquished her. However, he remained true to his principle, determined to show the world that Wallis was worthy of marriage, as opposed to relegating her to the diminished role of mistress. Wallis had to suffer the rejection of not being honored by her husband’s family on an international scale. She contained her private agonies with laudable dignity.
The love affair between Edward and Wallis was both an iconic story of sheer devotion and a heartrending chronicle of the consequences of sacrifice. I believe that Wallis never wanted to marry the king of England. She was enthralled by the glitter and prestige of his position, yet later maintained that she would have preferred to have stayed in the shadows of history with Ernest Simpson. Whether, as Ernest doubted, this would have sustained her after the excitement of royal favor is questionable. However, once trapped into marriage to Edward, burdened by his almost choking adoration, she did her best to make their life together as perfect as possible. No matter who was in the room, “the duke only had eyes for her,” Diana Mosley said of Edward’s love for Wallis. “I think that it is something quite unique for middle-aged and old people who have been married for over thirty years to be so completely in love as he was. She was devoted to him and did her utmost to make him happy and that’s where she succeeded.”4
Count Rudi von Schönburg observed: “In over fifty years of running a hotel, I have seen thousands of couples together. I have seldom seen a couple as integrated as they were. They had been married for thirty-five years by this point and had a deep confidence in each other and mutual respect. It was an extraordinary love.”5
I wanted to honor this love by placing flowers on Wallis’s grave, to pay tribute to the woman I had come to respect and feel great affection for. It pained me that the duchess had commented that she did not expect anyone to visit her in death. I was deeply fortunate to be allowed to go to Frogmore, situated in the Home Park at Windsor, to visit the Royal Burial Ground. I chose my bouquet with care; it contained her wedding flowers: white peonies, delphiniums the color of her Mainbocher blue wedding dress, larkspur and sprigs of wild grasses. For the duke, I took a smaller posy of white carnations, a reminder of his wedding day boutonnière, mixed with forget-me-nots.
The duke’s and duchess’s graves are together but set apart from the other royal graves, separated by the vast, protecting boughs of the plane tree. As I placed my bouquet, I felt relieved; they were together at last, accepted into the royal fold. It would have given the duke tremendous pleasure that they had finally taken their rightful place in history. His brothers’ graves are to the right; opposite stands the Royal Mausoleum, the resting place of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Tranquillity radiates; the quiet power of monarchy and manicured privilege.
The sacred ground is surrounded by the lovely, almost informal gardens of Frogmore House, with its lake and paths mown through wildflowers. A month earlier, Meghan Markle celebrated her marriage to Prince Harry here. The plane tree by Wallis’s grave lies in the distance.
As I stood over the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s final resting places, it struck me as ironic that, in death, Wallis and Edward were back in this unique realm, when they had been driven from it in life. The duke’s smooth Portland stone grave is adorned with his heraldic roll call of names and his regal title. The duchess’s grave, of rougher-hewn stone, simply says: “Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, 19th June 1896–24th April 1986.” Her lack of HRH remains jarring.
Wallis wrote to Edward after the abdication, astutely aware of the fact that receiving the title Her Royal Highness would be “the only thing to bring me back in the eyes of the world.” Given everything that she went through and the propriety with which she endured her suffering, this is the title she should have had, was legally entitled to and deserved. It has been my intention to bring Wallis Simpson favorably back in the eyes of the world, and this book is dedicated posthumously to HRH the Duchess of Windsor.
I reject the notion put forward by some that, faced with a choice between love and duty, I chose love. I certainly married because I chose the path of love. But I abdicated because I chose the path of duty. I did not value the Crown so lightly that I gave it away hastily. I valued it so deeply that I surrendered it, rather than risk any impairment of its prestige.
—Edward, Duke of Windsor, 19471
Bessie Wallis Warfield aged six months, with her mother, Alice, 1896.
Four generations: Edward, aged six, with his great-grandmother Queen Victoria, his grandfather Prince Edward (later King Edward VII) and his father Prince George (later King George V).
Naval cadets Edward and Bertie with their mother, Queen Mary, at Barton Manor, Isle of Wight, 1909.
The Prince of Wales, 1911.
A young Wallis, aged ten.
US Navy pilot Earl Winfield Spencer, Wallis’s first husband.
Wallis with her bridesmaids and maid of honor for her marriage to Spencer, 1916.
“Adored and feted like a film star”: Edward on tour, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1919.
Edward with Winston Churchill, one of his political mentors, 1919.
Wallis and her second husband, Ernest Simpson, presented at court in June 1931.
Fort Belvedere: Edward’s country retreat in Berkshire.
Wallis relaxes at Belvedere with her favorite cairn terrier Slipper, 1935.
King George V’s funeral procession, January 1936. Wallis was watching from St. James’s Palace.
“A breathtaking breach of protocol,” as Wallis places a hand on the king’s arm during the Nahlin cruise along the Adriatic, August 1936.
Wallis, wearing the famous lobster dress by Schiaparelli, photographed for Vogue by Cecil Beaton at the Château de Candé, France, May 1937.
T
hree weeks after Bertie’s coronation as George VI, Wallis and Edward marry, June 3, 1937, at the Château de Candé.
Never before published. An official event in Nassau, 1940. Afterwards, Wallis invited the girl who presented her with flowers to a children’s party at Government House.
In Nassau during the Second World War, Wallis became local president of the Red Cross.
Never before published. The duke and duchess with their friend Charles Bethell, who introduced them to Nassau society, 1940.
Never before published. The duke and duchess on the steps of the Bahamian Club at a farewell party that they hosted, Nassau, 1945.
Dorothy Wilding’s portrait of the duke and duchess, New York, June 1943.
“I had not seen him for nearly 9 years!” recorded Queen Mary of her son’s visit to Marlborough House in October 1945. They relished their time together, but her views on his “unfortunate marriage” had not changed.
A life in exile: the duke and duchess return to France from a trip to the United States, 1955.
Never before published. Wallis dines at the Marbella Club, September 1964. Count Rudolf von Schönburg (standing), the Marquesa de Toreno, the Duke de Arion and the Duchess of Windsor.
The Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Charles visit the duke and duchess in the Bois de Boulogne, in May 1972, shortly before the duke’s death.
The Queen’s guest: two days before Edward’s funeral, Wallis watches the Trooping the Colour from Buckingham Palace, June 3, 1972. Incurably sad, it was her thirty-fifth wedding anniversary that day.
The Queen, Wallis and the Queen Mother leave St. George’s Chapel after the funeral service for the Duke of Windsor.
Funeral of a duchess. Wallis’s coffin is carried, watched by Prince Charles, the Queen, the Queen Mother and Princess Anne, April 20, 1986. There had been no funeral address, in accordance with the duchess’s wishes. Nor any mention of her name or reference to her life.
Inside the house of the exiles: Wallis’s bedroom in the villa in the Bois de Boulogne, with her glass-topped dressing table and pug cushions lined up on the sofa.
The author’s bouquet of flowers: a tribute to Wallis at her grave at Frogmore, where she lies next to Edward under a wide-spreading plane tree.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND NOTE ON SOURCES
My interest in the love affair between the Duke and Duchess of Windsor began early. Aged eleven, I watched the 1978 television series Edward and Mrs. Simpson with my parents. Edward Fox, as the charismatic yet petulant Prince of Wales, stands out in my mind to this day. My mother gave me Michael Bloch’s Wallis and Edward: Letters 1931–1937 when the collection was first published in 1986; I read them when I was at university, and felt moved and haunted by this tragic love affair. Bloch’s book contains the most romantic documents of the era, charting Edward’s obsessive and overwhelming passion for Wallis, and the struggle that she endured trying to stave off the abdication.
When it was announced in November 2017 that Prince Harry was to marry American divorcée Meghan Markle I felt a profound sense of injustice flare up for poor Wallis. While I was relieved that the royal family has modernized to the extent that they allowed Ms. Markle to become the Duchess of Sussex and accord her the title Her Royal Highness, I still feel a burning sense of prejudice on Wallis’s behalf. While I was delighted that the popular Prince Harry would remain a legitimate member of the royal family on his marriage, I felt sadness for his great-great-uncle Edward, who was exiled not just from the country but also from the inner sanctum of his own family on his marriage to Wallis.
It was Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s engagement that precipitated my interest in writing about Wallis Simpson, fuelling my desire to rehabilitate her in history. Interest in the abdication story will doubtless reignite when Prince Charles ascends to the throne. Current debate simmers over whether Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, can ever become queen as opposed to princess consort. As Camilla is also a divorcée, this uncertainty echoes some of the battles Edward and Wallis endured. Will we see Queen Camilla or will this become a morganatic marriage, the solution Edward was denied? Though Edward and Wallis lived in different times, monarchy is about continuity and the use of titles is a powerful element of that; it therefore seems bitingly unfair that Camilla was granted the coveted title HRH, a title that the British royal family cruelly denied Wallis (and even any future children).
In my quest to rehabilitate Wallis, I have been touched and surprised by friends who have introduced me to their friends who knew the royal couple. I decided that fate was on my side when I went to stay with the Duke and Duchess of Fragnito, in Gstaad, just as the idea for this book was percolating. I had not realized that my host, David, had spent time with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in Palm Beach in the sixties. During our visit, David and his wife, Patricia, held a dinner party for us. One of the guests, Ann Pleydell-Bouverie, from a prominent Nassau family, mentioned that her parents had known the duke and duchess well in the Bahamas. She introduced me to Julie, whose father, Charles Bethell, was the duke’s closest friend during his time in the Bahamas and was able to provide many insights. Julie Le Corne also showed me photographs never seen before of the royal couple. By now it truly felt like fate, and as the praise for Wallis from a wide, unrelated circle began to accumulate, I knew that this was an important book for me to write.
Anne Sebba wrote the last definitive biography of Wallis, That Woman, in 2011. I decided to seek her counsel while writing my book. Her excellent portrayal of Wallis and her situation highlights Wallis’s entrapment by the prince and reveals Wallis’s enduring love for Ernest. When I asked Sebba: “Did you like Wallis?” she replied, “What’s to like?” I, however, have taken a completely contrary view: my response would be “What’s not to like?” I am grateful to Anne for encouraging me to pursue a book about Wallis in which I hope that the reader feels the same sympathy and tenderness for the female protagonist that I do.
Other friends of the duke and duchess, I was delighted to discover, were happy to contribute to a book that celebrated rather than condemned Wallis. Georgia Coleridge introduced me to Nicky Haslam, whom I cannot thank enough for his kindness and generosity towards me and the extent to which he has championed this book. He let me quote from never-before-seen correspondence and has been a constant source of inspiration, steering me towards the memoirs of Elsa Maxwell, Diana Vreeland, Mollie Panter-Downes, Edith Olivier and the glamorous scrapbooks of Baron de Cabrol.
Rachel Kelly introduced me to Lord Norwich, who was equally kind, generous and supportive. My time spent with him was especially meaningful as, sadly, John Julius Norwich died on June 1, 2018, while I was completing this book. I treasure a postcard he sent to me after our meeting. “I too greatly enjoyed our talk,” he wrote. “You probably know what Wallis is said to have said to him in November ’36: ‘You must understand, darling, that you can’t abdicate and eat it.’ ”
I am grateful to Sarah O’Brien, who introduced me via her father, the Honorable Michael O’Brien, to historian and writer Hugo Vickers. Vickers’s Behind Closed Doors: The Tragic, Untold Story of the Duchess of Windsor is a gripping portrayal of the end of the duchess’s life and her captivity by the despotic Maître Blum. Vickers’s later book, the edited diaries of James Pope-Hennessy, The Quest for Queen Mary, is funny, riveting and insightful. I thoroughly recommend this to anyone interested in the royal family and was grateful to be able to quote from it, as well as to interview Hugo, who was at both the Duke and the Duchess of Windsor’s funerals.
I am indebted to Count Rudi von Schönburg, with whom I had a fascinating, long lunch at the Marbella Club. He could not have been more generous with his recollections. Thank you also to Alejandra García at the club, who sourced the archives for a wonderful, previously unpublished photograph of Wallis.
I am profoundly grateful for and touched by the generosity of Mrs. Galen Weston, the current owner of Fort Belvedere, who allowed me to visit this fascinating property as part of my research.
My thanks, too, go to Dean Peckett, who gave us a memorable tour of the gardens that Edward loved so much. He was patient with my desire to touch the trees along the Cedar Walk and allowed me time to soak up the atmosphere. I am equally indebted to Sarah, Duchess of York, and HRH the Duke of York for allowing me to visit Royal Lodge and, the most special of all, to place flowers on Wallis’s grave at Frogmore. This was the most moving and fitting end to my journey with Wallis.
I am incredibly appreciative of everyone above who has given me so much time, help, wisdom, expertise and support during the research and writing of this book. My immense gratitude also goes to Audrey Pasternak, Daisy Pasternak, Eugenie Furniss, Arabella Pike, Trish Todd, Kate Johnson, Katherine Patrick, Linda Mathews-Denham, Charles Spicer, Monika Barton, Richard Furgerson, Yvonne Williams and Judith Osborne. Also, my thanks go to Julie, April and May from Bluebells Florist, Henley, who each week prepared a spectacular bouquet of flowers, which I had on my desk while writing to inspire me, as Wallis adored flowers so much.
The Real Wallis Simpson: A New History of the American Divorcée Who Became the Duchess of Windsor Page 34