by Anne Edwards
Until the time of King George’s illness, the Prince of Wales was almost unerringly faithful to Freda Dudley Ward. Even during his long periods out of the country, his dedication was observed by his staff. Mrs. Dudley Ward did not return David’s love with the same passion with which his was given, and there were quite a few indications that she was not always faithful to him. Having not been born into the English gentry, she was quite comfortable with the role of King’s mistress and too steeped in Monarchy ever to consider marriage to the Prince of Wales.
Eventually, a time came when the Prince of Wales realised that the King and Queen and all of England expected him to marry. So too did Freda Dudley Ward. The idea was not abhorrent to him; he simply was not prepared to make a loveless marriage. He wanted what he believed his father had had—a strong woman who would dedicate her life to him. He might have had some sexual perversions, some masochistic tendencies that had to be satisfied and that related back to Mary Peters and his shocking nursery experiences. If so, he could not indulge them without believing they were coupled with a great and passionate love.
His good friend, young Lord Louis Mountbatten, had married years before,* at which time the Prince of Wales’s younger brother Georgie (now Duke of Kent) had come to live with him. A strong bond had always existed between David and Georgie, and the latter’s presence had been much welcomed. Georgie and Princess Marina (now twenty-seven), however, had met again, and this time they both were very much in love. They were married on November 29, 1934, in Westminster Abbey.† The Duke of Kent was thus too taken up with his own affairs to give much time to his brother.
“What could you possibly want that queer old place for?” the King had asked the Prince of Wales with some surprise when David had proposed converting the castellated conglomeration called Fort Belvedere, situated on Crown land bordering the Great Park of Windsor, for a country residence. Then the King had added sharply, “Those damn weekends, I suppose.”
Those damn weekends were all that kept the Prince of Wales from feeling “caged.” Since 1925, his practise had been to spend his weekends and holidays in small rented country houses “selected because of their proximity to good golf courses.” Begun in the eighteenth century by William, Duke of Cumberland, the third son of George III, Fort Belvedere had been enlarged eighty years later by George IV to house one of his mistresses. An imposing tower, rising high above the surrounding trees, gave it a look of great antiquity. Actually, it was a pseudo-Gothic hodgepodge. A profusion of yew trees kept one side of the house in perpetual shadow, staining the walls with green, acidulous mould. The grounds were beautifully situated, however, and Windsor Castle was only six miles away on the opposite side of the Great Park. But to the Prince of Wales, Fort Belvedere’s most endearing attribute was that “from the top of the tower on a clear afternoon one could see London and with a spy glass make out the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral nearly twenty-five miles away.”
Freda Dudley Ward helped the Prince of Wales renovate and decorate the interior, and she included “modern comforts” not found in any other Royal residence: a bathroom for nearly every bedroom, showers, a steam bath, built-in wardrobes, and central heating. Once Mrs. Dudley Ward’s work was complete on Fort Belvedere, her hold on the Prince of Wales had loosened. While the work was being carried out, David had met the young American bride of Viscount Furness. The beautiful Thelma Furness was the first American woman to whom he had been strongly attracted.
American women were dazzled by the idea of Royalty. The sense of reverence or of servitude that an Englishwoman instinctively exhibited was missing. Friendship with the Prince of Wales was, of course, the ultimate rung on the social ladder. When she met the Prince of Wales, Thelma Furness had learned only recently of her husband’s numerous infidelities. Faced with a despairing wife, Lord Furness informed her that her ideas were too American, and that in England husbands and wives went their separate ways. A chance to avenge herself and at the same time live out a classic American fantasy was presented to Lady Furness when the Prince of Wales invited her to dine with him.
“I arrived at York House, St. James’s Palace,” she later wrote, “at eight o’clock sharp. To my surprise, there were no other guests. I looked around me. The room I found myself in [the sitting room] was big, an enormous map of the world covered the entire far wall. A large and beautiful Empire desk dominated the corner of the room by the windows. Comfortable quilted chintz sofas had been placed on each side of the fireplace, over which hung a portrait of Queen Mary in a white evening gown wearing the Order of the Garter, a magnificent tiara on her head, and a fabulous diamond necklace around her neck.
“... We sat by the fireplace and had cocktails, while the Prince chatted pleasantly about the small things one can discuss without strain or effort. In time he asked me where I would like to go to dinner. We decided on the Hotel Splendide which was famous for its cuisine and its Viennese orchestra. It was a happy choice; we both loved to waltz ... We talked of many things ... just little things ... the admiration in his eyes as we danced, the frank, disarming way in which he spoke as if there had never been a time when we did not know one another, quickened my heart. It all seemed so natural, so right ...”
She describes David as “... a little shy. His hand went often to his white tie. He held his head a little to one side when spoken to. He looked younger than his years ... and very handsome.
“The Prince,” his new inamorata wrote, “was shy, gracious, meticulously considerate ...” Almost like a loving son, she could have easily added.
Thelma Furness’s relationship to the Prince was bizarre enough to make her suffer tremendous guilt. Her husband condoned the liaison and often joined them in a party of six or eight at the Embassy, the Kit Kat, or some other nightclub. Lord Furness was even host at parties at his own home at which the Prince would be one of the guests. After one of these gatherings, Lord Furness would withdraw and leave his wife and the Prince alone. To an Englishman, honour existed in his wife being chosen as the Prince of Wales’s favourite. To an American girl, she became a scarlet woman, and to assuage her own misgivings the affair had to be wrapped in romantic gauze.
When the Prince of Wales went to Africa in 1933, Lady Furness flew to Nairobi with her husband, left him there, and continued on the journey with the Prince, the Governor and his wife, and about forty native guides and servants. Nothing in her and the Prince’s comfort was overlooked. Their equipment included portable bathtubs, dining tables, wine coolers, toilet facilities, the finest mosquito-proofed tents, and a private plane to scout for lions. “It was our enchanted time to be together,” Lady Furness wrote. “As we sat by our own fire, now little more than glowing embers, the tropic African night would come closer and closer ... the air was like a caress, silken soft. No one could remain insensitive to the vastness of the starry sky, the teaming fecund sense of nature at its most prodigal ... We instinctively drew closer ... this was our Eden ... His arms around me were the only reality; his words of love my only bridge to life. Borne along on the morning tide of his ardour I felt myself being inexorably swept from the accustomed moorings of caution. Each night I felt more possessed by his love ...”
No romance novel could have exceeded the impassioned narrative given here. Lady Furness thought herself the incarnate heroine of every American girl’s youthful fantasies. As with all enchanted stories, the magic could not survive reality. Once back in London, David still maintained a relationship with Mrs. Dudley Ward. To his consternation, she had no objection to the presence of Lady Furness in his life and even teased him about the lady’s American insouciance and romantic illusions.
Lady Furness often came to Fort Belvedere at the weekends when Mrs. Dudley Ward was engaged elsewhere. As a token of love, Thelma made a petit-point fire screen for the Prince. He was pleased with it and asked her if she would help him make one for his mother. For many months to follow, the two of them (seated beneath the portrait of Queen Mary), worked hard on a petit-point paperweight w
ith a royal crown, below which were the initials M.R. in gold.
Lady Furness brought into the Prince of Wales’s life other Americans of her acquaintance, among them Wallis Warfield Simpson, who was also married to an Englishman (albeit one who had had an American mother). Wallis was in her late thirties. Born into an old and respected Baltimore family, nonetheless she had not had an easy childhood. After her father’s death, she and her mother had had to live on the charity of his family, which was not always graciously given. Wallis’s first husband, Earl Winfield Spencer, though from an old family, was a ne’er-do-well with neither money nor a grand future. He was also violent and an alcoholic. Wallis divorced him in 1927 and married Ernest Simpson the following year. Gossip spread about her own divorce, and there were rumours that she had set out to break up Mr. Simpson’s first marriage. Simpson’s father transferred his son from the New York to the London office of the family firm. For the first time in Wallis’s life, she was well off, and she wanted more than anything else to move up in society and to have fun.
Before long she met other American expatriates, including Benjamin Thaw and his wife, the former Consuelo Morgan, who was Lady Furness’s sister. In the autumn of 1930, Thelma introduced Wallis to the Prince of Wales. If he was attracted to her at that time, he put all thoughts aside. His life was complicated enough with two women and his additional responsibilities resulting from his father’s ill health. Six months later, prodded by Lady Furness, who simply enjoyed Wallis Simpson’s high good spirits, the Prince of Wales invited the Simpsons to the fort for the weekend. Lady Furness was hostess. Everyone had a lively time, and so the Simpsons were then included in numerous other weekend gatherings. In June 1933, the Prince of Wales gave a birthday party for Wallis (he often made such gestures to acquaintances) at Quaglino’s with Thelma present. A month later, he dined for the first time with the Simpsons at their Bryanston Square flat. The following January, Thelma was called back to the States for family reasons. To leave the Prince for five or six weeks could easily have given Mrs. Dudley Ward the upper hand. A few days before she sailed, she had lunch with Wallis at the Ritz Hotel.
“Oh, Thelma, the little man is going to be so lonely,” Wallis said.
“Well, dear,” Thelma answered, “you look after him for me while I’m away. See that he does not get into any mischief.”
On the surface, Wallis Simpson did not appear to be an extraordinary woman. At the age of thirty-eight, youth was not in her favour, nor was she a woman of great beauty. She gave an illusion of height, yet was only 5 feet, 2 inches tall. She was, however, attractive, possessing distinctive looks: the well-poised forehead, the dark hair coiffed in a nineteenth-century manner to emphasise height, the long face, dark eyes heavily browed, the wide mouth (invariably perfectly drawn in bright red lipstick), and the large mole that looked almost like a beauty spot stuck on her chin at a perfect distance from her lower lip.
She dressed simply and elegantly (usually in Mainbocher), and always looked as though at least three personal maids had helped her to achieve her flawless tidiness (she had, in fact, none). She was self-conscious only about her hands, which were broad, with stubby fingers; because of them she seldom wore rings. Besides her habitual neatness and her dark attractiveness, her feet were her best feature; with “classically separated toes and rouged nails,” they were small (size three) by English standards. She swaggered slightly in her walk and had a brisk step that made it difficult for others, including the Prince of Wales, to remain abreast of her. She was fond of ankle bracelets (perhaps she even inspired the fashion in these that continued into the forties) and once startled a group on the Cote d’Azur by wearing an exquisite emerald-and-diamond ring on one of her small toes. Her voice was fairly strident, with an exaggerated Southern drawl that some people thought must be affected because she used a broad “a”: “caawn’t” and “caaw” (for car). In fact, she had spoken this way all her life.
Bessie Wallis Warfield Simpson was born in Baltimore, Maryland, which—though it considered itself the northernmost point of the South—did not secede from the Union during the Civil War; an historic choice that divided the sympathies of the population. The Warfields were with the Confederate cause, and Wallis’s grandfather spent a year and two months as a Union prisoner. Civil War divisions did not die swiftly in the South, and forty years later, when Bessie Wallis was born, people still bitterly remembered that Grandfather Warfield had refused to take the oath of allegiance to the Union. In addition to the Confederate history, Wallis (Bessie she claimed sounded too much like a cow) grew up fatherless (he had died when she was a small child) and as poor gentility, reliant upon the charity of relatives; these painful roots formed her character.
Her four years in London had been remarkable only for the excellence of her parties. She was a connoisseur of wine and had a gastronome’s gift for the preparation of good food. When dining out, she could identify the ingredients of a good sauce by taste alone and then reproduce it in her small kitchen, usually improving the recipe in so doing. Her flat and her dinner table had a very special look, distinguished by the unique Eastern style of floral arrangement she had learned in Peking when married to her first husband, Earl Winfield Spencer.
In some respects, Mrs. Simpson was atypical of her generation. She was a “wisecracker” and could tell a ribald story as well as any man, and never looked abashed or injured if one was told to her. Her laugh was easy, her memory exceptional. She did not gossip and was not a snob. In America she would have been called “a good sport” or “a man’s woman.”
Lady Furness returned six weeks later, after her meeting with Wallis Simpson, to a cool and distant Prince. In America, Aly Khan had been attentive to her, but, according to Thelma, nothing had happened between them. Still, she thought the Prince might have heard about the flirtation and been jealous. She asked him if this was the case. He refused to answer. The following weekend at the Fort, he did his best to avoid her while still being a polite host.
Deeply troubled when she got back to London that Monday, she telephoned her friend Wallis and made a date at the Simpsons’ for tea. Wallis, after all, was her good friend and one person with whom she felt she could discuss her problem openly.
As Wallis escorted the distressed Lady Furness into her sitting room, she told her maid, Kane, “We don’t want to be disturbed for any reason. Please answer the phone.” After listening sympathetically to Thelma, she assured her, “Darling, you know the little man loves you very much. The little man was just lost without you.”
“Wallis,” Thelma replied, “the Prince has asked me to come to the Fort next weekend. It’s Easter weekend, you know. Would you and Ernest care to come down? It might help.”
“Of course,” Wallis replied warmly. “We’d love to.”
Lady Furness later wrote that at that moment Kane entered the room to tell Wallis that she was wanted on the telephone. “I told you,” she replied with fierce irritation, “I did not want to be disturbed.”
“But Madam,” Kane said hesitantly, half in a whisper, “it’s His Royal Highness.”
“Wallis looked at me strangely,” Lady Furness wrote. “ ‘Excuse me,’ she said and left the room. The door was left open. I heard Wallis in the next room saying to the Prince, ‘Thelma is here,’ and I half rose from my chair, expecting to be called to the telephone. There was no summons, however, and when Wallis returned, she made no reference to the conversation.”
Lady Furness left in a quandary almost immediately. She had not been able to ask Wallis the question that had come instantly to her thoughts: Was it Wallis, not Mrs. Dudley Ward, she had to fear?
That weekend she knew. The Prince and Wallis had their private jokes. Once he picked up a piece of salad with his fingers; Wallis playfully slapped his hand. Later that night, the Prince came up to Thelma’s bedroom.
“Darling,” [she] asked bluntly, “is it Wallis?”
The Prince’s features froze. “Don’t be silly!” he said crisply and then l
eft the room, closing the door quietly behind him.
Lady Furness knew better. She left the Fort the following morning before the weekend had officially ended.
Queen Mary was never known to have discussed her son’s liaison with anyone, but members of her Household were conscious of a disruptive element in her life. She was unusually short-tempered, seldom was amused, and often was seen looking off, distracted, her forehead furrowed, her lips tight. For a woman who was an expert at masking her emotions, such behaviour was enough to give cause for alarm. Her Ladies-in-Waiting were more inclined to believe that the Queen was distressed because the Prince of Wales was causing the King grief than because of any threat to the country. Queen Mary always hated gossip, and for the son she had raised to be King to encourage such scandal was a hard cross for her to bear. Neither she nor the King ever spoke directly to him of this matter.
No one had feared Freda Dudley Ward’s influence on the Prince of Wales. With the years, Freda had developed more in the tradition of Alice Keppel, content to remain out of the public eye. Not so Mrs. Simpson, whose photograph with the Prince of Wales at various outings was frequently published and whose possessive attitude toward him at parties and sports events encouraged much talk. Still, as long as Freda Dudley Ward remained a presence in his life, there was no reason to think he might do anything as untoward as making Mrs. Simpson his established and only mistress. The idea that he might consider marrying Mrs. Simpson was never an option. Mrs. Simpson as a future King’s mistress was enough to cause concern. She was American and divorced, a woman with no sense of propriety or the order of things.
Members of the Queen’s Household spoke together about the situation. Discussions usually ended in the decision that Mrs. Simpson would soon be discarded by the Prince of Wales, as had been Lady Furness, and that he would return once again to Freda Dudley Ward’s safe companionship. Queen Mary herself believed this would be the case.
