by Diana Mosley
The Prince of Wales did not much care for royal visits to his parents which he was obliged to attend. Early in 1914 the Danish King and Queen came and there was a banquet. ‘I took in Granny,’ he wrote. ‘Then we stood about in the picture gallery till 11.15 talking to the guests. What rot and a waste of time, money and energy all these State visits are! This is my only remark on all this unreal show and ceremony!’
That summer the Prince was twenty; during the London season he went to a ball nearly every night. At first he was shy, but after a while: ‘I have now become fond of dancing and love going out!… I’ve had no more than eight hours sleep in the last seventy-two hours.’ He was attached to the 1st Life Guards and had to report at the barracks early each morning.
The investiture of Edward as Prince of Wales in Caernarvon Castle in 1911. He wore satin breeches and a mantle and surcoat of purple velvet edged with ermine, which he called ‘preposterous rig.’ The King is shown presenting his son to the people of Wales.
In April 1912 the Prince was sent to France to learn the language, an experiment which was not very successful as he was never to be fluent in French.
A photograph from the Prince’s album in the first year of the Great War.
Ever since the fatal 28 June when Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated threats and counter-threats had reverberated all over the Continent, but in London life went on just as usual. Towards the end of July the full international implications of what the Prince was later to describe as ‘this villainous act’ became apparent. Prince Henry of Prussia called at Buckingham Palace to say goodbye to his first cousin the King. ‘We were coming out of church when he arrived’ wrote the Prince. ‘Uncle Henry and I shook hands warmly. I had happy memories of my stay at Hemmelmark the year before, and I felt that his Anglophile sentiments made him dread the awful possibility of war between our two countries as much as we did. I never saw him again.’
When war was declared on 4 August there was an explosion of public enthusiasm and rejoicing; crowds gathered outside Buckingham Palace and the King and Queen had to go on the balcony and be vociferously acclaimed. The general view, even among those who might have known better was that the fighting would be over by Christmas. With the hindsight of two great wars lasting four and six years this may seem more absurdly optimistic than it did in 1914. When France and Germany had fought in 1870 the war had been fairly quickly over. The French had then introduced three years’ compulsory military service and their great army looked forward to a spectacular revenge. Nobody foresaw the holocaust of trench warfare, hundreds of thousands of men killed for a gain of a few square miles of mud. After witnessing the demonstration at the palace the Prince wrote: ‘I was lulled to sleep by their fearful shindy at 1.30. The die is cast; may God protect the fleet!’
He asked the King for a commission in the Grenadiers. ‘Dear Papa never hesitated a moment and immediately instructed Lord Stamfordham to notify this to the War Office,’ he wrote. ‘It was a happy moment for me, and now I am an officer in the Army and am going to do active service! I get away from this awful palace where I have had the worst weeks of my life!’ But although he got away from the awful palace it was only to go to Warley Barracks in Essex. After hard training they were sent back to London and in mid-September the Battalion went to France. The Prince was left behind. ‘It was a terrible blow to my pride,’ he wrote later, ‘the worst in my life.’ Trying to conceal his bitterness he asked the King why this had to be, and was told: ‘Lord Kitchener does not want you to be in France just now.’ He bearded Kitchener at the War Office. ‘What does it matter if I am killed?’ he said, ‘I have four brothers.’ Lord Kitchener said he could not risk the Prince being taken prisoner by the enemy.
In the long casualty lists the Prince of Wales found the names of many friends with whom he had trained only a few weeks before. Among them was his equerry Major Cadogan. ‘I shan’t have a friend left soon,’ he wrote in his diary. Eventually he was sent overseas, though only to a staff appointment. He began to appeal to Lord Stamfordham, who had the ear of the King, to be allowed to go in to the front line. ‘Our poor 1st Battalion had seven officers killed and seven wounded. Ghastly,’ he wrote to the old courtier in March 1915.
Of course my position at such times as these four days becomes all the more painful and depressing when I know I am only to be a spectator … There is no job I am qualified for but that of a regimental officer … though it is sad to have to say it, I have no real job except that of being P. of Wales … I am awfully sorry for inflicting you with all my small troubles, but you have always been and are so good and kind to me that I can’t help it.
After September 1915 the Prince was appointed to the staff of Major-General (afterwards Field-Marshal) Lord Cavan, who commanded the Guards Division, and from then on he was often near the front line and saw much of the fighting. When his own driver was killed he received a letter from Lord Stamfordham saying that the King was content to leave the decision to Lord Cavan as to where and when he went to the front. ‘But, Sir, you who are so thoughtful for others, will not, I feel certain, forget Lord Cavan and the heavy weight of responsibility resting upon him in his Command and remember that your safety, your Life, so precious to your Country, is another care which circumstances have devolved upon him. Make it as light for him as you can, Sir! To anyone of your nature it is hard, very hard, to be left behind when the others are at the danger points.’ Lord Stamfordham wrote this just after his only son had been killed in action.
The Prince was present when the King visited the armies after the battle of Loos. In order that the troops might see him better, General Haig had lent him his own supposedly very quiet and crowd-trained charger. The King rode among the ranks, until one of the officers called for ‘Three cheers for His Majesty the King.’ At the loud and sudden shout the horse took fright, reared up and fell back on top of the King, who suffered a fractured pelvis, an agonising accident.
Sent to Egypt in 1916 the Prince was taken to Khartoum where officers still talked of General ‘Chinese’ Gordon. He had seen Gordon’s Bible at Windsor, the very one he had with him ‘at the time he was run through by the spears of the maddened Fuzzy-Wuzzies on the steps of his Residency’ as the Prince described it.
The Prince with his father, George V, in France 1915.
His war service brought him into contact with men of all kinds in a way that could hardly have happened in peacetime. Back in France he still chafed: ‘Oh! to be fighting with those grand fellows and not sitting back here doing so little as compared with them who are sacrificing their lives! There could be no finer death.’ He was still on Lord Cavan’s staff when there is a glimpse of him in Italy in the memoirs of Sir Colin Coote, who had a period with a French division on the Italian front. Coote heartily disliked the French divisional commander who, according to him, was ‘a grumbling, foul-mouthed swine.’ The Prince of Wales paid them a visit during which ‘he could and did charm that French divisional staff into raptures. Even the General thawed, and later said: “After all, your nation can produce a civilized man,” a remark absolutely typical of the brute.’
What did the ‘grand fellows’ in the Guards think of him? A confidential report sent in by Lord Cavan in March 1916 says:
As I had the honour of having HRH the Prince of Wales, KG, on my staff … I beg to submit a report on HR Highness … I have no hesitation in saying that HR Highness has endeared himself to every officer and man in the Guards Division—not only on account of his high courageous spirit which chafes at the restraint that his high position enforces.
Nevertheless I have taken opportunities to show HR Highness as much as possible of life in the front trenches, and especially the battle of Loos … and from what I have seen of him … I can but regret that the services of so fearless an officer should not be available for ordinary duty with his regiment.
As a staff officer he was very quick at picking up instructions and was very particularly efficient at organizing any out-of-doo
r work such as regulation of refilling points and making arrangements for the transfer of rations from lorry to supply wagons by cleanly and smart methods.
HRH always kept himself in the pink of condition truly setting an excellent example to other young officers.
For these reasons I should certainly have considered HRH worthy of ‘mention in despatches’ and I hope that his good service and excellent example may not be overlooked.
Signed Cavan, Lt General XIV Corps.
The war dragged on, first one side then the other gaining a slight advantage, until America was thrown into the scales so that virtually the whole world was fighting against the Central Powers. In November 1918 the Allies had won the war and an Armistice was signed. All over Europe thrones toppled, first in Russia and then in Germany, Austria and Hungary.
CHAPTER FIVE
Divorce and Remarriage
I looked at the dragon-pond,
with its willow-coloured water
Just reflecting the sky’s tinge,
And heard the five-score nightingales
aimlessly singing.
Ezra Pound
WALLIS ARRIVED IN Shanghai in 1924 knowing nobody. But a letter of introduction to a man she calls ‘Robbie’ (his real name was Harold Robinson) led to the good time she always had wherever she happened to be. The hope of getting a divorce from Win Spencer quickly faded, but she decided to stay on for a while. There were garden parties and racing and dancing; the hospitable foreign colony consisted mostly of English people. When one of the American Navy wives suggested going to Peking for a shopping expedition Wallis accepted; she had always wanted to see Peking. She knew that an old friend, Colonel Louis Little, commanded the US Legation Guard there. The American Consul at Tientsin warned her and her companion that to travel further was unsafe. A local war was being fought, and trains were constantly being raided by bandits. The other Navy wife decided to give up the idea of Peking when the Consul threatened to report to the Navy that in going there she had disregarded the advice of the US Government representative. ‘My husband would never forgive me if I went against the Consul and something awful happened,’ she said.
But Wallis, having come so far, took the train, and although it arrived eight hours late and had several times been boarded by bandits she was none the worse. Colonel Little, who had been told of her journey by the Tientsin Consul, was on the platform to meet her. He was visibly annoyed, but soon accepted the situation. Wallis stayed at the Grand Hôtel de Pékin. She intended to spend a couple of weeks sight-seeing and shopping, but she fell in with an old friend, Katherine Moore Bigelow, now married to Herman Rogers. This couple was destined to be important in Wallis’ life. The Rogers invited her to stay with them at their house in the Tartar City, a lovely old house in a garden hidden behind a high wall. Stipulating that she must be allowed to pay her way, Wallis accepted; so cheap was Peking in those days for Americans that she could easily afford it. She supplemented her allowance as a Navy wife by her winnings at poker.
Her visit to Peking was one of the happiest times of her life and she always looked back upon it with pleasure as a peaceful interlude. She was fond of Katherine and Herman Rogers, and they of her. She loved the beauty of her surroundings, her daily ride with her hosts in the glacis round the Legation quarter, and above all the weekends they spent in a temple hired from the local priest. It was high up in the Western Hills; they drove to the foot hills and rode the rest of the way on donkeys. Herman Rogers was an intelligent, well-read man who had studied Chinese history and Chinese art. The foreign colony in Peking, diplomats and business men, provided gaiety, but her visit to China was not just the usual good time and she enjoyed it much more. It was in Peking that she made friends with Georges Sebastian, a Romanian brought up in France. He was a man of taste and a perfectionist such as she was later to become herself, he was doubtless a great influence upon her. When he left Peking Sebastian went to Tunis, where in 1928 he built himself a beautiful house at Hammamet. He supervised the restoration of the Medina there, forbidding electric wires (and, later, television aerials) so that nothing should spoil the purity of the sky-line. Long afterwards, in the 1950s, it was to him that Wallis turned when she thought of building a house in Spain.
Many months went by before she could make up her mind to leave this idyllic existence and go back to America. On the voyage home she became ill. She was put ashore at Seattle and taken to hospital where she had an operation. When she had sufficiently recovered she took the train east; at Chicago. Win Spencer unexpectedly appeared and travelled with her to Washington. This rather touching reunion was their last; they never saw one another again.
Staying with her mother in Washington, Wallis now discovered that she could get a divorce for desertion if she lived for a year in Virginia. Different States had different divorce laws and all she had to do was establish residence; the rest was easy and not expensive. She lodged in an hotel at Warrenton and before long she became acquainted with Virginia’s horsey set. She had intended to enrich her mind during lonely months at Warrenton and she had provided herself with plenty of books, but she was soon as much in demand as ever for dinners and parties. She sometimes visited her mother, and often stayed with her old friend Mary Kirk, now Mme Raffray, who lived in Washington Square, New York.
Her great preoccupation at this time was deciding how to set about earning her living. She knew she had a talent for clothes which might be turned into money, and she entered a competition in a fashion magazine; the winner was to be taken onto the editorial staff. She was in New York staying with the Raffrays and she sat up all night polishing her essay. Weeks later she got a letter from the magazine rejecting her effort. Thus discouraged, she attempted to learn about the selling of tubular steel for a Pittsburgh businessman whose wife was a friend of hers. ‘Nobody else seems to be able to sell it. Maybe Wallis can,’ said Mrs Schiller. After three weeks at Pittsburgh Wallis decided that tubular steel was not for her.
Shanghai in the 1920s: The Bund and the British Concession (above); a shopping street (below).
The British Legation in Peking, with the minister’s residence, and a temple on the Tartar Wall, Peking.
It was at this juncture that she started seeing a good deal of Ernest Simpson, whom she had met with the Raffrays. He, like Wallis, was in the process of getting divorced. When she went back to Warrenton he gave her an armful of books to take with her. In New York that time she visited a fortune-teller who told her she would have two more husbands and become ‘a famous woman.’
In 1926 her mother, now aged fifty-six, married again, a Washington man, Charles Gordon Allen. The wedding was a small family affair, and a few weeks later Wallis’ Cousin Lelia invited them all for a party at Wakefield Manor to celebrate the Fourth of July. Her mother wrote in the visitors’ book: ‘Here on the Fourth of July with my Third,’ which was evidently considered one of her vintage wisecracks. A better one, dating from the same period, was the caption she wrote under a snapshot of herself sitting on Mr Allen’s knee: ‘Me on my last lap.’
During the summer of 1927 Wallis was taken to Europe by her Aunt Bessie. They visited Naples, Palermo and the Dalmatian coast, Monte Carlo, Avignon and Arles. Aunt Bessie returned to America while Wallis went to Lake Maggiore with friends. Back in Paris she read in the Paris Herald that her Uncle Sol had died. She sailed for home. Uncle Sol had left most of his fortune to charity, but Wallis received a small annuity.
In December 1927 she got her divorce from Win Spencer; Simpson was also free and he asked her to marry him. Ernest Simpson’s father was English, and he was to take over the family’s shipping business in England. Wallis asked him for time to think about his proposal. She sailed for Europe and spent the spring staying with Katherine and Herman Rogers, who were now living near Cannes in a villa called Lou Viei. While she was there she wrote to Ernest Simpson and told him that she would marry him.
It is hard to resist the thought that for the second time Wallis was marrying because t
here was nothing much else she could do. She had tried, and failed, to get a job. She had very little money and no home to go to. Simpson was not a particularly attractive man but he was a determined suitor. He was well read, widely travelled, with courtly manners; and he was fairly rich. Above all, he admired Wallis, who was everything that he could never be, spontaneous, amusing, popular, high-spirited. They were married at Chelsea Registry Office; the bride wore a yellow dress and a blue coat she had bought in Paris. They drove through France in a yellow Lagonda. Ernest Simpson knew his way about. He spoke good French and in Paris he took her to little restaurants where they had delicious food. They did a lot of sightseeing; Simpson according to Wallis was the Guide Michelin, Baedeker and an encyclopaedia rolled into one. She was pleased with their honeymoon.
Wallis’ mother, Alice, who was twice widowed and married Charles Gordon Allen as her third husband in 1926.
Back in London they took a furnished house, 12 Upper Berkeley Street, for one year. Wallis had a butler, a cook, a housemaid and a chauffeur. Her sister-in-law, Mrs Kerr Smiley, introduced her to her friends. At Upper Berkeley Street Wallis’ genius for ‘house-keeping’ first had real scope. She did her shopping herself and chose well. This was unheard of in the London of those days: the cook always bought the food, usually ordering it on the telephone so that the shops did the choosing. Like all Americans, Wallis thought English table manners odd; eating with knife and fork, and not waiting to begin until everyone had got their food, as is the custom in America.
