by Diana Mosley
In Madrid the British Ambassador was the Duke’s old friend Sir Samuel Hoare, who told them that the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was sending flying boats to Lisbon to bring them home, and that the Duke of Westminster had offered them Eaton Hall in Cheshire. The Duke said he would go to England as soon as the question of the position of the Duchess was cleared up. On their previous visit to England a few months before she had been completely ignored and the Duke was not prepared to see this happen again. He has been criticized for making conditions about such a trifling matter when Britain was fighting for its life. In June 1940 there was, in fact, no fighting anywhere since France had signed an armistice. England was preparing to fight, but there was total calm until the following August and the outbreak of the Battle of Britain. If the Duke’s request was so trifling why was it not complied with? It did not appear trifling to the authorities in Britain, and even Winston Churchill, who was so fond of the Duke and so well disposed, was unable to make them budge. He offered the Duke the governorship of the Bahamas, and it was accepted. Churchill’s telegram ended with the significant words: ‘I have done my best.’
On their arrival in Portugal the Windsors were met by the British Minister, Sir Walford Selby, whom they had known when he was en poste in Vienna. He installed them in a house by the sea at Cascais, belonging to the banker, Senhor Espirito Santo. While the Windsors’ destination was still in doubt the Duke was visited by Miguel Primo de Rivera, brother of the celebrated José Antonio who had been murdered during the Spanish Civil War, and son of the old dictator. Rivera wanted to persuade the Duke to return to Spain rather than go to the Bahamas. He reported that he told the Duke that he might yet be called upon to play an important role and possibly ascend the English throne. The Duke was astonished and replied that under the British Constitution this would never be possible after the Abdication. The story goes that the Spaniards (and behind them, naturally, the Germans) wanted the Duke to stay so that he could be kidnapped at an appropriate moment and induced to work for Germany.
In the summer of 1940 there was a possibility that Britain might be defeated, and when a country is defeated in war, sooner or later the conqueror tries to find men among its citizens who would be prepared to take over the responsibility for running its affairs and negotiating the best terms possible with its conqueror. In Germany five years later, for example, Konrad Adenauer and Willy Brandt were willing to play such a part. It is most unlikely that Hitler himself would ever have imagined the patriot he knew the Duke to be could have been induced to do any such thing. Remembering his own feelings at the end of the First World War, he must have known it would be unthinkable. Also, quite apart from patriotic sentiment, for the Duke, having abdicated, to ‘ascend the English throne’ would have been highly dishonourable.
At the same time, since it is the duty of officials to prepare for any contingency, it is not impossible that the Germans on the spot and their Spanish friends hoped he would stay in Europe. It would have been utterly out of character for him to allow himself to be thus used, and among his own countrymen even those who, for one reason or another, disliked him have never believed in its possibility. There is a world of difference between a passionate desire for peace and a readiness to work for a victorious foreign power.
During the First World War the enemy was a Germany where the Duke had spent happy months as a boy, and almost every sector of the German army was led by near relations of his. The British royal family did not greet the outbreak of war in 1914 with the insouciant excitement that a large number of the less thoughtful of their subjects displayed. Yet, as we have seen, the Prince’s only wish had been to get into active service. In the Second War he would have preferred a negotiated peace to the destruction of Europe and the loss of the Empire, but this he must have known was out of the question since the fall of France.
Another clumsy effort to induce the Duke to stay was made when he was told that the British Secret Service planned to get him to the Bahamas and then murder him. Walter Monckton flew to Lisbon and had a long talk with the Duke. An extra detective was provided, and after a tiresome wait for a ship to take them across the Atlantic the Duke and Duchess left for Bermuda and thence for the Bahamas. They wanted to go to America on the way, but President Roosevelt declined. In November he had an election coming up and was going to win by promising to keep the United States neutral. The isolationists would have made great propaganda if he had received such a prominent Englishman.
Notes
18 In conversation with the author.
19 In a letter to the author.
20 In conversation with the author.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Bahamas
What is hard today is to censor one’s own thoughts;
To sit by and see the blind man on the sightless horse, riding into the abyss.
Arthur Waley
THE BAHAMAS ARE a group of islands which geographically form a continuation of the Florida keys. Government House stands on a hill and from its pillared façade there is a view over the sea, while from the back it looks over gardens to the town of Nassau. Providence Island, though not the biggest, is the most heavily populated of the islands in the Bahamas.
The very hottest time of the year in the Bahamas is mid-August, and that is when the Windsors arrived. The Duchess says that during the reception of the Duke as Governor both he and the Chief Justice were pouring with sweat and their signatures were just two blots on the page. Eighteenth-century Nassau is very pretty with its immensely tall palm trees and Georgian architecture, and Government House is just like the ‘colonial style’ houses in the American South that the Duchess remembered from her childhood. When she saw it she declared it absolutely lovely.
But the old house was shabby and needed renovating, and the Windsors telegraphed Mr and Mrs Frederick Sigrist to ask whether they could rent their house while the work was done. The reply was no, not rent, but that the Sigrists would lend it with pleasure. It is a delightful, comfortable house built on coral foundations above the sea on Prospect Ridge, with a large garden. The Windsors gratefully settled in. Frederick Sigrist was a brilliant aeronautical engineer, the creator, with Sir Thomas Sopwith, of the Hawker-Siddeley Aircraft Company; he was about to leave for California where he advised the Americans on the manufacture of Hurricane Fighters.
Hot for about three months, the rest of the year the Bahamas bask in perpetual summer. Like all places with a really lovely climate, in those days there were plenty of insects to annoy; they annoyed the Duchess, who complained loudly of being eaten alive. There are beautiful gardens, and the sea is exactly the perfect temperature to swim in. Miami is about half an hour away by air. The Duchess has always been the subject of silly stories, and it was widely believed that she went to get her hair done in Miami once a week. In fact, as is well known, she disliked flying, and there were plenty of hairdressers in Nassau, but she did sometimes make shopping expeditions to Miami to buy garden furniture.
Government House, Nassau. The Duke of Windsor (below) taking his oath of officeas Governor of the Bahamas.
The Duchess says the Duke fitted into his role as Governor with the greatest of ease. She was busy as head of the Red Cross and of the Daughters of the British Empire. As always, she excelled as a hostess. In the newly done-up Government House she gave dinner parties for the local politicians, smoothing many difficulties. The Duke bought a cabin cruiser he called the Gemini (the sign of the Zodiac under which the Duchess was born) so that they could visit the out-islands, of which there are about seven hundred. Governorship of the Bahamas was very far from being the war service he would have chosen, but the Duke determined to do the job well.
The Duke of Windsor was very partial to millionaires who had made their money themselves. Any fool can inherit money, it was self-made men who had glamour for him. He felt about them as an ordinary snob might feel about people of ancient lineage going back into the mists of time. In the Bahamas there were several of these, to the Duke,
fascinating men. Among them was Sir Harry Oakes, an American who had struck gold in Canada and taken Canadian citizenship, and Sir Harold Christie, a property tycoon who made a fortune by being one of the first to realize the wonderful possibilities of the Bahamas as a winter playground for the rich and in particular for Americans. The islands are only a few minutes by air from Miami, they are uncrowded, some of them empty, with beaches of silvery sand and seas of palest most brilliant blue.
After Pearl Harbor, war approached the Bahamas. Tourists no longer came from America, and in their place there were survivors from ships torpedoed by U-boats. The Red Cross ladies worked overtime.
In 1942 the Colonial Office in London conceived the idea that a U-boat might kidnap the Windsors and hold them as hostages, therefore a company of Cameron Highlanders was sent to the island. The troops put barbed wire round Government House, then they practised mock raids. They had an amusing time creeping through the barbed wire at night and taking Major Gray Phillips prisoner while he slept. Soon afterwards the Cameron Highlanders were needed for more serious work.
The Americans built an airfield called Windsor Field, to be shared by them and the RAF. The local black labourers considered their wages were low compared with what the Americans earned. In May the Windsors were in Washington staying at the British Embassy with Lord and Lady Halifax when a message came from Nassau that serious rioting had broken out. The mob had smashed all the windows and looted the shops in Bay Street and drunk all the liquor they could find. The Duke flew straight back. The riot act was read, martial law was declared and the Cameron Highlanders with the police had no trouble in restoring order.
The Duchess, as President of the Bahamas Red Cross showing the Duke supplies to be sent to England.
The Duke and Duchess visiting two survivors of a sea rescue, December 1940.
Wages were raised by the Americans to a more equitable level. The Duke encouraged agriculture as far as possible, but the riches of the Bahamas came from the tourists and only after the war did the islands boom again. The most difficult years were those when the Duke of Windsor was Governor.
The Windsors went fairly often to Washington, and lunching one day at the White House with President Roosevelt, they found their old friends Herman and Katherine Rogers were fellow guests. When the Duchess invited them to stay in Nassau, Katherine Rogers said they could not accept as they had no passports. Mr Roosevelt immediately got in touch with the passport office so that they were able to go, a great pleasure for the Duchess.
On another occasion, when Churchill was in America to address Congress the Duke and Duchess went to listen to the speech, and were given an ovation: ‘As the Duke descended to his seat in the front row, he got as much clapping as Winston, or more, by which we were surprised’, wrote Lord Moran. The Windsors also visited a ranch belonging to the Duke in Canada, and they went to Baltimore where they stayed with the Duchess’ uncle, General Henry Warfield. There were always crowds to greet them; ten thousand people, headed by Aunt Bessie, were at the railway station in Washington when they arrived the first time.
In July 1943 Sir Harry Oakes was brutally murdered in bed. Sir Harold Christie was staying with him at Westbourne at the time.21 The Duke called in the Miami police; he was criticized for not immediately getting in touch with Scotland Yard, but in his opinion and that of his officials speed was more important than protocol; Miami was on his doorstep, London thousands of miles away. According to a doctor who examined the body these detectives from Miami were so ill-equipped that muddle was certain. He formed the opinion that Oakes had been hit with a poker while asleep and that he never recovered consciousness or moved again, though he was then hit three more blows, yet the detectives proceeded on the assumption that there had been ‘a running fight.’ Some people thought it was a mafia murder but the mystery was never solved. It caused shock waves all through the colony, and the Duke was genuinely sorry, for he had become fond of Harry Oakes who was the sort of rough diamond that he appreciated.
The Duchess created a maternity care centre in Nassau, the first of its kind in the Bahamas, she devoted a lot of time to it as she also did to her canteen. A young RAF officer who was often invited to Government House says how popular the Duchess was with British and Commonwealth servicemen of all ranks. She worked really hard in the canteen and they got to know her at first hand. He mentions her ‘true kindheartedness.’ This is interesting, because one of the reasons why the authorities in England wanted the Duke to serve overseas rather than at home subsequently turned out to be that they thought if he visited the troops with the Duchess, there might be demonstrations against her. In fact, people in the know feared the very opposite. The Duke’s popularity was bad enough; what if the Duchess, with her breezy, friendly manner, went down all too well?
When they left the Bahamas in 1945 gifts were showered upon the Windsors, and they were touched by evidence of the affectionate regard they were held in by all sections of the community. They stayed for a few months in America and returned to France in the autumn.
Notes
21 One evening, years later, the author was dining with Lord Beaverbrook at his villa on Cap d’Ail when Sir Harold Christie was a guest. Beaverbrook’s opening gambit was, ‘Come on, Harold, tell us how you murdered Harry Oakes’, a joke which evoked a tired smile from Christie.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Windsors in France
I have good experience of this world, and I know what it is to be a subject and what to be a sovereign. Good neighbours I have had, and I have met with bad.
Queen Elizabeth I
DESPITE SIX YEARS of war, and the occupation of Paris, the house in Boulevard Suchet and its contents had remained intact, and it soon wore its old aspect once again. But the Windsors had only rented it and they now had to move. They first lived in Rue de la Faisanderie, but after a while they acquired a house in a big garden in the Bois de Boulogne belonging to the French Government. They paid a nominal rent, and there they stayed for the rest of their lives. General de Gaulle had used it just after the war, Gaston Palewski, the Gaullist Minister who was a friend of the General and also of the Windsors, describes the tremendous contrast of dining there first with one and then with the others. The silences, the whispered conversations, the ascetic way of life of de Gaulle were very unlike the rich and beautiful table of the Duchess, with its talk that was always amusing and sometimes brilliant, fantastic food and sumptuous wines.
When the ship bringing the Windsors back to Europe had called at an English port, journalists asked the Duke whether he would like to live in England, and he said yes, he would. A whole decade and the war had passed since the Abdication, yet nothing had changed. ‘They’ were still concerned to keep him out of the country if possible.
Truth to tell, it was quite easy now. There is no question but that the Duchess preferred France. Contrary to what is often said, they had dozens of French friends, and the things she excelled at, her clothes, her food, were French. Her ideal was to live in France and visit America from time to time, and this became the pattern of their life. They usually stayed in France from April until after Christmas, then they went to America, to the Waldorf Tower in New York where they rented a lovely flat with a spectacular view, and to Palm Beach to stay with friends. There was a persistent rumour that when they were at Palm Beach they made boring people pay them large sums for the privilege of having the Windsors to dine. It would have been an excellent idea, but unfortunately it never in fact happened.
The Duke with his mother, Queen Mary, in the gardens of Marlborough House in 1945
The Duchess at the Paris Horse Show in 1949.
The Duke was now over fifty, and although he would have liked to work (and it was a stupid waste to prevent it) he was perfectly happy not to. He offered his services as roving ambassador in the United States; he would have done a wonderful job, but needless to say the offer was turned down.
It is useless to pretend, as some of his biographers do, that the D
uke was a sad exile. To reinforce this description they publish photographs showing him in the most unbecoming light. He did not much care for being photographed and all his life there had been a sad expression on his face except when he was actually smiling. Sometimes caught unawares, he looked both sad and startled; then the photograph went on the front pages. For the funerals of Queen Mary and of King George VI he went to London, and rather naturally looked quite unhappy.
Only one thing made him miserable and that was if for some reason he was separated from the Duchess. In 1948 Winston Churchill sat next to Mabell, Lady Airlie one day at luncheon. She wrote: ‘We talked of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Winston told me he himself had always liked her. “The Duke’s love for her is one of the great loves of history,” he said. “I saw him when she had gone away for a fortnight. He was miserable, haggard, dejected, not knowing what to do. Then I saw him when she had been back a day or two, he was a different man gay, debonair, self-confident. Make no mistake, he can’t live without her.”’
