Before Wallis

by Rachel Trethewey

  With her daughters increasingly living their own lives, in June 1930 Freda finally divorced her husband on the grounds of adultery. The correspondent was a woman called Lilian Gallifent of 15 Matheson Road, West Kensington. The adultery was alleged to have taken place at the Hotel Metropole, Brighton.90 Until the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1937, to get a divorce it was not only necessary to prove a husband’s adultery, it was also important to demonstrate that the divorcing couple were not colluding by putting up an agreed story. If there was any doubt, a government official known as the king’s proctor would investigate the truth of the case. In practice many rich couples, like the Dudley Wards, divorced by mutual consent if the husband was willing to provide evidence for his wife by a procedure known as ‘a hotel bill case’. This often involved a young woman being hired to stay in a hotel room with the divorcing husband. She would then be found in bed with him next morning when breakfast was brought up to them by a member of staff.91

  Freda’s case in court was that about five years previously she and Duddie had ceased to live in the same house. There was a disagreement and she discovered that her husband had a house elsewhere. There was no actual separation and they remained friendly. The year before, while she was in Paris, her husband called and saw her. When he said that he did not want her to go to his hotel her suspicions were aroused. Shortly afterwards she discovered he was being unfaithful. On hearing the evidence, the judge granted a divorce to Freda and custody of her two daughters.92

  The divorce came too late for Michael. He was increasingly unwell, but as his health deteriorated he still hoped that Freda would marry him. Too ill to work, Michael sat in his garden all day just staring into space, waiting for a phone call, letter or visit from Freda. He wrote to her: ‘I didn’t know it was possible to long for anything like I long for you, I can’t think of anything else.’93 The prince was sympathetic, telling Freda he knew how much anxiety she was suffering from. If she could not get away from the nursing home where Michael was being looked after to visit him, he understood and she need not worry about him.94 In September 1932 Michael died from an abscess on his lung, bronchio-pneumonia and cerebral toxaemia, at his home in Hill Street, Mayfair. He was only 39 years old. Freda was devastated. Her family believes that he, rather than the Prince of Wales or either of her husbands, was the love of her life. After Michael’s death, she wrote to their mutual friend Duff Cooper about her feelings of guilt and regret:

  Darling Duff,

  Thank you for your sweet sympathy. I am so sorrowful and desolate and haunted by so many memories – sad and gay – but all so poignant. I know how much you and Michael loved one another and that you will miss him so often in times to come and at so many places. But you need have no regrets. While mine are intolerable and take all consolation from my sorrow. I am very touched that you should have thought of writing to me darling – Thank you so much.

  Freda.95

  The seriousness of their relationship was reflected in Michael’s will, which he made just before he underwent an operation in August. He left £80,000 of his £500,000 fortune to Freda. Half of his wealth was left to his brother Sidney. A clause in his will directed that all his locked boxes and attaché cases with their contents should be destroyed unopened.96 It is likely that they contained love letters from Freda because, although she kept his letters to her, none of her letters to him survive. Michael was buried in the Temple Copse at Wilton. In 1939, when Sidney also died prematurely, he was buried beside his brother.97

  As well as losing her lover, Freda also lost both of her parents within a short space of time. Her father had never fully recovered from the head injuries he sustained during the war, and had also developed heart disease; he died in 1932 aged 67. Her mother became unwell shortly afterwards. She had a gall-bladder operation while visiting France and died from complications two years later. Freda was with her when she died.

  Freda was now without her husband, her lover and her disapproving parents. For the first time, the prince could have been the only man in her life and he could have had her to himself. Yet, unlike a few years later when Wallis divorced Ernest Simpson, Freda’s divorce was not a prelude to marrying the heir to the throne. As with Michael, her freedom had come too late, and her relationship with the prince was past its peak. She never pushed to marry him. Instead, she continued to accept her role in his life without asking for more. However, the question of who would be the future king’s bride had become an increasingly important issue. Various European royals were still rumoured as potential partners. At Edward’s suggestion, Lord Mountbatten came up with a list of seventeen princesses, including Princess Ingrid of Sweden and the 15-year-old Thyra of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.98

  Even Hitler tried to intervene in the matchmaking. The prince had expressed sympathy for the views of the Nazi party. He admired their policies to deal with unemployment and housing, and argued that Germany’s internal affairs were their own business.99 The German government appreciated his attitude and Hitler believed an alliance with a German princess could bring the two countries closer. He asked the Duke of Brunswick to arrange a marriage between the Prince of Wales and his 17-year-old daughter Princess Friederike. Her royal pedigree was excellent: like Edward, she was a descendant of King George III and her father was head of the House of Hanover. From Hitler’s point of view, she was a model candidate. Her father regularly donated funds to the Nazi party and the princess was a member of the League of German Girls, the female branch of the Hitler Youth movement.100 However, the Brunswicks were not keen on the idea as Friederike’s mother, now the Duchess of Brunswick, was the Kaiser’s daughter who had been matchmade with the prince in 1913. The Brunswicks believed the age gap was too great and that their daughter should be free to choose her own husband.101 Nor was Edward enthusiastic about a child bride.

  In March 1932 the king had a rare personal discussion with his son. George V began the conversation by telling Edward that he had no intention of having a row with him, he just wished to put certain ideas before him. He added that until now he had talked to him as a father, but now he wanted to speak to him as a reigning monarch to his successor. He told Edward that the public ‘worshipped him and that he was at the zenith of his popularity – but would this last when the Public began to realize at last the more or less double life that the prince was leading?’ The king believed that ‘the great non-conformist conscience of England’ would not accept Edward’s private life if it was revealed. The prince disagreed, saying that people were more tolerant nowadays, but the king would not accept this and told his son that the days when royal princes had well-known mistresses and families by them was over and the the British public now expected their royal family to have a decent home life. He added: ‘All young men sowed their wild oats; but wasn’t the prince at 38 rather beyond that age?’ The king was particularly critical of Edward’s affair with Thelma Furness. He asked his son if Lord Furness could be entirely trusted not to make trouble. The prince assured him that he had no anxieties about that.

  George V then asked his son if he was genuinely happy; he added, did Edward ‘not sometimes long to have someone he could turn to for sympathy and true affection as apart from mere physical satisfaction’. The prince admitted that he was not particularly happy. The king replied that he never looked very happy. They then discussed the future of the throne and the empire. The king pointed out that England had never had an unmarried king and that it would be an ‘invidious’ position. Edward would feel lost living on his own in Buckingham Palace. The prince told his father that one of the reasons he had not married was his distaste for marrying a foreign princess and he understood that the king would not wish him to marry a commoner. The king replied that times had changed and that he would be willing to consider ‘a suitable well-born English girl’. The prince claimed that this was the first time that this had ever been suggested to him. He admitted that there was only one woman he had ever wished to marry and that was Freda Dudley Ward, and he still wanted to marry
her. However, the king said he did not think that would do. The interview then came to an end. It had been a highly charged encounter for both men. During their conversation the prince had smoked countless cigarettes and frowned most of the time, but on the whole it had been ‘amicable’.102

  Afterwards the prince told Sir Lionel Halsey and Sir Godfrey Thomas that it had been ‘a very satisfactory interview’ and it had ‘cleared the air’. He said that the king had been ‘very nice, though he had spoken with complete frankness’. Sir Lionel Halsey thought that for the first time the prince had taken notice of what his father had said. Edward felt that the king was ‘a bit old-fashioned’ and he rather resented what he had said about his friends but other than that he admitted that his father’s criticism of his behaviour was ‘fair comment’.103 Edward added that he hoped to have another talk with the king, but this seems to have been the last conversation the prince ever had with his father about marriage.104 It was telling that in his interview with his father he told him that it was Freda, not Thelma, he wanted to marry. Both Freda and Edward knew they were trapped in an untenable situation, they had spent more than ten years trying to find a solution and failed. Neither could make a complete break or the commitment that would have allowed them to move on, but soon a catalyst from outside would change the situation forever.

  Unlike Freda, Thelma was not seen as a good influence on the prince. One of the criticisms of Lady Furness was that she separated him from his old friends and surrounded him with her own dissolute circle. The economic crisis, which left over a million men unemployed, made observers more critical of the prince’s lifestyle than they had been in the previous decade. It was felt that he was socialising in a ‘fast’ set who danced until dawn and then lay in bed until 2 p.m. the following day. At least part of the negative reaction to Thelma’s circle was because they were predominantly Americans and thus considered alien.105 Rosemary’s mother, Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland, complained that Edward was more irresponsible than in the past. She blamed Lady Furness, who failed to restrain him in the way Freda had done.106 The prince’s behaviour in public and private deteriorated. He was seen looking bored at visits to hospitals and was often unpunctual for events.107

  A joke circulating in society at the time was: ‘If the Lord saved Daniel from the Lions’ den, who will save David [the prince] from the fiery Furness?’108 The diarist Chips Channon claimed that Thelma was the first woman who ‘modernised’ and ‘Americanised’ him. He blamed her for making him ‘over-democratic, casual and a little common’.109 Channon’s judgement seems a little unfair; all those tendencies were already there in the prince – Thelma just reinforced them. However, some of the royal servants agreed that Lady Furness was Americanising their employer and bringing a touch of vulgarity to his household. Edward’s butler-valet, Finch, a plain-speaking Yorkshireman who had cared for the prince since he was a child, thoroughly disapproved when Thelma introduced cocktails at York House. When Finch refused to mix these American innovations, his boss came to a compromise with him. Finch would make the drinks but only on the condition that he would not have to take part in the un-English fashion of adding ice to the concoction. Once the rebellious butler had brought the shaker into the drawing room, the prince was left to put the ice in himself.110

  One summer, Lady Furness rented a house with her friend, the American socialite Betty Lawson Johnston, near the Chiberta golf course in Biarritz. The prince and his brother Geroge came to stay. In the interwar years, the resort on the Basque Coast of Spain attracted many British and American socialites. As one gossip columnist explained, Biarritz had ‘a youthful, reckless, last week of the holidays feeling’.111 Life and gossip revolved around the various villas. There was always plenty to do. For the energetic there were tennis tournaments, polo or golf. On the beach, Thelma was seen in her scarlet beach pyjama suit combing her long black hair, then she stripped off to her yellow swimsuit to bathe in the bracing Atlantic Ocean.112 The prince attended an unorthodox dog show in which prizes were given for the worst dog and the dirtiest dog.

  For visitors who wanted to go further afield, there were excursions along the coast to St-Jean-de-Luz. At St Jean visitors could dine at the Auberge or visit the yacht club in the tower overlooking the harbour. St-Jean was the centre of the sardine industry so on certain days the smell could be quite pungent. On the way back there was the choice of bathing at Guethary or going to a tea dance at the Grand Hotel at Ilbarritz. The Grand was known for its modernist garden. The hotel was perched on a cliff top above concrete terraces punctuated with statues. In the evenings the Bar Basque was a favourite meeting place for cocktails. After dinner everyone decamped to the Château D’Espagne, the nightclub in the casino.113

  As a Catholic, Thelma decided that she would like to visit the shrine at Lourdes. She encouraged Edward to come with her. Lourdes attracted thousands of sick and disabled people who hoped to be cured. During Lady Furness and the prince’s visit, halfway through the ceremony, the priest passed by carrying the Blessed Sacrament. Everyone, including the prince, knelt. Edward and his party were then shown around the shrine and taken to a house full of pictures of people who had been cured at Lourdes. Inside the house the prince was surrounded by hundreds of people who had heard that he was there.

  The visit to Lourdes caused outrage back in Britain. The prince received dozens of letters complaining about Lady Furness taking the Protestant heir to the throne to a Catholic shrine. There was a protest by the Scottish Reformation Society who believed it could be interpreted as ‘indicating some favour for an alien system of religion’. They feared that it could be used to compromise the constitutional position of the country. The prince’s private secretary replied that the incident was ‘devoid of any religious significance’.114 Naïvely, Thelma could not understand why people were so outraged and she was angry about the attack on her. However, she received many letters from Catholics telling her to keep up the good work.115 The visit to Lourdes, and Thelma’s reaction, demonstrated her lack of understanding of the British constitution and history. When the prince became king, he would be defender of the Protestant faith. Thelma’s faux pas was the type of misjudgement Freda would never have made.

  To portray Lady Furness as a malign figure would be over-emphasising her influence and misjudging her character. She was kind and easy to get on with. The Duke and Duchess of York liked her very much. During Thelma’s five-year affair with the prince the two couples socialised often.116 At the time the Yorks were living at Royal Lodge, Windsor, which was near the Fort. Years later, Thelma remembered skating with the Duchess of York on the frozen pond in Windsor Great Park. They held on to kitchen chairs to get their balance and were soon laughing together.117 Thelma just lacked the strength of character or inclination to discourage the prince’s worst side. During his relationship with her he became more spoilt and petulant. Lacking depth herself, she encouraged his more superficial side.

  However, to see their relationship as primarily about partying would be wrong. As in the prince’s relationship with Freda, his affair with Thelma was also about domesticity. Thelma hosted house parties and dinners at Fort Belvedere for their closest friends. It was an unusual move for a bachelor household and it emphasised Lady Furness’s status in her lover’s life. To explain Thelma’s frequent visits to his home the prince announced that no unmarried woman would be entertained at Fort Belvedere. The press fell for his ruse and he was congratulated for the discretion he showed in not inviting his unmarried girlfriends for weekends.118

  At the Fort, Edward would greet his guests at the door and lead them into an octagonal hall with white plaster walls and a black and white marble floor. In each of the eight corners was placed a bright yellow leather chair. The yellow colour scheme was continued in velvet curtains in the drawing room which, like the hallway, was octagonal. There was Chippendale furniture, Canaletto paintings on the wall and a baby grand piano.119 Meals and clothes were informal during the day, but guests dressed for dinner a
nd the prince put on a grey and red tartan kilt at night. After cocktails, dinner was served in the panelled dining room with equestrian paintings by George Stubbs on the walls. Up to ten guests would sit down at the walnut table to eat a simply cooked healthy meal. Food often came from the Duchy of Cornwall; there would sometimes be oysters from the prince’s own oyster beds followed by roast beef. After dinner, guests played cards, did jigsaws or danced to the latest records played on a gramophone. To the strains of ‘Tea for Two’ Edward would take Thelma in his arms and sweep her into the octagonal hallway.

  The prince told his guests that there were no rules at the Fort. Although he went to bed before midnight and was up early, they could stay up as late as they liked and get up when they wanted.120 Yet even at the Fort informality only went so far; at one dinner a woman who had become part of the prince’s intimate circle called him by his first name. Edward allowed it to pass, but when she did it again he turned to her and told her that he would rather she did not call him by his Christian name. The prince was not quite as democratic as he liked to seem and, when he chose, he expected to be treated with the respect due to his rank.121

  As well as entertaining friends, Thelma and Edward also enjoyed quiet, intimate weekends together shut away from the world. At Fort Belvedere the prince could relax and escape from the formality and artificiality of his public life. Gardening had become one of his passions and he enjoyed pottering in the grounds, pruning his trees, moving shrubs and planting herbaceous borders.122 His favourite flowers were old-fashioned ones and he planted delphiniums, Sweet Williams, nasturtiums and phlox.123 After gardening, before dinner, the prince would have a steam bath in the basement. Recreating the happiest times in Edward’s childhood, when he had sat in Queen Mary’s sitting room embroidering, during the evening Thelma and the heir to the throne would sit for hours stitching their latest tapestries together. Thelma wrote about how happy she was, content with the simplicity and lack of drama in their life together.124