Before Wallis

by Rachel Trethewey

  While Edward and Wallis drew closer, Thelma was having a flirtation of her own in America with Prince Aly Khan. Thelma was almost 30, while Aly was only 23, but the sexual chemistry between them was instant when they met at a dinner party in New York. Aly’s father, the Aga Khan, was seen by Muslim Ismailis as the direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. He was the world leader of the Nizari Ismailis, the second-largest branch of Shia Islam, a non-radical sect with 15 million followers in twenty-five countries.45 The Aga Khan was one of the world’s wealthiest men and an international celebrity. His son Aly lived a playboy lifestyle, racing cars and horses. However, he also took his role as heir apparent to his father seriously, and he spent three months of the year visiting followers in Asia, Africa and South America. He was worshipped by Ismailis as a living deity. Like the Prince of Wales, he was often mobbed on his tours and he found the experience both exhilarating and exhausting.46

  In his private life, Aly was irresistible to women. The American author and songwriter Elsa Maxwell described him as ‘un homme fatal’ with ‘animal vitality’.47 Not only was he dark and very handsome, he also knew just how to make a woman feel good about herself. He loved women and took a delight in the way they walked, dressed, spoke and thought. Adding to his attraction, there was also a hint of danger about him because he was an exciting, risk-taking figure.48 He knew that all women believed in the coup de foudre (love at first sight), and he made each woman he seduced feel that was what he felt when he first saw her.49 As Elsa Maxwell explained, when he fell in love with a woman he fell madly and deeply. He would make her feel that no other person existed for him. He would be absorbed with her to the exclusion of all others. He would dance cheek to cheek with her ‘slowly and rapturously’, as though it was the last time he would ever hold her in his arms. It was intoxicating, but the only problem was his infatuation might last for only one night.50

  When he focused his attention on Thelma she found it hard to resist. Although she claimed that she was flattered but not interested in a relationship, Thelma went to dinner with him the following night. The next morning Aly sent her a huge box of flowers. Before Thelma was due to return to England they dined and danced together again. When she reached her cabin on the Bremen it was full of red roses from her new admirer. She then discovered, to her surprise, that Aly had booked himself on board the ship. During the crossing, they dined together every night.51 The fact that she was the mistress of the Prince of Wales made her more attractive to Aly. He was competitive and liked to prove his prowess. He often seduced women who were married or in a serious relationship. If he detected restlessness or frustration in a woman he would capitalise on it.52 Knowing that there was no long-term future with the Prince of Wales, Thelma was receptive to Aly’s seductive wiles. Gossip soon spread about Thelma and Aly, and it was said that she now had captured both the White Prince and the Black Prince.53 Inevitably, some of the rumours reached the Prince of Wales’s ears and he was not amused.

  By the time Thelma returned to England in March 1934 everything had changed. When she was reunited with the prince at her Regent’s Park house, he was polite but distant. He told her that he had heard Aly Khan had been paying her attention. Thelma asked him if he was jealous, but the prince did not answer. The following weekend they met again at the Fort. When her lover was still cold towards her Thelma met Wallis at her Bryanston Court flat to get her advice as a friend. Both Thelma and Wallis gave different accounts of this meeting. According to Lady Furness, when she asked Wallis if she knew why the prince’s attitude had changed, Mrs Simpson assured her that Edward still loved her. She added that he had been lost without her. However, Thelma began to have her doubts when at the end of her visit Edward called to speak to Wallis, not her, on the phone.54 Wallis recalled the afternoon differently. Apparently, Thelma said that the prince was avoiding her; she then asked her friend ‘point-blank’ if he was ‘keen’ on her. Wallis had been expecting the question and answered that she thought he liked her and might be fond of her but, if she meant was he in love with her, the answer was no.55

  According to Thelma’s memoir, the next weekend, she joined the prince and the Simpsons at Fort Belvedere. The first night Thelma went to bed early as she had a cold. The following evening, at dinner, Thelma noticed that Edward and Wallis had developed little private jokes. When she saw her supposed friend playfully slap the prince’s hand as he picked up a salad leaf with his fingers, Thelma shook her head at Wallis, but she just looked back at her defiantly. Thelma was shocked that Wallis treated the heir to the throne in this way; she would never have dared to behave with such familiarity.56 Perhaps that was why her hold on the future king was less than her successor’s. Thelma was always slightly in awe of the prince, partly because she was so in love with him but also because of his status. She was far more subservient than Freda, Rosemary or Wallis ever were, even lighting Edward’s cigars for him.57 She failed to realise what the other important women in his life quickly understood: the prince liked to be treated strictly, sometimes even cruelly, by his women. Rather than a pampered prince, he wanted to be chastised like a naughty little boy. Wallis was already perfecting this technique. She admitted to one friend that she always kicked him hard under the table if he was going on too much in a conversation, then she would kick him again to continue.58

  There has been much speculation about Wallis’s sexual hold over the prince but it seems that, as in his relationship with Freda, her power over him was at least as much psychological as physical. When Edward and Mrs Simpson first consummated their relationship is a subject of debate. Contemporaries who wanted to discredit Wallis believed that she used sexual techniques she had learnt to ensnare the prince. However, the Windsors’ biographer, Michael Bloch, points out that Edward always rejected suggestions that Wallis had been his lover before they married. A judicial inquiry in the winter of 1936–37 found no evidence that they had been guilty of an adulterous relationship. Bloch writes that his letters to Wallis reveal a ‘mother–son relationship’; they were full of baby talk and were childish and adoring, pleading for her affection.59 These letters have the same characteristics as his letters to Freda, although the ones to his earlier mistress are perhaps even more effusive and loving. As Freda drew back from the prince’s life, Thelma had not been able to fill her elegant shoes. Edward had now found someone who was ready, willing and able to do so. He was Wallis’s slave – a role he had long desired in Freda’s life but one she had rejected.

  After watching her friend and lover together, Thelma knew what had happened: she had been replaced. When the prince came up to see her in her bedroom, Thelma asked him directly: ‘Darling, is it Wallis?’ The prince’s features froze, he told her not to be silly and walked out of the room.60 Thelma left Fort Belvedere the next morning, never to return. Someone else at the Fort that evening told a different story. The prince was having a dinner party and Thelma was not there. She then arrived, banging on the door so loudly that it sounded as though someone was trying to break in. She stormed into the party and then the prince went into the library with her. The guests could hear her voice coming from the room but not his. She then stormed out, leaving the Fort forever. Edward returned to the dinner party without saying anything about what had happened.61

  Whatever the precise denouement, the outcome was the same; as Wallis wrote to Aunt Bessie, Thelma’s rule was over.62 In May 1934 Thelma’s old friend Maury Paul reported: ‘Over in London, the Prince of Wales, who once was noted as the frequent dancing partner of Lady Furness, now is tripping the light fantastic with a Mrs Simpson. And the air becomes frigid whenever Lady Furness and Mrs Simpson happen to meet – which, fortunately, is not often.’63

  Thelma was not the prince’s only mistress to be banished. The callousness with which Edward treated Freda, his lover, confidante and best friend, shocked their mutual friends. In the early days of Wallis being on the scene Freda and her daughters were still part of his life. When in 1933 Angie was presented at court, the prince
was there to give her moral support. The girl chosen by journalists as the deb of the year was Primrose Salt. The prince teased Angie, warning her that she had better go to the hairdresser, stand up straight and lower her voice, or she would never measure up to Miss Salt. The king was unable to attend the presentation as he had an attack of rheumatism, so the prince was going to lead his mother to the throne. The night before Angie’s presentation Edward boosted her confidence by saying that when the ceremony was over and he came down among all the debutantes she would outshine Miss Salt because it would be Angie he talked to. True to his word, on the day, the prince, dressed in his Welsh Guards uniform, singled out his favourite.64

  Wallis knew about Edward’s continued attachment to Freda and seemed to believe that his long-term mistress would remain. She told her aunt that although the prince was attentive to her he saw equally as much of Mrs Dudley Ward.65 He was open with her, saying that he would visit Freda in St John’s Wood before stopping off to see her at Bryanston Court.66 As late as February 1934 the prince was seen at Ciro’s dancing with Freda.67 Members of the king and queen’s household also thought that his affair with Mrs Simpson would not last and he would return to Freda.68 The diarist Chips Channon wrote that Wallis was determined to ‘storm society’ while she was the prince’s favourite, because she was aware that he would eventually leave her because he left everyone in time.69

  However, as Edward fell more under Wallis’s spell, Freda’s days were numbered. At first she had not noticed that the prince was visiting her less. She had heard gossip about Wallis, but Edward had never mentioned her, and she was not concerned. Freda had been distracted because Pempie had been dangerously ill with appendicitis. For several days Freda had thought her daughter might die and she anxiously kept a vigil by her bedside. For many weeks the invalid was not well enough to do more than lie quietly in Freda’s garden. When Pempie was on the mend Freda had time to realise that she had not heard from Edward. The end of their sixteen-year relationship was brutal and abrupt. When Freda called St James’s Palace she was told by the operator: ‘I have orders not to put you through.’ Freda and the prince never spoke again, and she was deeply hurt by his neglect.70 Many years later, Freda told an interviewer that she had always known their affair would end sometime, but she wished that he had had the courage to tell her face to face.71

  It was thought by many people that Wallis had insisted that the prince cut off all communication with his former mistresses. Chips Channon wrote that Mrs Simspon had banned Thelma and all her circle from York House.72 However, in an interview many years later Wallis denied she had been responsible. In the case of Thelma, she said something had happened between Lady Furness and the prince that had destroyed the warmth and easiness of their relationship. As for Freda, Wallis always admitted that she was the prince’s first true love. She said that she had known that Edward was very attached to his long-term mistress. At first Wallis had encouraged hostesses to invite Freda to parties where the prince would be present, but it seems that she had turned down the invitations.73 There is a ring of truth to Wallis’s story. When the prince was first with Freda he had behaved unchivalrously to old girlfriends like Lady Coke, not because Freda requested it, but because that is what he thought she wanted. Perhaps he was just repeating the same pattern in his new relationship with Wallis.

  The prince’s behaviour towards Freda and Thelma was the talk of society. Friends divided into three camps, each supporting their chosen mistress. The diarist Chips Channon wrote that it was ‘war to the knife between the past and the present’.74 As an act of solidarity some of the prince’s old friends refused to socialise with Wallis. However, Chips Channon and the society hostesses Sibyl Colefax and Emerald Cunard rallied round Mrs Simpson. Lady Colefax claimed that the criticism of Wallis was very unfair and due to the jealousy of the women he had liked in the past. She told the novelist Maire Belloc Lowndes that they had all made him ‘dreadfully unhappy’. None of them had been faithful to him and that had made him feel ‘wretched’.75

  Supporting the new regime was controversial. Lady Cunard was attacked by the prince’s old flame Portia Stanley for befriending Wallis.76 At a weekend house party at Portia’s country estate, the first woman member of parliament, Nancy Astor, wrote in her diary that the Duke and Duchess of Kent and Sheila Milbanke (previously Loughborough) were there. They were all friends of Freda and they hated the way the Prince of Wales was ‘pushing’ Mrs Simpson. He had refused point blank to attend a court ball unless Wallis was invited. Lady Astor complained that everyone seemed to be suffering from a new disease, which she dubbed ‘Simpsonitis’, which involved sucking up to Wallis. Apparently Emerald Cunard was the biggest sychophant around ‘Queenie Simpson’.77

  Other members of the prince’s circle remained loyal to Thelma. The prince’s household comptroller, ‘G’ Trotter, wrote to Edward criticising his transfer of affection from Thelma to Wallis. The heir to the throne did not want to hear what his old friend had to say and when ‘G’ mentioned it again he was dismissed after years of loyal service. However, not everyone in the prince’s set was sorry to see Thelma or Freda go. Edward’s equerry John Aird thought there was little to choose between Mrs Simspon and Lady Furness; in his opinion, they were both ‘tough girls’ who deserved to be treated with the callousness the prince had shown.78 Chips Channon was critical of Freda’s circle, writing that while they were ‘amusing and witty’ the set was ‘small and suffocating with their high-pitched voices and pettiness and criticism and anti-everything’. He claimed that Wallis was a better woman than them all.79

  Many people commented that Edward’s behaviour had improved under Wallis’s strict rule. The diplomat, writer and politician Harold Nicolson was impressed by the way she had changed the prince. He thought Edward was more relaxed and seemed less nervous and shy. While he was with the couple at the theatre, Wallis stopped Edward smoking during the interval. However, Nicolson thought that for all her good intentions, she was separating the prince from the type of people he should be mixing with.80 Duff Cooper, who spent many weekends with the couple at Fort Belvedere, also thought she was a sensible woman. However, he believed she was as ‘hard as nails’ and did not genuinely love the prince.81 His wife, Lady Diana, went further: she thought Mrs Simpson was bored by her lover, and was cold towards him not as a strategy to lure him in, but because he irritated her. Although Diana found Wallis amusing, she described her as common and like Becky Sharp, Thackeray’s aspiring heroine in Vanity Fair.82

  Wallis’s political influence on the prince was even more controversial and has been the subject of decades of debate.83 Many of Edward’s friends noticed that the prince was becoming more pro-German; both in public and private he argued for a strong friendship with Germany.84 There was a great deal of gossip about the Prince of Wales’s Nazi leanings. According to Chips Channon, he had been influenced by Emerald Cunard, who admired the German special envoy to Britain, Joachim von Ribbentrop.85 More recent research suggests that the link was more direct. Hitler had told Ribbentrop to flirt with Wallis and become intimate with her in order to influence Edward. The German diplomat began to send her seventeen red roses or carnations each day. According to some observers, this gesture was to remind her of the number of nights they had spent together.86 However, Wallis’s recent biographer believes that although she enjoyed a flirtation with Ribbentrop there is no evidence of an affair.87

  Whatever other people thought of his new mistress, the prince had made up his mind that he wanted to be with her. It seems that he had learnt from his experience with Freda that exclusivity was essential for a fulfilling relationship. He was not willing to get caught in another toxic circle where no one felt secure. His feelings for Wallis had much in common with his bond with Freda. His old friend Walter Monckton wrote that it would be a great mistake to believe Edward was in love with Wallis purely in the physical sense of the word. He had found a spiritual affinity with her. He believed that they were made for each other and that she
was an inspiration to him to be at his best and to do his best.88 Anyone who has read his letters to Freda would recognise these sentiments. However, this time he was not willing to listen to reason and take no for an answer; he was determined to make a lasting commitment no matter how great the cost.

  11

  ROSEMARY IN LOVE

  In the spring of 1918, once Rosemary knew that her relationship with the prince would not end in marriage, she did not waste time on self-pity. Like Edward, within months she was more deeply in love than she had ever been before. However, as with Edward’s affair with Freda, Rosemary’s relationship with her new lover was to prove complicated and at times painful.

  A year after Rosemary’s romance with the prince came to an end, she walked down the aisle with a handsome war hero. In March 1919 Rosemary married William Ward, Viscount Ednam, at St Margaret’s Westminster. Dressed simply in a long tunic of white chiffon edged with point de Venise lace, Rosemary was the perfect post-war bride. Her twelve bridesmaids were dressed in yellow chiffon with touches of green to represent spring while the daffodils they carried symbolised hope for the future. It was a celebration of a new era; during the war ceremonies had been scaled back and even the numbers of bridesmaids were rationed. Recognising the past, while looking forward to the future, Rosemary promised that ‘every friend she has ever had is to be invited to the wedding’.1

  Although Rosemary had not been considered suitable to marry into the royal family, many of its members attended her wedding. Queen Alexandra, her daughter Princess Victoria and Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, were among the guests. However, all eyes were drawn to the man who had so recently wanted to walk down the aisle by Rosemary’s side. When Pathé News filmed the occasion, as well as the doll-like bride and the groom in his army uniform, the film-makers could not resist showing the Prince of Wales, walking alone along the pavement with his cane. Eve, the gossip columnist at The Tatler, spotted him there and described him as ‘one of the boys who won’t grow up isn’t he?’ and added that he had decided that he wanted to see the world as a bachelor before he settled down ‘into even the silken chains of Royal matrimony’.2 In fact it was not quite that simple. As what the prince described as ‘an engagement epidemic’ swept through his contemporaries, he felt left out.3 He found it particularly hard seeing the woman he had wanted to marry wed another man. He confessed to his new love, Freda, that the engagement had been a great surprise to him and he couldn’t ‘help feeling a little sad’.4