Before Wallis
Page 28
At first after his divorce from Thelma, Duke had been furious with his ex-wife. He could not even bear to see his stepdaughter Pat’s governess, because she looked like Thelma.15 However, as the years went by and his marriage to his new wife failed to live up to expectations, he began to relent. In 1939, Thelma took a small house near Cannes; Duke was staying at the Carlton Hotel and wanted to see her. It seems that they put the past behind them. When they met for lunch, he told her about his marital problems. She realised that he was sick and needed some form of medication. Thelma noticed that Duke was very ‘jittery’ and in pain but he would not say what was wrong with him. In his hotel suite he asked her to give him an injection; Thelma did not know how to do it, so he had to inject himself.16
While in the south of France Thelma also saw her debonair stepson, Dick, who was an officer in the Welsh Guards. Thelma and Dick had always got on well and during his visit he put on a party to celebrate her birthday. When the war began Dick was asked to report to his regiment. He travelled back to England with Thelma and Tony and stayed with them in London until he was sent back to France to fight. Thelma’s lawyer advised her to take Tony to America to be out of danger during the war. However, before she left she wanted to return to the south of France one more time so that Duke could see his son. Lord Furness had moved into a villa near Monte Carlo with Enid. He was so ill that the doctor visited him every day and his wife had hired a trained nurse to look after him. He was suffering from cirrhosis of the liver and was dependent on morphine injections.17 When Thelma met up with her ex-husband she could not believe how frail he had become. She suggested that he should travel to America with them, but it was evident that he was too ill to move. After seeing Duke for the final time, Thelma and Tony sailed to New York where they met up with Gloria senior.18
In May 1940, Thelma heard that her stepson Dick had been reported missing in action at Arras. He had been covering the withdrawal of some vehicles when he heard that the Germany infantry were in a wood nearby. Immediately, Dick went off to reconnoitre with the intention of attacking the enemy. Suddenly fire was opened on him by a concealed German anti-tank gun. Several carriers were destroyed including Dick’s. His fellow officers said that he charged straight at the gunner and shot him before he fell himself. An eyewitness recalled that he saw Dick spread-eagled across the top of the tank with a Bren gun in front of him. He said: ‘Mr Furness must have known then the very slender chances of his returning from such a hell.’19 Dick’s body was never found, so it was unclear whether he had been killed or taken prisoner. His action had saved an entire column from destruction, and he was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his extreme gallantry.20
When Duke heard the news he wept and wept, but he held on to the hope that his son might have been taken prisoner.21 He could not face the thought of losing his eldest son as he had already lost his daughter Averill four years before. She had married a much older man, Andrew Rattray, who had been her father’s white hunter on safaris in Africa. The oddly matched couple had fallen in love when Rattray brought two zebras over to England for her father’s stables. Lord Furness had disapproved of the match and had cut his daughter off without a penny. When Averill’s husband died suddenly, she never recovered from the shock. She remained in Africa, living in Rattray’s bush shack. She died of heart failure in a nursing home in Nairobi aged only 27. According to some reports she had drunk herself to death.
With both his children from his first marriage dead and his own health shattered, Duke died in October 1940. Thelma was very upset when she heard the news.22 Adding to her feeling that an era was coming to an end, the next blow came when her old home, Burrough Court, was accidentally burnt down while the Canadian Air Force were stationed there.
With the past wiped out, all Thelma had left was her son, Tony, and Gloria. She started a new life with them in Beverly Hills, California. The sisters bought a house on North Maple Drive and were soon socialising with film stars. The glamorous Morgan twins were invited out most evenings to the smartest Hollywood parties. After a late night they would sleep in until lunchtime when their maid would bring them their lunch on a tray or they would sit out on their terrace under a sun shade gossiping about their friends and eating smoked salmon followed by mangoes.23 They would then spend a languid afternoon embroidering or knitting. If they got bored they would flick through the Los Angeles Examiner to the column of the famous gossip columnist, Louella Parson, which they would read to each other.24
Thelma and Gloria often appeared in Louella’s pages. They were always good copy. When Thelma met the actor Edmund Lowe at a party, he greeted her with the old cliché: ‘Where have you been all my life?’ to which she replied: ‘Looking for you.’25 After splitting up from his wife, Edmund had been flitting from nightclub to nightclub but once he met Thelma he concentrated all his attention on winning her over. His car was seen most days parked in front of her house and they often dined together at local cafes.26 Friends thought that they might marry, but instead they had an on/off affair for many years. Thelma described their relationship as one of her happiest friendships.27 They laughed a great deal together and had a relaxed relationship. Edmund introduced Thelma to one of his passions, baseball, and she became a fan.
It was not so easy for Thelma’s son Tony to adapt to life in America. After inheriting the Furness title at the age of 11 he had been dubbed the richest little boy in England. Once his mother moved him to California he got to know many of the child stars of the era including Shirley Temple, Roddy McDowall and Elizabeth Taylor. However, with his English accent and bad health due to diabetes and poor eyesight, he never really fitted in. He seemed a lonely, isolated little boy. He was called ‘his lordship’ by fellow pupils at his Santa Barbara school.28
One summer the twins rented a house near Nissequogue on Long Island. Their children, Little Gloria and Tony Furness, joined them for their summer holiday. Little Gloria had hoped to have some time alone with her mother, but her aunt was always there beside her. Their lifestyle was as sybaritic as in California. The twins invited a group of friends to join them. They all slept in until lunchtime, then Thelma and Gloria senior would appear in matching eau de nil robes. It was stiflingly hot, so lunch was served outside on the porch. While the adults gossiped and sipped cocktails the children drank Coca-Cola in silence. After an afternoon nap the children would walk down to the beach with their nannies while the adults took even longer siestas. The highlight of the holiday was when one of the twin’s friends arrived in an aeroplane and gave Tony and Little Gloria a ride. There were love affairs going on which were supposed to be hidden from the children, but Little Gloria picked up on the undertones and felt annoyed by the pretence.29
In the summer of 1941, Little Gloria decided to move in with her mother and aunt in Hollywood. Although she was only a teenager, Thelma and Gloria treated her as an adult. They were too preoccupied with their own affairs to bother much with what she was getting up to. She went on dates with much older film stars including George Montgomery, Ray Milland and Errol Flynn. When she got engaged to Pat DeCicco, a former actors’ agent, gambler and an alleged mobster who worked for Howard Hughes, her mother and aunt were delighted. They did not bother to look into his background. Pat had been married to the actress Thelma Todd who, after their divorce, was found dead; there were rumours that her ex-husband might have killed her. Rather than considering whether the 33-year-old was a suitable match for a 17-year-old heiress, Gloria senior and Thelma concentrated on planning the wedding.30
The ceremony was held in December 1941 at the Old Mission Catholic Church in Santa Barbara. Afterwards a cocktail reception was hosted by Gloria senior and Thelma at their Maple Drive home. As always with the twins, there was drama. Once the bride and groom had left on honeymoon, at the end of the reception a gunman, posing as a chauffeur, tried to rob them and the eight remaining guests. Tall and lanky with a long nose and receding chin, the robber came in through the back door and said: ‘This is a stick up.
’ He made it seem that he had a gun in his overcoat pocket.
Both Gloria and Thelma kept their cool. Gloria stood in front of her guests, who were wearing expensive jewellery, and said to him: ‘You’re a little bit late, most of the guests have left.’ He replied: ‘Yes, I know.’ Thelma gave up her $1,000 ‘V for Victory’ clips and said calmly: ‘You’re quite foolish to do this because the house is full of cops.’ The gunman then fled without attempting to rob the other guests. The next day, when Thelma and Gloria were telling reporters about the robbery, the gunman appeared at the front door and handed a package to the maid. He demanded a receipt and then left in a hurry. The parcel contained Thelma’s ‘V for Victory’ clips and bizarrely, a note with the phrase ‘Dieu et mon droit’ (God and my right) scrawled in pencil on it, which is the motto of the British monarch.31 Apparently, the inept robber had thought it was the patriotic thing to do to give the clips back. It seems that even when she was robbed Thelma could not escape her past with the prince.
Little Gloria’s marriage to Pat DeCicco only lasted three years as he was violent. Shortly after leaving him she turned 21 and inherited her trust fund of more than $4 million. Hoping to find the closeness she had always desired with her mother, Little Gloria gave her a substantial allowance and they moved in together in an apartment in Park Avenue, New York. However, it was not long before the younger Gloria fell in love again. When she became involved with the conductor Leopold Stokowski – who at 63 was 42 years her senior – her mother did not approve. Under her new love’s influence, Gloria became estranged from her mother. She stopped her allowance, believing that Thelma would be able to support her sister using her divorce settlement from Lord Furness. Once Little Gloria’s divorce from Pat came through, she married Stokowski. She did not see or speak to her mother for fifteen years.32 However, after a few years she agreed to give her mother an allowance.33
Thelma had her own battles to fight over money. After the Second World War ended, she sued Enid, the subseqent wife of her ex-husband Lord Furness, over a codicil that cut Tony out of his father’s will. The codicil was initialled by Lord Furness in a shaky hand, but not signed, just three months before his death. Thelma claimed that Duke had not been in his right mind when he signed the codicil as he had been addicted to morphine. There was even gossip that Enid had administered a fatal dose of the drug to her husband. It was a bitter battle. Thelma produced an affidavit signed by one of Lord Furness’s nurses to support her case. However, her evidence was discredited when it was revealed that the nurse had been bribed. Thelma had to write a letter of apology admitting that there was not the slightest justification for any of the allegations or insinuations made.34 In the end Tony received a substantial out-of-court settlement, while Enid received the bulk of the Furness fortune. After the case ended, Tony used some of his inheritance to support his mother and aunt.35
Although there were brief relationships, neither twin remarried. The one constant in their lives was each other. When she was in her 40s, Gloria’s health began to fail as she developed glaucoma. Thelma took her all over Europe and America hoping to find a treatment which would save her sister’s sight.36 When Gloria became almost completely blind, Thelma guided her with such skill that very few people realised her disability.37 In 1947 Gloria became seriously ill after surgery. The doctors thought that she might die as she had an abscess which caused peritonitis. Thelma rushed to be with her in hospital. She could not stand the thought of losing her twin and willed her to live.38 During the long operation on her sister, Thelma felt as though she was dying herself. When she heard it had been successful she burst into tears.
In 1950 Tony came of age. Thelma and Gloria senior celebrated his 21st birthday with him at Maxim’s in Paris with a dinner for forty or fifty guests. Another proud moment was when Tony took his seat in the House of Lords. Sitting in the Peeresses’ Gallery, Thelma listened with pride as he made his maiden speech.39 Tony became a strong Catholic and considered becoming a priest. It was said he lived a celibate life after he had proposed marriage to one woman and been refused.40
With Thelma’s son living in London, the twins were once again alone together. Repeating the patterns of their childhood, they never lived in one place for long. By the time Gloria senior was 53 she had crossed the Atlantic more than 120 times, which meant that she had spent almost two years of her life at sea.41 In 1955 the sisters moved to Nassau and then to a small apartment in New York. In 1956 their mother, Mrs Morgan, died. After her behaviour against her daughter in the trial, it had taken a long time for the twins to forgive her, but they had been reconciled with her before her death and were by her bedside when she died. She left them both substantial sums of money in her will.42
Over the years money had often been in short supply for Gloria senior. She had been dependent on first the Vanderbilt trust fund and then her daughter’s goodwill. In a bid to make money and keep themselves occupied, Thelma and Gloria set up a variety of short-lived businesses. In the early 1950s they got into the toy-making business, setting up a toy factory in a dreary industrial street in Hollywood. The twins only made two products. There was a cardboard penthouse for children to build, complete with a king-sized bed with a satin coverlet, freezer, television set, mirrored dressing table and shrubbery roof garden. Perhaps drawing their inspiration from what might have been, the twins’ second toy was a princess doll with a real ermine-trimmed robe. The plastic novelty dolls were called ‘Pooks’. Gloria painted the dolls’ faces then the sisters bent over sewing machines making dresses for them which sold for 85 cents in Woolworths.43 Justifying their new business, Thelma told reporters: ‘Well everyone in the world has changed. You know with income tax and all […] those days of sitting around and clipping coupons are gone forever. So we make toys.’ She added: ‘Our family and friends thought this was a joke at first. Now they know we’re serious.’44
When the dolls failed to make their fortune, the twins pointed their entrepreneurial skills in another direction. At a party they met the chemist Dr Alexander Farkas, who in the 1920s had created a unique scent for them. When he blended two new scents for them called ‘Curtain Call’ for the winter and ‘White Pique’ for spring, they were excited by the business potential of the fragrances.45 They marketed the scents as Parfums Jumelles (French for twins) and travelled around the country setting up outlets for their latest venture.46 As with their previous enterprises, it did not last long and soon went out of business.
Their next venture was in advertising. Thelma had endorsed products twenty years before when she appeared in the Pond’s Cold Cream advertisements. In 1957, both twins promoted the slimming product Ayds, which was a low-calorie vitamin- and mineral-enriched sweet. In the advert, Gloria enthused: ‘I’m really astonished at the job Ayds has done helping me keep my figure slim.’ Thelma agreed: ‘Ayds really works. I can say that from my own experience.’47
Reflecting how intertwined their lives had always been, in 1958, Gloria and Thelma wrote a joint memoir called Double Exposure. It told their versions of their life stories. They explained that they recognised that the F. Scott Fitzgerald age in which they had grown up was over, but they were happy to adapt to the modern world. At the end of the book they wrote that if they had their lives to live over again they would probably behave in the same way and make the same mistakes.48 However, in a later interview Thelma reconsidered this comment and added: ‘I would do it all again. The only thing I would NOT do again is introduce Wallis Simpson to the Prince of Wales.’49
Perhaps the greatest missed opportunity in Gloria’s life had been her inability to bond with her child. In 1960 Gloria senior was given a second chance when, after fifteen years of estrangement, she was reconciled with her daughter. For many years Little Gloria was fearful of her mother; she was never exactly sure why this fear developed and in retrospect she suspected her wariness was due to her grandmother’s and nanny’s influence. She had always longed to feel connected to her mother but there was always a distance.50 The
younger woman had had therapy which enabled her to come to terms with what had happened.51 As a mature woman herself, she realised that some people should not be parents and perhaps her mother was one of those people.52 Now she had a different perspective, Gloria junior invited her mother to tea at her apartment. When she first saw her mother again she would not have recognised her. Although Gloria senior was beautifully dressed she had become a fragile figure who was ‘hesitant’ and nervous. Her daughter found it hard to believe that this was the woman whom she had feared all her life.53 The first meeting went well enough for mother and daughter to arrange to meet again.
In the summer of 1961, Thelma suggested that her niece should come, with her two sons from her marriage to Stokowski, to visit them in Los Angeles. They rented cottages next to each other on the beach in Malibu for a week. It was a success and Gloria senior had a chance to spend time with her grandchildren.54 During the next few years mother and daughter continued to meet, but they never fully opened up to each other or discussed the custody trial. After years of mutual wariness, it was too late to become close and the topic of Little Gloria’s childhood was still too emotionally charged for either of them to broach it.55
Although the younger Gloria recognised the limitations of their relationship, she wanted to involve her mother in her life. After divorcing Stokowski in 1955, Little Gloria found true happiness when she married the author Wyatt Cooper in 1963. The following year she put on a 60th birthday party for her mother and aunt. She gave Gloria a diamond bracelet and Thelma a pair of diamond earings.56 When she found out that she was pregnant again, she invited her mother and her aunt to stay in her house so that they could be there when the baby was born. Unfortunately, Gloria senior was too ill to go. In December 1964, she had been operated on to remove a fusiform aneurysm followed by extensive artery replacement at Los Angeles’s Cedar of Lebanon Hospital. A few months later she needed further surgery and was admitted again to hospital.57 Her daughter spoke to her on the phone a few hours after she had given birth to another son. Her mother had hoped for a granddaughter who would be ‘the third Gloria’, but instead she joked to her daughter that she would soon have so many sons she could start a baseball team.58 Gloria senior died shortly afterwards; she was 60 years old. Right to the end, Thelma was by her side.