That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor

by Anne Sebba

  ‘Wallis must not get too bossy,’ wrote Diana Cooper, having heard her reprimand the King in front of his guests for wanting to have his papers and documents read to him instead of reading them himself. She told him he simply had to learn to master the points in them. ‘She is right of course as he made haste to say. “Wallis is quite right. She always is. I shall learn it quite soon.”’ The King was used to having information fed to him and if, as Prince of Wales, he appeared well informed this was because he had been well briefed. Reading an entire book was so low on his list of priorities that in 1936, fitting out the hired yacht that was to take Wallis and him cruising for the summer, instructions were given for all the books to be removed from the yacht’s library as they would not be needed. This is not a matter of intellectual snobbery; it meant in practice that he drained Wallis as his sole source of information and, when he needed to draw on his own emotional reserves, he was not supported by any books he had read. When Baldwin had to have serious discussions with Edward in November 1936 he felt the lack of reading acutely disadvantaged him. He described him as an ‘abnormal being, half-child, half-genius … it is almost as though two or three cells in his brain had remained entirely undeveloped while the rest of him is a mature man … he is not a thinker. He takes his ideas from the daily press instead of thinking things out for himself. He never reads – except, of course, the papers. No serious reading: none at all …’

  Of greater concern, however, to those around him was the way he now deferred to Wallis in everything, including matters of state. Within weeks of his accessio K hie an he was no longer reading state papers at all but leaving the task entirely to Alec Hardinge, his despairing Private Secretary. Not only were the papers unread, much to Baldwin’s horror they were apparently left lying around the Fort during his ever longer weekends, now often from Thursday to Tuesday. If scrutinized by anyone it was Wallis’s eye that fell on them. When they were returned they were decorated by rings from wet glasses left on top of them. Despatch boxes were sometimes lost entirely. But it was not only at the Fort that work was neglected. Even in London, according to Alan Lascelles, the King shut himself up giggling with Mrs Simpson for hours on end while the royal footmen would say to the waiting secretaries ‘The Lady is still there.’ Hardinge fed Baldwin a tale of ever increasing dereliction of duty, resulting in the Prime Minister’s decision to restrict the documents made available to the King to those requiring the royal signature.

  Within weeks, as he felt the loneliness and boredom of his new job, his infatuation and desperate need for Wallis increased. Exhausted, frustrated and even angry, she escaped to Paris in the early spring with her divorced, redheaded friend Josephine ‘Foxy’ Gwynne. The trip was partly to stock up on her couture wardrobe; she was especially keen to buy from the Chicago-born Main Rousseau Bocher, known as Mainbocher, her latest favourite, whose haute-couture gowns were endorsed by an exclusive clientele that included Syrie Maugham, Diana Vreeland and many Hollywood stars. But another reason for the visit was that she hated the pressure on her, with the King constantly telephoning her, relying on her; she felt she was losing control of the situation and wanted to get Ernest back as her husband. As she admitted to her aunt, ‘I have of course been under a most awful strain with Ernest and H.M.’ What the King’s mother called his ‘violent infatuation’, which she hoped would pass, had turned into an obsession so all consuming that he could concentrate on nothing more than how he could arrange to marry Wallis Simpson as quickly as possible. Wallis now felt trapped.

  Nineteen-thirty-six was a critical year throughout Europe as dramatic events with enormous consequences unfurled with lightning speed and the rise of the far right was allowed to go unchecked. In Spain, a Popular Front government was elected in February but almost immediately came under pressure from strikes and violent uprisings, and by July the country was locked in a bloody civil war. France, too, had elected a socialist prime minister in February but the Popular Front of Léon Blum was weakened from constant and vicious attacks from both the extreme left and the extreme right. On 7 March German troops marched into the Rhineland, an action in direct contravention of the Treaty of Versailles which had laid out terms which the defeated Germany had accepted. It was Hitler’s first illegal act in foreign relations since coming to power in 1933 and it threw the European allies, especially France and Britain, into confusion. Yet public opinion in Britain was strongly opposed to going to war with Germany over this. No politician wanted to unleash another great war in Europe.

  However, it was now clear that Hitler had no qualms about repudiating treaties which he argued had been imposed on Germany by force. As Baldwin’s Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden commented: ‘We must be prepared for him to repudiate any treaty even if freely negotiated (a) when it becomes inconvenient; and (b) when Germany is sufficiently strong and the circumstances are otherwise favourable for doing so.’ But although no one expected (or wanted) the King to be directly involved, the fact remains that during this year of unprecedented turbulence in Europe, the British sovereign was concentrating on one matter only: how to mar Ky: ng ry Wallis and make her his queen. His obsession impacted on his government.

  One evening in early February, Ernest went to have dinner with the King at York House and decided to take with him his friend Bernard Rickatson-Hatt, by then editor in chief at Reuters. When Rickatson-Hatt got up to leave, Ernest pressed him to stay. He wanted his friend to hear what he felt he now had to state clearly to the King, ‘that Wallis would have to choose between them and what did the King mean to do about it? Did he intend to marry her? The King then rose from his chair and said: “Do you really think that I would be crowned without Wallis at my side?”’ That evening, according to Rickatson-Hatt’s version, the King and Ernest Simpson reached an accommodation whereby Ernest agreed to put an end to his marriage provided the King promised to look after Wallis.

  Naturally, events could not rest there. According to a memorandum by Lord Davidson, Baldwin’s close ally, written immediately after this:

  Simpson Mason asks to see Jenks Mason – the Mari Complaisant is now the sorrowing and devastated spouse. He tells Jenks that the King wants to marry Mrs S, (unbelievable) & that he – S – would like to leave England only that would make divorce easier – what he wants is his wife back. S suggests he should see the P.M. SB replies to this suggest [sic] with a flat negative. He is the King’s chief adviser not Mr S’s … Clive Wigram, SB and I have a frank talk. I am quite convinced Blackmail sticks out at every stage. HM has already paid large sums to Mrs S and given valuable presents. I advocate most drastic steps (deportation) if it is true that S is an American but if he isn’t the situation is very delicate. The Masonic move is very clever. The POW got S in on a lie – is now living in open breach of the Masonic Law of chastity because of the lie he first told. S and Mrs S, who is obviously a gold digger, have obviously got him on toast … Mrs S is very close to [the German Ambassador Leopold von] Hoesch and has, if she likes to read them access to all Secret and Cabinet papers!!!!!

  Realizing that Simpson, as a British subject, could not be deported, Sir Maurice Jenks managed to reassure the frightened Wigram that Ernest was an honourable man who wanted above all to avoid scandal. Couldn’t Simpson be persuaded then to go back voluntarily to the United States and take his wife with him, Wigram urged Jenks? The story of the King’s meeting with his nemesis was passed around a frightened inner circle of advisers, including Sir Maurice Gwyer, First Parliamentary Counsel to the Treasury, Sir Lionel Halsey, then a Council Member of the Duchy of Cornwall, and Walter Monckton. Monckton, while questioning whether indeed the King could have said what was attributed to him, predicted ‘blackmail upon an extravagant basis’.

  The Davidson memorandum not only lays bare deeply felt establishment concerns about Wallis becoming queen, but, more significantly, makes plain the twin fear some had of her passing on secrets to the Germans at a time of critical international tension. This fear never went away and was partly responsible
for royal attitudes towards Wallis in the ensuing decades. Just eight years later the King’s brother and successor George VI was to write in a private and confidential letter to his Prime Minister: ‘I must tell you quite honestly that I do not trust the Duchess’s [Wallis’s] loyalty.’ In 1936 the ambassadors of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were actively courting all the hostesses, as well as newspaper editors and politicians. Bernard Rickatson-Hatt’s boss at Reuters, K atelySir Roderick Jones, had been meeting Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German former champagne salesman acting as Hitler’s special envoy, socially since 1933. He described him as a man who, when he invited him to luncheon at his own home, ‘held me there with a flow of argument and talk from which I could not very well escape without appearing discourteous’. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang, arguably more aware of the Nazi reality than most through Germany’s bishops informing him of Nazi policy, also lunched with Ribbentrop in the summer of 1935 and described him as ‘most genial and friendly’.

  Wallis herself met Ribbentrop at least twice at Lady Cunard’s. This was Ribbentrop’s job, to assess the degree of pro-Nazi feeling in British society, so naturally he made a point of socializing with the woman now being called the King’s mistress. He may even have sent her regular bouquets after the dinners in the hope of currying favour, as Mary Raffray asserted later. According to the Kirk family version, when Ribbentrop was in London he called on Wallis daily, ‘except when some engagement took him out of town and then, said Mary, flinging her arms wide to indicate size, he always sent Wallis a huge box of the most glorious flowers’. As Helen Hardinge noted in her diary, ‘one of the factors in the situation was Mrs Simpson’s partiality for Nazi Germans’. But there is no evidence of an affair with Ribbentrop beyond Wallis’s ever-ready preparedness to flirt – especially with diplomats – and society’s love of gossiping. German diplomats in 1936 believed she would soon be very useful and she enjoyed having their attention. She was probably no more pro-Nazi than the pro-appeasement Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax and many of the Cabinet at the time. It is noteworthy that Baldwin himself never accused her of having German sympathies, either then or later. Yet, because many found her untrustworthy on other private matters, it was easy to assume that she was untrustworthy generally. The views of the King himself were more dangerously pro-German, although predominantly pacifist, and more easily bent out of shape; they were views Wallis doubtless absorbed as being easier than exercising her mind about such matters when her own security was paramount. Not only did the King have many German relations, he spoke German fluently and believed, like many, that a repeat of the carnage of the First World War had to be avoided above all else. Recently released German documents have now made clear that the Nazis were ready to exploit the King’s sympathies if the opportunity arose and, although his friends wanted to believe that his deep patriotism would always win through, Wallis’s over-arching influence was an unknown factor.

  At the end of March 1936, Wallis returned from Paris ‘in a state of collapse’. Her health was never robust and she often complained of suffering from ‘the old nervous indigestion’. But this time her unhappiness stemmed as much from the King’s almost suffocating need for her as from Ernest’s increasing detachment. She was still convinced that her days with the King were numbered, especially now that the pressures on him to provide an heir were redoubled, and this need she knew she could never satisfy. ‘In the back of my mind I had always known that the dream one day would have to end – somewhere sometime somehow. But I had characteristically refused to be dismayed by this prospect.’ And she soon realized why Ernest was quite so pliant. On 24 March, Mary Raffray had arrived in London again. Even before she came Wallis was annoyed by the idea of having a houseguest. Once she arrived she had no time for Mary and thought the clothes she had brought with her were unsuitable other than for a nightclub. But she was still Wallis’s most intimate friend, the one person in whom she could confide with utter frankness sure of a sympathetic and und Khetllierstanding listener. Or so she thought.

  It rapidly became clear to Wallis that while Mary may have started by taking pity on Ernest, as well as genuinely enjoying his historical explanations as they toured ancient buildings, she had now fallen in love with him. Wallis felt deeply hurt by the new relationship between her husband and Mary but cannot have been surprised. It was a situation of her own contriving which she had believed she could control. Mary understood later that she had been manipulated, such as ‘the night she tricked me into going to the opera and then at the last minute failed to appear because she told everyone Ernest’s mistress was there … She thought she could use me as a scapegoat and did,’ wrote Mary, ‘that Ernest would turn to me in his great unhappiness as he did. Even though she loathed and despised having me there, it served her purpose as then she could say that Ernest was having an affair with me and so she would have to get a divorce.’

  ‘Mary’s first letters to me’, her sister Buckie recalled of 1936, ‘were in sharp contrast to those I had had the previous year,’ although she still wrote of occasional small dinners at York House and of weekends at the Fort. In one of these Mary described how the King had the entire house party, which included Ernest, driven over to Windsor Castle to see movies of the Grand National and how thrilled she felt at being able to walk casually around at least part of the castle, admiring some of the magnificent paintings. ‘Wallis is in the very thick of things, received and toadied to by everyone,’ Mary wrote.

  Very soon, though, Wallis had had enough of her old schoolfriend. ‘Within a few days I received a note from Mary on unfamiliar paper bearing the letterhead of a London hotel,’ her sister recalled. ‘It was brief and to the point. Yesterday, Mary wrote me, Wallis had accused her of having seduced Ernest. Mary had left the room where they were talking, gone to her own, thrown all her possessions into suitcases, phoned for a taxi and then walked out of Bryanston Court and Wallis’ life forever.’

  Wallis fed her aunt little of this drama, explaining only that she had gone to great lengths to amuse Mary. But, she added ominously, ‘I am afraid.’ She then wrote to her aunt with remarkable self-knowledge of how people of her age, nearly forty, must make their own lives. ‘As I wasn’t in a position to have it arranged for me by money or position and though I have had many hard times, disappointments etc I’ve managed not to go under as yet – and never having known security until I married Ernest, perhaps I don’t get along well with it, knowing and understanding the thrill of its opposite much better – the old bromide, nothing ventured nothing gained.’ Bessie Merryman decided that it was time to come over to England again and support her niece more actively, but she could not do so immediately.

  On 2 April the Simpsons hosted a black-tie, black-waistcoat dinner in the King’s honour at Bryanston Court where Ernest, bizarrely, made a grand entrance into the drawing room of his own home escorting his sovereign. Harold Nicolson, a guest that evening, found ‘Mrs Simpson a perfectly harmless type of American but the whole setting is slightly second rate’. After this there was to be only one more occasion when Ernest accompanied his wife in public, but the society jokes about him did not abate. The Duchess of Devonshire suggested that while other staff were being sacked a job might be found for him such as ‘“Guardian of the Bedchamber” or “Master of the Mistress”’.

  In May, the Prime Mini Khe ter ster and his wife, Lucy, were invited to dine at York House, where the King still lived. Until recently Lucy Baldwin had been completely unaware of Mrs Simpson’s existence – and her discovery was the cause of much mirth in smart London gatherings. But this was not her milieu. The Baldwins had been married for more than forty years and had six surviving children, and, although their roots were in the country, in Worcestershire, they were not part of the Tory landed gentry who spent weekends hunting and shooting. Lucy was first and foremost a homemaker, a formidable woman dedicated to a life of service. She was the founder of the Anaesthetics Appeal Fund, associated with a machine, which was named after her
, for self-administration of oxygen analgesia in obstetrics, the aim of which was to address the high incidence of maternal mortality. She was involved in the Young Women’s Christian Association and various other charitable bodies for women, especially those concerned with improving maternity care, after having herself suffered difficult pregnancies and lost her first child in a stillbirth. She was also a member of the White Heather Club, the first women’s cricket club founded in Yorkshire in 1887, and she created a small theatre at Astley Hall in Worcestershire where her children with cousins and friends often put on small productions. It is hard to imagine which of these topics would have resulted in congenial conversation with Wallis Simpson.

  The King had warned Wallis weeks beforehand that he wanted her at this dinner. ‘He paused, and after a moment, with his most Prince Charming smile, added: “It’s got to be done. Sooner or later my Prime Minister must meet my future wife.”’ Wallis, recounting this story, maintains that it was the first time he had proposed marriage. They planned the evening together and, on the surface, the dinner passed off uneventfully. The other guests included the Mountbattens, the Wigrams, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Ernle Chatfield and Lady Chatfield and the American aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife, Anne. Baldwin had no prior knowledge of the significance of the occasion and, although surprised to see Mrs Simpson at one end of the table and Lady Cunard at the other, neither disliked Wallis nor took offence at his own wife’s placement, which was on the King’s right. In fact he was one of those who believed that ‘Mrs Simpson’s influence was not without its good side’. Neither was he out of touch with modern morals nor without sympathy for her predicament, having recently seen his own daughter go through a painful divorce. But others were more distressed, especially when the names of Mr and Mrs Ernest Simpson were announced in the Court Circular. Sir John (later Lord) Reith, a minister’s son and strict Presbyterian who rose to become director general of the BBC, was deeply disapproving of ‘the Simpson woman’ and described the affair as ‘too horrible and … serious and sad beyond calculation’.