The Riviera Set

by Mary S. Lovell

  They had agreed to make a luxurious safari at the end of the trip, but after Aly departed Rita did some thinking and concluded that life with Aly was never going to be any different, and that his playboy lifestyle was not the life she wanted. The next day she sent Aly a note to say she was returning to Cannes and wanted to go to America with the children. He quickly returned to her and they quarrelled again. In the end she insisted on at least returning to Château de l’Horizon alone, and he agreed on the understanding that she would wait for his return before the proposed trip to the United States. He was adamant on one point: she must not take his daughter to America without his permission.

  Emrys Williams was on a rare leave in London when he received a worried phone call from one of the servants at the Château de l’Horizon. The Prince was still in East Africa and the Aga was due to return from a holiday the following day. Rita had packed and flown to Paris with the children and their nurses, and now she had apparently boarded a liner at Le Havre, bound for New York. From her packing and luggage it looked as though she did not intend to return. Emrys telephoned the Aga, who was deeply upset. Aly was also alerted. Chartering a private plane, he flew directly to France to try to stop Rita from leaving, but he was too late for the ship had sailed by the time he landed. As she boarded the ship Rita announced to the newspapers she had left her husband and intended to instigate divorce proceedings from America.

  Aly flew to California and, using all his charm, talked Rita into a very brief reconciliation, but it did not last. And this time the fairy-tale marriage was well and truly ended.

  While all these events had been occurring, the other fairy-tale romance – that of the Windsors – had also very nearly hit the rocks in nearby Antibes.

  After having spent the war years in the Bahamas, where the Duke was Governor, followed by some time in Paris, the Duke and Duchess had moved back to the Riviera in 1947. A year later Winston and Clementine Churchill spent their fortieth wedding anniversary at La Croë. This was surprising, in view of Clementine’s dislike of the Riviera and what she considered to be the louche crowd it seemed to attract. She did not like Wallis either. But Winston loved the climate and could take or leave what he wanted of the people he met. Clementine stayed only a few days, returning home alone and leaving her husband to paint, write and relax.

  He had already begun work on his series of books about the Second World War which would make him financially secure for the rest of his life, but of course in 1948 he was not yet aware of this so an invitation to spend some time in the overwhelming luxury of La Cröe was welcome. Even so, despite his loyalty to his erstwhile monarch Winston seems to have, at about that time, come to agree with his wife that the Duke would not have made a good king and Wallis would not have made a good queen.4

  After he left La Croë in 1948, and again during 1949, Churchill stayed with Beaverbrook at his magnificent villa La Capponcina at Cap d’Ail, which looked across the bay to Monte Carlo. Just as he had always done at Maxine’s villa, immediately he arrived Winston plunged into the sea and swam like a schoolboy. During the second visit, at dinner on the veranda, he gazed at the lights and said wistfully how much he wished he could go to the Casino, but he had promised Clementine he would not. He kept to his old routine of dictating his book in the morning and bathing or painting in the afternoon. Fellow guests invited by Beaverbrook to keep Churchill amused were amazed by Winston’s fluency as he spoke and clowned and held the table in his spell; ‘It was as though,’ said one, ‘he were raised to the highest pitch of his life and genius in one glorious peak of exultation before the climax.’5

  The Duke and Duchess of Windsor joined them one evening. The Duke had included in his book some things about Churchill’s part in the abdication and wished to discuss this with him before submitting the manuscript to a publisher, for there was a general election looming. Later Winston played rummy with Wallis, and after the Windsors left he continued to play for some hours. As he climbed the stairs to bed he complained of cramp and an ‘odd sensation’. On the following morning his doctor examined him and confirmed that he had suffered a mild stroke. At Winston’s insistence this was kept secret, and he left for Chartwell as scheduled after two weeks of complete rest. Churchill would often meet the Windsors in the South of France in future years, but he would never again stay with them.

  Following the war, La Croë was the only home of significance left to the Windsors: they had not owned their Paris house in Boulevard Suchet, and the owner declined to renew the lease. Fortunately, they were able through Sir Charles and Lady Mendl to obtain an affordable lease on a house on the Bois de Boulogne which became their Paris base,* and were allowed to draw on rations from the British Army because of the Duke’s military position, which enabled them to entertain. But Paris was changed from the city of frivolity and light that it had been prior to 1939. Extreme food shortages and daily power cuts made life difficult for most residents, although there were plenty of diplomatic social events at the British Embassy after Duff and Diana Cooper took over. There, expats of the right sort could meet and, while drinking champagne, at least pretend all was as before. Noël Coward saw the Windsors at an embassy party in the winter of 1946; he wrote that the Duke was still deeply in love with Wallis, but he was able to believe that, at last, Wallis seemed to love the Duke. Lady Diana Cooper, as wife of the ambassador, adopted the practice of dropping a royal curtsey to Wallis, which was frowned upon by the Foreign Office – but who was going to tell the daughter of a duke how to behave? Having been given an official lead, most ladies could happily follow her example, which pleased the Duke, who still smarted over his family’s treatment of his wife.

  The couple had made a low-key visit to England in the autumn of 1946, staying privately at the house of the Duke’s former equerry Sir Dudley Forward, Ednam Lodge near Sunningdale in Berkshire, and having no contact with the Royal Family. The Forwards obligingly moved into Claridge’s while the Duke and Duchess occupied their home but the hope that this private visit would not attract any press notice was doomed when Ednam Lodge was burgled one evening while the Windsors were out to dinner. The thief – or thieves – got away with priceless uncut emeralds given to Wallis by her husband, which were said to have once belonged to Queen Alexandra, plus all of Wallis’s jewels apart from those she was wearing – the value was estimated at a sum that would be thirteen million pounds today. Nothing else in the house was touched: not even some Fabergé eggs. Only the Duchess’s jewellery, locked in a trunk in her bedroom, was taken. A thin trail of dropped baubles – gold, diamonds, sapphires, emeralds and pearls – led police across the nearby golf course, but the perpetrator was never found.* This incident, together with the grim austerity of England, the widespread depression caused by even more harsh rationing than during the war years (even bread was rationed now) and the Labour government’s attitude to inherited wealth, helped the Windsors to decide to return to Antibes. The England over which the Duke had reigned seemed to have vanished.

  Thanks to various official contacts, many items of value from their Paris and Antibes properties had been rescued and stored during the war. The Château de la Croë had been abused, like most other properties belonging to expats, but it suffered less damage than most others. Axis forces had turned the garage into a mini headquarters, had cut down sheltering trees in order to improve visibility to the sea, and the sea frontage and grounds had been mined. The château itself had not been lived in, although a bomb had landed outside and blown in all of the windows, admitting adverse weather for months. The Duchess soon had it all in hand and within weeks had employed a staff of twenty-two, with the women house servants all dressed in the classic black with white frilly aprons so admired by Rita Hayworth. Wallis wrote to her aunt that outside of foreign embassies it was probably the only house in France that was still maintained in such a manner, possibly in England too.

  By the start of the Fifties the Windsors had been married fifteen years and felt they had been shunted into a siding
in life. The Duke was deeply offended that they had been excluded from the wedding of his niece Princes Elizabeth to Prince Philip of Greece in November 1947, an insult which had caused headlines in England. Very occasionally the Duke paid a visit to his mother, and in February 1952 was a senior mourner at the funeral of his brother King George VI, but he always went alone and his family pretended Wallis did not exist. His frequent attempts to obtain some sort of official position – his personal objective was the governorship of Canada – were all firmly rejected.

  Both the Duke and Duchess had loathed the war years in the Bahamas, regarding it as a sort of exile – Wallis called it their Elba – though millions living in Europe envied them. They had been able to escape on occasion to the United States for short holidays, such as in April 1941 when, on leave in Florida, they were invited to lunch at Palm Beach with Jessie Donahue. Jessie was one of the three daughters of Frank W. Woolworth, founder/owner of Woolworth’s stores, who inherited between them a billion dollars. The Windsors met Jessie and her family again that autumn in New York, and when Jessie sailed to Nassau that winter they were able to repay her hospitality.

  For at least a decade thereafter Jessie Donahue showered the Windsors with invitations. She was one of the richest women in America and the cost was nothing to her; association with this gilded couple was a pinnacle of social achievement. For the Duke of Windsor, always concerned about money (except when commissioning extravagant new jewellery for Wallis), it was a way to enjoy the lifestyle he enjoyed without affecting his income. Through Jessie the Windsors were able to enjoy such benefits as vacations in Palm Beach mansions, cruises on huge yachts, a long lease on a Long Island estate which included a twenty-five-room château overlooking a golf course, and all for free or at a peppercorn rent.

  From time to time Jessie’s son, the playboy Jimmy Donahue, would put in an appearance. Born to such wealth that he knew from childhood that he would never have to work and would hardly have time to spend what he would inherit, he decided on a life of self-indulgence and degradation worthy of a latter-day Roman emperor. Along with his more famous cousin Barbara Hutton, who was also among his best friends, he discovered drugs early and was already hooked on Seconal* by the time he was expelled from the Choate School, where he had been a contemporary of John F. Kennedy. He openly admitted his sexuality when being gay was shocking to most people, but shocking people – or, as he called it, ‘making mischief’ – was Jimmy’s stock in trade. His father had also been homosexual and had committed suicide after being jilted by his sailor lover. Multilingual and a qualified pilot, Jimmy could play the piano, sing and dance, and was a raconteur.

  Most of his ‘pranks’ were repellent. At a low level they were simply distasteful, such as when he purchased a cow’s udder and minced down Madison Avenue with one of the teats hanging out of his flies, but they also included the group rape of a kidnapped waiter and the castration of a victim who refused his advances, which provides some sort of scale of his conception of ‘mischief’. With the willing connivance of a group of largely male prostitutes and other disreputable hangers-on it amused Jimmy to abuse – both physically and mentally – various helpless victims, knowing that anyone who complained about him would be paid off by his doting and worried mama. Whenever his more infamous and sordid behaviour looked like reaching the newspapers a team of public relations men countered with stories showing Jimmy with a beautiful woman on his arm, dining and dancing tête-à-tête, or helping veterans and old ladies. Despite his intrinsic nastiness, Jimmy was able to make himself appealing in society, and evidently he charmed the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in 1950 when they all found themselves crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Mary.6

  From that date onwards, this unlikely trio were seemingly inseparable. Encouraged by his mother Jimmy bankrolled the Windsors, paying for Wallis’s purchases at Mainbocher and other world-class fashion houses, buying her a collection of fabulous furs, paying the couple’s air fares, always picking up the bills after evenings at smart places such as the Stork Club or the Twenty-One Club, and chartering private yachts for cruises in the Mediterranean. Loathed by many in the British upper classes and American polite society, Jimmy Donahue’s presence in the ducal train frequently raised hackles and eventually some top houses were denied to the Duke and Duchess if Donahue was in attendance. Elsa Maxwell – still going strong in her late sixties and still throwing her incomparably smart parties – was so disgusted by Donahue that she openly criticised the relationship and warned Wallis that it would not enhance her reputation. As a result, the two women did not speak to each other for some years.

  A number of books and newspaper articles have been written about the relationship between Wallis and Jimmy Donahue, which is sometimes purported to have been a sexual one. In some of these a good deal has been made from little actual evidence and the conclusions reached appear to be based mainly on supposition, more with an eye to increased book and newspaper sales than any need to verify facts. It would make far more sense had it been claimed that Jimmy had an affair with the Duke, for some of Donahue’s gay friends have said that – initially at least – it was the Duke in whom Jimmy was interested. However, that story seems unlikely, for as far as Wallis was concerned the Duke wore his heart on his sleeve until his death.

  Did Wallis have an affair with Jimmy Donahue? The answer is that we don’t – and can never – know the truth. According to several of his male lovers, Jimmy Donahue was physically revolted by women. Some writers on the subject, determined to prove the unprovable, have inevitably claimed that while there was no actual penetrative sex, Wallis – totally obsessed in her flirtation with a younger man – had performed oral sex on him. Jimmy apparently boasted of a ‘blow job’ from Wallis – and this, whether true or not, is perfectly in line with his character. But it would still appear to infringe their differing sexual orientations for which, at least in his case, there is plenty of substantiation. The interior designer Nicholas Haslam, the son of a diplomat, was then a young member on the fringe of the same social set and knew Wallis and Donahue, and his comments to Wallis’s biographer seem to have a credible bearing on the matter: ‘I can’t think he would have touched any woman, let alone one as rigidly un-undressable as Wallis.’7 Wallis was naturally flirtatious and her upbringing as a belle in America’s south was deeply ingrained. She also appears to have enjoyed heterosexual sex, for as well as her several marriages there is incontrovertible evidence of her having enjoyed a liaison, most probably a sexual one, during the period when she was still married to Ernest Simpson and was also being pursued seriously by the then Prince of Wales. The relationship was detailed by the Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police, who had Wallis under surveillance from the time that the Prince’s inclinations towards her became obvious. Her lover, Guy Trundle, was the rakish son of a vicar, employed by Ford Motors to market their cars to the trade. He was described in the police report as ‘a very charming adventurer, very good looking, well-bred and a good dancer’. The pair often met openly at social events but made ‘secret assignations’ when – it was alleged by the surveillance officer – ‘intimate relations take place’. This statement would seem to be confirmed by Trundle’s subsequent open boasts about his relationship with Wallis, and his assertion that she had made him presents of money and expensive trinkets. Her latest biographer regarded this behaviour by Wallis as ‘part of the flirtatious and promiscuous pattern which provided her with continuous reassurance of her attractiveness to men’.8 She also openly enjoyed the company of many gay men, including Noël Coward, Barry Dierks, Cecil Beaton and Somerset Maugham, to name a few who were among the regular guests at Windsor entertainments.

  Of course there are those who hint darkly that the androgynous-looking Wallis was really a man (and this despite the fact that she had a pregnancy terminated in her youth, and it is a matter of record that in 1951 she was diagnosed with, and treated for, cancer of the womb). Just as she was supposed, as a young naval bride posted to the Far East, to
have studied ‘Chinese’ sex techniques and used these to ensnare her prince. But such outrageous claims aside, why would the ambitious and level-headed fifty-four-year-old Duchess risk everything – especially as she must, surely, have known how unreliable he was – for a one-sided relationship with Jimmy? It makes intriguing gossip, but somehow it doesn’t totally add up. Many women will have experienced the very special charm of a personable gay man flirting with her, each knowing there is no danger involved. Even accepting that sexual morals among this particular set of people were often loose (to say the least), it seems most likely that for Wallis this was merely a flirtation, because Jimmy, a fellow American, was free from stuffy European protocol, and quipped endlessly with salacious, camp tittle-tattle. He made her laugh, and he made her feel young and carefree again. The Duke had slowed down considerably, no longer wanting to carouse until the early hours and often returning home before his wife, or allowing her to go out alone, especially when he was working on his memoirs.* Also, ironically, she may have felt safe from adverse gossip when with him, because Jimmy was so openly gay.

  A member of the Windsors’ personal staff* recorded in her diary what appears to be the crisis caused by Donahue’s relationship with the Duchess. Wallis habitually returned home late from her solo evenings out on the town with Donahue, humming a tune and smiling. One such evening she went into the Duke’s bedroom as usual to say goodnight, little knowing that since her departure someone had told him, ‘in his own interests’, of the unfavourable gossip about his wife and Jimmy. Wallis was told by a jealous and tearful Duke that whatever relationship she had with Jimmy must stop, not because she was the Duchess of Windsor but because no man would accept such behaviour in a wife. Wallis’s response was not heard by the eavesdropper, but when she came out onto the landing ‘all her gaiety [was] gone – walking slowly with her head bent, her face submissive, her eyes blue & bewildered ... She was very quiet and submissive for a long time afterwards. She telephoned immediately cancelling whatever arrangement she had made with the young man.’9