“I dress.”
“Well, so do I.”
“Well, they put out my ties and so forth and I have to choose.”
In any case, he had been the Prince of Wales’s aide-decamp. The reason he was there for lunch with King George and the Prince was that the Prince insisted someone else be in the room with himself and King George, who was an absolutely terrifying man. The King never spoke in public except in the House of Lords, but when he did it was blood and thunder….
So you can imagine what a dramatic moment it was when the Prince of Wales looked his father, the King, straight in the eye and told him that never, under any circumstances, would he succeed him.
This, you understand, was long before he had even met Wallis Simpson. It had nothing to do with giving up the throne for the woman he loved. Isn’t that the damnedest story you ever heard? I didn’t even tell Reed about it for five or six years. I was so afraid that if I said it out loud I’d get in the habit of saying it.
In retrospect, it all seems so logical. For one thing, the Prince of Wales was born a very modern man. I’m not sure he really believed in the monarchical system. Now I’m not talking about his love of country. That was overpowering.
Once, I arrived at Neuilly, outside of Paris, for quite a big dinner. I had on white satin slippers. There’s never been such rain! I mean the rain was falling down and jumping up off the ground. The Duke was at the door, which I thought was terribly charming—you know, with the two footmen there—and he was just roaring with laughter as I was struggling out of the car. And I got in soaking, absolutely soaking, and I said, “Your country, sir!” meaning that it rained too much there in France, or certainly at that moment, and his whole countenance changed.
“My country?!” He…was…furious…at my suggesting that France was his country. Oh, he wasn’t joking at all! Of course, immediately he recovered himself and was charming. But I had hit on something that was just about the…end.
Reed and I were no longer living in England by the time Edward became King and then abdicated. But my sister’s brother-in-law, Lord Brownlow, was very much involved. He was Edward’s lord-in-waiting. That meant that he could be called upon at any time of the day or night. Naturally, this rarely happened. He’d be invited for dinner, the way I’d invite you for dinner; the King didn’t follow every move he made. Then, on the one day in history when the King really needed Lord Brownlow, he was nowhere to be found. Finally, they found him in a Turkish bath. He’d been on a bit of a toot. I guess, and he was having a good old massage when the message came through: Would he please go directly to Fort Belvedere, bringing a change of clothing?
When Perry got to the fort, the King told him exactly what was expected of him: He was to dine, and then, immediately after dinner, he was to leave with Mrs. Simpson and drive to Southampton, where they were to board the Channel boat as Mr. and Mrs. Something or other. That turned out to be a terrible mistake. Perry’s face was known everywhere, because he’d been seen walking beside the King into Parliament, walking into White’s, or wherever. And by this time you couldn’t miss Wallis Simpson. She didn’t dress any more exaggeratedly than I’m dressed at this moment, but there was something about her that made you look twice. Well, they were spotted, and the story got out that the two had boarded the boat, that they were crossing the Channel….
Perry told Reed and me about this when we were visiting London about six weeks after the abdication. He called us late one night and said, “Please come to see Kitty and me.”
So, still dressed for dinner, we arrived.
“I’ve been back two weeks,” Perry told us when we got there. “This is my life: today I walk into White’s and every man leaves the bar. I walk down Seymour Street, where Kitty and I have lived all these years, and if I see a friend he crosses to the other side of the street. Nobody—but nobody—speaks to me in London. It’s as if people really believed I was a party to the abdication—to a conspiracy! Kitty doesn’t want to listen to this. She’ll go up to bed. But I will tell you and Reed everything.”
Kitty did go up to bed, being totally exhausted at this point by the pressures of a world-shaking event in which her husband was more involved than anyone—except, of course, the King and Mrs. Simpson.
Perry went on. “We crossed the Channel, Wallis and I,” he said, “and our first night was in Rouen, where we found rooms in a hotel, just like ordinary tourists on the road. ‘Perry,’ Wallis said to me through the door, after we’d been in our separate rooms for what seemed like an eternity, ‘will you please leave the door open between your room and mine? I’m so frightened. I’m so nervous.’ I did. Then she called to me: ‘Perry, will you please sleep in the bed next to me? I cannot be alone.’”
So he went into her room, fully dressed, and pulled the blanket up over himself…and then, suddenly, she started to cry. “Sounds came out of her,” Perry said, “that were absolutely without top, bottom…that were primeval. There was nothing I could do but lie down beside her, hold her hand, and make her feel that she was not alone.”
The next morning, Perry told us, a call came through from the King. The hotel was very simple, and Mrs. Simpson had to take the call at the concierge’s desk. By this time the whole of Rouen knew who Wallis was. They were standing in the hall, in the street, in the square—hundreds of them—while Perry and the maid and the driver who were traveling with them tried to shield them so that she could have a little privacy in which to talk.
The next day they hit Cannes. There, the King would call two and three times a day. The lines were tapped so they could literally hear twenty clicks as they came on. “Is everybody listening?” Mrs. Simpson would say. “Now we’re going to start to talk.” That was the only way to handle it—to let people know that they knew that they were being listened to. And then Mrs. Simpson spoke to him: “You will never ever see me again. I will be lost in South America.” Don’t forget, South America was still a place you could get lost in in those days. “Never leave your country! You cannot give in! You can not! You were born to this, it is your heritage, it is demanded of you by your country, by the traditions of nine hundred years….”
And et cetera.
Anyway, the King took absolutely no heed, and the abdication took place. Perry was called to Windsor from Cannes. He saw the farewells.
“Edward went up to Queen Mary,” Perry told Reed and me, “and kissed her on both hands and then on both cheeks. She was as cold as ice. She just looked at him. Then he said goodbye to Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and to Prince George, Duke of Kent, who both broke down in tears. Then he approached the new King, King George VI, who completely broke down. ‘Buck up, Bertie!’ the Duke said. ‘God save the King!’ And with that, he turned, walked away, and that was it.”
Perry accompanied the Duke of Windsor on the battleship that took him to Calais. From there, the Duke went to Vienna, where he stayed in a castle that belonged to Eugène de Rothschild. Perry went to Cannes to see Mrs. Simpson and to bring news back to the Duke. He told us that he had arrived at about 6:00 a.m.—the sun was just coming up—and that he had been met by a footman who took him through this cold, lonely castle to a room. He went into the room and there he saw the Duke—who looked just like a little schoolboy, sound asleep, with sun coming across his blond hair. His bed was surrounded by chairs…and on each chair was a picture of his beloved Wallis.
“It was an obsession,” Perry said. “No greater love has ever existed. I stayed there two days with him. Now I’m back in London, and this is my reward—I am completely, totally alone.”
We never talked about it again, Perry and I. It obviously affected him very much. He must have paced five miles up and down as Reed and I listened to him. Reed and I never said one word. Perry was a charming, erudite gentleman who was forever tainted by being involved with a King at the wrong moment.
Do you know what time it was when Reed and I walked out into Seymour Street? Seven-thirty in the morning. It was bright daylight. That’s why
I remember what I had on: a beautiful dress, I think Chanel’s—this was the thirties, so it must have been—of navy-blue crêpe de chine, and from the knees down it was white organdy. Reed was wearing a dinner jacket. Here we were, walking through the streets of Mayfair in the early morning…dressed absolutely to the nines.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I never discuss politics—they’re beyond my ken. But I do know that the rise of Hitler—which more or less coincided with the abdication of the Duke—was the passing of the empire.
Several years ago, right after The Damned was released, I had dinner with Luchino Visconti in Rome. I told him that a part of the Night of the Long Knives—which he does so marvelously in The Damned—had actually taken place on three floors above me in the Vier Jahreszeiten Hotel in Munich.
Reed and I had been down in the lovely Swan Country—the valley below Munich—that day, and we returned to the hotel in the early evening in a terrific hurry to change our clothes and get to a concert. At first, all we could make out was this tremendous agitation in front of the hotel—cars, cars, cars—huge Mercedes-Benzes with the great silver pipes on the outside, tops down so that the populace could see the grandeur of the people they carried—the captains of Hitler’s new order. Out of the cars emerged Röhm’s officers, with spiked helmets, swords jangling, and overcoats to the ground. Everything was metallic. Just sticking out from beneath their long coats were spurs—though, of course, they got about as close to a horse as you and I are right now. In the street, a regiment of goose-stepping soldiers went by—the clap, clap, clap of their leather boots as they hit the pavement—and they were shouting, “Heil! Heil! Heil!” but to the heavens!
I pushed my way past all of this, into the hotel, to get up into my bath. “Really,” Reed said to me, “you’ve got to behave yourself. You simply cannot push your way past these men saying, ‘Excuse me, excuse me, I’ve got to get to my bath!’ You’ve got to realize that you are in somebody else’s country and it’s been taken over by this special breed of people.”
We got through that evening all right. Actually, we were having the time of our lives. Every day we went out into the lovely, sweet-smelling countryside—which was quite untouched then—having picnics and revisiting the castles of mad King Ludwig, which we could never see enough of.
This is the tour: First you go to Nymphenburg. Ludwig was born there. You get a little bit of early Wagner here.
Then…you go to Neuschwanstein. You leave your car, get in a carriage, and then eventually you have to walk, because it’s really on a mountain peak. Inside, it’s all Tannhäuser—all of it—and the outside is so beautiful, with these towers like candles on the top of the mountain. It’s a child’s dream of a castle. There is no countryside like the Swan Country was then. Grass waist-high, turrets everywhere, the sky blue.
Then—these are the steps of Ludwig’s life—the next stop is Linderhof, which is divine—it’s the most perfect example of kitsch in the history of the world. You see a huge gold throne at the head of a dining table. There, draped in ermine tails, Ludwig would dine with the busts of…Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon or Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour or whatever combination struck his fancy on that particular night. Their busts were set on chairs. The table came up through a hole in the floor with the meal on it so that they never had to see a servant. The meal would come up; they’d eat; they’d of course enjoy the conversation, the mad Ludwig and his busts—tous les trois or tous les whatever, and then, at midnight, he’d leave them and go outside. Every time he’d pass a statue of Marie Antoinette in the gardens he’d sweep off his hat and bow. They were all royal, of course. Then he’d wander over the countryside because he couldn’t sleep. There’s a marvelous painting I once saw of Ludwig alone on a small sleigh pulled by eight peacocks—two by two by two by two. I don’t think that Ludwig actually did this—whoever painted it was probably madder than he was—but it’s a pretty idea.
Also, at Linderhof there’s a small door you go through and you’re in the Blue Grotto! There is this extraordinary aura of light, and there Ludwig would float on the water in a golden seashell of a boat, while from a balcony within the grotto an orchestra performed everything they knew of Wagner for hour after hour after hour….
Then…there’s Herrenchiemsee, where he’s getting into a more “classical” period, shall we say—and it’s the end…. He tried to build something finer, larger, and more splendid than Versailles. He was totally gone by then, having had so many talks at dinner with those marble statues.
I think it was Goethe who said, “There is a glory to madness that only madmen know.” It’s a beautiful statement, but I’m afraid I may have made it up. If I did, it’s better than his.
These were our days around Munich. Then we’d go back to the Vier Jahreszeiten in the early evening, and at night we’d hear some music, which was always remarkable—the best music in the world is in Germany, after all. The stars would come out, we’d listen to this music…our life was a dream of beauty.
But the contrast of this beauty with the absurdity of those comic-opera bullies we encountered….
One morning, Julie, my maid from London, came in late with the breakfast, shivering, shaking, and weeping. She said, “Madam, madam, madam…we must leave today.”
“What do you mean, ‘leave today’?” I said. “We’ve got another four days here, and you know it—and you love Munich.”
“Madam, please…something terrible is happening in this hotel!”
“Well, if it’s that terrible, couldn’t you tell me what it is?”
“That’s just it—I don’t know what it is! But I know that when I leave this room—I’ve been twice to this floor this morning trying to bring you your breakfast—everything’s delayed. Something’s happening on the three floors above you. Something’s going on up there.”
“Listen, Julie, there’s nothing to get upset about as long as you can get from your room to—”
“Oh, madam, madam…”
“Listen, Julie, cheer up and let’s get on with it!”
So she got me dressed and out and everything seemed normal enough. But Julie was getting more and more upset until she couldn’t even fasten a hook. She was a very sensible Frenchwoman, nothing simpering about her. She knew she was in very, very bad company.
Then we returned to London. Ten days later, The Times gave an account of the fourteen murders that had been committed that night upstairs at the Vier Jahreszeiten! It was the Night of the Röhm Murders—the Night of the Long Knives, which took place all over the country.
I’ve learned a tremendous amount from maids in my life.
Do you remember the scene in The Damned of officers in women’s underwear? Elsie Mendl showed me photographs of exactly the same thing going on at her house—pictures that had been snapped by her wonderful old caretaker and his wife. They managed the gate lodge of her little house at Versailles, the Villa Trianon, and they stayed on when the Germans occupied the house.
First, you must imagine the beauty of Elsie’s house. It had belonged to one of the members of the court of Louis Philippe, and there was something in the lease that gave her permission to open a door and walk right into the park at Versailles—the palace grounds that no one sees, way, way beyond all the canals and the formal gardens, farther away than the eye can see. You opened the gate of Elsie’s little potager—her vegetable garden—and there you were under the big live oaks that had been there since the Kings of France. The live oaks were spaced very far apart, and there were sheep grazing underneath. It was like stepping into the eighteenth century.
Now imagine, if you can, the German officers, so obscene with their helmets and their mustaches, running around in this garden in Elsie’s underclothes! Somehow or other, the caretaker and his wife found the ways and means of taking the pictures—the officers were too drunk to notice, I suppose. There weren’t many of them, but those, I can tell you, were some pictures.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Let’
s suppose you were a total stranger—and a very good friend. That’s a good combination. What would you want to know about me? And how would you go about finding it out?
To me, the books I’ve read are the giveaway. My life has been more influenced by books than by any other one thing. I stopped reading—seriously reading—years ago. But what I read before then has remained forever secure in my mind, because I used to read and reread and reread. The real seriousness of my youth—by which I mean my young married years—was that I devoted myself totally to learning. From the time I got married at eighteen until the time I went to work in 1937, twelve years—I read. And Reed and I would read things together out loud, which was marvelous. That was the charm of it—when you’ve heard the word, it means so much more than if you’ve only seen it.
Reed and I had seven thousand books, between our own and the boys’, that we had to sell when we sold the house in Brewster. It was cash on delivery, because it was a house that was not easily sold. Our lives in the city were too full to properly use the house and its garden. It was on three levels, which is what made it hard to sell, but that’s also what made it so romantic. When we decided to sell it, it was one of those things you don’t think about. It was done. And these awful people would come and they’d say, “Now what period would you call this?”
“Well, it’s many periods,” I’d say, “many thoughts….”
It was far and away the most romantic country house you could ever imagine. The top of my bed was over twenty feet high—à la polonaise. And I had every door inside painted a different color—pale lavender, pale blue, pink, strong yellow—I had such a color sense in those days. But we rarely went there. I suppose that’s why we sold it. You see, I’ve always been a gypsy. I mean, by the time we lived there I’d lived in Europe and then America and then Europe and then America again. I can never have the feeling other people have about their roots, their own soil, as I remember telling Reed when we sold the house. I have no sense of soil—at all. But for the same reason, it was mad to sell the books.
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