Wallis had lots to say about staff, Perry and HRH to me. She said it didn’t matter to her, but she minds a great deal really and says Monckton has made her sign just Wallis on the documents today. She said that she realised that there was no insult that they hadn’t tried to heap on her.
She thanked me effusively twice for having come, and twice said she thought it was so very sweet of me. A scene never to be forgotten, more perhaps than the ceremony: the rehearsal before dinner. A small pale green room with an alcove in one corner. The organist Dupré from Paris trying out the music in the room next door, Fruity walks in with HRH and stands on the right of the alcove, Wallis on Herman’s arm comes in—under the tutelage of Jardine, large-nosed, bulging-eyed red-faced little man, they go over the service, HRH’s jaw working the whole time exactly the same as I saw the King’s all through the Coronation. Walter Monckton, Allen and I watch with such a mixture of feelings. The tune played for “O Perfect Love” is not the lovely one, so I sang it to the organist who wrote it down as easily as I am writing this. M. Bedaux keeps calling Jardine “the Reverent.” For the guests, there were 33 chairs placed in rows, with another 15 in the library from which the chateau staff could watch. All was in place the night before.
Although the duke had worn shorts and open-neck shirt to greet all those who arrived on June 2, dinner that night was of the utmost formality, with the women dressed as for a ball and blazing with jewels—Wallis sported a new one, two huge quills, one set with diamonds, another with rubies.
“Dinner. Kitty and Eugene [the Baron and Baroness de Rothschild] and Randolph Churchill came to dine. I sat on H.R.H.’s right with Monckton on the other side who I could not like more. He is devoted to him. No word as yet from the King, Queen or Queen Mary and nothing is settled about the £25,000 a year.” Baba also noted that when Wallis went to bed on this last night before the wedding she shook hands with her future husband, curtsied and said, “Good night, Sir,” in exactly the same way as she said good night to the other guests.
At seven on the morning of June 3 the police took up their places. All road traffic around the nearest village, Monts, was stopped, no parking allowed near the estate and only those with passes let in, although the villagers were permitted to line the avenue. At 8 a.m., Wallis’s hairdresser arrived, carrying flowers; Wallis’s hair was set, her face massaged and her nails manicured. As on the previous morning, Baba saw the duke “in dressing gown and tousled hair sitting on the floor going through all the mail helped by Mr. Carter and his old chief clerk,” sorting through some of the hundreds of letters and the thousand-odd telegrams—including one from every member of the royal family.
At 11:47 came the brief civil ceremony, conducted by the mayor of Monts, Charles Mercier, in French with French responses, also rehearsed the night before. After this, the newlyweds withdrew briefly.
At ten past twelve, what everyone—the duke included—regarded as the real marriage took place. With Jardine standing by the makeshift altar, which was adorned with pink and white peonies, Marcel Dupré began to play a Bach concerto, followed by a chorale.
Only seven English people were present: Monckton, Allen, Randolph Churchill (the only one in a frock coat, a garment abolished by the duke during his brief reign), Hugh Thomas, Lady Selby and the Metcalfes. Baba sat beside Walter Monckton, soon to become a great friend.
Baba’s diary, headed “3.30, 3 June 1937,” continues:
It’s over and it’s true. I felt all through the evening that I must be in a dream. It was hard not to cry, in fact I did. In the room itself besides the guests already mentioned there were a number of French officials and wives and five members of the press. The servants were in the adjoining room.
The civil ceremony took place first, at which Fruity and Herman R. were present. During that time we sat and waited, talking ordinarily as though nothing unusual was happening and the organ playing from the room next door. Jardine came in first, followed shortly by the Duke and Fruity, who stood two yards from my chair.
The duke, in morning coat, dark yellow waistcoat and gray checked tie, asked Fruity to hold his prayer book, given to him by Queen Mary when he was ten and inscribed: “To David from his loving Mother.”
The diary goes on:
Wallace [sic] on Herman R’s arm came in by the other door. She was in a long blue dress with short tightfitting coat, blue straw halo hat with feathers and tulle and the loveliest diamond and sapphire bracelet, which was her wedding present [her octagonal wedding ring was of Welsh gold]. Jardine read the service simply and well. “Do you, Edward Albert George Christian Andrew Patrick David, etc, take, etc.” His responses were clear and firm and very well said. Her voice “I Bessie Wallis” was much lower but very clear.
It could be nothing else but pitiable and tragic, to see a king of England of only six months ago, an idolised king, married under those circumstances and yet, pathetic as it was, his manner was so simple and dignified and he was so sure of himself in his happiness that it gave something to the sad little service which it is hard to describe. She could not have done it better. We shook hands with them in the salon, I realised I should have kissed her but I just couldn’t. In fact, I was bad the whole of yesterday. My effort to be charming, and like her, broke down. In fact, I don’t remember wishing her happiness and good luck.
If she occasionally showed a glimmer of softness, took his arm, looked as tho’ she loved him, one would warm towards her. But her attitude is so correct and hard the effect is of an older woman moved by the infatuated love of a much younger man. Let’s hope that she lets up in private with him, otherwise it must be grim.
After the marriage service, the duke entered the salon with tears running down his face. The first of the 250 bottles of champagne was opened and Fruity gave the toast: “Long life to His Royal Highness the duke of Windsor and his bride.” The duke laughed and said: “I didn’t know Fruity could make such a speech.” Wallis began to cut the three-tier wedding cake, plain under its carapace of icing; it took her a quarter of an hour, including all those to whom pieces had to be sent. After this, she made a good lunch, although the duke was still so moved he could not eat.
A very nice telegram from King and Queen* and one from Queen Mary [records Baba’s diary]. We all had a buffet lunch and I took a number of photos. It was easy and gay. All guests left by three and we sat around till we left for the train. She changed into a dark blue coat and skirt for travelling and they left at 6 to motor to Laroche and so to Wasserleonburg [Count Munster’s château, where the Windsors spent most of the summer]. Lady Selby, Mr. Allan, Jardine and Walter Monckton came back in the train.
When he knew Wallis was not going to be allowed to be HRH he said he wanted to give up his own title. He has written a letter to the King saying he will not admit the fact of Wallis not being HRH.
The hopes are that the King will give him £25,000 which with what he has already got should give him about £60,000 a year. Only an ordinary settlement has been made on her.
At home, on June 4, Baba put down her last thoughts:
No one ever knew to what extent Wallis was at the bottom of everything. Baldwin is supposed to say that as a schemer and intriguer she is unsurpassed. My opinion is that she must have hoped to be either Queen or morganatic wife as if she had realised she would get neither she would and could have stopped him putting forward the whole idea. Although I loathe her for what she has done I’m unable to dislike her when I see her. Her hardness I find very unattractive but that is the only outstanding thing I can find to criticise, and yet there might be something more as, except for him, I would never cross the street to see her again.
We dined with the Kents on the night we got back at Coppins. They wished to hear every detail. I’ve had the impression they would have preferred to hear a bad account than a favourable one. She obviously dislikes him because of old slights and rudeness. He wrote to Queen Mary in reply to her letter to the effect that her good wishes did not ring true. Prince G said it
was an awful letter.
The family loathe and abhor her so naturally are reluctant to send wishes to both. For this he won’t forgive them so he replies by curt answers. The HRH question is more complicated. Terence O’Connor, Attorney General who did it all for the Government, explained it. The courtesy title of HRH was only started by Victoria and is only used by members of the royal family who are in lineal succession to the throne. Therefore when the King abdicated he was no longer in the line of succession and therefore no longer really was rightfully HRH but when he was going to make his Abdication broadcast Sir John Reith rang up and told the King he was going to introduce him as Mr. Windsor. The King said no, introduce him as Prince Edward. This having been done, the step was taken and he has remained HRH although his case and the Prince Consort are the only two exceptions. Wallis’s right to the HRH is therefore nil.
26
The Cliveden Set
By the end of 1936 the British Union was nearly bankrupt. The money from Italy had ceased, the fallout from the Cable Street affair had frightened off many supporters, and the Public Order Act, passed on December 18, 1936, forbade the wearing of uniforms and gave police the right to call off marches.
Tom’s first step was to sack many of the staff; his next to mortgage his estate for eighty thousand pounds and put one hundred thousand pounds into BU funds. His third, at the beginning of June, was to tell the Curzon sisters that he would be letting Savehay Farm and the children would have to spend their holidays at Wootton in future. Since no one knew of his marriage, this was the equivalent of saying that they must live with his mistress. Baba at once wrote to tell him that he had no right to put the sixteen-year-old Vivien in such a position.
On June 11 Irene was shocked to receive a telephone call from the Daily Mail correspondent in Berlin, Ward Price, saying that there was a report that Tom had married Diana Guinness in Berlin. She rushed over to tell Baba, who sensibly told her not to burst out with this to Tom or it would make him more furious on the subject than ever. Instead, she arranged to see the Mosley family solicitor the same day, who told her that Tom had mentioned neither the question of letting Denham nor having the children at Wootton when they had met the day before.
The next morning Lady Mosley asked Irene to come over, as she had a proposal from Tom to discuss with her. Before bringing it out, Lady Mosley told Irene how badly she felt about it. What Tom had suggested was that if Irene felt his children should remain in the family home, she should pay the annual running costs of fifteen hundred pounds herself and make arrangements for the children to repay her when they came of age. He justified this, said Lady Mosley, by saying that he had no more money to spend on them.
Later, at lunch, with Baba present, Tom put this to Irene himself. Irene’s solicitor said it was an outrageous suggestion to which he could never agree but she asked him to reach some accommodation with Tom so that for the next few years at least the children need not be uprooted from their home.
The next day her solicitor had a lengthy meeting with Tom, who had received an offer for an eighteen-month tenancy of Denham which he wanted to accept. Her solicitor found the whole business deplorable: apart from the moral considerations, Tom refused to offer any security and there was no time to make adequate alternative provisions. But Irene was adamant that the children must stay in their home, so, after a long argument with Tom, she agreed to take on the costs if he would agree to a two-year tenancy.
“All hopeless and vile,” she groaned to her diary, having tried in vain to make him promise that he would not bring Diana Guinness there, “but I took on the deal.” With additions from Baba, she compiled a letter of agreement which her solicitor refined and dispatched to Tom for signature.
They were not out of the woods yet. Lady Mosley rang to report that Tom was infuriated by her letter and had called off the deal, saying that his mother and secretary could run the house instead. Once again, it was Baba who managed to make Tom see reason, eventually persuading him to put his signature to a document that covered every point raised by Irene. She may have reminded Tom that both of them depended on Irene’s goodwill to look after their children during the summer holidays.
By the end of June 1937 more rumors about Tom’s remarriage had filtered out, but when Georgia Sitwell stayed with the Metcalfes for a weekend neither of them could confirm it. Instead, they regaled her with an account of the duke of Windsor’s wedding. “Most interesting—pathos and bathos combined” was Georgia’s response.
The summer followed the same pattern as earlier years, Irene’s total commitment to the children alternating with indignation at the way both Tom and Baba seemed to take her for granted. She took the older ones to Lord’s to watch the Eton-and-Harrow cricket match (it was the year that Eton won by seven wickets), she went down to Hastings to see Fruity, his sister Muriel and the twins on the beach, took Nick and Mick crab-hunting on the rocks or to the big pool at St. Leonards for a bathe and played spillikins with the older children after dinner. From there she went to the Isle of Wight, to spend a few days in a camp arranged for the Girls’ Clubs for which she worked, returning to St. Leonards in early August.
Irene’s other summer travels took her to Salzburg, Greece, Crete, Delos, Myklor, by ship from Salonika along the coast, and finally back to England from Milan by train on September 16. The next day she went to lunch with the duke and duchess of Kent. All of them would have been worried if they had known what their former king was planning.
While staying at the Château de Candé for his wedding, the duke of Windsor had got on well with his host, Charles Bedaux. Unbeknownst to the duke, Bedaux was trying to reestablish his business in Germany and was well aware of the satisfaction to the Nazi party if the former king of England could be persuaded to tour the country—and of the benefits it could bring to himself.
Bedaux also knew that the duke had always been interested in the working man and his conditions of labor, and during their conversations the idea of an exploratory visit to Germany came up. The duke was enthusiastic and preparations had begun soon after the wedding, with a list of conditions sent to Hitler’s aide-de-camp Captain Wiedemann. On September 3, the duke sent Wiedemann a statement that
he and the Duchess of Windsor would be visiting Germany and the United States in the near future for the purpose of studying housing and working conditions in these two countries.
The arrival in Berlin will be on the Nord Express on Monday morning, 11 October 1937. His Royal Highness would appreciate an attaché speaking English, this attaché to meet him in Paris by calling on Mrs. Charles Bedaux at the Ritz on 30 September at 3:00 in the afternoon, and desires that his plans be kept secret until 3 October.
He and the Duchess prefer not to exceed 80 kilometers per hour in automobiles, for luncheon he eats only green salad and drinks tea—though he would be happy to have one or two typically German luncheons in a factory cafeteria with some German workers present—he prefers receptions between 6–8 p.m. followed by a quiet dinner with a few personalities present. The party will consist of the Duke and Duchess, Dudley Forwood, the German attaché, his detective Mr. Storrier, a valet and two maids.
Bedaux also corresponded on the duke’s behalf with various American private and official dignitaries. To one, he concluded: “How right you were to suggest in April to the Duke of Windsor, who is proving himself to be as great a man as he was a King, a world leadership where what a writer has aptly termed his genius for service would be used.
“I have the personal feeling that it is going to be used and on a scale never known before. I wonder if the cruelty, the suffering, the distress are not the result of a Superior Will intent on ensuring a greater joy on earth.” The letter (dated August 23) was, as he pointed out in the second paragraph, authorized by the duke himself. It, too, enjoined secrecy.
Irene and Vivien left for Munich, where Viv was to be “finished,” on September 25, 1937. Viv had been worried about going to Germany—her headmistress said she thought it was
because she hated fascism—but on the day itself she was perfectly calm. Irene could not help thinking of her own departure for Dresden, unaccompanied by any of her family, twenty-five years earlier, with Curzon desperately embarrassed when she burst into tears as they said farewell on the platform. On their arrival the following day she took Viv to the house where she would be staying, 16 Konradstrasse, and when she was settled in they made plans for exploring the city.
Three days later they were spectators at the arrival of Hitler and Mussolini (who was visiting Germany) at the Olympic stadium.
Goebbels in a ringing voice opened the tamasha,* followed by the Fuhrer whose voice was hard and clear [wrote Irene that evening]. He reeled out a string of praises for Musso and his regime amid storms of applause. Musso followed and jerked his German-spoken speech out like machine gun fire. It was the better of the two—his accent was very good for an Italian.
He actually said thousands of Italians had died in Spain to save the world from Moscow. I longed to be there to see those hundreds of thousands greeting the two dictators. Throughout dinner we listened to military bands in the Stadium. I played bridge with Viv after.
When Irene left Munich on October 3, Viv mumbled, “I am not really unhappy, Aunt,” in a way which so tore at Irene’s heartstrings that as soon as she got home she wrote her a long, comforting letter, with a note to the countess with whom Viv was staying. “I thank God for all the plans so far, may she be happy and safe,” wrote Irene that night. “I think Cim would be pleased.” Back at home at the beginning of November, she found it hard to swallow both Tom’s ingratitude and lack of concern over his daughter.
The Viceroy's Daughters Page 31
