by Cecil Beaton
A VISIT TO WALLIS SIMPSON AT CHTEAU CANDÉ
Spring 1937, Paris
I meant to take the train to Touraine, thus offering myself the enjoyment of reading Le dernier des Villavides. But the day proved too beautiful, with spring far advanced. I motored instead, feeling more than compensated by a countryside blossoming with lilac, fruit trees and chestnut. I also saw Chartres for the first time; and the Palace at Blois and a few châteaux along the Loire.
Château Candé is situated on high, commanding a view of miles of green country. Tall poplars and willows grow in platoons. The Château itself, begun in the sixteenth century, has seen many subsequent additions in the intervening years. It is feudal and rather ugly, with high towers, pointed turrets and heavily embellished Gothic doorways. But the house is run with a modern luxurious comfort that would make a Long Island millionaire envious.
I arrived to find Wallis looking rested after her long incarceration here. Mr and Mrs Herman Rogers and Mme Bedaux joined us. All were thirsting for news of the outside world. To the accompaniment of cocktails, chatter was of people and clothes and the ‘Buick of which you’ve read so much.’ Then it was late, and time to change.
My rooms were Empire, decorated in striped satin. From the bathroom, with its sunken bath, came clouds of red carnation scent.
A footman waited to conduct me to the underground vault where dinner was to be served. Hams and salami sausages hung from hooks in the ceiling. In dim candlelight we were royally waited on by a solicitous butler (who really overdid his act) and three footmen. The chef used to be with the Duke of Alba, who must have regretted letting him go. There was a superb variety of wines, and everyone’s spirits rose.
The women had dressed to the nines, all in reds. Wallis sported a new jewel in the form of two huge quills, one set with diamonds, the other with rubies. Her dress showed to advantage an incredibly narrow figure, narrower since the abdication.
The atmosphere was one of suppressed excitement. Rogers said that though the worst was over, the strain on Wallis became greater as the wedding day approached. Her divorce goes through this week; and after the Coronation, they will undoubtedly be married without further delay. Still, no mention could be made of the date or details.
After dinner we went across a courtyard to a games pavilion. Billiards ensued, then were abandoned for conversation. At midnight the Rogers said goodnight, leaving Wallis and me to talk in full earnest until nearly dawn.
I was struck by the clarity and vitality of her mind. When at last I went to bed, I realised that she not only had individuality and personality, but was a very strong force as well. She may have limitations, she may be politically ignorant and aesthetically untutored; but she knows a great deal about life.
Some people maintain that Wallis obviously possesses little insight into British character and customs. Certainly I got the impression that she has been taken as much by surprise by recent events as anyone else. Though her divorce proceedings had already begun, I don’t believe she had any clear intentions of marriage. If the King ever said to her, ‘What about your wearing that little crown?’ she more than likely laughed and replied, ‘Let’s talk about it after your Coronation.’
Of the abdication, she told me she had known less than anybody. It had been impossible to talk freely with the ex-King on the telephone, as the wires were constantly tapped. But two things, she confided, had not been generally known. One was that the ex-King had told Mr Baldwin he would be willing to let the matter of his marriage hang fire, to be discussed again six months after his Coronation. Secondly, during the entire period of these discussions, Mr Baldwin held in his possession papers which had been signed by Wallis, to the effect that she was willing to stop divorce proceedings against her husband.
It wasn’t just tactfulness, I am sure, that prevented Wallis from airing any grievance she might have against Mr Baldwin or the so-called friends who ‘welshed’ on her when the situation altered. She said, ‘It has only shown me who among my friends are my friends.’ She is bitter towards no one.
As for her future, she seems determined that she and the Duke will ‘work things out’. Obviously she has great admiration for his character and his vitality; she loves him though I feel she is not in love with him. In any case, she has a great responsibility in looking after someone who is temperamentally polar to her but yet relies entirely upon her.
Our conversation in the abstract was most interesting. I became sleepy and soft from time to time, perhaps saying things without careful consideration. Thereupon, Wallis, quick as a flash, would contradict or challenge me, observing, ‘No, I don’t agree with you. I’ve always found that in life people may be given this but they do that.’
She twisted and twirled her rugged hands. She laughed a square laugh, protuded her lower lip. Her eyes were excessively bright, slightly froglike, also wistful.
Candidly, she concluded that she had always been much alone in her life. Perhaps this isolation helped her now. She confessed that it had been difficult for her not to give way and hang herself on one of the many pairs of antlers in the room in which we sat. But her control surprised her. She was, she said, very like a man in many ways; she has few woman friends, and Katherine Rogers, the most intimate among them, has likewise, I think, a man’s mentality. Yes, both the Rogers had been wonderful friends and had borne the brunt of her hysterics; but a great deal of her time had none the less been spent by herself in her bedroom.
The next morning, Sunday, was given over to preparations for the photography. A manicurist and hairdresser arrived from Paris. Her hair was set in a new way, with waves flowing up instead of down.
After lunch, our camera session started with ‘romantic’ pictures in the shade of sunlit trees, where the thick grass was covered by daisies. A greyhound came in useful, together with bunches of gorse and broom. Wallis was terrified of treading in the long grass where her dog, Slippers, had recently been fatally bitten by a viper, but tread she did.
The photography went on for many hours. Birds sang; conditions, and settings and organdie dresses were ideal. We mounted a Gothic turret to Wallis’s bedroom, where the boiseries made a good background, for a succession of clothes which were put on and off with the speed of a quick change artist. Jewellery was produced in unostentatious driblets. It impressed me to see some big historic stones, including a pair of diamond pear-shaped clips the size of pigeons’ eggs. Wallis, helpful and serious, purposely dropped her usual badinage.
On the desk, dressing table and bedside table were informal pictures of the Duke, signed ‘To Wallis-David.’ Over a number of these pictures hung little enamel or palm crosses.
Regularly, like the chimes of a clock, the telephone rings: at seven o’clock and again at ten. For the Duke still enjoys his long telephone conversations. At frequent intervals the press also rang up to make inquiries. Wallis seemed to be at pains to please them. She continually remarked to whoever answered, ‘Be careful to be nice: So-and-So is very important.’ Once we laughed when someone asked for proof that Mrs Simpson was really there, as a report published in America had authenticated her return to Baltimore!
After dinner, Rogers showed a series of cine-Kodak films which he had taken intermittently since 1924.
The first setting was China, at a time when Wallis had again been staying with the Rogers during six months of divorce proceedings against Spencer. The women wearing knee-length dresses and boudoir caps or bandages on their foreheads and gambolled and laughed coyly. The men were in immensely tight trousers and high collars. In one sequence Wallis hilariously kissed Rogers, laughed into the camera and then continued her attack.
There were scenes at the races, also intimate glimpses of the English colony with Wallis, as ever, the life and soul of the gatherings. She seemed much less individual then, her hair thicker, her head bigger, her body fatter.
This was followed by glimpses of the Simpson-Rogers friendship with the Prince of Wales and future King. They appeared, a jovial group
, in Budapest and Vienna. In the south of France, they splashed and frisked in a turquoise sea. They picnicked on rocks, snapped one another, rowed in collapsible boats, ate lunch.
Then came the ‘Nahlin’ cruise, showing the Royal party steadfastly roughing it at sea. The King, with Wallis at his side, went round asking questions of the crew, of anybody and everybody. He seemed a wizened little boy, distinguished by untidy golden hair and a brown, naked back.
But an unique film showed the Simpson-Rogers visit to Balmoral. Here, against the Highland setting, more candid shots of the turreted castle, which caught the King demonstrating to his guests an Austrian game by shooting some kind of arrow through the air. Lord Louis Mountbatten tried after him, then the Duke of Kent. They fared badly, making everyone laugh. As they sat on the terrace waiting for lunch, the ladies looked untidy and relaxed. The Duchess of Sunderland seemed enormous in a dowdy hat; Mollie Buccleugh was made to look very squat in tartans. Neither Mary Marlborough nor a begoggled Edwina Mountbatten were flattered by the camera; only the Duchess of Kent looked romantic with her hair untidily blowing and tied with a baby bow of ribbon. Every few feet of film, the King appeared with Wallis. She looked very different from the others, neat and towny in smart clothes and a black felt hat. In the background, the Rogers laughed and ran round in circles.
One sequence showed the King in a huge hood and cloak, lying in wait on the moors. He munched an apple, asked questions of the old retainers, helped the stalkers to put the victim deer on the pony’s back...
After Rogers’ cine-Kodak, we discussed the ‘stills’ I had taken earlier in the day. There were enquiries as to the proper use of these pictures. Some must be allowed to the general press, for Wallis has got used to her publicity now.
We exchanged goodnights, and the weekend was over. It has given me much to muse upon. The Rogers, I concluded, are nice — but in spite of being wary, not very intelligent and apt to be fooled. Still, they’re loyal friends. Walks appreciates this, and throughout her success she has always insisted on the Rogers being included in social invitations.
Next morning, the over-solicitous butler and footmen were lined up at the door to salute my departure. I concluded that, for Mrs Simpson, events might have been worse. If she has not been fated to wear a crown, she is still loved by an abdicated King and will soon be married to him. It won’t be so bad to be called the Duchess of Windsor.
PRE-PHOTOGRAPHING THE WEDDING OF THE DUKE OF WINDSOR AND MRS SIMPSON
June 3rd
I took a very early train to Tours. When I arrived at the château, swarms of journalists and their vans and motorcycles waited outside the gates.
Mrs Spry and her assistant Miss Pirie, two laden Ganymedes, calmly went about their business of decorating the whole château with magnificent mountains of mixed flowers. Rogers with his typewritten lists busily handled the telephone, and the press.
Wallis hovered about in yellow, slightly more businesslike than usual; with her face showing the strain: she looked far from her best. The Duke, by contrast, seemed radiant — his hair ruffled gold, his complexion clear and sunburnt, his blue eyes transparent with excitement. Marriage in Westminster Abbey should have been his birthright yet now he beamed contentedly at the impromptu wedding arrangements set up in the music room. The piano had been taken out; and thirty-two chairs placed in the room. Wallis inquired, ‘We don’t have to shake hands with everybardee, doo weeh?’
A car drove up. Great consternation and activity were occasioned by the arrival of the clergyman who (out of the blue and at the eleventh hour) had volunteered to marry the loving pair. This obscure Darlington vicar had felt it an injustice that the Duke should be denied a religious ceremony, and sent through the post a letter to that effect. As with all the other letters, it was personally opened by the Duke. And so, out of provincial obscurity, a vicar had been hied to Château Candé to be the centre of world interest.
The Duke was interested in everything he had to say, and spent much time discussing arrangements with him.
Now the clergyman wanted an altar, of course. The château was scoured for a suitable table. ‘What about the one with the drinks on it, or the chest from the hall?’ In the confusion someone knocked over an Italian lamp and cracked it. The Duke became greatly perturbed, and tried forthwith to mend it.
At length the chest from the hall was chosen. It promised to be just the thing: a heavily carved, vastly ornate affair of no particular period, with a row of fat caryatids holding up bogus Renaissance carving.
Wallis, rather harassed but not too harrassed to laugh, wondered about an altar cloth. Pointing to the caryatids, she drawled, ‘We must have something to cover up that row of extra women!’
‘Oh, I’ve got a tea cloth,’ Wallis suddenly exclaimed.
The tea cloth was produced from the bottom of an already-packed linen trunk. Wallis’s Cockney maid, furious at having to unpack the trunk, whined, ‘If it’s as much trouble as this getting married, I’m sure I’ll never go through with it myself.’
Wallis explained, ‘I couldn’t let the poor girl be put off matrimony for life. I felt duty-bound to say, “Oh, it isn’t always as bad as this — only if you’re marrying the ex-King of England!”’ The altar cloth was spread. Mr Allen, the solicitor, a rather sheepish expression on his face, trooped in with two heavy candlesticks to be placed on the altar.
Wallis remonstrated, ‘Hey, you can’t put those out: we want them for the dinner table tonight.’
More flowers were brought in. Mrs Spry, robin-like in a picture hat and overalls, sentimentally broke off a branch of laurel: ‘I’m going to make the flowers as beautiful as I can. I’m so glad they’ve both got what they want with this religious ceremony. I’d do anything for her. I adore her. So did all my girls when they arranged flowers for her in her Regent’s Park house and didn’t know who she was.’
The parson now allowed the photography to begin without further delay. The electricians had fixed up the lights in Wallis’s bedroom, and we started with pictures of the Duke alone. He turned himself into a pliable, easy-to-pose subject, doing his best to make things less difficult. The only taboo: he would not allow himself to be photographed on the right side of his face, preferring the left as it showed the parting in his hair. Though somewhat wrinkled, he still seemed essentially young for all his forty-three years. His expression, though intent, was essentially sad, tragic eyes overruling the impertinent tilt of his nose. Those eyes, fiercely blue, do not seem to focus properly, and one is somewhat lower than the other.
Photographing the bridal couple together proved more elusive. It developed that nowhere in the château was there a crucifix to place upon the improvised altar. The British Embassy in Paris must get one; which meant that the Duke himself had to telephone to Lloyd Thomas about the matter. Wallis, wearing a black dress and her huge diamond pear clips, was meanwhile waiting impatiently to be photographed with him. She became perturbed at the delay. The Cockney maid telephoned to his room: ‘Is that your Royal Highness? Well, will you please come down right away?’ When he finally did appear, Wallis let him see she was annoyed. After a preliminary argument he apologised. Then the two sat hip to hip on the pouf, his far hand round her waist while I clicked away.
There was a lunch interval before we settled down to taking pictures in the wedding vestments. The other guests on hand were whisked off to a restaurant in some neighbouring town by M Bedaux — a strategy designed to get them out of the way. Our own meal was served out on the terrace under the trees. The Duke never eats much lunch, but today had strawberries and cream while Wallis, Rogers, Dudley Forwood the equerry, and myself ate curried eggs and rice, kidneys and other dishes.
At the beginning of lunch, Wallis asked that the large sunshade on the terrace be lowered. The Duke rose from the table to do it himself. Footmen hovered impotently as he called, ‘Is this the right height? Six inches lower?’
Lunch conversation was light and witty. At times the Duke roared and wrinkled up h
is face so that it looked like last year’s apple.
Then he went off to change into his morning coat.
Upstairs, in the bathroom-dressing-room, hung Wallis’s hard blue wedding dress. On a stand by the window was her hat, of matching feathers with a tulle halo effect.
With Wallis in costume, we were now ready to take the wedding pictures. ‘Oh, so this is the great dress? Well, it’s lovely, very pretty,’ admired the Duke.
To avoid possible sightseers with telescopic lenses, we had to confine ourselves to certain shielded parts of the house. The most successful pictures were those taken on the steps and terrace of the medieval porch.
As misfortune would have it, Forwood brought some bad news just as the bridal couple posed at a turret window. Through the lens I saw the Duke become worried, frowning and contorting his face until he looked as tortured as a German gargoyle. Wallis, too, seemed troubled. The Duke opined, ‘That’s one point I will stick to. I’m certainly going to have my way on that. After all, I am English!’
It was painful. I couldn’t very well interrupt and say, ‘Please look pleasant.’ I took several unflattering but illuminating pictures. Then the mood changed for the better again, as Wallis suggested, ‘Let’s remember now, we’re having our pictures taken.’
The sun poured down beneficently. I was glad to be getting what I knew would be good results, since the day’s earlier efforts hadn’t augured well. But at last there was no excuse to go on; and so the bridal pair changed their clothes.
The Duke reappeared in a bright blue suit that made his complexion even more rubicund, his hair more flaxen. The latest batch of mail was carried across the lawns to him. Great joke: ‘Old Carter with the mail.’ I took pictures of the Duke with Carter and the mail tray piled high, every letter bearing the Duke’s profile.
