The Real Wallis Simpson: A New History of the American Divorcée Who Became the Duchess of Windsor

by Anna Pasternak

  This was a view shared by the king’s youngest surviving son, Prince Henry, who became the Duke of Gloucester. “My brother and I never got on, I’m afraid,” Gloucester later said of his relationship with Edward. “We had a hell of a row in 1927. I’d said to someone I didn’t think he’d ever be king and it was repeated. He said to me: ‘Did you say that or didn’t you?’ So I said: ‘Well I’ve either got to tell you a lie or tell you the truth and I’m going to tell you the truth. I did say it and I still think it.”28

  The prince’s equerry, John Aird, who succeeded Tommy Lascelles in this position, believed that the king and his family were misinformed about his son’s activities. He wrote in his diary: “I have been told that HRH’s behaviour is killing the king. If so I am very sorry, but feel that it is not probable and quite unnecessary.”29 Lascelles had described the prince as “ ‘an archangel ruined’—though ruined by what, God only knows.”30 John Aird, however, did not share this view. At fault, he felt, were the courtiers at York House eagerly relaying to the king “all the nasty gossip, which is very wrong of them and does no good.”31 Queen Mary’s official biographer, James Pope-Hennessy, who was given access to the entire royal family for the writing of his 1959 book, concluded sagely: “It is courtiers who make royalty frightened and frightening.”32

  However, those close to the Prince of Wales, the unholy trinity of the monarchy, Church and political establishment, had serious misgivings about Edward’s suitability as king. His views were regarded as not conservative enough and he did not seem to take to his official duties with the appropriate solemnity. His high-profile visits to areas of mass unemployment, highlighting the suffering of the laboring classes, raised political hackles during the Depression, while his chief activities—socializing, needlepoint, sewing and gardening—did not match well with contemporary ideas of kingship. There were also concerns about his ability to have children and provide an heir. Several who worked closely with him began to bandy about the word mad. His nervous tics, odd speech and constant fiddling with his cuffs did not help solidify his reputation, yet while he could be extremely self-centered, often appearing detached from reality, he was certainly not insane. George V remained infuriated by his eldest son’s ways, especially his style of dress. The prince insisted on wearing a bowler hat on official visits to industrial plants, eschewing his father’s preference for a top hat. Yet this was a considered move not to further alienate himself from the workers, rather than as a snub to court etiquette. The king and his court dismissed any such attempt of Edward’s to modernize the style and approachability of the monarchy as anarchic.33

  The prince’s lack of conformity extended widely to his social circle. Edward’s friendship with Lady Diana Guinness (née Mitford) and her lover, the MP and, from 1932, leader of the British Union of Fascists, Sir Oswald, raised questions of political impartiality and judgment. George V knew that the monarchy’s survival depended on maintaining its constitutional neutrality, whereas Edward appeared to be enthusiastically pro-German at a time when his parents were going to great lengths to rebrand the royal family as British. Like many members of the British aristocracy in the early 1930s, the prince seemed to view fascism as the latest in political chic. However, Edward was considered too ideologically vacuous to have any genuine interest in a political creed, and his two political mentors, Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George, were both Liberals.34

  That Edward did not conform to court life, preferring a vigorous and flamboyant social life over the grey strictures of monarchial duty, was tantamount to treachery in the eyes of his advisors. In 1927 Tommy Lascelles said to Stanley Baldwin of the prince: “You know, sometimes when I am waiting to get the result of some point-to-point in which he is riding, I can’t help thinking that the best thing that could happen to him and the country, would be for him to break his neck.” “God forgive me,” Baldwin said. “I have often thought the same thing.”35

  Edward carried on with his private life, ignoring opprobrium, preferring to spend his time with the wealthy and self-made as opposed to old-school aristocrats. He enjoyed the company of rich Americans, such as Sir Henry “Chips” Channon and Lady Emerald Cunard. Emerald, widow of shipping heir Sir Bache Cunard, was an influential hostess and patron of the arts. Stanley Walker, editor of the New York Herald Tribune, wrote: “International society is not always difficult to crash. To be the guest of the Prince of Wales at his country house, Fort Belvedere, is regarded as a high honour. Many of the members of what is known in New York as the ‘international set’ are accepted in London, and shuttle back and forth between England and America.”36

  During the summer of 1932, Wallis, who suffered from a physically nervous disposition—she felt her stresses in her stomach—had to return from a much-anticipated trip to France and Austria with Ernest, due to a stomach ulcer. She later wrote: “I suppose that the ulcer came from nerves, as I always kept the day-to-day tensions of living bottled up inside me.”37 Beneath her confident, sharp-shooting facade, Wallis nursed a frailty she was at literal pains to conceal. That autumn, Wallis and Ernest were twice invited to the Fort: once for tea and once for the weekend. By December, Wallis was in bed again as her stomach problems had flared up in spite of careful attention to her diet. Her doctor advised her to drink only whisky or water for six months.

  From early 1933, the Simpsons received more frequent invitations to the Fort. Wallis wrote to Aunt Bessie from Belvedere on Sunday, January 29: “It is cold for England now and since arriving here we have been skating out on the water with the Duke and Duchess of York.II Isn’t it a scream! Also you can imagine me out on the ice but due to having roller skated I have not been too bad. The Prince presented T[helma] and self with skates etc.”38

  Wallis’s bond with Thelma was strengthening. She wrote to Mary Kirk: “A friend of mine, Thelma Furness, is the Prince of Wales’s girl and I chaperone her when she goes out to Fort Belvedere to stay with him.”39 Wallis described her surprise when Thelma arrived to drive her to the Fort, with long struts strapped to the side of the car. Thelma “just laughed and said that I would find out later.” It was after dinner that she found out. “The three of us came into the sitting room for coffee. On either side of the fireplace, where a grand fire was blazing, stood a comfortable chair and beside each chair stood something that looked like an artist’s easel. When I went closer and looked I found that each of these held a canvas on which was an unfinished piece of embroidery. When we had finished our coffee Thelma and the prince settled themselves down to work and I, sitting between them, was asked to read from a book Thelma handed me.”40

  Thelma encouraged the prince’s love of petit point. His first solo effort was a paperweight which he made for Queen Mary. It depicted the royal crown above her initials, M. R., in gold. The prince had it mounted on a silver base and when finished, it was beautiful. He then progressed to sewing a backgammon table cover for Thelma.

  The prince had a thoughtful, generous side. Every Christmas he bought all the staff at York House and the Fort a present. This meant buying and wrapping many hundreds of gifts. An eccentricity of his was to involve all his weekend guests during the run-up to Christmas in sessions of after-dinner wrapping. “All the guests became an informal task force,” recalled Thelma. “Scissors, paper, ribbon, string were issued to each and the production line started rolling. The prince got down on the floor with his paper and ribbon and manfully struggled through three or four parcels. The results were hardly reassuring; the corners sagged ominously and the ribbons were apparently tied with some sort of knot he had learned to use in securing hawsers during his naval days.” Thelma tactfully suggested that he would be of the greatest help if he cut the paper for them, and this became the prince’s special task. “I can still see the group sprawled on the floor: Prince George flourishing rolls of ribbon, Wallis Simpson keeping up an animated chatter from one corner, while Ernest stolidly ground out package after package with astonishing skill and artistry.”41

  Walli
s sailed for New York that March, thanks to a generous cheque for $500 from Aunt Bessie. When Wallis received it the previous December, she had written immediately to her aunt from Knole, where she and Ernest were weekending. “Dearest Aunt Bessie, I am staggered by the size of the cheque and have a sensation of being a millionairess. You know you should not have sent it and I shall be killed by generosity! I have sworn I shall not pay a bill with it or buy anything for the flat as I have done with your other presents. This I shall invest in myself.”42

  On this visit to America, Wallis was keen to tour, visiting old friends and family. Ernest was due to join her, as his business interests took him to New York, while Wallis would also see friends in Baltimore. The Mauretania had barely left the Isle of Wight in its wake when a messenger came dashing up with a radiogram. It was a bon voyage message from the prince, signed “Edward P.,” wishing Wallis a safe crossing and speedy return. Word spread on the ship that Mrs. Simpson had received a personal message from the Prince of Wales. “The attention was flattering,” Wallis recalled. “I enjoyed every minute of it.”43

  Wallis’s time in Washington coincided with the famous first “hundred days” of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency, when he presented a series of initiatives to Congress to counter the effects of the Great Depression, including the abandonment of the gold standard. Wallis’s mind was on other matters, however, and she made no reference in her letters to American politics. She returned to Europe in May aboard the RMS Olympic (Ernest met her at Cherbourg), and, on the seventeenth, wrote to Bessie, thanking her for her generosity. “Darling—What can I ever say to make you know how much I appreciate your giving me this marvelous trip and then a dress and coat besides? Maybe you realize that I am enough like my mother to be completely inadequate at expressing my feelings when I feel the most. I’m afraid I then generally joke the most. I love you better than anyone in the world and will always be on hand when you need me.”44

  On her return from America, Wallis’s relationship with the Prince of Wales entered a new phase, despite Wallis’s writing to her aunt that “Thelma is still the Princess of Wales.”45 She and Ernest were accepted into the inner circle of the prince’s friends, mixing with his brothers, Prince George and the Duke of York. The Simpsons were regulars at the Fort; they accompanied Edward to nightclubs in London—he was a habitué of the Embassy Club on Bond Street—and the prince dined often at Bryanston Court. Ernest, a staunch monarchist and social climber, was proud of Wallis and the way she had been accepted into this rarefied crowd. He believed in deferential reverence to the Prince of Wales, initially basking in reflected glory at his wife’s burgeoning closeness to the future monarch, as William Dudley Ward had once done. “Ernest was initially delighted with Wallis’s royal foray,” recalled Ernest’s nephew Alex Kerr-Smiley. “He benefited from the royal connection. The Prince of Wales had some tweed especially woven. It was made into an overcoat for him. My great-uncle admired it and the Prince of Wales said: ‘My dear chap, there is some tweed left over. You may have it.’ Ernest had an identical overcoat made up and there is a rude family story saying that he actually swapped his wife for an overcoat.”46

  Initially, though, Ernest refuted rumors that he was a cuckold. Ernest had applied for admission to a Masonic lodge, presided over by Sir Maurice Jenks, a former lord mayor of London. His candidature was supported by the Prince of Wales. When Ernest was refused entry, Edward naturally demanded an explanation. The heir apparent was boldly told that it was against the Masonic law for the husband of his mistress to be admitted. The prince gave his word that this was not the situation and Ernest’s candidature was accepted. With Ernest’s entrée to the Masonic lodge came introductions to a rich and influential coterie of friends.47

  “The game of royal mistress, or the royal favorite, had its own set of rules and Ernest played his part,” said John Julius Norwich. “Both Wallis and Ernest benefited from the arrangement.”48 Of her association with the Prince of Wales—“a figure of popular legend and the quintessence of youthful charm”—Wallis was “glad to be even a minor satellite in the company revolving around him.”49 Yet she, like her husband, misunderstood the prince’s growing admiration for her. “If the prince was in any way drawn to me I was unaware of his interest,” she said. “Thelma was always there, and often Prince George, whom I found on closer acquaintance to be altogether as attractive as his brother. He played the piano very well, knew all the latest jazz, and loved to bang away at the keys while the rest of us danced after dinner in the octagonal hall.”50

  Prince George was closest to Edward of all his siblings and had worried the heir to the throne considerably. After he left the navy, George took up residence in York House. Artistic and impressionable, he succumbed easily to temptation. In 1928 he fell into the embrace of an attractive married American socialite called Kiki Preston, who introduced him to drugs. Known as “the girl with the silver syringe,” she was addicted to heroin, cocaine and morphine. In the summer of 1929, Edward tried to intervene and even drew closer to his parents, the three of them united in their concern for George. Eventually Edward persuaded Mrs. Preston to move abroad and more or less incarcerated George in the country. He took full responsibility for helping his brother beat his addictions, telling Freda Dudley Ward how exhausting it was to be “doctor, gaoler and detective combined.”51 Aiding Prince George to come off drugs illustrated Edward’s capacity for kindness and commendable behavior. Even King George was impressed. He wrote to his son: “Looking after him all those months must have been a great strain on you, and I think it was wonderful all you did for him.”52

  Sadly, Edward could not hold his father’s praise for long. Eschewing stuffy court life, he began to drop in on the Simpsons at Bryanston Court for tea or cocktails, enamored with the “gay, lively and informed company” Wallis liked to keep. Young British and American businessmen, foreign diplomats and Wallis’s girlfriends would gather. The prince found the conversation “witty and crackling with new ideas.”53 Edward later wrote: “Wallis had an intuitive understanding of the forces and ideas working in society. She was extraordinarily well informed about politics and current affairs. Her conversation was deft and amusing. But most of all I admired her forthrightness. If she disagreed with some point under discussion, she never failed to advance her own views with vigour and spirit. That side of her enchanted me.”54

  Where Wallis was not honest with the prince was concerning the financial strain that she and Ernest were under, constantly trying to keep up with the prince’s set. Entertaining lavishly was beyond their means. Although Ernest’s father, “Pa Simpson,” helped financially, from time to time he would withdraw his allowance, creating huge pressure on the couple. Wallis wrote to Aunt Bessie that “Pa S—the most selfish old pig”—had stopped their allowance. They could only afford to host one dinner party a month.

  On June 19, the Prince of Wales threw a surprise dinner party for Wallis’s thirty-seventh birthday at Quaglino’s, a restaurant off Jermyn Street. Edward gave Wallis an orchid plant as a gift. As it was the prince’s thirty-ninth birthday four days later, she gave him a present that she had put much thought and effort into. She had borrowed a royal spoon from Osborne, the butler at the Fort, and had the prince’s cipher copied and engraved onto a silver matchbox holder. The first letter the prince preserved from Wallis was the note she wrote accompanying the birthday present:

  Sir—Many happy returns of the day.

  This small “presy” is to conceal Bryant and May’s (match) books on your dining table at the Fort. I am also enclosing your own spoon which I borrowed from Osborne for the marking.

  Your obedient servant, Wallis55

  That summer, news of the Prince of Wales’s interest in Wallis reached his mother, Queen Mary. Elizabeth, Duchess of York, wrote to her mother-in-law about the matter on August 1, 1933:

  My darling Mama, when I was at Cowes with you, PapaIII one day mentioned to me that he had heard that a certain personIV had been at the Fort when B
ertie & I had been there, & he said that he had a good mind to speak to DavidV about it. I never had the chance to reopen the subject, but I do hope that he won’t do this, as I am sure that David would never forgive us into being drawn into something like that. I do hope that you do not mind my mentioning this Mama, but relations are already a little difficult when naughty ladies are brought in, and up to now we have not met the “lady” at all, & I would like to remain outside the whole affair.

  With again all my grateful and loving thanks darling Mama for all your kindness and sympathy which I appreciate more than I can ever say,

  Ever your loving daughter in law

  Elizabeth56

  Although the Duchess of York had not met Wallis at Fort Belvedere, she had, in fact, been skating with the duke and the prince’s party, which included Wallis and Thelma, five months earlier. Queen Mary replied on August 20, reassuring her daughter-in-law:

  Darling Elizabeth,

  I am so sorry, I quite forgot to answer yr letter to me at Cowes. Of course Papa never said a word to D about Belvedere so all is well for I agree with you that it wld never do to start a quarrel, but I confess I hope it will not occur again for you ought not to meet D’s lady in his own house, that is too much of a bad thing!!!”57

  The Yorks had never been frequent visitors to the Fort. The duchess, ever conscious of her position, was not comfortable with its air of informality. A photograph taken by Thelma Furness during her reign as chatelaine shows a group of eight guests; seven are sitting around the pool relaxing in swimming costumes, while the Duchess of York sits alone, resplendent in a dress, hat and pearls.58

  Wallis and Edward went on separate summer sojourns in August. The prince holidayed in Biarritz, while Wallis and Ernest extended a business trip of Ernest’s in Norway, staying with their friends the Thaws, who were stationed in Oslo. That autumn, they were again regulars at the Fort while Wallis stoically nursed her private strain: more frantic concerns about money. She and Ernest faced the prospect of having to sell Bryanston Court. Dinner parties were reduced to eight guests every six weeks, and she was restricted to having one girls’ lunch a month of no more than four women. She continued to lunch at the Ritz or Claridge’s with Thelma, à deux, and in November was excited to be invited to a dinner that Thelma gave where she met Noël Coward. (Coward later said of the Prince of Wales that he “had all the charm in the world with nothing to back it up.”)