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

by Anna Pasternak

  On May 12, the day of his brother’s coronation at Westminster Abbey, Edward announced that he was going to listen to the live broadcast on the BBC. A silent group gathered around the radio set in the Château de Candé. As the duke listened to the proceedings—described afterwards by the new Queen Elizabeth as “inordinately long”—he knitted a blue sweater for Wallis. “David’s eyes were directed unblinkingly at the fireplace,”7 Wallis recalled. “The words of the service rolled over me like an engulfing wave. I fought to suppress every thought, but all the while the mental image of what might have been and should have been kept forming, disintegrating and re-forming in my mind.”8

  Edward sweetly sought to allay Wallis’s fears when they were alone together later. “You must have no regrets,” he told her. “I have none. This much I know; what I know of happiness is forever associated with you.”9

  Wallis wrote to Ernest that day to inform him that she had decided to change her name back to Warfield. “I really felt that I had done the name of Simpson enough harm,” she declared. “Now the target can be Warfield as I don’t expect the world will let up on its cruelty to me for some time. . . . The publicity has practically killed me.”10 Wallis told a friend that she had aged ten years during the year of the abdication.11 Rather oddly, when Edward sent out the handful of invitations for the June 3 wedding, he announced his bride-to-be as “Mrs. Warfield,” which, of course, she never was. Edward presented Wallis with a 19.77-carat emerald engagement ring. The shank was inscribed “We are ours now.”12

  Wallis chose the American couturier Main Rousseau Bocher to create her trousseau. She had been introduced to him by her friend Elsie de Wolfe. The couture house of Mainbocher had been established in 1929 in Paris, and Wallis became a regular at his salon on Avenue George V because the designer’s style was directly aligned with hers. “I like persuasive dresses that have manners,” Main Bocher declared, “and I hate aggressive ill-bred concoctions.”13 Together they worked on her austere but classic wedding dress, in dyed, pale-blue crêpe satin. Its hue matched her eyes and became known as “Wallis blue.” The well-known Parisian milliners Caroline Reboux made a halo-style fascinator. Constance Spry, the society florist, who was genuinely fond of Wallis and resolutely loyal to her, came from London with her assistant, Val Pirie, to create floral arrangements. Spry’s close association with the Duke of Windsor (she knew about his relationship with Wallis long before others, due to the bouquets he ordered from her) meant that she missed out on the lucrative commission for the flowers for George VI’s coronation. Spry was fully aware that arranging the flowers for the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor would mean years of forgoing royal commissions, yet she did not hesitate. She and Val spent two days filling the castle with Madonna lilies, white peonies, delphiniums, wild roses and wildflowers. Her outstanding floral displays were, according to Cecil Beaton, “out of all proportion to the scale of the house and the small number of people who would see them.”14 Constance explained to Cecil: “I’m going to make the flowers as beautiful as I can. I’m so glad that 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.”15 The flowers were Constance’s personal gift to Wallis. Spry noted that, as she worked, the former king spent hours on his knees, rather pathetically scanning old and damp copies of The Times, which she had spread out beneath her arrangements.16

  In the run-up to the wedding, one of Wallis’s guests, Constance Coolidge, the Comtesse de Jumilhac, observed a dinner at Candé where Winston Churchill’s son, Randolph, was also present. The Duke of Windsor, she said, was “like a boy let out of school . . . gay, carefree, laughing and terribly in love.”17 When Wallis asked him to fetch her handkerchief, he sprang up to go and get it. On his return, he sat close beside her on the sofa, “a little shy of her and adoring.” After dinner, the duke noticed that Wallis’s slipper was undone, and he knelt down to tie it up. “I caught Randolph Churchill’s eye at this moment and his expression was amusing to say the least,” the countess recalled.18

  Despite the duke’s tenderness towards Wallis and his caring attentiveness to her every need, he became unbalanced when his aspirations for Wallis were thwarted. As the wedding drew closer, the hammer blows from the royal family came one by one. Edward was informed that the Duke of Windsor would no longer be able to call upon the court, even for secretarial assistance; he would not be given a pension in the new civil list—and none of his family would be attending the wedding. “Right up to the last minute,” Dudley Forwood recalled, “the duke hoped that his brothers would come and that somehow the royal family would relent. But they did not. He was deeply, deeply hurt.”19

  The royal family had been advised to stay away from the wedding by the king’s private secretary, Lord Wigram, taking the view that their attendance “would be the final nail in the coffin of monarchy.”20 Edward later wrote to his brother: “I will never understand how you could ever have allowed yourself to be influenced by the present Government and the Church of England and their continual campaign against me.”21

  To Edward, however, cruellest of all was the news that Wallis would not be granted the title “Her Royal Highness.” And neither would their children (in the unlikely event that they would have any) be entitled to address themselves as “HRH.” Wallis was to be simply styled “the Duchess of Windsor.” This last diktat, which the duke received in the form of a letter from the king, personally ferried to him by Monckton the day before his wedding, hit Edward like a fatal gunshot wound. “Nothing in the aftermath of the Abdication hurt David more than that gratuitous thrust,”22 said Wallis. Monckton had warned the Home Secretary, Sir John Simon, that this move “would create an intense bitterness in the duke that should not be underestimated.”23 He was right.

  On reading the letter, a shocked Edward turned to Monckton and said: “Well, this is a nice wedding present.”24 He then started shouting: “I know Bertie—I know that he couldn’t have written this letter on his own. Why in god’s name would they do this to me at this time?”25 The duke believed that “this cold-blooded act” was not an idea that his brother “would have thought of himself. . . . Without question, other influences were working on him.”26 Edward considered that the letter was written by Sir John Simon but believed that the decision itself was influenced by “somebody close to him,” most likely Elizabeth, the queen consort.27 This was a view shared by Wallis, who, anticipating this move, had previously written to Edward that the Duchess of York “guided by [Queen Mary] would not give us the extra chic of creating me HRH—the only thing to bring me back in the eyes of the world.”28 This issue would become the greatest source of bitter anguish for the exiled former king.

  Diana Mosley said that not according Wallis her HRH was “a clever move on the part of the politicians who devised it. They knew, none better, that the duke was loved in quite a special way in Britain and that legends do not disappear in the wave of a wand. They dreaded his return to his native land, and they reckoned, quite correctly, that he would never come back unless his wife was treated properly.” Diana Mosley and others believed that “in order to ensure his continued absence they acted illegally, in the opinion of learned lawyers.”29 The editor of Burke’s Peerage stated years later that it was the “last act of triumph of an outraged and hypocritical Establishment . . . the most flagrant act of discrimination in the whole history of our dynasty.”30

  Although Wallis had written to Edward of being denied “the extra chic of creating me HRH,” her close friends claimed that she did not mind about the title for herself. “The distinction did not seem particularly important to me,” Wallis wrote, but she recognized the status of acceptability that it would give her.31 “She honestly did not care about the title,” said Nicky Haslam. “She always introduced herself as: ‘I am Wallis.’ ”32

  Edward, however, was hurt to such a deep degree that he never rec
overed from this appalling slight from his family. To him, “HRH” was not just an emblem of rank but a token of the love for which he had relinquished his family. Its denial drove him to distraction and cast a permanent blight on his happiness. The two major preoccupations for the rest of his life would be, first, that he should obtain the title “HRH” for Wallis, and second, that Wallis should be received by the king and queen and the event recorded in the Court Circular. “This caused a great dissatisfaction with Edward and his family,” explained John Julius Norwich. “What he wanted was for Wallis to be accepted and he wanted this so much. Not getting HRH was a deliberate snub. For the wife of an HRH not to be an HRH is totally unique. I think that the family should have given her HRH as it would have given them both so much pleasure.”33

  Although the duke was later advised that he could pursue the matter through the courts, Diana Mosley said that he would never have resorted to such action because “such a move would have injured the monarchy.”34 From that moment on, Edward would remain loyal to the Crown—but he would never forgive the brother who he considered viciously betrayed him.

  Before his wedding, Edward told Herman Rogers: “I hope that you and all of Wallis’s friends and mine will recognise her after tomorrow as ‘Her Royal Highness’ and that the ladies will curtsy to her.” He instructed his equerry, Sir Dudley Forwood, to “notify the staff to address my wife as ‘Your Royal Highness.’ I expect you to do the same.”35 After their marriage, on the duke’s orders, no one was permitted to sit down in front of the duchess without her permission. According to Sir Dudley, the abdicated monarch was never fully reconciled to his new status. “Although he was plainly a broken man, a shell, he still expected a full service, a monarch’s service.”36

  Edward knew that Wallis wanted a dignified marriage ceremony, and even providing this was not without travails. The religious aspect was complicated because the Church of England forbade church marriages for those with partners still living. Initially, one Canon Andrews, from the Home Farm parish in the Duchy of Cornwall, offered to officiate; however, he swiftly withdrew his services when advised from on high that he would be acting contrary to the decisions of Convocation.37 Thwarted at every step by the Church of England, the former king struggled to find anyone to conduct the religious ceremony. Eventually a clergyman, Reverend R. Anderson Jardine, offered to officiate. The duke was delighted. Predictably, however, the Church continued to attack and undermine the duke’s wedding: Alan Don dismissed Jardine as “an entirely insignificant vicar in Darlington” acting “without any ecclesiastical authority,” and added: “It is really rather tragic that the duke should demean himself by accepting the services volunteered by a poorly educated and wholly obscure cleric.”38 Later, having officiated at the wedding, Jardine was shunned by the Church. He had committed no illegality in offering a religious blessing to a couple who had just been legally married by the French mayor of Monts; yet within the month, despite receiving thousands of letters of public support, he resigned his post and left England for America.39

  In the absence of any of his beloved brothers acting as his best man, the duke asked Lord Louis Mountbatten, who turned him down. Edward, who never forgave him, turned to his old friend and equerry Major Edward Dudley “Fruity” Metcalfe, who agreed to the duke’s request. On the eve of the wedding, Cecil Beaton returned to the château to photograph the couple. The run-up to a wedding is stressful enough for any bride, but at every turn, Wallis had unendurable snubs to contend with. Beaton noticed that her face “was showing the strain. She looked far from her best.”40 In the photographs, Wallis looks utterly shell-shocked. It was impossible for her to hide the immense burden she felt or to fully digest everything that had happened. 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.”41

  The music room had been converted into an Anglican chapel for the occasion—the piano removed and thirty-two chairs placed in rows, though only sixteen people would attend. The Reverend Jardine arrived, “a comic little man with a red bun face, protruding teeth and a broad grin.”42 As they shook hands, Edward said: “Thank God you’ve come, thank God you’ve come. Pardon my language, Jardine, but you are the only one who had the guts to do this for me.”43 As there was no crucifix in the château, the duke telephoned the British embassy in Paris to procure and supply one. There was a brouhaha over finding a suitable piece of furniture to use as a makeshift altar. A heavily carved chest from the hall, with a row of fat caryatids holding up a Renaissance carving, was eventually deemed suitable. “Wallis, rather harassed but not too harassed to laugh, wondered about an altar cloth,” recalled Beaton. “Pointing to the caryatids, she drawled, ‘We must have something to cover up that row of extra women!’ ”44 She remembered that she had a coffee-colored tablecloth from Budapest in her already packed linen trunk. Wallis’s cockney maid, resentful at having to unpack the trunk, declared: “If it’s as much trouble as this getting married, I’m sure I’ll never go through with it.”45 An amused Wallis later told the assembled guests that she “couldn’t let the poor girl be put off matrimony for life,” so felt duty-bound to say: “Oh, it isn’t always as bad as this—only if you’re marrying the ex-King of England.”46

  The wedding day, June 3, 1937, was blissfully cloud free and sunny. The only French journalist to attend the ceremony, Maurice Schumann, described how Wallis woke to a “Wallis blue sky.” He praised the elegance of the duchess and her “very great dignity.”47

  “Alas! the wedding day in France of David & Mrs. Warfield. . . . We all telegraphed him,” Queen Mary wrote in her diary.48 The third of June was the date of King George V’s birthday—a fact Edward would have been keenly aware of, but unlikely to have registered with Wallis. Nevertheless, Queen Mary wrote to her daughter-in-law Elizabeth that the date of the wedding hurt her deeply, blaming it on Wallis. “Of course she did it, but how can he be so weak, I suppose it is out of revenge that none of the family is going to the wedding.”49 A telegram from the king and queen read hollowly: “We are thinking of you with great affection on this your wedding day and send you every wish for future happiness and much love.”50

  Before the wedding, Beaton photographed the bridal couple, while their guests were whisked off to lunch outside the château. Afterwards, Beaton sat down with the duke, Wallis, the Rogerses and Sir Dudley on the terrace. While the duke toyed with strawberries and cream, the others ate curried eggs, kidneys and rice. When Wallis asked for more shade, despite the presence of footmen, the ever-attentive duke leapt up and lowered the large sunshade in her direction, asking: “Is this the right height? Six inches lower?” The conversation over lunch “was light and witty,” Beaton recalled. “At times the duke laughed and wrinkled up his face so that it looked like last year’s apple.”51

  After they had changed, the duke into a morning coat and Wallis into her wedding dress, Beaton took the official photographs in various locations in the grounds of the château, shielded from the eyes of the press. Wallis, wafer thin, wore an art deco clip of sapphires over a fan of baguette diamonds that had been made for her earlier that year by Van Cleef & Arpels.52 When the duke saw his bride, he said: “Oh, so this is the great dress? Well, it’s lovely, very pretty.”

  Before the wedding, Lady Alexandra “Baba” Metcalfe observed: “I have never seen HRH happier or less nervous but looking at her, and trying with all one’s might and main, one is unable to register that she is the cause of the whole unbelievable story. One almost begins to think there is nothing incredible, unique or tragic about it, as they are so blind to it all. If it were not for the press, who are only allowed as far as the gate, one might be attending the wedding of an ordinary couple.”53 Of the ceremony, Baba wrote: “seven English people present at the wedding of the man who, six months ago, was King of Engla
nd.”54 Ever loyal, Aunt Bessie was Wallis’s only relative at the wedding. Also there were Herman and Katherine Rogers, Kitty and Eugene de Rothschild, Fern and Charles Bedaux, Hugh Lloyd Thomas, Lady Selby (her husband, Walford Selby, had been advised not to go), Walter Monckton, George Allen and Randolph Churchill. An already ostracized Perry Brownlow backed out, which further aggrieved the duke.

  Just before the ceremony began, a bouquet of red, white and blue flowers, tied with a tricolor ribbon, was delivered. It was a gift from Léon Blum, the French prime minister. In the House of Commons, the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain—who had replaced Baldwin in May—was asked: “Has the government already decided to send, or are they considering sending a message of congratulations to the Duke of Windsor on his wedding?”55 Chamberlain made no reply. There was no mention of the wedding in the Court Circular the following day.

  Marcel Dupré, a celebrated organist from Paris, played “O Perfect Love” as Herman Rogers walked Wallis into the music room. “Wallis was in a lovely blue dress with a short, tight-fitting jacket and wore a blue straw halo-hat with feathers and tulle. On her arm was the loveliest diamond and sapphire bracelet, which was her wedding present,”56 wrote Baba Metcalfe. “Jardine read the service simply and well: ‘Do you Edward, Albert, Christian, George, Andrew, Patrick, David take . . .’ etc. His responses were clear, firm and very well said. Her voice: ‘I Bessie Wallis’ was much lower, but very clear. It could be nothing but tragic to see an idealistic Prince of Wales and King of England buried under these circumstances, and yet, so pathetic as it was, his manner was so simple and dignified, he was so sure of himself in his happiness that it gave something to this sad little service, which is impossible to describe.”57