Probed by the press and asked if he was surprised to receive an official invitation to the unveiling, the duke replied smoothly: “Not at all. It is only natural that her eldest son should be invited to this purely private family ceremony, and that the duchess should be with me.” Asked if the couple might make their home in England again, the duke replied: “No.” When questioned how he would like to spend the remaining years of his life, the duke turned towards the duchess. Smiling, he answered: “Together.”18
The following day, the Court Circular made no mention of the couple’s arrival in Britain. The Windsors spent their first night at Broadlands, the Mountbatten family home in Hampshire, where Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip had stayed for part of their honeymoon. They were invited to plant a tree in the grounds to commemorate their visit, receiving an address of welcome from the mayor of Romsey. At one point, the mayor mistakenly addressed the duchess as “Your Royal Highness,” before hastily correcting himself to “Your Grace.”19
The following day, when the couple arrived to stay at Claridge’s, a crowd had gathered on the pavement. “Welcome home, sir,” someone called out. The duke raised his trilby in acknowledgment. An even larger crowd gathered the next day to watch the Windsors leave for St. James’s Palace, where the royal family was to assemble prior to the unveiling. “There were no formal processions that day in case there were unseemly demonstrations of loyalty to the duke,”20 said Hugo Vickers.
The Windsors received the loudest cheer as their car drew up outside Marlborough House. A crowd estimated at five thousand had gathered to witness the historic encounter between two women: Wallis and the queen mother, who had been her bitter adversary for a third of a century. The duchess was elegance personified in a dark-blue shantung coat and white stole, her magnificent Cartier panther and Kashmir sapphire broach a dazzling addition. The sixty-six-year-old queen mother was dressed in pale lilac, with a matching hat covered in elaborate berries, which seemed to fascinate (or appal) Wallis. Elizabeth had not seen Edward since Queen Mary’s funeral, fourteen years before. When the duke, with courtly grace, bowed to kiss his sister-in-law’s hand, she leaned across and kissed him on the cheek. The queen mother then turned to the duchess and extended her hand. The duchess stood her ground. Wallis did not curtsy. She later explained to a surprised girlfriend: “She stopped people from curtsying to me. Why should I curtsy to her?”21
When the queen arrived and walked past the royal lineup, the duke bowed his head deeply and the duchess bobbed a brief but unmistakable curtsy. The Windsors were not invited to join the queen’s luncheon party at the Derby that afternoon. After a small lunch hosted for them at Kensington Palace by Princess Marina, they were flown back to Paris, as a special concession from the sovereign, in the queen’s aircraft. The following day, the Court Circular noted the presence of every royal at the unveiling. There was no mention of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. For the first time in thirty years, the duchess had publicly taken her rightful place with her husband’s family; but to the court and its senior officials, the former king and his wife remained personae non gratae.
Old age fast encroached on the duke. He was Peter Pan no more. Where once he had been hyperactive, now he was lethargic and despondent. After a hip operation in 1968, he could no longer work with pleasure in his garden. When he had lumbago and could not comfortably bend over, Wallis bought him a wooden milking stool to sit on for weeding the borders. This soon held little enjoyment, as his sight was so impaired. Friends noted Wallis’s tender solicitude to her ailing husband. He once fell off a chair playing cards after dinner in Paris, briefly losing consciousness. Immediately after she had helped him to a sofa, she whipped the doctor’s telephone number out of her handbag, alerting the American Hospital of Paris. Shortly afterwards, he recovered consciousness, and they were able to go home, the duke leaning heavily on the duchess’s arm.
In November 1969, royal biographer Kenneth Rose was invited to a dinner party to meet the Windsors by Baron Bentinck, the Netherlands ambassador to France. “I notice that most of the guests greet the Duchess of Windsor as if she were Royal. It seems only polite to do so,”22 recorded Rose. Wallis looked “quite remarkable for her years. She is smaller than I should have expected, but very trimmed and plucked and pressed, more like a woman of forty. She is dressed simply in pale blue, with no jewels except one huge sapphire round her neck. She has a harsh voice, but great vivacity and friendliness.”23 According to Rose, the couple departed “very regally, with much bowing and scraping all the way to the door. Thirty-three years after his Abdication, he is still very much King in manner, and nobody takes the slightest liberty with him.”24
Prince Charles, now in his early twenties, had learned all about his “Great-uncle David” from his adored confidant Lord Louis Mountbatten. Mountbatten had for some time been angling for the duke and duchess to be able to return to Britain and finally heal the family rift. In 1971, Prince Charles wrote to Mountbatten: “I, personally, feel it would be wonderful if Uncle David and his wife could come over and spend a weekend. Now that he is getting old he must long to come back and it is pointless to continue the feud.”25 He raised the matter with his grandmother, the queen mother, who made it quite clear that she brooked no reconciliation. Later that year, Prince Charles made a private visit to France, where the British ambassador, Sir Christopher Soames, arranged for him to visit the Duke of Windsor. Prince Charles recorded his stay at the Windsors’ home overlooking the Bois de Boulogne, describing how the footmen and pages wore identical “scarlet and black uniforms to the ones ours wear at home.” He considered that “rather pathetic,” and noted the red box with “The King” on it, placed in the front hall.26
Prince Charles was relieved to be able to escape the throng of guests, whom he deemed frightful, to a small sitting room, where he could speak to his great-uncle alone. The duke told the prince that he had had a very difficult time with his father, and Queen Mary (whom Prince Charles nicknamed “Gan-Gan’) was “a hard woman.” “While we were talking the duchess kept flitting to and fro like a strange bat. She looks incredible for her age and obviously has her face lifted every day,” wrote Charles. “Uncle David then talked about how difficult my family had made it for him for the past 33 years. I asked him frankly if he would like to return to England for the last years of his life, and he hesitated to ask Wallis if he should give me ‘the works.’ It sounded as though he would have liked to have returned but no one would have recognised him. I assured him that would not be the case. The whole thing seemed so tragic—the existence, the people and the atmosphere—I was relieved to escape it after 45 minutes and drive round Paris by night.”27
On June 3, 1971, the Windsors celebrated their thirty-fourth—and final—wedding anniversary together. The duchess, almost seventy-five, cut a gutsy dash, appearing at a party in a floor-length slit skirt over brown floral hot pants by Givenchy. Both knew, however, that the party was over. When the duke’s old friend Lord Sefton fell ill, the duchess had written a note of sympathy to his wife. She told Lady Sefton: “Dearest Foxie, we are not well. I have a flood of nerves and the duke is having X-ray for this throat. I too from worry have a painful time with my old friend the ulcer.” She concluded: “There is nothing to be said for growing old.”28
While Wallis had never smoked, believing the habit dangerous and foul, the duke had smoked all his life; cigarettes, cigars and pipes. He was diagnosed with throat cancer that autumn. At the age of seventy-seven, his life was slipping away and his worst fear was realized: he was certain to leave Wallis alone.
After a period in the American Hospital of Paris in February 1972, when the duke was admitted under the pseudonym of Mr. Smith, the tumor in his throat was deemed inoperable. Edward insisted on returning home. An Irish nurse from the hospital, Oonagh Shanley, accompanied him to look after him. Nurse Shanley was touched that the duke’s first question each morning was “Is the duchess awake?” If she was, he would go through to her room in his dressing gown. L
ater, they would have brunch together in the sitting room between their two suites, eating scrambled eggs and thin slices of bacon with slivers of toast. By early May, the duke’s decline was rapid. “He underwent coughing spasms and suffered from fever,” said Oonagh Shanley, “but all he ever wanted to know was if he would be well enough to dine with the duchess.”29
The queen had a state visit to France on May 18. Throughout May daily bulletins concerning the duke’s health were sent to Buckingham Palace. The duke’s doctor was summoned by the British ambassador and instructed that the state visit was of tremendous political importance. Sir Christopher Soames told Dr. Jean Thin that “it would be politically disastrous” if the duke died during the visit.30 Implicit was the message: let him die before the queen arrives or keep him alive and let him die after the visit. It was not admitted to the press corps the extent to which the duke’s life was in peril. Sir Martin Charteris, the queen’s private secretary, told a journalist who inquired after the duke’s health: “I know he’s dying, you know he’s dying but we don’t know he’s dying.”31
On May 18, the queen went to the races at Longchamps. Afterwards, at 4.45 p.m., she arrived at the Windsors’ house in the Bois. With her were the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles, the Duchess of Grafton and Charteris. Wallis had filled the house with orchids. She received her visitors wearing a blue crêpe Dior dress, before personally serving them tea in the library. After fifteen minutes, she took the queen upstairs to have a private audience with Edward. The duke had insisted on getting dressed to receive his niece, a Herculean effort considering how ill he was. His blue blazer hung off his emaciated frame; he weighed less than six stone (84 pounds). He was still on an intravenous drip, but Dr. Thin had managed to conceal the medical apparatus behind a yellow chair in which the former king was seated. When the queen entered the room, Edward rose slowly from his chair, summoning every last bit of energy, to bow to his sovereign. With his unbreakable dignity, he then kissed her on each cheek. Typical of his English restraint, when she asked how he was, clearly drained from the immense strain of rising to greet her, he replied: “Not so bad.”
That night, the duke’s pug, Black Diamond, who always slept on his bed, was restless, which upset the duke. On 27 May, when Dr. Thin came as usual early that evening to check on the duke, he found that Black Diamond was sitting by himself on the floor, “thus letting me know that the end was near.”32 During the day, Wallis had stayed with Edward almost constantly. She struggled to remain composed; it was the duke, his voice a feeble whisper, who strove, as always, to comfort her. Sensing death was near, Wallis wanted to stay up all night but Edward, devoted to the end, insisted: “No, darling. I shall soon be asleep, get some rest, please.”33
On Sunday morning, May 28, at 2.30 a.m., the duke passed away peacefully. The duchess was woken immediately and came to her husband’s bedside. She took his hand and kissed his forehead, whispering “My David.” Nurse Shanley later said: “Her quietness was much sadder than tears.”34 When Wallis was led back to her room, the duke’s Bahamian valet, Sydney Johnson, insisted on maintaining a solitary vigil by his master’s body for the rest of the night.
When the news broke, with each bulletin the BBC broadcast the abdication speech. “It made the same impact as it had thirty-five years before,”35 said Diana Mosley, who had dined with Wallis in the library the night before the queen’s visit, the duke too ill to join them. The queen ordered nine days of court mourning. She honored the duke’s final wishes, which they had agreed over a decade before in 1961, in every respect. The RAF would fly the former monarch home to Britain. He would lie in state for two days at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. Then, after a private funeral service, he would be interred at Frogmore, waiting for the duchess to one day lie beside him for eternity.
The queen invited Wallis to stay at Buckingham Palace ahead of the funeral, rather than the Claridge’s suite that she and the duke had lately frequented. “How ironic it is,” pointed out the London Evening News, “that the first occasion since the abdication on which she will have been welcomed to the palace will be for her husband’s burial. Would this visit not be an appropriate time for her to be accorded the courtesy title of Her Royal Highness on which the duke had set his heart?”36
Despite the fact that the queen permitted her first cousin Prince Michael of Kent to remain a Royal Highness after he forfeited his place in the line of succession to marry a Roman Catholic, only six years later—also conferring the royal status of HRH on his divorced wife—there was no question of her reversing her father’s decision and upsetting the queen mother by allowing Wallis the royal status that she was legitimately entitled to.
The finality of death, while close and anticipated, came as a biting shock to Wallis, desolate and alone. After weeks of strain and anxiety, terrified for the future, she suffered a nervous collapse. Dr. Antenucci could see that she was in no fit state to accompany the duke’s body when it was flown across the Channel to England forty-eight hours later. While the duchess rested, her friend Hubert de Givenchy made her a black mourning coat and matching dress, with a waist-length chiffon veil, overnight.
The duke’s lying in state at Windsor attracted over sixty thousand visitors, many queuing for hours in lines that stretched over a mile long down Castle Hill and beyond. “My abiding memory of this is the atmosphere of solemnity and sadness,” said Hugo Vickers, who acted as lay steward of St. George’s Chapel. “It was clear that for those who came to pay their respects, their affection was undimmed. During those two days at Windsor, it was the young, charming Prince of Wales who was being remembered, not the Duke of Windsor who had deserted his subjects to take the supposed path of happiness.”37
Wallis arrived in Britain on the second day of the duke’s lying in state. She flew in on one of the queen’s aircraft. “She no longer feared flying,” explained Diana Mosley, “she felt her life was over.”38 Her arrival in England finally brought Wallis the first recognition she had received in the Court Circular during thirty-five years of marriage to the former king: “Buckingham Palace, June 2. By command of The Queen, Admiral of the Fleet the Earl Mountbatten of Burma was present at Heathrow Airport—London this morning and, on behalf of Her Majesty, greeted the Duchess of Windsor upon arrival in an aircraft of The Queen’s Flight.”39
The queen had sensitively ordered that all cross-traffic along the duchess’s route into London be blocked off until her four-car procession had passed, to spare her gawping stares while the cars were stopped at intersections. Described by palace officials on her arrival as “unwell, tired and distressed,” Wallis was shown to the suite of rooms on the first floor of Buckingham Palace, overlooking the Mall.40
The following morning, the queen had hoped that the duchess would join the other members of the royal family for the traditional ceremony of Trooping the Colour. She would have traveled in an open carriage with the queen mother, the most public and striking means of proclaiming reconciliation between the two women. For Wallis, the acceptance her husband had so desperately craved for her his entire married life, and unsuccessfully fought for, had come too late. She did not have the energy nor the inclination to be publicly recognized in his absence, nor paraded as the grieving widow. Her pain of loss was too intense—it was Wallis and Edward’s thirty-fifth wedding anniversary on that very day—and her in-laws’ urgent desire to honor her bittersweet. The only man in the world who would have been ecstatic to have witnessed this was no longer here by her side. To Wallis, it now seemed pointless.
On Saturday, June 3, the queen rode out on horseback at the head of the parade, a black armband adorning the left arm of her scarlet tunic. In honor of the duke, there was a roll of drums followed by a minute’s silence, a further roll of drums, then Edward’s favorite lament, the haunting “Flowers of the Forest,” was played by the pipers of the Scots Guards. Photographers captured the duchess as she pulled aside the curtains of the state suite to watch the procession return. Her face is the image of stunned grief.
Her eyes stare in bewildered shock. She looks afraid, vulnerable and incurably sad.
That evening, Prince Charles took the duchess to see the duke after all the visiting crowds had gone, accompanied by Lord Mountbatten. “I shall never forget the scene,” the prince wrote.
The Chapel was silent, almost dark except for the huge candles round the catafalque, which cast a flickering peaceful glow on the great pillars and the statuesque figures of the Guards Officers who stood vigil round the coffin. With great bearskinned heads bowed they stood absolutely motionless and silent. The duchess did not seem to be well. Uncle Dickie supported her all the time and at one point she moved away from us and stood alone, a frail, tiny, black figure, gazing at the coffin and finally bowing briefly. . . . As we stood she kept saying “he gave up so much for so little.” . . .
After she had gone back to B.P. [Buckingham Palace] Uncle Dickie and I waited until the Welsh Guards Bearer Party had removed the coffin to the Albert Memorial Chapel. . . . The whole evening was full of grandeur, simplicity, beauty and mystery and I shall never forget it. I only wish I had known Uncle David better.41
The funeral, two days later, on Monday, June 5, was described by Cecil Beaton as “short and entirely noble.” During the service, in which she sat between the queen and Prince Philip, Wallis appeared lost and distraught. Lady Avon, seated behind the duchess, told Beaton that throughout the service, “the Queen showed a motherly and nanny-like tenderness and kept putting her hand on the Duchess’s arm and glove.”42
The most stirring and historic moment in the funeral came when the Garter King of Arms called out the styles and titles of the late duke: Knight of the Garter, of the Thistle, of St. King Edward VIII of Great Britain, Ireland, the British Dominions beyond the Seas, Emperor of India, Defender of the Faith . . . and uncle of the Most High, Most Mighty and Most Excellent Monarch, Queen Elizabeth—the roll call of heraldic honors and imperial birth a stark reminder to the congregation of just how much Edward had given up.
The Real Wallis Simpson: A New History of the American Divorcée Who Became the Duchess of Windsor Page 32
