D.V. (8 page)

Did I tell you about the Duke of Windsor's bathroom at the Moulins? After lunch, the Duchess said to me, “Come upstairs. I want to show you something.”

So there was the Duke's bathroom, not very big, say from there to here…but ample. The tub was covered over with a wooden board which he'd obviously had one of the men on the property make—a kind of table. It was piled with papers, papers…pa-pers,
PAPERS
! Bills, little things to do with golf. The Duchess said, “Isn't this terrible? Look at this heap!” Well, of course, she was right—nothing but a
mass
of papers. It's very English. What was so odd was that this mess was in the house of the best housekeeper in the world, where naturally everything, between dozens of housemaids, was perpetually organized every day. You might expect all sorts of things in such a house—but
not that table
! So we were roaring with laughter. The Duchess said, “What can I do? Look at this thing.”

Suddenly the Duke appeared: “What are you two doing in here?! May I ask you two ladies to get the hell
out
! This happens to be
my
bathroom, and that happens to be
my
table.”

So he kicked us both out of the bathroom. We hadn't touched a thing. We just gazed in horror. Yes, there was a shower
right there in the bathroom, but it wasn't in the tub. Oh, I'm sure he used the shower. There was a glass door on it so the water wouldn't splash out on his papers. Oh, I'm sure he took showers. There was nothing unwashed about the Duke. My God! We know about the English, but I do think that he had his two a day.

I first met the Duke at the polo matches on Long Island when the Argentines were here in the twenties—the golden Prince of Wales, heir to the throne. “Did I do the right thing?” After he abdicated, the Duke must have asked himself that question every day of his life. It tormented the Duchess, too. One day I arrived in Paris. The Duchess called me on the telephone and said, “Oh, Diana, I know you've just arrived, but come out here and have dinner with me. I'm all alone.” This was after the Duke had died. I went out to the house in Neuilly. The Duchess looked too beautiful, standing in the garden, dressed in a turquoise djellaba embroidered in black pearls and white pearls—marvelous—and wearing all her sapphires. She was so affectionate, a loving sort of friend—very rare, you know. Women are rarely that sort of friend to each other. Men are much more fond of each other. At least, that's what I
think
.

So we were talking after dinner, the two of us. And then suddenly she took hold of my wrist, gazed off into the distance, and said: “Diana, I keep telling him he must not abdicate.
He must not abdicate
. No, no, no! No, no, no, I say!” Then, suddenly, after this little mental journey back more than thirty-five years, her mind snapped back to the present; she looked back at me, and we went on talking as we had been before.

I first met her when I was running a little lingerie business near Berkeley Square. It was my first job. It was in a mews where a friend of mine kept his cars. Above the cars there was nothing doing, and that's where I started the shop and supervised all the work. I was always in Paris finding fabrics, finding designs…. We had some women who sewed in the shop, but the most beautiful work was done in a Spanish convent in London, and that's where I spent my time. There was a brief period in my life when I spent
all
my time in convents. I was never
not
on my way to see the mother superior for the
afternoon. “I want it rolled!” I'd say. “I don't want it
hemmed
, I want it
r-r-r-rolled
!”

Ah! You don't know the
fabrics
we had! You don't know the
luxe
, you don't know the
beauty….
I mean, someone like my friend Mona Williams would come in and spend five thousand dollars—this is on
bedsheets—
which, of course, was an enormous sum. She collected them. Laid them away in linen closets and chests. She treated them like the most beautiful French dresses. And then the
nightgowns…

One day Wallis Simpson came into the shop. I didn't really know her then. I'd met her at a party at the embassy when we first arrived in London. She wasn't very well dressed then. She wasn't in what you'd call the smart set—at all. We didn't become great friends then. But one day she invited me to lunch and I went. And I've
never
eaten a meal like I had that day for lunch. All the people at the table that day said that they'd never had such a lunch. She gave other luncheons like this, always with the most remarkable food, and that's what really established her as a hostess in London, which she was by the time she walked into my shop.

She knew
exactly
what she wanted. She ordered three nightgowns, and this is what they were: First, there was one in white satin copied from Vionnet, all on the bias, that you just pulled down over your head. Then there was one I'd bought the original of in Paris from a marvelous Russian woman. All the great
lingères
, the workers of lingerie, were Russian, because they were the only people who really knew luxury when luxury was in fashion. The whole neck of this nightgown was made of petals, which was too extraordinary, because they were put in on the bias, and when you moved they rippled. Then the third nightgown was a wonderful crêpe de chine. Two were pale blue, another in white—three pieces in all.

By this time she had left her husband, Ernest Simpson. She was on her own then. She didn't have anyone to support her, so this was a big splurge for her. The nightgowns were for a very special weekend. The Prince of Wales had discovered Wallis Simpson.

She gave our shop three weeks to do the job. “This is the
date!” she said. “This is the deadline!” So then a week went by and she called again: “How are those nightgowns getting on?” Then, in the third week, she called every day.

She was on her way to her first weekend alone at Fort Belvedere with her Prince.

Then…suddenly, she had the most beautiful clothes in London and the most divine house in Great Cumberland Terrace, filled with white lilacs and burning perfume and the whole bit.

The other evening I dined with my oldest friend, Edwina d'Erlanger—just the two of us. After dinner we started talking about our life in London together during the thirties. “Oh, Edwina,” I said, “didn't we love our Golden Prince of Wales!”

He
was
the Golden Prince. To say that now, after all these years…it sounds a little mawkish. But you must understand that to be a woman of my generation in London
—any
woman—was to be in love with the Prince of Wales.

That evening I told Edwina a story I'd told no one but Reed. The year must have been 1930, because I remember Reed was away in New York on business that year and I was home alone in London. One night a friend was going to take me to dinner and to a movie at a divine movie house on Curzon Street where you called up to reserve tickets and where everybody knew everybody—it was rather chic to go, but it was important to be on time. My friend was to pick me up at precisely eight o'clock.

Eight o'clock arrived. Then eight-fifteen. I was standing in front of the fire downstairs, wondering. I couldn't believe it, because my friend was always extremely prompt, as all Englishmen were in those days. Eight-thirty arrived, and I told Coglin, the butler, that I'd have my dinner on a tray. Coglin, who was an extraordinary man—he had a marvelous
correctness
about him—suggested that I wait another fifteen minutes.

At ten minutes to nine, in walked a man who hadn't shaved since morning, whose tie was askew, whose collar was rumpled. You simply didn't
see
men like that at ten to nine in the evening in London.
I'm not saying that he'd be in white tie, but he'd be clean as a whistle—and
on time
.

“Diana,” he said, “I have just lived through the most terrible day of my life. At nine o'clock this morning I was called to Buckingham Palace to meet the King and the Prince of Wales. I sat in the room with them, lunch was served, a bottle of wine was passed…we made conversation—stiffly. Then…”

The man who was telling me all this is dead now. He was a charming, handsome man, named Fruity Metcalfe. He was the Prince of Wales's aide-de-camp; he was a polo player the Prince had picked up in India; he married Lord Curzon's youngest daughter, you know, Baba, Lady Alexander. He didn't do very much in life. I once asked him, “Fruity, what do you do in the morning?”

“I dress.”

“Well, so do I.”

“Well, they put out my ties and so forth and I have to
choose
.”

In any case, he had been the Prince of Wales's aide-decamp. The reason he was there for lunch with King George and the Prince was that the Prince insisted someone else be in the room with himself and King George, who was an absolutely terrifying man. The King never spoke in public except in the House of Lords, but when he did it was
blood
and
thunder….

So you can imagine what a dramatic moment it was when the Prince of Wales looked his father, the King,
straight
in the eye and told him that never,
under any circumstances
, would he succeed him.

This, you understand, was long before he had even met Wallis Simpson. It had nothing to do with giving up the throne for the woman he loved. Isn't that the damnedest story you ever heard? I didn't even tell Reed about it for five or six years. I was so afraid that if I said it out loud I'd get in the
habit
of saying it.

In retrospect, it all seems so logical. For one thing, the Prince of Wales was born a very modern man. I'm not sure he really believed
in the monarchical system. Now I'm not talking about his love of country. That was overpowering.

Once, I arrived at Neuilly, outside of Paris, for quite a big dinner. I had on white satin slippers. There's never
been
such rain! I mean the rain was falling down and jumping up off the ground. The Duke was at the door, which I thought was terribly charming—you know, with the two footmen there—and he was just roaring with laughter as I was struggling out of the car. And I got in soaking, absolutely soaking, and I said, “Your country, sir!” meaning that it rained too much there in France, or certainly at that moment, and his whole countenance changed.

“
My
country?!” He…was…furious…at my suggesting that
France
was his country. Oh, he wasn't joking at all! Of course, immediately he recovered himself and was charming. But I had hit on something that was just about the
…end
.

Reed and I were no longer living in England by the time Edward became King and then abdicated. But my sister's brother-in-law, Lord Brownlow, was
very
much involved. He was Edward's lord-in-waiting. That meant that he could be called upon at any time of the day or night. Naturally, this rarely happened. He'd be invited for dinner, the way I'd invite you for dinner; the King didn't follow every move he made. Then, on the one day in history when the King really needed Lord Brownlow, he was nowhere to be found.
Finally
, they found him in a Turkish bath. He'd been on a bit of a toot. I guess, and he was having a good old massage when the message came through: Would he please go directly to Fort Belvedere, bringing a change of clothing?

When Perry got to the fort, the King told him
exactly
what was expected of him: He was to dine, and then, immediately after dinner, he was to leave with Mrs. Simpson and drive to Southampton, where they were to board the Channel boat as Mr. and Mrs. Something or other. That turned out to be a terrible mistake. Perry's face was known everywhere, because he'd been seen walking beside the King into Parliament, walking into White's, or wherever. And by this time you couldn't miss Wallis Simpson. She didn't dress any more
exaggeratedly than I'm dressed at this moment, but there was something about her that made you look twice. Well, they were spotted, and the story got out that the two had boarded the boat, that they were crossing the Channel….

Perry told Reed and me about this when we were visiting London about six weeks after the abdication. He called us late one night and said, “Please come to see Kitty and me.”

So, still dressed for dinner, we arrived.

“I've been back two weeks,” Perry told us when we got there. “This is my life: today I walk into White's and every man leaves the bar. I walk down Seymour Street, where Kitty and I have lived all these years, and if I see a friend he crosses to the other side of the street. Nobody—but
nobody—
speaks to me in London. It's as if people really believed I was a party to the abdication—to a conspiracy! Kitty doesn't want to listen to this. She'll go up to bed. But I will tell you and Reed
everything
.”

Kitty did go up to bed, being totally exhausted at this point by the pressures of a world-shaking event in which her husband was more involved than anyone—except, of course, the King and Mrs. Simpson.

Perry went on. “We crossed the Channel, Wallis and I,” he said, “and our first night was in Rouen, where we found rooms in a hotel, just like ordinary tourists on the road. ‘Perry,' Wallis said to me through the door, after we'd been in our separate rooms for what seemed like an eternity, ‘will you please leave the door open between your room and mine? I'm so frightened. I'm so nervous.' I did. Then she called to me: ‘Perry, will you please sleep in the bed next to me? I cannot be alone.'”

So he went into her room, fully dressed, and pulled the blanket up over himself…and then,
suddenly
, she started to cry. “Sounds came out of her,” Perry said, “that were absolutely without top, bottom…that were
primeval
. There was nothing I could do but lie down beside her, hold her hand, and make her
feel
that she was not alone.”