The Duchess Of Windsor
Read The Duchess Of Windsor Online
Authors: Greg King
THE DUCHESS OF WINDSOR
Greg King’s biographies include
The Last Empress, The Mad King
and
The Man Who Killed Rasputin.
He lives in Everett, Washington, USA.
The Last Empress, The Mad King
and
The Man Who Killed Rasputin.
He lives in Everett, Washington, USA.
THE DUCHESS OF WINDSOR
The Uncommon Life of Wallis Simpson
Greg King
CITADEL PRESS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
In memory of
Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales
Table of Contents
THE DUCHESS OF WINDSOR
Title Page
Dedication
Preface
Prologue
Praise1
-
Romeo and Juliet in Baltimore2
-
Childhood3
-
Youth4
-
Win5
-
Marriage6
-
China7
-
Ernest8
-
The Prince of Wales9
-
A Fateful Weekend10
-
”Wallis in Wonderland”11
-
The Relationship Deepens12
-
The Passing of the King13
-
The New Reign14
-
The King’s Mistress15
-
The Nahlin Cruise16
-
The Divorce17
-
Growing Troubles18
-
“A Pretty Kettle of Fish”19
-
The Morganatic Marriage Proposal20
-
Flight to France21
-
The Struggle for the Throne22
-
Abdication23
-
Rat Week24
-
“The Whole World Against Us and Our Love”25
-
At War With the Royal Family26
-
The King‘s Wedding Present27
-
The Wedding28
-
The Visit to Germany29
-
Exile in Paris30
-
Two Houses31
-
War32
-
The Plot to Kidnap the Windsors33
-
The Bahamas34
-
The Visit to America35
-
The Duchess’s War Work36
-
Shady Friendships, Murder, and Treachery37
-
Postwar Wanderings38
-
The Death of the King39
-
The Last Two Houses40
-
A Woman of Style41
-
Life in Paris42
-
American. Adventures43
-
The Windsors and the Royal Family44
-
Declining Years45
-
The Duke’s Death46
-
Wallis Alone47
-
Last Years
Epilogue
Afterword (2003)
Acknowledgments
Source Notes
Bibliography
Copyright Page
Preface
I
DON’T WANT PEOPLE
referring back to inaccuracies after I am dead.”
1
So said Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, in an interview in 1956, prior to the publication of her memoirs,
The Heart Has Its Reasons
. In spite of her wishes, however, Wallis had the dual misfortune of having inaccuracies written and spread about her not only after her death but during her lifetime as well.
DON’T WANT PEOPLE
referring back to inaccuracies after I am dead.”
1
So said Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, in an interview in 1956, prior to the publication of her memoirs,
The Heart Has Its Reasons
. In spite of her wishes, however, Wallis had the dual misfortune of having inaccuracies written and spread about her not only after her death but during her lifetime as well.
Wallis had always fascinated me, and through my interest in the British Royal Family, I had casually studied the lives of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Like most people, I was prepared to believe the worst: tales of ambition, humiliation, treason, and sexual escapades. Certainly, the vast majority of those who have chronicled the Royal Family have expressed little sympathy for the Windsors. After twenty years of reading the worst that authors and historians had to offer on Wallis Windsor, I felt her portrait seemed set, and it was an unflattering one at that.
It would be difficult to imagine a woman more vilified in the twentieth century than the Duchess of Windsor. Beyond the intimate circle of those still alive who knew the Duchess well, she has been all but lost to myth. From the middle of the 1930s, when she first became a public figure, to the present day, Wallis has been condemned as common and vulgar, a scheming adventuress, a frivolous woman whose fierce determination to become queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland provoked the abdication of King Edward VIII. Thereafter, her ambitions thwarted, she married the former King and embarked on one of the most self-indulgent and extravagant lives in recorded history. Popular legend has it that Wallis never loved the man who had given up the throne to marry her and did little more than nag him to his grave.
There is much more. Wallis, it is suggested, was a Russian spy, an American spy, a German spy, an Italian spy; she was mistress to both Hitler’s and Mussolini’s diplomats; she dealt illegal drugs; she prostituted herself in Chinese brothels; had illicit affairs before and after her marriage to the Duke; and was in reality a hermaphrodite. The sheer breadth of the accusations is staggering. Was this woman really as despicable as most historians have led us to believe?
The few voices raised in defense of the Duchess of Windsor, therefore, struck me as rather apologetic, almost dismissive of the apparently overwhelming evidence of her sordid life and shameful character. Ralph G. Martin’s biography
The Woman He Loved
presented a portrait of Wallis Windsor so contrary to the public image that it seemed impossible to treat it seriously. Lady Mosley’s 1980 biography, coming from a close friend of the Duchess’s, seemed far from impartial. And Michael Bloch, who authored six books on the Duke and Duchess of Windsor between 1983 to 1996, had done so at the request of their French lawyer, Maitre Suzanne Blum, and could therefore be considered partisan. Surely, I thought, the Windsors cannot have been the couple presented in these books: a rather human man and woman, both somewhat stubborn at times but neither one the unsympathetic nuisance of whom I had often read.
The Woman He Loved
presented a portrait of Wallis Windsor so contrary to the public image that it seemed impossible to treat it seriously. Lady Mosley’s 1980 biography, coming from a close friend of the Duchess’s, seemed far from impartial. And Michael Bloch, who authored six books on the Duke and Duchess of Windsor between 1983 to 1996, had done so at the request of their French lawyer, Maitre Suzanne Blum, and could therefore be considered partisan. Surely, I thought, the Windsors cannot have been the couple presented in these books: a rather human man and woman, both somewhat stubborn at times but neither one the unsympathetic nuisance of whom I had often read.
History is rarely composed of those with black or white characters. Undoubtedly, the Duchess of Windsor was neither a villain nor a saint. Somewhere between these polar views had to be the truth. Over the years, I toyed with the idea of writing a biography of the Duchess if only because it seemed to me that here was a woman—like the subject of my first book, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia—whose vile public image concealed what was undoubtedly something rather more mundane. Still, the territory was abundant with memoirs and biographies. What more could be said? Unlike Empress Alexandra, Wallis failed to strike an emotional chord in me; as far as I was concerned, whatever favorable qualities I was ready to allow her by virtue of sheer logic failed to outweigh what I continued to perceive as her hard character, faulty judgment, and aimless life. Then, too, the Duchess of Windsor was a little outside my favored realm of research—nineteenth—century European Royals and the Russian Imperial Family. Without completely dismissing the thought, I moved on to other projects.
I admit that most of my antipathy toward the Duchess of Windsor was based on esteem for the British Royal Family. If the much-loved and revered Queen Mother despised her, she must have had good reason. But this naive view changed when I, like millions of others around the world, witnessed—through publication of authorized and semiauthorized memoirs, stolen love letters and indiscreet photographs, televised admissions of adultery and taped telephone conversations, divorces and haggles over paying taxes—the unraveling of the beatific myth surrounding the House of Windsor. With the monarchy under increasing pressure, certain incidents over the last seventy years began to take on a new perspective, and assume definite shades of gray. As they did, I often thought about Wallis; realizing that the present Royal Family was quite capable of ruthless behavior and self-preservation, I wondered if the pattern would have been all that different where the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were concerned. Indeed, the same powerful matriarchy which had largely been responsible for the Windsors’ ostracism, headed by Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, remains firmly in place. If the Royal Family were not the bastions of virtue and selflessness, an image they had themselves promoted, was it also possible that Wallis was not necessarily the evil adventuress they had always made her out to be?
With growing interest, I began to view the Duchess of Windsor in this light: someone who had blundered into a system she did not understand and which refused to change; who came under the influence of a man more stubborn than she, whose petulant determination to wed her would, ironically, be viewed as her own ambitious plan; and whose continued existence was a much-resented and painful reminder to the Royal Family of the crisis through which they had passed. For the rest of her life, the Duchess of Windsor was to be punished—denied her rightful style of Royal Highness, her efforts in the Second World War completely ignored by King George VI, and, at the side of her husband, condemned to an exile which kept her in perpetual disgrace. With each new crack in the Royal Family’s image, the Duchess became more sympathetic to me. It was rather obvious that she, like Diana, Princess of Wales, had suffered at the hands of the family into which she had married and their attendant court and been the subject of a carefully orchestrated whispering campaign.
In the spring of 1996, I was living in London, researching a future work on the court of Tsar Nicholas II and doing publicity for the U.K. editions of my first two books. During a visit to Hatchard’s, one of London’s premier book stores, I had a conversation with Robin Piguet of the Biography Department about my possible subsequent projects. I casually mentioned Wallis, but Robin told me that Michael Bloch would shortly be publishing a new biography of the Duchess of Windsor. Hearing this, I thought, Well, that’s that, then. Bloch, I reasoned, had years of unprecedented access to the Windsors’ private papers in Paris and was surely the best-informed man on the subject. His biography would undoubtedly be the final word, answering the many charges made against her.
A few weeks later, Robin rang my flat and told me that Bloch’s new book,
The Duchess of Windsor,
had just arrived. Curious, I ran down to Hatchard’s and picked up a copy. I was somewhat surprised to find that it was a mixture of text and photographs, running to just over two hundred pages. I bought the book, walked up Piccadilly to Green Park, and sat down in the sunshine to read. This was not the massive biography which I had been expecting: Bloch had produced a clear, concise account of her life for the curious but admitted in a preface that he had made no attempt to write a definitive work. I left Green Park that evening and rounded onto the Mall as the floodlights were being turned on at Buckingham Palace. I paused, as I always did, to sit for a few minutes on the steps of the Queen Victoria Monument and look up at the palace’s rather grim stone façade. Now, however, I saw it as a powerful symbol of all that Wallis Windsor had fought for in her life—dignity, respect, tradition, solidity—and also of her rejection by the aristocracy, court, and the Royal Family. Sitting before the palace, I knew I would write about the Duchess of Windsor.
The Duchess of Windsor,
had just arrived. Curious, I ran down to Hatchard’s and picked up a copy. I was somewhat surprised to find that it was a mixture of text and photographs, running to just over two hundred pages. I bought the book, walked up Piccadilly to Green Park, and sat down in the sunshine to read. This was not the massive biography which I had been expecting: Bloch had produced a clear, concise account of her life for the curious but admitted in a preface that he had made no attempt to write a definitive work. I left Green Park that evening and rounded onto the Mall as the floodlights were being turned on at Buckingham Palace. I paused, as I always did, to sit for a few minutes on the steps of the Queen Victoria Monument and look up at the palace’s rather grim stone façade. Now, however, I saw it as a powerful symbol of all that Wallis Windsor had fought for in her life—dignity, respect, tradition, solidity—and also of her rejection by the aristocracy, court, and the Royal Family. Sitting before the palace, I knew I would write about the Duchess of Windsor.
My decision was reinforced when I happened to watch the British television premiere of a documentary called
Edward on Edward,
produced by Prince Edward, Queen Elizabeth II’s youngest son. This seemed to me little more than another attempt by the Royal Family to depict the Duke and Duchess of Windsor as a rather sad, puerile couple leading profligate and self-indulgent lives. I, on the other hand, was becoming increasingly sympathetic to the Windsors, believing that the Duke—and especially the Duchess—had been grossly and unfairly subjected to years of wild rumor and innuendo. Out of this grew a desire to write a favorable but accurate biography of the Duchess, something no one had really attempted since Ralph G. Martin’s
Woman He Loved
some twenty years earlier.
Edward on Edward,
produced by Prince Edward, Queen Elizabeth II’s youngest son. This seemed to me little more than another attempt by the Royal Family to depict the Duke and Duchess of Windsor as a rather sad, puerile couple leading profligate and self-indulgent lives. I, on the other hand, was becoming increasingly sympathetic to the Windsors, believing that the Duke—and especially the Duchess—had been grossly and unfairly subjected to years of wild rumor and innuendo. Out of this grew a desire to write a favorable but accurate biography of the Duchess, something no one had really attempted since Ralph G. Martin’s
Woman He Loved
some twenty years earlier.
This proved to be more of an undertaking than I had anticipated. I faced over sixty years of largely negative press concerning the Duchess, from allegations of her sexual liaisons to accusations of collaboration with the Nazi regime. Above and beyond the actual assertions concerning Wallis were the hundreds of open questions surrounding her life: Had she loved the Duke? Why had she and the former King not had any children? Had they really treated their servants badly? What were the true circumstances of her last years?
Aside from memoirs, diaries, letters, and published works, the best hope of getting at the truth lay with those who knew the Windsors most intimately: their family members, friends, and those who had formed their household and staff. Understandably, they were reluctant to speak of the Duke and Duchess. Some feared reprisals from the Royal Family and court, while others, having suffered through inaccurate quotations and previous scandal-plagued biographies, had little reason to trust anyone writing about the Windsors. Eventually, I managed to convince most of those I approached to cooperate; while quite a few still requested anonymity, which I have honored, others went on record for the first time. All have my sincere thanks.
What has emerged from my research is a portrait of the Duchess of Windsor that is vastly different from that of popular conception. I make no apologies that the Duchess of Windsor, herein described, is a generally sympathetic character, in contrast to the usual depiction of a scheming, vulgar, and flamboyant woman so often featured in previous works. In part, this is intentional: I have focused largely on those aspects of her life that have been ignored—such as her war work in the Bahamas or her charity work in the later part of her life—because they not only illuminate her character but have also been all but neglected by most other writers. Nor do I feel it necessary to repeat each and every unfavorable story concerning the Windsors. When some detail of her life seemed particularly important, I have, of course, examined the circumstances. Wallis was not an extraordinary woman; she undoubtedly had faults as well as strengths. If I have focused less on the former and more on the latter, it is not because I do not believe they ever existed, rather, that most other writers have taken great pains to point out her human failings. Anyone can pick up a book and read about the Duchess’s alleged intrigues, her rumored affairs, and her supposed unhappy marriage to the Duke. I am no apologist for the Duchess of Windsor: While some of these tales are undoubtedly true, it seems to me counterproductive in a biography whose declared aim is to present an accurate and sympathetic portrait of the Duchess to endlessly repeat them here. Rather, I have tried to examine the allegations and gossip, place them in context, answer charges made against the Duchess, and refute or acknowledge them accordingly.
I also freely admit that the picture of the British Royal Family contained within is not a very flattering one. I do not, however, feel that it is in any way distorted. My focus is on the way in which the Royal Family responded to and treated Wallis. If there is nothing of the Queen Mother’s benevolent public smile or Elizabeth II’s dedication to duty here, it is because these qualities are irrelevant to their private relations with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. As with the Duchess of Windsor, I have examined the other side of the myth. Whereas in previous biographies Wallis’s favorable qualities and sympathetic character have largely remained hidden, the Royal Family’s often callous and calculating actions have been glossed over. In reconciling these two myths, I know I shall be accused of partiality. I can only say that any honest and accurate portrayal of the Royal Family’s dealings with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor has, of necessity, to reflect their less-than-admirable behavior; in an admittedly sympathetic biography of the Duchess, this is even more true. At the same time, I have tried to examine the reasons why the Royal Family behaved as they did, even when I am highly critical of their actions.
Of necessity, a number of subjects—allegations of Nazi sympathies, questionable relationships, and most principally, the abdication crisis—have been dealt with at length, even when it may appear that their relevance veers more toward the Duke than the Duchess. I would ask my readers, however, to remember that the events of King Edward VIII’s brief reign and his life thereafter in exile, along with his friendships and associations, have long been used against the Duchess in an attempt to paint her with the same brush of traitorous behavior as has been used against the Duke. I have kept the discussion of the actual abdication crisis to a minimum, but obviously, even in an episode in which Wallis herself played little direct part, it is necessary to reexamine the details in any biography of the woman the King of England gave up his throne to marry. In their life following the abdication, the Duke and Duchess operated as a team; slights against her were taken as direct insults against them both; his behavior was perceived to be influenced by her; and their actions often reflected decisions made together. Therefore, I have dealt at some length with important incidents in the Duke’s life when they have affected Wallis’s reputation. At times, it has been possible to examine the Duke’s behavior in a new light, and I think his portrait, like that of his wife, is likewise largely a sympathetic one.
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