The Duchess Of Windsor (45 page)
Read The Duchess Of Windsor Online
Authors: Greg King
After the luncheon, Wallis asked Reverend Jardine to inscribe her prayer book. Jardine went to a nearby table where the book lay, followed by the Duke. “What shall I write—Her Royal Highness, the Duchess of Windsor, or just the Duchess of Windsor?” Jardine asked the Duke.
“Write the Duchess of Windsor,” David replied with some hesitation. When Jardine still seemed uncertain, however, David changed his mind and said, “Write Her Royal Highness.”
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After the cake had been cut, Wallis and Walter Monckton took a short stroll through the garden. Monckton told her how much he sympathized with her position and assured her that he would always try to help both her and the Duke. But he also pointed out how much many people disliked her, believing that she was responsible for the abdication. He warned that for the rest of her life the public would scrutinize her every move to see how she treated the husband who had given up so much to be with her. She replied very simply, “Walter, don’t you think I have thought of all that? I think I can make him happy.”
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Wallis was only too well aware of the truth behind Monckton’s words. “If ever there was a marriage that started off inauspiciously, resented and vilified, with many hopes and probably prayers for its failure, it was ours,” she later wrote. “If ever the life of two people together was beset with problems—problems, mind you, manufactured by our enemies—it was ours.”
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“That marriage aged the Duchess overnight,” Dudley Forwood recalls. “People always thought she struck the best bargain, but she had to take the place of the Duke’s family, his country and his job. What a terrible, terrible responsibility. It was a sacred duty, but she was determined to treat him as he was, a former King of England.”
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Despite the criticism in certain circles, the world was enraptured, and pictures of the newly married couple were quickly flashed around the world to grace the front pages of newspapers. Predictably, the British Royal Family reacted with less enthusiasm; although both the Duke’s brother George VI and his mother telegraphed best wishes, something of Queen Mary’s true feelings can be gauged in the entry she made in her diary that day: “Alas! The wedding day in France of David & Mrs. Warfield.”
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The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, accompanied by two valets, two footmen, two detectives, two dressers, a butler, and three chauffeurs, as well as Dudley Forwood, left Candé late that afternoon in a procession of cars guarded by French gendarmes on motorcycles. There was a brief stop for a small picnic, but when the hampers were opened, it was discovered that someone had neglected to pack the food. The Duke, seeing that the meal would be reduced to some fresh peaches, loudly declared, “If Wallis eats all those peaches, she won’t stop going to the loo all night!” The picnic was abandoned.
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Late that afternoon, the Windsors and their party arrived in the village of Laroch-Migennes, where they boarded a private
wagon-lits
carriage which had been coupled to the
Simplon-Orient Express
for the journey to Venice. As the Duke and Duchess settled into their compartments, which had been filled with dozens of red and yellow roses, their 266 pieces of luggage were loaded into the baggage car. At six-thirty in the evening, the train steamed out of the station, bound for Italy.
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wagon-lits
carriage which had been coupled to the
Simplon-Orient Express
for the journey to Venice. As the Duke and Duchess settled into their compartments, which had been filled with dozens of red and yellow roses, their 266 pieces of luggage were loaded into the baggage car. At six-thirty in the evening, the train steamed out of the station, bound for Italy.
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They stopped in Venice to change trains; they had several hours to see the sights, and the new Duke and Duchess enjoyed a gondola ride down the Grand Canal, cheered on by hundreds of applauding spectators and chased by determined photographers. In St. Mark’s Square, Wallis fed the pigeons and joined her husband on a tour of the adjacent Doge’s Palace. After afternoon tea at the Hotel Excelsior, they boarded a train bound for Vienna.
For the honeymoon, David had arranged to rent Schloss Wasserleonburg, an old castle in Carinthia which belonged to Count Paul Munster, a cousin of the Duke’s friend Lord Eric Dudley. At midnight on June 4, the train bearing the Duke and Duchess steamed into the small village of Villach, high in the Austrian Alps, where the local prefect, clad in traditional costume, waited to greet them with a speech. As Wallis stepped from the train, she was presented with a bouquet of red and white roses, and a choir of fifty boys and girls, dressed in colorful peasant costume, burst into song.
The Duke and Duchess were driven in Countess Munster’s Mercedes along high Alpine roads, through the forests of fir and pine, and past serene lakes which glowed in the soft moonlight; the road was narrow and filled with curves, which Wallis found unsettling. Just before one in the morning, the car rounded a bend in the drive, and the tower and tall roof of Wasserleonburg came into view. “To come upon the castle so—in the moonlight—was utterly enchanting,” Wallis would later declare.
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As the Duke and Duchess prepared to enter the castle, David stooped down, picked up his wife, and carried her across the threshold, to the applause of the more than two dozen staff and servants who stood gathered in the great hall to greet them upon their arrival.
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As the Duke and Duchess prepared to enter the castle, David stooped down, picked up his wife, and carried her across the threshold, to the applause of the more than two dozen staff and servants who stood gathered in the great hall to greet them upon their arrival.
Wasserleonburg had been built in the fifteenth century around a large cobblestone courtyard. Its arched windows and towers looked out over magnificent views of the surrounding countryside. A high Gothic chapel stood at one end of the small but beautiful garden; beyond lay a swimming pool and tennis courts. Newspaper reporters happily pointed out that the castle was said to be haunted by the ghost of a sixteenth-century woman who had been married six times and [had killed five] of those husbands within Wasserleonburg’s walls.
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The extent of what exactly it meant to be the wife of the former King of England came as a revelation to Wallis. She later recalled the morning after their wedding in a conversation with author Gore Vidal: “I woke up and there was David standing beside the bed with this innocent smile, saying, ‘And now what do we do?’ My heart sank. Here was someone whose every day had been arranged for him all his life and now I was the one who was going to take the place of the entire British Government, trying to think up things for him to do. My life’s not important. But I think his was. Such a waste, really, for everyone.”
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Between riding and walking, the Windsors inevitably began to replay the events of the past few months in their minds. Over and over again, they wondered what they might have done differently. Wallis particularly felt responsible for the almost shameful conditions of exile into which her new husband had been forced by his family. “The Duchess wasn’t one for emotion,” a friend recalled, “but I remember her telling me of the immense weight she felt on marrying the Duke. She was nearly
crushed
by the thought of having to look after him properly. At Wasserleonburg, she confessed, she told the Duke she wanted to walk alone in the forest and actually went out there and sat and cried and cried.”
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Finally, however, Wallis drew herself up to the challenges which lay ahead. She and David realized that they would drive themselves mad if they continued to question every move they had made in the past. For both Wallis and David, it was now the future and their life together that mattered most; they would not look back with regret.
crushed
by the thought of having to look after him properly. At Wasserleonburg, she confessed, she told the Duke she wanted to walk alone in the forest and actually went out there and sat and cried and cried.”
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Finally, however, Wallis drew herself up to the challenges which lay ahead. She and David realized that they would drive themselves mad if they continued to question every move they had made in the past. For both Wallis and David, it was now the future and their life together that mattered most; they would not look back with regret.
At the beginning of September, while the Windsors were still in residence at Wasserleonburg, David learned that his brother and sister-in-law, the Duke and Duchess of Kent, were on holiday with Prince Paul of Yugoslavia at nearby Brdo in Slovenia. The Duke of Kent wrote to his brother, saying that he would very much like to come and see him for a few days.
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David, overjoyed at the prospect and convinced that the veneer of family opposition to him and Wallis was about to crack, immediately telephoned his brother and agreed to the meeting.
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David, overjoyed at the prospect and convinced that the veneer of family opposition to him and Wallis was about to crack, immediately telephoned his brother and agreed to the meeting.
But as they continued to speak, David gradually began to understand that although she was only a few hours away, his sister-in-law Marina had absolutely no intention of joining her husband, George, on this visit. When David asked why Marina was not coming to Wasserleonburg, he was bluntly informed that Queen Mary had previously warned her not, under any circumstances, to meet the Duchess of Windsor.
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Needless to say, David was filled with anger at this deliberate slight and told his brother George that either he and his wife both came or neither was welcome. Unsure of what to do, the Duke of Kent asked his brother the King for advice. Bertie replied that it was important that he visit David even if he had to take Marina with him. In spite of all of the bad feeling which existed between the brothers, Bertie apparently realized that the Royal Family must not completely cut off David.
Marina was reluctant to do as the King wished, but in the end her own feelings mattered little, for Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary stepped in and repeatedly insisted that Bertie change his instructions.
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With great reluctance, Bertie folded under this feminine pressure and informed the Kents not to visit the Windsors at Wasserleonburg. When David learned of this, he immediately wrote an understandably angry letter to his mother: “I unfortunately know from George that you and Elizabeth instigated the somewhat sordid and much publicized episode of the failure of the Kents to visit us. . . . I am at a loss to know how to write to you, and further to see how any form of correspondence can give pleasure to either of us under these circumstances.... It is a great sorrow and disappointment to me to have my mother thus cast out her eldest son.”
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With great reluctance, Bertie folded under this feminine pressure and informed the Kents not to visit the Windsors at Wasserleonburg. When David learned of this, he immediately wrote an understandably angry letter to his mother: “I unfortunately know from George that you and Elizabeth instigated the somewhat sordid and much publicized episode of the failure of the Kents to visit us. . . . I am at a loss to know how to write to you, and further to see how any form of correspondence can give pleasure to either of us under these circumstances.... It is a great sorrow and disappointment to me to have my mother thus cast out her eldest son.”
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The incident with the Kents was just one example of the continuing campaign to marginalize the Windsors taking place in London. In May 1937, George VI had asked the Foreign Office to issue a set of guidelines for the diplomatic corps and Foreign Service staff explaining how the Windsors were to be treated. The official reply by Anthony Eden was that they should be regarded as junior members of the Royal Family on holiday.
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This raised too many unwelcome possibilities, however, and the still-insecure George VI, pushed by his wife and mother, asked Alexander Hardinge to draft a response to the Foreign Office. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the King insisted, must only be entertained privately by ambassadors, never invited to official functions and never asked to stay at an embassy overnight.
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This raised too many unwelcome possibilities, however, and the still-insecure George VI, pushed by his wife and mother, asked Alexander Hardinge to draft a response to the Foreign Office. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the King insisted, must only be entertained privately by ambassadors, never invited to official functions and never asked to stay at an embassy overnight.
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Throughout the summer of 1937, however, the King continued to worry that exceptions would be made and that his more accomplished and glamorous brother and sister-in-law would manage to detract from his own position. On September 2, Hardinge wrote to Sir Robert Vansittart, permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, once again stating what Eden had supposedly settled several months before: “The most important point in His Majesty’s opinion is that His Royal Highness the Duke of Windsor and the Duchess should not be treated by His Majesty’s representatives as having any official status in the countries which they visit.”
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At the beginning of October, Sir Robert Lindsay, the British ambassador in Washington, D.C., was summoned to Balmoral in Scotland to meet with the King and Queen. He was amazed at the blatant hostility at court toward the Windsors. “The Palace Secretaries are extremist, the Foreign Office still more so,” Lindsay noted. “All are seeing ghosts and phantoms everywhere and think there are disasters round every corner.”
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Lindsay found George VI suspicious of the Duke of Windsor and uncertain as to his own position on the
throne
. He also spoke with Queen Elizabeth—“not a great intellect but she has any amount of ‘intelligence du coeur.’” On this occasion, the Queen managed to control her anger, at least toward the Duke. Lindsay noted: “In all she said there was far more grief than indignation and it was all tempered by affection for ’David.’ ’He’s so changed now, and he used to be so kind to us.’ She was backing up everything the men said, but protesting against anything that seemed vindictive. All her feelings were lacerated by what she and the King were being made to go through.” However careful the Queen might have been in expressing her feelings about the former King to this unfamiliar diplomat, she had no such restraint when it came to the Duchess. “With all her charity,” Lindsay declared, “she had not a word to say for ‘that woman.’ “
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throne
. He also spoke with Queen Elizabeth—“not a great intellect but she has any amount of ‘intelligence du coeur.’” On this occasion, the Queen managed to control her anger, at least toward the Duke. Lindsay noted: “In all she said there was far more grief than indignation and it was all tempered by affection for ’David.’ ’He’s so changed now, and he used to be so kind to us.’ She was backing up everything the men said, but protesting against anything that seemed vindictive. All her feelings were lacerated by what she and the King were being made to go through.” However careful the Queen might have been in expressing her feelings about the former King to this unfamiliar diplomat, she had no such restraint when it came to the Duchess. “With all her charity,” Lindsay declared, “she had not a word to say for ‘that woman.’ “
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When Lindsay returned to Washington, D.C., he met with the undersecretary of state, Sumner Welles, who reported:
The Ambassador said that before his departure from England he had been summoned to spend a few days with the King and Queen of England. He said that, as I probably knew, the relationship between the present King of England and the Duke of Windsor had been throughout their lives particularly close and that during the present King’s earlier years when he suffered from an impediment in his speech, the then Prince of Wales had taken it upon himself to shield and to support his brother and that the present King for that reason had a very natural and particular sense of gratitude and affection for the Duke of Windsor. On the other hand, they both felt that at this time when the new King was in a difficult situation and was trying to win the affection and confidence of his country people, without possessing the popular appeal which the Duke of Windsor possessed, it was singularly unfortunate that the Duke of Windsor was placing himself in a position where he would seem constantly to be courting the limelight. The Ambassador went on to say that he had found on the part of all the governing class in England a very vehement feeling of indignation against the course of the Duke of Windsor based in part on the resentment created by his relinquishment of his responsibilities and in even greater part due to the apparent unfairness of his present attitude with regard to his brother, the King. The Ambassador said that in Court circles and in the Foreign Office and on the part of the heads of political parties, this feeling bordered on the stage of hysteria . . . . The Ambassador expressed the personal opinion that the Duke of Windsor himself is probably not cognizant of the state of feeling in this regard and that it is being exploited without his knowledge . . . . What the British desired he said was to prevent any action on the part of the authorities of the British Government which would permit the Duke of Windsor to appear in the light of a martyr. . . .”
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