The Duchess Of Windsor (52 page)
Read The Duchess Of Windsor Online
Authors: Greg King
Wallis’s bedroom was the most theatrical space in the entire house. She and Boudin hung the walls with navy-blue watered silk, pleated at intervals of three inches. The pleating was separated and drawn back over the doors, which were painted white. The windows were hung with heavy, blue satin curtains tied back with white sashes. Across the deep blue carpet lay an oval white-ermine rug above which glittered a rock-crystal chandelier. The bed had been designed by Boudin in the art-deco style: a scroll-patterned headboard, covered in blue satin and piped in white detailing, rose above the white wooden scroll frame. The plush sofa and armchairs were upholstered in navy blue, edged with alternating tassels of white and blue silk. Beside the bed, atop a small table, stood a reading lamp of mother-of-pearl. Across the room, above a white Venetian rococo chest painted in blue with scenes of country life, hung an immense mirror in a white scrollwork frame.
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The Duchess’s dressing room, in contrast to her bedroom, was white, with a blue carpet, blue and white curtains, and mirrored closet doors. Her dressing table was draped with alternating skirts of white and sapphire-blue lace; atop it stood Wallis’s dressing kit in blue and gold, her initials WW in white crystal. Beyond lay her bathroom, with a pink marble floor and a golden bathtub.
For the Windsors, life in Paris soon settled in to a quiet, luxurious routine. In these years before the war, they gave little in the way of lavish entertainments, preferring small dinner parties, and they seldom went out. Occasionally they might take in an evening of dancing or dine with friends in restaurants or nightclubs, but for the most part, they avoided the fashionable cafés where the international set gathered. Believing that they both had a future role to play in the public life of England—and having been severely criticized for their visit to Germany in 1937—the Duke and Duchess avoided publicity, preferring close friends and private dinners to the more extravagant displays which would mark their later lives. The contradiction was noted by more than one visitor: a magnificent house, with beautifully furnished rooms, carefully crafted for entertaining and a couple reluctant to put it to use.
French society continued to be divided over the Windsors. The older, more respectable aristocratic families regarded them snobbishly; although David might be tolerated, Wallis was clearly an object of disdain. Families with fortunes founded in industrial riches, banking, and commerce, however, had no such prejudices and eagerly welcomed the Duke and Duchess on the rare occasions when they ventured out.
Nor did they fare any better among members of the diplomatic corps in Paris. Many European embassies, worried lest they offend British sensibilities, simply ordered important officers to avoid the Duke and Duchess. The few officials who dared break ranks often did so at their own peril. “One of my parents’ friends spoke up once on the Duke’s behalf at an Embassy reception,” recalled an acquaintance of the Duke and Duchess’s. “This was just before the visit of a junior member of the Royal Family, and, as usual, no one had tried to include the Duke and Duchess in any official capacity. My father’s friend, who had been the sole voice raised in favour of at least some form of public meeting, might as well have been a traitor for the way in which he was treated thereafter. In the end, he was posted back to Whitehall and a potentially brilliant career came to an end behind a desk—and no one can tell me it wasn’t because he spoke up on their behalf.”
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As they would later in their lives, the Windsors turned most of their attention to their collection of dogs. In these days, they favored cairn terriers; one of David’s first presents to Wallis, when he was still Prince of Wales, had been the cairn terrier Slipper, or Mr. Loo, and undoubtedly the Windsors associated their new cairns with the lost dog who had been present during their emotional relationship. In Paris, they kept three cairns: Pookie, Detto, and Prisie. As they would later with their pugs, the Duke and Duchess doted on their dogs. Their meals were specially prepared and brought on platters to the Windsors’ private apartments, where either Wallis or David would spoon the food into their silver bowls themselves.
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The dogs were companions; the Windsors never kept guard dogs. Indeed, they were not needed, for the Duke and Duchess were guarded around the clock. At all times of the day and night, two officers were on guard at 24, boulevard Suchet. Inspector Storrier, who had followed the Duke and Duchess into exile, retired in the summer of 1938; Scotland Yard replaced him with Detective Philip Attfield. His Sûreté partner was Monsieur M. Magnin. The Sûreté also provided uniformed officers to stand regular guard on the sidewalk outside the house in Paris.
As personal detectives, their duties were usually fairly light. They spent the greater part of each day alternating shifts, waiting in their ground-floor sitting room until they were required. Whenever the Duke or the Duchess left their house, they were accompanied not only by regular security forces from the Sûreté but also by one of the private detectives. When they lunched with friends in a restaurant, the detective would patiently wait outside. When Wallis wandered through the Parisian antique shops, she was shadowed by a detective.
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The detectives formed only a portion of the household and staff. In the years before the outbreak of the Second World War, more than a dozen men and women worked for the Duke and Duchess. This number included the butler, a chef, and his assistant, a pastry chef, several kitchen boys, a housekeeper, two maids, David’s valet, David’s equerry; Wallis’s lady’s maid, two secretaries, and two chauffeurs.
Wallis had been greatly impressed by Hale, the butler employed by Charles Bedaux at Chateau de Candé; she convinced Fern Bedaux to let her hire him away into their service. Hale was a tall, dignified English expatriate with a detailed knowledge of entertaining and an ability to command respect in a large household.
The Duke and Duchess kept two cars. Both were Buicks, including the one in which Wallis had fled England in December 1936. On its side, in small gold lettering surrounded by a tiny painted diamond frame, were her old initials, WWS; for some reason, she never asked that they be removed. Wallis never learned how to drive; instead, she had a chaffeur, an Englishman named Tony Webster. David had his own chaffeur, Karl Schafranek, whom he had brought with him from Austria. In 1939, Wallis finally replaced her old Buick with a newer model, and the curious initials on its door that spoke of her old life gave way to a coroneted WW.
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In time, there would be quite a lot of gossip concerning the lot of the Windsors’ servants. But few left their positions, and the turnover in the house on boulevard Suchet was quite low. It is true that the Windsors did not pay competitive wages; in general, household and staff received between 10 and 20 percent less than their colleagues in other establishments. This was not so much an example of the Windsors’ oft-discussed tightness, rather, the prevalent attitude in which the Duke himself had been raised. Royal servants were always paid less than their regular counterparts. While Wallis and David were heavily criticized by writers for their perceived lack of largesse, the wages they offered were little different from those paid by David’s own brother at Buckingham Palace.
Additionally, if less was paid, there were added incentives for employment in the Windsor household. The Duke and Duchess traveled frequently, and a great many of their staff accompanied them, allowing opportunities to visit countries at no expense. Wallis took great pains with those who worked for her and David. While it is true to say that she was meticulous in her requirements and demanding, she also was quick to recognize a good job done and took a real interest in husbands, wives, and children of the staff. “She was always very kind and generous to the staff,” Hale recalled. “Whenever we traveled anywhere, she always made sure we had the best accommodations, the best rooms. The staff always knew what she wanted and we knew what we had to do. And she was quick to compliment.”
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These servants and staff were governed by the iron rules of royal etiquette which Wallis had imported from her husband’s former court. No one sat in either the Duke or Duchess’s presence unless invited to do so. Every morning, upon first meeting Wallis or David, a servant or member of the household was expected to bow or curtsy, a procedure followed again in the evening when saying good night. Within the household, the Duke and Duchess were both addressed as “Your Royal Highness” during their first encounter; thereafter, one could choose to use “Sir” or “Ma’am” in ordinary conversation.
The two members of the household who stood slightly apart from the rest and enjoyed a more intimate relationship with the Windsors were Gertrude Bedford and Dina Wells Hood, private secretaries, respectively, for the Duchess and the Duke. Gertrude Bedford had joined Wallis in April 1937, right after she arrived at Candé. She was married and lived with her husband in a small flat outside Paris, although she always accompanied the Duke and Duchess on their various travels. In the spring of 1939, she was joined by Elizabeth Arnold, who took on many of her duties working for the Duchess while Bedford herself assumed charge of the entire household. In the summer of 1938, Dina Wells Hood joined the Windsor staff as the Duke’s private secretary.
These secretaries regularly worked five nine-hour days, with an hour off for lunch. Dina Wells Hood recalled how tradition dictated that she stand while taking dictation for the Duke each morning, often for hours on end. Occasionally, he would offer a chair, but usually she was left to stand—it was simply a part of the royal tradition in which he had been raised.
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While Wallis was neat and orderly, her husband seemed to be her exact opposite, especially where his private papers were concerned. Often she would enter his rooms, only to find the former King sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by piles of letters, books, papers, and dispatches. When he read something, he usually tossed it onto the floor; as a result, when he quickly needed to find a certain letter or memo, he had to dig for hours. Wallis tried several times to impose some sort of filing system on him, but to no avail, and it was left to Hood to deal with David’s daily debris.
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Wallis maintained close contact with every aspect of the running of their house. Each morning, she rose according to a regular schedule no matter how late she and David might have been out the night before. She always remained in her rooms, however; she rarely appeared before eleven unless there was a luncheon or other scheduled engagement. Her first concerns were the menus, which her chef submitted on a daily basis. Sitting in her bed, dressed in her silk-and-lace dressing gown, pen in hand, she would carefully review each and every suggestion, often making notes in the margins. Because the chef spoke only French, Wallis used that language to communicate with him. According to Dina Wells Hood, her comments were “in perfectly grammatical French, which was all the more remarkable because she was somewhat diffident about her French.”
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Hood recalled her early-morning encounters with the Duchess, when Wallis would summon her for dictation. Clearly, Anna Emory Warfield’s early training had paid off, for Wallis was always perfectly correct. “There was a streak of hardihood in her nature which contrasted oddly with her leisured existence and the luxurious surroundings in which she lived. She never lounged in an armchair or on a sofa. Even if she sat back comfortably, her posture was good. She could sit for long periods on a backless divan without any apparent discomfort. When she sat up in bed in the morning with her breakfast tray or to interview her secretary, she did not lean back among the pillows. She sat upright and unsupported.”
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Wallis spent the majority of her late mornings and early afternoons inspecting the house, speaking with the servants, consulting with the chef, and arranging flowers. “No detail ever eluded the Duchess’s attention,” recalled Dina Wells Hood. “Her quick eye noted the precise quality of every material and every fitting—the strength of a cord, the movement of a switch, the finish of a lock.”
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Another time-consuming task was going over the household accounts. Every expenditure was carefully logged in a series of ledgers, following a system the Duke had imported from his days at Buckingham Palace. In the ledgers, expenses were completely broken down so that Wallis could see not only how much food cost from month to month but how much had been spent on milk or cheese. The same sorts of records were kept on cleaning supplies, electricity, laundry, flowers, and wages. “We knew, for instance,” wrote Hood, “how much was spent respectively on wines and spirits, on beer, on soft drinks, on mineral waters. We knew not only the cost of fuel in general but the exact amounts expended on coal, charcoal, wood and gas.”
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Only the chef did not have to present itemized bills to her; instead, he presented a monthly account book showing general kitchen expenses.
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Another time-consuming task was going over the household accounts. Every expenditure was carefully logged in a series of ledgers, following a system the Duke had imported from his days at Buckingham Palace. In the ledgers, expenses were completely broken down so that Wallis could see not only how much food cost from month to month but how much had been spent on milk or cheese. The same sorts of records were kept on cleaning supplies, electricity, laundry, flowers, and wages. “We knew, for instance,” wrote Hood, “how much was spent respectively on wines and spirits, on beer, on soft drinks, on mineral waters. We knew not only the cost of fuel in general but the exact amounts expended on coal, charcoal, wood and gas.”
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Only the chef did not have to present itemized bills to her; instead, he presented a monthly account book showing general kitchen expenses.
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While Wallis was thus engaged, the housemaids were busy with their work: sweeping, dusting, vacuuming, and polishing. Every afternoon, they reported to Marguerite Moulichon, the Duchess’s lady’s maid, who had charge of the lingerie on the second floor, where all of the household linens were stored. The Windsors’ bed linens were all hand-embroidered with coronets and the initials of the Duke and Duchess. All rooms were fitted out with linens to match their color schemes. Bed linens and bath towels were all replaced every day; in the afternoon, sheets were ironed and distributed to the maids, who carried them through the house to their intended destination.
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