The Duchess Of Windsor (70 page)
Read The Duchess Of Windsor Online
Authors: Greg King
In August 1964, Wallis’s aunt Bessie celebrated her hundredth birthday with a party at Wakefield Manor outside Baltimore, but the Duke and Duchess were unable to attend due to health problems. That November, Bessie died. Wallis was in the hospital in New York at the time, having just undergone foot surgery, and her doctors would not allow her to attend the funeral; David went in her place. The press, and unfortunately some of the Duchess’s own family, made much of her absence, ignoring the fact that her doctors had forbidden her to leave her bed.
On the day she was released from the hospital, Wallis—still in great pain and scarcely able to walk—kept a prior engagement. Norbert, her French hairdresser in New York City, was celebrating the grand opening of his new salon and had previously asked the Duchess if she would attend as his guest of honor. Everyone had expected that she would cancel after her operation, but according to Janine Metz, she felt “very strongly that she had made a promise and that her presence would help ensure his success.” Her feet were still bandaged, and she could not wear shoes; instead, she put on a pair of the Duke’s velvet bedroom slippers and, hobbling on a pair of canes, duly appeared to wish Norbert well. The next day, however, several fashion editors wrote that her appearance in slippers was less than dignified, criticism which hurt Wallis very much.
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Just a few days after this, David himself fell ill; doctors discovered that he had an aneurysm in an artery that threatened to burst and kill him. Ten days after Aunt Bessie’s death, the Windsors—Wallis still hobbling uncomfortably on a cane—traveled to Houston, Texas, where the Duke entered Methodist Hospital for an operation. On December 16, the swollen section of artery—the size of a small grapefruit—was cut away by Dr. Michael DeBakey, assisted by the Duke’s personal physician, Dr. Arthur Antanucci, and replaced with four inches of knitted Dacron tubing. The operation was a success, and the Windsors were able to leave Houston in a few weeks.
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In 1965 producer Jack Le Vien released his documentary
A King‘s Story
, based on the Duke’s memoirs and filmed with the cooperation of the Windsors, who allowed him and his assistant, Linda Mortimer—Fruity Metcalfe’s daughter—unprecedented access to their private archives. The film was a fairly straightforward portrait of the King’s reign and abdication, with glimpses of his life with Wallis in Paris and at the Mill. The result was a rather curious collection of old newsreels, coupled with stock footage of dancing natives in Africa to demonstrate the numerous cultures the Duke had experienced and interviews with Wallis and David at the Mill. During the premiere, David burst into tears watching the old footage of himself as king. Cecil Wilson, writing his review in the
London Daily Mirror
, declared: “However you viewed the Abdication at the time, it still stirs the heart to see the ex-King sitting at his desk re-enacting in old age his farewell broadcast to the nation between shots of his early idolatry. Even more stirring is the final garden glimpse of this Romeo and Juliet turned Darby and Joan walking into the distance arm in arm to the closing words of the broadcast.”
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A King‘s Story
, based on the Duke’s memoirs and filmed with the cooperation of the Windsors, who allowed him and his assistant, Linda Mortimer—Fruity Metcalfe’s daughter—unprecedented access to their private archives. The film was a fairly straightforward portrait of the King’s reign and abdication, with glimpses of his life with Wallis in Paris and at the Mill. The result was a rather curious collection of old newsreels, coupled with stock footage of dancing natives in Africa to demonstrate the numerous cultures the Duke had experienced and interviews with Wallis and David at the Mill. During the premiere, David burst into tears watching the old footage of himself as king. Cecil Wilson, writing his review in the
London Daily Mirror
, declared: “However you viewed the Abdication at the time, it still stirs the heart to see the ex-King sitting at his desk re-enacting in old age his farewell broadcast to the nation between shots of his early idolatry. Even more stirring is the final garden glimpse of this Romeo and Juliet turned Darby and Joan walking into the distance arm in arm to the closing words of the broadcast.”
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In June 1967 the Windsors marked their thirtieth wedding anniversary. To commemorate the occasion, the Duke and Duchess collaborated on a syndicated newspaper article entitled “The Duke’s Formula for a Happy Marriage,” a collection of tongue-in-cheek reflections which revealed a rare glimpse of the couple’s shared humor, not to mention the level of comfort they had reached with each other and their lives before they met. Among other things, David advised:
Don’t ask questions. If you got the right answer, it might hurt. If you didn’t, it surely would. If she absentmindedly calls you Ernest or Winfield, don’t comment; at least she has your role fixed in her thoughts.... Don’t let marriage interfere with old customs. Step out to an occasional nightclub, but with your wife, just to keep in practice. This will make her feel that whatever pleasure you used to have in such frivolities were incomplete until you met her. If she shows an inclination to go with you to your tailor, ignore it. This is a major encroachment upon your freedom. A minor menace is the selection of your ties, socks and pyjamas. There is nothing you can do about this.... Always praise the way she wears her hair. If possible, like it. She will wear it that way anyway.
And Wallis wrote: “Be first to decide any question, no matter how trivial. After you’ve made the decision, ask your husband what he thinks. All men like to be deferred to.... Praise any little accomplishments he may have, such as skirling bagpipes. At least you know where he is when he is playing. Tell him how strong he is, and praise him for his character. But suggest that all decisions be mutual.... Make him think this love, the only real one of your life, will last forever.”
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The Windsors and the Royal Family
T
HE WINDSORS
had hoped that the reign of the Duke’s young niece, Elizabeth II, would begin a period of reconciliation between themselves and the Royal Family, however slight; but there was no lowering of the drawbridges that, in David’s words to Wallis, had gone up after the abdication many years earlier. What little gestures came from Buckingham Palace trickled out over a period of twenty years, leaving a bitter taste among the Windsors, their friends, and a large portion of the British public as well.
HE WINDSORS
had hoped that the reign of the Duke’s young niece, Elizabeth II, would begin a period of reconciliation between themselves and the Royal Family, however slight; but there was no lowering of the drawbridges that, in David’s words to Wallis, had gone up after the abdication many years earlier. What little gestures came from Buckingham Palace trickled out over a period of twenty years, leaving a bitter taste among the Windsors, their friends, and a large portion of the British public as well.
Shortly after Elizabeth II’s coronation, in November 1953, the Duke and Duchess made their first joint visit to London in many years. Although the occasion was a purely private one, word eventually leaked out, and wherever they went, the Windsors were greeted by cheering crowds. One evening, they attended a production of Agatha Christie’s
Witness for the Prosecution
at the Winter Garden Theatre. They had asked Sir Peter Saunders, director of the theater, to keep their arrival a secret; but to reach their box, Wallis and David had to walk past the crowded stalls, and soon everyone in the theater recognized them. Within minutes, the crowd was on its feet, applauding their entrance into their box. Surprised and touched, the Windsors moved to the front of the box to acknowledge the ovation. When they left the theater, a cheering throng of people surrounded their car. “Certainly, in my mind,” Saunders later wrote, “there was no doubt about the feeling of the people of England towards this couple.”
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Witness for the Prosecution
at the Winter Garden Theatre. They had asked Sir Peter Saunders, director of the theater, to keep their arrival a secret; but to reach their box, Wallis and David had to walk past the crowded stalls, and soon everyone in the theater recognized them. Within minutes, the crowd was on its feet, applauding their entrance into their box. Surprised and touched, the Windsors moved to the front of the box to acknowledge the ovation. When they left the theater, a cheering throng of people surrounded their car. “Certainly, in my mind,” Saunders later wrote, “there was no doubt about the feeling of the people of England towards this couple.”
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Despite the warm welcome they had received from the British public they had encountered, the Duke and Duchess were cautious in their visits to London over the next few years for fear of their presence creating tension. When they did return, inevitably the reception was much the same, with cries of “God Bless the Duchess!” and “Don’t go away again!”
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The Windsors—perhaps more than most people—watched with interest and not a little resentment as the scandal over Princess Margaret’s affair with a divorced group captain, Peter Townsend, broke with a vengeance unequaled in the British press since the abdication. The crisis which followed has been aptly described by Sarah Bradford as the result of “the moral straightjacket into which the Royal family was to be confined, trapped by an image of its own creation.”
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Townsend, sixteen years Margaret’s senior, had been equerry to her father, George VI. The King genuinely liked Townsend, who was married with two sons, and promoted him, in 1950, to the position of deputy master of the royal household. In 1951, Townsend divorced his wife, citing her in a divorce action; the following year, the Queen Mother appointed him to the position of comptroller of her own household at Clarence House.
Although Margaret had first encountered Townsend in her youth, by her twenty-first birthday, in 1951, she was deeply in love with the dashing group captain, and she made no secret among her family that she wished to marry him. The Queen Mother and Margaret’s sister Queen Elizabeth II were openly supportive but noncommittal; behind Margaret’s back, however, they were well aware of the crisis which would break should Margaret follow her heart.
Elizabeth II, as supreme governor of the Church of England, could not sanction her sister’s marriage to a divorced man. If Margaret wished to marry, therefore, she would have to relinquish royal status, her succession rights to the throne, and her official civil-list income. When consulted, the cabinet advised against the marriage. Townsend was packed off to Brussels, and Margaret was asked to wait and rather duplicitously told by her mother, her sister the Queen, and others that when she was twenty-five, in 1955 she could marry without the sovereign’s consent.
Townsend returned to England in October 1955; the following day, he was at Clarence House, where Margaret lived with her mother. For the next three weeks, the question of the Margaret-Townsend relationship filled the headlines of newspapers around the world. Even though she could now marry without her sister’s permission, Margaret was told that if she did, she would still require the government’s permission to keep her royal status and civil-list income; on October 18 the cabinet, presided over, ironically, by the divorced prime minister, Anthony Eden, voted to advise against the marriage. If Margaret wished to marry Townsend now, she would almost certainly have to follow her uncle into exile. In the end, Margaret announced that she would not marry Townsend. Her personal sacrifice to the idealistic view which the Royal Family had carefully cultivated over the last half century would, in the end, be futile. Her rather sad life which followed the Townsend affair, with her failed marriage, very public divorce, and bitter feelings over the thwarted relationship, marked Margaret as one of the most visible reminders of the hypocrisy of the court establishment.
The other, more lasting legacy of the Margaret-Townsend affair was to have a fateful influence on the Royal Family to the present day. Sarah Bradford has called it “the first example of the dangers of the family policy, initiated by Queen Elizabeth, of ‘ostriching,’ of ignoring a potentially dangerous situation until it became explosive, of ‘noninterference’ and ‘non-confrontation.‘”
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The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and more recently, Diana, Princess of Wales, were to provide ample evidence of this disastrous trait of ignoring crises, circumstances, and changing public opinion.
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The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and more recently, Diana, Princess of Wales, were to provide ample evidence of this disastrous trait of ignoring crises, circumstances, and changing public opinion.
On May 6, 1960, Princess Margaret was married to Antony Arm-strong-Jones in Westminster Abbey. Neither the Duke nor the Duchess was invited to attend the ceremony, nor were they asked to the wedding of Edward, Duke of Kent, to Katharine Worsley in York Minster on June 8, 1961 or that of Princess Alexandra of Kent to the Honorable Angus Ogilvy on April 24, 1963. On this last occasion, Wallis suffered an additional, needless humiliation: in the souvenir wedding program approved by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office, the Duchess of Windsor was the only member of the family not included in the Royal Family tree; all other wives—even nonroyal wives of distant nephews—were listed.
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As time passed, the Windsors became more vocal in their displeasure over these continued slights. “I was treated bloody shabbily,” David declared to author James Pope-Hennessy.
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Wallis went further. In February 1961,
McCall’s
magazine in America began publication of a regular column written by the Duchess of Windsor, with the assistance of Etta Wanger. She chose the first installment to break her silence on the way her husband had been treated by his family:
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Wallis went further. In February 1961,
McCall’s
magazine in America began publication of a regular column written by the Duchess of Windsor, with the assistance of Etta Wanger. She chose the first installment to break her silence on the way her husband had been treated by his family:
It suddenly occurred to me how ridiculous it is to go on behind a family designed, government manufactured curtain of asbestos that protects the British Commonwealth from dangerous us.... I wish to make it clear at the outset, however, that none of this is written with venom or bitterness, although twenty-four years of persecution, even in small ways, are more than enough to break anybody’s spirit.... My husband has been punished, like a small boy who gets a spanking every day of his life for a single transgression.... I think the monarchy’s lack of dignity toward him then, and occasionally now, has been resented.... When World War II came, this man, with his unparalleled knowledge, trained in the affairs of state, with a lifetime’s experience behind him, was first given an insignificant military post. Eventually, he was put “out of harm’s way” with an appointment of little consequence—the governorship of the Bahamas.... His hurt has been deep.
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In December 1963 the Duchess gave an interview to Susan Barnes. She asked if Wallis thought she would ever be granted the style of Royal Highness. “Never!” she answered. “I don’t mind. There are a great many things I have had to learn not to give any importance to.
... I don’t know, but I think the refusal to give me equal rank with my husband may have been done to make things difficult for us. It
is
difficult—because people are puzzled about what to do with me. At parties. At any time. They don’t understand being married to Mr. Smith and being called Mrs. Jones. And I know it hurts my husband.... I know that he has been hurt very deeply.... I don’t mind for myself. I’ve lived without this title for twenty-five years. And I’m still married to this man!”
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is
difficult—because people are puzzled about what to do with me. At parties. At any time. They don’t understand being married to Mr. Smith and being called Mrs. Jones. And I know it hurts my husband.... I know that he has been hurt very deeply.... I don’t mind for myself. I’ve lived without this title for twenty-five years. And I’m still married to this man!”
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The Countess of Romanones remembers that the Duke and Duchess “were very careful about what they would say” about the Royal Family. “They rarely mentioned what he had left behind in England, or his family there. It was as if the Royal Family didn’t exist. I’m sure the Royal Family felt the same way. I know it hurt the Duke and Duchess very much. He took it very hard. I only recall one or two times when he seemed very upset about his family when the subject came up. She was upset for his sake.”
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In 1964, Elizabeth II gave birth to her fourth child, Prince Edward. One of the Duchess’s friends apparently asked if he had been named in honor of his great uncle, a question which elicited a very frank response from Wallis:
No doubt it would be nice if the cracks were that wide, but don’t count on it. In the very, very unlikely event that Lilibet [the Queen] had wanted to honour David, Cookie [the Queen Mother] would have stepped in and ranted and hollered her little tulled and flowered head off! Now
that
would be well-worth seeing (and I for one would pay the price!) but fear of poor little US runs too deep! No, I’m afraid that for us, it goes on and on. I wish for David’s sake, of course, that it didn’t, but by now, what’s the point? The years of damage have already been done, and we’re both too old now to care—it’s too late to make any difference. It’s just the odd letter or Christmas Card for us.
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In February 1965 the Windsors traveled to London so that David could have surgery on a detached retina. During his stay in the London Clinic, Wallis took a room near his; between visits to the doctor, they took a suite at Claridge’s Hotel. The public, confronted by their aged former King and his elderly wife holding each other’s hands as they entered the hotel amid the flashing of cameras, began to question why the Windsors had not been invited to stay at Buckingham Palace. Indeed, during their stay in London, the press, sensing the public mood, created much sympathy for the Duke and Duchess, hinting broadly that the time had come for a reconciliation between the Royal Family and “a blind old man and the woman who had been his wife for nearly thirty years.”
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In the six weeks that the Duke and Duchess were in London, Queen Elizabeth II visited them twice, meetings which were largely regarded as welcome gestures on the part of the sovereign. The Queen, however, originally had no intention of visiting her ailing uncle at all; only after her private secretary, Sir Michael Adeane, along with Walter Monckton’s widow, Alexandra, and several others intervened did Elizabeth II agree to the visits. Certain members of the court pointed out that the reaction of the press—already strongly sentimental in favor of the Windsors—would be vehement if the Queen failed to make this simple gesture. Dowager Viscountess Monckton of Brenchley informed Buckingham Palace, on behalf of the Duke, that he would be greatly appreciative if his niece could find the time to pay him a short visit while he was in the hospital.
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“Poor David practically had to beg to see her,” Wallis told a friend.
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“Poor David practically had to beg to see her,” Wallis told a friend.
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The first visit came on the evening of Monday, March 15. The Queen, escorted by Adeane, arrived at the London Clinic and went directly to the third-floor suite of her uncle and aunt. This was the first time Wallis had come face-to-face with Elizabeth since that spring afternoon in 1936 at Royal Lodge, when the ten-year-old girl had tugged at her governess’s hand and asked who her uncle David’s friend was. As the Queen entered, Wallis dropped a deep curtsy. Elizabeth II stayed for a half hour. Before she left, the Duke asked if he might come to Buckingham Palace to walk in the gardens during his stay in London. Apparently, the Queen agreed, but not without delivering another humiliation: The Duke might come to the palace, provided he be accompanied by a valet and not the Duchess.
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There were two more important questions the Duke asked his niece. In 1957 he had purchased a large burial plot in the Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, where many of Wallis’s relatives were interred. Although he had wished to be buried at Windsor, David, after so many years of continued ostracism, was not convinced that he would be allowed to return even in death. Now he asked his niece if he and his wife would be granted permission to be buried in the Royal Family’s private burial plot in Frogmore Gardens, below Windsor Castle and near the grave of his beloved brother George, Duke of Kent. His second request was that both he and Wallis would be allowed to have their funeral services in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. Elizabeth II declared that she would look into the matter and left the clinic.
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Incredibly, it took Elizabeth II ten days to consent to this simple, almost pathetic request. On her second visit to the Duke, this time at Claridge’s Hotel on March 25, the Queen informed David that both he and Wallis would be allowed funeral services at St. George’s Chapel and burial at Frogmore. Apparently, this was done with great reluctance; Elizabeth II was none too keen about having Wallis honored by a funeral in St. George’s Chapel and permanently buried so close to Windsor Castle, but the publicity surrounding the burial of a former King of England in America was thought the greater of the two evils.
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