The Duchess Of Windsor (74 page)
Read The Duchess Of Windsor Online
Authors: Greg King
Wallis, meanwhile, continued to remain secluded in Paris. Not only was she devastated at the death of her husband, but the idea of joining his family for the funeral was almost too much for her to consider. She had always been an outsider among them, never welcome, and now, at the time of her greatest grief, she had no wish to put herself through what she clearly believed would be a terrible ordeal. The Royal Family, too, was worried. Originally, Wallis had been scheduled to accompany her husband’s body on its return to England. Her decision to remain in Paris, therefore, came as a surprise. Lord Mountbatten himself noted that there was some discussion as to whether the Duchess would attend her husband’s funeral.
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It was clearly in the best interests of the Royal Family that she do so: Her absence, particularly after years of very public ostracism, would only be interpreted as the final humiliation. There was a great sense of relief when Buckingham Palace received a telephone call asking if a plane could be sent for the Duchess to bring her to England.
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It was clearly in the best interests of the Royal Family that she do so: Her absence, particularly after years of very public ostracism, would only be interpreted as the final humiliation. There was a great sense of relief when Buckingham Palace received a telephone call asking if a plane could be sent for the Duchess to bring her to England.
Wallis flew from Paris to London aboard an airplane from the Queen’s flight on Friday, June 2. She was accompanied by her friend Lady Grace Dudley; Mary Churchill Soames, the wife of the British ambassador in Paris, Sir Christopher Soames; Dr. Arthur Antonucci; Brig. Douglas Greenacre, equerry to Elizabeth II; the Duke’s secretary, John Utter; and Alexandre, Wallis’s hairdresser. The latter had telephoned and asked if the Duchess wished him to join her to do her hair during her stay in England; at first, Wallis said no. “But then I thought, Yes, of course,” she later told the Countess of Romanones. “The last thing David would want was for me not to look my best.”
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Lord Mountbatten had come to greet her. Wallis was a bit surprised at this and wondered why Prince Charles had not been dispatched instead. “I helped Wallis down the ladder as she was very frail and nervous,” Mountbatten recalled.
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The television cameras captured her descent: a tiny, bent figure in black, clutching the rails and stepping carefully onto the tarmac. It was a startling image: Here was the woman the Royal Family had so feared, so loathed, that she and her husband had been punished for thirty-six years. The contrast between the popular misconception and the stark reality could not have been greater.
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The television cameras captured her descent: a tiny, bent figure in black, clutching the rails and stepping carefully onto the tarmac. It was a startling image: Here was the woman the Royal Family had so feared, so loathed, that she and her husband had been punished for thirty-six years. The contrast between the popular misconception and the stark reality could not have been greater.
Wallis and Mountbatten rode together in a Rolls-Royce to London. As they drove, Wallis began to express her fear that the Royal Family would treat her coldly; she was especially worried about the reception she would receive from the Queen Mother, who she knew had continued to blame her for her husband’s death. But Mountbatten tried to reassure her, saying, ”Your sister-in-law will receive you with open arms—she is so deeply sorry for you in your present grief and remembers what she felt like when her own husband died.”
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Ironically, the next morning, Wallis received the first official recognition by the Royal Family and court of her existence during her entire marriage to the Duke. The court circular read: “Buckingham Palace, 2 June. By Command of The Queen, Admiral of the Fleet the Earl Mountbatten of Burma was present at Heathrow Airport-London this morning and, on behalf of Her Majesty, greeted the Duchess of Windsor upon arrival in this country in an aircraft of The Queen’s Flight.”
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Ironically, the next morning, Wallis received the first official recognition by the Royal Family and court of her existence during her entire marriage to the Duke. The court circular read: “Buckingham Palace, 2 June. By Command of The Queen, Admiral of the Fleet the Earl Mountbatten of Burma was present at Heathrow Airport-London this morning and, on behalf of Her Majesty, greeted the Duchess of Windsor upon arrival in this country in an aircraft of The Queen’s Flight.”
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Despite this concession, the four days Wallis spent at Buckingham Palace were remarkable for both the cold demeanor of the Royal Family toward her and the subtle ways in which this elderly widow was subjected to petty humiliations. Important visitors to the palace used the main entrance; members of the diplomatic corps, the ambassador’s entrance; and members of the Royal Family, the private entrance in the garden, hidden from public view by a long, one-story wall pierced with an arch. Wallis, upon arriving at the palace, used none of them. Instead, her Rolls-Royce pulled up before the doorway into the privy-purse corridor, used by members of the household and other court officials. No member of the Royal Family waited to greet her; an official led her through long, crimson-carpeted corridors to the suite she was to occupy at the front of the palace, overlooking the Mall. When Wallis had settled in to her rooms, an official arrived and informed her that the Queen would receive her. This stiff, rather formal summons seemed to Wallis a bit cold; as a matter of courtesy to a grieving widow, she had thought that the Queen might come to her.
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Instead, Elizabeth received her aunt in her private sitting room. She told Wallis that if there was anything she wished, it would be arranged for her. “They were polite to me,” Wallis recalled, “polite and kind, especially the Queen. Royalty is always polite and kind. But they were cold. David always said they were cold.”
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Instead, Elizabeth received her aunt in her private sitting room. She told Wallis that if there was anything she wished, it would be arranged for her. “They were polite to me,” Wallis recalled, “polite and kind, especially the Queen. Royalty is always polite and kind. But they were cold. David always said they were cold.”
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Ben Pimlott, Elizabeth II’s most recent biographer, recalls a conversation with a former courtier who was present at the palace when the Duchess came to stay: “The Queen didn’t want to have much to do with Wallis. Dinner was given in the Chinese Room—with anybody else, it would have been in the Queen’s own dining room. She preferred to go down to where Wallis was set up. It was okay—everybody behaved decently. Charles was there, and helpful. But there was certainly no outpouring of love between the Queen and the Duchess of Windsor, or vice versa.”
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Wallis felt lost. She tried to make conversation but found that for the most part her efforts went unrewarded. The Prince of Wales later noted rather ungenerously of his grieving great-aunt that she had “prattled away” during the dinner.
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“In all the time I was there,” Wallis later told the Countess of Romanones, “no one in the family offered me any real sympathy whatsoever.” Still, she was resolute. “They were going to continue to hate me no matter what I did, but at least I wasn’t going to let them see David’s wife without every shred of dignity I could muster.”
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“In all the time I was there,” Wallis later told the Countess of Romanones, “no one in the family offered me any real sympathy whatsoever.” Still, she was resolute. “They were going to continue to hate me no matter what I did, but at least I wasn’t going to let them see David’s wife without every shred of dignity I could muster.”
The Queen herself, who had often played with her uncle David as a child, was not overwhelmed with grief at his passing. As with her instructions to Mountbatten regarding his BBC tribute, she was determined that the Duke be accorded precisely the respect and privileges due him, but no more. According to her private secretary, the Duke “had been a threat. The Queen wanted to play things down.”
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“The general principle was to err,” writes Ben Pimlott of the funeral and its attendant ceremonial, “but only a little, on the side of magnanimity.”
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As the recent funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, confirmed, this would not be the only occasion on which the Queen misjudged the extent of public grief and sympathy.
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“The general principle was to err,” writes Ben Pimlott of the funeral and its attendant ceremonial, “but only a little, on the side of magnanimity.”
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As the recent funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, confirmed, this would not be the only occasion on which the Queen misjudged the extent of public grief and sympathy.
By the end of Saturday afternoon, when the Duke’s lying in state came to an end, some sixty thousand people had paid their respects, silently shuffling through St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. Many—especially those in their fifties and sixties—recalled the reign of Edward VIII with favorable nostalgia. “He should have stayed on,” said one woman, interviewed while waiting in line. “The wife he wanted would have just slipped into the background. We wouldn’t have cared at all. She’s a lovely woman.” “They should have accepted her,” declared another, while a third added sadly, “We love our Royal Family. But that Duchess should not have been snubbed all these years. If I were her, I would never have agreed to go to the palace now. I would have said, Thank you, and then gone off to Claridge’s Hotel.”
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Such sentiments were more prevalent than either Buckingham Palace or Queen Elizabeth II wished to believe. The criticism among the public, reported in the newspapers and repeated on nightly television broadcasts, drove Labour MP Ian Mikardo to declare: “In a generation from now, when we have quietly got rid of the monarchy, people will see the events of this week as the beginning of the end of the court and all the mumbo jumbo that goes with it.... When he was alive Edward Windsor was savaged and his wife was condemned by the court, the established church and the government. Now, with sickening hypocrisy, they are all falling over themselves to show to the corpse the charity they denied to the man.”
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Trooping the colors had previously been scheduled for Saturday, June 3, and there was some question as to whether the Queen would cancel the ceremony. It has often been written that she instead dedicated it to her uncle, wearing a black armband on the left sleeve of her crimson uniform as a tribute. The armband was indeed in place, but the suggestion to make the occasion a tribute to the late Duke did not come from the Queen. When it was initially suggested that she cancel the ceremony out of respect for her dead uncle, Elizabeth flatly declared that she thought this too much and asked her advisers to work out some compromise. It was her private secretary, Sir Martin Charteris, who proposed that the Queen wear a black armband and that a piper’s lament be played to provide a suitable atmosphere.
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As the Queen and her procession rode out from Buckingham Palace, Wallis was caught by a photographer looking from a curtained window of her suite, dressed in black, a string of immensely large pearls around her neck, her eyes haunted by sadness. The trooping passed off without incident: There was a roll of black-draped drums, a minute’s silence, and the playing of a bagpipe lament, “Flowers of the Forest,” by the massed bands of the Irish and Scots Guards. Upon her return to Buckingham Palace, the Queen came to the Duchess’s suite and informed her that the rest of the family would be leaving for Windsor Castle; Wallis could join them if she wished. After years of rejection during the Duke’s life, this sudden attempt at thoughtfulness and familial embrace in his death, as Wallis later confessed to a friend, seemed hypocritical. She admitted privately that she had no desire to put herself through the strain, and so she remained at Buckingham Palace—alone.
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That afternoon, the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, and Princess Anne visited St. George’s Chapel and stood with heads bowed in silent tribute for six minutes. Later that evening, after the chapel had been closed to the public, Wallis came from London, escorted by Lord Mountbatten and Prince Charles. She walked alone through the austere chapel, her footsteps echoing against the stone floor as she passed the tombs of King George V and Queen Mary and approached the catafalque in the center of the nave. The arc lights in the arches shone down upon the royal standard, mingling with the soft light from the setting sun filtering in through the tall windows above. Mountbatten recalled that she stood looking at the coffin and said “in the saddest imaginable voice: ‘He was my entire life. I can’t begin to think what I am going to do without him, he gave up so much for me, and now he has gone. I always hoped that I would die before him.’ “
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The Prince of Wales later wrote that his widowed aunt had declared, “He gave up so much for so little,” and pointed at herself with what he termed “a strange grin.”
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The emotion of the moment was overwhelming. As she stood before her husband’s coffin, Wallis repeated over and over, ”Thirty-five years . . . thirty-five years. . . .”
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It would have been their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary.
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The Prince of Wales later wrote that his widowed aunt had declared, “He gave up so much for so little,” and pointed at herself with what he termed “a strange grin.”
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The emotion of the moment was overwhelming. As she stood before her husband’s coffin, Wallis repeated over and over, ”Thirty-five years . . . thirty-five years. . . .”
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It would have been their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary.
Monday, June 5, was to be the day of the Duke of Windsor’s funeral. In London, a motion had been introduced in the House of Commons “that a Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty on the death of His Royal Highness the Duke of Windsor, expressing the deep sympathy which this House extends to Her Majesty and to all members of his Family on their grievous loss, and recording grateful remembrance of his devoted service to his Country and to the British Empire.”
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After the motion was read into the record, Prime Minister Edward Heath spoke, paying tribute to “the wife for whose love King Edward was content to give up his patrimony and who has repaid his devotion with an equal loyalty, companionship and love. His death is, above all, her loss, and to her the House will wish to extend its profound sympathy.”
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After the motion was read into the record, Prime Minister Edward Heath spoke, paying tribute to “the wife for whose love King Edward was content to give up his patrimony and who has repaid his devotion with an equal loyalty, companionship and love. His death is, above all, her loss, and to her the House will wish to extend its profound sympathy.”
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This set off a storm of controversy; the seemingly simple issue of including the Duchess of Windsor by name in the motion expressing sympathy on the death of her husband reawakened old animosities and conservative fears. Incredibly, a debate arose over the propriety of mentioning the Duchess by name. The Democratic Unionist member for North Antrim, the Reverend Ian Paisley, fearing the worst, intervened: “Surely, today, when this matter is brought before the House, specific mention should have been made in the Motion of the person who will miss the Duke most.”
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But the speaker replied, “That is not a matter of order for the Chair.”
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But the speaker replied, “That is not a matter of order for the Chair.”
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Harold Wilson, the opposition leader, rose in tribute to the Duke’s “gracious lady, the Duchess of Windsor.... We all welcome the fact that she has felt able to be in Britain to hear and sense the feelings of our people, and we are all appreciative of the dignity she has shown, not only in these tragic days but over all the years. We hope that she will feel free at any time to come among and freely communicate with the people whom her husband, Prince of Wales, King and Duke, lived to serve.”
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Jeremy Thorpe, the controversial Liberal leader, declared: “I would have hoped that it might have been possible to mention his widow by name in the Motion which we shall pass, for not only does our sympathy go out to his family but in particular it goes out to his widow whose sadness has been shared by many in this country and whose composure and dignity have won our deep respect.”
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Even Willie Hamilton, the staunchly antimonarchist MP, said: “No woman could have behaved with more dignity and grace in the face of the humiliations and indignities piled on her by the Government, the House and by Our Government over the last thirty-six years.”
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In the face of such overwhelming support, the motion was rewritten to include the extension of the government’s sympathy to “Her Grace the Duchess of Windsor.”
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Even Willie Hamilton, the staunchly antimonarchist MP, said: “No woman could have behaved with more dignity and grace in the face of the humiliations and indignities piled on her by the Government, the House and by Our Government over the last thirty-six years.”
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In the face of such overwhelming support, the motion was rewritten to include the extension of the government’s sympathy to “Her Grace the Duchess of Windsor.”
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