The Peoples King (9 page)

As well as lacking both title and wealth, and being American, what
made Wallis objectionable to the English upper class was that she was
divorced. In fact, civil divorce had been legal in Britain since 1858:
divorced persons had the right to remarry, and the legally innocent
party of a divorce could remarry with the sanction of the Church of
England. Some attitudes to divorce in Society circles were enlightened:
in 1906 Waldorf Astor had married Nancy Langhorne - the future
Lady Astor - who was then a twenty-six-year-old American divorcee
with a six-year-old son. Waldorf's father, William Waldorf, had
trusted his son's judgement and assured Nancy that, 'If you are good
enough for Waldorf, then you will be good enough for me."
⁰²
But
overwhelmingly, divorce was a barrier in public life and court circles.

Wallis had been presented at court in June 1931, but this was allowed
only because she had been the innocent party in her divorce. Because
of this interdict, 'which rightly or wrongly I regarded as hypocritical,'
observed Edward in his memoirs, 'an ever-increasing number of other­wise worthy and blameless men and women were forced to stand
apart in a permanent state of obloquy.'

There were mutterings of horror and indignation when in the sum­mer of 1936 Edward took Wallis on a cruise through the Adriatic
aboard the
Nahlin.
She was one of several select guests, including
Lord Sefton, Helen Fitzgerald, Duff Cooper and Lady Diana Cooper,
and Lord and Lady Brownlow, as well as Katherine and Herman
Rogers, the friends with whom Wallis had stayed in Peking. The
Captain of the ship found Mrs Simpson 'a most charming lady'.
This view was shared by a bedroom steward on the ship, who
remembered when Mrs Simpson joined the ship in Poland, and her
stay on board until leaving at Constantinople three weeks later. 'I
have had to deal with a great many ladies in my time,' he said, 'but
I never met a more charming lady than she was.' It was a very
happy party, he thought. As on the
Rosaura
two years earlier,
Wallis's bedroom and Edward's bedroom were in the fore part of
the ship, while the rest of the guests had rooms in the aft. After the
King and his guests had left the
Nablin
, said the steward, the crew
'naturally spoke about them'; they had all liked Mrs Simpson. A
dining room steward noticed that Wallis addressed Edward as 'Sir',
but was not submissive - 'I mean that if His Majesty was speaking
to other guests Mrs Simpson would butt in with some witty remark.
When at the table I have noticed His Majesty leave off talking to
others to answer Mrs Simpson.'
¹⁰¹

Lady Diana Cooper seemed to resent Wallis's presence. 'It's imposs­ible to enjoy antiquities with people who won't land for them and
who call Delphi Delhi', she wrote, snobbishly. 'Wallis is wearing very
very badly. Her commonness and Becky Sharpishness irritate', she
added, likening Wallis to the social climber in Thackeray's
Vanity
Fair.
¹⁰⁵
Diana's hostility may have been fed by annoyance that the
King was not paying her much attention on the cruise. As the daughter
of the Duke of Rutland and someone who was generally regarded as
one of the most beautiful women in London, she was usually at the
centre of anything that was going on.

Although the
Nahlin
voyage had been planned as a holiday, Edward
also visited the battlefields of Gallipoli and performed a number of
royal duties. He visited the King of Greece and the King of Yugoslavia,
helping to cement friendly ties between these nations and Britain.
While they were in Greece, Sir Sydney Waterlow, the British Ambas­sador in Athens, was impressed by the bond between Wallis and
Edward. He wondered 'whether this union, however queer and gener­ally unsuitable and embarrassing for the state, may not in the long run
turn out to be more in harmony with the spirit of the new age than
anything that wisdom could have contrived.'
¹⁰⁶
Edward also met with
Kemal Ataturk, the ruler of Turkey. This was the first time a British
king had ever been to Turkey, and the occasion was a great success.
On his way home Edward visited Vienna, where he made a point of
looking at housing estates for the poor. An Austrian living in London
later wrote to a member of Edward's staff to tell him of the King's
immense popularity in her country,
for which he has done such a lot. We have the greatest trust in him to prevent
another war at all costs and admire his genuine concern for the people and
their problems. It really made an impression in Vienna when the King visited
the Workmen's blocks of flats with such interest.
¹⁰⁷

Despite her divorced status, her nationality and her lack of the kind
of social status that counted in Britain, Wallis had many friends,
among them journalists, politicians, diplomats and artists of all kinds.
Elsie de Wolfe, a Parisian hostess, instructed her on entertaining
and introduced her to fashion designers such as Schiaparelli and
Mainbocher. One lively friend was 'Foxy' Gwynne, whom Wallis had
got to know in Paris during her stay there years before. Foxy had
once been a fashion model and owed her nickname to her red hair.
She was later to marry the Earl of Sefton, who was a good friend of
Edward's.

An especially close and loyal friend in London was Sybil, Lady
Colefax, a pretty and popular social hostess in her early sixties. Many
people shared Charles Lambe's view that 'Lady Colefax was nice,
intelligent and sympathetic. I felt at ease with her.'
¹⁰⁸
Like Wallis, she
was a remarkably resourceful woman. After losing her wealth in
the crash of 1929, she set up a very successful business in interior
decoration, which popularized the vogue for English chintz. When her
husband died in February 1936, she had to move out of her grand
home, Argyll House, to a much smaller home on Lord North Street in
Westminster. But despite the relative shortage of space, money and
time, she continued to be an influential hostess. The number of her
acquaintances was vast. 'I would so like to ask someone to meet you,'
wrote the novelist E. M. Forster to Lady Colefax, 'whom you don't
know, but whom do I know whom you don't know, I don't know.'
¹⁰⁹
Unusually for a social hostess, Lady Colefax was politically left of
centre and usually voted Labour; she invited Labour politicians and
their wives to her soirees and was a great admirer of the radical
economist John Maynard Keynes.
¹¹⁰

Sybil did not meet Wallis until the summer of 19 3 5, but they quickly
became friends. Not only did Sybil like Wallis, she also approved of
her as Edward's companion in life: 'His first great love was always
hard and in love with someone else . . . His second awful (Lady
Furness). Wallis tactful, helpful and wise and I've seen her at it."
¹¹
Sybil hosted formal occasions for Wallis and Edward. To one dinner
at Argyll House she invited Perry Brownlow and his wife Kitty, the
Duchess of Buccleuch, Lady Diana Cooper and Duff Cooper, Lord
and Lady Vansittart, and Mr and Mrs Artur Rubinstein. It was a
summer evening, and through the great double doors, which were
open, the guests could see the garden with its spreading lawns and
a sea of green trees, lit by Chinese lanterns, 'pale moons of white'
floating in the branches.
¹¹²
Later in the evening, Lord Berners, Winston
Churchill and some other men joined the gathering. Rubinstein played
Chopin, which delighted Sybil (Rubinstein did not like playing for
social gatherings) but also caused her some anxiety, as Edward was
not keen on classical music. Bruce Lockhart wrote in his diary that
the 'King sat down on a little stool beside Mrs Simpson. Seemed rather
bored, but stayed on.' After he had finished, Noel Coward was asked
to sing, which cheered the King immensely - he 'bucked up and looked
quite amused. He did not leave till nearly one. Came with and left
with Mrs Simpson. Quite unattended. No ADC etc.'
¹¹³

It was by no means unusual at this time for social hostesses to lionize
people with a particular claim to attention by Society. Albert, the
Duke of York, and his Duchess, Elizabeth (the future King George VI
and Queen Elizabeth), were cultivated by Mrs Ronnie Greville, who
had a house on Charles Street in London and an immense country
estate in Surrey, Polesden Lacey. Here, Albert and Elizabeth spent a
part of their honeymoon. Born the illegitimate daughter of a Scottish
millionaire brewer, Mrs Greville had managed to put this behind her
and establish a position among the elite and many of the royal family.
Edward disliked her and thought her behaviour to royalty was syco­phantic. People such as the Coopers and Cecil Beaton held her in
contempt because of her zealous pursuit of titles to attend her recep­tions (of sixty-one names mentioned on one evening, over fifty were
titled, and on most occasions there was at least one royal). Cecil
Beaton thought she was a 'galumphing, greedy, snobbish old toad
who watered at the chops at the sight of royalty.'"
⁴
Menus were pre­sented in French, and at one large Christmas party, one of the seven
courses was 'Oeufs Due d'York' in honour of the most important
guest."
⁵
Mrs Greville, like many of her circle, was an enthusiastic
supporter of Adolf Hitler. She was fawned upon by Joachim von
Ribbentrop, the German ambassador, and was present at a Nazi Party
rally in Nuremberg; she was furious at the British Embassy for not
sending a representative.
¹¹⁶

Because of her intimacy with Edward, Wallis was eyed as a passport
to the King. 'Of course anyone who can get hold of Mrs Simpson can
now secure His Majesty', commented Jean Hamilton enviously in
the summer of 193 6.
¹¹⁷
Emerald Cunard, an American, was a keen
contender for Wallis's favour. She was the estranged wife of Sir Bache
Cunard, grandson of the founder of the Cunard shipping line. She was
known for her affairs with the writer George Moore and then with Sir
Thomas Beecham, the famous conductor, and had a particular interest
in the patronage of musicians and writers. By the time Edward had
started his reign, Lady Hamilton was observing in her diary that
Emerald Cunard and 'all her crew' were 'tumbling after' Wallis. Their
nickname, she added, was The Royal Racket'.
¹¹⁸
Some resentment
was felt at Lady Cunard's determination to win Wallis's favour. At a
'pompous, manque dinner' at Lady Cunard's in 1936, when she was
'looking like Pavlova in white', wrote Chips Channon, she slipped a
crumpled note into his hand for him to read. It was an anonymous
missive she had received. It began, 'You old bitch, trying to make up
to Mrs Simpson, in order to curry favour with the King.' Emerald was
frightened, thought Channon, 'and yet rather flattered. It was in an
educated handwriting.'
¹¹⁹