Untitled: The Real Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor. Anna Pasternak
href="#ulink_0c03a212-214a-5150-9568-bc704c2664fe">* camp, is most diverting. In fact, the romance surpasses all else in interest.’
Of the state ball, Wallis recalled that after the king and queen had made their entrance, the dancing began. ‘As David and I danced past, I thought I felt the king’s eyes rest searchingly on me. Something in his look made me feel all this graciousness and pageantry were but the glittering tip of an iceberg that extended down into unseen depths I could never plumb, depths filled with an icy menace for such as me.’ A chill ran through Wallis and in spite of being seen dancing the foxtrot with the Prince of Wales, ‘in that moment I knew that between David’s world and mine lay an abyss that I could never cross, one he could never bridge for me’.
Wallis kept up her jovial, reassuring front in her correspondence with Aunt Bessie. After the ball, she wrote of her evening, describing the diamond clips she received as a jubilee present. ‘The Prince danced with me after the opening one with the Queen so you see I am not neglected on the right things.’ She continued to regale her aunt with examples of her popularity, explaining that she was besieged by invitations. Wise to the situation she explained: ‘They think that in asking me they’ll get him.’ Before adding, tellingly: ‘It will be lovely when something happens to break it up.’
However, Edward had no intention of letting Wallis go. He later wrote: ‘A prince’s heart, like his politics, must remain within the constitutional pale. But my heart refused to be so confined; and presently and imperceptibly the hope formed that one day I might be able to share my life with her, just how I did not know.’ The prince and Mrs Simpson continued to storm society; while Special Branch continued to spy on Wallis; and the royal family made every effort to avoid her. The battle lines that Chips Channon referred to were drawn between the old guard traditionalists (chiefly King George V, Queen Mary, the Duke and Duchess of York and Princess Marina) and the pro-Wallis camp (which included the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Kent, Lady Cunard, Lady Colefax, Chips Channon, the Duff Coopers, Cecil Beaton and Winston Churchill).
Later that May, on Empire Day, Chips Channon wrote in his diary: ‘We had cocktails at Mrs Simpson’s little flat in Bryanston Court. The Prince was charm itself. He is boisterous, wrinkled and gay. His voice is more American than ever. (It doesn’t matter, since all the Royal Family except the Duke of Kent have German voices.) He wore a short black coat and soft collar, checked socks and a tie … He shook and passed the cocktails very much the jeune homme de la maison.’
A few nights later, Chips joined the prince and ‘the ménage Simpson’ in Emerald Cunard’s box at the opera. He noted the positive influence and mesmeric hold Wallis had over the heir to the throne. It was she who chided Edward to leave, reminding him not to be late in joining the queen for a ball. As he left, she removed a cigar from his breast pocket, admonishing: ‘It doesn’t look very pretty.’ The party noted that the prince left but was back within half an hour.
Wallis’s reign at the Fort was similarly in its zenith. That summer Lady Diana Cooper and her husband, Duff, were weekend guests. ‘We arrived after midnight (perhaps as chaperones),’ recalled Lady Diana:
Jabber and beer and bed was the order. I did not leave the ‘cabin’s seclusion’ until 1 o’clock, having been told that no one else did. HRH was dressed in plus-twenties with vivid azure socks. Wallis, admirably correct and chic. Me bang wrong! Everything is a few hours later than other places (perhaps it is American time). A splendid tea arrived at 6.30 with Anthony Eden and Esmond Harmsworth [son and heir of Lord Rothermere]. Dinner was at 10. Emerald arrived at 8.30 for cocktails, which she doesn’t drink although the prince prepares the portions with his own poor hands and does all the glass-filling. The Prince changed into a Donald tartan dress-kilt with an immense white leather purse in front, and played the pipes round the table after dinner, having first fetched his bonnet. We ‘reeled’ to bed at 2 a.m.
While the British press had yet to write anything about the royal romance, keeping the public completely in the dark about the affair, American publications were less reverential and inhibited. That June, Wallis wrote to Aunt Bessie who was ‘upset by Hearst [Newspapers’] reporters lies’. She tried to put her aunt’s mind at rest. ‘You know I am not going to get a divorce. Ernest and I are perfectly happy and understand each other so please put it all out of your head and tell people they can’t believe the press.’
It was not just the whispers in the press that were mounting. Superintendent Canning’s report, delivered to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Philip Game on 3 July, not only alleged that Wallis was having an affair with Guy Trundle; it also speculated about a controversial liaison between Wallis and Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler’s ambassador to Britain. The relentlessly charming von Ribbentrop, a former wine salesman, had for the last two years been peddling the Third Reich to the British aristocracy. He cultivated Lady Cunard as a route to the Prince of Wales. In June, Wallis and the prince had met von Ribbentrop at a large gathering at Emerald’s. Winston Churchill, also in attendance, listened as the German droned on about the achievements of the Führer. When he left, Churchill turned to his hostess and said: ‘Emerald, I hope we never have to hear that broken gramophone record again.’
Chips Channon noted in his diary: ‘much gossip about the Prince of Wales’s alleged Nazi leanings; he is alleged to have been influenced by Emerald (who is rather eprise with Herr Ribbentrop) through Mrs Simpson. He has just made an extraordinary speech to the British Legion advocating friendship with Germany; it is only a gesture, but a gesture that may be taken seriously in Germany and elsewhere. If only the Chancelleries of Europe knew that his speech was the result of Emerald Cunard’s intrigues, themselves inspired by Herr Ribbentrop’s dimple!’
In July, Edward took part in a naval review in the Channel. His separation from Wallis inspired him to write to her at one o’clock in the morning on board his ship:
A boy is holding a girl so very tight in his arms tonight … A girl knows that not anybody or anything can separate WE – not even the stars – and that WE belong to each other for ever. WE love [twice underlined] each other more than life so God bless WE. Your [twice underlined] David.
For his August holiday that year, the prince rented the Marquess of Cholmondeley’s summer residence, Villa Le Roc, in Cannes. As Edward was not allowed to receive gifts from his subjects, he paid George Rocksavage a token £5 for the fortnight’s stay. Wallis wrote to Aunt Bessie of the villa, with its pretty terraced gardens bursting with zinnias and plumbago: ‘We got here on Monday to find a lovely villa on the water – our own rocks and all the privacy in the world but very hot.’ The Duke of Westminster’s yacht, Cutty Sark, was at their disposal. Again, Wallis accompanied the prince without Ernest. Ernest absented himself because his mother was visiting him in London, then he was due on business in America. Wallis gushed to her aunt: ‘My party consists of Lord and Lady Brownlow, Buists, Mrs Fitzgerald and Lord Sefton. Très chic. E is quite content for me to go as he can do nothing for me in the way of a holiday.’ She ends her missive asking her aunt to go and see her husband when he is in the States. Ernest, she reveals, ‘is still the man of my dreams’.
John Aird, who was in attendance on the trip, was alarmed when, on arrival at the villa, the prince rushed in and gave the best bedroom to his equerry, apportioning himself ‘a rotten little room next to W’. An hour later the decision was reversed. ‘At whose suggestion I do not know,’ recorded Aird. Most likely Wallis’s, given that only she could steer the prince towards more dignified behaviour. Indeed, the couple’s correspondence during the trip bears witness to Wallis’s eye for detail. She writes to him from her room in the morning, suggesting that as they have a lunch for ten later that day, including with Sir Robert Vansittart, the permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office, it would be more comfortable if the butler could organise ‘chairs without arms’. As well as seating plans, menu plans – ‘I didn’t see a green vegetable on the menu’ – she explains: ‘I like everyone to think you do things well.’
Wallis always needed to be in control. ‘She liked to know exactly what was going on,’ said Hugo Vickers. ‘Later in their life together, if someone dropped a plate in their house in the French countryside and the Duchess was in Paris, she would know as if by radar. She said