Read The Duchess Of Windsor Online
Authors: Greg King
The Duchess Of Windsor (72 page)
It is well known that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, in private, often expressed their strong feelings about the Queen Mother; less well known is that the Queen Mother was just as virulent in her condemnation of the Windsors. Behind the friendly veneer and set smile, her iron will, which had kept the Duke and Duchess in a state of perpetual punishment, never softened, infecting generation after generation. When Prince Charles was asked about his great aunt the Duchess of Windsor—whom he had never met—he declared, “She’s a dreadful woman.” He was asked why he said this. His chilling reply left no doubt about the source of his animosity: “I know because my grandmother says she was.”
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Declining Years
I
CAN‘T STAND PEOPLE MY AGE
!” Wallis once declared to her friend Aline, the Countess of Romanones. “Old people like me are such bores, the way they forget things.”
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However, by the end of the 1960s, despite her best efforts, the Duchess of Windsor could no longer disguise the fact that she was rapidly aging.
CAN‘T STAND PEOPLE MY AGE
!” Wallis once declared to her friend Aline, the Countess of Romanones. “Old people like me are such bores, the way they forget things.”
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However, by the end of the 1960s, despite her best efforts, the Duchess of Windsor could no longer disguise the fact that she was rapidly aging.
For many years, Wallis had prided herself on keeping up with the latest fashions and newest trends: The photographs of her dancing the twist in a miniskirt in her late sixties turned many heads. Nor was her youthful appearance confined to fashion and dance. In 1961 cosmetic surgeon Dr. Daniel Shorell was rumored to have treated a well-known royal lady. The press bluntly asked if his patient was the Duchess of Windsor. “Let us say I know her very well,” he answered. “Beyond that, I don‘t think I’d like to go.” He admitted that the patient was not “a member of the royal family by lineage.” He also explained that he had operated to “reduce redundancy of the neck, and to improve the jowls.”
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But Wallis could not prevent the inevitable. Her face was gently lined now, her graying hair carefully dyed each week. Moreover, although she could manage her appearance, there was nothing she could do about her health. In 1968 she began to suffer from short memory lapses. At first, they were nothing serious, and she dismissed them as no more than troublesome instances of normal aging. But as her moods increasingly changed, David was concerned enough to call in the doctors, who diagnosed arteriosclerosis. There was little the doctors could do; the disease, which had already began to interefere with the supply of blood to the Duchess’s brain, would only progress with the passage of time.
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The changes were gradual, but members of the household in Paris noticed small things: occasional bursts of temper and regular orders not given by the Duchess, all of which seemed to indicate that something was amiss.
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Certainly there seems to have been nothing quite as dramatic as the incidents alleged by John Utter, who not only claimed that the Windsors were alcoholics but that “the sound of their drunken bickering was unbearable.”
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The evidence from the Windsors’ friends and former staff members contradicts Utter’s assertions; if the secretary witnessed anything of the sort, undoubtedly it was symptomatic of the Duchess’s increasing illness. “I do not think the Duchess had a problem with alcohol,” says Janine Metz. “The problem is that she did not eat, and when she ate, she ate very little. When she drank the smallest quantity it immediately affected her. I never saw that the Duke had a problem. If he had a problem, I would have known.”
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Certainly there seems to have been nothing quite as dramatic as the incidents alleged by John Utter, who not only claimed that the Windsors were alcoholics but that “the sound of their drunken bickering was unbearable.”
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The evidence from the Windsors’ friends and former staff members contradicts Utter’s assertions; if the secretary witnessed anything of the sort, undoubtedly it was symptomatic of the Duchess’s increasing illness. “I do not think the Duchess had a problem with alcohol,” says Janine Metz. “The problem is that she did not eat, and when she ate, she ate very little. When she drank the smallest quantity it immediately affected her. I never saw that the Duke had a problem. If he had a problem, I would have known.”
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Cecil Beaton, on a visit to the Windsors, noted how rapidly time had caught up with the Duke and Duchess:
She seems to have suddenly aged, to have become a little old woman. Her figure and legs are as trim as ever, and she is as energetic as she always was, putting servants and things to rights. But Wallis had the sad, haunted eyes of the ill. In the hospital they had found that she had something wrong with her liver and that condition made her depressed. When she got up to fetch something, she said: “Don’t look at me. I haven’t even had the coiffeur come out to do my hair,” and her hair did appear somewhat straggly. This again gave her a rather pathetic look. She loves rich food and drink but she is now on a strict diet and must not drink any alcohol. Wallis tottered to a sofa against the light in a small overcrowded drawing room. Masses of royal souvenirs, gold boxes, sealing wax, stamps and seals; small pictures, a great array of flowers in obelisk-shaped baskets. These had been sent up from The Mill, which will be sold now [that] the Duke is not able to bend down for his gardening.... “Well, you see, we’re old! It’s awful how many years have gone by and one doesn’t have them back!” ... The Duchess leaning forward on tiny legs, looked rather blind, and when an enormous bouquet of white flowers and plants arrived, she did not seem able to see it. She leant myopically towards it and asked, ”What‘s that? A tuberose? An arum lily?” The man corrected her—“An auratum”—“Ah yes, will you tell them how beautifully they have done them.” I watched her try to open the card.... “Who is it from?” asked the Duke. “Don’t be so full of curiosity,” said his wife trying to read without glasses.... The two old people, very bent, but full of spirit and still both dandies, stood at the door as I went off....
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The Windsors’ dealings with the Royal Family were still limited and always tinged with questionable intentions and fears of humiliation. In 1969, Prince Charles was invested as Prince of Wales in a ceremony closely based on the 1911 proceedings which had been instigated by George V for David. Neither of the Windsors attended the ceremony. Shortly thereafter, the Duke declined an invitation from the Queen to join the Royal Family at the dedication of a new Order of the Garter window in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. “Although you did not include Wallis by name in the invitation . . .” he wrote, “I presume that you would have expected her to accompany me. You see, after more than thirty years of happy married life, I do not like to attend such occasions alone.”
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In January 1970 the Duke and Duchess granted an interview to the BBC’s Kenneth Harris. During the interview, which aired on British television to an audience of some 12 million, the Windsors displayed a natural understanding and empathy, finishing each other’s sentences and making jokes which helped dispel rumors that their relationship was cold and uncomfortable.
For the interview, Wallis appeared in good health, showing no sign of her illness. She declared that if she were a young woman she would like to be the head of an advertising agency; she also confided that the Duke had two bad habits—smoking, which she abhorred, and his golf, which, she complained, “keeps him away from me.” When asked about the latest trends, the Duke replied: “Now, the Duchess and I are a little past the age of being what they call with it, but don’t for one minute imagine that we weren’t with it when we were younger. In fact I was so much with it that this was one of the big criticisms that was levelled against me by the older generation.” And the Duchess spoke of loneliness: “There is no problem for a man alone, but it is different for women who are widows. Who is going to take her out to dinner? How much time is she going to spend sitting alone unless she is going to entertain a great deal; and then most of her friends are probably widows too, you see. Then the great manhunt has to go on to get someone to come to dinner and sit next to these people.”
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In April of that year the Windsors, during a visit to Washington, D.C., attended a state dinner given in their honor at the White House by President Richard Nixon. To most people, it was a visit of the stars of the century’s most romantic story, two elderly people whose marriage had survived adversity for more than three decades. To the British government, however, it was simply another occasion for worry. If anyone believed that the vendetta against the Windsors on the part of the Royal Family and the government had come to an end, they simply had to learn of the orders which the Foreign Office in London fired off to the British embassy. The Duchess, they warned, was not to be addressed as Her Royal Highness; in no instance was she to be curtsied to, and the ambassador was directed to personally inform the United States’ chief of protocol that these requests must be followed by the Nixons during the state dinner. “This heavy-handed advice did not go down well in Washington,” writes Kenneth Harris, “and even the British took exception to it. The Ambassador’s wife said afterwards, ‘I curtsied anyway—and I called the Duchess Your Royal Highness.‘”
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The dinner took place on April 4. The Windsors, who were staying down Pennsylvania Avenue at Blair House, arrived in a limousine under the North Portico; President and Mrs. Nixon stood on the steps, waiting to greet them. David, dressed in white tie and tails, leaned heavily on a cane as he exited the car; Wallis, dressed in a white-silk crepe gown by Givenchy adorned with medallions and a belt of colored metallic beads, took his hand and helped him climb the stairs, where they stood side by side with the Nixons and posed for photographs.
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One hundred and six invited guests waited within to greet the Duke and Duchess. Several of Wallis’s relatives, including the Mustins, had received invitations and greeted her warmly as they passed through the receiving line. Other guests included President Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Col. and Mrs. Charles Lindbergh, the Winston Guests, Fred Astaire, and Arnold Palmer. According to Marie Smith, writing in the
Washington Post
, “the Duchess looked decades younger than her 73 years.” The Windsors sat with the Nixons at the head of an E-shaped table in the State Dining Room. The menu included Le Saumon Froid Windsor, a mousse of sole and shrimp molded in the form of a royal crest and surrounded by cold salmon; and a strawberry dessert called Le Soufflé Duchesse. Throughout the meal, observers noted that the Duke and Duchess could be seen holding hands, whispering to each other and exchanging jokes. They seemed perfectly comfortable and at ease. At the end of the meal, when toasts were being exchanged, David said, “I have had the good fortune to have a wonderful American girl consent to marry me. I have had thirty years of loving care, devotion, and companionship—something I have cherished above all else.”
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Washington Post
, “the Duchess looked decades younger than her 73 years.” The Windsors sat with the Nixons at the head of an E-shaped table in the State Dining Room. The menu included Le Saumon Froid Windsor, a mousse of sole and shrimp molded in the form of a royal crest and surrounded by cold salmon; and a strawberry dessert called Le Soufflé Duchesse. Throughout the meal, observers noted that the Duke and Duchess could be seen holding hands, whispering to each other and exchanging jokes. They seemed perfectly comfortable and at ease. At the end of the meal, when toasts were being exchanged, David said, “I have had the good fortune to have a wonderful American girl consent to marry me. I have had thirty years of loving care, devotion, and companionship—something I have cherished above all else.”
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At the end of the dinners, a second group of invited guests arrived for drinks and entertainment in the East Room. Among them were George and Barbara Bush. The future first lady later recalled “being surprised by how tiny the Duke and Duchess were and how charming she was.”
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Bobby Short played piano and sang many of the Windsors’ favorite songs; David could be seen tapping his cane in time with the music. Afterward, a group of high school and college students known as the Young Saints performed traditional American hymns and Negro spirituals. At the end of the evening, the Duke and Duchess climbed to the stage and thanked each of the performers before returning to Blair House just before midnight.
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Bobby Short played piano and sang many of the Windsors’ favorite songs; David could be seen tapping his cane in time with the music. Afterward, a group of high school and college students known as the Young Saints performed traditional American hymns and Negro spirituals. At the end of the evening, the Duke and Duchess climbed to the stage and thanked each of the performers before returning to Blair House just before midnight.
In these last years, Lord Mountbatten became a frequent—if not altogether welcome—visitor to the Windsor Villa in the Bois de Boulogne. Wallis had never particularly cared for him, and even David by now was angry at the way he seemed to inspect the house, examining papers and souvenirs. “Who are you going to leave that to?” he would ask the Duke, pointing at some object. “I think that should go to Charles.” “How dare he!” David declared after one such visit. “He even tells me what
he
wants left to him!”
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he
wants left to him!”
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Mountbatten, to his credit, had quietly been suggesting to Prince Charles that the time had come for a new generation of the Royal Family to make overtures toward the Windsors. This provoked the Prince’s curiosity, and he approached his grandmother the Queen Mother with the idea. Jonathan Dimbleby, in his authorized biography of the Prince, writes, however, that “it was immediately apparent to him how difficult she would find it to be reconciled with the man whom she held responsible for consigning her husband to an early grave.”
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On October 3, 1970, Prince Charles, who happened to be shooting near Paris with British ambassador Sir Christopher Soames and his son Nicholas, decided he wanted to visit the Duke and Duchess. Although Soames objected that both the Queen and the Queen Mother would strenuously object, Charles was adamant. There was a large dinner party already taking place in the house in the Bois de Boulogne when the Prince of Wales arrived, and he was immediately uncomfortable with the gathered company. “The Duchess appeared from among a host of the most dreadful American guests I have ever seen,” he later wrote. He clearly disliked Wallis, whom he described as “flitting to and fro like a strange bat. She looks incredible for her age and obviously has her face lifted every day. Consequently she can’t really speak except by clenching her teeth all the time and not moving any facial muscles. She struck me as a hard woman—totally unsympathetic and somewhat superficial. Very little warmth of the true kind; only that brilliant hostess type of charm but without feeling....” He spent most of his time in a corner of the drawing room with the Duke, chatting about his role as Prince of Wales. “The whole thing,” Charles declared “seemed so tragic—the existence, the people, and the atmosphere—that I was relieved to escape it after 45 minutes and drive round Paris by night.”
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One of the last parties the Duke and Duchess attended was given by Guy de Rothschild at Château Ferrières-en-Brie on December 2, 1971. The Windsors joined Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Audrey Hepburn, Brigitte Bardot, Cecil Beaton, and a hundred other celebrities in a lavish costume ball which began at half-past ten and broke up at seven the next morning. Burton recalled that during the dinner Wallis seemed hopelessly lost. “She had an enormous feather in her hair which she got into everything, the soup, the gravy, the ice-cream, and at every vivacious turn of her head it smacked Guy sharply in the eyes or the mouth and at one time threatened to get stuck in Guy’s false mustache which was glued on.”
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