That Woman Part 6

Although most lawyers pointed out then and subsequently that the announcement of Letters Patent was based on fallacious premises and a royal t.i.tle for the d.u.c.h.ess should have followed automatically from marriage had it not, then Wallis would after all be marrying the Duke morganatically, which had been ruled out as an impossibility months before the Duke obviously guessed that there would be strong opposition from his family and therefore had written to his brother in mid-April asking him to announce the d.u.c.h.ess's HRH formally. The request resulted in a flurry of activity, with some courtiers so convinced that the marriage would not last that they feared there would eventually be a number of ex-wives parading as HRH. One can only speculate about what might have happened had the Duke not persisted in asking. However, without such a t.i.tle they would never live in England and in this way they were effectively kept as exiles.

Baba Metcalfe wrote that, although the wedding was a nev cingexier-to-be-forgotten occasion, 'perhaps more than the actual ceremony was the rehearsal in the small green drawing room with the organist trying out the music next door. Fruity walks in with HRH and stands on the right of the altar. Wallis on Herman's arm comes in under the tutelage of Jardine ... they go over the service, Walter, Allen and I watched with such a mixture of feelings. The tune played for "O Perfect Love" was not the proper one so I sang it to the organist and he wrote it down ... seven English people present at the wedding of the man who, six months ago, was king of England.' The total wedding party comprised Metcalfe and his wife, Charles and Fern Bedaux, Herman and Katherine Rogers, Walter Monckton, Aunt Bessie Merryman, Lady Selby (her husband, Walford Selby, had been advised not to go), Dudley Forwood and George Allen. Just before the ceremony began, a bouquet of red, white and blue flowers tied with a tricolour ribbon, the gift of the French Prime Minister Leon Blum, was delivered, further underlining that there was no official British presence.

Once home, Jardine was offered large sums for the inside story of the wedding. Although he declined and had committed no illegality in giving a religious blessing to a couple who had minutes earlier in the same room been legally married by a French mayor, he found himself ostracized in his parish and repudiated by his Church; within a month he had left England to live in America. Walter Monckton, who would spend many more hours trying to sort out the financial arrangements between the brothers, had a great sense of foreboding that day. He had constantly advised the Duke to be cautious and not inflame matters, but, as he wrote later, he had always been in favour of granting Wallis a t.i.tle because he foresaw the bitterness that would fester as a result. Once again the Dominions, especially Australia and Canada, were blamed for being immutably opposed to an honour, or rather a style, for someone who had nearly destroyed the Empire. And Wallis well knew how she was loathed in the Empire. Among the piles of hate mail she received, 'the most abusive, oddly enough, came from Canadians, from English people residing in the United States and from Americans of British birth or connections', she noted in her memoirs.

It was a scene of enormous loneliness, hardly the alternative coronation Wallis might have wished for, and both the rivalry and the sense of abandonment were to be played out for another four decades. A telegram from Elizabeth and Bertie insisting 'We are thinking of you

with great affection on this your wedding day and send you every wish for future happiness much love' rang eerily hollow.

'It was hard not to cry. In fact I did,' wrote Baba; 'afterwards we shook hands in the salon. I knew I should have kissed her but I just couldn't. In fact I was bad all day: my effort to be charming and to like her broke down. I don't remember wis.h.i.+ng her happiness or good luck as though she loved him. One would warm towards her but her att.i.tude is so correct and hard. The effect is of an older woman unmoved by the infatuated love of a younger man.'

'I explained to her after the wedding', wrote Walter Monckton, 'that she was disliked because she had been the cause of the Duke giving up the throne but that if she made him happy that would change. If she made him unhappy nothing would be too bad for her. She took it very simply and kindly just saying: "Walter, don't you think I have thought of all that? I think I can make him happy." '

11.

Wallis at War.

'And with all her charity, she had not a word to say for "That Woman" '

Having failed to make Wallis his queen or even win her a royal t.i.tle, having failed to give her a dignified wedding blessed by a royal chaplain, having failed to convince the world, let alone his own family, what a uniquely wonderful woman Wallis was and how worthy of all those things, having instead forced her to hide under car seats and to be abused, threatened or insulted, the Duke of Windsor's natural tendency towards self-abas.e.m.e.nt and flagellation was now redoubled. A feeling that he had somehow let Wallis down, although Wallis herself had been clear-eyed about the royal family's disinclination to welcome her, set the ground rules for their marriage. He had believed right to the last that his brothers would attend his wedding. When they did not, this most bitter blow on top of all the others made him feel that he could never do enough to make up to Wallis for all, as he perceived it, that she had been forced to endure, and because he felt so blessed by having her as his wife. In the short term this meant fighting for money he believed due to him, especially 'considering the position I shall have to maintain and what I have given up'. When she was ill or in pain from neuralgia he rushed her to the best doctors and dentists, while praying that the pain would disappear 'as I can't bear to see her suffering'. And she, in turn, determined to give the Duke whatever she could to make up for what he had abandoned, especially where a display of material possessions was concerned.

Dudley Forwood recalled one evening when the d.u.c.h.ess appeared 'beautifully dressed as always but blazing with rings, earrings, brooches, bracelets and necklaces and almost stooping under their weight. I said "Ma'am I wonder if you aren't wearing a few too many jewels?" She said "You forget that I am the d.u.c.h.ess of Windsor. I shall never let the Duke down." '

The honeymoon was spent largely at Schloss Wa.s.serleonburg, a secluded castle in the Carinthian mountains belonging to a cousin of their friend Lord Dudley. En route they stopped in Venice, where Mussolini's Fascist government had arranged an impressive array of gondolas and flowers to meet the newlyweds. And then, at last, they were left in peace.

In her memoirs Wallis wrote disingenuously that she 'recognised with incredulity' a note awaiting her on the morning tray sent by Ernest about ten days after the abdication. But she had no reason to be surprised since she had been writing to him from the moment when she first felt so alone facing the crowd of reporters in Ipswich. More surprising than Ernest writing to her 'you may rest a.s.sured that no one has felt more deeply for you than I have' is that she continued to write to her second husband even while on her honeymoon with her third. She told him: 'I think of us so much, though I try not to.' She craved news about him: 'I wonder so often how you are? How the business is getting on etc. I thought I'd write a few lines to say I'd love to hear from you if you feel like telling me a bit.' She admitted she was at least peaceful in the mountains and trying 'to recover from these terrible months that we all went through before starting out in the future. I have gathered up courage for that,' she wrote from Schloss Wa.s.se kSche arleonburg.

But it was peace thanks to material comforts rather than peace from pa.s.sionate love that she had found and she knew that Ernest understood that. 'The dual side of my nature will out and you filled my one side so utterly. If we could only have done these things. Anyway I shall always be struggling with myself to the grave and whereas other people will become happy I shall never be able to answer either of my sides satisfactorily. If only one of me was stronger than the other,' she wrote with remarkably Freudian insight into her own personality. 'I am so glad you won your suit. I knew you would,' she concluded. In fact the case against Mrs Sutherland had been settled out of court and Ernest contented himself with costs.

From Wa.s.serleonburg, as she told Ernest, she and the Duke were travelling around Europe to Budapest and Vienna, 'as well as to Czechoslovia [sic] (wrong I'm sure) for more shooting ... Then a city for a dentist'. In the years to come, Wallis was often in need of dental treatment. They returned to Venice for an occasional day and even managed a visit to Salzburg, a surprising outing given the Duke's dislike of opera. By the end of September they had done enough travelling and finished up in Paris, staying mostly at the Hotel Meurice, while they looked for a house, the Duke all the while wondering how soon he could return to England. They did not find anything suitable until February 1938, when they rented a house at Versailles, but later that year they moved again to a more solid and substantial mansion on the Boulevard Suchet, which offered possibilities for entertaining on a regal scale. Mary Kirk, who became Ernest Simpson's third wife in November 1937, heard about the house from a mutual friend and wrote in her diary: 'it was deeply interesting what he told me about being there ... going over the house from top to bottom there was not ONE single book in it'.

Wallis was unsettled. Although they had visitors there was an awkwardness of which she was only too aware: As for all one's 'friends', I think they find it very difficult to know anybody but the new regime though I must say they all put in unexpected appearances in Paris. But then even a t.i.tle of peculiar origin and a slight idea that the Duke may be heard from in the future is enough to bring that type of English to one's side ... It is horrid having no home & living like snails yet how difficult to decide where to live with every country quivering.

'I don't agree it was fate,' she insisted to Ernest, but 'a woman's ambition which has left a wound that will never heal and a woman's pride were the causes. I curse the latter because it made me lose control. The former was Mary's way to be satisfied, the latter pushed me over the cliff. Anyway I shall write about it again. It is very painful and it is too late. Wherever you are you can be sure that never a day goes by without some hours thought of you & for you & again in my eanum prayers at night. With love, Wallis.' Her use of the word 'eanum' in a letter to her ex-husband reveals a surprising a.s.sumption of his familiarity with what had been part of the lovers' private language.

From now on there is an appalling sense of aimlessness to the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess's lives compounded by abandonment by their friends. Above all they were cut off from sources of good advice, which left them alarmingly vulnerable. Walter Monckton and Winston Churchill both retained a strong sense of obligation towards a former monarch, the latter from a more romantic standpoint bu kstadiv>t at some cost to his own reputation, the former constantly counselling patience while hoping to counteract what he called 'influences working the other way', that is Wallis. Another source of advice was Bernard Rickatson-Hatt, Ernest's old friend, still editor in chief at Reuters, who played something of a double game in the post-abdication years, offering the Duke occasional advice on public relations and Ernest and Mary occasional press seats for events as well as t.i.tbits about the lives of the royal exiles. The Duke asked Rickatson-Hatt, whenever there was negative publicity about Wallis, to contradict the statements or give 'the lie to false rumours ... What is vitally important to us ... is that any renewal of newspaper interest in us should be met with good publicity.' So, for example, when they were invited for dinner by the British Amba.s.sador in Paris, Rickatson-Hatt was asked to ensure that the occasion was given what would now be called a favourable spin. The Duke was grateful and told Rickatson-Hatt, who sent on some clippings, how pleased he was 'that your friends co-operated so willingly ... Wallis and I have been greatly amused over the Buck House att.i.tude: not the King's of course, but that of the same old Palace enemies.'

But where once he had been surrounded by counsellors, now there were none. In this abyss it is easy to see how alluring was the advice of his host at Tours, Charles Bedaux. Bedaux had substantial business interests in Germany and was keen to use the Duke to further these. The idea of the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess making a trip to n.a.z.i Germany had been in his mind from the first and he broached it with the Duke even before the wedding. The Duke needed little persuasion that such a visit would be a good way to cement ties between the two royal families, broken after the First World War, and thus promote peace. The trip genuinely appealed to his belief that, if he could study the housing and working conditions of the German labour force, there might come a time when such knowledge would be useful, and an announcement in August that the Duke wished to make a study of working conditions in various countries was read with alarm in London to mean that he was doing so with a view to returning to England at a later date as a champion of the working cla.s.ses.

In fact there was another, more pressing reason why the idea so appealed. A visit to Germany afforded a real opportunity for Wallis to sample a state visit, a chance for her to experience something of what it was like to be the wife of someone who commanded the respect of a major power; most Germans had a high regard for the Duke, with his often stated love of Germany. At Oxford his German tutor had been the influential Professor Hermann Fiedler, a man who in May 1937 wrote to The Times that he was 'appalled' that Oxford had refused to send an official representative to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Gottingen University, by then purged of Jews. Yet even Mensdorff, the Austro-Hungarian diplomat, was surprised at the strength of his pro-German feelings. Recording a talk he had had with the Prince in 1933, he declared that, having been summoned to see him at 5 p.m. the previous day, 'I am still under his charm.' He went on: It is remarkable how he expressed his sympathies for the n.a.z.is in Germany. 'Of course it is the only thing to do, we will have to come to it, as we are in great danger from the Communists here, too.' He naturally condemns the peace Treaty [Versailles, 1919]. 'I hope and believe we shall never fight a war again,' he commented. 'But if so we must be on the winning side and that will be the German, not the French' ... I asked him how he imagined that one got out of the National Socialist dictators.h.i.+p ... He seemed not to have thought k ha very much about these questions. It is, however, interesting and significant that he shows so much sympathy for Germany and the n.a.z.is.

Dudley Forwood believed that the most compelling motive for the visit was to give Wallis a taste of being queen, 'and when the Foreign Office and George VI asked him not to go, he felt ... they'd been b.l.o.o.d.y to me why the h.e.l.l should I do what they want? They denied my wife her right. It showed his great respect for the throne that even on this most vexed question he would never in public question his brother the King but in private ... it hurt him a lot.' Relations with his family were now strained almost to breaking point. As the Duke told Walter Monckton, he embarked on the trip in the wake of 'a series of rather tricky letters I have had to write to bring home to my mother and the King how sore I feel from their humiliating treatment of me ever since I left England in December.'

The Windsors went by train from Paris to Berlin in early October and there to greet them on the Friedrichstra.s.se station platform were a number of n.a.z.i leaders, including Dr Robert Ley, the boorish, alcoholic leader of the n.a.z.i National Labour Front, but from the British Emba.s.sy there was only a junior member of staff. That night Ley gave a magnificent banquet in their honour at which several of the most senior German leaders were present, among them Goebbels, Himmler, Hess and Ribbentrop the latter, according to the British Amba.s.sador Sir Eric Phipps, p.r.o.nounced himself delighted by the trip, declaring that 'HRH will some day have a great influence over the British working man'. They were taken to visit various housing projects, hospitals and youth camps in Dresden, Nuremberg, Stuttgart and Munich by Ley in his enormous and powerful Mercedes, and local authorities were instructed always to refer to Wallis as Her Royal Highness and they did not disobey. The visit was well covered in British newspapers which showed the Duke, relis.h.i.+ng an opportunity to speak German, clearly enjoying himself even when visiting a beer hall in Munich. They went by train to see a major German coalmine, deep in the Ruhr at Kamp-Lintfort, 'because it was known how pro-German he was', according to a woman, whose father accompanied the Duke on that occasion. 'There was jubilation at the Kamp to have a former King visit. He was totally enraptured by the technical innovations of the German mining industry,' she recalled.

Wallis, uninterested in the politics, could not resist writing naively to Ernest about the tour: 'This is a most interesting trip, though very strenuous, starting at 8 am each morning and ending at 5. Tomorrow, to vary the tour a bit, we take the train at 7.15 am. Peter Pan is determined to help working conditions. He really likes those people much better than any of us and I'm sure they are much nicer.'

But she did not write to him about the climax of the trip, a meeting with the Fuhrer himself at his mountain home, the Berghof, just outside Salzburg. Since it came three days after the pro-appeas.e.m.e.nt British Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, had called on Hitler hoping to come to some permanent agreement with Germany over its expansionist aims, the Duke's visit had the effect of encouraging Hitler further in his belief, however erroneous, that when the time came to install a puppet government in England the Duke would be willing to be restored to the British throne with Wallis as queen. There are several photos recording the historic meeting but none more evocative than that showing the d.u.c.h.ess smiling broadly and enjoying the pomp and pageantry as the Fuhrer leans over to kiss her hand while the Duke looks on proudly.

After the war the Duke wrote: '[The] Fuhrer struck me as a somewhat ridiculous figure, with his theatrical posturings and his bombastic pretensions.' But Dudley Forwood, also a German-speaker, who was present at the hour-long meeting, gave a different account: 'My Master said to Hitler the Germans and the British races are one, they should always be one. They are of Hun origin.' Wallis was not included in the private interview. She was offered tea by the fireplace with Rudolf Hess instead. Later she insisted that when she asked the Duke afterwards what he had discussed he told her, 'I'd never allow myself to get into a political discussion with him!'

'His tour was ill-timed and ill-advised but not a crime,' is Philip Ziegler's sober a.s.sessment. Since the Duke had agreed to make no formal speeches while in Germany there are at least no words to be quoted back at him. But the grainy newspaper images showing a smiling Wallis and Edward meeting uniformed n.a.z.i leaders against a vivid backdrop of swastikas, flags and jackboots have become indelibly imprinted in the public imagination. By not condemning any aspect of the German social experiment, the Duke was tacitly condoning it and thus allowing himself to be used by the Germans. For Queen Mary there was a still greater crime, and one that solidified with time: forsaking his sacred duty as king of a glorious empire. She was not afraid to make her views known to her son.

Meanwhile Charles Bedaux was busy organizing another, rather grander tour for the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess, a visit to the United States, which Wallis had told Ernest would last a month and feature more visits to factories in an attempt to examine working conditions in America. But, in the wake of the German trip, it was clear that a visit to America would prove disastrous on several counts, princ.i.p.ally because the American labour unions hated Bedaux for what they saw as his brutal ideas about workers' efficiency. According to Dudley Forwood, 'they could not even vouch for his security'.

And it was the projected American trip that caused so much ill-feeling in London.

The fear at Court the King and Queen advised by Hardinge and Lascelles was that the Duke, behaving abominably, was trying to stage a come-back. Coincidentally, the British Amba.s.sador in Was.h.i.+ngton, Sir Ronald Lindsay, was on home leave while the trip was being discussed and he argued that if the Duke went ahead with the visit he should be accorded the full courtesies of the Emba.s.sy. Lindsay could feel the King's continued sense of vulnerability vis-a-vis his brother, 'and up to a certain point he is like the medieval monarch who has a hated rival claimant living in exile'. Lindsay recognized that there were many grounds for objecting to this trip, but recorded that Queen Elizabeth's view was that: while the men spoke in terms of indignation she spoke in terms of acute pain and distress, ingenuously expressed and deeply felt. She, too, is not a great intellect but she has any amount of intelligence du coeur ... In all she said there was far more grief than indignation and it was all tempered by affection for 'David'. He's so changed now and he used to be so kind to us. She was backing up everything the men said but protesting against anything that seemed vindictive ... and with all her charity she had not a word to say for 'That Woman'.

The new King and Queen were not yet ready to make any state visits themselves and their first was not to be until 1938 when they went to Paris. Queen Elizabeth was acu kabemaktely sensitive to the damage being inflicted on her husband by living out this unexpected public duty and laid the blame squarely at Wallis's feet. In response to a remark just after the Paris trip that the d.u.c.h.ess of Windsor had 'done much for the Duke stopped him drinking no more pouches under his eyes', she retorted, 'Yes, who has the lines under his eyes now?'

So although the suggestion that they should visit North America, combining a tour of Canada with a trip to the United States, had already been mooted as early as 1937 when the Canadian Prime Minister, William Mackenzie King, came to London for the Coronation, such a tour needed careful planning. It was felt that, once people had had an opportunity to see the new King and Queen in person, the wounds from the abdication and the loss of such a popular monarch as Edward VIII would be finally healed. And President Roosevelt was also keen for such a visit but, by the time all the arrangements had been made, it did not actually take place until May 1939, making it a deeply significant trip given the worsening situation in Europe. The idea of the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Windsor making a tour of North America in 1937, advised by such dubious friends as Charles Bedaux and in advance of the new King and Queen, could only be interpreted as a blatant attempt to upstage the British sovereign.

When Wallis wrote to Ernest, who was in New York, on 30 October, just a year after her divorce, she knew the US trip was hopeless: 'Ernest dear, What can I say when I am standing beside the grave of everything that was us and our laughter rings in my ears over "letter from New York". My opinion is the same only more strong than that because the events in London more than proved what we were laughing about. Only oh my very dear, dear Ernest I can only cry as I say farewell and press your hand very tightly and pray to G.o.d. Wallis.' In fact, the Duke did not call off the trip until 6 November when he made a statement in The Times denying that he was 'allied to any industrial system ... or for or against any particular political or racial doctrine'. From now on a sense of despair inflamed his already raw bitterness against his family, especially his mother and sister-in-law whom he blamed for the situation.

Whether the Windsors would return to Britain was a constant source of gossip, and Mary Simpson's diary reflects this at a personal level. 'Life in London would be unbearable for us if they lived here too,' she wrote on a November day in 1938 reflecting on a meeting between the Windsors and the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Gloucester who happened to be in Paris. Prince Henry, who had married Lady Alice Montagu Douglas Scott three years before, had never been especially close to Edward. But as Mary perceived: This really makes them respectable. It's funny when I think of all the things we did together at school, how we fought, how we hated and loved each other, how jealous we were until we both married, then it was so different ... however, memories aside, if she comes back to England ... I won't let it disturb me ... I feel that I'm lucky now not to feel more bitterness. But if they lived here I believe it would poison my life ... everyone would want to curry favour in the higher sphere and I think she'd see to it that life was difficult on that score for us.

Walter Monckton, the skilful go-between, was well aware that the Queen and Queen Mary remained implacably opposed to the Windsors' return, whether for a brief visit or for a prolonged stay. As long as Wallis was denied her royal appellation and the dignity k thrn,of being received, it was unlikely she would return, which was what both Queens wanted. 'He couldn't come back. You can't have two kings,' was Elizabeth's view. Her mother-in-law agreed and, while feeling sorry for her son, genuinely believed 'of course we know she is at the back of it'. But in February 1939 Monckton tried to move things forward and asked to see Queen Mary to enquire whether she would receive the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess if they came to London. When she sent a message to say she would not, Monckton asked King George to give the Duke some hope that he and the d.u.c.h.ess would eventually be received. 'To put the matter at its lowest, I find it increasingly difficult to keep him quiet ... I should hate to see any open controversy about it.'

The refusal to meet Monckton, as well as an argument with his family over the dedication to his father George V's tomb, was the catalyst for an eruption from the Duke, who finally wrote to his mother accusing her of destroying any remaining feelings he had for his family and adding that 'You ... & BERTIE, BY HIS IGNOMINIOUS CAPITULATION TO THE WILES OF HIS AMBITIOUS WIFE, have made further normal correspondence between us impossible.'

Throughout all of this Winston Churchill remained doggedly loyal to his former sovereign. Having argued in 1936 that the King should not be hurried into abdicating, he now wrote supportively to the Duke after the German tour, informed by his son Randolph who had been reporting it. 'I was rather afraid beforehand that your tour in Germany would offend the great numbers of anti-n.a.z.is in this country, many of whom are your friends and admirers, but I must admit that it does not seem to have had that effect and I am so glad it all pa.s.sed off with so much distinction and success.' He also did his best to ensure a suitable financial settlement for the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess. As he confided to his wife: 'HMG are preparing a dossier about the DOW's finances, debts and spendings on acct. of Cutie wh I fear they mean to use to his detriment when the Civil List is considered.'

Churchill was well aware that the King had informally promised, at Fort Belvedere at the time of the abdication, to ensure that his brother received 25,000 a year, if necessary paid for by himself, as a pension. But all discussions about money had been poisoned by revelations that the Duke was in fact far better off than he had led his brother to believe. The Duke defended his position by arguing that he was badly off and that his personal fortune according to George Allen he had deposited 800,000 abroad, with a large part of it under the control of Mrs Simpson was irrelevant to the 25,000 which he looked upon in the light of rent for Sandringham and Balmoral, both left to him in his father's will. As it soon became clear that the House of Commons was in no mood to vote the Duke money from the Civil List and no one wanted an acrimonious parliamentary debate on the matter, the haggling dragged on unpleasantly for months and the size and nature of the Duke's pension was not finally settled until 1938. Churchill did all he could to avoid a discussion in the Civil List Committee, arguing that for the maintenance of the honour and dignity of the Crown, the Duke should be dealt with as one of the King's sons, not as an outcast.

Churchill, whatever his private thoughts about 'Cutie', made a point of visiting the Windsors in the South of France, where they now rented a magnificent villa in Cap d'Antibes called the Chateau de la Croe, hidden behind high walls on a twelve-acre estate overlooking the Mediterranean. Wallis tried as best she could, with the help of interior designers such as Elsie Mendl, to recreate here the palatial and royal residence she believed her hu klieughtsband deserved. They had liveried servants, who were never quite paid the going rate but were asked to refer to the d.u.c.h.ess within the household as Her Royal Highness, and there were reminders everywhere of a past regal life. Pride of place in the drawing room was given to the imposing desk at which the ex-King had sat to sign the Instrument of Abdication; it was a piece of furniture that they tried to ensure followed them to every house in which they lived. The dogs, too, followed them everywhere three spoiled Cairn terriers called Pookie, Detto and Prisie who were often literally spoon-fed from silver bowls by the Duke or d.u.c.h.ess meals that had been especially prepared for them. The Windsors' dogs increasingly were the children they never had but were indulged as no royal nanny would ever allow royal children to be indulged. Churchill explained to his hostess, Maxine Elliott, at the end of 1937: 'There is just one uncertainty that faces me on 5th [January 1938]: the Duke is leaving on 6th and I have to go and see him on 5th ... whatever he suggests I shall have to do as I have not seen him since that dark day when he left our country and, as you know, I am a devoted servant.'

Clemmie, harsher than her husband in her judgements on the Windsors, was less devoted and Winston even had to coax her into writing a thank-you to the Duke, who had sent them a Christmas card. 'You can refer to her as the d.u.c.h.ess, thus avoiding the awkward point,' he advised. In fact, both Clemmie and Winston were scrupulous over the years in unfailingly bowing or curtseying to the d.u.c.h.ess. When they finally met for dinner at Maxine's villa early in 1938, the house that the Windsors had so nearly rented the previous year instead of the Nahlin, he reported back: 'The W's are very pathetic, but also very happy. She made an excellent impression on me and it looks as if it would be a most happy marriage ...' Harold Nicolson, who met them at the same dinner party, was also struck by their dilemma. As an excuse for the couple's late arrival the Duke said: 'Her Royal Highness couldn't drag herself away. He had said it. The three words fell into the circle like three words into a pool. Her (gasp) Royal (shudder) Highness (and not one eye dared to meet another).' Later in the evening Nicolson had a chance to talk to the d.u.c.h.ess and she left him in no doubt that living in England again was what they both wanted; 'after all', she told him, 'I don't want to spend all my life in exile'. Matters cooled slightly thanks to Colin Davidson, a young equerry, who warned the Duke that 'every time they heard in England that he was doing it [referring to his wife as HRH] the reconciliation and the arrangements for his return were probably r.e.t.a.r.ded'. Bravely, to set an example, Davidson refused to bow to the d.u.c.h.ess himself.

And so the Windsors remained, perching in France, constantly hoping to be given word that a return to Britain was in order. In the Duke's mind, a visit in spring 1939 seemed possible that was already a delay from a suggested November visit and Monckton too thought that the new King's position was firmly enough established that a short private visit then would cause no embarra.s.sment and break the ice. As the Duke's friends (and lawyers) continued to point out, permanent exile had never been intended in 1936. Allowing the situation to fester was insulting. When the Duke sought legal advice he was told by counsel that nothing short of an Act of Parliament could rob a British subject of his right to return to the UK. As Churchill wrote to his wife two years after the abdication, 'They do not want him to come, but they have no power to stop him.' The power was vested in the refusal to grant Wallis a royal appendage.

Walter Monckton became their only channel of official co kf oan>mmunication, and Wallis was frank with him. 'This is just a reminder', she wrote in February, should he feel inclined to speak to Neville Chamberlain, who had been prime minister since 1937, 'about the rather difficult position the British Emba.s.sy has put the Duke of Windsor in as regards the reaction of the French themselves and their Emba.s.sies here. After all we live in foreign countries to please England therefore why must England make this more unpleasant? The amba.s.sador here did not answer HRH's letter and as I said we are never asked there. It is a small thing but an unnecessary insult to the brother of the King.' Colin Davidson reinforced the same message in letters to Monckton: The public must soon realise that she is making him very happy and that she must have some reward. And that the only way to manage him is to refrain from what he thinks is insulting him. If only his family would sink their own personal disinclinations to treat her as his wife, I feel they would be doing a National Service. She may be a little common and twice divorced but nevertheless she is the legal wife of the ex-King of England and after all he did abdicate. He was not kicked out.

A Gallup poll conducted in 1939 concluded that 61 per cent of the British public wanted the Windsors to return to England, with only 16 per cent opposed.

But there were constant delays, deliberate or not, caused by indecision over where they would stay, who would meet them on arrival and where, and the form of words to be issued in pre-visit statements to clarify who had instigated the meeting. Because of the importance of this 'greater question', Wallis exercised enormous self-restraint in reacting to the press and turned away myriad requests for interviews. She hated the relentless media intrusion which had destroyed her peace of mind. Nonetheless, she did not object to being named in 1938 one of the ten best-dressed women in the world, an accolade she was careful to retain for the next four decades. But she did relent in the spring of 1939, telling Alice Henning of the London Sunday Dispatch that she and the Duke 'in many ways live more quietly than the average married couple ... I expect to take my husband's name and rank, that is all. And I expect ordinary human graciousness in human relations.h.i.+ps.' She went on to discuss the dresses I wear 'and all that ... Those are not the real things of life. I hope as I grow older I realise it.'

Then two months later in May, just as the King and Queen finally sailed to the United States, the Duke was invited by Fred Bate, head of British and European operations at the National Broadcasting Company of America and an old friend of the Windsors, to make a speech on the world situation pleading for peace. The Duke wrote the broadcast himself without advice, and at some point it was decided that it would have greater impact if he made it from Verdun after a visit to the battlefield. Following a genuinely heartfelt appeal for peace, he concluded: 'I personally deplore for example the use of such terms as "encirclement" and "aggression". They can only arouse just those dangerous political pa.s.sions that it should be the aim of us all to subdue.' Although some, especially Americans, wrote to praise the Duke, the BBC decided not to carry the broadcast; 'aggression' was precisely the word to describe Hitler's activities in Austria and Czechoslovakia and there was a feeling that having abdicated the Duke had no right to step so clearly into the political arena. Mary Simpson, knowing Fred Bate, concluded that the notion they just happened to be at Verdun was 'blatant hypocrisy ... eyewash' and wondered 'h kwonte,ow people could be such fools and rogues' to believe it. The broadcast did nothing to advance the Duke's case and so the months pa.s.sed without agreement on a return, the Duke now urging an autumn 1939 visit rather than an August one, when he feared his friends would be away.

But by August 1939 war was imminent and the issue of his return became acute. Monckton was now fielding pressing requests from the Duke to do appropriate war work while insisting on suitable arrangements being made for his return journey to England. Could the French government help him with the removal and storage of his effects in France, he asked, evidently feeling himself ent.i.tled to such a.s.sistance, which Monckton felt, in the current chaos and panic, he was not. As other British subjects were fleeing as fast as they could from France, the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess would have to make the best arrangements they could by themselves, he believed. Then, at the end of August, the Duke sent a telegram to Hitler pleading for peace. 'Remembering your courtesy and our meeting two years ago I address to you my entirely personal simple though earnest appeal for your utmost influence towards the peaceful solution of the present problem. ' Hitler replied on 2 September, the day after Germany had invaded Poland, a.s.suring the Duke 'that my att.i.tude towards England remains the same'. The next day England was at war with Germany, and suddenly the question of how to get the Windsors home became urgent.

Lady Alexandra Metcalfe was incensed by the way the Windsors were treated at this time. Writing a full account in her diary she said that once it had been decided that they had to return to England 'they were offered no accommodation anywhere so I invited them to stay at South Hartfield [the Metcalfe home in Suss.e.x] ... not only were no rooms offered to the Windsors during their visit but no car was made available to meet them. Walter asked the Palace but was told nothing was going to be done from that quarter so they were our guests.' Walter Monckton recorded later, in a succinct account of the arrangements to bring the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess back to England, that he had offered on the eve of war to send the King's personal plane to Antibes but that the Duke wired the night before refusing to make the journey unless promised accommodation at Windsor. 'I was therefore compelled to cancel the flight and war was declared with the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess still at Antibes.'

But the reality of events in those tense days of early September was far more dramatic. Wallis was terrified of flying, especially in such a small plane, a fear that was aggravated by the Duke's anger at the way his family was treating them. Fruity Metcalfe, deeply upset by the Duke's refusal of the King's plane, fed Monckton a vivid account of the overwrought atmosphere. 'The lady here is in a panic, the worst fear I've ever seen or heard of all on account of the aeroplane journey, talks of jumping out, etc.'

So when Monckton told the Duke on 2 September that he was coming in the morning with a pilot and should be at Cannes by 10 a.m. and that he hoped they would be ready, the Duke responded by asking how many people the plane could carry. When told just four he asked Monckton why it was necessary for him [Monckton] to come too as he would take up valuable s.p.a.ce on the return journey which he wanted for luggage. Monckton said he had been told to fly out in the hope that he could help. The Duke then asked what was to be their destination in the UK, and insisted that unless his brother was ready to have him and his wife to stay in one of their houses, they would not return to England. Nevertheless, he said, he still wanted the plane to take Metcalfe and a secretary back home. Monckton reported this conversation to kverss,Hardinge, who decided that the flight would not take place at all under the circ.u.mstances. The next day, 3 September, there was further communication between the Duke and the British Emba.s.sy in Paris, with the Duke telling the Amba.s.sador that the plane would have to make two journeys, because in addition to himself and the d.u.c.h.ess there was also Metcalfe, a secretary, a maid and luggage as 'they could not be expected to arrive in England for a war with only a grip'. He thought a destroyer in one or two days' time would definitely be a better plan. Metcalfe, appalled by this behaviour, did not s.h.i.+rk from telling them that in his view they had 'behaved as two spoiled children ... women and children are being bombed and killed while YOU talk of your PRIDE'. Monckton did indeed fly out to the Windsors in the first week of September in an attempt to explain in person how things stood. In the event, Churchill, who was now First Lord of the Admiralty, organized a destroyer, as the Duke had wanted all along. HMS Kelly, commanded by Lord Louis 'd.i.c.kie' Mountbatten, sailed to Cherbourg to bring home the former monarch and his wife. They were met on 12 September at Portsmouth by Alexandra Metcalfe and Walter Monckton. There were no members of the royal family.

'We arrived at about 6.30 p.m. and went to the Queen's Hotel,' wrote Baba Metcalfe in her diary.

We booked a ghastly red plush double room for Wallis and HRH. Luckily the C-in-C of Portsmouth played up well and said he would put them up ... At 8.30 p.m. a message came to say the Destroyer Kelly with the Windsors on board would be in at about 9.30 p.m. We went down to the Dock (the same one from which Walter saw HRH off after the abdication). A Guard of Honour of one hundred men, wearing tin hats and gas masks, was drawn up and a strip of red carpet was laid to the gangway ... This part of the show was done bang up, all due to Winston, who had given orders for the Windsors to be received with all due ceremony ... Walter and I went first, followed by the Admiral. After a lot of handshaking and guard reviewing, we went down and had dinner in d.i.c.kie's cabin. Fruity had made the whole trip with the Windsors by motor, from the South of France to Cherbourg, where Winston had sent Randolph to meet them ... Later we all went to Admiralty House [in Portsmouth] and left the Windsors there for the night. Fruity and I, Walter and Randolph went to the Queen's Hotel, where Fruity and I had the ghastly plush suite. Next morning, I went to fetch the Windsors in my car, while Fruity drove our van with their luggage ... The Duke never once gave the impression of feeling and sensing the sadness of his first return after the drama of his departure.

Apart from one sentimental visit to the overgrown Fort Belvedere, Wallis and Edward spent most days at the Metcalfes' London house, 16 Wilton Place. It was here with the furniture under dust sheets, that the Duke's business was transacted: clerks, secretaries, War Office officials, boot makers, tailors and hairdressers all streamed in and out, fed by sandwiches and tea from a Thermos flask. Two weeks later, reflecting on the visit, Baba wrote: 'There have been moments when the ice seemed dangerously thin and ominous cracks have been heard but night has brought a thickening up and we have skated on.'

Wallis did not cause a fuss over the way her husband's family ignored her; she almost accepted it and displayed some dignity in doing so. 'So far as David's family, or the court, were concerned, I simply did not exist,' she observed later. That was not quite true of course, but she did not exist as the d.u.c.h.ess of Windsor and, when not referred to as 'That Woma k ="0"> At the end of September, the Duke returned to France to take up his new job outside Paris a.s.signed to the British Military Mission, with Fruity Metcalfe appointed his ADC. According to Wallis, this was not the job he wanted and he would have preferred to stay in Britain in a civil defence post that had first been offered. Nonetheless they went, travelling back again to Cherbourg in a destroyer, with Wallis crouching on the floor of the captain's cabin this time as the s.h.i.+p rolled around in rough seas, the Duke in shock at his isolation from his family. Baba noted: 'I see endless trouble ahead with the job in Paris ... I do think the Family might have done something. Except for one visit to the King, the Duke might not exist. Wallis said they realised there was no place ever for him in this country and she saw no reason for him ever to return.'

With the Duke stationed at Vincennes, Wallis moved first into a hotel in Versailles from where she joined a French relief organization, the Colis de Trianon, but only after she had been rebuffed by the various British agencies. She poured out her heart to Walter Monckton, as she was often to do in the years ahead: I have in fact given both time and money to the French, having waited for some time to see what att.i.tude would be taken by the numerous British organisations formed here for British troops. It soon became apparent that there was no use waiting to be of use to them. Had I had some backing from the Emba.s.sy or GHQ I think I could have been useful regarding the canteens in the station. The young British officers there were longing to have some helpers in the French canteens that knew and speak English.

So she decided to move back into their house on the Boulevard Suchet and took a job with the Section Sanitaire Automobile (SSA) of the French Red Cross, delivering plasma, bandages and cigarettes to the hospitals behind the Maginot Line in eastern France. 'I was busier and perhaps more useful than I had ever been in my life,' she admitted. Realizing that the British press would not write about her activities, the Duke urged Rickatson-Hatt to get his wife some publicity for her work visiting hospitals and the forward areas of the French army and carrying out other duties on behalf of the SSA. He sent Rickatson-Hatt a long account of how Wallis was billeted within the sound of gunfire and had much interesting information about the conditions in which French troops were living at the front. But British views of her remained unchanged by knowledge of such work, which in any case did not last long. While the Duke was stationed at Vincennes they saw each other rarely, but then, on 10 May 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands, quickly broke through French defences and threatened Paris. It was time once again to flee.

Desperate families, loading all their possessions on to carts or car roofs, jammed the roads out of Paris. With the help of their chauffeur George Ladbroke, the Duke kke,sioand Wallis (she never learned to drive) joined the jostling hordes on the road to Biarritz on the Spanish border. The Duke deposited Wallis there and then returned to his job in Paris. Two weeks later he was back, his need to be with his wife so overpowering that he now abandoned his oldest and most loyal friend, Fruity Metcalfe, without a word of warning, leaving him to make his own way back to England without any means of transport. Not surprisingly Metcalfe saw this as a callous disregard of twenty years of friends.h.i.+p and threatened never to forgive him. 'He deserted his job in 1936, well he's deserted his country now, at a time when every office boy and cripple is trying to do what he can. It is the end,' he told his wife. Philip Ziegler defends the Duke on the grounds that he probably left Paris with the approval indeed to the relief of the Military Mission. More significantly perhaps, the Duke also understood that at a time when everyone else seemed to be against the d.u.c.h.ess, he had toto be with her to support and defend her. From Biarritz the pair went to their home at Chateau de la Croe and waited there for news of the German advance and French collapse. It was agreed with the British Emba.s.sy in Madrid that the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess were to get to Spain somehow ahead of the fleeing French government whose members it was expected the Germans would try to bomb once they arrived at Perpignan. In mid-June they set off in convoy with the Duke's equerry, Major Gray Phillips, driving through the night, camping where they could, intending to get to officially neutral Spain. But the Spanish Fascist leader, General Franco, was far from a reliable friend of Britain and it was clear that this was only a temporary post and they would have to be moved on as quickly as possible.

On 22 June 1940, the day the new French leader, Marshal Petain, signed an armistice with Hitler, it became known to the British government that the Windsors had arrived in Barcelona. The Foreign Office telegraphed to the Madrid Emba.s.sy: 'Please invite their Royal Highnesses to proceed to Lisbon.' As Michael Bloch points out, this was the most critical moment of the war, the French defeat having left Britain dangerously alone now to fight the Germans. 'Yet Hardinge, the King's secretary, could find time to write to the FO reprimanding the official who had used the forbidden words "Their Royal Highnesses" and expressing the King's desire that steps be taken to ensure that such an error never occur again.'

There followed one of the most bizarre episodes in the entire history of the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess's lives. Churchill had now taken over from Chamberlain as British prime minister, yet even at this low point in the war he made it his concern to instruct the Amba.s.sador in Spain to establish contact with the Windsors and ensure they were looked after. They were soon installed in comfort at the Ritz Hotel in Madrid. Churchill wanted the Duke to go immediately to Lisbon and then fly home to England. But a difficulty arose because his brother the Duke of Kent was about to visit Portugal to celebrate the 800th anniversary of Portuguese independence and no one wanted the two Dukes there together. So matters were delayed before they moved on to stay at the mansion home of an eminent Lisbon banker, Dr Ricardo de Espirito Santo Silva. But the Duke still insisted on certain conditions before he would agree to return. Above all he wanted an a.s.surance that his wife would be given the same status as other members of his family. He made it clear that this meant he and the d.u.c.h.ess should be received at Buckingham Palace if he returned and, in addition, if his return involved them in additional taxation due to their loss of non-resident status, then this should be made good from the Civil List or other public funds.

The Duke's stubborn and self-centred behaviour at this most critical juncture in British history, when the country of which he had once been king was fighting an existential battle and he was telling diplomats privately 'that the most important thing to be done was to end the war before thousands more were killed or maimed to save the faces of a few politicians', has not endeared him or the d.u.c.h.ess to posterity. Churchill now finally lost patience with the man he had defended for so long and at the end of June reprimanded him for failing to obey military authority; though not actually accusing him of desertion, he believed the Duke had left Paris in May in doubtful circ.u.mstances and ordered him home. Wallis may have shared his views on conflict in Europe, but they were unquestionably his, long held and deeply felt as were his views on his wife's dignity and status. It suited the Germans to keep the Windsors on the Continent. Entire books have been written about plans to kidnap the Duke and use him as a p.a.w.n, plans that were known to Churchill thanks to British intelligence intercepting coded messages. Would the defeatist Duke have agreed to become a puppet king if Hitler had invaded and occupied Britain? It is of course unknowable, and Philip Ziegler has argued that he was too much of a patriot ever to have been part of such a scheme. But he had only himself to blame that people should believe such a ruse possible. Wallis was not only not part of this, she desperately wanted to return to England. As long as they remained in France she felt they were 'like rats in a trap until the end of the war'. She had chosen to live there more than ten years before and now more than ever believed that, if she returned there, the difficulties with her husband's family might be ironed out. In vain, she urged her husband to return and not quibble in advance about terms.

'What followed now seems fantastic and perhaps even a little silly,' Wallis wrote later reflecting on events.

But David's pride was engaged and he was deadly serious. When after some time he felt it necessary to tell me what was going on he put the situation in approximately these terms: 'I won't have them push us into a bottom drawer. It must be the two of us together man and wife with the same position. Now, I am only too well aware of the risk of my being misunderstood in pressing for this at such a time. Some people will probably say that with a war on these trifles should be forgotten. But they are not trifles to me. Whatever I am to be I must be with you; any position I am called upon to fill, I can only fill with you.'

In mid-July the Windsors were informed that the King was pleased to appoint his brother the Duke governor of the Bahamas. The Duke, who had offered to serve anywhere in the Empire, accepted, but then threatened 'to reconsider my position' if the travel arrangements he had made for himself and Wallis were not acceded to. Churchill would not change his position and Alan Lascelles and Walter Monckton advised that the Duke be treated 'as a petulant baby'. The couple finally sailed from Lisbon on 1 August 1940, in the first available s.h.i.+p, the Excalibur, crowded with desperate refugees.

12.

Wallis Grits her Teeth '"Les Anglais" are very strange people, I find'

The twenty-nine islands known collectively as the Bahamas were, even in total, half the size of Wales. Most of the 70,000 inhabitants 60,000 of whom were black or of mixed race lived in Na.s.sau, the capital, on New Providence Island, a town which boasted three historic buildings, high unemployment and a heavy dependence on rich American tourists. The Bahamas were well known as the British Empire's most backward-looking colony and the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess, as they viewed one of these buildings, the semi-derelict Government House built in 1801 and designated as their new home, can have had no doubt that they were being fobbed off with one of the least important positions available for such a high-ranking former soldier and member of the royal family and one that would keep them out of Europe for as long as possible. Michael Bloch describes it as 'a kind of punishment station in the Colonial Service, combining a minimum of importance with a maximum of frustration'.

The climate was unbearably hot and humid in summer, often reaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Centigrade), and the Duke, as Wallis wrote vividly in her memoirs, was sweating so profusely in his thick khaki uniform on the day they arrived in mid-August 1940 that there were several black patches of wet to be seen on his tunic as he dripped his way down the receiving line. The rest of the year was mild, dry and pleasantly temperate, in fact perfect weather for the Duke to enjoy the local golf course. But for Wallis neither the golf course nor the Bay Street shops held much appeal, and almost the only attraction of the post was its proximity to Miami, where she had to make an emergency visit in December for treatment on an impacted wisdom tooth. Never one to miss an opportunity for a wisecrack, she told one reporter: 'all my life I've disliked hot weather and coming to Na.s.sau has been like taking a permanent slimming cure'. What they called 'the Na.s.sau Drip' soon became something of a mantra for them both; the one thing they both liked about the post was that it was 'certainly good for the figure'. Publicly she did not complain, and many remember her working hard and efficiently in a variety of capacities as the Governor's wife, for the Red Cross, of which she was automatically local president, and for the local branch of the Daughters of the British Empire. But she was, in many ways, far from her natural comfort zone.

Frank Giles, later editor of the Sunday Times but then working as ADC to the Governor of Bermuda, Sir Denis Bernard, encountered the couple during their week-long stopover en route to Na.s.sau and was struck by how 'extraordinarily nice Wallis was to people as she went around inspecting homes and creches, and always had the right word for everyone, always able to make whomever she was talking to feel they were the person she'd been waiting all her life to meet, which was very flattering'. As Giles observed at the time, this was not something she had learned from experience: she was naturally very good at it. 'Now this is a trick, obviously, but it's a very flattering trick when it happens to you.'

And this was in spite of the cable sent by Lord Lloyd to Sir Denis with instructions, noted Giles, that 'the Duke should receive a half curtsey and the d.u.c.h.ess none at all and to be addressed as "Your Grace" not "Your Royal Highness". This made him angrier than ever and he said he'd never heard of a half curtsey and as for ad sand youdressing her as "Your Grace" only servants did that, whereupon he turned on his heel and strode off in a pa.s.sion.' Wallis was, as Giles and others noticed gratefully, very good at calming the Duke or 'nannying' him. On this occasion, for example, she reminded him that he must go and work on the speech he was to make on arrival at Na.s.sau, but she nonetheless wrote to Monckton herself later. 'Also the t.i.tle, or lack of one, is an issue and Lloyd took pains to issue a telegram to Bermudans and here to say how I was to be treated thus stressing for all concerned the whole sorry story. I doubt if he would wish his own wife to have been the subject of such orders.'

After less than a week in Na.s.sau it was clear when a chunk of ceiling fell to the floor in a room where Wallis was sitting that Government House was in need of urgent reconstruction and that the Windsors would have to move out while this happened. It was not simply a question of the decor being a little shabby or the cracked swimming pool being filled with debris, the house was structurally unsound and infested with termites. This involved further difficult negotiation, through Lord Lloyd, with a government in London that had rather more critical concerns on its mind. And so although the local legislature eventually voted grudgingly, according to Philip Ziegler about 4,000 for essential repairs, the Windsors paid for most of the internal redecoration themselves.

Wallis instinctively understood, over and above any need for her own comfort, that if her husband was to be successful in his job and he did make a spirited attempt to build up the economy of the islands so that they were not exclusively reliant on American tourism they would need to entertain the few extremely wealthy white traders, such as Harold Christie and the Canadian goldmining millionaire Sir Harry Oakes, lavishly and with style. She knew she needed to develop friends.h.i.+ps with the merchants' wives, cemented over the dinner table. While the extensive repairs and refurbishments were being carried out the Duke had suggested to London that he and Wallis might stay at his ranch in Canada for three months. They were also worried about La Croe, their abandoned home in France, which housed everything they had taken from the Fort. Like thousands of others in wartime they had no idea what would become of their possessions, but, not surprisingly, the proposal that they take temporary leave of absence was met with horror. Both the royal family and the government professed shock and outrage that no sooner had they arrived than, once again, they were abandoning their post.

It was this perceived dereliction of duty that marked a serious s.h.i.+ft in Churchill's att.i.tude to the former King. He was, Monckton told the Duke, '"very grieved" to hear that you were entertaining such an idea when the people of Britain were suffering so much and at the very least had thought you would be willing to put up with the discomfort and remain at your post until weather conditions made things less unpleasant'. In a lengthy letter, which also tried to address some of the Duke's pressing concerns about money and the tax status of the d.u.c.h.ess as an American citizen married to an Englishman, Monckton reminded them that now, while the rest of Europe was grappling with the devastating privations of war, was scarcely a propitious moment to urge such a request.

And so the gulf in understanding was only to widen. Wallis, finding herself with no other channel, took to writing long and heartfelt letters to Monckton. He may have dreaded the sight of her large round handwriting on the familiar blue paper telling him 'this hot little h.e.l.l is so far from the war and how one misses Europe's air raids and all we have known for the snow height=past months', but he continued to do his best for them. Those who knew her at this time admired the element of Southern n.o.bility in the way she was standing by her man and getting on with the job in hand, however distasteful to her. She tried to explain matters from their point of view: The place is too small for the Duke. I do not mean that in any other way but that a man who has been Prince of Wales and King of England cannot be governor of a tiny place. It is not fair to the people here or to him. The spotlight is on an island that cannot itself take it and the appointment is doomed to fail for both concerned. One can put up with anything in wartime in the way of discomforts, even if one knows one is not contributing to the war effort, as we cannot from here, but it is really impossible to live in a house that has been so neglected for years that insects are eating it away ... I do wish we were not so far away from you, dear Walter.

In the event the Windsors remained in Na.s.sau, staying in one of Sir Harry Oakes's homes until the refurbished Government House and gardens were ready. Wallis, using bright chintzes, imported French wallpapers and a pale-green carpet, managed to fill the old, dark rooms with a feeling of light. Her own portrait, painted by Gerald Brockhurst, took pride of place above the drawing-room fireplace. But she was not able to put all her redecoration schemes into practice. Before their arrival a portrait of Queen Elizabeth had been ordered for the Red Cross headquarters and the d.u.c.h.ess, as president, made a convincing acceptance speech stating what a great honour it was for the office to have a portrait of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.

They both believed that the blocking of their travel plans was further evidence of continuing ill-usage. 'I am amazed', Wallis told Monckton in October 1940, 'that in the middle of a life and death struggle the government still has time to continue its persecution of us. These actions do not increase the prestige of the royal family in the US and this I have straight from American journalists, of which we have seen any number.' A few weeks later she wrote to him again: There is no doubt that England carries on propaganda against us in the States in a sort of whispering campaign of the most outrageous lies about us such as the hairdresser [it was rumoured that she had one regularly flown in from New York] and as Government House was uninhabitable it had to be repainted not decorated. There are many ways to twist things ... There will always be the court and the courtiers engaged in fifth column activities against us ... it makes tears come to my eyes to see the Duke doing this ridiculous job and making good speeches as though he were talking to the labouring cla.s.ses of England and inspiring them on to work ... better to be in a shelter or called anything than buried alive here. Do write, Walter, and, if I have any friends, remembe