‘You have no idea how hard it is to live out a great romance.’ – Wallis Simpson.
Wallis Simpson and Edward Formerly VIII were married on this day, 3rd June 1937 at the Chateau de Candé in France. The groom wore a very dapper suit, which must have been a bit of a more comfy contrast to the uniform, dripping with medals that he must always have expected to wear on his wedding day. His bride looked elegant and unruffled in a pale blue dress by the American designer Mainboucher, who designed a lot of her clothes and even invented a shade of blue, Wallis Blue just for her. It was said to match the exact shade of her eyes.
Sadly the exact shade of Wallis’ lovely crepe gown has faded over the years to a more traditionally bridal cream. It’s still considered one of the most iconic dresses of the twentieth century though and is housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.
The photos from their wedding day are interesting, I think. To me they look nervous but defiant and not exactly thrilled. In fact, I think that Edward looks the happier of the two.
I don’t know much about Wallis Simpson, although lately I have been inspired with a keen desire to learn more. I remember reading a novel about her when I was a teenager and coming away with the impression of a rather slutty, cold hearted schemer – a well dressed collision of Scarlett O’Hara and Wharton’s Undine Spragg.
I’ve often wondered about Wallis though – I mean, a King voluntarily gave up his throne for her after all so surely there must have been more to her than scheming, glitz and some interesting sexual tricks? As a teenager I used to look at pictures of her and think how weird the whole thing as she was, to my eyes then, really unattractive with greasy looking hair, caked on make up and weird eyebrows (I was a trad goth at the time so this was possibly a mite hypocritical). Also to one who grew up in a world dominated by Princess Diana, Wallis Simpson looked, um, a bit old?
I’m older myself now. Hell, I’m not far off the age Wallis was when she married her prince and I’m now the same age as Catherine Parr was when she died, which is apparently akin to being a wizened old crone according to some historical biographers. Crikey, I’ll soon be the same age as Marie Antoinette was when she was executed. I used to think that she was SO old but I feel pretty sprightly all things considered. Mind you, I’m not a Tudor or locked up in the Conciergerie…
Getting back to Wallis, I think I can see now why she was so attractive – it’s nothing to do with looks and more to do with good old fashioned allure, which is something that a teenaged me would never have comprehended.
Mind you, Wallis herself seems to have had no illusions about her looks: ‘My husband gave up everything for me… I’m not a beautiful woman. I’m nothing to look at, so the only thing I can do is dress better than anyone else.‘
Poor Wallis though. I mean, maybe she was the dreadful person that popular imagining seems to have decided that she must have been thanks to nabbing the King, hanging out with Hitler and all the rest of it. Of course being the object of what appears to have been if not an epic family feud at least a bit of a family stand-off doesn’t help matters much but I’ve started to wonder if there was more to her than meets the eye.
I’ve chatted on here before about the weird way that the British media and some parts of the public love to criticise people from non royal or even aristocratic backgrounds who marry into the Royal Family. Actually, I’ll be more specific as Princess Anne and Margaret both married men from pretty normal backgrounds and they don’t seem to have attracted nearly so much spite and criticism as their female counterparts. I think that Wallis, who was American and so not from an easily categorised British class, may have been a victim of this weird class ridden envy, confusion and suspicion.
What do you think? Intrigued by Wallis? Wonder what all the fuss was about? Any books you’d like to recommend to me? I’m going to read a few this summer so I can get a bit more of a handle on Wallis and maybe make my own mind up about her.
LOTS and LOTS about Wallis and what was behind her allure (not to mention her Nazi and Fascist sympathies) in my books ROYAL AFFAIRS and NOTORIOUS ROYAL MARRIAGES. That woman was a piece of work! And Edward (who the royal family always called David, the last of his 7 names) was also rather eccentric and not what met the eye at all. Remember, this was a time when media coverage of the British royals was confined to what the palace wanted people to know. No tabloid coverage; no intrusive paparazzi. In fact, while the international press covered Windsor and Wally’s “love affair,” it was kept out of the British press because the Establishment was afraid of ginning up public sympathy for a king whom they knew held Nazi sympathies (remember, this was 1936 and Hitler was on the march). Most of the world (including the Duke and Duchess of York!) had no idea what was really going on behind the scenes regarding the Abdication Crisis (over whether Edward VIII would be permitted to wed Mrs. Simpson or whether he would be compelled to abdicate the throne) until the 11th hour.
And call me madcap, but I could swear that at some point in my lifetime I’ve seen that wedding suit in person in a shade closer to the original medium teal. Many years ago I think there was a show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC of her clothes.
I found a picture of the dress on show in the original blue but it turned out to be a film costume that gets reused a fair bit! It’s being exhibited in Scotland, I think.
I am actually finding it hard to imagine the dress in blue to be honest as it looks so bridal in its faded state!
I hesitated over calling him David in this post but then decided it was too intimate. I’ll probably feel differently when I’ve read more about them both! :)
It’s funny, I thought I might have seen the dress too. It may have been in one of the shows at the Met’s Costume Institute. I would love to read more about them, but I think the reason behind Wallis’s non-acceptance was the fact that she had been divorced—twice. This was somewhat scandalous then for anyone, in a way that is hard for us to comprehend (and would have been magnified many times once a member of the royal family was involved). My parents are from an older generation, and both of them have talked about how the modern view of divorced people is so different from the way it used to be. From what I’ve heard, divorce lost a lot of its stigma in the 1970s.
Oh yes the divorces must have really got up people’s noses. I’m glad we’re more accepting these days – the stigma of divorce and the difficulty of breaking up marriages caused so much unhappiness in the past.
A fairly decent biography about her is Greg King’s _The Duchess of Windsor,_ and it’s still around if you look hard enough. There’s been plenty of spilled ink about her over time, and I tend to see her as a schemer — she knew exactly what she was about, and the massive collection of jewelry that she amassed during her lifetime — and most of it during a depression — well… She could have left Edward at any time, if she had been truly that anxious for him, but was always there. So, no, she doesn’t get a lot of sympathy from me. George V had his eldest son pegged right when he said that Edward would ruin everything within a year.
Thanks – I’ll look out for that one as I enjoyed his book about the Tsarina Alexandra.
I keep reading that she didn’t want him to abdicate or marry her and have wondered why she decided to stay! The naive part of me assumes that they must have been madly in love, but were they really? I mean, they always look so devoted to each other in photographs but then again they were kind of nomadic and don’t seem to have had a close circle of people around them, which makes couples cling to each other somewhat. Not to mention having to join forces to face a barage of criticism.
I actually think people see the end and then think they know what happened – the motivation. Her letters suggest she did try to prise herself away from him. I don’t think she was the schemer people think she was. She saw a man, she liked him, she went after him and she got him. I think she thought it would last a little while and then be over. i don’t think she was prepared for what happened. And it caught her and she was trapped and tried to get out but couldn’t. Her letter to her aunt saying you have no idea how hard it is to live this great romance and to be with him always and always and always and always I think is very very telling. I think she had an idea of what lay in store – not the abdication but the sacrifices they would both have to make. And I think she did sacrifice to be with him. She became trapped in a romance she helped create and the whole world expected her to live out that romance to her dying day.
Hello,
Wallis fascinated me too! I think it was the complete commitment to style down to the tiniest thing – a bit like a whole life being an art performance. Please read Royal Feud: The Queen Mother and the Duchess of Windsor by Michael Thornton as it points out all the failings on both sides (an interesting misalliance in the Bowes Lyon family in the 1950s I think) and it’s utterly compelling & one of the best. I like aspects of both of them – chocolate box with an edge of steel for EBL and night club glamour for Wallis. Plus they both have fantastic jewels (you’ve already touched on this so well previously). But which would you go for? I think in the end Queen Elizabeth for the best and most historic jewels & best tiaras and Wallis didn’t really have one. Wallis was much maligned and perhaps would have preferred to remain a king’s mistress – there’s more fun and lots more indulgence but I don’t really know I’m a librarian. Oh but it would have to be Wallis’s wedding dress over the EBL as that just looked like a pile of laundry. Both had pretty spectaular houses although Clarence House had a better art collection I think. Try Hugo Vickers latest bio of Wallis it’s brilliant and incredibly poignant – a hostage to fortune literally. She did stick to the role Edward had given her but goodness it must have been hard to have to live out the romance – it’s a bit like a salutory alternative ending to Cinderlla.
This site is so lovely thank you so many times for it!
Sarah
Hello!
That’s interesting about the art performance because I was listening to Lady Gaga as I wrote this piece and found myself wondering what she makes of Wallis as I bet she has a few opinions on her!
I love the Queen Mother but yes she was a complicated person. Adorable but kind of terrifying at the same time. :)
Great analysis. I am going to read the biography you mention. I think she has been misunderstood and people focus on the surface things and don’t see the deep underlying things. Your last three lines are fantastic and echo my thoughts. People also forget that in the 30s lots of English people were sympathetic to the Germans and Hitler. Everyone forgets about them.
I know very little about her, but it’s hard for me to dislike a woman who had photographs taken of her holding her cairn terrier.
I’m a sucker for dog lovers too! This is why Charles II can do no wrong for me. ;)
@Susan: Even if she was also sleeping with other men while she was diddling the then-Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII)? Used car salesman Guy Trundle (who had Reich connections) and German Reich ambassador to Great Britain Joachim von Ribbentrop fall into that category. So now you know a bit more about her, despite the Cairn terrier. :)
In the 1920s, during her first marriage (to a US naval pilot), the US State Dept. discovered that she was couriering documents to high level Fascist officials in Shanghai while her husband Win Spencer was stationed there. She also had an extramarital affair with a high ranking member of the Italian Fascisti and got pregnant, necessitating an abortion, which may have been the reason she remained unable to ever conceive again.
Wallis was also still married to her second husband, Earnest Simpson when she began her affair with Edward and the king was complicit (utterly unethical, but the press didn’t know about it at the time) in helping her secure her divorce from Simpson (who also had a mistress, Mary Kirk Raffray).
Still your heroine?
For more on Wallis: “The Duchess of Windsor: The Uncommon Life of Wallis Simpson” by Greg King, “Duchess: The Story of Wallis Warfield Windsor” by Stephen Birmingham; and “The Duchess of Windsor: The Secret Life” by Charles Higham.
@Leslie: Assuming “Still your heroine?” was addressed to me, when did I say she was my heroine? I simply said (facetiously) that it was hard for me to dislike a woman who has a photograph taken with her cairn terrier.
Cairn terrier or no, I’ve no use for Nazi sympathizers, but the jury seems to be out as to whether she was one. I looked her up in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and noted that the author of the entry on her, Philip Ziegler, wrote, “The duchess accompanied her husband on his visit to Germany in 1937; it was popularly believed that she had fascist sympathies and it has even been claimed that she worked for German intelligence, but there is no evidence that she held any considered political views, still less indulged in such activities.”
I’ve read Ziegler’s entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as well and I know what he says. But other biographers dispute the claim that there is scant evidence to support her Nazi views; and Ziegler, like most biographers and historians, may have his own perspective and may not be entirely unbiased. I’ve read numerous bios of her and Edward VIII and evidently both the US and UK clandestine organizations had files on her.
If one starts reading full biographies of her they will see that she and Edward visited Germany on their honeymoon and were given a warm welcome reception by Hitler. Hitler did in fact say “I have lost a friend to my cause,” when Edward abdicated; and Wallis had been insistent that Edward remain on the throne in 1936, because they shared the same political sympathies. She was content to remain his mistress as long as he married no one else. But Edward insisted on making it legal, and England’s Parliament, as well as the Parliaments in the Empire’s dominions were not willing to give him the votes to permit a morganatic marriage. If the king insisted on wedding Wallis, he would have to abdicate, or face a mass exodus of his cabinet ministers and parliamentary chaos.
Also, George VI had to scramble to get Edward and Wallis out of Germany because Edward was secretly talking with ministers from the Reich, trying to negotiate a separate peace, and plans were in place to reinstall Edward on England’s throne as a Nazi puppet if he handed England to Hitler. Wallis was 100% behind this enterprise.
One can admire her fashion sense and her dogs, but I’ve read about 8 books on the subject and written a couple of published chapters on Windsor and Wallis, so this info is fairly fresh in my mind.
And Susan, I was being facetious, too, when I used the “still your heroine” line. It wasn’t specifically directed at anyone.
I love your debate! Forgive me being a bit dim here but isn’t there a tiny part of this story that is heartwarming? I meant that Edward was not prepared to keep Wallis as his mistress but to make her his wife – a much better life for any woman than being a secret, although probably Wallis enjoyed the fun of being a royal mistress like others. But I find him a much more endearing man than his grandfather Edward VII and all his mistresses and the backstairs, bedroom swappings and all the naughty Edwardian affairs at Warwick Castle etc. Edward, as far as I understand, never had another mistress after marrying Wallis. That says much for the kind of man he was.
Politically he probably was unappealing but many people from his background were like this – I think even my heroine Nancy Mitford flirted with fascism despite her later loathing of it. Also many people were appeasers which in itself is a rather sliding position.
It’s probably awful (especially for a wonderful writer like Leslie to read this) but I see Wallis and Elizabeth as almost archetypes; good girl and bad girl. Snow White and Rose Red plus Edward was known as Prince Charming and was ‘stolen’ away by a dark exotic woman with a past. It’s like a fairy story written by Angela Carter – weak man and vibrant daring women! None of them were really like that – Elizabeth was an incredibly complex woman and not such a sugary confection as was portrayed. Thank goodness! I still am a little in sympathy with Wallis – and especially not to eat properly for forty years is penance enough surely for dodgy views? Off to eat violent cremes now,
Sarah
PS. Leslie, doesn’t Wallis’s fate at the hands of her lawyer move you a little?
I think people are still fascinated because a) what did he see in her and b) the abdication had an effect on Britain that still reverberates in England. Witness the hue and cry when Prince Charles wanted to marry Camilla. Two new biographies are coming out about his year. Hugo Vickers just came out and Anne Sebba has one coming outi n August.
Oh crikey yes – what DID he see in her? I mean, I’ve tried to explain it (badly) here but I still don’t really get it. Mind you, from all accounts Anne Boleyn wasn’t exactly a stunner but there again you get a duffer of a man tearing his world apart just to get her.
I was really annoyed when Charles married Camilla. This is very sad of me, I know, but I am happy to say that I am over it now and am a big fan of her now.
Thanks – I think I have those on my list so will read them as soon as I get my mitts on them. I really know very little about Wallis (my knowledge of history becomes woefully patchy after 1918) and there seems to be so much debate and controversy that I really want to read as much as possible to get a clearer idea, hopefully!
It sounds as if she had tremendous influence over the man. Enough that if she didn’t want him to abdicate he wouldnt have. Was she truly teed off about it? I can’t imagine she would be so against it, while he goes off and does it anyway.
Also, if she’s as ambitious as her reputation allows and if he lost so much power, I don’t see her sticking around very long until a more powerful prospect came along who
she would latch onto.
Im wondering if those of you who know more about this than me (which is probably everyone) have any insight into
my quandry. I just can’t make everything add up.
Certainly a fascinating couple!
I generally tend towards the view of Wallis as a very sophisticated and smart lady who intended to get close to power and then wield it from behind the scenes. Most accounts I’ve read paint a picture of a woman horrified by what David gave up, and what she herself lost in the process.
I suppose we will never know for sure, but if they were a live match then they certainly enjoyed a life together that was far from lacking in privilege.
That sounds pretty likely to me too – that she was happy to control things indirectly and was really hacked off when he gave it all up for her. Can you imagine their rows? ‘You forgot to replace the loo roll again!’ ‘So what? I GAVE UP MY THRONE FOR YOU.’ And so on. ;)
I don’t know about Edward’s relationship with Wallis Simpson, but he certainly got around a bit. I can’t remember the timing becaause it’s in my local history book which my parents are borrwing at the moment, but he used to come quite often to parties at a large house just outside our Nottinghamshire village and have a good time. The women who faciliated part of that ‘good time’ were paid to keep their mouths shut. We had at least one royal by-blow in the village who looked so much like a Windsor that people did a double take. I say ‘had’ and ‘looked’ because I haven’t seen him in a while. Many years ago, my mum knew one of the ladies who used to be a maid at the country house where the carrying on happened, and was told about them. When one of the girls got pregnant, she was paid hush money. Actually it was one of those open secrets the whole village knew in the days when it was a small place tied to the landowners, but they closed ranks. It’s a much bigger one now due to development and there have been many incomers, but there are still photos of HRH pottering about the locality on one of his visits.
Oh that’s interesting! It’s a bit spooky too as I just had to look at a list of Nottingham writers (I went to Nottingham University and try to maintain an interest in what goes on there) and saw you on it and thought ‘Oh, I didn’t know Elizabeth Chadwick was a Nottinghamshire person’. Lo, here you are talking about Nottinghamshire. :)
My favourite Edward story is how one of his girlfriends got really annoyed with him because he kept insisting that Brontë was pronounced as ‘Bront’. :)
I find her interesting and mentally alluring. But I wouldn’t ever consider her a heroine. Unless you look at it from a hindsight point of view. If Edward wasn’t so in love with her that he wanted to make it official and legal and all wrapped up with a pretty bow, England would have had a pro-Nazi sympathizer on the throne and how would that have shaped what happened during WWII and after?
Love them or hate them, people who cause or have a dramatic roll in major events on the world stage are just fascinating.
I don’t think I could have her as a heroine as my loathing of Nazis is so profound that I just couldn’t stomach anyone who sympathised in any iota with them, also I can’t bear to think about what would have happened had Edward been on the throne when the war broke out.
They certainly are interesting though! :)
I was just thinking about her as a couple days ago I finally got to watch The King’s Speech which my stepmother absolutely loves and has on Blu-ray. I liked the movie very much although some of the history was dodgy, especially the way it papered over Churchill’s support of Edward VIII and attempts to avoid the abdication (last thing you’d expect of him but apparently that’s how it was). Anyway, it made me want to know more about Wallis and the future Queen Mother so I’m delighted to have all these book recommendations – thank you Madame Guillotine!
Loved Guy Pearce as Edward VIII BTW. Although he’ll always be “Mike from Neighbours” to me.
Oh yes, I wasn’t sure at all about the history of The King’s Speech but thought that overall it was pretty faithful to the people it depicted. Mike From Neighbours made an excellently rakish and slightly spiteful king, I thought. It’s just how I imagined Edward to be, in fact.
I read this last night, which I thought you might find interesting – http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/article6850690.ece. Loved the depiction of the grumpy, disagreeable Duke of Windsor refusing to move out of the way while people tried to squeeze past his seat.
And you’re welcome – I will of course report back with my thoughts!
Yes, that’s a great article! Interesting also about him lapsing into German on occasion. I thought when I was watching the film that the royal accent of the 1930s was actually quite Germanic in intonation, so perhaps it wasn’t just his political sympathies that led him to do this.
I must admit that I am a bit of a sucker for gossipy royal articles like this one although this was a particularly fascinating one, I thought.
The bit about David lapsing into German and coming perilously close to giving salutes while Wallis pretended not to know him really made me laugh, although possibly it shouldn’t!
I thought there was something a bit Germanic about their intonation too – that kind of very formal slow bark?
For those who are interested in the story from George VI and the Queen Mother’s POV, two very good biographies are: The Reluctant King by Sarah Bradford and The Queen Mother by William Shawcross. The latter one is rather hefty — more than a 1000 pages! — but it is also the most insightful.
I find the whole Edward VIII/Wallis story interesting as all get out, and I feel that in the long run, his abdicating was the best thing that could have happened — given the events of WWII, and the terrible realities of what was discovered afterwards, the idea of a pro-Nazi King of England gives me the horrors.
Excellent, thanks. :)
Oh yes, it was definitely the best thing that could have happened. The war was horrible, but I am SO glad that we were fighting against the Nazis rather than alongside them as allies. Although, I’m not even sure that would have happened – would having a sympathising king have meant we chummed up with Hitler? Like I said, my knowledge of history falters somewhat after 1918 – I didn’t learn any history at school (I read, wrote and thought about nothing else in my own time though) until I went to sixth form, where I did an A Level in Early Modern History.
I’m an American, and not really familiar with the British view on class (for example, I’m a fan of the William & Kate match), but I feel the same way about Wallis Simpson that I do about Camilla–ugly, probably sexually alluring, and more than a bit trampish. I also agree that the abdication was providential given the disaster a pro-Nazi monarch on the throne would have been for the English in WWII.
The British view on class is very weird – everyone claims not to care about it but most of us are very aware of the subtle differences and nuances, even if we dislike it intensely. The main thing is that it isn’t about money, it comes down to other stuff, most of which individuals have no actual control over like ancestry, education etc. Totally bizarre.
I just picked up a book on the Duchess of Windsor (titled simply The Duchess of Windsor) recently at my favorite used book store… It is by Michael Bloch, who was the assistant to Wallis’ French lawyer. He (according to the book jacket) also edited two volumes of their personal correspondence… could be worth a read.
As always, I enjoy your posts!
Thanks! I will have a look for that one! :)
Well, it was my Grandmother’s opinion, who lived through it all and new someone in Royal Service…………………………………..Doesn’t many a story start like that? They thought that Edward did not want to be king. He was horrified and appalled by the state of some coal miners living conditions after an official visit to their village, he thought fascism could helpthat. He also couldn’t father children, not much good if you are a king, even though he had loads of affairs, and marrying Wallis was as good an excuse for giving up the throne as he could find.
Many years ago I actually read her memoirs, and the book was very over the top and flowery but certainly interesting/entertaining. Love her dress though, but not the hat!
Wonderful frock and yes, like you, I don’t know enough about Wallis
Do let me know what books you find so I can read them too – would be intrigued to find out more about her
I will do! I’m planning to post about it when I’ve read a bit more about her. :)
British royal biographer Hugo Vickers was due to give a lecture, followed by a book signing and reception on his book, “Behind Closed Doors: The Tragic, Untold Story of the Duchess of Windsor” at the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore this evening. I live in Baltimore but had to work later in Washington, D.C. today so unfortunately missed the talk.
Chris
I’m on my third book about Wallis at the moment, picked up my first, by Diana Mosely, from a car boot sale in the summer and it piqued my interest. I’m reading “The Last of The Duchess by Caroline Blackwood at the moment and it is wierd! Its all about Maitre Blum so far. I got onto this book because the last one I read was Behind Closed Doors by Hugo Vickers. It was really sad, about the Duchess in her last, long years, alone and kept like a virtual prisoner by her lawyer Maitre Blum. It would seem that Blum was selling off her precious objets, its all rather foul. The other book is The Secret Lives of the Duchess of Windsor by Charles Higham, which I am looking forward to getting to next. I hope to find out more about this fascinating woman!
I’m on my third book about Wallis at the moment – The Last of the Duchess by Caroline Blackwood. It seems, so far, to be mainly about Maitre Blum, the Duchess’ formidable lawyer and self appointed spokesperson. Blum seems to have kept the Duchess a virtual prisoner in her home for many years before she died, not allowing friends to visit her, and selling off her possessions and banning her from drink and taking her beloved pug dogs away!
I got interested in Blum after reading Behind Closed Doors (The Tragic Untold Story of the Duchess of Windsor) by Hugo Vickers. She seemed to have an almost erotic admiration for the Duchess. Very odd, I cant work it out….
The first book I read was the one by Diana Mosely, she was a good friend and even better apologist for WW. I picked it up at a car boot sale while away in my caravan, it really piqued my interest.
I also have Wallis – The Secret Lives of the Duchess of Windsor by Charles Higham. I’ll take that next when I’ve finished Blackwoods book. Blackwoods book was halted from publishing until after the death of Maitre Blum. The old lawyer liked to sue anyone and everyone who wrote anything at all about the Duchess. Her protege Michael Bloch commenced publishing Wallis and Edwards secret letters on the very day she died.
It really is pretty scandalous, and deeply sad and distasteful. Interesting though!
Just to clarify, I know the choice to abdicate wasn’t his. Did she honestly think she could be Queen? Did she want him to keep his position and never marry?
SHE AND CAMILA ARE UGLY ASS BROADS.