The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Monday 24 January 2005

Letters from a Prince: A Posthumous Autobiography

Let’s say you want to learn as much as possible about a historical figure, but are limited to reading just one book. Most historians would probably agree that your best bet would be to ignore the biography (especially the “official” one), skip over the autobiography, and go straight for the book of personal correspondence. Why? In short, as author E.B. White wrote in a letter dated June 11, 1975, “A writer, writing away, can always fix himself up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.”  

Not surprising then that so many public figures throughout history have expressly asked their correspondents to destroy their letters. Edward, Prince of Wales, was no different when he asked his (mostly female) correspondents to burn his letters. And like so many before him, it was a request that historical record consistently reminds us often went unheeded. In the last four years alone, no fewer than three auctions have featured billets-doux and other letters written by the Duke of Windsor when he held the titles Prince of Wales and King Edward VIII.  

What may be news to some is that the letters on sale at two of these auctions were not written to the expected recipient, the future Duchess of Windsor, but rather to the woman who was, by most accounts, the Duke of Windsor’s first true love – Mrs. Freda Dudley Ward. And while this might explain why the letters offered at a 2003 Sotheby’s auction in New York failed to sell, it would be a mistake to say that the letters are of less historical importance. In fact, in some respects, they may be more important. 

The Duke – then Prince of Wales – met Freda Dudley Ward in February 1918 when she was obliged to take cover during an air-raid warning at the Belgrave Square home of Maud Kerr Smiley, who was hosting a party attended by the Prince. (It’s an interesting coincidence of history that Maud Kerr Smiley was the sister of Ernest Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor’s second husband.) The Prince took instantly to Freda, who was separated from her husband, and the two quickly began both an affair and a correspondence that were only intensified when the Prince was recalled from his military leave late in March 1918. The relationship continued – to varying degrees – until 1934, although the majority of the letters we know of today were written between 1918 and 1923, when the Duke was in his 20s and, clearly, at his most infatuated with Freda. Rupert Godfrey’s 1998 book, Letters from a Prince, includes letters written from the very beginning of the relationship in March 1918 to January 1921. 

While the Duke’s letters to Wallis published in Michael Bloch’s 1986 book, Wallis and Edward, Letters 1931-1937: The Intimate Correspondence of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, give readers a unique insight into the development of his feelings for her, the letters to Freda in Letters from a Prince offer a no-holds-barred autobiography of the young Prince, and rarely fail to contrast starkly with his then public image of a happy, carefree, and open-minded young man. Everything was unleashed when David wrote to “Fredie” – fears and hopes, emotional insecurities, personality quirks, displays of both genuine compassion and deep prejudice, anger at his father, feelings for other royals… all the elements that have little or no place in his autobiography, A King’s Story, but which tell us far more about him. 

Although many “critics” of the letters focus on the Prince’s often immature and overtly emotional writing style, it’s not difficult to come to the more humane conclusion that these were the words of a very emotionally needy young man writing to a woman with whom he was deeply in love in a tone that was particular to the couple’s unique and personal communication style. For example, words are often spelled in “baby talk,” as in “My vewy vewy own precious darling…”, or “I’m terribly thleepy again…” Then there were the effusions. In a letter dated September 10, 1919, the Prince wrote: “Tous tous les baisers [all kisses] of your vewy vewy own devoted & darling little David who loves his precious darling little Fredie + que hier,-que demain [more than yesterday, less than tomorrow] & who never never stops thinking & dreaming of HER!!”  

Without Freda’s corresponding letters, it’s difficult to say for sure that the Prince’s writing was reflective more of a private “language” than of simple immaturity, but I personally feel that, when it comes to love letters, most of us are far from being eloquent poets. The Duke of Windsor was no different. In fact, by the time he wrote the love letters to Wallis that were published in Michael Bloch’s Wallis and Edward, the Duke’s writing style and tone – if not his romantic clich�s – had clearly matured according to time and experience. 

Romantic notions aside, details in the letters vary from the mundane – in a letter dated April 17, 1920, the Prince said he weighed 130 pounds, “which pleased me as I was afraid I was more” – to the intimate knowledge that, in the Spring of 1920, the Prince thought, or at least hoped, that Freda was pregnant. And, as is so often the case with most personal forms communication, his letters also frequently betrayed his most insensitive, and even racist, side. On a trip to India in 1922, he shamelessly told Freda that the beggars were “the scum of the East.” While in Japan, he confided to his mistress that Prince Hirohito was a “prize monkey” and said the Japanese people “breed like rabbits.” Everything about the letters is telling. Even the datelines of his letters give an indication to his opinions, or at least his moods. On a letter dated December 23, 1919, was the handwritten dateline, “York Cottage (F*** it!!!!), Sandringham.”  

But even these insights are superficial compared to the many references the Prince made about his desire to die young, preferably with Freda, and his feelings of mental imbalance. A letter written in Ottawa, Canada on November 7^th, 1919 reads: “I’m like YOU my angel, want to die young & how marvelously divine if only WE could die together; there’s absolutely nothing I could wish for more…” It’s easy for the reader to wonder whether statements like this are meant as incredibly morose romantic prose or are the manifestation of deep depression and frustration. Rupert Godfrey sheds some light on this question: “He was addicted to strenuous exercise, and he ate little, being concerned about getting fat. These two characteristics, especially when combined with the rigours and stress of his tours – when he often smoked and drank too much, and stayed up later at night – contributed to both physical and mental problems, as seen especially in the middle of his Australian tour programme.”  

The Prince leaves little doubt in his letters that Godfrey’s assessment of physical and mental problems was, at times, deadly accurate. On his first day in Australia, May 27, 1920, the Prince writes: “This ghastly existence of mine really seems to get more intolerably strenuous & difficult each day… I just don’t seen how I’m going to avoid a nervous breakdown…”  Six months earlier, he told her: “But you know what a bloody difficult life mine is… If I can’t talk & unburden my soul… then I get thinking & brooding & that is fatal & something in my tired little brain seems to snap & I feel I’m going mad!!!”  

Although the Prince rarely credits the excessive smoking and drinking Godfrey referred to for his dark moods, he does write frequently of the difficulty and strain of carrying out the various royal duties during his Empire tours, when his schedule was often extremely demanding and the conditions were not always ideal. Case in point, during the Prince’s official tour to Australia in 1920, he and his entourage traveled more than 45,000 miles and visited 208 places in 210 days. In his letters, he talks of endlessly shaking hands with thousands (the Prince’s estimates, not mine) of people, making innumerous impromptu public speeches, putting awkward diplomats and representatives at ease, and wearing a friendly public face despite illness or lack of sleep. While we have come to expect these things from royalty, the Prince himself makes the valid point that most people are completely unaware of the tremendous strain they impose on the individual and the impact that strain has on his or her life. Writing from Canada in September 1919, the Prince tells Freda, “…all this official work & speeches are beginning to break my heart angel & though the staff are nice & kind & sympathetic yet they don’t really understand what a strain it all is for me.” 

Another key factor that featured heavily in the Prince’s letters and undoubtedly contributed to his tone of depression and anger was his turbulent relationship with his family, particularly with his father. On May 22, 1920, he wrote: “How I loathe and despise my bloody family…”, while in October 1920 he complained, “H.M. [his father, George V] has been more bloody and tyrannical all day than I’ve ever known him to be; he’s really been the absolute limit snubbing me and finding fault sarcastically at every possible occasion.” Even when things were “better” with his father, the relationship was strained. On December 23, 1919, the Prince wrote: “It’s been such a bloody sordid dinner party and you just can’t imagine… my father wasn’t as criticizing as usual although he got in a few digs at me!! He is a most extraordinary man, in fact I’ve often said he isn’t a man at all & he is so queer in many ways.” 

But nothing – not his family troubles, his brutal tour schedule, or even his partially self-induced physical and mental problems – was as prominent a theme in his letters to Freda as his hatred of his role as a member of the royal family and the traditions and responsibilities to which he was bound. Whether you’ve read everything or nothing about the Duke of Windsor, it’s likely that you’ve at least heard some version of the story that he “gave up his throne for love.” As the following excerpts from Letters from a Prince show, the situation was just not that simple.  

As early as August 1918, the Prince refers to Windsor Castle as a “prison.” Later, he tells Freda, “Gud how thine E [he’s referring to himself in the third person] does loathe palace & court life… guess he was never intended for that sort of existence; must have been a mistake, not that he will ever treat it as anything but a huge joke, & artificial camouflage & loathing it all more & more intensely!!…” His letters clearly express that he felt his personal life was his own business – “…how right you are, darling, in defining the difference between official capacity & private life; it’s that difference which none of these (expletive) old courtiers realize; it’s so vast that their pompous minds can never grasp it…” he told Freda in July 1919. And although he spoke often of wanting to marry Freda and even referred to “running away” with her to his ranch in Canada, he told her that, as much as he wanted to marry her, it would be horrible to ask her to take on the “awful responsibility” of being wife to the Prince of Wales. In 1920, he wrote to her, “It just would not be fair on you sweetheart though who knows how much longer this monarchy stunt is going to last or how much longer I’ll be the P. of W.” 

These are clearly not the words of a man who would make the “sudden and drastic” decision 16 years later to give up the throne “simply” for the woman he loved. He clearly had other motives and the woman was just the excuse. While I don’t doubt the sincerity of his love for Wallis Simpson, I know I am not the first to believe that – unlike Freda Dudley Ward – she was simply the right woman at the right time to abdicate for. Granted, this was my theory long before the Duke’s letters to Freda were published, but the letters are, in my opinion, as good as a posthumous personal admission from the Duke of Windsor that the theory more than just holds water.  

Movie producer Samuel Goldwyn once said, “I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead.” In the Duke of Windsor’s case, the private letters he wrote during his lifetime have perhaps unwittingly become a more realistic autobiography than the one he wrote for the public.

Until next week, 

- Tori Van Orden Mart�nez