The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Monday 27 June 2005

Wallis and the Royal Family, Part II

Duchess: Life after the Abdication 

Read Part I Here

If Wallis Simpson’s relations with the British Royal Family had ranged from coolly social to outright hostile before the Abdication Crisis, she quickly realized that becoming a member of that family was in no way a free pass into its bosom. In fact, for her, it was quite the opposite. 

As was alluded to in Part I, the Duke of Windsor had learned rather unceremoniously from his “good friend” and cousin, Lord Louis Mountbatten, that no one in his family would attend his wedding. Even Lord Louis himself had backed out of the wedding and, more importantly, had withdrawn his offer to serve as the Duke’s best man. Several good biographers of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor have pointed out that this refusal by the royal family to endorse the wedding with their presence – and, essentially, accept Wallis as a member of the royal family – was in direct contradiction to promises made to the Duke of Windsor by his brother, King George VI, just prior to the Abdication.  

In “The Duchess of Windsor: The Uncommon Life of Wallis Simpson,” Greg King wrote, “…George [King George VI] had assured him that Wallis would take her place with the Royal Family upon their marriage.” Likewise, in “Royal Feud: The Queen Mother and the Duchess of Windsor,” Michael Thornton stated, “At Fort Belvedere on December 9, the day before the Abdication, Edward VIII had extracted a promise from his brother, the Duke of York, that Wallis Simpson would be raised to royal rank upon their marriage.”  

As we know, George VI – “at the insistence of his wife and mother” – did not keep his promise. In fact, just days before the Windsor's wedding on June 3, 1937, the Duke learned that while his wife-to-be would certainly become the Duchess of Windsor on marriage, she was to be denied the style of “Her Royal Highness.” As the Duke himself sarcastically noted, “This is a nice wedding present.” More than the snub of having none of her husband’s family attend the wedding, this seemingly simple act instigated by her mother- and sister-in-law set the tone for the Duchess of Windsor’s relations with her royal relatives for the rest of her life.  

Royal Relatives

As the Duke and Duchess of Windsor had been socially friendly with the Duke and Duchess of Kent prior to the Abdication, it seemed natural that shortly after the wedding they anticipated a visit from the Kents. It would be their first visit as a married couple from any member of the royal family and there was little doubt to anyone that such a visit would indicate at least a minimal degree of acceptance. Which is precisely why it didn’t happen.

By most accounts, George VI felt the visit was an important and necessary measure, but was – once again – convinced otherwise by his wife and mother. According to Greg King, “…Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary stepped in and repeatedly insisted that Bertie [George VI] change his instructions. With great reluctance, Bertie folded under this feminine pressure and informed the Kents not to visit the Windsors.” The pattern was set. 

It wasn’t until more than a year later that the couple finally received their first visit from a member of the royal family. That is was from the sibling the Duke of Windsor had never really been close to was likely disappointing, but it was a royal family member nonetheless. In November 1938, Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester – the third son of King George V – and his wife, born Lady Alice Montagu-Douglas-Scott, visited the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in Paris. From the beginning, it was clear they hadn’t gone out of their way to make the visit – stopping in Paris as it were on their way back to England from Kenya. Later, it became clear that the Gloucesters hadn’t even really wanted to make the visit. The Duchess had no compunction in stating years later that, “It was Neville Chamberlain’s [the prime minister] idea, not ours.” Apparently, the British government had used the Gloucesters to test “public reaction in England to news of [the] visit.” Clearly, warm family feeling was not a factor. 

Meanwhile, Lord Louis Mountbatten – the man with whom the Duke was once “inseparable” – was thoroughly invested in the new reign and allied to the new monarchs. On January 1, 1937, he had been appointed Personal Naval Aide-de-Camp to George VI and invested with the Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO). Although he did visit the Duke in March of that same year, Lord Louis – like everyone else close to the royal family – knew that courting the Duke was dangerous territory, especially once he was married to Wallis. If he wanted to keep in favor with the new king, he had to stay on the good side of the queen, and that meant avoiding the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

When Lord Louis finally did encounter the Windsors, it was at the request of the royal family. On September 12, 1939 – not long after Britain declared war on Germany – Lord Louis greeted the Duke and Duchess in Cherbourg, France on the destroyer HMS Kelly, which carried them back to England for the first time since December 1936. This “reunion” was not a happy one. Some biographers have claimed that there had been a miscommunication of sorts regarding the Windsor’s wedding. The Duke felt that he had been snubbed by Lord Louis not attending the wedding, but Lord Louis was complaining that he hadn’t been invited.  

The latter’s claim, however, appears to have been a subterfuge since – as noted in Part I – in his book “Royal Feud,” Michael Thornton referred to a letter Lord Louis wrote to the Duke of Windsor in May 1937 “regretfully declining an invitation to the wedding and explaining that ‘while “Bertie” and “Georgie” had been willing to come, other people had stepped in to create a situation which made all the Duke’s friends most unhappy.’” Those “other people” were undoubtedly Queens Mary and Elizabeth and – again – Lord Louis knew that they, not the Duke of Windsor, were buttering his bread. Using the excuse that he hadn’t been invited to the Windsor wedding was perhaps one way of “artfully” handling the tricky situation. It’s likely that the Duchess was keenly aware of the game Lord Louis was playing because she did little to hide her dislike of him from this point forward.

The Royal Treatment

All the slight snubs of the relatively minor members of the royal family were nothing compared to the treatment Wallis received from the highest levels. As has already been stated here and is consistently enforced in most modern biographical accounts, the treatment of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor was dictated by King George VI, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary – but mostly by the latter two. If the treatment of the Duke and Duchess had been cold and unfair during the first years of their “exile,” their welcome home in September 1939 was positively frigid. According to Greg King: 

“No arrangements of any kind had been made for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor; when they arrived in Portsmouth, they did not even have a place to stay. Wallis, particularly, was angry at this treatment of her husband. She had absolutely no doubt that the Royal Family had decided intentionally to ignore their presence as far as was possible even though they had come at the King’s request.”  

It’s possible that Wallis had previously held out some hope that relations with her royal in-laws would improve in time, but this response likely changed her mind. It has been suggested that one reason for the cold treatment of Wallis by Queens Elizabeth and Mary in particular was that neither one really believed the marriage would last. Further, they felt that any special treatment afforded her would ultimately come back to haunt them in the event that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were separated or divorced. But if this had been the primary impediment, time should have healed all wounds. As the years passed and the Windsor’s marriage continued unbroken, there would have been a softening of the treatment of her, but this never happened to any noticeable degree. 

That said, as time wore on, Queen Mary took a few tiny steps of friendly consideration for Wallis, although she kept her promise to her late husband and never did receive her daughter-in-law. When Wallis had surgery in 1951, Queen Mary expressed concern in a letter to her son: “I feel so sorry for your great anxiety about your wife, and am thankful that so far you are able to send a fair account so we must hope the improvement will continue.” It was slight consideration at best and it almost certainly came thanks to Wallis’ own efforts at building a bridge to Queen Mary. Almost 10 years earlier, in 1942, Wallis wrote a letter to her mother-in-law in which she expressed how important it was for her husband to maintain his family ties. She wrote: 

“My motive for the latter [writing the letter] is a simple one. It has always been a source of sorrow and regret to me that I have been the cause of a separation that exists between mother and son and I can’t help feeling that there must be moments perhaps, however fleeting they may be, when you wonder how David is.” 

She continued by talking about the Duke’s activities and the letter is admirable for its lack of affectation or self-serving intentions. Naturally, Wallis did not receive a personal response from Queen Mary, but a few weeks later, the Queen wrote in a letter to the Duke, “I send a kind message to your wife.” It is presumed that this type of comment was infrequently – if ever – included in previous letters from Queen Mary. Historical record does not give us much else in the way of communication between the two women, but Queen Mary did make a somewhat indirect gesture of goodwill toward Wallis before her death in March 1953 when she gifted her son a pearl necklace, obviously intended for Wallis. The necklace was a choker designed by Cartier that consisted of 28 very large natural pearls with an oval diamond clasp. It sold at the 1987 Sotheby’s auction for $733,333 – around $1.2 million today.

Unlike Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth’s attitude toward Wallis did not soften. Initially, the two women were probably just too unlike each other to ever really get along. Both appeared to make early attempts to be cordial to one another, but a number of insults – real and perceived – on both sides eventually turned dislike into outright hostility.

In retrospect, prior to the Abdication, both Wallis and Elizabeth’s reasons for disliking each other were fairly flimsy. For one thing, neither liked the way the other dressed. To Elizabeth, Wallis was “ostentatious.” To Wallis, Elizabeth was “dowdy.” And their personalities made them like oil and water with each other. Elizabeth didn’t like Wallis’ “casual manner,” while the latter didn’t like Elizabeth's “false and artificial” attitude. With the Abdication, the situation was taken to a whole new level.

For the new queen, instead of placing the blame for the Abdication squarely on her brother-in-law’s shoulders, she laid the bulk of it on Wallis. Not surprising since she had also blamed Wallis when the Duke had ended previous relationships with women Elizabeth had actually liked. Queen Elizabeth vented this anger in a number of ways, including helping to prevent the Duchess of Windsor from ever receiving the style of “Her Royal Highness,” which she was rightfully entitled to by her marriage to the Duke of Windsor.

Although it has been argued that, as the “Fount of Honour,” King George VI had the right to deprive Wallis of an HRH, this is simply not true. A 1949 letter to Prime Minister Clement Attlee from the Lord Chancellor stated that the Letters Patent of May 27^th, 1937 – which were used as the basis of depriving the Duchess of the HRH style – “are founded upon a complete misapprehension of the law.” But it had been done nevertheless because, as an earlier letter, dated April 28^th, 1937, to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin from the Home Secretary asserted: “You are aware how strongly The King and Queen desire this situation to be established; I believe Queen Mary also has strong views that it should, if possible, be done.” ¹

To be sure, as the years passed, her resentment for the Duchess of Windsor seemed to grow increasingly more personal. Although there never appears to have been a time when Queen Elizabeth actually liked the Duchess, the death of King George VI provided the Queen with a new rallying point for her dislike. In “Duchess: The Story of Wallis Warfield Windsor,” Stephen Birmingham succinctly summed up what most every Windsor biographer has recognized:  

“The Queen Mother… had kept no secret of the fact that she believed that the Abdication of Edward VIII… had helped shorten her husband’s life. ‘My husband would be alive today if it hadn’t been for that woman,’ she once told Lady Diana Cooper.”  

While the strain of being king may very well have weakened him and brought on overall ill health, George VI’s death was most certainly due not to Wallis, but to lung cancer brought on by decades of chain smoking.

It’s perhaps interesting to note at this point that although Queen Elizabeth blamed Wallis for her husband becoming king and, by association, also putting her in a position she didn’t want, some contemporary observers pointed out that Queen Elizabeth seemed very much to enjoy her exalted position. For instance, in “The Duchess of Windsor,” Greg King pointed out that on King George VI and Queen Elizabeth’s state visit to France in 1938, the French premier noted that the Queen was: “…an excessively ambitious woman who would be ready to sacrifice every other country in the world in order that she might remain Queen Elizabeth of England.” To some people, such an observation may come as a complete surprise and be received with more than a little indignation, but for those familiar with the story of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, it’s a side of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother that is more than familiar.

To be fair, Queen Elizabeth’s – by then Queen Mother – animosity was more than matched by that of Wallis. But while the Queen Mother’s feelings for Wallis had manifested in some very significant ways, Wallis’ anger could never be exercised from a position of power. Wallis’ was more a game of name calling than anything else. Over the years, she gave Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother the nicknames, “The Dowdy Duchess” and “The Fat Scotch Cook,” and informally called her “stupid” and an “actress.” All of these comments were naturally made at a distance, but when the Duchess of Windsor did have the rare opportunity to meet face-to-face with her nemesis, she took full advantage of the situation. When the Duke and Duchess of Windsor attended the unveiling of a memorial plaque in honor of Queen Mary in London in June 1967, the Duchess refused to curtsey to the Queen Mother, apparently stating later, “She stopped people from curtseying to me. Why should I curtsey to her?” She did, however, curtsey to Queen Elizabeth II and every other member of the royal family deserving such courtesy.  

Apart from matters of protocol, the Duchess also seems to have done her best to “psych out” the Queen Mother. According to Charles Higham in “The Duchess of Windsor,” at the same event, “…the duchess stared at her (the Queen Mother) intently, no doubt to the recipient’s annoyance.” She also “appeared to be counting the berries in the Queen Mother’s hat.” There’s a wonderful photo of this meeting in “Royal Feud,” in which it’s possible to imagine the Duchess is doing just that. When the two women were saying their goodbyes, the Queen Mother said, “I do hope we meet again.” The Duchess’ reply was a succinct, “Oh? When?” She naturally received no reply to her question. It was the last time the Duchess was to see the Queen Mother until they met again at the funeral of the Duke of Windsor five years later.  

Queen Elizabeth II and Company

The Queen Mother’s attitude inevitably passed to the next generation. According to Greg King, “Behind the friendly veneer and set smile, her iron will, which had kept the Duke and Duchess in a state of perpetual punishment, never softened, infecting generation after generation.” Mercifully, however, it was slightly softened in Queen Elizabeth II thanks to the generation gap. Although this did not manifest in Wallis' formal acceptance as a member of the royal family, Queen Elizabeth II took small – yet guarded – steps to recognize the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

The Duchess’ visit to London with the Duke in 1967 for the unveiling of Queen Mary’s memorial was the first time she had been invited to any royal event. As at least one Windsor biographer pointed out, however, she was not invited for purely sentimental reasons. “The Duke of Windsor was… most unlikely to attend without the Duchess, and any commemoration of Queen Mary in the absence of her eldest son… would be bound to attract criticism,” wrote Michael Thornton in “Royal Feud.” Even to the kinder, gentler Queen Elizabeth II, practical considerations were foremost in the mind. This was certainly also true when the Queen visited the Duke and Duchess at their home in France in May 1972. In France anyway on a State visit and with the Duke in abominable health, the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Charles spent a short time with the couple between a horse race and a ball. Just over a week later, the Duke died.

As circumspect as the present Queen is, it’s incredibly difficult to say what “official” feelings she had for the Duchess, although Michael Thornton did remark in “Royal Feud” that “Elizabeth II was affronted by the barely concealed malevolence of Wallis’ remarks concerning the Queen Mother” in her memoirs, “The Heart Has Its Reasons.” In general, however, it is usually agreed that while the Queen did her best to be fairly neutral, her mother’s opinion of the Duchess loomed large over her own. In “Duchess,” Stephen Birmingham aptly remarked: 

“It was not that the young Queen [Elizabeth II] bore any personal animus toward her uncle and his wife. But for nearly thirty years she had been living with her mother’s and grandmother’s feelings on the subject, and in 1965 Queen Mother Elizabeth remained just as stubborn and unyielding as old Queen Mary had been.”

Neither the Queen’s circumspection nor her relative impassiveness to Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother’s feelings about the Duchess appear to have been passed on to her son, Prince Charles, The Prince of Wales. In “The Duchess of Windsor,” Greg King wrote: 

“When Prince Charles was asked about his great aunt the Duchess of Windsor – whom he had never met – he declared, ‘She’s a dreadful woman.’ He was asked why he said this. His chilling reply left no doubt about the source of his animosity: ‘I know because my grandmother says she was.’”

Whether his attitude toward her changed once he finally met her is difficult to say, but he at least had the good grace to treat her with courtesy. He apparently sent the Duchess “a beautiful letter” after the Duke’s death, in which he pledged his support if she needed it. And, according to Diana Mosley in “The Duchess of Windsor,” Prince Charles drove the Duchess from Buckingham Palace to Windsor the night before the Duke of Windsor’s funeral.

One member of the royal family who did not appear to be overly affected by the Queen Mother’s feelings for the Duchess of Windsor was Princess Margaret. Finding herself at the Waldorf Towers in Manhattan at the same time the Duchess was in residence there, Princess Margaret did not hesitate to call on the Duchess. As it turned out, the informal visit was photographed at the suggestion of the Princess herself and the pictures appeared in newspapers around the world. According to Michael Thornton, “Margaret… seems to have felt no apprehension that the publicity might displease her mother or her sister in London.”

As for Wallis, she appears to have taken the hot and cold behavior of the younger generation of royals in stride, although – as always – she rarely failed to let slip her thoughts on them. Although outwardly she was courteous and respectful to the Queen, she was always deeply hurt by Elizabeth II’s refusal to reverse the harsh penalties imposed on her and the Duke by George VI and Queen Elizabeth. Not long before she slipped into her mental and physical abyss, the Duchess is known to have remarked of Elizabeth II, “She’s stupid – even stupider than her mother, if that’s possible.”

Her attitude toward Prince Charles was far kinder, so much so that she once said, “Everything is going to Prince Charles – everything!” Had she been informed of the Prince’s earlier judgment of her, it’s highly unlikely she would have made such a statement. Something must have changed her attitude regarding Prince Charles, however, as “everything” most certainly did not go Prince Charles after the Duchess’ death.

One opinion that never did change was the one she held about Lord Louis Mountbatten. By most accounts, she had good reason. According to Greg King: 

“In these last years, Lord Mountbatten became a frequent – if not altogether welcome – visitor to the Windsor Villa in the Bois de Boulogne. Wallis had never particularly cared for him, and even David by now was angry at the way he seemed to inspect the house, examining papers and souvenirs. ‘Who are you going to leave that to?’ he would ask the Duke, pointing at some object. ‘I think that should go to Charles.’ ‘How dare he!’ David declared after one such visit. ‘He even tells me what he wants left to him.’”

After the Duke’s death, Wallis felt particularly vulnerable to Lord Louis’ seemingly vulturine behavior. Lord Louis’ actions appear to have been part of a not-very-diplomatic attempt to ensure that the Windsor’s belongings and legacies were left to the royal family; but considering how the Duchess was treated over the years, it must have helped serve the opposite purpose.

The treatment of Wallis by the royal family after the Duke’s death must have had a similar effect. Suddenly, after more than 36 years of more or less being ignored and mistreated by the royal family, even the Queen Mother was making tiny gestures of goodwill toward Wallis. Mind, these were indeed small gestures. Wallis, for instance, was treated with noted kindness by the Queen Mother during the Duke’s funeral, and the Duchess was even invited to stay at Buckingham Palace. But even during the days Wallis was in London for the funeral, she was still treated as a marginal entity among the royal family. Perhaps one of the more insulting incidents was that her name wasn’t even included in the Duke’s funeral service. Indeed, the Duke’s wish that he and Wallis be buried side by side at Frogmore had been somewhat grudgingly granted by the Queen.  

It’s not much of a wonder then that Wallis spoke less than graciously of the Queen Mother – the woman she held responsible for her mistreatment – and even the Queen, in the years of her widowhood. Even the occasional card or letter that she reportedly received from the Queen and Queen Mother must have been more of a rub than anything. In the end, a “fond” note could not make up for decades of bitterness and never so much as even a simple recognition of her as a member of the royal family. 

Becoming “Aunt Wallis”

For all the unwanted attention from Lord Louis Mountbatten and the small tokens of sympathy from the Queen and Queen Mother, the closest Wallis ever came to being considered “family” by any member of the royal family occurred just before she slipped into the state of oblivion that lasted until her death in 1986. In “The Royal Jewels,” Suzy Menkes noted that:

“The only member of the British royal family to have touched the heart and the jewels of the Duchess of Windsor while she was still alive, was Princess Michael of Kent. Her husband… had built up a relationship with his uncle-in-exile. In the summer of 1978, he introduced his new bride to the 82-year-old Duchess of Windsor, shortly before arterial sclerosis overwhelmed her.”

Apparently, the situation was friendly enough that Princess Michael was able to address Wallis as “Aunt Wallis.” 

It’s not entirely surprising that the Duchess of Windsor should take a liking to Princess Michael given how much the two women had in common. Like the Duchess, Princess Michael had been married and divorced prior to her marriage to Prince Michael. The marriage was also controversial not just due to the bride’s marital status, but because it took Prince Michael out of the line of succession. In the Kent’s situation, this was due not to Princess Michael’s divorce, but to the fact that she was a Catholic and, under the Act of Settlement, members of the royal family who become or are married to a Catholic are barred from the succession.

One thing the two women did not have in common was the fact that, despite her controversial status, Princess Michael had never been deprived of the style “Her Royal Highness.” It’s easy to wonder what the Duchess of Windsor thought of this, but considering her consideration of Princess Michael, it seems that her reaction was a positive one. Perhaps she felt grateful that her “niece” had been afforded the consideration she herself had never received. Though it’s impossible to know her feelings, Wallis undoubtedly expressed herself in a very generous way to Princess Michael. According to Suzy Menkes: 

“Flattered and charmed by the attentions of the vibrant new Princess, the Duchess of Windsor gave to Marie-Christine [Princess Michael] some prized pieces of her jewellery as a wedding gift. This was, understandably, never made public, but caused a frisson within her circle.” 

Suzy Menkes noted in an article that the jewels the Duchess of Windsor gave Princess Michael included: “a gold sunburst suite set with pearls and a pair of emerald panther earrings.” In “The Royal Jewels” there are two photos – one of the Duchess of Windsor in 1948 wearing a pair of distinctive panther earrings – designed by Cartier – consisting of two cabochon emeralds of 54.04 and 50.42 carats; the other picture is of Princess Michael of Kent wearing what appear to be the exact same earrings in 1985, the year before the Duchess of Windsor’s death. As the panther earrings were not among the Duchess’ jewels auctioned off in 1987 or 1997, it seems entirely plausible that the earrings Princess Michael has worn did indeed belong to the Duchess of Windsor.

As it turned out, the Kent family fared well with the Duchess of Windsor as, evidently, Princess Alexandra of Kent and the Duke and Duchess of Kent also received gifts of jewelry from the Duchess. Suzy Menkes noted that this was probably due to an appeal by Lady Monckton who “promised the Duchess that she would escort her body to the royal mausoleum at Frogmore, on the Windsor estate. In return, she suggested a fair distribution of the jewels among the younger members of the royal family.” As far as is known, however, no other members of the royal family received any of the Duchess’ jewels by bequest, so perhaps her early friendly associations with Prince George, Duke of Kent, had played a role in her few select legacies.

Despite the Duchess of Windsor’s generosity to these few select members of the British royal family, her limited bequests were entirely appropriate considering the overall treatment of her since her earliest associations with the royal family. For all intents and purposes, it’s fairly safe to say that no one in the British royal family – excepting the Duke of Windsor, of course – had ever had the time or inclination to genuinely like or express a real depth of kindness and consideration to the Duchess of Windsor.

That said, it’s something of a mystery that, according to Caroline Blackwood in “The Last of the Duchess,” during the Duchess of Windsor’s internment at Frogmore on April 29, 1986, “The Queen broke down momentarily and cried.” We can only guess at what was going on in the Queen’s head at that moment, but there’s a slim chance that the Queen realized that – despite it all – she really had lost a member of the royal family.

Until next time, 

- Tori Van Orden Martínez

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¹ Copies of both letters were obtained by the author at the National Archives in Kew.