Helen wrote about one who, when introduced to Wallis at a party, absolutely refused to shake hands with her.

'What did you do?' I asked her.

'Oh,' she replied, 'it was quite easy. I dropped my handbag just as she got to me so I had to stoop down to find it.'

Others, many of whom had American connections and money and were new to London 'the Ritz Bar Set' as they were often called felt differently. 'To them Mrs Simpson seemed to provide a heaven-sent opportunity to enter Royal society.'

At the end of May Channon noted a revealing scene in Lady Cunard's box at the opera. Emerald Cunard, the former American heiress Maud Burke, had married Sir Bache Cunard but lived separately from him and was widely known as a patron of the arts and mistress of Sir Thomas Beecham. 'I was interested to see', wrote Channon, 'what an extraordinary hold Mrs Simpson has over the Prince. In the interval she told him to hurry away as he would be late in joining the Queen at the LCC [London County Council] Ball and she made him take a cigar out of his breast pocket. "It doesn't look very pretty," she said. He went, but was back in half an hour.'

Lord Wigram, a sixty-three-year-old former soldier and experienced courtier who had served his sovereign for two generations, decided it was time for action. Urged on by Halsey, he paid a special visit to the Prince after this holiday to convey how worrie Cey itd the King was about his private life. But he was merely the first of many to receive a princely rebuff. 'The Prince', he reported, 'said he was astonished that anyone could take offence about his personal friends. Mrs Simpson was a charming, cultivated woman.' This was more or less the att.i.tude he took throughout the rest of his life. He believed that Wallis was a uniquely wonderful woman and that anyone who did not share those views, having met her, was blind to the facts. Wigram's shot across the bows had, as G.o.dfrey Thomas, who was closer to the Prince, was well aware, been totally ineffective.

It was not only the King but the government which was now concerned about this unorthodox alliance. A surveillance report by Special Branch in June 1935 sent to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police indicated that the Simpsons' activities were already being monitored because it was believed that Wallis was not only juggling Ernest and the Prince of Wales but also seeing another man whose ident.i.ty they had not yet ascertained. A week later, the man they suspected was revealed as Guy Marcus Trundle. Trundle, a vicar's son born in York and a well-known rake, was said to be a married man and a motorcar salesman employed by the Ford Motor Company. According to this report, 'Trundle is described as a very charming adventurer, very good looking, well bred and an excellent dancer ... He meets Mrs Simpson quite openly at informal social gatherings as a personal friend, but secret meetings are made by appointment when intimate relations take place. Trundle receives money from Mrs Simpson as well as expensive presents. He has admitted this.'

It's a curious story. Clearly detectives were now talking to those who knew the Simpsons, including their staff, in the hope of finding some indiscretions. While it is quite possible that Trundle met Wallis Simpson and that this led him to boast about 'intimate relations' after all, he was known to boast that every woman he met fell for him it is highly unlikely that they had any personal relationship. But it was also not out of character for Wallis to enjoy making men jealous. It was part of the flirtatious and promiscuous behaviour pattern which provided her with continual rea.s.surance of her attractiveness to men, and one meeting with a rogue such as Trundle would have been enough to inflame the Prince's ardour, had she chosen to tell him. The Special Branch reports are bald but, as Stephen Cretney makes clear in his account of the abdication crisis, 'whether they could have been sustained in legal proceedings is not clear'.

But there is another line in the report which states: 'Mrs Simpson has said that her husband is now suspicious of her a.s.sociation with other men as he thinks this will eventually cause trouble with POW.' If this is what she told Trundle, which he repeated, it gives further evidence that the man Wallis most wanted to keep was Ernest and that she was using the Prince of Wales for the time being, intending to revert to Ernest as soon as the shine faded. Ernest, according to the report, 'is bragging to the effect that he expects to get "high honours" before very long. He says that P.O.W will succeed his father at no distant date. He has mentioned that he expects, at least, to be created a Baron. He is very talkative when in drink.' The report was obviously circulated to a select few in the government as Sir Edward Peac.o.c.k, Receiver General to the Duchy of Cornwall, and responsible for the royal finances at many levels, later told Joseph Kennedy when he became US amba.s.sador, that 'they all had evidence Wallie [sic] was having an affair with a young man and of course this embittered the Cabinet more than ever. Peac.o.c.k is convinced', added Kennedy, 'they would have gladly taken an American for Queen but not Wallie.'

King George did manage one conversation about Wallis Simpson with his son at this time. The King insisted he could not invite his son's mistress to the forthcoming Court Ball. The Prince swore to his father that Mrs Simpson was not his mistress. The King relented and she was therefore invited. But although there are various reports of the Prince having always protested that he had not had s.e.xual intercourse with Mrs Simpson before they married, this was of course open to dispute then as it is now. His servants and staff knew that one of the bedrooms at the Fort, previously a dressing room situated between Wallis's and the Prince's bedrooms, had now been allocated to her as an extra room allowing unimpeded access between the rooms. Courtiers au fait with the latest gossip were more horrified than ever, believing now that their future sovereign was a liar as well as an adulterer. Wigram wrote: 'Apart from actually seeing HRH and Mrs S in bed together they [the staff] had positive proof that HRH lived with her.' Aird joined in, giving details of how he had seen him emerge early one morning with his upper lip all red!! So that's that and no mistake.' Wigram's view was the one the King believed in the end that his son had lied to him. The sovereign wrote in his diary on 6 November 1935 following the marriage of his third son Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester to Alice, daughter of the Duke of Buccleuch: 'Now all the children are married except David.' A few weeks later he was heard to exclaim: 'I pray to G.o.d that my eldest son will never marry and have children and that nothing will come between Bertie and Lilibet [the pet name for Princess Elizabeth, the King's granddaughter] and the throne.'

The Prince had known it would be impossible to arrange for Wallis officially to see the Jubilee procession on 6 May, the actual anniversary of the King's accession which, that year, happened to fall on a glorious summer's day. Instead, he begged a favour of Helen Hardinge, as her apartment in St James's Palace overlooked the processional route to St Paul's Cathedral. Could she, he asked, find accommodation for 'one or two scullery maids' to watch as the windows of his own residence at York House did not overlook the processional route? Slightly puzzled as to why the Prince could not find s.p.a.ce for his humble servants at a Buckingham Palace window, she nonetheless obliged. 'Some time after we returned home ... I learned the ident.i.ty of the "one or two scullery maids". They were Mrs Simpson and one of her friends.' The Hardinges came to believe that the Prince had not deliberately played a trick on them. So consumed was he by his love affair with Wallis, he a.s.sumed that everyone else was too and that the ident.i.ty of the scullery maids would have been obvious. A week later Wallis was, grudgingly, invited to the Jubilee Ball, where she 'felt the King's eyes rest searchingly on me. Something in his look made me feel that all this graciousness and pageantry were but the glittering tip of an iceberg ... filled with an icy menace for such as me.'

In spite of referring to the occasion as the 'Silly Jubilee', Wallis was happy to receive a pair of beautiful diamond clips as a Jubilee present from the Prince. Yet the real lessons of the Jubilee seem to have pa.s.sed her by. In her bubble of worry about losing both husband and lover, she had failed to see just how deeply the British monarchy was loved and revered, not just in London but throughout the country and the wider Empire. When on Jubilee Day itself King George and Queen Mary appeared on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, some 100,000 people cheered enthusiastically, a scene repeated every night that week and which she could not fail to have been aware was happening. His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gord Cy, haton Lang, 'listened with evident satisfaction to the words which fell from royal lips', wrote his chaplain, Alan Don, in his diary that Jubilee night. No wonder. The Archbishop had written them. Men like Don and Lang were increasingly worried about how they would ever be able to write such speeches for King George's son to utter with conviction when the time came.

But there was a deeper meaning of service which the royal family embodied and which could not have been made clearer that week. 'A leading theme of statements about the monarchy [in 1935] was that although its political power had declined, its public significance had increased,' notes Baldwin's official biographer, Philip Williamson. Even renowned left-wingers like George Orwell had to admit they were impressed by 'the survival, or recrudescence, of an idea almost as old as history, the idea of the King and the common people being in some sort of alliance against the upper cla.s.ses'. For the Jubilee was a brilliant opportunity to raise many thousands of pounds for a wide variety of charities, not just in England but all over the Empire, to launch Jubilee Appeals, usually with members of the royal family as patrons. Canada raised 250,000 for a Silver Jubilee Cancer Fund within weeks of the charity's launch. Wallis may have thought the celebrations silly but she must have known about King George V's Jubilee Trust, which quickly raised 1 million to 'promote the welfare of the younger generation', as the appeal was headed by the Prince of Wales. According to the historian Frank Prochaska: Few subjects bring out so well the differences between ourselves and our ancestors as the history of Christian charity. In an increasingly mobile and materialist world, in which culture has grown more national, indeed global, we no longer relate to the lost world of nineteenth-century parish life. Today, we can hardly imagine a voluntary society that boasted millions of religious a.s.sociations providing essential services, in which the public rarely saw a government official apart from the post office clerk. Against the background of the welfare state and the collapse of church membership, the very idea of Christian social reform has a quaint, Victorian air about it.

Shortly after the celebrations ended in early June, Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald resigned on grounds of ill health and was replaced by Stanley Baldwin. At the end of July, Wallis left for Cannes where the Prince had taken a villa. Unfortunately, as she wrote to her aunt, Ernest was not able to join them. All summer Wallis was writing to Bessie about how saintly Ernest was, running the business, looking after his deaf mother, irascible father and jealous sister. He even tried, vainly, to bring over his ten-year-old daughter Audrey to live in London, perhaps to keep him company or perhaps thinking she might benefit from the royal connection his wife had forged. But his former wife refused. Wallis tried to rea.s.sure Bessie that no divorce was planned at all and that she, Ernest and the Prince had an understanding. She worried about Ernest endlessly, thought he looked extremely handsome at the Court Ball and described him as 'still the man of my dreams'. When Ernest made a ten-week business trip to the US that autumn she missed him and wrote to Bessie in early October just before his return: 'I shall be glad to see that angelic Ernest again.'

But by then the Prin ce had found he could barely stand a day without Wallis. His love letters to her were increasingly intense and, by now, unambiguous about his intention to marry her. At three o'clock one morning at the Fort he declared: 'I love you more and more every minute and NO difficulties or complic Ces reeations can possibly prevent our ultimate happiness ... am just going mad at the mere thought ... that you are alone there with Ernest. G.o.d bless WE for ever my Wallis. You know your David will love you and look after you so long as he has breath in this eanum body.'

7.

Wallis Out of Control.

'I have of course been under a most awful strain with Ernest and H.M.'

In the years since 1935 Wallis Simpson has acquired the reputation of a seductress with legendary contractile v.a.g.i.n.al talents. She had, according to one study, 'the ability to make a matchstick feel like a cigar'. Charles Higham, one of her early biographers, went into greater detail, describing an ancient Chinese skill at which she was apparently adept involving 'relaxation of the male partner through a prolonged and carefully modulated hot oil ma.s.sage of the nipples, stomach, thighs and after a deliberately, almost cruelly protracted delay, the genitals'. When Thelma Furness was abandoned by the Prince, she made it her business to ensure that everyone in London knew that 'the little man' was so called for a reason; he was s.e.xually inadequate and suffered from a common complaint among men at the time premature e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. Wallis, it was alleged, having spent so much time in Chinese bordellos, had learned special techniques to overcome this and give him the satisfaction he craved. But as the China Dossier, said to detail how she learned techniques variously called the Baltimore grip, Shanghai squeeze or China clinch, has never been found, the intimate pleasures Wallis gave the Prince must remain conjecture. That such breezy rumours landed on so much fertile ground reveals plenty but little that is about Wallis directly. The stories flowered so convincingly because they played on ignorance and fantasy, on the Western vision of the orient as a highly s.e.xualized society coupled with the embarra.s.sed repression and s.e.xual taboos prevalent in most British homes at the time.

Every biographer of Wallis, as well as courtiers who knew her, in trying to explain the inexplicable how could a middle-aged, not especially beautiful, rather masculine-looking woman have exerted such a powerful effect on a king that he gave up his throne in order to possess her? produces a different theory. What most agree on is that Wallis was the bad girl, the wicked temptress, the femme fatale who, in teaching a repressed prince satisfying techniques in bed, nearly destroyed the monarchy. Just as Eve was responsible for man's original sin, these ideas tap into some deep and ancient fears of women's carnality. Wigram believed that Wallis was, effectively, a witch, while other scandalmongers, whisperers and t.i.ttle-tattlers blabbed that she must have hypnotized the Prince. Servants talked to chauffeurs about rowdy parties, and plenty of the rumours, embellished on the way, reached higher places, including Lambeth Palace, residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Another woman whose s.e.xual allure proved irresistible to an English king, Henry VIII, was similarly accused of bewitching him. Those accusations were based partly on Anne Boleyn's alleged sixth fingernail and partly, some scholars argue, on the fact that when she miscarried in 1536 the apparently deformed foetus thus 'prove Fd pd' that she was a witch, even though serious historians today insist that the foetus bore no abnormalities. After being found guilty of treason on the grounds that she had allegedly committed adultery, she was beheaded for her 'crime'.

But the difficulty with theories which insist that Wallis was a s.e.xual predator is that they underplay the fact that Edward was a man of considerable s.e.xual appet.i.te and experience. As Prince of Wales he had sought out women for fornication in almost every corner of the globe and, apparently, had no difficulty in possessing them. But who is to know how satisfying these activities had ever been? Clearly this time something was different. Wallis's remark to Herman Rogers about her marital chast.i.ty was now backed up by the Prince's insistence that he and Wallis had never slept together before marriage and his threats to sue anyone who dared to write that Wallis had been his mistress. Wallis might well have taught him some adventurous new activity. What is not in doubt is that she was at the very least a woman of the world, unusually experienced for a well-brought-up young lady in the early twentieth century who liked to tell people about her 'tough, rough past life in China and cooking and doing housework for a loathed husband with the smell of your husband's bacon getting in your hair etc'. What she would have learned from her years as a naval wife married to Win Spencer as much as from life in China was that pleasure as well as pain can be derived from s.e.x. And she probably knew about a variety of non-v.a.g.i.n.al s.e.xual techniques, including oral s.e.x, which would not have been standard education for most English or American girls of the day.

The great ignorance in s.e.xual matters in early twentieth-century middle- and working-cla.s.s Britain is key to understanding the story of Wallis, why she was attacked so fiercely at the time, and why she has since become such a talisman for gay and lesbian minorities even though she herself was not lesbian. For many, her struggle is emblematic of a wider struggle for greater s.e.xual freedom against the establishment's narrow interpretation of what was acceptable. In the 1930s, some who wanted information about s.e.x resorted to p.o.r.nography. A variety of erotic literature could be purchased then but only through expensive underground channels, so in practice it was available only to satisfy well-off men, probably those whose wives were shy, ignorant or both. The Rickatson-Hatt divorce, awarded in 1939 on grounds of genuine non-consummation after ten years of traumatic marriage, ill.u.s.trates only too clearly and in painful detail the overpowering middle-cla.s.s taboos involved in seeking help, medical or otherwise, to discuss s.e.x. When Rickatson-Hatt died it was discovered that he had ama.s.sed a fine collection of erotic literature. But, although he had gone on to marry a second time and father a son, it did not help him in his marriage to an American wife, Frances, who evidently struggled to establish normal marital relations with her reserved husband. Neither of them felt able to talk, even in private, to their friends, Wallis and Ernest Simpson.

Of course there were books, by Marie Stopes and others, containing s.e.xual information for the lay public as well as medical textbooks which, while describing the s.e.x organs, omitted to detail what was done with them. But there was almost nothing for the general reader nor anything that looked at the psychology of s.e.xual behaviour. One trainee gynaecologist who tried to remedy this state of affairs by writing a simple and straightforward guide had to do so under a pseudonym for fear that the medical hierarchy would prevent him getting a post in obstetrics and gynaecology. When he eventually found a publisher the Wales Publishing Company they insisted that any ill.u.s.trations in the book were bound Kk wtuaand sealed separately in a packet at the back of the book as these were, according to the preface, 'of interest only to the serious reader'. Even so the book, first published in 1939, was banned in some areas and burned publicly in Blackpool. The Technique of s.e.x by Anthony Havil (pseudonym of Dr Elliot Philipp) cost fourpence a copy, stayed in print for a remarkable fifty years and sold half a million copies in hardback alone, clearly satisfying a national demand.

But, since no one can know for certain what activities go on behind a closed door except those who are inside, all speculation about what exactly Wallis and her Prince did or did not do together must remain just that speculation. Of the facts that are known, many of those who saw the Prince naked commented on his lack of bodily hair, implicitly questioning his virility. But, drawing the conclusion that Wallis, with her obvious dominating personality, was therefore able to satisfy both his repressed h.o.m.os.e.xuality and his yearning for a mother figure is, again, speculation, however likely it may seem. Much could be observed by watching them together in public and examples abound of Wallis bossing the Prince or humiliating him contemptuously, depending on the occasion or one's point of view. The young Alfred Shaughnessy, stepson of a courtier at the heart of the crisis, Sir Piers 'Joey' Legh, was so struck by her manly behaviour that he had to ask his mother 'who the bossy American woman was': she had 'got up at lunch and seized the carving knife from the Prince as he struggled with the roast chicken on the sideboard and told him to sit down saying in a grating voice: "I'll take care of that, Sir"'. When the weekend guests had departed from the Fort and only Wallis remained, the staff would notice how she would 'taunt and berate him until he was reduced to tears'. Lady Diana Cooper, one of the keenest observers of the Prince's demeaning devotion, noticed that once 'Wallis tore her nail and said "oh" and forgot about it, but he needs must disappear and arrive back in two minutes, panting, with two little emery-boards for her to file the offending nail'. The more Wallis was beset by fears of her future the more, it seemed, she found new ways to humiliate the Prince more brazenly. Philip Ziegler believes that Wallis provoked in him both 'slavish devotion' and 'profound s.e.xual excitement. That such excitement may have had some kind of sadom.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs is possible, even likely.'

Yet s.e.xual magnetism was clearly not all that Wallis offered the Prince, even if it was at the root of their relationship. Edward may not have realized how deeply he needed someone like Wallis, nor she him, until they became entangled. If Wallis had grown up with an unexplained and unnamed Disorder of s.e.xual Development she would always have known there was something unusual about her that she could not talk about, something that was humiliating, and she may have discovered that she was more comfortable when projecting this on to someone else. Wallis could be remarkably self-aware on occasions and in letters as well as her memoirs often talks of the 'two sides' of her own personality in flat, straightforward terms such as 'good' and 'bad'. At the same time she now said of her husband, Ernest, that he is 'much too good for "the likes of me"'.

Psychologists may have an explanation for this behaviour: the ideal partner for her personality would be one who allowed her to appear as the perfect one, the other (him) as the inadequate one and the one who carried the flaw. This allowed for an aspect of herself, instead of being owned by her, to be projected on to someone else. This type of personality needs someone else to engage with closely so that the other person can be the receptacle of those part Kof r: the s of oneself that are despised. In this way an aspect of one is transferred to the other which makes both partners feel good and as a result each person develops a vital sense of closeness with the other.

To the outsider this phenomenon is observed by watching the transference process which is effected, however unconsciously, by giving the other person tasks and then criticizing them for the way they do them, thus making them feel at first inadequate but then eager to do better another time. Wallis excelled at this and the Prince responded by returning for more.

Outsiders were indeed aware that the Prince was in the grip of an abnormal obsession but were at a loss to explain it. He insisted it was love and in some ways it was. Walter Monckton, a barrister friend of Edward's since Oxford days who acted as his trusted legal adviser in the months to follow, commented: It is a great mistake to a.s.sume that he was merely in love with her in the ordinary physical sense of the term. There was an intellectual companionship and there is no doubt that his lonely nature found in her a spiritual companionship ... He felt that he and Mrs Simpson were made for one another and there was no other honest way of meeting the situation than marrying her.

Winston Churchill MP, whose warnings in the 1930s of the need for Britain to rearm in the face of the n.a.z.i threat made him suspect as a warmonger, was even more understanding and retained a roseate romantic view of the relationship longer than most. Churchill felt deeply that abdication should be avoided in the hope that the crisis would resolve itself. He believed that 'the Prince found in her qualities as necessary to his happiness as the air he breathed. Those who ... watched him closely noticed that many little tricks and fidgetings of nervousness fell away from him. He was a completed being instead of a sick and hara.s.sed soul.' Churchill wrote shortly after the abdication that: the King's love for Mrs Simpson was branded with the stigma of a guilty love ... no companionship could have appeared more natural, more free from impropriety or grossness ...

The character and record of the lady upon whom the affection of Edward VIII became so fatally fixed is relevant only upon a lower plane to the const.i.tutional and moral issues which have been raised. No one has been more victimised by gossip and scandal but gossip and scandal in themselves would not have been decisive. The only fact of which the Church could take notice was that she had divorced one husband and was in the process of divorcing another.

Lord Dawson of Penn, asked by the King for a medical opinion on his son's infatuation, believed that the Prince's age had something to do with his obsession. 'A first absorbing love coming after 40 is so apt to take possession. To have abandoned it would have spoilt life and work and therefore worth. To preserve it in marriage was impossible, ' the doctor wrote. By the late autumn of 1935, the old King was, after years of poor health, seriously ill, suffering from bronchitis and a weak heart aggravated by heavy smoking. Worried about his eldest son he now predicted to his Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, 'After I am dead the boy will ruin himself in twelve months.'

The new year of 1936 started with exceptionally cold and snowy weather and on 16 January the Prince was out shoot Kwasm">ing in Windsor Great Park when he received a restrained message from his mother suggesting he might 'propose' himself for the weekend at Sandringham. He flew up immediately with his own pilot flying was part of the Prince's glamour and, as soon as he arrived, was shocked to find his father had only hours to live. He immediately wrote to Wallis, terrified that the new situation might change her feelings, imploring her to keep faith. 'You are all and everything I have in life and WE must hold each other so tight.' On 20 January at five minutes to midnight King George V died, his end hastened by an overdose of morphine and cocaine injected by the royal physician, Lord Dawson, to ensure that the death announcement was in time for the quality newspapers. The Queen's first act was to take her eldest son's hand and kiss it, offering fealty to the new King. He was embarra.s.sed by such subservience and broke down, weeping hysterically and noisily with dread at what the future might hold as much as for the pa.s.sing of his father. Wallis was at a charity gala in a London cinema with some friends, the Lawson Johnstons, when she heard the bulletin. 'I am so very sorry,' she told the new King, adding later, 'G.o.d bless you and above all make you strong where you have been weak.' Ernest, the next day, wrote 'as a devoted, loyal subject' offering 'the warmest sentiments that friendship can engender ... in the ordeal through which you have pa.s.sed'.

'I miss him dreadfully,' the d.u.c.h.ess of York wrote to Dawson. 'Unlike his own children I was never afraid of him, and in all the 12 years of having me as daughter-in-law he never spoke one unkind or abrupt word to me, and was always ready to listen and give advice on one's own silly little affairs.' Two days later the will was read to the family and the former Prince was shocked to discover that his father had left him a life interest in Balmoral and Sandringham, but no cash, because it was expected that he had considerable reserves from his Duchy of Cornwall estates which, as it transpired later, he did, although he failed to admit it then. Alan Lascelles described how, with a face like thunder, he strode out of the room and immediately telephoned Mrs Simpson to tell her the bad news.

The next few days were a shock to many as the new King, believing he was on a mission to modernize the monarchy, constantly breached protocol. The first important ceremony was his own proclamation by Garter King of Arms at St James's Palace. Not only did Edward VIII arrange for Mrs Simpson to view the proceedings from a highly visible front window; he then, at the last minute, decided he wanted to stand next to her there and watch his accession being proclaimed. Chips Channon, like many of those in the know, was enthralled.

Afterwards I saw a large black car (the King's) drive away, with the blinds pulled half down. The crowd bowed, thinking that it contained the d.u.c.h.ess of Kent, but I saw Mrs Simpson ...

We are all riveted by the position of Mrs S. No man has ever been so in love as the present King but can she be another Mrs Fitzherbert?6 If he drops her she will fall fall into the nothingness from whence she came.

A desire to gainsay this nothingness prompted Wallis to ask her aunt to have 'one of those family tree things' made up of the Warfields and the Montagues, reminding Bessie that in England Montague with an e meant the Jewish family 'the swell spell it without an e!!' She did not specify why she wanted this genealogy but said she hoped her Khe the Jewown family histories 'would stand up against these 1066 families here'. Meanwhile the d.u.c.h.ess of York spent the day of the proclamation travelling to Sandringham to be with the widowed Queen.

There were trivial aspects to the modernizing, too, all of which aroused comment. For example, Wallis liked the King to call a taxi for her at St James's Palace. Lady Carlisle, who saw him doing this, commented: 'anything more undignified than the King going past sentries to call a taxi is difficult to imagine'. And the same 'democratic' approach was introduced at the Fort where Wallis, acting as hostess, would say 'We don't dress for dinner.' This caused the women much embarra.s.sment as often they had not brought the appropriate clothes. For example Lady Diana Cooper, arriving late for dinner, began gushing apologies whereupon Mrs Simpson said: 'Oh cut it out. David and I don't mind.'

Others were more deeply offended by her easy, proprietorial att.i.tude. Lascelles told his wife, Joan, how the Wigrams had been invited to see a film show at Windsor: When it was over Mrs S said to Lady W (who has lived at Windsor for 20 years and knows everything in the castle as well as she knows her own drawing room) 'wouldn't you like me to show you the pictures in the long corridor' and when they left 'Goodbye, we were so glad you and Lord W were able to come.' That shows an incredible lack of elementary tact. Don't leave this about!

Lascelles concluded that this indicated that Wallis 'cannot really be a very clever woman'.

'Clever' was not the issue as far as hostesses such as Emerald Cunard, who had never been on good terms with the old regime, were concerned. Almost immediately the invitations turned from a trickle to a flood. In 1935 Lady Cunard had enjoyed what she believed to be a position of pre-eminence among those chasing after the Prince and his paramour. Partly hoping the Prince would become a patron of the opera so important to her lover, Sir Thomas Beecham, she had pursued Wallis from the first. Wallis responded, believing that some musical culture would be of benefit to the future monarch. But Edward always loathed opera and took every opportunity to escape into the corridor and smoke. Emerald genuinely liked her fellow American, describing 'little Mrs Simpson' as 'a woman of character who reads Balzac' a questionable boast.

When the Prince and Mrs Simpson expressed a desire to see a play called Storm over Patsy, a light romantic comedy based on a German play by Bruno Frank which had just opened at the Theatre Royal Haymarket and which they, solipsistically, believed had echoes of their own story, it was Emerald who arranged for them to see an abridged version privately at her house to save them the embarra.s.sment of going publicly.7 She rashly told friends she hoped to be appointed mistress of the robes and preside over a court where poets, musicians and artists held sway, a remark which may have reached Queen Mary who always singled Lady Cunard out not entirely justifiably as having played a mischievous role by encouraging Wallis to believe she was accepted in society. 'I fear she has done David a great deal of harm as there is no doubt she was great friends with Mrs S and gave parties for her ... several people have mentioned to me what harm she has done.'

Other hostesses, notably Lady Colefax and Lady A Kax .stor, vied with each other to entertain the woman they a.s.sumed would be queen, but older money invited her as well, including the Marlboroughs, Sackville Wests, Buccleuchs and Sutherlands. Noel Coward, exhausted by the chase, refused one of Emerald's invitations, telling her acidly: 'I am sick to death of having quiet suppers with the King and Mrs Simpson.'

From the first, the new Court caused deep consternation among the old guard. 'I think he will make a great King of a new era,' Wallis told her aunt, 'and I believe the country thinks the same.' The old regime, she believed, 'was a little behind the times ... the late King was not sociable nor the Queen and I'm sure this one will entertain more at the Palace.' What the old guard objected to was not so much the new King's awkwardness or obstinacy a monarch was ent.i.tled to that and after all George V had often not been easy. What they minded was the obstinacy devoid of any sense of duty or service. Men like Lascelles had been aware of the chasm since 1928, constantly hoping that Edward would mature. In fact the reverse now seemed to be the case. On 12 February there was tea with Lord and Lady Brownlow, where Chips Channon recorded 'Mrs Simpson [as being] very charming and gay and vivacious. She said she had not worn black stockings since she gave up the Can Can,' a remark some felt out of order so soon after the King's death, but which Channon considered was typical of her 'breezy humour, quick and American but not profound'. While some courtiers were optimistic that Wallis would have a positive effect on the King, encouraging him to take his job more seriously, and were therefore prepared to overlook her brashness, others quickly despaired. Philip Ziegler believes that by 1936 it was too late for anyone to effect any change, that by then Edward 'was corroded by idleness. He may have had a better brain than his brother, and a capacity to communicate and charisma ... but the charisma was wasted by the time he had met Wallis and the charm had become a dangerous attribute.'

'Wallis must not get too bossy,' wrote Diana Cooper, having heard her reprimand the King in front of his guests for wanting to have his papers and doc.u.ments read to him instead of reading them himself. She told him he simply had to learn to master the points in them. 'She is right of course as he made haste to say. "Wallis is quite right. She always is. I shall learn it quite soon."' The King was used to having information fed to him and if, as Prince of Wales, he appeared well informed this was because he had been well briefed. Reading an entire book was so low on his list of priorities that in 1936, fitting out the hired yacht that was to take Wallis and him cruising for the summer, instructions were given for all the books to be removed from the yacht's library as they would not be needed. This is not a matter of intellectual sn.o.bbery; it meant in practice that he drained Wallis as his sole source of information and, when he needed to draw on his own emotional reserves, he was not supported by any books he had read. When Baldwin had to have serious discussions with Edward in November 1936 he felt the lack of reading acutely disadvantaged him. He described him as an 'abnormal being, half-child, half-genius ... it is almost as though two or three cells in his brain had remained entirely undeveloped while the rest of him is a mature man ... he is not a thinker. He takes his ideas from the daily press instead of thinking things out for himself. He never reads except, of course, the papers. No serious reading: none at all ...'

Of greater concern, however, to those around him was the way he now deferred to Wallis in everything, including matters of state. Within weeks of his accessio K hie an he was no longer reading state papers at all but leaving the task entirely to Alec Hardinge, his despairing Private Secretary. Not only were the papers unread, much to Baldwin's horror they were apparently left lying around the Fort during his ever longer weekends, now often from Thursday to Tuesday. If scrutinized by anyone it was Wallis's eye that fell on them. When they were returned they were decorated by rings from wet gla.s.ses left on top of them. Despatch boxes were sometimes lost entirely. But it was not only at the Fort that work was neglected. Even in London, according to Alan Lascelles, the King shut himself up giggling with Mrs Simpson for hours on end while the royal footmen would say to the waiting secretaries 'The Lady is still there.' Hardinge fed Baldwin a tale of ever increasing dereliction of duty, resulting in the Prime Minister's decision to restrict the doc.u.ments made available to the King to those requiring the royal signature.

Within weeks, as he felt the loneliness and boredom of his new job, his infatuation and desperate need for Wallis increased. Exhausted, frustrated and even angry, she escaped to Paris in the early spring with her divorced, redheaded friend Josephine 'Foxy' Gwynne. The trip was partly to stock up on her couture wardrobe; she was especially keen to buy from the Chicago-born Main Rousseau Bocher, known as Mainbocher, her latest favourite, whose haute-couture gowns were endorsed by an exclusive clientele that included Syrie Maugham, Diana Vreeland and many Hollywood stars. But another reason for the visit was that she hated the pressure on her, with the King constantly telephoning her, relying on her; she felt she was losing control of the situation and wanted to get Ernest back as her husband. As she admitted to her aunt, 'I have of course been under a most awful strain with Ernest and H.M.' What the King's mother called his 'violent infatuation', which she hoped would pa.s.s, had turned into an obsession so all consuming that he could concentrate on nothing more than how he could arrange to marry Wallis Simpson as quickly as possible. Wallis now felt trapped.

Nineteen-thirty-six was a critical year throughout Europe as dramatic events with enormous consequences unfurled with lightning speed and the rise of the far right was allowed to go unchecked. In Spain, a Popular Front government was elected in February but almost immediately came under pressure from strikes and violent uprisings, and by July the country was locked in a b.l.o.o.d.y civil war. France, too, had elected a socialist prime minister in February but the Popular Front of Leon Blum was weakened from constant and vicious attacks from both the extreme left and the extreme right. On 7 March German troops marched into the Rhineland, an action in direct contravention of the Treaty of Versailles which had laid out terms which the defeated Germany had accepted. It was. .h.i.tler's first illegal act in foreign relations since coming to power in 1933 and it threw the European allies, especially France and Britain, into confusion. Yet public opinion in Britain was strongly opposed to going to war with Germany over this. No politician wanted to unleash another great war in Europe.

However, it was now clear that Hitler had no qualms about repudiating treaties which he argued had been imposed on Germany by force. As Baldwin's Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden commented: 'We must be prepared for him to repudiate any treaty even if freely negotiated (a) when it becomes inconvenient; and (b) when Germany is sufficiently strong and the circ.u.mstances are otherwise favourable for doing so.' But although no one expected (or wanted) the King to be directly involved, the fact remains that during this year of unprecedented turbulence in Europe, the British sovereign was concentrating on one matter only: how to mar Ky: ng ry Wallis and make her his queen. His obsession impacted on his government.

One evening in early February, Ernest went to have dinner with the King at York House and decided to take with him his friend Bernard Rickatson-Hatt, by then editor in chief at Reuters. When Rickatson-Hatt got up to leave, Ernest pressed him to stay. He wanted his friend to hear what he felt he now had to state clearly to the King, 'that Wallis would have to choose between them and what did the King mean to do about it? Did he intend to marry her? The King then rose from his chair and said: "Do you really think that I would be crowned without Wallis at my side?"' That evening, according to Rickatson-Hatt's version, the King and Ernest Simpson reached an accommodation whereby Ernest agreed to put an end to his marriage provided the King promised to look after Wallis.

Naturally, events could not rest there. According to a memorandum by Lord Davidson, Baldwin's close ally, written immediately after this: Simpson Mason asks to see Jenks Mason the Mari Complaisant is now the sorrowing and devastated spouse. He tells Jenks that the King wants to marry Mrs S, (unbelievable) & that he S would like to leave England only that would make divorce easier what he wants is his wife back. S suggests he should see the P.M. SB replies to this suggest [sic] with a flat negative. He is the King's chief adviser not Mr S's ... Clive Wigram, SB and I have a frank talk. I am quite convinced Blackmail sticks out at every stage. HM has already paid large sums to Mrs S and given valuable presents. I advocate most drastic steps (deportation) if it is true that S is an American but if he isn't the situation is very delicate. The Masonic move is very clever. The POW got S in on a lie is now living in open breach of the Masonic Law of chast.i.ty because of the lie he first told. S and Mrs S, who is obviously a gold digger, have obviously got him on toast ... Mrs S is very close to [the German Amba.s.sador Leopold von] Hoesch and has, if she likes to read them access to all Secret and Cabinet papers!!!!!

Realizing that Simpson, as a British subject, could not be deported, Sir Maurice Jenks managed to rea.s.sure the frightened Wigram that Ernest was an honourable man who wanted above all to avoid scandal. Couldn't Simpson be persuaded then to go back voluntarily to the United States and take his wife with him, Wigram urged Jenks? The story of the King's meeting with his nemesis was pa.s.sed around a frightened inner circle of advisers, including Sir Maurice Gwyer, First Parliamentary Counsel to the Treasury, Sir Lionel Halsey, then a Council Member of the Duchy of Cornwall, and Walter Monckton. Monckton, while questioning whether indeed the King could have said what was attributed to him, predicted 'blackmail upon an extravagant basis'.

The Davidson memorandum not only lays bare deeply felt establishment concerns about Wallis becoming queen, but, more significantly, makes plain the twin fear some had of her pa.s.sing on secrets to the Germans at a time of critical international tension. This fear never went away and was partly responsible for royal att.i.tudes towards Wallis in the ensuing decades. Just eight years later the King's brother and successor George VI was to write in a private and confidential letter to his Prime Minister: 'I must tell you quite honestly that I do not trust the d.u.c.h.ess's [Wallis's] loyalty.' In 1936 the amba.s.sadors of n.a.z.i Germany and Fascist Italy were actively courting all the hostesses, as well as newspaper editors and politicians. Bernard Rickatson-Hatt's boss at Reuters, K atelySir Roderick Jones, had been meeting Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German former champagne salesman acting as. .h.i.tler's special envoy, socially since 1933. He described him as a man who, when he invited him to luncheon at his own home, 'held me there with a flow of argument and talk from which I could not very well escape without appearing discourteous'. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang, arguably more aware of the n.a.z.i reality than most through Germany's bishops informing him of n.a.z.i policy, also lunched with Ribbentrop in the summer of 1935 and described him as 'most genial and friendly'.

Wallis herself met Ribbentrop at least twice at Lady Cunard's. This was Ribbentrop's job, to a.s.sess the degree of pro-n.a.z.i feeling in British society, so naturally he made a point of socializing with the woman now being called the King's mistress. He may even have sent her regular bouquets after the dinners in the hope of currying favour, as Mary Raffray a.s.serted later. According to the Kirk family version, when Ribbentrop was in London he called on Wallis daily, 'except when some engagement took him out of town and then, said Mary, flinging her arms wide to indicate size, he always sent Wallis a huge box of the most glorious flowers'. As Helen Hardinge noted in her diary, 'one of the factors in the situation was Mrs Simpson's partiality for n.a.z.i Germans'. But there is no evidence of an affair with Ribbentrop beyond Wallis's ever-ready preparedness to flirt especially with diplomats and society's love of gossiping. German diplomats in 1936 believed she would soon be very useful and she enjoyed having their attention. She was probably no more pro-n.a.z.i than the pro-appeas.e.m.e.nt Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax and many of the Cabinet at the time. It is noteworthy that Baldwin himself never accused her of having German sympathies, either then or later. Yet, because many found her untrustworthy on other private matters, it was easy to a.s.sume that she was untrustworthy generally. The views of the King himself were more dangerously pro-German, although predominantly pacifist, and more easily bent out of shape; they were views Wallis doubtless absorbed as being easier than exercising her mind about such matters when her own security was paramount. Not only did the King have many German relations, he spoke German fluently and believed, like many, that a repeat of the carnage of the First World War had to be avoided above all else. Recently released German doc.u.ments have now made clear that the n.a.z.is were ready to exploit the King's sympathies if the opportunity arose and, although his friends wanted to believe that his deep patriotism would always win through, Wallis's over-arching influence was an unknown factor.

At the end of March 1936, Wallis returned from Paris 'in a state of collapse'. Her health was never robust and she often complained of suffering from 'the old nervous indigestion'. But this time her unhappiness stemmed as much from the King's almost suffocating need for her as from Ernest's increasing detachment. She was still convinced that her days with the King were numbered, especially now that the pressures on him to provide an heir were redoubled, and this need she knew she could never satisfy. 'In the back of my mind I had always known that the dream one day would have to end somewhere sometime somehow. But I had characteristically refused to be dismayed by this prospect.' And she soon realized why Ernest was quite so pliant. On 24 March, Mary Raffray had arrived in London again. Even before she came Wallis was annoyed by the idea of having a houseguest. Once she arrived she had no time for Mary and thought the clothes she had brought with her were unsuitable other than for a nightclub. But she was still Wallis's most intimate friend, the one person in whom she could confide with utter frankness sure of a sympathetic and und Khetllierstanding listener. Or so she thought.

It rapidly became clear to Wallis that while Mary may have started by taking pity on Ernest, as well as genuinely enjoying his historical explanations as they toured ancient buildings, she had now fallen in love with him. Wallis felt deeply hurt by the new relationship between her husband and Mary but cannot have been surprised. It was a situation of her own contriving which she had believed she could control. Mary understood later that she had been manipulated, such as 'the night she tricked me into going to the opera and then at the last minute failed to appear because she told everyone Ernest's mistress was there ... She thought she could use me as a scapegoat and did,' wrote Mary, 'that Ernest would turn to me in his great unhappiness as he did. Even though she loathed and despised having me there, it served her purpose as then she could say that Ernest was having an affair with me and so she would have to get a divorce.'

'Mary's first letters to me', her sister Buckie recalled of 1936, 'were in sharp contrast to those I had had the previous year,' although she still wrote of occasional small dinners at York House and of weekends at the Fort. In one of these Mary described how the King had the entire house party, which included Ernest, driven over to Windsor Castle to see movies of the Grand National and how thrilled she felt at being able to walk casually around at least part of the castle, admiring some of the magnificent paintings. 'Wallis is in the very thick of things, received and toadied to by everyone,' Mary wrote.

Very soon, though, Wallis had had enough of her old schoolfriend. 'Within a few days I received a note from Mary on unfamiliar paper bearing the letterhead of a London hotel,' her sister recalled. 'It was brief and to the point. Yesterday, Mary wrote me, Wallis had accused her of having seduced Ernest. Mary had left the room where they were talking, gone to her own, thrown all her possessions into suitcases, phoned for a taxi and then walked out of Bryanston Court and Wallis' life forever.'

Wallis fed her aunt little of this drama, explaining only that she had gone to great lengths to amuse Mary. But, she added ominously, 'I am afraid.' She then wrote to her aunt with remarkable self-knowledge of how people of her age, nearly forty, must make their own lives. 'As I wasn't in a position to have it arranged for me by money or position and though I have had many hard times, disappointments etc I've managed not to go under as yet and never having known security until I married Ernest, perhaps I don't get along well with it, knowing and understanding the thrill of its opposite much better the old bromide, nothing ventured nothing gained.' Bessie Merryman decided that it was time to come over to England again and support her niece more actively, but she could not do so immediately.

On 2 April the Simpsons hosted a black-tie, black-waistcoat dinner in the King's honour at Bryanston Court where Ernest, bizarrely, made a grand entrance into the drawing room of his own home escorting his sovereign. Harold Nicolson, a guest that evening, found 'Mrs Simpson a perfectly harmless type of American but the whole setting is slightly second rate'. After this there was to be only one more occasion when Ernest accompanied his wife in public, but the society jokes about him did not abate. The d.u.c.h.ess of Devonshire suggested that while other staff were being sacked a job might be found for him such as '"Guardian of the Bedchamber" or "Master of the Mistress"'.

In May, the Prime Mini Khe ter ster and his wife, Lucy, were invited to dine at York House, where the King still lived. Until recently Lucy Baldwin had been completely unaware of Mrs Simpson's existence and her discovery was the cause of much mirth in smart London gatherings. But this was not her milieu. The Baldwins had been married for more than forty years and had six surviving children, and, although their roots were in the country, in Worcestershire, they were not part of the Tory landed gentry who spent weekends hunting and shooting. Lucy was first and foremost a homemaker, a formidable woman dedicated to a life of service. She was the founder of the Anaesthetics Appeal Fund, a.s.sociated with a machine, which was named after her, for self-administration of oxygen a.n.a.lgesia in obstetrics, the aim of which was to address the high incidence of maternal mortality. She was involved in the Young Women's Christian a.s.sociation and various other charitable bodies for women, especially those concerned with improving maternity care, after having herself suffered difficult pregnancies and lost her first child in a stillbirth. She was also a member of the White Heather Club, the first women's cricket club founded in Yorkshire in 1887, and she created a small theatre at Astley Hall in Worcestershire where her children with cousins and friends often put on small productions. It is hard to imagine which of these topics would have resulted in congenial conversation with Wallis Simpson.

The King had warned Wallis weeks beforehand that he wanted her at this dinner. 'He paused, and after a moment, with his most Prince Charming smile, added: "It's got to be done. Sooner or later my Prime Minister must meet my future wife."' Wallis, recounting this story, maintains that it was the first time he had proposed marriage. They planned the evening together and, on the surface, the dinner pa.s.sed off uneventfully. The other guests included the Mountbattens, the Wigrams, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Ernle Chatfield and Lady Chatfield and the American aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife, Anne. Baldwin had no prior knowledge of the significance of the occasion and, although surprised to see Mrs Simpson at one end of the table and Lady Cunard at the other, neither disliked Wallis nor took offence at his own wife's placement, which was on the King's right. In fact he was one of those who believed that 'Mrs Simpson's influence was not without its good side'. Neither was he out of touch with modern morals nor without sympathy for her predicament, having recently seen his own daughter go through a painful divorce. But others were more distressed, especially when the names of Mr and Mrs Ernest Simpson were announced in the Court Circular. Sir John (later Lord) Reith, a minister's son and strict Presbyterian who rose to become director general of the BBC, was deeply disapproving of 'the Simpson woman' and described the affair as 'too horrible and ... serious and sad beyond calculation'.

As Harold Nicolson had observed in calling the group surrounding Wallis and the new King second rate, and as the guest books from the Fort reveal, most of those invited to inform or stimulate the King came from their existing small circle of friends in London (the Hunters, Prendergasts, Buists, Lawson-Johnstons), those who took a broad-minded view of divorce, with a sprinkling of courtiers and diplomats every now and again but a marked absence of artists, writers, politicians or statesmen or those who might have challenged them to think differently about a wide range of issues. Fred Bate, the British representative for America's National Broadcasting Company (NBC) who had lived in Britain for some twenty years, was an exception in that he was better informed than most of their friends. But he too was divorced, in 1929, and remarried. When Wallis and Edward were exposed to the world of culture it was often a disaster, never more Kr, d, so than on 10 June when Sibyl Colefax invited them as guests of honour and persuaded Artur Rubinstein to play after dinner, a rare honour granted by the Polish maestro. Several after-dinner guests swelled the numbers at this point, including Winston and Clementine Churchill, and there was a considerable hubbub about politics which Sibyl did her best to hush as Rubinstein was ready to play. After three Chopin pieces during which the King, seated on a stool close to the piano, had chatted intermittently, openly displaying his boredom, Rubinstein prepared himself for a fourth. But before he could do so the King got up and walked over to him saying, 'We enjoyed that very much, Mr Rubinstein,' which, as everyone knew, was a clear command to stop. Rubinstein made a barely audible reply, 'I am afraid that you do not like my playing, Your Majesty,' and, accompanied by Kenneth Clark, the influential Surveyor of the King's Pictures and director of the National Gallery, left the party angered by the humiliation. One of the guests was the Princesse de Polignac, the former sewing-machine heiress Winnaretta Singer and a noted musician herself, who said later how shocked she had been by the rudeness shown to Rubinstein. Such philistinism could never happen in Paris where she hosted musical salons, she declared.

Among the elite, everyone knew who Wallis Simpson was. But Alan Lascelles noticed how naively keen the King was that they should know her better. He wrote to his wife Joan of a meeting at which the King: gave me an example of his ostrich-like mentality, which nearly made me burst out laughing. I was telling him about my hunting experiences in Maryland and he asked me searching questions about various places in that part of the world. I couldn't imagine why he was so excited about them when he said, 'I'm very interested in that country because rather a friend of mine, Mrs Simpson, Wallie Simpson, I don't think you know her? comes from down there.' It struck me as the most child-like simplicity; can he really think I've not heard of Mrs Simpson?

The King had often in his life revealed a lack of intellectual curiosity but, now with the petulance of a child who does not want to be told no, was going dangerously further by putting himself beyond the reach of anyone who might disagree with his chosen lifestyle. Even the judicious Walter Monckton was forced to remark, 'he was not well placed at Fort Belvedere to judge public opinion'. Among those whom he rarely saw in 1936 were his brother and sister-in-law, the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of York. It was partly in order to remedy that situation that he suggested in the spring that he and Wallis should drive over from the Fort in his new American station wagon, the height of modernity, to visit the Yorks' nearby home, Royal Lodge; he wanted to show Bertie the car.

He took enormous pleasure driving there, Wallis recalled. The Yorks met the King at the door and they all had tea in the drawing room. Wallis, in a perfectly polished paragraph of her memoirs, describes how the d.u.c.h.ess's 'justly famous charm was highly evident'. The hour pa.s.sed with innocuous conversation but left Wallis with 'a distinct impression that while the Duke of York was sold on the American station wagon the d.u.c.h.ess was not sold on David's other American interest'.

The antipathy between the two women may have had a deeper source, as Lady Mosley, the former Diana Mitford, who knew both women, believed. 'Probably the theory of their [the Windsors'] contemporaries that Cake [a Mitford nickname for the Queen Mother, derived from her confectionary fashion sense] was rather in love w Kher[the With him [the Duke] (as a girl) & took second best, may account for much.' But there were more recent grievances too, such as the occasion when Wallis decided to entertain guests at the Fort with an impersonation of the d.u.c.h.ess, whom she thought not only dowdy but possessed of a 'goody-goodiness [that was] false and artificial'. The d.u.c.h.ess walked into the room while Wallis was in full flow and, 'from that moment of overhearing, the d.u.c.h.ess of York became her implacable enemy', according to Ella Hogg, wife of Brigadier Oliver Hogg, who was there at the time. Wallis maintained that the episode showed the d.u.c.h.ess had no sense of humour; the old courtiers thought it indicated that she had no idea how to behave with royalty.

Throughout May and June Wallis had more weekends at the Fort as well as buying sprees in Paris, while the King bought her more and more jewellery to go with the frocks and sent more declarations of eternal love couched in the private, infantile language they used for each other. In March a magnificent ruby and diamond bracelet from Van Cleef and Arpels had come with a note full of underlinings telling her that 'THEY say that THEY liked this bracelet and that THEY want you to wear it always in the evening ... A boy loves a girl more and more and more.' Inscribed on the clasp are the date '27-iii-36' and the words 'Hold Tight', a reference perhaps to Wallis's s.e.xual prowess as well as to the need to endure political difficulties.

Meanwhile Ernest bought a small flat for Mary near by at Albion Gate in Hyde Park and although Mary was 'homesick and lonely', as she told her sisters, she wanted to stay in London for the sake of Ernest. In early June the King had had another 'difficult' talk with Ernest and told Wallis that he 'must get after him now or he won't move'. But Ernest was still required to put in an appearance with his wife on occasions and the day she was writing this letter, 28 June, he was at Blenheim with her and the King and the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough. In her memoirs Wallis wrote that 'as best as I can recall' the last time she and Ernest 'were publicly together in David's company' was the dinner on 28 May for the Baldwins. 'Not long afterwards I told Ernest that I was starting divorce proceedings.' As Mary's letter shows this was not the case. Ernest had not quite yet given up on Wallis nor on his love of visiting England's stately homes. But this particular occasion of togetherness was one she absolutely could not recall publicly.

Wallis was suffering from a serious and painful recurrence of her stomach trouble in the summer of 1936. X-rays, she told her aunt, had found 'a healed ulcer scar', but this could have been a healed scar from another internal operation. By the end of June she felt better as 'I have the sort of stomach that needs care and I have a diet which evidently agrees as I haven't had a pain for a month', she told her aunt. But the pain from the intensity of her marital situation was harder to a.s.suage. In July, Ernest accepted the inevitable and booked in to the riverside Hotel de Paris at Bray on the night of 21 July with a female companion who gave her name as b.u.t.tercup Kennedy. In an interview with the King's Proctor in 1937 Ernest insisted that on his return he found a formal letter from Wallis suing for divorce which, he explained, meant not that she had been colluding in the proceedings but that she must have had him followed. He immediately moved out of Bryanston Court to live at the Guards Club in Piccadilly. In the letter Wallis wrote to Ernest she complained that 'instead of being on business, as you led me to believe, you have been staying at Bray with a lady. I am sure you realise this is conduct which I cannot possibly overlook and must insist you do not con Kou at tinue to live here with me.' Furthermore she was, she told him, instructing solicitors.

Having set her divorce in motion it was time once again to go on a summer holiday. The King was determined not to follow royal tradition and spend August in Scotland; neither Balmoral nor grouse shooting had much appeal for him. He planned at first to rent the American actress Maxine Elliott's villa on the French Riviera but was later advised against that by the Foreign Office because of the instability in the area caused by the Spanish Civil War. 'I really am very annoyed with the FO for having messed up my holiday in this stupid manner,' he wrote to his mother. According to John Aird, increasingly critical of Wallis's baneful influence, the King was about to offer Maxine Elliott 1,000 as compensation for the cancellation but 'then consulted Mrs Simpson and reduced the amount to 100'. Her fear not irrational that she would be cast aside without enough to live on and have to suffer as her mother had, was st