Hanging on Princes' Favors
ALAN, RAY
Euro vista BY RAY ALAN Hanging on Princes' Favors Just 50 years ago , the English establishment was in the grip of the crisis provoked by Edward VIII's desire to marry Wallis Simpson (nee...
...Kings and queens don't have to be intelligent or interested in politics—it is preferable that they are not—but Edward VIII lacked common sense and would not have qualified for a minor executive post in the Civil Service...
...A survey showed half the population inclined toward abolishing the monarchy...
...They spent the rest of their private lives dwelling on bitter complaints against the Duke's relations...
...I will repeat again what to say to Mr...
...For example, when [Prime Minister Eamon] de Valera rejected his request to settle in Ireland, Wallis told the Duke [Edward] that Buckingham Palace was responsible...
...I know that you will go on with your job, doing it better and in a more dignified manner each year...
...In mid-1935, in a letter rebuking him for selfish behavior ("your life has been such that...
...Edward wrote: "God's curses be on those English bitches who insult you...
...In a private memoir, Grandmesnil says Edward "was never happy for one single day after his abdication...
...Bloch links them with a lucid commentary and includes Wallis' illuminating correspondence with the generous aunt who subsidized her safari into London society, as well as extracts from the memoirs of Wallis and Edward, published in the 1950s and revealed by this book to be inaccurate in some details...
...anyway, the prospect of abdication was already occupying his thoughts...
...Fairyland...
...Another View In a vital respect Wallis was "a very foolish woman," according to the Duke de Grandmesnil who knew Edward in Paris where, recycled as the Duke of Windsor, he spent the last 25 years of his life...
...because our likenesses seldom appeared in the press, we were not often recognized on the street...
...Some informed Englishmen, who considered him erratic or pro-German or both, said they were grateful to Wallis for so besotting him that he stepped down...
...Could you possibly have settled down to the old life and forgotten the fairyland through which you had passed...
...Although attentive to his material needs, Wallis "had no idea of a man's vocational needs: She did not understand that if a man's transitory comforts involve sacrifice of his vocation he will eventually become miserable...
...When he was King, Wallis described the private film shows he gave in Windsor Castle and one of his London houses as "a slight contact with the outside world...
...My child, I do not think so...
...Thelma, the mistress and "Princess of Wales" (as envious society women called her) displaced by Wallis, was American too...
...Edward's letters are often infantile...
...Let's have something else...
...I feel I am better with him than with you...
...Edward wrote in his memoirs: " I recall with wonder the ease with which we were able to move about in public places...
...Wretched, too, the poor woman that hangs on princes' favors...
...His upbringing left him immature, lonely and in desperate need of a maternal mistress-confidante, a need Wallis satisfied . She was a natural man-manager...
...I feel secure with him...
...Among the few people to offer her sympathy were Winston Churchill and her Anglo-American husband, Ernest Simpson, who wrote: "I do believe that you did everything in your power to prevent the final catastrophe...
...That would please me so...
...I know Ernest and...
...When Stanley Baldwin, the Conservative Prime Minister of the day, and other political leaders plus a sprinkling of prelates voiced disapproval of Wallis Simpson, Edward argued weakly, then—on December 11, 1936, less than 11 months after becoming king— he abdicated...
...Edward had faith in the Church but echoed her other complaints...
...Some Conservative backwoodsmen saw Wallis as a scheming foreign adventuress who had somehow ensnared their fine young King...
...Determined to break her marriage, the King was unmoved...
...His dependence on her became as intense as an addiction...
...InGrandmesnil's view, their marriage "was not the success that stupid people have reported...
...To that she added naively: "Why play with the Church of England...
...Don't be weak, don't be rude...
...I am sure you and I would only create disaster together...
...I grew up before the age of the flash camera and...
...Mark's is going to marry Dottie Sands, twice divorced, in his church...
...And Ernest, tired of Wallis' antics, was already thinking of a calm congenial life with a more attractive woman...
...She teased him, too, reminding him how little he knew of life outside royal and ducal residences and French coastal resorts...
...Later, they complained bitterly that he did nothing for them...
...you only think of what you want and take it, without the slightest thought of others"), Wallis told Edward he was "a boy who may always remain Peter Pan...
...He wrote: "If I ever [again] hear that bromide 'The English are sportsmen' I'll yell the place down...
...She wrote him an eloquent defense of her marriage that is one of the most memorable documents in Wallis and Edward: "I must return to Ernest for a great many reasons which please be patient and read...
...Even when he was King, he described a tour of an important industrial region (whose naive inhabitants thought their welcome had delighted him) as a chore, and dismissed the dispatch-cases of documents sent for his attention by thegov-ernment as "damned red boxes full of mostly bunk...
...On June 3,1937, Wallis and Edward were married in a small chateau in the Loire region of France...
...slow-brained" brother, who succeeded him on the throne...
...Emotionally, he became her prisoner...
...If he otherwise claimed, it was mere propaganda...
...The British press and radio—until then, among the best in Europe—discredited themselves by suppressing news of the problem before abdication was decided on...
...Millions of words have been written during the past half-century about the dull-eyed English king and the shrewd-eyed American housewife, but the book that penetrates most intimately to the heart of the affair has only just appeared: Wallis and Edward: Letters 1931-37, impeccably edited by Michael Bloch and elegantly designed by Eve Metz (Summit, 360pp., $19.95...
...but, weighed against a calm congenial life, I choose the latter...
...Constitutionally, he could only do nothing...
...Like most members of the English establishment, he had been brought up by a "nanny" and other servants, and received little attention from his parents...
...It was Wallis who forced the Duke to put pressure on his brother, King George VI, on various occasions, thus earning the Duke a reputation for blackmailing.' Yet Wallis was not, he insists, a "bad" woman...
...The affair was rich in dramatic irony...
...English society (hypocritical and " a nation of cads where women are concerned...
...Wallis was no stylist, but she had a better command of English than Edward, was brighter and more articulate, and her letters are enlivened occasionally by the dry "American" humor that delighted him...
...like his dismal father, King George V, he had no talent for original thought, let alone wit...
...I should rather have my husband than mere friends...
...As the crisis deepened, she urged him to assert himself, and robustly criticized his "wretched...
...She constantly steamed him up...
...He was obsessed by the calamity and discussed it frequently, "finding relief in bitter complaints against his family which the Duchess [Wallis] encouraged and fed with criticism and sarcasm...
...Noneof these letters have been published until now...
...Captivated by her, he smuggled into England clothes she ordered in Paris, and violated Britain's severe quarantine regulations by flying her dog home in his private plane after it had accompanied them on a Continental vacation...
...She began one letter: "Dearest Lightning Brain, I don't know what English papers you [read] but you never seem to know what's going on...
...No one can fill that place...
...His combination of emotional immaturity and selfishness was a recipe for disaster...
...Edward gave up the crown for an infatuation a Woody Allen character would have had doubts about...
...True, we are poor and unable to do the attractive amusing things which I confess I love and enjoy...
...Wallis was startled by "enormity of the hatred I aroused" in England, especially among women: For weeks she received a torrent of hate mail and threats to kill her...
...As King, Edward was head of the official Anglican Church, which then frowned on divorce, though not as sternly as Rome (it was, after all, founded by Henry VIII...
...You have been independent of affection all your life...
...She advised him on his domestic arrangements, his conduct and finally his relations with the Prime Minister—sounding at times like awearymother: "You must make every effort...
...As Shakespeare's Wolsey says, "Oh, how wretched is that poor man that hangs on princes' favors...
...de Valera (whom I approached on the Windsors' behalf) was not a man to bow to influence from the Palace...
...Socialites had been aware that Edward was something of a philanderer, but the public knew little of the royal family's private life and was taken by surprise...
...Edward was the author as well as the protagonist of the tragedy...
...itmakesmesosickandscared...
...In September 1936, feeling insecure and perhaps realizing that her emotions had been ignited less by love than by princely, now royal, favors and the flattering but treacherous attention of "the very best titles" in London society, Wallis tried to pull away from the King...
...and the Church ("The hypocrisy of the Church is amazing—the Rector of St...
...Quarrels were frequent...
...They seldom discussed anything else, save almost mindless society gossip...
...His letters and memoirs give the impression that he never really understood why he had to abdicate...
...In fact, Mr...
...Falling back on demagogy, he encouraged unemployed Welsh miners to believe that "something" would be done to help them...
...Euro vista BY RAY ALAN Hanging on Princes' Favors Just 50 years ago , the English establishment was in the grip of the crisis provoked by Edward VIII's desire to marry Wallis Simpson (nee Warfield), a vivacious divorcee from Baltimore who already had two marriages under her belt...
...She was resentful, and at a serious disadvantage because "she did not understand the English establishment...
...the rest of the royal family ("I am disgusted with them all...
...Behind the "modern" image dreamed up for him by the popular press, which was bored with the rest of the royal family, he was weak, wishy-washy, "little"—as Wallis called him affectionately until she learned that in upper-class English usage (in phrases like "a clever little man") "little" means inferior...
...It brought Wallis and Edward immense unhappiness and probably contributed to the mental disorder that afflicted her in later years...
...He was only sporadically interested inpoliticalandsocialissues...
Vol. 69 • December 1986 • No. 18
