The Wedding
On 3 May 1937, Wallis’s decree absolute was made public and the Duke left immediately on the Orient Express from Salzburg with a bouquet of edelweiss, a dirndl for Wallis and some seventeen suitcases in his private car. It was there, nine days later, that the couple listened to the Coronation Service, the Duke knitting a blue jersey for Wallis, whilst a heavy rainstorm raged outside . . . and, where, as Wallis later wrote, ‘. . . the mental image of what might have been and should have been kept forming, disintegrating, and re-forming in my mind.’1
It must have been a bittersweet moment, for 12 May was the date originally set for the Coronation of Edward VIII, brought forward from the customary late June date for Coronations to give spectators above street-level along the Coronation route a better view than if the trees had come into full leaf. Present were all the members of the Duke’s family – a cross-looking Princess Royal, his two Royal Duchess sisters-in-law, and his mother, who was keen to signify her support for the new reign by breaking with a tradition going back to the Plantagenet kings, whereby the widow of the previous sovereign did not attend the Coronation of his successor.
The Duke had hoped that some members of his family would also be present at the wedding and that either two of his brothers or Dickie Mountbatten would act as his best man, but the Palace was having none of it.
‘You will have heard that although I succeeded in fixing a date for your wedding that suited Bertie, George, etc., that other people stepped in and have produced a situation that has made all your friends very unhappy,’ wrote Mountbatten to the Duke on 5 May. ‘I have made several attempts to get matters put right, but at present I cannot even accept your kind invitation myself. I haven’t quite given up all hope yet, though my chances don’t look too good. I will write again when I know finally.’2 Instead Fruity Metcalfe agreed to be best man.
Not only were close members of the Royal Family forbidden from attending the Windsors’ nuptials, but friends and former advisers were warned not to go. Percy Brownlow was told that he risked his position as Lord Lieutenant of Lincolnshire, a role taken by his family for eight generations, if he attended. Ulick Alexander was threatened that he would lose his job as Keeper of the Privy Purse if he accepted an invitation.
The Church of England did not recognise the marriage of divorced people and the Royal Family could not be seen to flout its teachings. It had also banned any minister from conducting the service and the couple had resigned themselves to a simple civil service until the Reverend Robert Anderson Jardine, an eccentric ‘large-nosed, bulging-eyed, red-faced’ minister from Darlington offered his services.3
There was to be a further blow. On 26 May, at Baldwin’s last Cabinet meeting as Prime Minister, the question of Wallis’s status as Her Royal Highness was discussed. The next day Monckton arrived at Candé with a letter that would cause enduring bitterness by the Windsors towards the Royal Family. Under Letter Patent, Wallis would not be granted the title of Her Royal Highness on her marriage.4 This was against royal practice – the wives of all his brothers had been granted such status on marriage – and British common law.
The Duke’s rank of Royal Highness, as the King’s son, was an inalienable birthright, already established by Letters Patent of 1917, which had not been revoked and could not therefore be ‘restored’. Following on from this, his wife was entitled to the same rank and status as her husband, but it was argued that he had renounced his royal rank and therefore that of his wife. The Abdication had been about her not becoming a member of the Royal Family. She could hardly be made a member now on her marriage, the reason her husband had abdicated in the first place.
Bertie had bowed to pressure from the Dominions, his mother and wife, amidst the concern that the Windsors’ marriage would not last and she might then marry again. To the Duke, brought up to regard title and precedence as important, it was a real insult. It meant that whilst all were required to bow to him, Wallis, though his wife, was not entitled to a curtsey. He was being forced to have the very morganatic marriage that he was told was impossible a few months earlier. As if to rub salt into the wound, it was announced that the Duke’s nemesis, Baldwin, who had done so much to manoeuvre the Duke towards abdication, had been granted an earldom.
‘The bitterness is there all right. He had an outburst to Fruity while dressing for dinner,’ Baba recorded in her diary. ‘The family he is through with . . . He intends to fight the HRH business as legally the King has no right to stop the courtesy title being assumed by his wife . . . He will be loyal to the crown but not to the man, his brother. He blames him for weakness in everything.’5
Meanwhile the wedding preparations continued. It had been decided to wait until after the Coronation, though the couple announced their engagement on its eve, a gesture suspected of being an attempt to upstage the event, and then had rather insensitively picked the date for the wedding day of 3 June, George V’s birthday.
As part of a plan to soften her image, Wallis gave an interview to a distant relative, Helena Normanton, for the New York Times, saying she had no wish to be Queen, and denying various accusations, such as she had made off with Queen Alexandra’s emeralds and had had a love affair with Ribbentrop:
I cannot recall ever being in Herr von Ribbentrop’s company more than twice, once at a party of Lady Cunard before he became ambassador and once at another big reception. I was never alone in his company and I never had more than a few words conversation with him – simply the usual small talk, that is all. I took no interest at all in politics.6
Cecil Beaton, then beginning to establish his reputation as a photographer and also part of the Windsor PR offensive, stayed for a few days to take some pre-wedding pictures. He was impressed with Wallis, with whom he sat talking until dawn:
I was struck by the clarity and vitality of her mind. When at last I went to bed, I realised that she not only had individuality and personality, but was a very strong force as well. She may have limitations, she may be politically ignorant and aesthetically untutored; but she knows a great deal about life.7
That night Baba noticed the wedding couple parting for the night. ‘Good night, sir,’ Wallis said and shook the hands of her future husband.8
Thursday 3 June was a gloriously sunny day. Hundreds of sightseers had flocked to the gates of the chateau in the hope of a glimpse of the couple, and food stands did a roaring trade. Traffic round the local village, Monts, was stopped at 7 a.m. and there was a flight ban over the chateau.
Though no member of his family attended, there were good wishes. ‘We are thinking of you with great affection on this your wedding day and send you every wish for your future happiness. Much love Elizabeth & Bertie,’ read one telegram.9 Winston and Clementine Churchill gave a plate and Adolf Hitler supposedly a gold box.10 A favourite present was a lavatory-paper holder that played ‘God Save the King’.
There were only seven British guests: Walter Monckton; the Duke’s solicitor George Allen; Randolph Churchill, there in his capacity as a journalist; Hugh Lloyd Thomas, a friend from the British Embassy in Paris; Lady Selby without her husband, Sir Walford, who had been advised not to attend; Fruity and Baba Metcalfe. They were joined by Wallis’s Aunt Bessie – the only member of her family to attend – Herman and Katherine Rogers, Kitty and Eugene Rothschild and the Bedauxs.
It was a low key affair. The French government, in deference to the British, had agreed not to broadcast the wedding and attempts to do so by the American networks, NBC and CBS, were blocked by the French. Baba Metcalfe found the event bizarre:
I had forgotten how unattractive her voice and manner of speaking are. Her looks ensure that in any room of only moderately pretty women she would always be by far the ugliest and her figure is thin, with absolutely no line . . . The rest of the party, Mrs Merriman – Aunt Bessie – harmless old girl who must have had a stroke as half of her face doesn’t function and her mouth is squidgways on. Mrs Rogers – common, ordinary large-boned American. Herman, nice quiet, efficient . . . I feel I am passing the weekend in an ugly chateau with people (with the exception of HRH) who are unattractive and completely ignorant of what is happening and who I never want to see again.11
At 11.30 a.m., Herman Rogers escorted Wallis down the grand staircase to the salon for the civil service, conducted by the mayor of Monts. Wallis was dressed in a powder-blue – subsequently called Wallis Blue – crepe, box-shouldered, tight-fitting, ankle-length outfit, designed by one of her favourite designers Mainbocher, with a matching jacket, and halo-style hat by Caroline Reboux, all accompanied by a diamond and sapphire brooch (a wedding present from the Duke), bracelet and earrings.
Half an hour later, they entered the music room to Handel’s ‘Wedding March’ from Judas Maccabaeus, played by the composer Marcel Dupré, for the twenty-minute religious service. The room had quickly been adapted as a temporary chapel with a hall chest, covered by a cream silk cloth to hide the plump nude nymphs, serving as an altar.
The Duke, dressed in black morning coat and striped trousers with a white carnation in his buttonhole, looked noticeably nervous. Wallis appeared more relaxed. The couple mingled with their guests and posed for photographs before sitting down to a wedding breakfast in the dining room of lobster, Chicken à la King and strawberries, accompanied by champagne – and for the Duke, a cup of Earl Grey tea.
‘It was hard not to cry. In fact, I did,’ wrote Baba in her diary:
Afterwards we shook hands in the salon. I knew I should have kissed her but I just couldn’t. In fact I was bad all day: my effort to be charming and to like her broke down. I don’t remember wishing her happiness or good luck as though she loved him. If she occasionally showed a glimmer of softness, took his arm, looked at him as though she loved him, one would warm towards her, but her attitude is so correct and hard. The effect is of an older woman unmoved by the infatuated love of a younger man. Let’s hope that she lets up in private with him, otherwise it must be grim.12
By 3.15 and a press conference, it was all over.13 After the cake was cut, Monckton and Wallis strolled in the garden. He explained that he would do all he could to support them, but she would be scrutinised by the public to see how she treated her husband, who had given up so much for her. She replied, ‘Walter, don’t you think I have thought of all that? I think I can make him happy.’14
It was a marriage that could not afford to fail. The price had been too high.
1 Heart, p. 297.
2 RA EDW/PRIV/MAIN/A/ 3206. Mountbatten sent some seventeenth- and eighteenth-century flagons and tankards as a wedding present.
3 de Courcy, p. 262. Jardine, a former missionary in the Shetland Islands, subsequently exploited his involvement with a US lecture tour and opened the Windsor Cathedral of Los Angeles, until being deported back to the UK in 1942 for overstaying his visa. When his troubles began in July 1939, the Duke offered to send him $1,000 on the understanding that Jardine ‘could expect nothing more in the future and that he must desist from publicity and such things as using a card describing himself as “the Duke’s Vicar”.’ George Allen to the Duke, Monckton Trustees, Box 17, Balliol College.
4 ‘Note’ Law Officers Department, 9 April 1937, LO 3/1168, TNA. The drafting from file H0 144/22945 can be found at https://www.heraldica.org/topics/britain/drafting_lp1937.htm.
5 3 June 1937, quoted Donaldson, p. 324.
6 Helena Normanton, ‘Intrigue Is Denied by Mrs Warfield’, New York Times, 1 June 1937.
7 Cecil Beaton, The Wandering Years (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1961), p. 305.
8 Baba Diary, 3 June 1937, Metcalfe Papers.
9 Monckton Trustees, Box 15, Balliol College.
10 Higham, Wallis, p. 185.
11 de Courcy, p. 260, and Hugo Vickers, Cecil Beaton (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985), p. 316.
12 3 June 1937, Donaldson, p. 326 and de Courcy, p. 265.
13 Amongst the press corps was the future French foreign minister, Maurice Schumann.
14 Birkenhead, Walter Monckton, p. 162.