The Wandering Windsors
The Windsors spent the winter of 1947 with Arthur Vernay at his home in the Bahamas, the first time the couple had returned to the island since 1945. They had met Vernay, an English-born American art and antiques dealer, decorator, big-game hunter, and explorer, during the war and were to subsequently spend many winters with him in the Bahamas.1
From there they moved on to Robert Young in Palm Beach. Though never totally accepted in Newport or New York, the Windsors loved Palm Beach, where the Duke regularly played golf and they were treated as royalty, with bows, curtsies, positions at the head of table and being served first. Protocol required that no one could leave until they did, which often led to tensions, as the Duke enjoyed lingering. ‘Sometimes at parties, for no apparent reason, the Duke would insist on speaking only in German,’ one biographer remembered:
Since German was a language with which most of the Palm Beach winter colony was not familiar, there were often evenings when, for long periods, no one had the slightest idea what the Duke was talking about. During the day, the male members of the Everglades Club would draw straws to see who would play golf with the Duke. The loser got him as a golfing partner; he was, it seemed, a painfully slow player, planning and discussing his shots for what felt like hours.2
King Leopold of Belgium, a regular golfing partner, remembered how the Duke was ‘always eager to win and tended to forget his score. Once I saw David take three shots in a trap, then give himself a five.’3
* * *
In May 1947, the Windsors returned to London from the United States. Asked about a new job, the Duke replied, ‘I might do something sometime, but I have nothing definite in mind. I never take life easy. I never have and I never shall.’4 The Duke took the opportunity to lobby Clement Attlee for a job and see his mother on her eightieth birthday – though he was not invited to the birthday lunch. Cynthia Gladwyn, who saw the couple at a tea given by Sibyl Colefax, leaves a portrait of the former king:5
At first glance he appears extraordinarily youthful, a boyish figure and his small retroussé nose giving him a very juvenile look. But as one examines him more carefully, one is almost unpleasantly shocked to see how old, wrinkled, and worried his face is and how pathetic his expression. His hair is golden and I fancy must be dyed, for he must be over fifty . . . He was amiable and alert, but one was terribly aware of his instability. He talked a great deal, not interestingly, but keenly – in fact he hardly drew breath. We discussed conferences, the Russians, servant difficulties, the French, places he’d been to, and so on. I envy his remarkable memory, he appeared to remember dates and names with ease and accuracy. He spoke with a profound American accent, and used American expressions which rather jarred on me. He kept looking at his watch and wondering why the Duchess didn’t arrive, and finally dashed into the next room to telephone to find out what had detained her.6
When Princess Elizabeth shortly afterwards announced her engagement to Philip Mountbatten, there was no invitation to the November wedding – the Windsors were the only close relations not amongst the 2,200 guests.
‘I am always hoping that one day you will tell me to bring Wallis to see you, as it makes me very sad to think that you and she have never really met,’ wrote the Duke to Queen Mary. ‘It would indeed be tragic if you, my mother, had never known the girl I married and who has made me so blissfully happy.’7
Instead they returned to the Waldorf Towers, where they had become friends with the composer Cole Porter, who also had an apartment there, and where on Christmas Eve they hosted a large dinner.
‘We were a party of some twenty,’ remembered the journalist Cecil Roberts:
I was astonished on entering their suite, which they kept permanently, by its almost regal magnificence. There were full-length paintings of George III and George IV in their coronation robes. Others of the duke’s ancestors were there, some in the Garter regalia, all illuminated, in the long salon. Two footmen wore liveries. It was a full-dress affair, the ladies décolleté, with jewels. The duchess wore a small tiara on her black, tightly drawn-back hair. A cerise silk gown moulded her svelte figure. The dining-room shone with silver, cut glass, flowers. The serviettes were embroidered with the royal arms. This did not look like exile.
In the salon after coffee we began to pull crackers and sing carols. After this there were general songs. The duke, in a plum-coloured velvet evening jacket, went to the grand piano and began to sing. He had a large repertoire, a good voice and was excellent in some German, Lancashire, Scottish and Irish songs. His à la Harry Lauder ‘Oh it’s nice to get up in the morning, but it’s better to lie in bed’ was the chef d’oeuvre. The party broke up at three a.m.8
* * *
In February 1948, the couple were in Florida and the following month they spent several weeks cruising the Caribbean – where they met Ernest Hemingway in Cuba – as the guests of Joe Davis, a former American ambassador to Russia, and his wife Marjorie Merriweather Post.9 In April and May the Windsors were on Long Island, staying at Severn, the Locust Valley estate of another friend, Polly Howe, where the local ‘hostesses were somewhat put off when they were asked to submit their guest lists to the Duchess before she would agree to attend any parties, and were even more put off when these lists were returned with certain names crossed out.’10
They were then the guests of honour at the reopening of Robert Young’s Greenbrier Hotel in West Virginia, a four-day extravaganza paid for by Young for ‘300 leaders of business, government, society, the motion picture world and sports’, including Fred and Adele Astaire, Sam Goldwyn, Herbert Hoover, Bob Hope, President Truman, Bing Crosby and William Randolph Hearst, where the Duke played the drums for ‘How are things in Glocca Morra’ during the intermission.
Concerned by radical leftist governments in France, the Windsors now thought of moving to Switzerland or Ireland – Kenneth de Courcy was brought in to take soundings with the Irish President, Éamon de Valera – and even bought a plot in southern Spain to build a house. The nine-month trip to America to June 1948 was part of a plan to settle in the United States, but eventually they were drawn back to France, partly because they could not find the right house, but largely because of the attractive tax break they were given by the French.11
The lease at La Croë had ended in spring 1949 – amongst their last guests were Churchill for his fortieth wedding anniversary and Beaverbrook. Now their only home was to be in Paris. They had given up the Ritz apartment and taken a four-year lease on 85 Rue de la Faisanderie, near the Bois de Boulogne, which they rented from the industrialist and philanthropist Paul-Louis Weiller.12
Thick hedges and tall wrought-iron gates protected the hotel particulier from the street. The outer hall led to a large entrance hall, where portraits of the Duke, at various ages, lined walls and an elegant marble staircase led to a small landing, where a marble horse stood looking down the stairs – the Duchess did not like it and it was hidden behind a screen. The stairs continued to the drawing room, dining room, library, sitting room and the Duchess’s study. Above were the bedrooms. One bathroom, decorated by Elsie de Wolfe, had leopard-skin walls and the house was furnished with Marcel Proust’s desk and eight chairs, which had belonged to Marie Antoinette.
Neither Windsor ever liked the house. It was too cramped for entertaining – the dining room sat only twenty-four – the rooms were cold and dark and the Duke objected to a huge organ in the foyer, disguised as a bookcase. So sometimes they used the Ritz.
‘My lost rank has its advantages – I don’t have to sit next to the Duke,’ remembered Lady Diana Cooper, now no longer ambassadress, of one such dinner in November 1948. ‘The party was pretty, in the Ritz’s best suite, candles and the choicest flowers, caviar, vodka. Wallis looking her very best in off-the-ground white and gold lamé, clipped with two new gigantic yellow diamonds, the whole surmonté and panaché by the faithful Bahamian Negro in fine gold livery.’13
Socialising was the only occupation the Windsors had, giving structure to a life without purpose and serving to keep them both stimulated. It was something Wallis took extremely seriously with a close attention to detail. At the dinners she kept a golden notepad at her side – the servants called it her ‘grumble book’ – to note the successes and mistakes. She was a perfectionist – even the leaves of lamb’s lettuce served at meals had to be the same size – and rather than serve one sort of bread, she would offer a choice of six. Each individual would have their own Sèvres butter pot with a porcelain-handled knife and one regular guest, the designer Jacqueline de Ribes, remembered there was ‘so much cutlery you never knew what to pick up.’14
‘The table had so much upon it that I got bewildered,’ wrote Diana Cooper of a dinner for Henry Luce, the publisher of Life and Time:
Saxe Negro slaves and monkeys and fruits falling from Nymphenburg cornucopias and flowers and candles and boxes for toothpicks and cruets of course, and matches individual and cigarettes in gold boxes and five equal-sized knives, ditto forks in white Dresden china (I had to ask which to take for what and further blotted my copybook by using my side plate as an ashtray instead of a gold dish) . . .15
There were certain rituals. Guests were asked for 8.45 with dinner punctually at 9.15. There was never soup, because Wallis claimed, ‘After all those cocktails, it’s just another drink.’16 Rather than serve cheese, she preferred camembert ice cream – camembert mixed with cream, coated in breadcrumbs and then frozen – which was served with port.
The couple employed several well-known chefs, including Lucien Massey and René Legros, who was said to be one of the four greatest chefs in the world. Beneath the chef was an assistant, two kitchen boys and a pastry cook. There was then the butler, Ernest Willemotte, assisted by Sydney Johnson, the ‘faithful Bahamian negro’, and several footmen.
Under the housekeeper were four housemaids – two just to take care of Wallis’s clothes, run her bath and iron her sheets twice daily. The Duke had a valet simply called Campbell. The two chauffeurs, Ronald Marchant and David Boyer, were in charge of the four cars – a Humber sedan, Buick sedan, a Buick estate car and a Royal blue Cadillac limousine with the Royal Crest on it, built to the Duke’s specifications and a gift from James Mooney. Wallis’s secretary, Denise Hivet, a former Air France stewardess, and the Duke’s secretary, Victor Waddilove, a former stock jobber’s clerk, brought the total to eighteen.
The annual wages came to over £125,000, but costs were controlled by several factors.17 First the Duke, with his diplomatic status, bought his drink, tobacco, many of his household goods and petrol through the British embassy and military commissary duty free. Likewise their television set, many electrical goods, and cars were not taxed.
And the Windsors paid some 20 per cent below the going rate for wages, on the grounds it was an honour to work for them and the position invariably led to more lucrative job offers elsewhere. At Christmas, however, staff were given, as required by French law, an extra month’s pay and either a wallet or cufflink with the royal cipher for men and a cashmere sweater or some nylon stockings for the women. An inducement to stay were the promises that servants would be taken care of in the couple’s wills.
Even so, the writer Charles Murphy noted ‘the turnover was high, though resignations – far less dismissal – received only the most meagre severance pay.’18 Marchant was forced to resign after over twenty years’ service because of ill health. He received no pension and was paid off with a few thousand francs. The other chauffeur, Boyer, stayed for twenty-seven years, only to be sacked with less than a week’s notice.
‘I knew many of her staff,’ remembered Letitia Baldridge, who later worked as Jacqueline Kennedy’s social secretary, ‘and she did not treat them particularly well.’19 The Hon. Sarah Morrison, the stepdaughter of the Earl of Dudley, then a teenager working in Paris as a model, had dinner with the Windsors once a week for two years and related how rude Wallis was to staff, giving the impression that she ‘thought someone was going to take advantage of her’ and how she was ‘pretty nasty to the Duke, domineering and bossy.’20 Working conditions were not easy with long hours and very precise demands. Charles Murphy remembered, ‘tongue-lashings, harsh and overt, were routine; holidays were ignored, as was overtime; nothing earned praise or seemed to give satisfaction.’21
A woman who worked for the Windsors for ten years recalled, ‘It was impossible for either of them to express gratitude. Their servants were made to feel that they were anything but indispensable – the Duke and Duchess were doing them an honour by having them around.’22
One Christmas, the Duke’s private secretary, John Utter, gave his employer ‘a small bag for carrying his golf shoes out to the course’. The Duke shifted nervously from foot to foot. ‘I’m sorry, John, but until the Mill has been sold, I’m afraid we can’t afford a present for you.’23
Yet, according to one staff member, every Christmas a party was held for staff and the royal couple:
took a great delight in the children, who although warned by their parents to be on their best behaviour, inevitably wound up racing through the rooms. Once, a boy playing with some tin soldiers accidentally knocked over the vase which was serving as his castle. It broke of course and he burst into tears. But the Duchess took his hand, helped him clean up the pieces, and spent the rest of the afternoon playing soldiers with him on the Grand staircase.’24
The Duchess kept up on all the arrivals of celebrities in Paris with a subscription to Celebrity Service. When a prominent American author was in Paris, the Duchess would not only send an invitation, but buy one of his or her books. She would then, Cleveland Amory remembered:
pick out a particularly good line, and then during the dinner when there was a total silence, she would turn to the author and say, ‘I really think your line’ – and then she would slowly quote the exact line – ‘is so wonderfully put.’ After she had done this at least one guest would always say to a companion, ‘Isn’t that just like the Duchess? She keeps up on everything.’25
Everything was focused on making themselves and their house look good. The Duchess had Édouard, from Alexandre’s, come to the house daily and comb her hair. There were then her regular hair and makeup treatments at Elizabeth Arden’s salon in the Place Vendôme, where she was treated like royalty. A bouquet of her favourite flowers was placed in a special cut-glass vase in her private treatment room. On call were her favourite coiffeurs, Claude, Roger and Manuel, who would apply the specially formulated secret dye, which she always carried with her whenever she travelled, and Madeleine the makeup expert, with a specially created foundation designed to extenuate her eyes and draw attention away from her prominent jawline.
She could be a demanding customer, complaining once when she felt she had not been ‘properly received and escorted’. The salesgirl was immediately sacked. ‘For all the special treatment she received at Arden’s, Wallis was not known as a good tipper,’ wrote one of her biographers. ‘Indeed, she was a non-tipper.’26 Instead if they were lucky, the women would receive gold and diamond pins in the shape of the Prince of Wales’s feathers and the motto Honi soit qui mal y pense, and for the men, gold cufflinks stamped with the royal crest. ‘The historical significance of these gifts was often lost on their recipients, who would have much preferred a cheque or cash.’27
* * *
In February 1947, the Duke had accepted an offer from Henry Luce, the proprietor of Time Life, to write four articles under the title ‘The Education of a Prince’, covering his career up to the First World War and ghosted by a Time Life journalist, Charles Murphy. They appeared in Life in December and were syndicated around the world with a further four running in May 1950.
Tommy Lascelles was incensed by them, but realised little could be done, writing in a memo: ‘I am sorry to say that long experience has convinced me that he has no such feelings when the interests of the Monarchy or the Royal Family conflict with what he imagines to be the interests of himself and the Duchess.’28
Encouraged by the public reception and earnings from the articles and keen to set down his own version of events, fill his time, and make some more money, in July 1948 the Duke agreed to work with Murphy on an autobiography – codenamed Operation Belvedere. The target delivery date was September 1949, but the book was to be bedevilled by delays – never particularly self-disciplined, the Duke preferred to spend his time socialising – and new sensitivities.29 For example, Churchill was nervous that his support of the Duke during the Abdication would affect his relationship with the Royal Family and asked that his private correspondence not be used and publication be delayed until after the General Election.
Murphy was later to write of the Duke that ‘his span of attention, by Murphy’s measurement, was two and a half minutes maximum; and when the story of the preceding night was plainly written in his trembling hands and bloodshot eyes . . . knew that another workday would have to be scrubbed.’30 It was not helped by Wallis’s lack of support for the enterprise, giving precedence to the couple’s social life over the looming delivery deadline. It was almost as if she resented the Duke doing something for himself and did not want him to revisit the past.
* * *
In the spring of 1949, George VI lay in bed in Buckingham Palace, following an operation to cut a nerve at the base of his spine. It was designed to counteract the arteriosclerosis from which the King now suffered, as a result of too much stress – and too many cigarettes – and there was a danger that both his legs might have to be amputated. The King’s incapacity provided an opportunity for his older brother.
‘The King is gravely ill and out of circulation and he will not be in circulation again,’ wrote Kenneth de Courcy to the Duke:
I may tell you most confidentially that a Regency has already been discussed and it seems likely enough that presently [a Regent] will be appointed. I do not think it too much to say that if the Regency should be one primarily influenced by the Mountbattens [i.e., Lord Mountbatten and Prince Philip], the consequences for the [Windsor] Dynasty might be fatal and I have no doubt from my information that the Mountbattens, thoroughly well-informed of the situation, will do everything in their power to increase their influence with the public regency, secondly with the future monarch . . . All these dangers could be averted, the whole position balanced and I believe the Dynasty heavily protected if the Duke were to return to live in England.31
The Windsors’ ambitions to settle, even temporarily, in Britain since the war had all been predicated on knowledge of George VI’s poor health and the wish to be available should the call come for the Duke to act as a caretaker regent. Such were their suspicions that Prince Philip’s uncle, Lord Mountbatten, would seek to influence the young Queen Elizabeth II, that the Windsors and de Courcy took the idea of a soft coup d’état seriously. In the event, there was no regency and any opportunity for the Duke to help shape events passed.
* * *
In August 1950, the Windsors were invited to the second wedding of Herman Rogers – Katherine had died in May 1949.32 His new bride was a widow, Lucy Wann, who had been part of his social circle. What he had not realised was that Wallis, long in love with Herman herself, still had designs on him. ‘There is no question that these women were rivals in love,’ remembered Lucy’s daughter-in-law, Kitty Blair. ‘Both wanted Herman. Wallis would have grabbed him and told the duke to go.’33 Wallis made her feelings clear, telling Lucy Wann, ‘I’ll hold you responsible if anything happens to Herman. He’s the only man I’ve ever loved.’
‘How nice for the duke,’ Lucy icily replied.34
‘Her boredom in her own marriage had become acute, and she was no longer as discreet as before when it came to hiding her feelings,’ according to one friend of the Windsors.35 Having failed to dissuade Herman from marrying Lucy, Wallis sought her revenge in other ways. The wedding present – an antique silver salver – bore the inscription: ‘To Herman Livingstone Rogers on the occasion of his marriage August 9th 1950 from Edward and Wallis.’ No mention of Lucy and the wrong date.36
On the morning of the wedding, the date of which had been brought forward to suit the Windsors, just as Lucy was setting off to the marie for the civil ceremony, Wallis had begun to tug at the collar of Lucy’s wedding dress. ‘We can’t have you looking like this today!’ She pulled and twisted the satin until it was completely shapeless. ‘There!’, she said, ‘That’s better!’37
The reception was to be held between 6 and 8 p.m., with the Windsors regarded as an equal attraction to the newly married couple. When they had not arrived by 8.15 p.m., the guests began to leave. At 8.45 p.m. the Windsors appeared, claiming they had been with their architect. ‘But Wallis, he was at our reception,’ said Lucy sweetly.38
Afterwards at dinner, Wallis monopolised Herman, suggesting they talk Chinese together. Herman, still fluent himself but knowing she spoke only three words, and not wishing to be drawn into her games, pretended he had forgotten the language. Her parting shot was to bustle the Duke into their car and drive off leaving the bride and groom to find their own way home.39
The Duke and Duchess and their relationship continued to intrigue those that met them. Diana Cooper, dining with them in October 1950, later wrote:
Wallis dreadfully over-animated and I don’t somehow think it’s drink – benzedrine rather. She repeats herself embarrassingly . . . I talked to the Duke after dinner (a particular agony) about the Bahamas. ‘It was a bit difficult for me, you see. I’d been King Emperor and there was I, a third-rate Governor.’ He says things like that so simply – no boggle, no laugh, no inverted commas.40
‘When they are together they are like two automata. They have no intimacy – they seldom talk of anything at all serious. They drift,’ noted Cecil Beaton in his diary:
Meanwhile the Prince is happy in his relationship with her. He depends on her utterly. It is a mother-mistress relationship. She looks after him like a child, & yet makes entertainment for him as she did in the days when he was the Prince coming to her home for relaxation at the end of a long day. She now gives him the antidote to hard work, but he has none of the hard work. He has nothing to do. She is nearly driven mad trying to find ways of amusing him. He has no interests. He thought he was bored at being a Royalty and he has no reason since to consider he has stopped being bored. He has no intellect. He never opens a book, & in many ways his memory has gone. Steam baths & brandy have made him very weak. The years as Prince have gone by in a flash. He has a ‘train driver’s’ memory of places he has visited, but remembers nothing of what happened in any of them.41
The years of the Wandering Windsors had begun.
1 The Colonial Office were concerned about the protocol of such visits. CO 537/2250, TNA.
2 Birmingham, p. 226.
3 Cyrus Sulzberger, A Long Row of Candles (Macdonald, 1969), p. 392.
4 Birmingham, p. 227.
5 Other guests included Osbert Lancaster, Harold Nicolson and Ben Nicolson.
6 28 May 1947, Miles Jebb (ed.), The Diaries of Cynthia Gladwyn (Constable, 1995), p. 56.
7 Duke of Windsor to Queen Mary, 15 August 1947, RA GV EE 3, quoted Ziegler, p. 529.
8 Cecil Roberts, The Pleasant Years (Hodder & Stoughton, 1974), p. 36.
9 Their yacht Sea Cloud, then the largest privately owned sea-going yacht in the world, was sold in 1955 to the President of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo. The Windsors often stayed at Post’s home Mar-a-Largo, later owned by Donald Trump.
10 Birmingham, p. 229. The son of their close friend Margaret Biddle relates the story of the Windsors being invited to dinner by the Biddles. Wallis first rang to ask the menu and then, clearly unsatisfied, asked if she could send her own chef to prepare the Biddle dinner party. Margaret Biddle replied that Wallis should indeed ask her own chef to cook for her that night – at her own home, as the invitation was withdrawn. Interview Tony Biddle, 16 April 2020.
11 See for example, ‘We had another blow about the Long Island house we wished to rent before buying.’ Duchess to Marjorie Post, 25 August 1948, Box 26, Marjorie Post papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. Amongst the houses they looked at on Long Island was one owned by Eugene de Rothschild. Bloch, Duchess, p. 186.
12 He also owned the Villa Trianon.
13 12 November 1948, John Julius Norwich (ed.), Darling Monster: The Letters of Lady Diana Cooper to Her Son John Julius Norwich 1939–1952 (Chatto & Windus, 2013), p. 333. Surmonté means ‘topped off’ and panaché means ‘given panache’.
14 Menkes, p. 28.
15 Darling Monster, pp. 379–80.
16 Menkes, p. 28.
17 £4.6 million in today’s money.
18 Bryan and Murphy, p. 493.
19 King, pp. 426–7.
20 Interview Hon. Sarah Morrison, 22 July 2020.
21 Bryan and Murphy, p. 493.
22 Ibid, p. 497.
23 Bryan and Murphy, p. 543. The Mill was a property they later owned.
24 King, p. 433.
25 Cleveland Amory, The Best Cat Ever (Little, Brown, 1993), p. 127.
26 Birmingham, p. 238.
27 Birmingham, p. 238.
28 Lascelles memo, 19 September 1947, RA KEVIII Ab. Box 3, quoted Ziegler, p. 523.
29 Duke of Windsor to Monckton, 8 December 1948, Monckton Trustees, Box 20, Folio 24, Balliol College.
30 Bryan and Murphy, p. 465.
31 Kenneth de Courcy to Duchess of Windsor, 13 May 1949, De Courcy, Box 3, folder 5, Hoover Institute.
32 Herman had been shocked that, when asked to choose a keepsake of Katherine’s, Wallis had picked not a modest personal item but two gold bracelets valued at 10,000 francs.
33 Interview February 2016, quoted Morton, Wallis in Love, p. 295.
34 Morton, Wallis in Love, p. 299.
35 Bryan and Murphy, p. 523.
36 Bryan and Murphy, p. 523.
37 Ibid, p. 523.
38 Morton, Wallis in Love, p. 299.
39 Bryan and Murphy, p. 524.
40 1 October 1950, Darling Monster, p. 430.
41 Cecil Beaton papers, quoted Vickers, p. 343.