Countdown to War
In October 1938, the lease having expired at Château de La Maye, the Windsors took on a ten-year lease of a mansion close to the Bois de Boulogne and the Saint-Cloud Golf Club. No. 24 Boulevard Suchet, in the 16th arrondissement, was a four-storey town house on a small corner lot, overlooking a paved square and surrounded by a tall iron fence and thick hedges. The imposing front door led into a pillared entrance hall with a black-and-white Carrara-marble floor and white columns, from which led several rooms used by the secretaries and detectives. At each corner of the hall in a mirrored recess stood a tall white caryatid, bearing on her head a crown of candles.
There was a small lift to their apartments on the left and on the right a curved white marble staircase with green carpet led to four interlocking reception rooms built round a big central landing – a formal drawing room, small salon, dining room, and a lounge known as the banquette room.
There were sixteen servants including: James Hale, the English butler who had previously worked for Charles Bedaux and who was known as ‘the butler with the golden voice’; a French chef, Monsieur Dyot, previously chef to the Duke of Alba; an Austrian valet, Rudolf Kopp, and chauffeur, Karl Schafranek; French and English footmen; two English housemaids; and for Wallis, an English chauffeur, Tony Webster, and a Swiss lady’s maid.1
Protection remained a big issue, with several British and French police officers always with them, even when the Duke played golf. When the couple lunched or dined in restaurants or with friends, or they paid visits to couturiers, milliners, jewellers or antique shops, an officer always waited outside and a Gendarme always stood guard at the front door of their home.
The new house became their project, a way of demonstrating their love for each other. ‘Tirelessly she searched for exactly the right furniture, rugs, materials, lamps and bibelots. She came to know intimately every antique shop, large and small, in Paris,’ recollected Dina Hood. ‘Everything that concerned the house was of absorbing interest to the Duchess. Besides the furniture and bibelots, she collected fine porcelain, glassware, silver and linen.’2 She thought nothing of paying £8,000 for a single Meissen figure or £30,000 for a pair of canary diamonds – generally bought with cash to avoid tax.3
The couple ate little during the day, the Duke preferring to spend the lunch hour on the golf course, knowing that few Frenchmen would venture out at such a time. Instead, Hood remembered, he might have a light brunch, which ‘consisted of stewed fruit or open fruit tart served with cream, accompanied by digestive biscuits and weak tea. He was very fond of fruit tarts, especially of Apfelstrudel, which he had learnt to know in Austria.’4
Their focus was on the evening, giving two dinner parties each week and out most other nights. ‘Never in my life have I worked so hard,’ remembered the butler James Hale, who worked at both La Croë and Boulevard Suchet:
The Duchess, I soon discovered, graded the villa, not so much as a home, but as the stage on which to present an unending show of hospitality and entertainment. She was the producer; I was her stage manager. On my arrival . . . I found house telephones not only in the butler’s pantry, not only in my bedroom – but in my bathroom and lavatory as well. It was clear that when the Duchess insisted on instant communication with the staff at all times, she meant, at all times.5
They were demanding and not always popular employers. ‘A dropped plate, a careless intrusion, or a slip in attentiveness could be counted upon to bring a swift dressing down, followed often by peremptory sacking,’ remembered Charles Murphy, who worked for the Windsors. ‘The hours were long, praise was scanty. It is doubtful that any household staff in all Paris was driven as hard as the one that served the Windsors.’6
Each morning Wallis discussed the menus for the day with the chef. ‘She examined these minutely, sometimes approving, sometimes altering or adding to his suggestions,’ Hood remembered.7 She continued:
Into every branch of expenditure she enquired exhaustively. Household accounts were kept with scrupulous exactness in accordance with the cash book and ledger system into which Mr Carter had initiated me that day at Buckingham Palace. In the ledger, payments were grouped under various headings which were sub-divided in such minute detail that a close watch could be kept on every kind of disbursement.8
With little else to occupy them, the devil was in the detail. ‘They decided the exact shade and size of their personal notepaper and how it should be engraved,’ Hood later wrote. ‘The same for their menu cards. Their luggage labels were printed according to their own instructions. Together they chose the designs and colourings of their Christmas cards.’9
* * *
In October 1938, Valentine Lawford, a young diplomat at the Paris Embassy, wrote to his mother: ‘Last night I had quite a historic time, as I was asked to a musical evening at Elsie Mendl’s, and found on my arrival (with the dessert) the men of the party sitting around the table being held forth to by the Duke of Windsor.’ He continued:
HRH was in a marvellous mood and made me come and sit beside him and tell him every detail of my (rather humdrum) life . . . After we moved out of the dining room, he told me to come and sit by him on a sofa in a corner of one of the rooms, and there we sat for half-an-hour, while he held forth on politics and pumped me all that time about what the younger generation thought about everything. He’s very Nazi in his ideas and seems to have a horror of Bolshevism . . . he was quite charming to talk to and obviously means well, though I think he’s very wrong-headed and prejudiced, for all his experience. Of course he wanted to know what the FO thought about Chamberlain’s foreign policy (of which he entirely approves) . . . Please, keep the Windsor dope to yourselves. People talk so much that it might get back to HRH that a certain 3rd Secretary had said he was a ‘Nazi’, etc.10
Lawford, then in his late twenties, became a regular part of the Windsors’ and Mendls’ entourage. On 1 February 1939, he described a film viewing that included Somerset Maugham’s wife Syrie amongst the guests. ‘It was amusing to see HRH watching his great-grandparents gambolling about at Balmoral, and he seemed to enjoy it . . . We went back after, to supper at Elsie’s, where the Duke spoke fluent Spanish and became quite jolly . . .’11
The next night he dined with them:
The Windsors were very kind and nice and jolly the other night and I had quite a heart-to-heart talk with the Duchess. We dined at Maxim’s, where we were joined by Alexandra Metcalfe and the Sacheverell Sitwells . . . The Duke found that the orchestra got in the way of his talking – and he talks a great deal – so we left Maxim’s and drove back to their house on the Boulevard Suchet. Incidentally, his French is appalling: he calls it the Bwaa de Boolone. The house is so far only half furnished; but it looks as if it would eventually be extremely pleasant: high rooms with tall windows and, of course, beautiful furniture.
His bedroom is also Empire, darkish red and gold; and he has a passion for little helmets. His chairs have helmets at both corners of the back; and his bedside-clock is enclosed in a helmet of metal and mother-of-pearl . . . His bed – on which were laid out the royal pyjamas and dressing-gown – is also Empire, dark red . . . The Duchess has a bedroom of very dark blue, and white . . . I can’t help feeling that he is sadly wasted . . . But the Duchess said they were in no hurry to go back to England if they weren’t wanted . . . I am dining on Saturday at the Ritz with [Lady] Bertha Michelham, when the Windsors will be her guests of honour. I don’t seem to be able to get out of their orbit; but I must admit that I honestly enjoy being with them both. HRH is astonishingly plain-spoken, simple and straightforward; and she is marvellously good company.’12
In the spring of 1939, the Duke’s blackmailer again popped up, writing to him from the Ritz Hotel:
Davy dear, Last month mother gave me the documents concerning my birth. These documents are now in safety with those concerning my relations with you. They can be produced at your request. Neither has consented to give us the chance to solve our problem by ourselves – thus until the middle of May I shall then rely entirely on her . . . I shall ask a solicitor to manage an interview between you and I or with your entourage, unless you should prefer to give me an answer either by letter or by telephone . . . Alexandra.13
‘I know Walter Monckton has commiserated with you regarding the files of the woman named Moroni (sic), and I enclose one of two supplicate letters she has written under the signature “Alexandra” from the Ritz Hotel in Paris,’ wrote the Duke to his solicitor George Allen a few days later:
You will remember that she was expelled from France about a year ago and this is the first notification that I and even the French police have had of her return to France. I had our detective, Attfield, communicate with Monsieur Perrier of the Sûreté Nationale, informing him of Moroni’s (sic)presence in Paris, and he has reported to me this evening that he understands that the woman is getting one month’s imprisonment for entering the country while being the subject of an expulsion order and will then be deported again.14
There was to be a further embarrassment the following month with perceptions of the Duke upstaging his brother and interfering in politics. ‘I see on the news bulletin today that David is going to broadcast to America this evening,’ wrote Queen Elizabeth to Queen Mary. ‘. . . how troublesome of him to choose such a moment.’15 At the invitation of a friend, Fred Bate of NBC, the Duke had agreed to make an appeal for peace from Verdun, in the belief only American intervention could prevent war. Attempts by friends, such as Lord Beaverbrook, not to go ahead were ignored:
For two and a half years I have deliberately kept out of public affairs and I still propose to do so. I speak for no one but myself, without the previous knowledge of any government. I speak simply as a soldier of the last war, whose most earnest prayer is that such a cruel and destructive madness shall never again overtake mankind.16
It was unfortunate timing, as the King and Queen had just left on a goodwill tour to the United States, where there were strong isolationist sentiments, and Canada, whose unity was threatened by the French Canadian separatist movement and the Abdication.
The BBC refused to broadcast the talk, but it made a huge impact in America, with a copy of the text inserted into the proceedings of Congress, and the Duke received hundreds of letters of support from amongst others Marie Stopes, John Foster Dulles and Lord Alfred Douglas; although his position was slightly undermined when it was revealed he had dined earlier that week with Count Johannes von Welczeck, the German ambassador to France and a longstanding friend.17 At the very least, it was seen as yet another attempt to upstage his younger brother.
‘What a fool he is and how badly advised; and everyone is furious he should have done it just after you left,’ wrote the Duke of Kent to George VI. ‘If he had mentioned you in it, it wouldn’t have been so bad, and why he broadcast such a peace talk only to America, when they have no intention of fighting, I don’t know.’18
As international tensions increased and war became more likely, the Windsors retreated to La Croë, where their first house guest was Philip Guedalla with proofs of his book on the Abdication, on which the Duke had assisted. This was to be one of several books in which the Duke attempted to control the narrative of his life – an attempt in November 1938 for Robert Bruce Lockhart to ghost a book or articles for Beaverbrook had come to nothing, whilst legal action had been taken against Geoffrey Dennis’s Coronation Commentary for suggesting the Windsors had slept together before marriage.19
Amongst the guests that summer were Noël Coward, Somerset Maugham, Lords Beaverbrook and Rothermere, Maurice Chevalier, and a party of a dozen Highland pipers and dancers, who were invited to give a display led by the Duke in his full Highland kit.
The Duke still felt that war could be averted and on 27 August he sent a personal telegram to Hitler: ‘Remembering your courtesy and our meeting two years ago, I address to you my entirely personal, simple though very earnest appeal for your utmost influence towards a peaceful solution of the present problems.’20
Six days later, Hitler replied: ‘Assure you that attitude towards England remains the same and my wish to avoid a new war between our two countries remains. It depends however on England whether relations between the Germans and English can find the correct channel.’21
Throughout August, amidst concerns they might be kidnapped, Walter Monckton liaised with Sir Horace Wilson about arrangements for the couple’s return to Britain, which included sending a plane to bring them back. On 2 September, Fruity Metcalfe, who had spent the summer at La Croë with his wife and son David – who was the Duke’s godson – arranged for the Windsors’ staff to take the train to Paris.
The same day Monckton reported to Alec Hardinge and Horace Wilson, after speaking to the Duke on the phone:
He then said that unless his brother was ready to have him and his wife to one of their houses they would not return to England . . . Great pity the difficult arrangements on which we have all worked so hard should have broken down. They will be difficult to rearrange when all are desperately busy on war preparations. In my case I had given up chance of seeing my son today before he leaves.22
The next day, war was declared. The Duke’s reaction, on learning the news from a call from the British Embassy in Paris, was to remark to his wife, ‘Great Britain has just declared war on Germany. I’m afraid in the end, this may open the way for world communism.’23 He then returned to the swimming pool and dived in.
1 On Wallis’s Buick, the initials WWS for Wallis Warfield Simpson were etched in small plain gold letters in a tiny diamond-shaped frame on one of the doors.
2 Hood, Working for the Windsors, p. 41.
3 The equivalent of £550K and just over £2 million.
4 Hood, p. 41.
5 Sunday People, 29 April 1973, quoted Martin, p. 361.
6 Bryan and Murphy, p. 394.
7 Hood, p. 105.
8 Hood, p. 106.
9 Hood, p. 119.
10 Lawford to his mother, 17 October 1938, courtesy of Charles Tilbury.
11 Lawford to his mother, 1 February 1939, courtesy of Charles Tilbury.
12 Lawford to mother, 6 February 1939, courtesy of Charles Tilbury.
13 12 April 1939, Monckton Trustees, Box 17, Balliol College.
14 15 April 1939, Monckton Trustees, Box 17, Folio 64, Balliol College.
15 RA QM/PRIV/CC12/93, quoted William Shawcross, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (Macmillan, 2009), p. 453.
16 New York Times, 9 May 1939.
17 Martin, p. 364; Morton Wallis in Love, p. 262, suggests the date was 22 June 1939.
18 RA GVI 342, 6 May 1939, quoted Ziegler, p. 399.
19 21 November 1938, Bruce Lockhart, Vol. 1, p. 410. It was true, but the Duke still won his case.
20 Monckton Trustees, Box 17, Folio 93, Balliol College.
21 Ibid.
22 Monckton Trustees, Box 17, Folios 116–17, Balliol College.
23 Heart, p. 330.