Duke and Duchess of Windsor Part 2

His stamp










The Princess Royal Mary looks so like the Princess Royal Anne!

The duke with his pets Detto Prisie & Pookie (Detto had a bandage in its paw cause a taxi ran over him)



 

 

In these days of "The King's Speech" and its heroïfication of trifles, it is interesting to consider how the Anglocentric (royalty watching) world treats the Abdication Crisis like it was the only one of its kind and the gravest abdication crisis ever, completely overlooking the contemporary case of Lilian Baels and Leopold III just across the Channel. That was a love story that threatened the unity of the country which Britain had gone to war to protect in 1914! And part of an ongoing conflict that remains unsolved today, with the King still unable to appoint a new government 8 month's after his last one handed in their resignation!

Interesting quote I found from an interview with Wallis:

“He had a terrible problem, you see. He had been brought up by very strict parents… harsh and authoritarian. The atmosphere at Buckingham Palace was incredibly Victorian, prudish, and narrow-minded. To make it worse, David had a very sensitive soul. After reaching adulthood he quarreled bitterly with his father over everything. After getting to know David and realizing that he was a desperately shy young man, full of deeply ingrained inhibitions of the most incredible kind, it became clear he could have never been a wild libertine. In those days, people never spoke of such things. But I had been married twice and knew instinctively that he had never really fulfilled himself in a mature, adult relationship with a member of the opposite sex. I loved David for his wonderful spirit and his fine mind. In time, when he grew to know and trust me, our relationship became a totally fulfilled one. I realized eventually he was totally happy with an understanding woman for the first and only time in his life.”

An interesting quote indeed, but quite a one sided one in my opinion!  I think both David and Wallis were made that way though - it was very difficult for them to see anyone's view but their own.  Just my opinion.  Thanks for posting, Jennian.

You beat me too it Grace! I agree 100%!! I get tired of reading about his "difficult childhood" and Queen Mary was a bad mother!! ZZzzzzzz!!! Wallis neglects to mention the Dukes biggest problem: his selfishness!!

You beat me too it Grace! I agree 100%!! I get tired of reading about his "difficult childhood" and Queen Mary was a bad mother!! ZZzzzzzz!!! Wallis neglects to mention the Dukes biggest problem: his selfishness!!

I've always thought their treatment of Thelma Furness when the PoW fell in love with Wallis was contemptible and cowardly.  I guess it's always embarrassing to have to dump your long-term girlfriend but it couldn't have been done in a nastier way by those sensitive little flowers.

I would have to agree CountessKate. And not just Thelma (Who I think was beautiful!!!), but the lovely Freda Dudley Ward too. I think I am right in saying that the Duke ended it by telling his staff that her calls where no longer to be put through, and that was that, so she was basically told she was toast by the telephonist! Bit harsh, however I stand corrected if I am mistaken on this....

I don't get the impression that the Duke or Duchess where sentimentalists!! Maybe that's why I could never warm to them, & I'm  a great one for looking past other peoples failings.

I would have to agree CountessKate. And not just Thelma (Who I think was beautiful!!!), but the lovely Freda Dudley Ward too. I think I am right in saying that the Duke ended it by telling his staff that her calls where no longer to be put through, and that was that, so she was basically told she was toast by the telephonist! Bit harsh, however I stand corrected if I am mistaken on this....

I don't get the impression that the Duke or Duchess where sentimentalists!! Maybe that's why I could never warm to them, & I'm  a great one for looking past other peoples failings.

I do think they could be quote sentimental, but only about each other. He always left flowers on her pillow and after he died she kept all his things exactly as he'd left them and said "Goodnight David!" before she went to bed every night.

They may have had a bit of an "us against the world complex" which some fairly selfish couples get. You convince yourself that any cheating or lying was justified because this is your "true love" and the other person was using you. You completely forget that you had been in love with that other person once. Then any relatives or friends who dare question your relationship (even if they're genuinely concerned about you getting hurt) are cut out. But usually these things blow up horribly and end with both parties begging to go home only a few months later. I do think Wallis and Edward must have had something real to keep them together (and still defending each other) for so many years.

I would have to agree CountessKate. And not just Thelma (Who I think was beautiful!!!), but the lovely Freda Dudley Ward too. I think I am right in saying that the Duke ended it by telling his staff that her calls where no longer to be put through, and that was that, so she was basically told she was toast by the telephonist! Bit harsh, however I stand corrected if I am mistaken on this....

I don't get the impression that the Duke or Duchess where sentimentalists!! Maybe that's why I could never warm to them, & I'm  a great one for looking past other peoples failings.

I do think they could be quote sentimental, but only about each other. He always left flowers on her pillow and after he died she kept all his things exactly as he'd left them and said "Goodnight David!" before she went to bed every night.

They may have had a bit of an "us against the world complex" which some fairly selfish couples get. You convince yourself that any cheating or lying was justified because this is your "true love" and the other person was using you. You completely forget that you had been in love with that other person once. Then any relatives or friends who dare question your relationship (even if they're genuinely concerned about you getting hurt) are cut out. But usually these things blow up horribly and end with both parties begging to go home only a few months later. I do think Wallis and Edward must have had something real to keep them together (and still defending each other) for so many years.

I think that’s absolutely right – they were sentimental and emotional only about each other and saw no value in any sort of reciprocal loyalty or sentiment towards anyone else.  Their treatment of the Duke’s loyal supporter and best man Edward Dudley ‘Fruity’ Metcalfe, basically just abandoning him in Paris when they fled the Germans, was deeply unpleasant.  I don’t think harsh parents can be blamed for the fact that the Windsors treated their supporters (as I hardly think they can be said to have had friends) so callously.

Speaking of callousness:

The book, Letters from a Prince, contained letters that David wrote to his lover, Freda Dudley Ward. In them, he displayed a callous attitude towards his brother's [John's] death (and apparently that of the Czar and his family, though I haven't read the book)

Anybody who knows more about his bad Romanov attitude?

Speaking of callousness:

The book, Letters from a Prince, contained letters that David wrote to his lover, Freda Dudley Ward. In them, he displayed a callous attitude towards his brother's [John's] death (and apparently that of the Czar and his family, though I haven't read the book)

Anybody who knows more about his bad Romanov attitude?

Actually, according to the letters, he took a fairly conventional view of the Romanovs.  "How tragic the wretched Czar being shot.  What brutes the Bolshevists are & I don't believe a word about the conspiracy [presumably the excuse used for the excecution that Nicholas was plotting to overthrow the Russian government]; he was a charming man, though of course hopelessly weak!!"  His annoyance was at the court mourning, of which he wrote "I'm very sorry for the poor man & he was charming, but I do think it rather far-fetched, particularly when one thinks of the way Russia (either as an empire or republic) has carted us, & the French, & the Yanks, who have had such a ghastly 4 months on the Western Front, as a consequence of it all!!  But you can well imagine how much 'entre nous' this all is......"

As you can tell, I am not a fan of the Prince, but he seems to be expressing the sort of views one might expect from the ordinary British public at the time, which in fact was the reason why George V felt obliged to deny Nicholas asylum in Britain.  I think it unlikely Edward knew about his father’s part in this, and indeed his views on the origins of the War were pretty crude, but no more so than those of many others of the period, and he was clear that Nicholas was personally not responsible for his plight.

Thank you for looking that up for me! We are often told that royals have all those photographs of all their foreign cousins on their desks because they lead so isolated lifes, so it's interesting that Edward didn't write about them as a family of cousins (first degree once removed and second degree) being murdered, but rather some foreign collegue, like you'd expect QEII to write about "awful how the people have turned against the King of Bahrain. Was such a pleasant fellow when we met up, but utterly reactionary, of course."

Thank you for looking that up for me! We are often told that royals have all those photographs of all their foreign cousins on their desks because they lead so isolated lifes, so it's interesting that Edward didn't write about them as a family of cousins (first degree once removed and second degree) being murdered, but rather some foreign collegue, like you'd expect QEII to write about "awful how the people have turned against the King of Bahrain. Was such a pleasant fellow when we met up, but utterly reactionary, of course."

I don't think he thought about them as family in any really meaningful sense - he would have seen very little of them, and although the elder girls were his contemporaries, they didn't seem at all his type, even as friends - and the gaps between royal families seemed to have widened considerably since his father's generation, there wasn't any central house in which the cousinage all met from time to time such as Rumpenheim or Fredensborg.