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16

The Windsors / Re: King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson (Duke and Duchess of Windsor)

« on: September 19, 2011, 02:36:29 PM »

I think even the letters.  She knew full well that they would eventually come out, even post mortem, considering who was having a relationship with.
 And looking at the mode of the times, they would be adoring and flowery in language.  What else could she say "Get the .... out of my life, you have made me miserable, but keep sending the gems" ?

You really really don't like her, do you? She actually asked for most of her letters to be burned and they're full of bitchy remarks. She wasn't expecting them to be widely read. I really have trouble believing anyone, aside from a sociopath or someone with other deep problems, could live a lie for that long. I can think of a lot of celebrity marriages that would have lasted longer if it was.

17

The Windsors / Re: King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson (Duke and Duchess of Windsor)

« on: September 19, 2011, 02:06:25 PM »

I amn with Lady Cathy  here. Of course the letters and interviews were PR work. If she had said anything negative, she would have been roasted by the press.
 The days of full frontal, tell all interviews were yet to come. Even now, they are rare and ususally self-serving.

The interview maybe, but the letters? Those were private. Unless her whole life turned into a big lie (and that kind of deception is usually impossible unless you're a sociopath) there's probably some truth there.

18

The Windsors / Re: King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson (Duke and Duchess of Windsor)

« on: September 18, 2011, 10:13:04 PM »

Bits from Wallis's letters to David:

I hate, hate having you go away alone-but you are not really alone because I am so much a part of you. Maybe one telephone call or even two just to hear your beloved voice… Darling I shall miss you each second and you know I love you more than anything in the world for always my dearest darling David.

I love you more than ever my sweetheart. So much trouble WE have had together but it only makes my love grow stronger for you my dear. Please take care of yourself.

I couldn’t bear hearing you cry-you who have been through so much and are so brave. My baby it is because I long to be with you so intensely everything becomes so magnified. Darling I love you. Come to me soon.

Darling-I want to leave here I want to see you touch you I want to run my own house I want to be married and to you.

As much as I like your dear warm letter I would rather Storrier had brought me you and ooh. It made me so sad to be on the yacht once again and to see the rocks where we spent such a happy afternoon on the Rosaura. I think so much of all the beautiful times we have had together only I can’t bear to think of the Fort. I cry so hard especially with the vivid picture of you peeping out to see what sort of day it was.

Right after he became King:

I am sad because I miss you and being near and yet so far seems most unfair. Some day of course I must learn to be always alone for I will be in my heart… One can be awfully alone in crowds-but also perhaps both of us will cease to want what is hardest to have and be content in the simple way. And now I hear your machine which generally was a joyous sound because soon you would be holding me and I would be looking up into your eyes. God bless you and above all make you strong where you have been weak.


Quote about their relationship from an interview Wallis gave late in life:
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.

19

The Windsors / Re: King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson (Duke and Duchess of Windsor)

« on: September 16, 2011, 05:38:35 PM »

See I think that the Duchess remained loyal because she had no where else to turn.  If she had left David after he abdicated or even after the wedding, she would have been "black listed" in every county in the world.  Her reputation as an adventuress would have been secure.  She was between a rock and hard place and didn't have any way out.

So whether or not the marriage worked or did not work, she had to make it look like it did for her own social standing.  And I think that her social standing meant everything to her.  That a the cushy lifestyle that she had made her objective in life.

I don't buy that at all. Wallis was certainly much better off with David than without him, but she wouldn't have been blacklisted. She might not have been A-list, but people would certainly have been interested in her. I think her situation might've been comparable to Fergie after her most recent scandals. Of course I legitimately believe Wallis wanted to be with David. I don't buy for a second she was capable of maintaining a fake relationship for thirty-five years. I don't even think that kind of deception is possible. If it was there are quite a few celebrity marriages that would've lasted longer.

I don't buy that blacklisted excuse either. If Wallis did stay with Edward out of loyalty to him then I think it shows a good character trait of hers, which is something most people want to believe Wallis did not have. I have come to believe that she did not want to marry him and would have been happy to stay with her second husband; but with all the he11 Edward had caused, even if she did not want to be his wife, I tend to think she stayed with him out of loyalty and not to embarrass him after all he had done to be with her. Perhaps both Wallis and Edward came to their marriage with a lot of baggage; she didn't want to be his wife, and he possibly used her so he wouldn't have to be king.

If you read her letters to him it looks like she loved him. It didn't consume her the way she consumed him, but it was certainly there. She missed him terribly when they were apart.

20

The Windsors / Re: King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson (Duke and Duchess of Windsor)

« on: September 15, 2011, 10:54:34 PM »

See I think that the Duchess remained loyal because she had no where else to turn.  If she had left David after he abdicated or even after the wedding, she would have been "black listed" in every county in the world.  Her reputation as an adventuress would have been secure.  She was between a rock and hard place and didn't have any way out.

So whether or not the marriage worked or did not work, she had to make it look like it did for her own social standing.  And I think that her social standing meant everything to her.  That a the cushy lifestyle that she had made her objective in life.

I don't buy that at all. Wallis was certainly much better off with David than without him, but she wouldn't have been blacklisted. She might not have been A-list, but people would certainly have been interested in her. I think her situation might've been comparable to Fergie after her most recent scandals. Of course I legitimately believe Wallis wanted to be with David. I don't buy for a second she was capable of maintaining a fake relationship for thirty-five years. I don't even think that kind of deception is possible. If it was there are quite a few celebrity marriages that would've lasted longer.

21

The Windsors / Re: King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson (Duke and Duchess of Windsor)

« on: September 15, 2011, 09:45:10 AM »

Come on, y'all. The Windsors were living the dream, like the Kardashians. Famous for nothing, and richer than most people will every hope to be.

22

The Windsors / Re: King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson (Duke and Duchess of Windsor)

« on: September 09, 2011, 08:25:43 AM »

Given that Wallis Simpson was significant only because Edward VIII insisted on marrying her, it is hardly surprising that the wedding picture (unflattering or not) appears in print so frequently.

To me, she looks haughty in most of her pictures, and I instantly think of the tale that she had so many facelifts that she couldn't open or close her mouth properly.

Ann

But there were dozens of wedding photos; in some of them Wallis looks much better. There's one picture in particular that was taking by some newpaper photographer where Wallis looks really awful and that's the one you see everywhere.



I think there were a couple others taken from a similar angle that also show up a lot.

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The Windsors / Re: King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson (Duke and Duchess of Windsor)

« on: September 08, 2011, 04:38:46 PM »

Really in most photos Wallis was smiling and looking vey relaxed. But the media tended to jump on the pictures where she had an angry look on her face because it better fit the story they wanted to tell. They do it with everyone. Of course, the pro-Wallis articles did the opposite, but you don't see those photos as much because that view has fallen out of favor. I'm sure if you dig you'll find pictures of Elizabeth looking angry and bitter as well. They also made a point to find unflattering pictures; one of the few widely published photos of Wallis where she does look genuinely relaxed and happy is that awful wedding photo where she's laughing and her face is all scrunched up and her nose looks like a blob. That's one of the worst photos taken of her, but it's one of the ones you find first when you look her up. Well, that and the one from when she met Hitler.

Neither Wallis or Elizabeth got exactly what they wanted, but in the long run they were both probably better off for it.

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The Windsors / Re: King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson (Duke and Duchess of Windsor)

« on: September 07, 2011, 02:35:33 PM »

I've never really gotten them impression Wallis was really trapped. It's ridiculous to imply that one suicide threat (assuming it actually happened; this story doesn't come from Wallis herself) could keep someone in a relationship they didn't want for years. Wallis didn't want David to abdicate, but after he did I think there was nothing she wanted more than to marry him and spend the rest of her life with him and had something come along to prevent that from happening she would have been furious. Even if we take the "it would've looked bad" out of the equation; let's assume he left her and not the other way around. Her life would've been terrible without him. A lot of her friends jumped ship after the abdication, she didn't have a job, her parents were dead and she was an only child. Her reputation was ruined. If David hadn't married her Wallis would've found herself in the position of a Rielle Hunter type, or Fergie after Andrew. Nobody wants that. She needed him as much as he needed her both emotionally and financially. You could argue that that was his fault and he put her in that position, but Wallis didn't seem to see it that way. She made a sport of blaming everyone but David, from Queen Mary to Stanley Baldwin to some kind of large shadowy conspiracy. She constantly whined about David being mistreated, not David mistreating her.

I've always gotten the impression Wallis thought she should have left, not that she ever really wanted to leave. I mean, she left Slipper with David. If she had really planned on never seeing him again she wouldn't have done that. Furthermore, when it was put to her that she should flee Europe to prevent David from abdicating, her reaction was to call him and talk it over with him. If you're really desperate to leave the country and never see someone again that's usually a situation where leaving a note works better. I think that Wallis was willing to leave if she thought it was necessary and on some level she thought it was the right thing to do. But I don't think she really wanted to do it. I really do believe Wallis loved David and wanted to be with him, but even if she didn't she at least liked him and knew her prospects were much better with him in her life than without him. I think the absolute worst case scenario for Wallis was ending up alone.

25

The Windsors / Re: King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson (Duke and Duchess of Windsor)

« on: August 30, 2011, 06:54:00 PM »

I don't think Wallis had the capacity to love.  (Maybe this was due to her abusive 1st marriage.)  To me she always looked rather brittle and hard and this was several years before the abdication crisis and after.  She was stuck with an emotionally stunted man-child and she just didn't have the capacity to give him the love and care he needed.  Honestly, I think she showed more love to her dogs than she did to him,  When they got on in years it seemed she had the attitude of "I'm bored, amuse me!"  Even in some of the newsreel clips I have seen of them, when he would touch her hand she looked grimacing.  Really, I pity them both.

I've seen most of the interviews and footage of them and I've never gotten that impression. She wasn't all over him, but usually she looked very happy and comfortable with him. It's also worth noting whenever they did big public shows of affection they were criticized for seeking attention. If she had been constantly kissing him and touching him people would have said she was being inappropiate and only doing it for attention. Yet if she didn't constantly act like she was madly in love it must mean she didn't love him at all. I feel like people have read way too much into things trying to prove their marriage was unhappy. Like the tabloids would claim they were getting divorced if they were ever apart for even a few days. If you read her memoirs Wallis mentions she was never really comfortable being the center of attention and tended to get nervous in front of people.

The Windsors were constantly together. Wallis rarely left the house without David, and when she did it was often because he didn't feel like going clubbing or shoe shopping or whatever. They had two houses yet always stayed together. There were never any affairs, or at least not any that caused a major rift. I've read all their letters from when they were married and not once is there any trace of conflict or unhappiness in the relationship. For the life of me I will never understand this obsession with the idea that they were so unhappy.

26

The Windsors / Re: King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson (Duke and Duchess of Windsor)

« on: August 30, 2011, 04:22:14 PM »

I think the Queen Mum was genuinely surprised Wallis and David stayed together. Perhaps she thought she misjudged them a bit and that's why she softened to Wallis. I've always gotten the impression Bertie and Elizabeth disliked Wallis so much partly because they felt she didn't love David and was using him. They thought after he abdicated she would eventually leave him; that's one of the reasons she was denied the HRH. She had been divorced twice, why not a third time? If you read the letters Bertie and Elizabeth wrote David at the time of the abdication you can see they really did care about him and what he was feeling. They didn't mention it to him, but in letters to friends and relatives Elizabeth said she was convinced David would end up being very hurt by Wallis and regretting giving up the throne for her.

I don't feel bad for Wallis except when it came to the end of her life. No one deserves that. When it came to the scandal, it was not the first media sensation. Wallis was a fan of Charlie Chaplin who had had some scandals over his love life so surely she was aware of that. When you get involved with someone really famous it will eventually get out. David had had some privacy with previous girlfriends in Britain, but not with American tabloids, though they frequently got things wrong. Wallis would have had to have been pretty damn naive to think there would never ba a scandal if she kept things up with David. I've also always believed the scandal bothered her more than the abdication. She didn't want David to abdicate that's true, but if you read the letter she wrote him when she asked him notto abdicate the main fears and doubts she expresses are in regards to how things will look and how the media is treating her. She constantly complains about the way the press is treating her and the reporters following her around. She also got death threats and someone threw a brick at her house. If David had been king of some tiny little kingdom in Eastern Europe that no one cared about and the abdication and marriage had happened with little comment I think Wallis would have been much less upset.

I believe that Wallis did love David and wanted to be with him, if not marry him. If she didn't I would certainly not have any sympathy for her being "trapped" into marriage with him. If she didn't love him that means she lied for years about loving him. That means she was willing to divorce her husband to marry him just because she wanted a title. And she did want that divorce, whatever anyone says. She wrote her Aunt Bessie saying so and she had a lot less motive to lie to her than to Ernest. If you lie to someone to exploit them into giving you things and then they assume you actually love them that's not their fault. While it may have been hard for her to get out by late 1936 she had plenty of a chance to break up with him if she didn't love him before things got so serious. If she didn't love him she shouldn't have acted like she did and she shouldn't have told him she did. If she wanted to stay with Ernest so bad she shouldn't have filed for divorce. Furthermore if she was so unhappy and miserable with David she shouldn't have stayed with him for so long. Sure, it would have looked bad, but a lot of people already hated her and didn't think the marriage would last anyways. No one was forcing her to stay. No one forced her to get involved with David in the first place. No one forced her to divorce Ernest. If she was so misrable it was because she made her own bed and had to lie in it.

But it doesn't really matter, because I do think she loved David and I don't think she was ever really miserable with him. There was conflict in their marriage just like every marriage and I'm sure there were things about him she didn't like, but the same could be said for anyone in a long-term relationship. I think this idea the Windsor marriage was so awful comes from wishful thinking on the part of people who don't think they deserved to be happy. Sort of like those rumors that occasionally turn up about Charles and Camilla getting divorced. None of this comes from Wallis and David themselves; they always maintained they were happy. Of course they weren't always happy and I'm sure both of them had regrets they prefered not to talk about, but it's a pretty far stretch to suggest that means they were miserable and Wallis never loved David. Both among people who like them and people who hate them there seems to be this strong aversion to even suggesting that they might have just had an ordinary relationship that tuned into a perfectly normal marriage just like anyone else's.
It was either they had the most perfect love story ever or they were absolutely miserable.

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The Windsors / Re: King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson (Duke and Duchess of Windsor)

« on: August 17, 2011, 03:40:44 PM »

None of those letters are particularly romantic, and she never writes that she doesn't love Edward or anything about being trapped into marrying him. If she did that would be the part quoted in the articles. It's all just speculation on the part of this Anne Sebba woman  (who also believes Wallis wasn't completely female) and she took bits and pieces from letters to back it up.

If there was anything really lurid or even surprising in those letters it would have gotten out long before now.

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The Windsors / Re: Books on British royalty (non-Tudor)

« on: April 13, 2011, 09:22:39 PM »

Hate to thread bump, but I just got this book in the mail today. Anyone else reading it? Opinions?

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The Windsors / Re: Duke and Duchess of Windsor Part 2

« on: March 15, 2011, 04:28:48 PM »

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.

30

The Windsors / Re: Duke and Duchess of Windsor Part 2

« on: March 03, 2011, 04:59:58 PM »

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.”