King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson (Duke and Duchess of Windsor)

[Eric_Lowe]

Well you brought it up Robert. I will be happy to keep the lid on again. I think "class" is pretty relative in comparison. Princess Mary once said of her sister-in-law Elizabeth about her "cheap smiles" to gain popularity. It was true though that the Queen Mum's appearance had a kind of theater in the way she conducts herself and gaining popularity as "The Smiling Duchess", and to one born to the royalty (Princess Mary, The Princess Royal) it would have seemed low class indeed. The same situation arose when Princess Anne felt about Princess Diana. 

[Robert_Hall]

I did say, Eric, that I was sorry to have brought it up. So, let's agree to  "put a lid on it".
 I like your comment  regarding the QM, but do not know what you mean about the Princess Royal and Dianna. Different topic altogether, but I understand they did not particularly like each other.

[Alixz]

I know that the "lid should stay on" but I have a feeling that I read somewhere that Wallis had her tubes tied (in the way that women did back then) and that was why there were no children.

I know that they had separate bedrooms, but then that was common in their strata of society.

I also heard that David had some physical problems of his own that would have made intercourse unlikely.

But I have been saying nothing about this for a long thread and now I shall stop again.

[LadyTudorRose]

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.

[LadyCathy]

I am sorry but I just don't buy it.  What was she going to say?  When someone gives an interview they are usually on their best behavior.   Could she talk about the way she demeaned him in public and found fault with him at dinner parties?  Could she discuss her relationship with Jimmy Donahue and who knows who else she may have been involved with?  There is a famous news clip of her joining him on a ship.  He is kissing her and she is pulling away. As far as him not being a "wild libertine" he was constantly seducing women when he went on tour.  There was one instance when he refused to go to his father's sick bed because he was too interested in "making it" with someone's wife at a party.  Please, give me a break.  When she says "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 believe her.  He, according to the many women he had affairs with was certainly unable to "fulfill" them.  He was incapable of having any kind of mature, adult relationship with a woman because besides his sexual and endocrine problems, he was not a mature adult male psychologically.  However, I do believe that he was such a disturbed individual that he really could not live without her.  He could not stand to have her out of his sight.  Queen Mary, who was neither a fool nor a prude, described his love for Mrs. Simpson as "unnatural."  She was right!

[Robert_Hall]

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.

[LadyTudorRose]

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.

[Robert_Hall]

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" ?

[LadyTudorRose]

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.

[Robert_Hall]

Jeniann, I am not fond of the woman, that is fairly obvious, but I do not in reality despise her. Actually as I have said before, IMO she did the UK a favour by ridding them of an inept king.
  I guess I  put her in the same  class as Lupescu  Wallis was indeed devoted [to her meal ticket] but not so much as David,who was besotted with her.

[Alixz]

Again, everyone is forgetting the times and who these people were.

Robert is right when he says that the time of "the full Monty" and in depth interviews were yet to come.  Doesn't everyone even remember the furor caused by Diana, Princess of Wale when she went on TV to "tell all" about her relationship with Charles and others?  That was in the 1990s.

Royals are different from us and from movie stars.  Many a royal has survived a bad marriage in order to keep face and to keep the money coming in.

Because we have survived Diana and Fergie and their bad manners and bad marriages some forget that, even though it has always gone on, others have just lived with it.  And yes that would be for years and years.

Divorce was a scandal up until the 1960s and remember that even Wallis's uncle said that if she left Win Spencer that he would not support her or receive her.  It would bring too much shame on the family if she left Spencer.  It didn't matter that he was an abusive husband, that was not relevant in the 1920s and 1930s.  What was relevant was keeping up appearances and one did so no matter what the cost.

[Robert_Hall]

So true, Alixz.  There are plenty of examples of  abusive marriages lasting for years, as well as rampant infidelity. One of the Romanov couples come to mind, but can't recall at the moment. I recall when neighbours were having a row and the kids, my school mates, were sent to our house  so they would  not "know" what was going on with their parents.
 Nonsense, kids take these things in very sharply. One of my cousins committed suicide after hearing her parents  fight. She was barely 11 at the time.
 However, I in now way suggesting Wallis was abused. If anything, it was exactly the opposite, but the point is, women put up with a lot to make a marriage last  in those days. Now, I think, people can get a  "quickie"  no fault divorcee almost like a car wash.  Many celebrities have gone years together,  without actually living together, going their separate ways. So this would be nothing new.  She was  David's pride & joy, even if few others saw it for one reason or another.
  What I also find common in her with other women of their day [and now even] was her  affinity for gay male company. Jimmy Donahue was  the most notorious, but, again, he paid the way. Others  were used as well,  either for simple dinner companions or party participants. They were no threat to David and Wallis loved the witty, bitchy, banter. I doubt David provided much of that for her. He was rather unimaginative, it seems.
 And, her letters. Well, if she truly wanted them destroyed, she would have seen to it personally. By the time it came to that, however,  Maitre Blum was in charge. She had no control over what came out.
 Must have been a humiliating  comedown for her, after being in charge herself for all those years.
  P.S.  I know I am accused off bringing up the gay context in many of these discussions.  So be it,  call me the John Barrowman of the Forum.   However, I feel their role should be acknowledged when appropriate, especial in  in the context of history. There is a lot out there, and too much has been  either ignored or hidden. And, as I said, kids can be very perceptive.

[Martyn]

I'm sure that probably someone has already talked about Channel 4's recent documentary 'Wallis Simpson: The Secret Letters', the core hypothesis of which was that Wallis was trapped between a rock and hard place, and that her real love was always Ernest.  It also suggested that Ernest and Wallis were both chancers who enjoyed the kudos and benefits of her being maitresse-en-titre, but that both balked when the takes got high and David got serious, that it was Ernest who upset the applecart with his affair with Mary Kirk......

That there was an element of sadomasochism in WE's relationship, certainly on a psychological level, is a very interesting notion.  The programme suggested that the worse that she treated him, the greater his need for her, almost in direct proportion.

John Julius Norwich, whose parents Duff and Diana Cooper were contemporaries of the Windsors offered some very interesting insights with his experiences of being around them, not the least of which was his revelation that when he met Wallis and David in later life, he actually found her to be an exceptionally good hostess and good company, whilst David was simply a dull bore.

[LadyTudorRose]

I'm sure that probably someone has already talked about Channel 4's recent documentary 'Wallis Simpson: The Secret Letters', the core hypothesis of which was that Wallis was trapped between a rock and hard place, and that her real love was always Ernest.  It also suggested that Ernest and Wallis were both chancers who enjoyed the kudos and benefits of her being maitresse-en-titre, but that both balked when the takes got high and David got serious, that it was Ernest who upset the applecart with his affair with Mary Kirk......

That there was an element of sadomasochism in WE's relationship, certainly on a psychological level, is a very interesting notion.  The programme suggested that the worse that she treated him, the greater his need for her, almost in direct proportion.

John Julius Norwich, whose parents Duff and Diana Cooper were contemporaries of the Windsors offered some very interesting insights with his experiences of being around them, not the least of which was his revelation that when he met Wallis and David in later life, he actually found her to be an exceptionally good hostess and good company, whilst David was simply a dull bore.

I saw that. I don't feel they backed up any of their assertions at all. Those letters didn't really document anything as to what she was feeling to either Ernest or David, and they certainly didn't back up any sexual speculation or anything. It was very similar to another documentary from a few years back by the same network called "The Queen Mother in Love" which also used letters to make various claims they really didn't support.

[Alixz]

To back up my point that society viewed divorce and/or adultery very differently in previous eras I quote from

Dreadnought by Robert K Massie:

Gentlemen in Victorian England could amuse themselves as much as they liked with "actresses," the term society applied to women of the streets and special houses.  Approaches to unmarried girls of good family were strictly forbidden.  Once married, a young woman in society must not be approached until she had borne her husband several sons to carry on the family name and inherit the estates.  The essential rule underlying the entire structure was discretion; everything might be known, nothing must be said.  The ultimate disgrace was divorce, (underline is mine) when charges and proceedings would get into the newspapers, informing the middle and lower classes that the standards upheld by Queen Victoria and the Church of England were habitually mocked by the nation's aristocracy.

These rules of moral etiquette were still in place during the reigns of Edward VII and George V and Edward VIII and finally George VI.

This is what I have been trying to post during this entire discussion.  Things in the early part of this century were so very different than they became post 1960s and the introduction of the "no fault" divorce.  I don't think that the generation raised after the 1960s has any idea that women were treated as second class citizens and they have no concept of the "fallen" or "used" woman or the disgrace of divorce as it was seen in the early part of the 20th century.

And I too, remember that children were sent out of the house when their parents argued and we, as children, were often told to lower our voices in the days before air conditioning closed up the houses so that the neighbors would not hear what was going on in our house.