The American Duchess. Anna Pasternak

jokingly checking the tally at the end of the day of how much the wedding gifts that arrived from all over the world were worth. ‘Royalty can be just as interested in the cost of things as the rest of us,’ she sagely observed. She and Ernest gave the royal couple two lamps from Fortnum & Mason, costing ten guineas each. These, she told Prince George, unabashed, were reduced in the sale and were not exchangeable.

      For the state reception hosted by the king and queen at Buckingham Palace, Wallis wore a dress designed by Eva Lutyens, daughter-in-law of the famous architect. In a simple column of violet lamé with a vivid green sash, Wallis made a bold impression. Princess Marina, the bride-to-be, was in an unpretentious white evening dress, while Queen Mary was her usual regal staid self in silver brocade with ice-blue paillettes. Wallis, who had borrowed a tiara from Cartier, was understandably thrilled when Prince Paul, Regent of Yugoslavia, the brother-in-law of the bride, told her: ‘Mrs Simpson, there is no question about it – you are wearing the most striking gown in the room.’

      However, the evening would hold far more import than being memorable for Wallis’s stylish gown. It would turn out to be the only occasion when she would (briefly) meet Edward’s parents. The prince approached Queen Mary with the words: ‘I want to introduce a great friend of mine.’ Wallis later wrote in her memoirs: ‘After Prince Paul had left us, David led me over to where they [the king and queen] were standing and introduced me. It was the briefest of encounters – a few words of perfunctory greeting, and exchange of meaningless pleasantries, and we moved away.’ Afterwards, Wallis described to her Aunt Bessie the ‘excitement of the prince bringing the Queen up to Ernest and self in front of all the cold jealous English eyes’. Many times that evening, Ernest was left standing alone while the heir to the throne took Wallis off to meet his friends and relations. Prince Christopher of Greece wrote of Edward: ‘He laid a hand on my arm in an impulsive way: “Christo, come with me. I want you to meet Mrs Simpson …” “Mrs Simpson, who is she?” I asked. “An American,” then he smiled. “She’s wonderful,” he added. The two words told me everything. It was as though he had said: “She is the only woman in the world.”’

      John Aird recorded in his memoirs that the prince introduced Wallis to his mother ‘and would have done to HM [His Majesty] if he had not been cut off’. After the party, the king was outraged that Wallis had slipped back onto the guest list, shouting: ‘That woman in my house!’ He continued to rant that at least Mrs Dudley Ward had come from a better class, while his son had ‘not a single friend who is a gentleman’. He was referring to Edward’s involvement with the international set. King George gave orders to the Lord Chamberlain that Mrs Simpson was not to be invited to any of the Silver Jubilee functions the following year, nor ever again to the royal enclosure at Ascot.

      During the glamorous reception, the prince also took Wallis over to be greeted by the Duke and Duchess of York. Against Wallis’s flat, angular frame and violet column dress, Elizabeth was softer, filling out her pale pink gown. Yet her femininity belied a steely reserve. Wallis curtsied to Edward’s sister-in-law, later describing ‘the almost startling blueness’ of the Duchess of York’s eyes as she felt her cold, appraising stare. Their blue eyes and affection for the Prince of Wales was all the two women would ever have in common. The Yorks, while studiously polite in public, failed to show any warmth towards Wallis. Elizabeth’s close friend, the Dowager Lady Hardinge of Penshurst, who was present at the interaction between the two brothers and their amours, later wrote: ‘I am afraid Mrs Simpson went down rather badly with the duchess from the word go. It may have been the rather ostentatious dress, or the fact that she allowed the Prince of Wales to push her forward in what seemed an inappropriate manner. The Duchess of York was never discourteous in my experience, but those of us who knew her very well could always tell when she did not care for something or someone, and it was very apparent to me that she did not care for Mrs Simpson at all.’

      If Elizabeth, born Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, once harboured romantic feelings for Edward, as was rumoured, it would partly explain her enmity towards Wallis. Elizabeth had initially been reluctant to accept his brother, Bertie’s, wedding proposal. ‘Prince Albert pursued Elizabeth for three years and she twice turned down marriage proposals, which protocol demanded were made to her through intermediaries,’ said her equerry, Major Colin Burgess. ‘On the third time, in 1923, when Prince Albert ignored protocol and asked her directly, she accepted.’ The twenty-three-year-old daughter of the Earl of Strathmore was considered a suitable royal match. ‘I believe that it is not impossible that Elizabeth would have liked to marry the Prince of Wales,’ said Hugo Vickers, who knew her. ‘Once the Duke of York took an interest in her, her mother, Lady Strathmore, saw the possibility of a royal union. She thought: “Why not the older brother?” Edward wasn’t interested in any eligible English girl.’

      Wallis, ever resourceful, did not dwell on the chill of Elizabeth’s disapproval at Prince George’s wedding celebrations. Instead, she was aware, after the nuptials – where ‘the prince had provided Ernest and me with very good places on a side aisle, from which we had an uninterrupted view of the altar’ – that Edward nursed a sense of sadness and keen loss now that his favourite brother was married. His friendship with his younger brother was, apart from his relationship with Wallis, the most important of his adult life. Wallis, sensitive to the strain of Edward’s loneliness, worked hard to divert him with some humorous irrelevancy or by engaging in a more serious topic that interested him. ‘It was curious to see a man of such dynamic qualities, a man so active and so often filled with the true joy of life, suddenly disappear before my very eyes into uncertainty,’ she wrote. She felt that he was ‘reaching out for something that was as yet unknown to him, something which could anchor his personal life’.

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      Edward described his life before his marriage to Wallis as ‘a disconnected pattern – duty without decision, service without responsibility, pomp without power’. After George’s betrothal, this disconnect seemed to weigh on him more heavily. The heir to the throne continued to struggle with the responsibility of his official duties, while railing against the Palace old guard. He was at heart a moderniser who felt that many of the institutional practices were out of date. He wanted to be seen as ‘Edward the innovator’, a monarch who would let ‘fresh air’ into the ‘venerable institution of kingship’. In 1969, Edward told an interviewer: ‘Before I became King, I was in conflict with the Government of the Day.’ The prince’s visits in 1935 to depressed areas of the country angered the prime minister. Edward later recalled: ‘When Stanley Baldwin got to hear of these trips he called me to the House of Commons. He said: “Why are you going up there? Have you not got other important things to do?” So I said, “No, Mr Baldwin, I think it’s very important to see how these people live. Some of them have been out of work for ten years.”’ Edward felt it was his duty to alert the government that little had been done to alleviate the plight of the unemployed. ‘To some extent I collided with the Establishment,’ he concluded, ‘but not violently. I’m not being conceited but it might have helped revive their thinking.’

      As the prince shared the frustrations of his position with Wallis, she realised that she had become a part of his quest, perhaps inextricably so. Each day he drew her ever more intimately into his life. Their dinners alone became more regular and he began telephoning Wallis frequently throughout the day. Flattering, but with his ardour and intense neediness, it was also pressurising and exhausting. On 3 December 1934, Wallis wrote to Aunt Bessie from the Fort that she had been buying all the prince’s Christmas presents for his staff and had to wrap 250 gifts. After her usual domestic update – she had no housemaid – Wallis added, almost casually: ‘I have 2 more bracelets and a small diamond that sticks into my hair. Smart. Ernest says that the insurance is getting steep! A big kiss and all love –.’

      Ernest was right to be worried about their insurance premium. That Christmas, Edward gave Wallis £50,000 worth of jewels (including two large square emeralds) followed by £60,000 worth a week later at New Year. The prince should have been more judicious. When the king was alerted by his courtiers that his son and heir had spent £110,000 (£7 million today) on jewels he feared blackmail. Unbeknownst to Edward, the king asked Stanley Baldwin for police help to ascertain the woman’s identity and motives. George V set in motion a controversial surveillance operation that would continue