The American Duchess. Anna Pasternak

gypsy music in Hungary, that Wallis had a piercing moment of realisation about the impossibility of her situation. As the violins swelled with melancholy tunes, amid the flickering candles and rough-hewn wooden tables, she ‘had the feeling of being torn apart, of being caught up in the inescapable sadness and sorrow of human suffering; and the look in David’s eyes told me that he was in the grip of the same flow of feeling’. She later wrote that she was ‘scarcely in a condition to differentiate these two worlds between which I giddily swung, hoping to have the best of both, but not quite sure whether I could maintain my footing in either’.

      On Wallis’s return to London, it became clear that her sense of foreboding was justified. Her marital footing could no longer be guaranteed. Ernest, now cold and distant, had ‘undergone a change’. He showed no interest in her trip and was uncommunicative about his own visit to New York. For the first time their evenings together were strained, punctuated by arctic silences. Still Wallis did not act on the warning bells, so enraptured was she to be swept up in the prince’s orbit. ‘My concern was no more than a tiny cloud in the growing radiance that the prince’s favour cast over my life,’ she wrote with insouciance. ‘I became aware of a rising curiosity concerning me, of new doors opening, and a heightened interest even in my casual remarks. I was stimulated; I was excited; I felt as if I were borne upon a rising wave that seemed to be carrying me ever more rapidly and even higher.’

      It was the Kitzbühel skiing holiday that convinced royal aides that the prince had gone too far. Sir Clive Wigram, George V’s private secretary, visited Edward at Fort Belvedere and told him how concerned the king was about his personal life. In a memo afterwards, he wrote: ‘The prince said that he was astonished that anyone could take offence about his personal friends. Mrs Simpson was a charming, cultivated woman.’ John Aird, meanwhile, could see that putting any pressure on the prince had negligible effect. If anything, he felt that after Sir Clive’s visit ‘the devotion of HRH if possible greater’. Godfrey Thomas, the prince’s equerry, said that he believed the prince knew ‘in his inmost heart’ he was behaving badly. Thomas reassured the courtiers that patience was key. ‘I am sure his eyes will be opened to the folly he is making of himself, and when he does come for help and sympathy, I am sure you will respond as I know I shall.’

      The rumour mill amongst the staff at the two royal households, York House and Buckingham Palace, was rife with tales of the prince’s nocturnal habits. It was said that two bedrooms at the Fort had been turned into one for the couple’s benefit, presumably to avoid the risk that, when the house was full, the dressing room adjoining Wallis’s bedroom might be occupied and thus access to her impeded. It is a curious detail that Edward always maintained that he never slept with Wallis before his marriage, and sued for libel an author who referred to her as his mistress. Astonishingly, the subject arose between Edward and his father, when Edward challenged the king over his ban on Wallis’s appearance at court. He wanted Wallis to be invited to the court ball to celebrate the Silver Jubilee in May 1935. The king said that he could not invite his son’s mistress to such an occasion. When the prince swore that she was not his ‘mistress’, the king accepted his son’s word and said that Mrs Simpson could come. ‘I think that this is all for the best,’ wrote John Aird in his diary, ‘but it is rather a shock to think of the Prince of Wales lying on his oath, which a lot of people who know think he has.’

      Sir Clive Wigram wrote that ‘the staff were horrified at the audacity of the statements of HRH. Apart from actually seeing HRH and Mrs S in bed together, they had positive proof that HRH lived with her.’ Tommy Lascelles said that he would find it as easy to believe in the innocence of their relationship as ‘a herd of unicorns grazing in Hyde Park and a shoal of mermaids swimming in the Serpentine’.

      Despite the unravelling of their marriage, the Simpsons put on a brave front. That April, Ernest wrote warmly to his mother, keen to impress her with his royal connections and wanting to reassure her that all was well in his marriage:

      My dearest one and only Mother,

      The Prince took two other married couples and ourselves to the Grand National Steeple chase near Liverpool. We had a special car on the train and we were met by a fleet of motors. We lunched in state with Lord Sefton, the owner of the course and had a splendid view from his private stand. It was great fun.

      Much, much love, in which Wallis joins, and a big hug,

      Affectionately, Ernest.

      At Easter, Ernest joined Wallis motoring around Cornwall with the prince, and their friends, the Hunters, to see the camellias and rhododendrons in bloom. According to Wallis, whatever Ernest was ‘thinking or feeling, he loyally played his part’. Whilst staying on the Duchy estate, Edward began penning Wallis intimate billets-doux, which he had delivered to her room. But a shadow was now cast over the trio. Where the arrangement had previously been chummily inclusive, Ernest was now excluded. Wallis and Edward were sufficiently emotionally entwined to have developed their own private language, which spelt out the intensity of their relationship. They referred to themselves as ‘WE’, representing their joint first names and symbolising their union. They also devised the adjective eanum, which to them meant tiny, ‘poor’, ‘affecting’ and ‘pathetic’. Edward wrote to Wallis from St Austell Bay Hotel, his note accompanying an Easter gift of a bracelet:

      My [twice underlined] Eanum – My [thrice underlined] Wallis

      This is not the kind of Easter WE want but it will be alright next year. The Easter Bunny has brought this from Us All [twice underlined] & Slipper says he likes it too but it has to be fitted and christened later. I love you more & more & more each & every minute & miss you so [thrice underlined] terribly here. You do too dont you my sweetheart.

      God bless WE. Always your[s] [twice underlined].

      Edward’s obsession for Wallis was causing him to act with increasingly rash indiscretion. Wallis would have received the letter, and the accompanying piece of jewellery, while sharing a room with Ernest. She, meanwhile, was no longer under any illusions that this was a romantic relationship that the prince seemed wholly committed to. The mounting tension between the trio finally erupted in a terrible row between Wallis and Ernest on their return from Cornwall. This provoked Wallis to write her first stern letter to the prince. It reveals how she by now fully assumed the role of disapproving mother, reprimanding a thoughtless naughty boy.

      Tuesday a.m.

      David dear –

      I was and still am most terribly upset. You see my dear one can’t go through life stepping on other people … You think only of what you want and take it without the slightest thought of others. One can arrive at the same result in a kinder way. I had a long quiet talk with E last night and I felt very eanum at the end. Everything he said was so true. The evening was difficult as you did stay too late. Doesn’t your love for me reach the heights of wanting to make things a little easier for me. The lovely things you say to me aren’t of much value unless they are backed up by equal actions.

      I was upset and also very disappointed in a boy – because David what are all those words if what they say isn’t enough for a little sacrifice on our part to do what is the right thing for all concerned. So far you have always come first in my actions if there had to be a choice (like Sat). It isn’t fair and cannot always be that way.

      Sometimes I think you haven’t grown up where love is concerned and perhaps it’s only a boyish passion for surely it lacks the thought of me that a man’s love is capable of … Your behaviour last night made me realise how very alone I shall be some day – and because I love you I don’t seem to have the strength to protect myself from your youthfulness.

      God bless WE and be kind to me in the years to come for I have lost something noble for a boy who may always remain a Peter Pan.

Those close to the couple could see the inherent insecurity in Wallis’s position. As Chips Channon wrote on 14 May, the day of the Silver Jubilee Ball: ‘She is madly anxious to storm society while she is still his favourite so that when he leaves her, as he leaves everybody in time, she will be secure.’ Chips continued to comment on the gossip fizzing about Wallis’s