January 13, 2010 • 19 mins
In 1936, Britain's King Edward VIII renounced his throne in order to marry an American socialite named Wallis Simpson. Join Katie and Sarah as the explore the astonishing story behind Britain's only royal resignation.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowie and Katie and
I have had so much fun talking about royal scandals
recently that we're going to talk about at least one more.
(00:23):
This one is from the twentieth century, though, so in
nineteen thirty six, Britain's King Edward the eight renounced his
throne in order to marry an American divorcee named Wallace Simpson.
And he was the only British sovereign ever to voluntarily
resign the crown. So this is a big deal. Yeah.
It forces his shy younger brother to become king, which
(00:44):
ends up putting his eldest daughter in the line of
succession that becomes Elizabeth the Second Um and Edward and
Wallace are shunned by the injured royal family. They travel
the world, they hobb nobbed with Nazis and they've become
style icons. But there's a big question about their relationship,
and that's what is it a great love story? Did
(01:07):
he give up his throne um to marry the woman
he loved or is there something more tragic. So let's
meet our major players. Bessie Wallace Warfield was born June
nineteenth to eighteen ninety six in Pennsylvania, but she grew
up in Baltimore and her birth was a bit of
a scandal because she was born only seven months after
(01:28):
her parents marriage. So do the math. Yeah, And they
were from a fairly elite family and um society definitely
cared about that kind of thing. Her father died when
she was only five months old, though, and her mother
had to rely on handouts from a wealthy relative. Um.
She grew up in Maryland and attended the Old Field
School and dumped her first name, and I kind of
(01:50):
loved this quote. She said that so many cows are
called Bessie, so she goes by Wallace instead. So she's
part of high society it because she's born into it,
but she's not because she doesn't have the money. And
this really bugs her. So she needs to find a
way in, and she decides the way in is marriage,
and she marries Earl W. Spencer, a Navy pilot, in
(02:13):
nineteen sixteen. But it's a complete disaster from the start.
Her husband was an alcoholic and he was very Moody
and she ends up leaving him. She has a short
affair after that and lives in Virginia for a time.
But after her divorce, she has another longer lasting affair
with the then married Ernest Simpson, who was a US
(02:34):
born brit and she writes to her mother, I really
feel so tired of fighting the world all alone and
with no money. So it sounds like she kind of
settles for him well, and I have sympathy for that sentiment.
But they end up getting married in nineteen eight and
they live near London. But later she meets a more
illustrious personage that's Edward, Prince of Wales, and she meets
(02:57):
him at a house party given by his missed rest
at the time, lady Thelma Furnace. So she's thirty five
years old and married, but Wallace has something seductive about her,
something that draws this prince to her. And who is he? Well,
this is the story of Edward. He was born June
(03:18):
and he has pretty much the longest name ever, Edward
Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David, so his friends called
him David, and he becomes Prince of Wales in nineteen eleven,
he's really not suited to his position. It exhausts him.
He feels isolated, and he's a frivolous young man. He's
into drinking and womanizing and clothes, and he likes clothes. Yeah,
(03:42):
he he one point writes to his longtime mistress and
friend before his his mistress before he meets Wallace. If
only the British public really knew what a weak, powerless
misery their press made national hero was, they would have
a nasty shock and be not only disa pointed, but
damned angry too. And he was a national hero. He
(04:04):
was incredibly popular, and partly that's because in the nineteen
twenties he undertook extensive foreign tours in the Empire to
represent his father because he wasn't allowed to serve in
the army as crowned prince. He's they don't want to
put him into the direct line of danger. But yeah,
he becomes very popular with his people, and he's a
(04:26):
you know, they're bright, young prince. He's also during the
twenties having a lot of affairs with married women. Um
and kind of a weird side note that is really
not related to anything here. He's somewhat of an authority
and horticulture, especially roses. His father gave him a refuge
for at Belvedere, and he entertained his friends there, and
(04:48):
he had a He had an unconventional set of friends.
They weren't drawn from just the same aristocracy that generations
of monarchs have been hanging out with. They were more
like the society. Right, So we've got this picture, you know,
champagne and roses and clothes and lots of women. But
soon there's only one woman. So after Wallace and Edward meet,
(05:11):
they're just friendly for a while. But by nineteen thirty four,
Edward is a regular visitor to the Simpson home and
the relationship is probably consummated around this time, not to
be too detailed. Yeah, and she tells her aunt it
requires great tact to manage both men. I shall try
to keep them both. So she's got her husband having
(05:31):
your cake into eating and it's not a discreet affair
at all. They really flaunt it. And you know, it
was accepted that the king or um the prince would
have a mistress, but it would be somebody who he
would visit from time to time and certainly not paraded
about in public and at public events. Well and not
(05:53):
a married woman who also has another ex husband. Yeah. Um.
But Edward becomes obsessed with Wallace and she's kind of
got a bullying personality and he likes it. She makes
him put on her shoes for her. Yeah, he's into that.
So the affair was kept out of most of the
British papers until the very end of Edward's kingship. It
(06:16):
was just a suppressed story. But it is a scandal
in America and a lot of the continent where in
every paper. Yeah, it's it's kind of the original British
royal tabloid scandal. And Edward is proclaimed king at the
beginning of nineteen thirty six when his father dies, and
around the same time, Wallace sues for divorce in July
(06:38):
of nineteen thirty six. So upon her divorce, of course
comes the next question will they marry? Edward wants to
marry Wallace, and he tries to get his family's acceptance,
and they're not going forward at all. Also against him
as the Church of England of which he's head, and
most of the politicians in Britain in the Commonwealth. His
(07:01):
only notable allies Churchill, who's out of power at the time.
And another sort of side note, Churchill has a reputation
as being a yeah, but his bowerfer said, probably the
only occasion when he addressed the House of Commons under
the influence of alcohol, not drunk, but kind of tipsy
(07:23):
was during the abdication crisis, when he's actually howled down.
And there are discussions of a morganatic marriage pursued, which
is something we talked a little bit about in the
Madame de Mentonal podcast, a marriage of social inequals right
where she wouldn't become queen, but they would be together
and their children wouldn't inherit right. But Prime Minister Stanley
(07:46):
Baldwin tells Edward that is absolutely not happening. It's not
an option. And Edward wants to also address his people
through the radio pleading for their support, and the that's
not going to happen either. It's not allowed, simply not done.
He did write a speech though, and in it he wrote,
it has taken me a long time to find the
woman I want to make my wife yeah for real
(08:08):
life Without her, I have been a very lonely man.
So this is from his band speech, but the whole
thing really explodes in the press in Parliament on December three,
and on the following day the word abdication starts appearing
in the papers. And before you start to get too
sympathetic towards the prince for his you know, romantic fairy
(08:32):
tale love, we should talk a little bit about some
of the people who were suffering during this whole thing. Yeah,
his brother, known as Bertie to his family, the future
George the sixth is really shy, and he's fought with
a stammer. He's been forced to write with his right
hand even though he's a lefty. And he's also really
(08:52):
happy where he is in life. He's married, he has
two young daughters, and he's terrified by the prospect of
the m and king and his wife Elizabeth told her
mother in law, Queen Mary, that she prayed every day
for the king to see reason and not abandon his people.
But as much as George didn't want to become king,
(09:12):
a lot of people thought he would be much better
at it than Edward was. Even his own father had
once said, I pray God that my eldest son will
never marry, and that nothing will come between Bertie and
Lilabet and the throne and Lilabet is of course now
Elizabeth the second Um, but still George isn't happy with
the prospect of the coming king, and he later records
(09:33):
that when he learned his brother would abdicate, I broke
down and sobbed like a child. So this is a
tremendous strain on him, and he's he's horrified by the
duty who's about to have to assume. But the king
makes his final decision December tenth, nineteen thirty six, and
he submits his abdication. I, Edward, do hereby declare my
(09:55):
irrevocable determination to renounce the throne for myself and my descendant.
And the instrument of abdication was endorsed by Parliament on
December eleven, and that evening Edward finally did get to
have his radio broadcast he had wanted pre abdication, and
he tells us people, I've found it impossible to carry
the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties
(10:17):
as king as I wished to do, without the help
and support of the woman I love. A plea for sympathy,
I've ever heard one, and uh that night he disappears
to the wind. He goes to the continent and lives
with friends in Austria discreetly apart from Wallace while her
divorce is finalized. And Wallace herself does not have a
(10:39):
great reputation, and at the time she was perceived as
a schemer. But was she because a document that was
kept in the private papers of Stanley Baldwin for years
includes a declaration that's signed by her before the abdication
that said she'd abandoned any interest in marrying his majesty
wasn't even what she was trying to get, or she
(11:00):
signed a paper saying that was what she was trying
to get. And even in Edward's abdication speech, he mentions
that the the other person who is as closely involved
in this as I am, has urged me to the
last to not go through with it. So it seems
as though she was trying to talk him down from
(11:21):
actually giving up his throne. Well, and she had some
qualms about him. She was disturbed by how cleany he was.
And the quote that really struck us was when she
wrote to an uncle and said, how can a woman
be a whole empire to a man? And I think
that's the quote that really haunts their married life together,
(11:41):
which after this whirlwind courtship and abdication, goes on for
a long time decades. So what's next. Edward is named
the Duke of Windsor by his brother, who's now George
the sixth and Wallace's divorced as finalized. They're married June
three seven by a Church of England clergyman at the
(12:02):
Chateau de Conde in France, and even though Wallace is
now Duchess of Windsor, the title of Royal Highness is
not extended to her. It's a big deal. It is
a big deal. It's something that really bothers Edward for
the rest of his life. Um. They live in France
for the next two years and visit other countries, most
(12:22):
famously visiting Germanist yes, infamitly. Um. They're actually honored by
Nazi officials in October of nineteen thirty seven and have
an interview with Hitler. Um. The pro German sympathies of
the couple end up becoming the subject of an FBI
investigation in nineteen one, and also the subject of a
(12:44):
later podcast. So we're gonna sort of skip over this
Nazi period, so we'll jump ahead to nineteen forty, when
their pro Nazi sympathies have become so obvious, the Churchill
has basically exiled them to the Bahamas. The Duke is
now the governor there, so they stay in the Bahamas
pretty much for the duration of the war, returning to
France in n and they took up a life as
(13:07):
members of the international set, a very flashy celebrity kind
of life that was reported in every single paper. Time
magazine even named Wallace Simpson their first Woman of the Year.
They'd only had Man of the Year since then because
she was so talked about. Yeah, and pugs and platinum
or how I think Katie and I liked to define them.
Had eleven pugs at some point, and they had really
(13:29):
cool names, Imp and Disraeli. Yeah. She'd give them homemade
dog biscuits and let them cuddle up on her bed
with her um. She was also really into clothing and
jewelry and wore flashy stuff, big jewels and lots of
yellow gold. But interestingly, she banned anything but platinum from
(13:50):
her dinner parties. I guess it seemed fancier to her.
And while they were very rich, Edward in his later
years became very concerned at out their finances. He argued
with his brother about his annual allowance and refused to
live in the United States as a private citizen because
he didn't want to deal with the taxes. Yeah. I
think that's to be expected for someone who was born
(14:13):
to be a king and who was king and living
like a cast to settle for, you know, living like
a very wealthy man instead of a king. And Edward's personality,
not just his fortune, has also changed since the abdication.
He becomes, as his biographer Philip Ziggler says, reactionary to
the point of caricature, even though before the war he
(14:35):
had had many of the same values as conservatives. Yeah,
he's kind of embittered by his situation, and he's very
dependent on Wallace too. He's a very dependent husband, and
as we said earlier, still outraged over the fact that
she can't style herself as royal highness, right, and she's
(14:56):
not received as as she would be usually. So because
of some of this, he only makes short visits to England.
He goes back for the funeral of his brother George
the sixth, and he goes back for the funeral of
his mother, Queen Mary, and he even writes, upon Queen
Mary's death to Wallace, what a smug, stinking lot my
relations are, and you've never seen such a seedy, worn
(15:18):
out bunch of old hags. Most of them have the
calm so bitter bitter words, very bitter. He's never gotten
over his family's unwillingness to accept Wallace as one of
their own. The Queen Mom always hated her, but her daughter,
Elizabeth the Second, eventually attempted a reconciliation with Edward near
the end of his life, and he was very ill.
(15:39):
He was in bed dying and his doctors had taken
care to cover up some of the tubing and machinery
that he was using to live. Yes, and he was
told not to get up because he was so ill.
But when she came in the room, he rose and
he bowed to her, and she was very touched by
that display of respect. So Edward dies of his throat
(16:00):
cancer on the twenty eight of May nineteen seventy two
in Paris and is buried near Windsor, and the Duchess
spent her remaining time in isolation and inconfusingly poor health.
She's kind of lost without the Duke it seems, and
she dies in nineteen eighty six and is buried behind
(16:21):
her husband at his request in the Royal Cemetery at Frogmore,
also near Windsor Castle. But that's not the end of
our story because several years ago, right after the Queen
Mother died, there's some new information came out. The documents
were really night that said maybe Wallace was two timing
Edward during their courtship. Actually there's no maybe about it.
(16:42):
She was so government papers from the time of abdication
were subject to a thirty year rule of secrecy, you know,
protecting people who are involved, and then some were considered
so sensitive that it was decided they wouldn't be released
for a hundred years. But after the Queen Mother died Um,
she was sort of the only living UM person who
(17:06):
was very much involved in the in the documents. After
she died, was decided the papers could come out, and
they It turns out that both Simpson and Edward were
under surveillance by a special branch of the Metropolitan Police,
and while she was married pursuing her affair with Edward,
(17:26):
she also had a third lover named Guy Trundle, a
married car salesman who lived in Nayfair and he was
a kept man. She gave him payments and also expensive presence,
and Edward had absolutely no idea. Wallace went to great
lengths to conceal his existence. There was a lot on
the line, I understand. So this puts a little bit
(17:48):
of a damper, i'd say, on the on the fairytale romance.
And it also shows just how complex their relationship was.
Biographies of Wallace seemed to either go the way of
being really silacious and gossipy or whitewashing the entire thing.
So so it's just a grand romance, right, and it's
and it's hard to find that that middle bit definitely.
(18:09):
So today we're starting a new feature in our podcast,
Listener Mail, to to start it off right, We're going
to start with an actual, real piece of mail, came
with a stamp on it and arrived at our desks
from Stormy in Scotland. She sent us a postcard of
(18:30):
St Margaret's Chapel in Edinburgh Castle, which is where um Mary,
Queen of Scott's, gave birth to her son. So Stormy
has officially raised the bar where if you'd like to
send us listener mail, you love real mail. And if
you'd like to learn more about the royals and their
various scandals, please come to our homepage and search for
(18:52):
how Royalty Works at www dot house stuff works dot com.
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blog on the how stuff works dot com home page.
Welcome to Stuff You missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowie and Katie and
I have had so much fun talking about royal scandals
recently that we're going to talk about at least one more.
(00:23):
This one is from the twentieth century, though, so in
nineteen thirty six, Britain's King Edward the eight renounced his
throne in order to marry an American divorcee named Wallace Simpson.
And he was the only British sovereign ever to voluntarily
resign the crown. So this is a big deal. Yeah.
It forces his shy younger brother to become king, which
(00:44):
ends up putting his eldest daughter in the line of
succession that becomes Elizabeth the Second Um and Edward and
Wallace are shunned by the injured royal family. They travel
the world, they hobb nobbed with Nazis and they've become
style icons. But there's a big question about their relationship,
and that's what is it a great love story? Did
(01:07):
he give up his throne um to marry the woman
he loved or is there something more tragic. So let's
meet our major players. Bessie Wallace Warfield was born June
nineteenth to eighteen ninety six in Pennsylvania, but she grew
up in Baltimore and her birth was a bit of
a scandal because she was born only seven months after
(01:28):
her parents marriage. So do the math. Yeah, And they
were from a fairly elite family and um society definitely
cared about that kind of thing. Her father died when
she was only five months old, though, and her mother
had to rely on handouts from a wealthy relative. Um.
She grew up in Maryland and attended the Old Field
School and dumped her first name, and I kind of
(01:50):
loved this quote. She said that so many cows are
called Bessie, so she goes by Wallace instead. So she's
part of high society it because she's born into it,
but she's not because she doesn't have the money. And
this really bugs her. So she needs to find a
way in, and she decides the way in is marriage,
and she marries Earl W. Spencer, a Navy pilot, in
(02:13):
nineteen sixteen. But it's a complete disaster from the start.
Her husband was an alcoholic and he was very Moody
and she ends up leaving him. She has a short
affair after that and lives in Virginia for a time.
But after her divorce, she has another longer lasting affair
with the then married Ernest Simpson, who was a US
(02:34):
born brit and she writes to her mother, I really
feel so tired of fighting the world all alone and
with no money. So it sounds like she kind of
settles for him well, and I have sympathy for that sentiment.
But they end up getting married in nineteen eight and
they live near London. But later she meets a more
illustrious personage that's Edward, Prince of Wales, and she meets
(02:57):
him at a house party given by his missed rest
at the time, lady Thelma Furnace. So she's thirty five
years old and married, but Wallace has something seductive about her,
something that draws this prince to her. And who is he? Well,
this is the story of Edward. He was born June
(03:18):
and he has pretty much the longest name ever, Edward
Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David, so his friends called
him David, and he becomes Prince of Wales in nineteen eleven,
he's really not suited to his position. It exhausts him.
He feels isolated, and he's a frivolous young man. He's
into drinking and womanizing and clothes, and he likes clothes. Yeah,
(03:42):
he he one point writes to his longtime mistress and
friend before his his mistress before he meets Wallace. If
only the British public really knew what a weak, powerless
misery their press made national hero was, they would have
a nasty shock and be not only disa pointed, but
damned angry too. And he was a national hero. He
(04:04):
was incredibly popular, and partly that's because in the nineteen
twenties he undertook extensive foreign tours in the Empire to
represent his father because he wasn't allowed to serve in
the army as crowned prince. He's they don't want to
put him into the direct line of danger. But yeah,
he becomes very popular with his people, and he's a
(04:26):
you know, they're bright, young prince. He's also during the
twenties having a lot of affairs with married women. Um
and kind of a weird side note that is really
not related to anything here. He's somewhat of an authority
and horticulture, especially roses. His father gave him a refuge
for at Belvedere, and he entertained his friends there, and
(04:48):
he had a He had an unconventional set of friends.
They weren't drawn from just the same aristocracy that generations
of monarchs have been hanging out with. They were more
like the society. Right, So we've got this picture, you know,
champagne and roses and clothes and lots of women. But
soon there's only one woman. So after Wallace and Edward meet,
(05:11):
they're just friendly for a while. But by nineteen thirty four,
Edward is a regular visitor to the Simpson home and
the relationship is probably consummated around this time, not to
be too detailed. Yeah, and she tells her aunt it
requires great tact to manage both men. I shall try
to keep them both. So she's got her husband having
(05:31):
your cake into eating and it's not a discreet affair
at all. They really flaunt it. And you know, it
was accepted that the king or um the prince would
have a mistress, but it would be somebody who he
would visit from time to time and certainly not paraded
about in public and at public events. Well and not
(05:53):
a married woman who also has another ex husband. Yeah. Um.
But Edward becomes obsessed with Wallace and she's kind of
got a bullying personality and he likes it. She makes
him put on her shoes for her. Yeah, he's into that.
So the affair was kept out of most of the
British papers until the very end of Edward's kingship. It
(06:16):
was just a suppressed story. But it is a scandal
in America and a lot of the continent where in
every paper. Yeah, it's it's kind of the original British
royal tabloid scandal. And Edward is proclaimed king at the
beginning of nineteen thirty six when his father dies, and
around the same time, Wallace sues for divorce in July
(06:38):
of nineteen thirty six. So upon her divorce, of course
comes the next question will they marry? Edward wants to
marry Wallace, and he tries to get his family's acceptance,
and they're not going forward at all. Also against him
as the Church of England of which he's head, and
most of the politicians in Britain in the Commonwealth. His
(07:01):
only notable allies Churchill, who's out of power at the time.
And another sort of side note, Churchill has a reputation
as being a yeah, but his bowerfer said, probably the
only occasion when he addressed the House of Commons under
the influence of alcohol, not drunk, but kind of tipsy
(07:23):
was during the abdication crisis, when he's actually howled down.
And there are discussions of a morganatic marriage pursued, which
is something we talked a little bit about in the
Madame de Mentonal podcast, a marriage of social inequals right
where she wouldn't become queen, but they would be together
and their children wouldn't inherit right. But Prime Minister Stanley
(07:46):
Baldwin tells Edward that is absolutely not happening. It's not
an option. And Edward wants to also address his people
through the radio pleading for their support, and the that's
not going to happen either. It's not allowed, simply not done.
He did write a speech though, and in it he wrote,
it has taken me a long time to find the
woman I want to make my wife yeah for real
(08:08):
life Without her, I have been a very lonely man.
So this is from his band speech, but the whole
thing really explodes in the press in Parliament on December three,
and on the following day the word abdication starts appearing
in the papers. And before you start to get too
sympathetic towards the prince for his you know, romantic fairy
(08:32):
tale love, we should talk a little bit about some
of the people who were suffering during this whole thing. Yeah,
his brother, known as Bertie to his family, the future
George the sixth is really shy, and he's fought with
a stammer. He's been forced to write with his right
hand even though he's a lefty. And he's also really
(08:52):
happy where he is in life. He's married, he has
two young daughters, and he's terrified by the prospect of
the m and king and his wife Elizabeth told her
mother in law, Queen Mary, that she prayed every day
for the king to see reason and not abandon his people.
But as much as George didn't want to become king,
(09:12):
a lot of people thought he would be much better
at it than Edward was. Even his own father had
once said, I pray God that my eldest son will
never marry, and that nothing will come between Bertie and
Lilabet and the throne and Lilabet is of course now
Elizabeth the second Um, but still George isn't happy with
the prospect of the coming king, and he later records
(09:33):
that when he learned his brother would abdicate, I broke
down and sobbed like a child. So this is a
tremendous strain on him, and he's he's horrified by the
duty who's about to have to assume. But the king
makes his final decision December tenth, nineteen thirty six, and
he submits his abdication. I, Edward, do hereby declare my
(09:55):
irrevocable determination to renounce the throne for myself and my descendant.
And the instrument of abdication was endorsed by Parliament on
December eleven, and that evening Edward finally did get to
have his radio broadcast he had wanted pre abdication, and
he tells us people, I've found it impossible to carry
the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties
(10:17):
as king as I wished to do, without the help
and support of the woman I love. A plea for sympathy,
I've ever heard one, and uh that night he disappears
to the wind. He goes to the continent and lives
with friends in Austria discreetly apart from Wallace while her
divorce is finalized. And Wallace herself does not have a
(10:39):
great reputation, and at the time she was perceived as
a schemer. But was she because a document that was
kept in the private papers of Stanley Baldwin for years
includes a declaration that's signed by her before the abdication
that said she'd abandoned any interest in marrying his majesty
wasn't even what she was trying to get, or she
(11:00):
signed a paper saying that was what she was trying
to get. And even in Edward's abdication speech, he mentions
that the the other person who is as closely involved
in this as I am, has urged me to the
last to not go through with it. So it seems
as though she was trying to talk him down from
(11:21):
actually giving up his throne. Well, and she had some
qualms about him. She was disturbed by how cleany he was.
And the quote that really struck us was when she
wrote to an uncle and said, how can a woman
be a whole empire to a man? And I think
that's the quote that really haunts their married life together,
(11:41):
which after this whirlwind courtship and abdication, goes on for
a long time decades. So what's next. Edward is named
the Duke of Windsor by his brother, who's now George
the sixth and Wallace's divorced as finalized. They're married June
three seven by a Church of England clergyman at the
(12:02):
Chateau de Conde in France, and even though Wallace is
now Duchess of Windsor, the title of Royal Highness is
not extended to her. It's a big deal. It is
a big deal. It's something that really bothers Edward for
the rest of his life. Um. They live in France
for the next two years and visit other countries, most
(12:22):
famously visiting Germanist yes, infamitly. Um. They're actually honored by
Nazi officials in October of nineteen thirty seven and have
an interview with Hitler. Um. The pro German sympathies of
the couple end up becoming the subject of an FBI
investigation in nineteen one, and also the subject of a
(12:44):
later podcast. So we're gonna sort of skip over this
Nazi period, so we'll jump ahead to nineteen forty, when
their pro Nazi sympathies have become so obvious, the Churchill
has basically exiled them to the Bahamas. The Duke is
now the governor there, so they stay in the Bahamas
pretty much for the duration of the war, returning to
France in n and they took up a life as
(13:07):
members of the international set, a very flashy celebrity kind
of life that was reported in every single paper. Time
magazine even named Wallace Simpson their first Woman of the Year.
They'd only had Man of the Year since then because
she was so talked about. Yeah, and pugs and platinum
or how I think Katie and I liked to define them.
Had eleven pugs at some point, and they had really
(13:29):
cool names, Imp and Disraeli. Yeah. She'd give them homemade
dog biscuits and let them cuddle up on her bed
with her um. She was also really into clothing and
jewelry and wore flashy stuff, big jewels and lots of
yellow gold. But interestingly, she banned anything but platinum from
(13:50):
her dinner parties. I guess it seemed fancier to her.
And while they were very rich, Edward in his later
years became very concerned at out their finances. He argued
with his brother about his annual allowance and refused to
live in the United States as a private citizen because
he didn't want to deal with the taxes. Yeah. I
think that's to be expected for someone who was born
(14:13):
to be a king and who was king and living
like a cast to settle for, you know, living like
a very wealthy man instead of a king. And Edward's personality,
not just his fortune, has also changed since the abdication.
He becomes, as his biographer Philip Ziggler says, reactionary to
the point of caricature, even though before the war he
(14:35):
had had many of the same values as conservatives. Yeah,
he's kind of embittered by his situation, and he's very
dependent on Wallace too. He's a very dependent husband, and
as we said earlier, still outraged over the fact that
she can't style herself as royal highness, right, and she's
(14:56):
not received as as she would be usually. So because
of some of this, he only makes short visits to England.
He goes back for the funeral of his brother George
the sixth, and he goes back for the funeral of
his mother, Queen Mary, and he even writes, upon Queen
Mary's death to Wallace, what a smug, stinking lot my
relations are, and you've never seen such a seedy, worn
(15:18):
out bunch of old hags. Most of them have the
calm so bitter bitter words, very bitter. He's never gotten
over his family's unwillingness to accept Wallace as one of
their own. The Queen Mom always hated her, but her daughter,
Elizabeth the Second, eventually attempted a reconciliation with Edward near
the end of his life, and he was very ill.
(15:39):
He was in bed dying and his doctors had taken
care to cover up some of the tubing and machinery
that he was using to live. Yes, and he was
told not to get up because he was so ill.
But when she came in the room, he rose and
he bowed to her, and she was very touched by
that display of respect. So Edward dies of his throat
(16:00):
cancer on the twenty eight of May nineteen seventy two
in Paris and is buried near Windsor, and the Duchess
spent her remaining time in isolation and inconfusingly poor health.
She's kind of lost without the Duke it seems, and
she dies in nineteen eighty six and is buried behind
(16:21):
her husband at his request in the Royal Cemetery at Frogmore,
also near Windsor Castle. But that's not the end of
our story because several years ago, right after the Queen
Mother died, there's some new information came out. The documents
were really night that said maybe Wallace was two timing
Edward during their courtship. Actually there's no maybe about it.
(16:42):
She was so government papers from the time of abdication
were subject to a thirty year rule of secrecy, you know,
protecting people who are involved, and then some were considered
so sensitive that it was decided they wouldn't be released
for a hundred years. But after the Queen Mother died Um,
she was sort of the only living UM person who
(17:06):
was very much involved in the in the documents. After
she died, was decided the papers could come out, and
they It turns out that both Simpson and Edward were
under surveillance by a special branch of the Metropolitan Police,
and while she was married pursuing her affair with Edward,
(17:26):
she also had a third lover named Guy Trundle, a
married car salesman who lived in Nayfair and he was
a kept man. She gave him payments and also expensive presence,
and Edward had absolutely no idea. Wallace went to great
lengths to conceal his existence. There was a lot on
the line, I understand. So this puts a little bit
(17:48):
of a damper, i'd say, on the on the fairytale romance.
And it also shows just how complex their relationship was.
Biographies of Wallace seemed to either go the way of
being really silacious and gossipy or whitewashing the entire thing.
So so it's just a grand romance, right, and it's
and it's hard to find that that middle bit definitely.
(18:09):
So today we're starting a new feature in our podcast,
Listener Mail, to to start it off right, We're going
to start with an actual, real piece of mail, came
with a stamp on it and arrived at our desks
from Stormy in Scotland. She sent us a postcard of
(18:30):
St Margaret's Chapel in Edinburgh Castle, which is where um Mary,
Queen of Scott's, gave birth to her son. So Stormy
has officially raised the bar where if you'd like to
send us listener mail, you love real mail. And if
you'd like to learn more about the royals and their
various scandals, please come to our homepage and search for
(18:52):
how Royalty Works at www dot house stuff works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other or topics,
is it how stuff works dot com and be sure
to check out this stuff you missed in History Class
blog on the how stuff works dot com home page.
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