Duke and Duchess of Windsor (1894-1972) and (1895-1986)


If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Why were they buying in London anyway? of course with the War just over, there would be restrictions and shortages of cloth and clothes in most European countres, but surely they could have made a trip to somewhere outside Europe and then they could buy up all they liked...
But pretty much everything one hears of them shows how shoddy they were
 
:previous: There is nothing "suspicious" about it at all. Your forget the overwhelming sense of entitlement they both had and Edward did not believe he should have to observe the same rules as the plebs.

As to the availability of the goods they required? Certainly, Europe was pretty much wiped out but I am sure that the US had plenty. It did not, however, have the cachet of shoes from Harrods, bespoke shirts and suits from Hawes and Curtis and lingerie from Madame Isar's exclusive boutique.

Princess Elizabeth saved her coupons and had a wonderful (austerity time) wedding dress. Women from all over the British Empire sent coupons for her wedding dress but they had to be returned to sender. Now consider how many coupons Wallis cheated on for lingerie alone?

Note: There is nothing new about this information, it is merely more easily accessed courtesy of the internet.
 
As to the availability of the goods they required? Certainly, Europe was pretty much wiped out but I am sure that the US had plenty. It did not, however, have the cachet of shoes from Harrods, bespoke shirts and suits from Hawes and Curtis and lingerie from Madame Isar's exclusive boutique.

The U.S had clothing rationing also until after 1946, And even then some imported goods were scarce for a time because of the devastation other countries experienced.
 
Yes, the us had rationing untilthe end of the war. the U.K. Went on until the fifties. The wealthy people had avenues to subvert the rationing of meat, gasoline, and whatever melted.
 
How this pathetic couple, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, did their best to sidestep wartime regulations and rationing.

pretty much everything one hears of them shows how shoddy they were

What historical personages think and do does not impact me personally. :ermm: I'll not vent spleen on people I have never met, and know naught of their trials and tribulations. 'Pathetic'? 'Shoddy'? The system they were part of created who they were and the animus directed at them made them what they were. I'm not interested in judging them harshly. Rather, through the haze of hectoring and animus, I seek to get a clearer picture of who the individuals were.

The news article is heavily biased and feeds the frenzy against them. I am not inclined to chime in with the negative about them, particularly Wallis. If lingerie eased her state of capture, that was the way it was. I suspect what they did was actually a norm back then for a certain class and their infractions may have been minuscule compared to what others did, but of that comparison one will never hear because the point is to denigrate this couple. Goal achieved. JMO.
 
Wallis could have left the marriage any time, she left her first two without regret. I don't think she was in a state of capture, she willingly went along with the capture and reaped the riches that went with that captivity. I could see their actions in the DM story, David was a pain in the neck.
 
Wallis could have left the marriage any time, she left her first two without regret. I don't think she was in a state of capture, she willingly went along with the capture and reaped the riches that went with that captivity. I could see their actions in the DM story, David was a pain in the neck.

Follow their story, particularly Wallis' side of it as has been discussed on this thread in recent posts. :sad: Wallis' first marriage was an abusive one, so there was no regret there with it's loss. Wallis did not leave her second marriage to Simpson willingly. In fact there is significant evidence that the loss of that marriage devastated her, and she deeply regretted it's loss for years after marriage to David. Its a tragic tale.

As for what Wallis could or could not have done, that is why studying the times, and the nature of a woman's place (and power) in those times is crucial to understanding what options were open to Wallis. There's that, and then there is the unpleasant reality that David was obsessed with her and threatened her with stalking if she left him (and what a spectacle that would have been!) and with killing himself. One must look at the whole of it in its time and place to fully grasp Wallis' predicament. IMO.
 
I come across it all the time, and not as in comparison to David. It seems she was an interesting woman, a good hostess, and that requires a certain like-ability. But I also think we cannot underestimate the effect the truly toxic reaction to her was in general across years. There had to have been a reaction in her deepest self. She may have become embittered over time, and living with someone like David day-in-day-out (so dependent a personality) must have had it's effect, too. After all, she never pretended to be spiritual or into self-help philosophy. ;)

There is also something to be said that as banished as they were, they were also likely considered prey for opportunists. That would make Wallis (likely the more astute and vigilant of the two) inclined to whip out a more hauteur attitude as defense. They did not have an ideal circumstance for life, given the times. Neither had the imagination to develop their joint lives in any unusual way (as might happen now).

BTW it was on this thread that it was revealed the good social work Wallis did while in the Bahamas during the war. I don't think letters in which she vented her bitterness need stand as the final word. Wallis did make attempts to do more than be a social butterfly.

They are both so very much outcomes of their time and place. Iconic really. Will always fascinate, I think. :cool:

Lady Nimue, I couldn't help but smile when I read the words "across the years". In 1985, following a weekend in Windsor and coming home via Virginia Water, I was disappointed to find I was unable to see The Fort (Belvedere) one time home to David. I voiced this disappointment to a friend who'd been a visitor there -being related through marriage- during that extraordinary period during the 1930's. I'll never forget her words. "My dear, you'd hate it. It's full of that woman"!!!!!

Wallis could have left the marriage any time, she left her first two without regret. I don't think she was in a state of capture, she willingly went along with the capture and reaped the riches that went with that captivity. I could see their actions in the DM story, David was a pain in the neck.

The invisible ties which bind, eh, Katrianna? Amongst them, fear and guilt being high on the list. I think David did an excellent job of making her responsible for him. However much he never wanted to be king, he could always play the "Look what I gave up for you" card. The words didn't need saying, they'd have hung there. At least Wallis had the comfort of knowing that she could be miserable in luxury.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Maybe I'm just completely crazy, since I can't feel the hatred that everyone else seems to have for this couple. But even though I hardly admire them, I do feel sympathy for them. So I won't judge them like most people do. [...]

You are not crazy. I feel exactly the same for Edward and Wallis.
 
The fact is that we will never know the secret of their hearts..... all of what people say are just suppositions.....likely of course but suppositions anyway.
 
I cannot like Wallis [nor Edward], but i cannot hate her either considering I think she did Britain a HUGE favour by removing him from the throne.

Both of them led essentially empty lives [certainly after 1936], and that is more pathetic than deserving of hatred.
 
What historical personages think and do does not impact me personally. :ermm: I'll not vent spleen on people I have never met, and know naught of their trials and tribulations. 'Pathetic'? 'Shoddy'? The system they were part of created who they were and the animus directed at them made them what they were. I'm not interested in judging them harshly. Rather, through the haze of hectoring and animus, I seek to get a clearer picture of who the individuals were.

The news article is heavily biased and feeds the frenzy against them. I am not inclined to chime in with the negative about them, particularly Wallis. If lingerie eased her state of capture, that was the way it was. I suspect what they did was actually a norm back then for a certain class and their infractions may have been minuscule compared to what others did, but of that comparison one will never hear because the point is to denigrate this couple. Goal achieved. JMO.

Pathetic-- Edward persuaded the British Army in March 1946 (when Europe especially was crammed still with refugees, and want and suffering and homelessness) to put three lorries at his disposal to carry, instead of possible needed supplies, thirty two packing cases of cherished possessions from the vaults of the Bank of France, to London.

Chapter 28 'The Duke as Author' 'King Edward VIII by Philip Ziegler.

From the book 'That Woman' the author recounts that Charles Pick, the publisher had several meetings with the Duchess while her autobiography 'The Heart has its Reasons' was about to be published by his company. He recalled that he 'certainly did not find her witty or endearing in any way, but rather a brittle and hard person'.

Pick stated that at their first meeting Wallis's opening remark was 'Can you tell me who Marilyn Monroe's publicity agent is? I have all the newspapers each day and I was generally on the front page. But now I see that Marilyn Monroe is....Well, somebody has pushed me off.'
Pick had to inform her that his job really was not to be her publicist.

Pathetic? Yes. Shoddy? Yes. Self obsessed to the nth degree? Yes. And 98% of what I've every read about these two, including about six biographies and collections of letters, confirms my opinion.
 
I remember reading (in one of the many books that I had on Wallis and Edward) that she stated it was hard living "a great love story" in regards to the years after the Abdication.

There is no doubt that Edward loved Wallis (almost obsessively to be honest), and I think she cared for him as well (love I am not sure about). She definitely would have been happy to be the mistress and the power behind the throne.


Don't forget that both he and Ernest discussed the outcome of the Simpson marriage without her. How ridiculous is that? She had no say in the outcome in her marriage. Now people could rightly say that she didn't give Ernest a say in his marriage so she got what was coming to her.
 
What is so interesting about David and Wallis to me is that along with having a profound effect on the monarchy and how it affected WWII, its also a good look into people's lives and how in different ways they were affected by the actions of each other. One could almost describe it as sitting back and watching the games people play in their relationships to each other.
 
I

Don't forget that both he and Ernest discussed the outcome of the Simpson marriage without her. How ridiculous is that? She had no say in the outcome in her marriage. Now people could rightly say that she didn't give Ernest a say in his marriage so she got what was coming to her.

Ernest was fed up with her affair with David and was seeing antoher woman, whom he wanted to marry. So he wanted to end the marriage.
 
Wallis could have left the marriage any time, she left her first two without regret. I don't think she was in a state of capture, she willingly went along with the capture and reaped the riches that went with that captivity. I could see their actions in the DM story, David was a pain in the neck.

which was why the RF were very reluctant to let her have the HRH. They felt that this marriage might not last any longer than the first 2 and she might end up married to some lounge Lizard, calling herself HRH the Countess somebody and exacting curtsies from people...
I think ti wasnt' easy to leave him, because of expectations, but she would have done it if the rewards had not exceeded the tedious bits. Can't believe anyone would feel that they were justifed in buying stuff without coupons at a time when there were such awful shortages in the UK even though they had won the war.
 
I can just picture how ostracized Wallis would have been if she had decided to end her marriage to David. After kind of being backed into a corner where her present husband and her want-to-be husband connived and plotted on how to make it all happen behind her back and then the subsequent marriage and being known as "That Woman", a divorce from David would have magnified the ostracism to the nth degree and unless Wallis was strong enough in her own skin to handle things, retreating to a nunnery or being a recluse somewhere would most likely be the only place where she could feel comfortable.

Events had forced her to make her bed where it ended up and it was perhaps easier to "go with the flow" of things and lie in the bed of her own making rather than being a lone woman against the world.
 
I don't think she would have done it easily but she would IMO have done it if she'd realy wanted to. But she wasn't likely to meet a richer man than Edward, she might have wound up with some social climber who would have married her for the social cachet of marrying the Duchess of Windsor.
I don't believe she would have been ostracised, there were always shallow people in that society she mixed in who would accept whatever excuse she might give for another divorce.
 
The thing is though that once Wallis would have remarried, she would no longer be able to associate herself with the Duchess of Windsor title. It would be totally lost upon remarriage.

If anyone would have known how shallow and status seeking some high society people in that era were, she probably could have smelled them a mile away. It also was part of the era Wallis lived in that lone women that stand on their own two feet as an individual just wasn't the norm.

Wallis had far more to lose by divorcing David than she really had to gain when everything is all weighed and looked at.
 
I don't think she would have done it easily but she would IMO have done it if she'd realy wanted to. But she wasn't likely to meet a richer man than Edward, she might have wound up with some social climber who would have married her for the social cachet of marrying the Duchess of Windsor.
I don't believe she would have been ostracised, there were always shallow people in that society she mixed in who would accept whatever excuse she might give for another divorce.

I'm not sure I agree w/para 2. I think she understood that if she walked away from him it would be she, not he that looked bad. After all, sans Wallis, the family could very well take him back on some terms and play her up as the villain. Which they were capable of at the time. If not the family, then the courtiers that did such an excellent job hacking away at the Wales' for fun and profit (JMO and off topic, but they showed their colors to be puce and petty back then).

I've always thought Wallis enjoyed kvetching about how much she endured from each of her partners. That was part of her schtick - to whine about all she had to put up with. You can see it in the passive aggressive comments in letters to friends and exes.

I've always admired him for his lack of that trait. Sooner or later, we all get bugged by friends/loves. It's a mark of some kind of substance that he didn't feel/vent (which?) that in his own letters. Of course, he vented to her about the Royal Family. But that's another thing.
 
I can just picture how ostracized Wallis would have been if she had decided to end her marriage to David.

Divorced women were ostracized. It was the ultimate scarlet letter. How many film stars from that era did not divorce because it would have meant the ruin of their career? :sad:

Wallis' first husband was an alchohoilc who brutally abused her. She was subject to savage beatings. She eventually got away from him and yet it was a mark against her that she left him at the time. To this day the ending of her first marriage is attributed to some character flaw and innate shallowness.

Her second marriage to Simpson she never intended to give up, it was given up for her through the machinations of David himself. He went behind her back, called Simpson to a meeting, and there her fate was sealed. We cannot say what Simpson would have done without the pressure David brought to bear. It's a remarkable piece of the story, because had Simpson not caved, she could have held David off. Without Simpson, she was powerless to effect her removal from David.

After kind of being backed into a corner where her present husband and her want-to-be husband connived and plotted on how to make it all happen behind her back and then the subsequent marriage and being known as "That Woman", a divorce from David would have magnified the ostracism to the nth degree

I don't see Simpson as conniving. I think David is the culprit here. Whatever occurred in that meeting, it was enough to convince Simpson to walk without talking to Wallis. It's a very curious moment in the whole proceedings.

and unless Wallis was strong enough in her own skin to handle things, retreating to a nunnery or being a recluse somewhere would most likely be the only place where she could feel comfortable.

We know she had considerable strength. She survived an abusive marriage and the ostracism leaving the husband entailed. No PTSD back then, and no sympathy for the woman. ('She must have deserved it', would have been the whispers).

It's easy in hindsight to say she could have refused to marry David, and she certainly could have, but the man was threatening her with stalking across the world, and killing himself. Someone here has mentioned that he got her to accept responsibility and guilt for him. She felt obligated if nothing else. Its a very complicated psychological/emotional web that had been, and was being woven, to keep her in place by his side. Someone objected to the notion that she was a captive, but she was, as so many women of her time were. Marriage was essential for social standing and economic survival, but what came along with that was more often than not a harrowing ordeal.

Events had forced her to make her bed where it ended up and it was perhaps easier to "go with the flow" of things and lie in the bed of her own making rather than being a lone woman against the world.

I think you have summed it up, Osipi. She had already experienced the wasteland that greeted any unmarried woman between her first marriage and her second. She already knew what lay in store so she made the best choice she could.

It's curious how people want these historical figures to be saint-like. In several instances Wallis was handed a poor hand, but she played it the best she could. That she maintained sanity is in itself remarkable imo. Powerful influences came into play around her and we are hardly in a position to lecture that she shouldn't have been embittered, or grandiose, or entitled. She dealt with what she had in the way she could. She was a southern belle. It was in her to be that.

Oh well. A fascinating woman imo. Her circumstances, her choices, her undeniable strength. Remarkable, really. And the animus goes on. The BRF's part, especially the QM's part, in how they were dealt, is the real nasty in my book. JMO.
 
Last edited:
The part of the story I care about is their friendships during the war. That is what I find unforgivable.
I don't see anything in the QM's dislike of Wallis to be surprised about. I don't see any reason for her to welcome the Duchess into the family. Wallis went after David, and got burnt when it slipped out of her control.
 
Last edited:
The part of the story I care about is their friendships during the war. That is what I find unforgivable.

You object to their politics. Okay. :cool: However, they were not outliers. The British aristocratic class were all of that and more. It is so. They were part of that which was their world. Why fault them for being precisely who they were embedded amongst? Neither of them were that well educated or imaginative in their own right to break free. Few did, yet they are faulted, and loudly. They played it the way they were given it. Most do. And none other are mentioned.

Someone remarked that Wallis' letters appeared (to them) to be whiny and complaining. They like that David did none of that. It's Wallis's critical faculty that is an indicator of her intelligence. IMO she's an example of a woman who could have been so much more with a good education. Even so, she did remarkably well living by her wits, I think.

I don't see anything in the QM's dislike of Wallis to be surprised about.

No? I do. It was pretty extreme, and the reasons given for the animus just don't hold up. I think there's more afoot there than is admitted. :cool:

Of course, one can understand it (and not be surprised) on the basis of snobbery alone. Wallis was common, an American, a divorcee. But common would have been enough. She was common and presuming to be equal to royalty. That's one uppity commoner. Unforgivable.

I don't see any reason for her to welcome the Duchess into the family.

Common courtesy? Good breeding? :huh:

Wallis went after David, and got burnt when it slipped out of her control.

'Went after David'. No. That wasn't Wallis' crime. Innumerable ladies had 'gone after' David, to his great delight (apparently). Wallis was playing by the rules. In the end, David wasn't. It wasn't part of the rules that the heir could break up marriages, but he did it. He went so far as to haul the husband into a meeting to effect that.

What Wallis's 'crime' was (that she did not look to have happen, it is clear) was that David fell in love with her and scrambled the monarchy. Or as some here suggested, as Kingship loomed he used Wallis as the handy get-of-jail-free card. Maybe it could have been any woman he had been currently enamored of, but we'll never know and that is pointless speculation.
 
Oh, how I love to see people twist and turn cold, hard, unforgiving facts in a vain attempt to try to rehabilitate Wallis Simpson into "she who was sinned against', a hapless victim of a selfish man (oh, better make that two selfish men, David and Ernest).
You object to their politics. Okay. However, they were not outliers. The British aristocratic class were all of that and more. It is so. They were part of that which was their world. Why fault them for being precisely who they were embedded amongst? Neither of them were that well educated or imaginative in their own right to break free. Few did, yet they are faulted, and loudly. They played it the way they were given it. Most do. And none other are mentioned.
Fraternising with the enemy in a time of war is never going to be called anything other than Treason and more than a few swung on a noose or were jailed and yet you claim they merely played the hand they were dealt. The rest of David's family and 99.9% of their class and the British as a whole had no trouble telling friend from foe. The biggest inditement of David and Wallis Nazi sympathising was that David, unlike the rest of the general public, regardless of class, was informed of what was happening politically and militarily in the years leading up to the war.

It is almost as if their behaviour was a childish way of cocking a snoot at his brother and the rest of the BRF. The indiscreet loose lips bothered them not one wit so long as their egos were being stroked. That is why they originally went to Berlin. Let's be honest here, there is no way on God's green earth that you are going to persuade us that Wallis was guileless and innocent and vast swathes of the people of Britain were Nazi sympathisers. Good heavens, whatever do you use to measure the moral fibre of a person. Wallis was divorced, remarried and had a succession of lovers, the last of any real note being David whom she later married. David was much the same.

Their chickens came home to roost and karma bit them in the ass. It's not as if David debauched an innocent! They were both morally bankrupt and it is hardly surprising that the bed they made was both crowded and comfortless.

Wallis Simpson's extraordinary collection of lovers | Daily Mail Online

Note: I do not hate either Wallis or David but am fascinated that each of them seemed to bring out the worst in the other. Fascinated by their public behaviour, how they seemed to go out of their way to do every single thing they were advised not to and thus became the authors of their own pitiable fate.
 
:previous:
You are correct-David had been privy as heir, then King to classified information but still fraternized with the enemy. There were good reasons he was sent to The Bahamas for the duration of the war. One, to protect him from his own stupidity and keep him from being captured and used as a pawn and two, to limit the information he could pass onto the enemy. Churchill and King George VI knew that David was untrustworthy and cared more about himself than his country. It saddened Bertie but he had no illusions about his brother.
 
Last edited:
Oh, how I love to see people twist and turn cold, hard, unforgiving facts in a vain attempt to try to rehabilitate Wallis Simpson into "she who was sinned against', a hapless victim of a selfish man (oh, better make that two selfish men, David and Ernest).Fraternising with the enemy in a time of war is never going to be called anything other than Treason and more than a few swung on a noose or were jailed and yet you claim they merely played the hand they were dealt. The rest of David's family and 99.9% of their class and the British as a whole had no trouble telling friend from foe. The biggest inditement of David and Wallis Nazi sympathising was that David, unlike the rest of the general public, regardless of class, was informed of what was happening politically and militarily in the years leading up to the war.

It is almost as if their behaviour was a childish way of cocking a snoot at his brother and the rest of the BRF. The indiscreet loose lips bothered them not one wit so long as their egos were being stroked. That is why they originally went to Berlin. Let's be honest here, there is no way on God's green earth that you are going to persuade us that Wallis was guileless and innocent and vast swathes of the people of Britain were Nazi sympathisers. Good heavens, whatever do you use to measure the moral fibre of a person. Wallis was divorced, remarried and had a succession of lovers, the last of any real note being David whom she later married. David was much the same.

Their chickens came home to roost and karma bit them in the ass. It's not as if David debauched an innocent! They were both morally bankrupt and it is hardly surprising that the bed they made was both crowded and comfortless.

Wallis Simpson's extraordinary collection of lovers | Daily Mail Online

Note: I do not hate either Wallis or David but am fascinated that each of them seemed to bring out the worst in the other. Fascinated by their public behaviour, how they seemed to go out of their way to do every single thing they were advised not to and thus became the authors of their own pitiable fate.
What an interesting article in the Daily Mail....so difficult to see how much she charmed men when you see her pix.....of course there are more important things than looks but.....:eek:
 
I kind of understand their point. With the end of the war they were gearing up to their never-ending social life and had to look respectable.

I believe that the women of the Royal Family also needed ‘respectable’ clothing, yet they abided by the rationing rules like their subjects did.
 
Back
Top Bottom