your loving daughter in law
Elizabeth
Although the Duchess of York had not met Wallis at Fort Belvedere, she had in fact been skating with the duke and the prince’s party, which included Wallis and Thelma, five months earlier. Queen Mary replied on 20 August, reassuring her daughter-in-law:
Darling Elizabeth,
I am so sorry, I quite forgot to answer yr letter to me at Cowes. Of course Papa never said a word to D about Belvedere so all is well for I agree with you that it wld never do to start a quarrel, but I confess I hope it will not occur again for you ought not to meet D’s lady in his own house, that is too much of a bad thing!!!’
The Yorks had never been frequent visitors to the Fort. The duchess, ever conscious of her position, was not comfortable with its air of informality. A photograph taken by Thelma Furness during her reign as chatelaine shows a group of eight guests; seven are sitting around the pool relaxing in swimming costumes, while the Duchess of York sits alone, resplendent in a dress, hat and pearls.
Wallis and Edward went on separate summer sojourns in August. The prince holidayed in Biarritz, while Wallis and Ernest extended a business trip of Ernest’s in Norway, staying with their friends, the Thaws, who were stationed in Oslo. That autumn, they were again regulars at the Fort while Wallis stoically nursed her private strain: more frantic concerns about money. She and Ernest faced the prospect of having to sell Bryanston Court. Dinner parties were reduced to eight guests, every six weeks, and she was restricted to having one girls’ lunch a month of no more than four women. She continued to lunch at the Ritz or Claridge’s with Thelma, à deux, and in November was excited to be invited to a dinner that Thelma gave where she met Noël Coward. (Coward later said of the Prince of Wales: he ‘had all the charm in the world with nothing to back it up’.)
The prince had started giving Wallis gifts: a photograph of himself in a leather frame, a table for her drawing room – that she chose – for Christmas. Wallis declared Christmas ‘lovely and gay’ and that New Year’s Eve, she and Ernest partied with the playboy prince until five in the morning.
On 25 January, Thelma left for a three-month trip to America to visit her family. In November, Wallis had written to Aunt Bessie: ‘I am going to miss Thelma terribly when she goes to NY after Christmas.’ The day before she sailed, Thelma and Wallis met for cocktails. ‘We rattled along in our fashion,’ Wallis remembered, ‘as we said goodbye, she said, laughingly: “I’m afraid the prince is going to be lonely. Wallis, won’t you look after him?” I promised that I would.’
Thelma’s recollection of events is subtly different. In her memoirs, she wrote: ‘Three or four days before I was set to sail, I had lunch with Wallis at the Ritz. I told her of my plans, and in my exuberance I offered myself for all the usual yeoman’s services. Was there anything I could do for her in America? Were there any messages I could deliver? Did she want me to bring anything back for her? She thanked me and said suddenly: “Oh, Thelma, the little man is going to be so lonely.” “Well, dear,” I answered, “you look after him for me while I’m away.”’
On Monday 12 February, Wallis’s letter to Bessie illustrated the extent to which Wallis heeded her friend, and in the process became indispensable to the demands of the prince. ‘Darling – I have been very slow with letters these past 2 weeks. We have inherited the “young man” from Thelma. He misses her so that he is always calling us up and the result is one late night after the other – and by late I mean 4 a.m. Ernest has cried off a few but I have had to go on. I am sure the gossip will now be that I am the latest.’ Six days later, she wrote: ‘Am also behind on my letters to you on account of the prince who is here most of the time or telephoning 2 and 3 times a day being completely at a loose end. However Thelma will be back very shortly.’
The prince’s interest in Wallis intensified during a dinner that he hosted at the Dorchester Hotel for some American friends on 30 January. Earlier that day he had been in Yorkshire, visiting social welfare projects, villages and working men’s clubs. He was astonished that evening, while the other guests were away from the table dancing, when Wallis sat with him, enquired about his day and actually appeared interested in what his role entailed. Instead of the usual: ‘Oh, Sir, how boring for you! Aren’t you terribly tired?’ response that he was accustomed to, Wallis, who had read about the Council of Social Service in the newspapers, was genuinely keen to know more about it.
Wallis recalled this to be a turning point in their relationship: ‘He began to talk about his work, the things he hoped to do, and the creative role he thought the Monarchy could play in this new age, and also dropped a hint of the frustration he was experiencing,’ she wrote in her memoirs. ‘I was fascinated. It was as if a door had opened on the inner fastness of his character. What I now saw in his keenness for his job, in his ambition to make a success of it, was not dissimilar to the attitude of many American businessmen I had known. I can not claim that I instantly understood him but I sensed in him something that few around him could have been aware of – a deep loneliness, an overtone of spiritual isolation.’
Edward was captivated. As the dancing guests returned to the table, he said to Wallis: ‘You’re the only woman who’s ever been interested in my job.’ He later wrote: ‘She began to mean more to me in a way that she did not perhaps understand. For a long time she remained unaffected by my interest.’
Yet the point had come when Wallis could no longer remain oblivious to the prince’s attentions. He took to turning up at Bryanston Court for pot-luck suppers which he, Wallis and Ernest would enjoy à trois. According to Wallis, Ernest then ‘developed the art of tactfully excusing himself and retiring to his room with his papers’. The work demands were genuine, thankfully Ernest’s shipping business was picking up.
The Prince of Wales would sometimes pop in and stay for a quick drink, at other times he would appear twice a week and stay all evening. On 18 February, Wallis reassured her aunt in her regular correspondence: ‘P.S. It’s all gossip about the prince. I’m not in the habit of taking my friends’ beaux. We are around together a lot and of course people are going to say it. I think I do amuse him. I’m the comedy relief and we like to dance together – but I always have Ernest hanging around my neck so all is safe.’
A few days later, Wallis wrote once more to her aunt: ‘I am feeling very well but am quite thin not in the face but in the figure. Naturally worry over finances is not fat-making. I weigh 8 stone undressed but eat and drink as usual.’ Juggling the attentions of Ernest, as well as the prince, who was proving to be a most determined suitor, similarly took its toll on Wallis’s nervous disposition. Admirably, she did not ‘junk old friends’ when the prince came into her life, making efforts to keep up her acquaintances in her spare evenings. She told Bessie: ‘I’m a bit worn – never a restful moment as it requires great tact to manage both.’ She and Ernest had even been asked by the prince to invite their own friends to the Fort for weekends. A tremendous honour. She asked Bessie to send her a pale-blue summer dress for $20, explaining: ‘The royalty stuff very demanding on clothes.’
Wallis was now playing the coveted hostess role. Unwittingly, Thelma provided the prince the perfect excuse to transfer affection when she returned from America on 22 March. In New York and on the crossing home, she had enjoyed the attentions of Prince Aly Khan, the son of the Aga Khan. Only twenty-three, he had a reputation as a polished seducer. According to Elsa Maxwell, Aly Khan was ‘un homme fatal’. Word of their association reached Edward.
‘The prince arrived at my house in Regent’s Park that night,’ Thelma recalled. ‘He seemed a little distrait, as if something were bothering him. Suddenly he said: “I hear Aly Khan has been very attentive to you.” I thought he was joking. “Are you jealous, darling?” I asked. But the prince
