The Peoples King by Susan Williams Page A
Authors: Susan Williams
Tags: History, Non-Fiction
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young. In fact, in my own country I would have been considered securely on the shelf. 34
Edward evidently cared nothing about Wallis's age - it was simply irrelevant to him. But in any case, there is nothing so rejuvenating as the feeling of desire and of being desired. As the romance grew into love, Wallis bloomed and her eyes sparkled. Her previous anxieties about middle age - her dread of the last swan song - slipped away.
Edward looked upon Wallis as the most independent woman he had ever met. 'I admired her forthrightness', he wrote later, in his memoirs. 'If she disagreed with some point under discussion, she never failed to advance her own views with vigour and spirit. That side of her enchanted me.' 35 She was also completely open and honest about her background and never pretended to be anything other than what she was. She never concealed - from Edward or from anyone else - the fact that her beloved Aunt Bessie worked as a paid companion to a rich American woman, even though she was well aware that the idea of working for pay was despised by the English elite. Wallis was never anything but proud of her aunt. In 1930 and again in 1934, Mrs Merryman came over from America to stay with Wallis and Ernest, and in 1936 she travelled once more to London to be at Wallis's side.
Edward was not bothered by Wallis's lack of titles and wealth. He was free of snobbery to a degree that was remarkable, given his background. He came to 'sit in my office and talk to me as an ordinary person would', said the head porter at Bryanston Court. 36 He saw Wallis as an individual woman, not as a member of any particular social group. And she, in her turn, saw him as an individual man - not simply as a king. She was probably the only woman he had ever met, commented Diana Mosley, one of the Mitford girls who became Oswald Mosley's second wife, who
did not feel obliged to behave slightly differently because he was there to the way she would have with anyone else . . . She was always very polite, curtsying, calling him 'Sir', but she always spoke her mind. It must have made him feel that at long last here was someone who treated him as he would have wished. ' 7
John Gunther, an American journalist who was a friend of Edward's, made the same point. 'She treated him', he said, 'like a man and a human being.' 38
Edward and Wallis had many shared understandings in their ways of looking at the world. Like Edward, observed Lord Beaverbrook, the newspaper magnate, Wallis 'showed a liberal outlook, well maintained in discussion, and based on a conception which was sound.' 39 One evening, when Edward invited Wallis and a few friends to dinner at the Dorchester Hotel, the conversation turned to his interest in the new social service schemes for the unemployed. Only that afternoon, he wrote in his memoirs, 'I had returned from Yorkshire, where I had been visiting working-men's clubs in towns and villages.' In the female company to which he was accustomed, he added, the disclosure of such a chore would usually have provoked a response like, 'Oh! Sir, how boring for you. Aren't you terribly tired?' Wallis, however, wanted to know more. 'I told her what it was and what I was trying to do.' She was genuinely interested in how the Prince of Wales went about his job. In addition, said Edward, she was discriminating, with 'an intuitive understanding of the forces and ideas working in society. She was extraordinarily well informed about politics and current affairs.' 40 Wallis admired Edward's concern about social problems, I am crazy to hear if you heard the King's broadcast and what you thought of it', she wrote proudly to her aunt, 4 ' after he had given a speech on I March 1936 in which, departing from the text supplied by the Government, he declared his commitment to the welfare of his subjects:
I am better known to you as Prince of Wales - as a man who, during the war and since, has had the opportunity of getting to know the people of nearly every
Edward evidently cared nothing about Wallis's age - it was simply irrelevant to him. But in any case, there is nothing so rejuvenating as the feeling of desire and of being desired. As the romance grew into love, Wallis bloomed and her eyes sparkled. Her previous anxieties about middle age - her dread of the last swan song - slipped away.
Edward looked upon Wallis as the most independent woman he had ever met. 'I admired her forthrightness', he wrote later, in his memoirs. 'If she disagreed with some point under discussion, she never failed to advance her own views with vigour and spirit. That side of her enchanted me.' 35 She was also completely open and honest about her background and never pretended to be anything other than what she was. She never concealed - from Edward or from anyone else - the fact that her beloved Aunt Bessie worked as a paid companion to a rich American woman, even though she was well aware that the idea of working for pay was despised by the English elite. Wallis was never anything but proud of her aunt. In 1930 and again in 1934, Mrs Merryman came over from America to stay with Wallis and Ernest, and in 1936 she travelled once more to London to be at Wallis's side.
Edward was not bothered by Wallis's lack of titles and wealth. He was free of snobbery to a degree that was remarkable, given his background. He came to 'sit in my office and talk to me as an ordinary person would', said the head porter at Bryanston Court. 36 He saw Wallis as an individual woman, not as a member of any particular social group. And she, in her turn, saw him as an individual man - not simply as a king. She was probably the only woman he had ever met, commented Diana Mosley, one of the Mitford girls who became Oswald Mosley's second wife, who
did not feel obliged to behave slightly differently because he was there to the way she would have with anyone else . . . She was always very polite, curtsying, calling him 'Sir', but she always spoke her mind. It must have made him feel that at long last here was someone who treated him as he would have wished. ' 7
John Gunther, an American journalist who was a friend of Edward's, made the same point. 'She treated him', he said, 'like a man and a human being.' 38
Edward and Wallis had many shared understandings in their ways of looking at the world. Like Edward, observed Lord Beaverbrook, the newspaper magnate, Wallis 'showed a liberal outlook, well maintained in discussion, and based on a conception which was sound.' 39 One evening, when Edward invited Wallis and a few friends to dinner at the Dorchester Hotel, the conversation turned to his interest in the new social service schemes for the unemployed. Only that afternoon, he wrote in his memoirs, 'I had returned from Yorkshire, where I had been visiting working-men's clubs in towns and villages.' In the female company to which he was accustomed, he added, the disclosure of such a chore would usually have provoked a response like, 'Oh! Sir, how boring for you. Aren't you terribly tired?' Wallis, however, wanted to know more. 'I told her what it was and what I was trying to do.' She was genuinely interested in how the Prince of Wales went about his job. In addition, said Edward, she was discriminating, with 'an intuitive understanding of the forces and ideas working in society. She was extraordinarily well informed about politics and current affairs.' 40 Wallis admired Edward's concern about social problems, I am crazy to hear if you heard the King's broadcast and what you thought of it', she wrote proudly to her aunt, 4 ' after he had given a speech on I March 1936 in which, departing from the text supplied by the Government, he declared his commitment to the welfare of his subjects:
I am better known to you as Prince of Wales - as a man who, during the war and since, has had the opportunity of getting to know the people of nearly every
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