Before Wallis Read online

  For John,

  for being with me all the way.

  First published 2018

  The History Press

  The Mill, Brimscombe Port

  Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

  www.thehistorypress.co.uk

  © Rachel Trethewey, 2018

  The right of Rachel Trethewey to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 0 7509 9019 6

  Typesetting and origination by The History Press

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd

  eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  PART ONE

  ROSEMARY

  1 A Wartime Romance

  2 The Perfect Partner

  3 The Girl of Girls

  4 Bad Blood

  FREDA

  5 The Lover

  6 ‘Fredie Mummie’

  7 The Toxic Circle

  8 International Affairs

  THELMA

  9 Second Best

  10 The Accidental Matchmaker

  PART TWO

  ROSEMARY

  11 Rosemary in Love

  12 The Tragic Heroine

  FREDA

  13 The Socialite with a Social Conscience

  14 The Charity Worker

  THELMA

  15 The International Playgirl

  16 The Businesswoman

  Notes

  Select Bibliography

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  From start to finish the writing of this book has only been possible because of the support of many people. The initial idea of looking into the life of Freda Dudley Ward came from the novelist, royal commentator and journalist Christopher Wilson. Since my time as a student journalist Christopher has been a mentor to me and his suggestion of writing about Freda immediately intrigued me. After discussions on the subject with my friend, the novelist and biographer Andrew Wilson, the project grew to include the other women in Edward VIII’s life. In most biographies of the Duke of Windsor, Rosemary Leveson-Gower, Freda Dudley Ward and Thelma Furness appear as minor characters. The same stories about them have been repeated many times. I wanted to find out more about the women who captured the future king’s heart. I have only been able to do that with the help of their descendants and archivists who have access to their papers.

  I would particularly like to thank the Dudley Ward family. Meeting Freda’s grandchildren has given me an insight into what she was like because they have inherited her charm, lack of pretension and open-mindedness. Freda’s granddaughter Martha Milinaric has been so generous with both her time and hospitality. I spent a magical summer’s day at Martha’s country house in Somerset, looking through hundreds of letters to Freda, including the collection of love letters from Michael Herbert. Martha showed me her grandmother’s photo albums, which capture her life close to the centre of power. Martha and her husband David made my husband and I feel so at home. After an intriguing morning looking at their collection, we had an equally stimulating lunch with the Milinarics. Martha also put me in touch with other members of her family. Freda’s grandson Max Reed and his wife Susan were also incredibly welcoming when I visited them in their London home. As I looked through the hundreds of love letters written by the Prince of Wales to Freda, there were welcome visits from the Reeds’ two lovely children, Ben and Alice, and their cat, Meg.

  Freda’s other grandchildren, Ben Laycock and Emma Temple, also talked to me about their grandmother and Ben provided me with some photographs of Freda that show that she remained stylish and fun throughout her long life. Freda’s great-nieces, Lady Lucinda Worsthorne and Lady Isabella Naylor-Leyland, and her great-nephew Ned Lambton, Earl of Durham, also talked to me about her and added to the colourful image I was piecing together. Stephanie Hallin at the Feathers Club Association allowed me to see the minutes of the charity, which reveal Freda’s dedicated philanthropy. Rosemary Leveson-Gower’s family members have also been very kind, sparing the time to tell me about their grandmother. I would particularly like to thank Alexander Ward and Leander Ward for providing me with information about the woman who died long before they were born.

  When I first started the project and found out that there were so many letters from Edward, Prince of Wales to Freda Dudley Ward, I wanted to discover who held the copyright. My first starting point was Rupert Godfrey, who edited Letters from a Prince, the correspondence from Edward to Freda from March 1918 until January 1921. He was most helpful but warned me that the copyright was ‘a thorny issue’. I then contacted the Pasteur Institute in Paris, which is the sole legatee of the Duchess of Windsor. They hold the copyright on all letters written by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor but when I wrote to them they explained that they consider that this only concerns the letters exchanged between the duchess and the duke. They do not claim the copyright on the Dudley Ward letters and told me that I did not need their authorisation to quote from them.

  I then contacted the Royal Archives at Windsor. As the copyright on the Duke of Windsor’s papers lacked clarity they decided to try to clear up the issue. In the autumn of 2017, Oliver Urquhart Irivine, the Librarian and Assistant Keeper of the Queen’s Archives, went to the Family Division of the High Court to formally request a full copy of the Duke of Windsor’s will and codicil for research purposes and to fill a gap in the Royal Archives’ holding and therefore in their knowledge. In a letter to the court, he explained that their purpose was to ascertain the identity of the current rights holders to the papers of Edward, Duke of Windsor. The president of the Family Division of the High Court, Sir James Munby, decided that the seal on the envelope containing the Duke of Windsor’s will and codicil could be broken for the first time, and a copy was made for Mr Urquhart Irivine to see. It was discovered that the Duchess of Windsor was the duke’s residual legatee. Therefore, the Royal Archives informed me that the royal family are not claiming copyright on the Duke of Windsor’s papers except for the brief period when he was king. Having spoken to the Pasteur Institute and the Royal Archives, I feel that I have done everything within my power to discover who holds the copyright. As the most likely candidates are not claiming it, I am quoting from the Duke of Windsor’s papers when he was Prince of Wales in this book. If a valid copyright holder comes forward, they will be credited in any future editions.

  I would also like to thank Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the Royal Archives for allowing me to visit Windsor Castle and see Edward, Prince of Wales’s diaries and the letters between him and his mother Queen Mary during the First World War. They also showed me correspondence to the prince from Lord Desmond Fitzgerald, Reginald, Viscount Esher and from the prince to Lady Weigall. Another important document I saw at Windsor was the Wigram Memorandum of 1932 recording the Prince of Wales’s discussion with his father George V about his attitude to marriage. It was a memorable experience walking up the worn stone steps in the round tower at Windsor and then studying these papers in the timeless, book-lined research room. Archivists Jane Mycock and Julie Crocker went beyond the call of duty in making sure I was able to see all the documents I had requested. Archives manager Bill Stockting explained to me very clearly a
bout the research the Royal Archives had done into the Duke of Windsor’s copyright. The material from the Royal Archives in this book is used with the permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

  Many other archives have also kindly allowed me to use material from their collections. I would like to thank Dudley Archives and Local History Service for the letters concerning Rosemary Leveson-Gower and her family; Staffordshire Record Office for a letter from Edward, Prince of Wales to Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland and a letter from Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland to Rosemary Leveson-Gower; Wiltshire and Swindon Archives for the Michael Herbert letters; the University of Southampton for letters between Lord Louis Mountbatten and his mother, the Marchioness of Milford Haven; Shropshire Archives for Sir Francis Newdegate’s letter to Bridgeman; Hatfield House Archive for Rosemary Ednam’s letter to Elizabeth, Marchioness of Salisbury; the Earl of Rosslyn and the National Records of Scotland for letters from the Prince of Wales to Shelila Loughborough; the Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge University for letters from Freda and Rosemary to Duff Cooper, Freda to Winston Churchill, Brendan Bracken to Winston Churchill, Lord Dudley to Winston Churchill and Winston Churchill to Harold Macmillan; the National Archives for Freda’s and Thelma’s divorce papers. I would also like to thank Dr Rosie Collins, whose research into the Birkin family in Nottingham for the Radcliffe-on-Trent First World War history project was enlightening. Many thanks too to John Taylor who trawled the Special Branch files to see if a watch was kept on Freda or Thelma.

  I have also drawn on many published memoirs, diaries and letters from contemporaries of Edward VIII. Among the most useful and colourful sources were the papers and books of Lady Diana and Duff Cooper. I would like to thank the estate of Lady Diana Cooper and Lord Norwich for granting me permission to quote from all sources in which Lord Norwich owns the rights. Rosemary Leveson-Gower was great friends with Ettie Desborough’s daughter, Monica. Viscount Gage has kindly granted me permission to quote from Ettie Desborough’s journal with the references to their friendship. I would also like to thank Jerome Thomas, Rosalind Asquith and Roland Asquith and the Random House Group Ltd for granting permission to reproduce quotations from Lady Cynthia Asquith’s Diaries 1915–18 (1968). For the photographs that appear in this book, I would like to thank Martha Milinaric, Ben Laycock, the Mary Evans Picture Library, the National Portrait Gallery and Staffordshire Record Office. I have tried to contact all copyright holders; if there are any I have missed, I will rectify this omission in subsequent editions.

  As well as the people who have helped me gather the information I needed to write this book I would also like to thank my agent Heather Holden-Brown and her assistant Cara Armstrong for all their support. Once again, it has also been a pleasure working with my publishers at The History Press. I am very grateful to Laura Perehinec, Chrissy McMorris, Caitlin Kirkman and Katie Beard, who have spurred me on with their enthusiasm; it is great to work with people who are on the same wavelength.

  Finally, I would like to thank my family. My husband, John Kiddey, has been there by my side throughout, coming on the research trips and acting as a sounding board for my ideas. Having him with me to share the experience has made it much more fun. My mother, Bridget Day, as always, has been a wonderful listener and adviser. For proofreading I have relied on my sister, Becky Trethewey, while, for making sure my computer worked, my son Christopher has been a great technician.

  INTRODUCTION

  It is hard to imagine a century later, just how eligible the Prince of Wales, who was to become Edward VIII and then the Duke of Windsor, was. Charismatic, charming and dapper, he caused debutantes to go weak at the knees at the thought of meeting him; and, as he was heir to the throne, future king and emperor, aristocratic mothers were busy with schemes for him to marry their daughters. In dormitories across the country, schoolgirls had photos of him pinned to their walls. Even the tough celebrity journalist Adela Rogers St Johns had a picture of him framed on her dressing table. His face appeared everywhere, in newspapers and magazines, on cigarette cards and Pathé News.1

  His combination of boyish vulnerability and glamour made him immensely popular and an icon of the age. He was the ‘unofficial patron’ of the Bright Young Things, totally in tune with the cult of youth of his era.2 If Edward appeared in ‘co-respondent’ shoes, a Fair Isle sweater or a loud checked jacket, half the young men across the country would copy him, thinking that it would make them equally irresistible to women.3 However, his appeal went deeper than fashion. As James Pope-Hennessy wrote, he personified the longings of the new post-war generation, with their desire for freedom from tradition and convention.4 He was thoroughly modern, rebelling against his father and rejecting his Victorian values. After the First World War, he recognised the need for a new order in society and wanted to see a land fit for heroes.

  No previous member of the royal family had experienced such celebrity. He was like a modern pop star, and everywhere he went he was surrounded by swooning fans. On royal visits girls would scream: ‘I touched him, I touched him.’ The frenzy that surrounded him was captured in a popular song of the era: ‘I’ve danced with a man, who’s danced with a girl, who’s danced with the Prince of Wales.’

  This book tells the stories of the much-envied women who really got close to the elusive prince. Wallis Simpson was the woman who stole the king’s heart and rocked the monarchy, but she was not Edward VIII’s first or only love. When the abdication crisis occurred in 1936 it was widely believed that Edward was suffering from an almost pathological obsession with the woman he loved. Only those in his inner circle knew that it was not the first time he had experienced a similar, all-consuming love.5 Mrs Simpson once told an interviewer that she knew the Prince of Wales had a lot of girls before her, but he said that she was the only one he wanted to marry.6 As this book will show, that statement might have fitted the legend of the greatest love affair of the twentieth century, but it was not quite true. The assessment made by the prince’s private secretary, Sir Alan Lascelles (known as Tommy), seems closer to the reality. He believed that the story of the lonely bachelor who fell deeply in love for the first time with the soulmate for whom he had been waiting all his life was a myth. Tommy had known the prince very well for a long time and he described this romantic interpretation as ‘moonshine’. He explained that in 1918 Edward had fallen as deeply in love with Freda Dudley Ward as any man could fall. From then on, he was never not under the influence of one woman or another. There was always a ‘grande affaire’ going on, alongside a continuous series of ‘petites affaires’ that occurred in whichever part of the empire the Prince of Wales was in at the time. Lascelles emphasised that Wallis was no ‘isolated phenomenon’ but just the current woman in an ‘arithmetical progression’ which had been going on for nearly twenty years.7

  Wallis Simpson, in her memoir, admitted that it was timing as much as the depth of Edward’s feelings for her that led to the abdication. She explained that as Prince of Wales his loneliness could be lessened by ‘passing companionships’, but as king that would have been difficult. The time had come for him to marry and it was her fate to be the object of his affection at that moment.8

  This book is about the other women Edward adored before Wallis dominated his life. Once under Wallis’s control he never openly admitted the importance of the women he loved before. However, in his memoir, written decades after these affairs, he did hint at his romantic past. He explained that there had been moments of ‘tenderness, even enchantment’ and without these experiences his life would have been ‘almost intolerable’.9

  Part One of this book seeks to recapture those first enchantments and analyse their pivotal role in shaping the man he became and his later choices. It describes the relationships the prince had with three women. First, Rosemary Leveson-Gower, the girl he wanted to marry; then his long-term married mistress, Freda Dudley Ward; and finally Thelma Furness, his twice-married American lover, who inadvertently paved the way for Wall
is. This section looks at these women’s lives before the heir to the throne entered their world and transformed it. It then charts the course of their romance up to the point where the prince moved on to his next relationship.

  Rosemary would have been the ideal bride: the daughter of a duke, she was not only well connected but also the perfect princess for the post-war era. She had served as a nurse in her mother’s hospital in France throughout the war and shared the prince’s compassion and respect for the soldiers who had sacrificed so much. She also had a strong personality, which could have steered the often wilful and weak prince in the right direction. Edward had found the perfect partner, but his parents opposed the match. It seems they were worried that the racy family of her mother, Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland, might cause embarrassment. It was a fateful decision; the prince would never seriously court a single woman again.

  His next love was Freda Dudley Ward. In many ways, she was the prince’s match, both physically and emotionally. They were both petite, fashionable and modern. But beneath her feminine exterior was a strong character. She had the wisdom to guide her lover in the right direction and make him a better person. However, Freda was married, and, unlike Mrs Simpson, she knew that she would never marry the prince.

  Edward was obsessively in love with Mrs Dudley Ward for sixteen years. His biographer, Frances Donaldson, claimed Freda might have been with him forever if she had wished to dominate him as much as Wallis wanted to.10 Research for this book supports this view. It reveals how intense the prince’s love for Mrs Simpson’s predecessor was. In his letters, he portrayed his affair with Freda as a love affair on an epic scale. Reading the hundreds of letters he wrote to Mrs Dudley Ward for more than a decade, it is clear that no man could have been more besotted. They challenge the legend that Wallis Simpson was the only great love of Edward’s life. Even Wallis, in her memoir, admitted that Freda was his first true love.11 Evidence suggests that he asked Freda to marry him, but – unlike Mrs Simpson – she firmly refused.