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Wallis Simpson is known as the woman who stole the king's heart and rocked the monarchy – but she was not Edward VIII's first or only love. This book is about the women he adored before Wallis dominated his life. There was Rosemary Leveson-Gower, the girl he wanted to marry and who would have been the perfect match for a future king; and the Prince's long-term mistress, Freda Dudley Ward, who exerted a pull almost equal to Wallis over her lover, but abided by the rules of the game and never expected to marry him. Then there was Thelma Furness, his twice-married American lover, who enjoyed a domestic life with him, but realised it could not last forever and demanded nothing more than to be his mistress – and fatefully introduced him to Wallis. In each love affair, Edward behaved like a cross between a little boy lost and a spoilt child craving affection, resorting to emotional blackmail to keep his lovers with him. Each of the three women in this book could have changed the course of history. By examining their lives and impact on the heir to the throne, we question whether he ever really wanted to be king.
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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
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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
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 about 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.
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 Wallis. 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.
One of the reasons that the idea of the legendary love affair grew up around the prince’s relationship with Mrs Simpson was because the public was largely unaware of the heir to the throne’s romance with Mrs Dudley Ward. Freda was discreet and, although their affair was known about in society circles, it did not appear in the press. This book explores in detail the complicated relationship that developed between Edward and Freda. It shows that not only was Freda married, she also had another long-term lover, Michael Herbert, who was as deeply in love with her as the prince. Throughout the 1920s they were caught in a toxic circle in which neither Freda, Michael nor the prince had the commitment they needed to feel secure nor the strength required to end their affairs. It is probable that this frustrating experience affected Edward’s relationship with Wallis Simpson. It seems likely that, having adored Freda and having wanted to marry her, he was not going to make the same mistake again and fail to make a commitment to the woman he now loved. His relationship with Freda may partly explain why he acted so decisively in his relationship with Wallis.
The third woman in this book is Thelma Furness. Although a less serious mistress than Freda, she shared the prince’s life for almost five years. She was unlikely to have ever become a permanent partner because she lacked the wisdom and wit of Rosemary, Freda and Wallis. She was also too in awe of Edward and did not have the strength of character to dominate him, which her predecessors and successor did possess. By encouraging the prince’s more frivolous side, she prepared the path that led Edward to Mrs Simpson. She will go down in history as the woman who introduced the prince to Wallis. By going on a trip to America and having a fling with Aly Khan, she created a vacancy in the heir to the throne’s life that his new mistress enthusiastically filled.
As well as telling the stories of the prince’s romances with Rosemary, Freda and Thelma, Part Two examines what happened to these women once their affairs with the prince were over. It seems that returning to normal life after being the centre of attention was not easy for any of them. Although they had other relationships, none of the women found lasting romantic fulfilment after their intense experience with the heir to the throne.
In their later lives, both Freda and Rosemary showed qualities that suggest they would have been admirable partners for the prince. Rosemary was a supportive political wife who also had the potential to become an able politician in her own right. Like her mother, she worked tirelessly for medical charities until a series of tragedies culminated in her premature death.
Once Freda’s relationship with the prince was over, she found herself thrown into the glamorous world of the movies. Her second husband Bobby, Marquis de Casa Maury, owned the chic Curzon Cinema, while her eldest daughter, Penelope, became a film star. However, Freda was not just a stylish socialite, she was also a respected charity worker. With the prince’s encouragement, she set up the Feathers Clubs to help some of the most deprived people in society. After her relationship with him ended, she continued to work for the charity for more than thirty years. She showed a genuine commitment to social work and in so doing she won the admiration of prime ministers and clients alike. She lived a very full and long life, adored by her daughters, grandchildren and many friends.
Shortly after her affair with the prince ended, Thelma found herself supporting her twin sister Gloria through a custody battle, which had the potential to embarrass the royal family if she had still been involved with the heir to the throne. However, like the other women in this book, Thelma developed more as a person in her own right once she was out of the prince’s sphere. She transformed herself from the social butterfly of her youth into a businesswoman. She tried her hand at various ventures with Gloria – some were more successful than others. Although both sisters had other relationships, it seems that their true soulmates were each other. The twins lived together in America until Gloria’s death.
The story of the prince’s love life is told using the diaries, memoirs, biographies and autobiographies of Edward and many of his family and friends. This book also draws on hundreds of letters which have never been published before. Many of the prince’s letters to Freda were published by Rupert Godfrey in 1998 but, as well as these, Before Wallis uses information from several hundred more letters written by Edward to his lover which are owned by Freda’s grandson, Max Reed. The book also gives a new perspective on what happened in the relationship between Freda and the prince by examining the hundreds of letters written by Freda’s other lover, Michael Herbert, which are in Freda’s granddaughter Martha Milinaric’s collection and Swindon Archives. Unfortunately, Freda’s letters to the prince do not survive but we get an idea of her side of the story from an interview she gave to J. Bryan III and Charles J.V. Murphy for their book The Windsor Story and from her co-operation in Frances Donaldson and Philip Ziegler’s biographies of Edward VIII.
The Royal Archives have kindly allowed me to see the Prince of Wales’s diaries, which give a new insight into his early love affairs with Portia Stanley and Marion Coke. They have also permitted me to see the letters between the Prince of Wales and his mother Queen Mary, written during the First World War. They challenge the traditional image of Queen Mary as a cold, distant mother who could not express her affection. These letters show that during the war mother and son developed a warm and loving relationship which was very important to them both.
A crucial source for telling Thelma Furness’s story was her joint memoir with her twin sister Gloria, Double Exposure. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor also wrote their memoirs. At times, the three accounts contradict each other about the timing of meetings and the denouement of events; where relevant I have pointed out these contradictions. For later events in Thelma’s life the autobiographical books of her niece Gloria Vanderbilt have been an enlightening source.
The prince epitomised his era. In the aftermath of the war the younger generation tried to put the horrors they had witnessed behind them in the pursuit of pleasure. The generation gap between the prince’s contemporaries and their parents was a chasm. Cynical about conventions, Edward represented a youth culture which rejected the rules of the past. The prince and his friends were determined to have fun, whether that was dancing till the early hours of the morning in nightclubs, playing polo or golfing. This book tries to recreate the atmosphere of the period: the early chapters on Rosemary give an insight into the nihilistic experience of living through the First World War, while later chapters provide a stark contrast as they delve into the decadent world of the jazz age. To capture the spirit of the times, as well as drawing on books about the era, this study draws on hundreds of contemporary newspaper and magazine accounts.
By studying the women before Wallis, this book gives an insight into how Mrs Simpson gained such power over the heir to the throne. It reveals that he had shown similar patterns in his earlier relationships. In each love affair, he behaved like a cross between a little boy lost and a spoilt child. The women who were most successful with him showed a dominant streak which would be even stronger in Mrs Simpson. This book shows that Wallis was certainly not the only woman Edward ever truly loved or wanted to marry. If he had married Rosemary or Freda, either of them would have been a better influence on him than the woman he finally chose. As my research into their lives after Edward reveals, they would both have made good queens. If the Prince of Wales had been allowed to follow his heart earlier, it could have changed the course of history. Biographers have speculated about whether, if Edward VIII had married a different woman, he could have been a ‘good king’. When he was young he had great potential. He was charismatic, progressive and compassionate. He also had some fatal flaws as he was wilful, spoilt and insecure.12 Tommy Lascelles, who saw both sides of his complex character, concluded that as the years went on, the Hyde side of his dual personality would have predominated over the Jekyll. Lascelles wrote to his wife that nothing but the prince’s own will could have saved him, and that will was not there.13
However, questions still linger. With either Rosemary or Freda by his side, would he have matured in a different way and would his positive side have overwhelmed the negative? With their moderate political opinions and well-developed moral compasses, could he have avoided the political pitfalls he experienced in the 1930s? Could they have given him the vital strength and support to do his duty that Queen Mary gave George V and Queen Elizabeth gave George VI? By re-examining the Prince of Wales’s life from the perspective of these women’s influence on him, and telling their stories, we are able to explore one of the great ‘might have beens’ of history.
In the summer of 1917 a determined young Red Cross nurse was caring for a young wounded soldier who had been badly affected by shell shock. He was unable to speak but the nurse and his doctors were sure that if he could be encouraged to utter just one word then others would follow. The nurse dedicated herself to his care and sat with him for hours, telling him stories, pausing before words that were well known to him, praying that he would supply the blanks. She even acted out the words and flirted with him in the hope that he would say that vital first word.
Eventually he spoke: he pointed at his devoted carer and said, ‘Darling’, to demonstrate his appreciation.1 Another young man had been watching this poignant scene. As he observed the animated nurse nurturing her patient he was deeply moved by her care and felt he had to get to know her better. This bond, formed in the most harrowing of circumstances, was a story that was played out in countless similar scenarios during the First World War. However, this couple was different; the man who had been watching was Edward, Prince of Wales, and the nurse who showed such compassion was Rosemary Leveson-Gower, daughter of Cromartie, the 4th Duke of Sutherland and his flamboyant wife Millicent.2
It was a meeting of the most eligible bachelor and one of the most alluring aristocrats of the era. He was 23 and she was just a year older. Photographs capture that fateful meeting: the slight, boyish prince, dressed in khaki uniform, looks slightly gauche, standing beside the poised young woman in a white nurse’s uniform. He has his head down as though he does not know what to say, while she stares ahead with her hand on her hip looking rather bored. Rosemary’s sangfroid had been evident earlier that morning before the prince arrived. The royal visit to Millicent, Dowager Duchess of Sutherland’s hospital in France coincided with the arrival of a particularly large number of casualties, which temporarily threw the wards into chaos. Several members of staff began to panic about how an inspection by the king and queen could take place in such conditions. Rosemary remained cool and calm. ‘Nonsense,’ she said, laughing happily. ‘Nothing at all to worry about. The king and queen will see our hospital at its best working at high pressure on a really hectic morning.’ Having reassured the rest of the staff, she rushed off to help her mother show the royal party around.3 Despite her busy schedule, as the photo reveals, it was the prince, not Rosemary, who felt uncomfortable. With a mother’s intuition, Queen Mary immediately detected there was an attraction between the young couple. She wrote to her son: ‘Have you seen the various photos of you “talking to nurses” with whom you seem on terms of great intimacy?’4
Rosemary and the prince already knew each other, as their parents’ social circles had overlapped, but it was their wartime experiences that turned acquaintance into something deeper. The prince was already aware of the wonderful work Rosemary and her mother were doing. At the beginning of the war Millicent, Dowager Duchess of Sutherland had left for the continent to set up her military hospital, taking Rosemary with her to help to organise it. They ran their unit, which developed into a British Red Cross hospital, for the rest of the war. It started as a temporary hospital at Malo-les-Bains near Dunkirk, but as the shelling along the coastline increased they moved inland to Bourbourg. Life in ‘the hospital in the oat-field’ was captured by the French artist Victor Tardieu, who worked as a volunteer ambulance driver at the hospital for several months. The basic tents were made more attractive by adding coloured awnings borrowed from local hotels along the seafront. Millicent and Rosemary made the atmosphere as pleasant as possible for patients, filling vases made from empty shell cases with poppies picked near the camp and making the most of the sunlight available to boost the soldiers’ recovery. In his pictures, Tardieu portrayed the duchess bending over the beds in her pristine white uniform as a ministering angel to the wounded soldiers.5
In October 1915 the hospital was moved again to Calais and became part of the British Red Cross. Nursing took place in huts between the sand dunes, a marsh full of yellow irises, and a copse. Thanks to Millicent and Rosemary’s dedication it became one of the best-equipped and organised hospitals in France. Special workshops were set up to manufacture splints and other surgical apparatus. The life-saving new Carrel–Dakin technique, which involved the rapid cleaning of wounds with antiseptic, was introduced to minimise infections such as gas gangrene. A barge was used as a floating ambulance to transport casualties from the front line by canal to Calais and the most up-to-date drugs were imported from England, often at Millicent’s personal expense.
Before his official visit with his parents in July 1917, the prince had been to the hospital several times to see his friend, Eileen, Duchess of Sutherland, Rosemary’s sister-in-law. At this stage, although Eileen was married, Edward was more interested in her than Rosemary. He wrote in his diary: ‘Eileen is a dear and far too good for Geordie [her husband, the Duke of Sutherland].’6 In February 1916 Edward and his friends paid frequent visits to Eileen, Rosemary and Millicent at their villa, which he dubbed ‘Sutherland House’. They had dinner, went to the cinema and had lunch together in the mess tent. One afternoon the prince and the two younger women went for a ride on the beach, galloping along the sands at top speed. Two days later they went for a ride in a blizzard and had to take refuge in a farm. The trio had another adventure when they went in search of Rosemary’s brother Alastair Leveson-Gower at Le Touquet. After having lunch in a hotel their car got stuck fast in a sand dune and they only managed to move it a few yards at a time using planks by racing the engine and getting people to give it a shove.7 After one evening out together, the prince wrote: ‘Eileen is a dear and so is Lady Rosemary, tho I don’t know her so well.’8
Just a few weeks later tragedy was to tear the group apart. The prince’s friend Lord Desmond Fitzgerald had also enjoyed socialising with Eileen and Rosemary during that hectic month. Desmond was one of the prince’s few contemporaries who was allowed to call him ‘Eddie’; he was also one of the only people who knew just the right thing to say to Edward when he went into one of his self-pitying moods.9 While they were both in France they met frequently to walk and talk. In his diary the prince wrote about Desmond joining him for a ‘cheery’ dinner with Rosemary and Eileen before ‘an amusing drive back to “Sutherland House”, a fearful squash in the car which no one minded!!’10
In March 1916 Lord Desmond, who was commanding the 1st Battalion Irish Guards, was training with his regiment on a sandy beach near Calais. After watching some of the men throw their hand grenades, he encouraged the padre, Father Lane-Fox, to have a go. Lane-Fox pulled out the pin; the five-second time fuse was supposed to be activated as the grenade left his hand, but it turned out to be defective. The bomb exploded immediately, blowing out Father Lane-Fox’s right eye and fatally injuring Desmond in the head. He was rushed to the Duchess of Sutherland’s hospital where Millicent and her team did what they could to save him, but he died within an hour of the blast.11 The death of his best friend depressed the prince more than any previous experience in his life. His mother, Queen Mary, was sympathetic, writing to Edward: ‘I can’t say how much I grieve for you losing such a good kind friend.’12
Afterwards, the prince wrote to the Duchess of Sutherland, thanking her for her care of Desmond and for writing to tell him what had happened. He explained: ‘It was one of the greatest shocks of my life for Desmond was my greatest friend: and to think of him being killed in such a rotten way […] of course poor Desmond will be lamented by all who knew him. He was so popular everywhere.’ Sensitive to the suffering of others, the prince thought about the effect Desmond’s death must have had on Rosemary and Millicent because they had also known him for most of his life and had seen him so recently. He added: ‘It must have been very painful for you both poor Desmond dying in your hospital; but to me it is such a relief to feel he did die in the hands of friends!!’13
Rosemary had grown used to coping with emotionally challenging situations. Since going with her mother to France, she had taken her war work very seriously. She became a very good surgical nurse and at times worked so hard that she made herself ill. However, as the prince had witnessed, her joie de vivre was transformative. One contemporary wrote: ‘She was always smiling, always cheerful, whether she was scrubbing floors, rolling bandages, or holding sick bowls. She was beloved for her actual nursing, her cheery presence in the wards and the hundred and one little kindnesses she showed the men.’14 Rosemary’s unstinting work close to the firing line was recognised in January 1917 when she was mentioned in dispatches for distinguished service and devotion to duty. A photograph of her, looking composed and confident in a simple tunic and chunky beads, appeared in The Tatler to celebrate her honour.15
The prince recognised in Rosemary a kindred spirit. Although, to his lasting frustration, his position as heir to the throne had limited the role he could play in the war, he did everything within his power to get as close to the front line as possible. He wanted to be treated just like his contemporaries and was willing to serve, suffer and if necessary die for his country. In the early days of the war he went to see the Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, and said to him: ‘What does it matter if I am killed? I have four brothers.’16 However, Kitchener explained that the danger was not that he might be killed but that he could be taken prisoner. At this time, Lord Desmond Fitzgerald wrote to his friend saying that he fully realised how disappointed he was not to be able to fight in the war and he was very sorry for him.17 However, he told the prince that he should not be downhearted because everyone knew how brave he was and how he would much rather be an ordinary person doing ordinary duty.18
Undeterred by official opposition, Edward continued his fight to get to France; in November 1914 he was attached to the staff of Field Marshal Sir John French, commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force. His days were taken up with paperwork and delivering dispatches. Exasperated by his non-combatant role and finding that most of the men on the staff were twenty years older than him, he complained that he was the only man without a job. He hated living in relative comfort and safety while his contemporaries were being killed on the front line. His closest friends understood how damaging his lack of a role was to his self-esteem. On the prince’s birthday Lord Desmond Fitzgerald wrote to him, commiserating, adding that unfortunately he could not give him the only present he really wanted – to become an ordinary person.19
At Givenchy in March 1915 the prince came under shellfire for the first time and saw the horrifying aftermath of a battle. A few months later he was attached to the headquarters of the First Army Corps and from there he often cycled to the front to visit his friends. In September 1915 he was appointed to the staff of Major General Lord Cavan, who commanded the Guards Division. In his new role, the prince experienced danger first hand. After visiting the front line during a lull in the battle of Loos, he had to jump into a trench to avoid an explosion; 50 yards away his car was riddled with shrapnel, killing his driver. That night Edward wrote in his diary: ‘It’s an absolute tragedy […] I have seen and learnt a lot about war today, having been forward during a fight; how exceptionally bloody it all is!!’20
When Sir John French heard what had happened he tried to get the prince transferred to a safer posting, but Edward resisted and remained where he was. The worst danger the prince faced during the war was when he was in an observation post on top of the ruins of Langemarck church. There were two explosions nearby and then the third shell fell even closer. The prince crouched for an hour in a dugout with the Welsh Guards while a French battery shelled them, thinking that they were the enemy.21 He was frightened but at the same time he felt glad to be sharing the risk experienced by other young men.22 Although the prince always felt inadequate about his war record, refusing to wear war decorations he felt he had not earned, the public recognised his courage and his desire to share the danger faced by his fellow countrymen. If there was a bad shelling he would always rush to the site and rally the troops or visit the wounded in hospital. Like Rosemary, he made a lasting impact on the soldiers he met, partly because he was so modest and naturally friendly but also because his compassion was genuine. This quality was most clearly illustrated when he visited a hospital for the treatment of English soldiers suffering from facial disfigurement. These patients were extremely sensitive – they were very aware if a visitor recoiled at the sight of them. After the prince had met twenty-seven out of the twenty-eight patients who he knew were being cared for in the unit, he asked to see the final one. The medical officer in charge explained that his case was of ‘such a frightful not to say repulsive character’ that it had been decided not to include this patient with the rest. The prince firmly replied that he refused to have anyone deprived of his sympathy and that this man had the greatest claim of all to it. He was then immediately taken to the patient’s room, where he went straight up to him and kissed him. As Sir Almeric Fitzroy, who recorded this scene, wrote afterwards: ‘He who can so bear himself in the dread presence of extreme misery must have a genius for pity.’23
The meeting between the Prince of Wales and Rosemary Leveson-Gower seemed to be a case of meeting just the right person at the right time. In so many ways Rosemary fitted the criteria for a post-war future queen. Inevitably the First World War had changed the royal family’s attitude about who was suitable as a marriage partner. For centuries, the British royal family had been expected to marry other royalty rather than commoners. Since the Royal Marriages Act of 1772, a formal declaration of the king’s consent, signed by him at a special meeting of the Privy Council, was needed before a prince could marry. The last heir to the throne to receive the monarch’s consent to wed a subject was James II. Since the time of George I, if any prince in the line of succession chose to do so the marriage was not held to exist officially and so his wife and children had no position. This rule was made law by George III.24
In the years leading up to the First World War, Prince Edward’s name had been linked to several foreign princesses. When the Kaiser of Germany’s only daughter Princess Viktoria Luise visited England with her parents in May 1911 there were rumours of an engagement to the Prince of Wales. However, there was no truth in the gossip. Edward was only 17 at the time and the German princess was just a year older. Although the princess thought he was ‘very nice’ she felt he looked ‘so terribly young, younger than he really was’.25 A more serious contender for royal bride was Caroline Matilda of Schleswig-Holstein, who was known as Princess May. When the prince visited Gotha during a visit to his German cousins in 1913, he got on very well with her. Although her teeth needed some work done and her nose was rather red, she was tall and very slim. Their initial reaction to each other seemed so promising that her brother-in-law August Wilhelm, who was the son of Kaiser Wilhelm II, wrote to the prince in June 1914 suggesting he should marry Princess May. At just 19 years old Edward was not keen on the idea and, helped by Queen Mary, wrote a tactful reply.26
The royal marriage market was changed forever by the war; after the prolonged conflict with Germany, alliances with other European royal dynasties no longer seemed such a good idea. Ironically, in the same month as the royal visit to Rosemary and Millicent’s hospital took place, at a meeting of the Privy Council at which George V gave up all his German titles and announced the establishment of the House of Windsor, the king made another momentous decision. He informed the council that he and Queen Mary had decided that their children would be allowed to marry British aristocrats.27 It was as if the prince’s meeting with Rosemary was meant to be; just as centuries of royal precedent was swept away, the ideal bride appeared on the scene.
Rosemary was the perfect partner for the prince: the daughter of a duke, she was one of the most eligible girls of the era. The Sutherland family was certainly a match for royalty. The earldom dated back to 1228 and was linked to Scottish royalty by the marriage of the 5th Earl to Margaret, daughter of Robert the Bruce. The Dukes of Sutherland were treated in their own country as virtually uncrowned kings.1 Rosemary’s grandfather was reputed to be the largest landowner in Europe, owning well over 1,250,000 acres, including the entire county of Sutherland in Scotland and coal mines in England. Throughout the year Rosemary and her two brothers, Alastair and Geordie, moved with their parents between the family’s four stately homes, spending Easter at Lilleshall in Shropshire, winter at Trentham in Staffordshire, August at Dunrobin Castle in the north of Scotland and part of the spring and summer at Stafford House in London.
The Sutherlands’ extensive possessions had at times made even the royal family envious. When in 1873 the Shah of Persia saw Trentham, which was modelled on an Italian palace, he said to the then Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) that when the prince came to the throne he would have to have the owner of Trentham executed as a possible rival.2 Stafford House, in the Mall between St James’s Palace and Clarence House, was also a residence worthy of a royal owner. It had been built for George IV’s brother, the Duke of York, and was held by the Sutherlands on a ninety-nine-year lease from the Crown. It had been designed by the architect Sir Jeffry Wyatville as ‘a home fit for a prince’. Filled with period furniture and priceless works of art, it was so palatial that, on visiting Stafford House, Queen Victoria said to her friend, Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland, ‘I come from my house to your palace.’3
Dunrobin was equally regal; a fairy-tale turreted castle standing high above the Moray Firth, it descended in a series of terraces to the seashore and had been inhabited by the Sutherland family since the eleventh century. During the Victorian era, Rosemary’s grandfather had his own railway built from Golspie to Helmsdale. He laid down 17 miles of private line and had his own locomotive that he drove himself, while wearing a red shirt. When Edward VII visited Dunrobin in 1903 he was so taken with the engine that he had a replica of it made for the royal train. As one navvy said when he saw the Duke of Sutherland set off from Dunrobin on his train: ‘There, that’s what I call a real dook – there he is a-driving his own engine, on his own railway, and a-burning of his own blessed coals.’4
The royal family and the Sutherlands had socialised together for generations. Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland, had been Queen Victoria’s mistress of the robes. In 1846, she added a new wing to Dunrobin Castle to provide a royal suite for the visit of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort.5 In the next generation, Edward VII and Queen Alexandra were good friends of Rosemary’s parents and they also stayed at Dunrobin several times. In 1895, Princess May (the future Queen Mary) and Prince George (later George V) visited. Princess May was very kind to the Sutherland children and suggested that they should visit her and her two sons, Edward and Bertie, when they were next in London.6 When Princess May became Queen Mary, Millicent was one of the four duchesses to carry her canopy at the coronation. A few days later the Sutherlands put on an enormous party at Stafford House for all the foreign royalty and their representatives who were attending the coronation. The traffic in the Mall was so dense that evening that some guests did not arrive until 1 a.m. Among the thousand guests to attend were the Crown Prince and Princess of Germany, the Crown Princess of Sweden and the Prince of Siam. It was one of the most glittering events of the season. Ablaze with lights that illuminated the priceless works of art, Stafford House was full of flowers from the Sutherlands’ estate at Lilleshall. The long gallery on the first floor and the great drawing room and octagon room were used for dancing and sitting out, while the ground-floor rooms were supper rooms. The red drawing room, which opened onto the terrace, was reserved for royal guests. As dancing to Gottlieb’s band began at 11 p.m. the duchess, dressed in white, and Rosemary, in pink lace layered over a blue dress, were the centre of attention.7
Rosemary and the prince had mixed together since their childhood. As they were growing up, they had met occasionally at the children’s parties which were among the few times Edward and his siblings socialised with other children. The royal siblings lived a lonely, isolated existence and rarely met children their own age; however, on special occasions they were introduced to carefully selected children. Rosemary was among this elite group. In 1904 Queen Alexandra gave a party for the prince’s tenth birthday; dressed in a white sailor suit and broad-brimmed sailor hat, he greeted his guests, including Rosemary, who was wearing a white dress with a pink bow in her hair. They were then treated to a circus before tea.8 At another party the following year, given by Edward’s aunt Princess Victoria for her young niece and nephews, Rosemary was described as one of the ‘belles of the day’.9
However, although they both came from socially privileged backgrounds, Rosemary and Edward’s childhoods could not have been more different. Rosemary had grown up in a warm, close-knit family. According to her brother Geordie, the future Duke of Sutherland, they had the kindest of parents, and as the only daughter Rosemary was doted on by them both. Her father had a special rapport with her. He was a shy, unostentatious man, who was happiest dressed in shabby clothes shooting and deer-stalking on his Scottish estate. As Rosemary grew older, father and daughter would go sailing together on his yacht the Catania.10 Her mother Millicent was very different; outgoing and beautiful, she was a successful society hostess. From an early age Millicent took Rosemary everywhere with her. There are photos of a bonneted Rosemary sitting next to her mother in an early motor car attending the first meeting of the Ladies’ Automobile Club, helping at her mother’s many charity events and acting as a bridesmaid at weddings.
Rosemary and her brothers were mischievous; the boys were always playing pranks while Rosemary devised escapades of her own. She once joined a procession of soldiers, ‘the Blues’, as they marched around the streets of Windsor. On another occasion, at a society wedding where she was a young bridesmaid, she sneaked off to drink a glass of champagne when no one was looking.11 Rosemary showed no interest in academic work; she simply told her governess that she would not bother. She later recalled that her tutor always thought that she was ‘quite awful’.12 Despairing of ever educating her, the harassed governess gave up trying to teach and instead took Rosemary shopping in the afternoons.
With academic achievement not a priority, the Sutherland children enjoyed a relaxed childhood playing games with their friends and many cousins in the spacious gardens of Stafford House or playing ice hockey on the frozen lake at Trentham.13 Rosemary’s closest friend was Monica Grenfell, the daughter of Lord and Lady Desborough. The Desborough and the Sutherland families were great friends. Millicent and Ettie Desborough were both part of the group known as the Souls – a circle where women were prized for their intellect as much as their beauty. At Souls’ dinners, the leading politicians and intellectuals of the day discussed profound subjects together. The Desboroughs and the Sutherlands often stayed with each other. The Sutherland boys, Alastair and Geordie, were friends with Ettie’s eldest sons Julian and Billy Grenfell. When Monica was in London Rosemary had German lessons with her three times a week, and they went to dance classes, had skating lessons and swam at the Bath Club together.14 Trying to make learning fun for the girls, Ettie Desborough organised a series of twelve lectures for Rosemary and Monica and their friends on English literature. The essayist Edmund Gosse inaugurated the series with an inspiring speech to the students and at the end of the sessions the girls took an examination. More to Rosemary’s taste were the seemingly never-ending holidays. Every summer the two girls paid each other long visits with their governesses at Lilleshall, Dunrobin and the Desboroughs’ estate at Taplow.15
Making sure her children had a social life to rival her own, Lady Desborough put on elaborate fancy-dress children’s parties. At one event, the 180 guests were treated to a ventriloquist act, and live kittens in little hampers were given as leaving presents. Rosemary came dressed as a Sutherland fishergirl and Monica was a snake charmer with silver snakes in her hair. Holidays at Dunrobin were more informal. The girls enjoyed the freedom of bathing every morning before breakfast, then riding all day. Rosemary was a keen horsewoman who was described as ‘something of a youthful hoyden’ by one newspaper because she rode astride rather than side-saddle, as was expected of young ladies in the Edwardian era.16
In contrast to Rosemary’s idyllic upbringing, Prince Edward had a less happy childhood. His parents, the future George V and Queen Mary, loved their five sons and one daughter but they both had trouble expressing their affection. According to the queen’s lady-in-waiting and lifelong friend Mabell, Countess of Airlie, the problem was that they lacked any understanding of how a child’s mind worked and mistook childish behaviour for naughtiness.17 Queen Mary, who was then the Duchess of York, was not maternal and found it hard to bond with her children when they were small. Finding the demands of a baby distasteful, she handed her eldest son over to a nanny, Mary Peters, who it was later discovered was mentally unstable. The divide between the children’s nursery and their parents’ domain was rigid. When the prince was brought downstairs once a day to be with his parents at teatime, Nanny Peters would pinch or twist his arm before he saw them so that he appeared sobbing or bawling and was immediately handed back. An orphan and spinster, Nanny Peters became obsessed with her charge. She was so possessive that she did not like anyone else even holding the little prince and therefore she never took a day’s leave in three years. The Duchess of York only discovered her son was being abused when the second nanny, Lala Bill, reported it. Nanny Bill had found bruises all over the 3-year-old prince. Miss Peters was then immediately dismissed. A week later she was in hospital with a nervous breakdown from which she never recovered. As Queen Mary’s biographer explains, the potential effects of this early experience on the prince’s future relationships with women has been the subject of much discussion. Whether he was sexually as well as physically abused cannot be known but the fact that his first three years were spent in the care of such a mentally unstable woman must have been damaging.18 From infancy he had a wistful, melancholic look in his large blue eyes. He became an insecure, nervous child, who frequently fidgeted or cried and was shy and hesitant with adults.19
Although she found it hard to express her emotions, Queen Mary loved her eldest son very deeply and he always loved her. He relished the hour he and his siblings had alone with their mother in her boudoir before she went down to dinner. As she reclined on a sofa in her negligée, her children sat around her in a circle on little chairs. In this cosy atmosphere, they would laugh and joke together, or she would talk to them about literature, art and history in her soft, steady voice.20 Practical by nature, she taught her sons and daughter how to embroider and crochet. His mother’s boudoir became a place of sanctuary for the young prince. However, ladies-in-waiting and nursery staff were always stationed nearby to remove any child who was naughty. The prince later recalled that he could not remember ever being alone with his mother.21
For the duchess, her eldest son was a constant concern. Brought up with an overwhelming reverence for monarchy, she was very aware that she had the responsibility of raising a future king. When he was a teenager she worried about all aspects of his behaviour from his bad spelling to his sudden shyness. She confided in the courtier and politician Reginald, Lord Esher, who advised her to talk to her son on equal terms as though he were an adult. However, her reserved nature made such openness difficult. Esher believed that in her unsentimental way she was very proud of her eldest son, but she was unable to communicate this to him.22 Reading the letters between Edward and his mother during the First World War, it seems that as he got older their relationship became more relaxed and intimate. In 1916 the prince told his mother that he wrote what he felt to her rather than to his father because he knew ‘you understand that I do have feelings of my own and it does me so much good to express them’.23 Although she found it hard to say what she felt face to face, Queen Mary’s letters to her son were very loving. She wrote frequently to her ‘Most darling David’ and signed off ‘lots of love bless you most darling David, Ever your loving Mama’.24