Memoirs of the Duchess of Windsor (16) — The True Story of Our Marriage

— Episode Sixteen —

The True Story of Our Marriage

At last, on the third of May, I received a telephone call from George Allen in London, informing me that my divorce had now become certain... I got in touch at once with David, who was staying in Austria, and he answered with some enthusiasm: the train would pass his way in the afternoon, and he would be at "Candé" on the morning of the next day.

I went out for a walk that afternoon in the company of Katherine Rogers... This woman was thoughtful and kind at once: "Remember that he has borne a great deal in these past days, and suffered much, and he may appear to your eyes other than the person you knew before..."

She said it without agitation; and I was in fact afraid for him, not for myself; I wondered whether that shock had crushed the sweet, merry spirit I had known!...

David arrived at lunchtime, accompanied by "Dudley Forwood." He was thin and pale, and yet I had not expected to see him in any other state; but by his behavior he wanted to convince me that he was cheerful, and that his laughter rang through the air of our life as in the days gone by... The first words with which he greeted me were: "A long time has passed in which I have not set eyes on you, beloved; I can hardly believe that this is you, and that I am here, before you..."

And it was truly a wonderful thing to meet once more: after each of us had faced his troubles alone, it had become possible for us to face them together. And since David's brother had decided that his coronation ceremony would be on May 12, we felt it necessary to postpone the date of the wedding until the month of June...

On the morning of the coronation, David mentioned in the course of conversation that he would listen to the proceedings of the ceremony from the London station: "I want to be with my brother in spirit."

And in the château of "Candé" we gathered in silence around the radio, as though in the presence of a deity. David had heard the rites of the ceremony twice in his life: once when his grandfather was crowned, and again on the day of his father's coronation. Was he thinking of those two occasions? Or was he imagining himself in the church? He said nothing of all this; he was silent, and the words of the ceremony passed over me like a roaring wave, and I struggled until I had strangled every thought; but the imagined pictures of what might have happened kept streaming through my head...

At last the gathering broke up and we were left alone, and David turned to me and said quietly: "You must never feel regret, for I myself have none... All I know is that my happiness is never parted from you..."

In those first days we began to draw up the plan of the morrow. David had taken a castle for the summer in Carinthia, and we decided to look for a dwelling for ourselves in the autumn, near Paris. There was nothing to prevent our living in England, for we were free to go and come whenever we pleased; and however strong our desire to keep our ties with Britain firm, we thought it would not be seemly for us to return too soon, for his brother's sake!...

At last the welcome changes began: Herman Rogers received a letter from the pastor of the church of St. Paul, the Reverend Jardine, in which he said that he was coming to France to perform the marriage... David rejoiced at this news, and got in touch at once with George Allen, so that he might make the necessary arrangements with the clergy and smooth the journey for Mr. Jardine, who arrived at Candé the day before the wedding. I thought him very bold to defy his superior and come to perform our marriage, and we received him with the utmost warmth.

The necessary preparations came to an end, and the trousseau that "Mainbocher" prepared for me was completed. From his collection I chose the wedding gown, of blue "crepe satin"; "Reboux" made the hat for me, while Constance Spry, the well-known flower arranger of London, came with her assistant to answer my request, and in a short while she turned the house into a luxuriant paradise; the flowers looked natural, magnificent — this was Constance's gift to me.

David had been thinking that his family might soften once the coronation was accomplished, and that perhaps one of them would come to attend his wedding; but what happened was contrary to what we expected. David's friend and secretary Ulick Alexander telephoned to tell us that Walter Monckton was coming to the wedding, bearing a letter from the King, in which he said: the Prime Minister has decided that the title, the "Royal Highness," shall be reserved to him and not to me; so David would be known as His Royal Highness the Duke of Windsor, and I would be the Duchess of Windsor — and the effect of this decision was to prevent me from standing beside my husband the King.

David grew angry, and flared up, and said: "I know my brother; he cannot have written such a letter himself; why do they do all this to me?..."

This discrimination did not stir my concern, though it distressed David, who considered it an insult to his wife and therefore to himself; and it let down a cold curtain between him and his brother.

Our wedding day, on the third of June, was splendid. Our friend Herman Rogers gave me away to my husband, and I believe he could not credit that he was seeing me in the keeping of another man, who would bear responsibility for me... They were happy moments; the pain I had endured, and the distress I had passed through, were swept away by the current of forgetfulness; and in the evening I was with David on our way to Austria.

The first lesson I learned about David was that he is more thoughtful and more precise in observation than I had expected. After he chose the castle, he reckoned it might not please me; and when the "Buick" drew up with us beside the hillside, we got out to walk along a path that goats could hardly force their way through. At last we were done climbing, and we came out at the most beautiful house I have seen in my life, built in the Austrian manner, with a spacious garden before it, a tennis court, and a swimming pool, and surrounded on every side by the peaks of the Austrian Alps. We had brought with us the cook, the servants, and the guards. Every day we would walk, and swim, and play tennis, and visit some friends; and from time to time David would satisfy his sporting passion by climbing the peaks behind the castle, and he would signal to me with a small mirror the moment he reached the highest point, while I sat in front of the house, watching him...

It was an ideal seclusion, in which we forgot the pains of the past winter; but the one thing that created a lump in our life and clouded its serenity was the returning of our thoughts to the events that had caused the abdication...

And I believe this is a natural reaction for any two spouses who have passed through painful events... "If only you had done this..." "If only you had thought of that," or "If only you had listened to me" — these questionings came to trouble us on many occasions, until one evening David said in despair: "If we keep to this way of thinking, we shall never reach any agreement whatever; so let us drop it, my dear, entirely..." And we swore never to return to mention of the past and the causes of the abdication, and we have kept the oath to this hour.