Sarah Freeman: Notes on a scandal from the pen of Mrs Simpson herself

It was a scandal like no-one had seen before.

In 1936, just a few months into his reign as the King of England, Edward VIII found himself at the centre of a constitutional crisis when he grew determined to marry Wallis Simpson.

Britain was scandalised. Not only was she an American socialite and not the kind of woman the public thought should be embraced by the Royal Family, but she was also twice divorced.

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It was unthinkable that the Head of the Church of England would ever consent to such a marriage and as the government opposed the union, Edward did the unthinkable. He renounced the throne, explaining: “I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility without the woman I love.”

While Edward didn’t escape censure, it was Mrs Simpson who bore the brunt of the public’s anger. Yet it now appears Wallis had no great desire to deprive the country of a King.

In the months immediately before and after Edward’s abdication, Wallis wrote a series of secret love letters to the man she was in the process of divorcing. In them, she revealed her dread at the prospect of the marriage and talked of how she planned to escape from the King and the furore surrounding her.

Examining 15 of her private notes, Anne Sebba, Mrs Simpson’s latest biographer, says Wallis was out of her depth and perhaps still in love with her second husband, Ernest, who she was in the process of divorcing.

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“None of this mess and awakening emptiness is my doing,” she wrote in one letter to the American businessman. In another letter she proclaimed: “I miss you and worry about you. Wasn’t life lovely, sweet and simple?”

“Wallis Simpson found herself at the centre of a national scandal when she was seen to ensnare Edward,” says Sebba, whose documentary Wallis Simpson: The Secret Letters will be broadcast on Channel Four next week. “As an American, Wallis loved the access to the highest levels of English society and she enjoyed the riches and trappings of a royal mistress.

“However, she never expected any of it to last. She truly believed that one day, like most mistresses, she would be easily replaced. These assumptions were shattered when King George V died and Edward made it clear he wished to marry Wallis at any cost – even threatening suicide when she suggested ending the affair.

“So Wallis divorced her husband, but as both Wallis’s and Ernest’s private letters make clear, theirs was a divorce conducted with collusion between both of them and the King of England.”

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Mrs Simpson had socially climbed her way through the British aristocracy, finally meeting Prince Edward at a party in 1931 and her husband, Ernest, turned a blind eye, to the affair. However, as the abdication crisis mushroomed, her comfortable life began to come apart at the seams.

Sebba’s research adds to growing evidence that Wallis was not quite the scarlet woman she was portrayed as at the time. Documents released in 2000 included a declaration signed by her in the latter months of 1936 in which she stated she had “abandoned any interest in marrying His Majesty”.

While vilified at the time of the King’s abdication, in later years her marriage to Edward was seen by many to be a great romance against all the odds, but again Sebba’s portrayal paints a very different picture. Shortly after her wedding to Edward, she wrote to Ernest: “I think of us so much, though I try not to. I wonder so often how you are? How the business is getting on etc. I thought I’d write a few lines to he say I’d love to hear from you.” She later added: “Wherever you are, you can be sure that never a day goes by without some hours thought of you and for you and again in my prayers at night.”

There was to be no happy ending for Edward and Wallis, the couple spent their final years in France, largely alienated from the society which she had craved acceptance to.

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Edward died on May 28, 1972, from throat cancer. Wallis attended the funeral, invited by the Queen as a guest at Buckingham Palace, but the atmosphere was as icy as ever and she made her way back to the airport alone.

She survived until April, 1986, but her latter years were plagued by ill-health. At the time, obituaries still talked of her as the woman who had almost brought down the monarchy, but it seems the real Wallis Simpson was a much more complex figure.

Wallis Simpson: The Secret Letters will be shown on Wednesday August 24 on Channel 4 at 9pm.

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