by Susan Flantzer  © Unofficial Royalty 2019

On June 3, 1937, Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor (known as David) married Wallis Simpson at the Château de Candé in Monts, France, a 16th-century castle owned by Charles Bedaux, a ­­French-born, naturalized American industrial millionaire.

David’s Early Life

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Four Generations: Left to right: The future King George V (David’s father), Queen Victoria (David’s great-grandmother), David (the future King Edward VIII), the future King Edward VII (David’s grandfather), circa 1900

The future King Edward VIII was born on June 23, 1894, at White Lodge, Richmond Park on the outskirts of London. At the time of his birth, his great-grandmother Queen Victoria sat upon the throne of the United Kingdom. His parents, the future King George V and Queen Mary were the Duke and Duchess of York, and his grandparents, the future King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra were Prince and Princess of Wales. The infant prince was the eldest son of his parents and was third in the line of succession behind his grandfather and father. He was christened with a long string of names: Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David but in the family, he was known as David.

David and his brother, the future King George VI (called Bertie in the family), were raised by Frederick Finch, the nursery footman, and Henry Hansell, their tutor. Finch remained important in David’s life as he later became his valet and then his butler. David continued under Hansell’s instruction until 1907 when he enrolled at the Osborne Naval College. He did not enjoy his time there and after two years, he moved on to continue his studies at Royal Naval College, Dartmouth.

After his father succeeded to the throne in 1910 as King George V, David was the heir to the throne and his education intensified. He was withdrawn from his naval course before his formal graduation and served as a midshipman for three months aboard the battleship Hindustan. Next, he was enrolled at Magdalen College, Oxford, despite being intellectually underprepared. He left Oxford after eight terms without any academic qualifications.

When World War I started in 1914, David was eager to participate. He had joined the Grenadier Guards in June 1914 and was willing to serve on the front lines. Secretary of State for War Lord Kitchener refused because of the possibility that the heir to the throne could be captured by the enemy.

During the 1920s and the 1930s, David made several successful overseas tours. He was a popular prince and was admired for his fashion style and easy manner. Much to his father’s annoyance, David showed little interest in marrying and settling down. His father was disgusted by his affairs with married women and was reluctant to see him inherit the throne. King George V prophetically said, “After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself in 12 months.”

• For more information, see Unofficial Royalty: King Edward VIII, The Duke of Windsor

Wallis’ Early Life

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Wallis and her mother

Bessie Wallis Warfield was born on June 19, 1896, in Square Cottage at the Monterey Inn in Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Baltimore, Maryland.  She was the only child of  Teackle Wallis Warfield and Alice Montague. Five months after Wallis’ birth, her father died of tuberculosis at the age of 27. Wallis and her mother were dependent on the charity of relatives until her mother remarried. Wallis’ uncle, her father’s brother, paid for her to attend the most expensive girls’ school in Maryland and she made friends with several girls from wealthy families.

When Wallis was 20, she married Earl Winfield Spencer, a U.S. Navy pilot. Allegedly, Spencer was abusive and an alcoholic. After several separations, the Spencers divorced in December 1927. Before her marriage was officially ended, Wallis became involved with Ernest Simpson, a shipping executive, who had been born in the United States but became a British citizen during World War I. Wallis and Ernest married in 1928.

• For more information, see Unofficial Royalty: Wallis, Duchess of Windsor

Controversy and Abdication

Through a friend, Consuelo Thaw, Wallis met Consuelo’s sister Thelma, Lady Furness, who was David’s mistress. In early 1931, Lady Furness introduced Wallis to David. Over the next several years, David and the Simpsons attended various house parties and other social events, and Wallis was presented at court. In January 1934, Wallis became David’s mistress.

On January 20, 1936, King George V died and David became King Edward VIII. He showed impatience with court protocol and caused concern by his disregard for established constitutional conventions. He was also completely enthralled by Wallis and was naively convinced that once she was free from her marriage, he would be able to marry her and she would be queen. Wallis divorced her second husband in October 1936. At that time, it was unthinkable that the Supreme Governor of the Church of England could marry a person who had been divorced not just once, but twice. David’s insistence on proceeding with these plans, despite advice to the contrary, provoked a government crisis.

David informed Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin that he would abdicate if he could not marry Wallis. Baldwin then presented the king with three choices: (1) give up the idea of marriage (2) marry against his ministers’ wishes (3) abdicate. It was evident that David was not prepared to give up Wallis and he knew that if he married against the advice of his ministers, he would cause the government to resign, prompting a constitutional crisis. He chose to abdicate.

David signed the Instrument of Abdication on December 10, 1936, in the presence of his brothers: Prince Albert, Duke of York, the heir to the throne who would succeed to the throne as King George VI; Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester; and Prince George, Duke of Kent. The next day, the last act of his reign was the royal assent to His Majesty’s Declaration of Abdication Act 1936, necessary because only Parliament can change the succession to the throne. On the evening of December 11, 1936, once again His Royal Highness Prince Edward, the former king gave his famous radio speech in which he said, “I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.”

Wedding Guests

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Left to right: Herman Rogers who gave Wallis away, Wallis, David, and Major Edward Dudley Metcalfe (Fruity), the best man

David had wanted his brothers Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Prince George, Duke of Kent along with his close friend and second cousin Lord Louis Mountbatten (the future 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma) to attend the ceremony but his brother King George VI forbade members of the royal family from attending. Instead, the marriage was witnessed by a small group of faithful friends. Major Edward Dudley Metcalfe, known as Fruity Metcalfe, David’s close friend and former equerry, served as best man. Wallis was given away by her friend Herman Rogers.

In addition to the guests listed below, fifteen servants, five newspaper reporters, and several local officials including the Mayor of Monts, France who performed the civil marriage ceremony, attended the wedding.

• George Allen (David’s solicitor)
• Charles and Fern Bedaux (hosts of the wedding)
• Randolph Churchill (journalist, writer, and politician, son of Sir Winston Churchill)
• Dudley Forwood (David’s equerry)
• W. C. Graham and Mrs. Graham (Graham was the British Consul at Nantes, France)
• Bessie Montague Merryman (Wallis’ maternal aunt, the only relative to attend the wedding)
• Major Edward Dudley Metcalfe (Fruity) and his wife Lady Alexandra Metcalfe (Fruity was
• David’s close friend and former equerry)
• Sir Walter Monckton (Attorney General of the Duchy of Cornwall, advisor to David during the abdication crisis)
• Herman and Katherine Rogers (Wallis’ friends)
• Baron Eugène Rothschild and his wife Baroness Rothschild (the Baroness, American-born Catherine “Kitty” Wolf, was Wallis’ friend, after his abdication, David stayed at the Rothschilds’ home in Austria)
• Lady Selby (wife of David’s friend Sir Walford Selby, British Ambassador to Austria)
• Hugh Lloyd Thomas (David’s former secretary, then First Secretary at the British Embassy in Paris)

Wedding Attire

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David wore a morning suit, with a wing collar, striped trousers, a black and white checkered cravat, and a white carnation in his lapel.

The bride wore a soft crepe dress with a tight, buttoned bodice in her signature color of “Wallis Blue,” a halo-shaped hat of the same color, matching shoes, and gloves. The dress was created by Mainbocher, a fashion label founded by the American couturier Main Rousseau Bocher. In 1950, Wallis presented the dress to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. More than 25 years after the wedding, the dress was still considered one of the most copied dresses in modern times. Wallis wore a glittering diamond and sapphire brooch and matching bracelet and earrings. She had a lavender orchid at her waist but carried no flowers.

The Wedding

On June 3, 1937, David married Wallis at the Château de Candé in Monts, France, a 16th-century castle owned by Charles Bedaux, a ­­French-born, naturalized American industrial millionaire.  Marcel Dupré, one of France’s leading organists, played the organ and the famous British photographer Cecil Beaton took the photographs.

A civil ceremony was required in France. It was performed in the green-paneled music room, the windows overlooking the beautiful Indre Valley. Four chairs for the bride, the groom, the best man, and the bride’s supporter had been placed before the marriage table, covered with a dark yellow cloth with large vases containing pink and white peonies at either end. The Mayor of Monts, Dr. Charles Mercier, also a physician, performed the civil ceremony. The mayor then made a speech, the register was signed and the civil ceremony was over in five minutes. During the civil service, Marcel Dupré, in an adjoining room, softly played music by Bach, Schumann, and one of his compositions.

When the Church of England refused to sanction the wedding, Reverend Robert Anderson Jardine, the Vicar of St Paul’s Church in Darlington, County Durham, England, offered to perform the ceremony. When Reverend Jardine returned home to Darlington, he soon became aware that he had performed an act that the Church of England could not accept. He was forced to resign his position, and under pressure, he left England and settled in California.

The religious service was held in the music room. An improvised altar of an oak chest was in an alcove of the room. At each end of the altar was a single yellow candle with a cross in the middle. David and his best man entered the room and awaited the bride. While Marcel Dupré played the march from Georg Friedrich Handel’s oratorio “Judas Maccabeus”, Wallis entered the room on the arm of her friend Herman Rogers. Reverand Jardine performed the traditional Church of England wedding ceremony. During the benediction, Marcel Dupre played “O Perfect Love”. Ironically, “O Perfect Love” was specially written by English composer Sir Joseph Barnby for the wedding of David’s paternal aunt Louise, Princess Royal, and Alexander Duff, 1st Duke of Fife.  “O Perfect Love” remains a popular wedding anthem.

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After the wedding, the newlyweds led the guests to the terrace where the best man gave a champagne toast to the bride and groom’s happiness and long life together. The guests dined on a buffet luncheon of lobster, chicken a la king, salad, and strawberries. There was a three-foot-high wedding cake that the newlyweds cut together. More than 2,000 telegrams were delivered and were packed up to be taken on the honeymoon, to be read at the couple’s leisure.

At 6:25 PM, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor climbed into their limousine, driven by George Ladbrooke, the Duke’s chauffeur for seventeen years, for the drive to the train station. Ahead of them went 226 pieces of luggage, including 183 trunks. They went by train to Wasserleonburg Castle in Austria where they spent their three-month honeymoon.

Wallis’ Style and Title

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On December 12, 1936, at the accession meeting of the Privy Council, the new King George VI announced he was giving his brother the title Duke of Windsor with the style of Royal Highness. Letters Patent dated May 27, 1937 re-conferred the “title, style, or attribute of Royal Highness” upon the Duke of Windsor, but specifically stated that “his wife and descendants, if any, shall not hold said title or attribute”. This meant that Wallis would be styled as the wife of a duke, Her Grace The Duchess of Windsor, while her husband was styled His Royal Highness The Duke of Windsor.

The legality of King George VI’s Letters Patent stating that David’s style Royal Highness could not be extended to his wife or any children is doubtful. As the son of a British monarch, David was entitled to that style which should have automatically reverted to him upon his abdication without the need of Letters Patent and automatically extended to his legal wife and any legitimate children. David considered the holding back of the style Her Royal Highness from his wife unjust but out of respect for his brother, he never made a public issue. In their household, the Duchess of Windsor was always addressed as Royal Highness.

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