The duchess of windsor, p.6
The Duchess Of Windsor, page 6
She was always very feminine but clever, and at times shrewd.... She was not impulsive; on the contrary, she seemed rather studied or thoughtful in determining on a course of action. We used to have close harmony parties on the porch, or down in the garden of our house. Curiously enough, Wallis rarely joined in the singing, though she obviously enjoyed the efforts of others, and was one of the best at thinking up new numbers. Having made suggestions, she would lean back on her slender arms. Her head would be cocked appreciatively, and by her earnest attention she made us feel that we were really a rather gifted group of youngsters.3
In 1911, Wallis left Arundell. She could have remained and completed her education, but for a girl of her social background, it was considered obligatory to attend one of the local finishing schools. Both Alice and her sister Bessie suggested Oldfields, at Glencoe, Maryland, some distance from Baltimore. That it was also the most expensive and fashionable school for girls did not escape Wallis’s attention, and she eagerly agreed to the idea.
Oldfields had been founded in 1867 by Rev. Duncan McCulloch and his sister, Anna, on her family estate along the Gunpowder River. A large white clapboard-and-brick mansion, set in the middle of several hundred acres of woodlands, formed the center of the school. Students were housed in a large wing, added onto the main house; several other buildings, including a gymnasium and an infirmary, stood nearby. The old mansion still retained a touch of its former grandeur, with a magnificent grand staircase, drawing rooms hung with silk, and a ballroom, with crystal chandeliers, in which the girls practiced their dancing lessons. Through the trees Wallis could catch a glimpse of the local parish church where students attended services each Sunday.
Anna McCulloch struck Wallis as “a replica of my grandmother.”4 In her early sixties, Anna, called Miss Nan by the students, was tall and thin, draped in black silk dresses with white collars. She was careful to instill in the girls a sense of gentility and grace. Signs reading Gentleness and Courtesy Are Expected of the Girls at All Times, were posted on the doors of the dormitories, and the school’s two basketball teams were also called Gentleness and Courtesy.5
Boarding school was a new experience for Wallis. Inevitably, her new friends were wealthy, privileged girls whose settled lives contrasted sharply with the uncertainties and struggles she had faced. Her most valued friend at Oldfields, Mary Kirk, was a dark-haired, blue-eyed girl whose family owned the Kirk Silverworks in Baltimore. Mary would remain a friend for many years to come and play a pivotal role in Wallis’s later life. Two other close friends were young heiress Renée du Pont and Ellen Yuille of North Carolina, whose father worked for Duke Tobacco.
Days at Oldfields were strictly organized and followed religious principles. Each morning, a bell summoned the girls to prayers, said according to the Episcopalian church’s Book of Common Prayer. There were few privileges: only two at-home weekends, in addition to regular holidays, were allowed each girl during the entire school year, and before leaving for Christmas break, each student had to memorize and recite a chapter from the Old Testament before the ever-vigilant Miss Nan. The girls could not write letters to boys and were not allowed to receive letters from any men other than relatives. In the evening, before dinner, students gathered to sing hymns. On Sundays, all students had to memorize the collect and gospel before joining the congregation in the nearby parish church; at half-past five on Sunday afternoons, there was an Evensong service and, following dinner, further hymns. By ten o’clock, lights were extinguished; there were severe penalties for breaking curfew.6
Wallis enjoyed her first months at Oldfields. She liked most of the other girls, studied hard, and thrived. However, with her growing streak of independence and headstrong nature, she soon resented the tight discipline. To escape the strict daily regimen, she began to complain of ill health: one week it was a cold; the next, a headache, followed by stomach flu or weakness. She enjoyed being coddled and indulged, although the other girls seemed to have quickly realized that most of Wallis’s infirmities were an act. Still, she managed to manipulate those around her through uniquely creative means. She even went so far as to have her mother write a note asking that she be excused from taking algebra classes, asserting that prolonged exposure to mathematics gave her hives.7 Somehow her charming craftiness overcame all objections, and she usually won in the end.
Undoubtedly, Wallis was a unique presence at Oldfields. The other girls were either pretty or plain, but Wallis managed to comfortably embrace her assets and make the most of her shortcomings. “My endowments were definitely on the scanty side,” she later recalled. “Nobody ever called me beautiful or even pretty.”8 Of medium height, thin, and slightly flat-chested, Wallis was not conventionally pretty: Her jawline was a bit too square, her eyebrows were thick, and a very prominent mole distracted from her face. But her hair continued to be a special pride, and, above all, it was her blue-violet eyes which captivated. Adela Rogers St. John recalled that “she had the most beautiful eyes I ever saw.”9
As she grew older, Wallis began to experiment with fashion. The lacy gowns and hobble skirts of the era were not at all to her taste. Instead, she liked to wear men’s shirts and bow ties with her long skirts, wrapping tight belts around her waist to emphasize its slenderness. At one time, she took to wearing a monocle, in what one must conclude was an effort to both challenge convention and attract attention to herself.
In manner, she was generally charming and good-natured. Her high-pitched voice, a curious mixture of eastern accent and southern drawl, could often be heard when she was laughing and joking with fellow students. And yet she seemed somehow different from the other girls, more mature, sophisticated if not cultured, with a certain weariness which she masked behind an ebullient façade. In part, this was owing to her childhood experiences, but it also reflected a growing consciousness on her part. All around her—in the country estates of her relatives, in her grandmother’s solid house, in the lifestyle of the girls who attended school with her—was money, an asset Wallis lacked. She craved excitement, acceptance, and prestige and realized that if society were to deliver these things to her, she, in turn, had to compensate for what she did not possess. Most twelve-year-old girls entering Oldfields were not at all concerned about wealth or power or position, but Wallis was extremely aware of their importance. Her carefully crafted sense of style, the ease of her conversation, her slightly theatrical quality, were all meant to attract attention and open doors.
Wallis was serious when necessary but was known among her friends for her love of excitement and slightly dangerous adventures, characteristics which only enhanced the exotic quality she cultivated. She knew this would entice the girls, but it had the added benefit of making her terribly attractive to young men as well. “She tended to be interested in boys,” one man later recalled. “Girls were just people who happened to be around . . . and some of the young ladies were critical of her because she cut in on their preserves a bit.”10 Wallis was known for her independence: “In those days,” recalled a friend, “that was considered forward for a young lady.”11 Several girls at Oldfields later described the Wallis they had known as “fast.” But this designation meant something quite different then. No one ever indicated that Wallis was promiscuous, or that she chased after boys. She seems to have enjoyed flirting, which made her friends uneasy, but had she been aggressive in her pursuits, Wallis would undoubtedly have been cut dead by her fellow students.
One of Wallis’s first serious boyfriends was Carter Osborne, son of a Baltimore bank president. Osborne was an attractive, athletic young man who shared Wallis’s love of laughter and fun. Theirs was an almost charmingly innocent relationship, fraught with danger on both sides, as Osborne later recalled: “I used to take my father’s car and drive down a dirt road. I wasn’t allowed to have the car, but I took care of that. At a certain point in the road, I’d stop, and Wally could see the car from her dormitory window. The moment she spotted it, she’d slip out. I don’t know yet how she managed it, but as far as I know, she never got caught. She not only got out, but she also got back in without being observed. She was very independent in spirit, adhering to the conventions only for what they were worth and not for their own sake. Those dates were all the more exciting for being forbidden.”12
It was during Wallis’s senior year at Oldfields that tragedy once again struck her family. Her stepfather had not been well for some time; when doctors were eventually called in, they diagnosed Bright’s disease, an unfortunate, and ultimately fatal, effect of Rasin’s frequent drinking binges. Hoping that the sea air would somehow revive his health and postpone the inevitable, doctors advised Rasin to take a cottage at Atlantic City, New Jersey. He and Alice moved there in the spring, but his condition worsened. On April 4, 1913, Wallis was called out of class at Oldfields and asked to go to Miss Nan’s office. There she learned that her stepfather had died. Wallis immediately packed a suitcase and returned to Baltimore.
The next day, Wallis stood waiting on the railway platform, watching as the train carrying her mother and her stepfather’s body slowly steamed into the station at Baltimore. Wallis spotted her mother as soon as she climbed down the steps of her carriage. Wrapped in black, she stumbled across the platform and collapsed in her daughter’s arms. The loss of her second husband left Alice inconsolable. Her near hysterics tore at Wallis; although she had grown fond of Rasin, she had not realized the extent of her mother’s devotion until his death. Throughout these days, Wallis dealt with the funeral arrangements, looking after her mother and easing tensions between Warfield and Rasin relatives, a measure of her maturity.
After Rasin’s death, the monthly checks from his trust fund stopped, and Alice was once again left to the mercy of her wealthier relatives. Much to Wallis’s humiliation, she found that her mother was forced to move out of 212 Biddle Street and take an apartment at 16 Earl’s Court, at the corner of St. Paul and Preston Streets, not far from the Warfield household. These difficult circumstances changed Alice greatly; on school holidays, Wallis found that she had aged, and was less certain of herself and often depressed.13
Oldfields had no graduation ceremony; at the end of her senior year, Wallis joined her fellow graduates in attending a great May Day festival at which the girls sported white dresses, wore flowers in their hair, and danced around Renée du Pont, who had been selected queen. This was followed by an award dinner and farewell dance. As they left the festivities, the girls signed their comments in a large visitors’ book. Most remarks were commonplace, about school or friendships, but Wallis was different: in a bold hand, she recorded: “All is Love.”14
Wallis was just shy of her eighteenth birthday when she left Oldfields. Despite her proven academic prowess in those subjects which she enjoyed, she gave no thought to pursuing her education. None of her friends went off to a university, and Oldfields had been designed not so much to provide academic qualifications as to mold its pupils into genteel young ladies, proficient in social arts, conversation, charm, and deportment. Nor was any emphasis given to the idea of pursuing a career; young ladies of suitable birth from well-to-do families were simply expected to marry and raise a family of their own.
That summer of 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his morganatic wife were shot and killed by a Serbian nationalist during a visit to Sarajevo. As Austria began shelling Belgrade, Germany invaded Belgium, and the Great War erupted in Europe, the heads of the young girls in Baltimore were filled with one thought: their debuts. Alice, having been denied the social benefits she felt belonged to her by dint of her privileged background, was determined that her daughter not suffer the same fate. She had made certain that Wallis attended the best schools, and mixed with the most important girls from Baltimore’s most prestigious families, and she had carefully groomed her daughter to sparkle and charm in public. A successful debut, leading to an important marriage—and the accompanying social prestige and economic well-being-was, Alice declared, no more than Wallis’s birthright, her chance to restore the faded Montagues to their proper glory.
Before Wallis could even contemplate a debut, she had to undergo what must have been a rather unpleasant, though necessary, task: a special visit to her uncle Solomon to explain her financial needs. By this time, Solomon was the president of the Continental Trust Company, a prosperous bank housed in a new fifteen-story brick building at the corner of Baltimore and Calvert Streets. At the appointed day and hour, Wallis, seated in the rear of her grandmother’s new Pierce-Arrow, was chauffeured through Baltimore to her uncle’s office. Solomon listened as she explained that she could not possibly make her debut unless she had new gowns to wear, along with day dresses for luncheons and tea gowns for afternoon dances. Eventually, much to her great surprise and delight, he presented her with two ten-dollar bills.15
With her financial freedom guaranteed—at least for several months—Wallis launched herself into a frenzy of engagements. She attended the Princeton Prom, dressed in a lacy blue gown of her own design. November was a particularly busy month. On November 5 she attended a football dance at the Cantonsville Country Club; the following day, Wallis was invited to a luncheon at the Stafford Hotel, given in honor of her fellow debutante Augusta Eareckson. A week later, on November 13, she joined friends at an oyster roast given by Albert Graham Ober for his debutante-niece, Rebecca Ober, at his country estate in Green Spring Valley; that same evening, Wallis assisted receiving guests at a party at Lehmann Hall given for her friend Priscilla Beacham. On November 17, she attended a luncheon at the Baltimore Country Club for friend Carolyn McCoy; on November 19, she was back at the country club, this time for Mary Kirk’s debutante luncheon. On November 25, there was a luncheon for Rena Alverda Sawyer. Three days later, Wallis and Priscilla Beacham took a weekend trip to Philadelphia for a football game followed by a dance. Wallis returned to the Baltimore Country Club on December 2 for a luncheon given in honor of her friend Eleanor Nosley; and on the following day she attended a luncheon for fellow debutante Jessie Van Rensselaer Bond.16
Each of these occasions required new dresses, outfits, and gowns. Wallis, in common with her fellow debutantes, would not have dared appear in public during her season wearing the same outfit twice. However, whereas most debutantes had the money to invest in an ample wardrobe, Wallis did not. Rather than spend the entire twenty dollars she had received from her uncle Sol, she instead bought only two or three different outfits; with the help of her skilled mother, she worked feverishly between engagements to alter style, design, dress length, trim, collars, necklines, and sleeves. By adding overlays of lace and tulle, they successfully managed to disguise their economies.
The highlight of the debutante year in Baltimore, and the biggest social hurdle, was the Bachelors’ Cotillon. (The misspelling was a deliberate affectation.) The Bachelors’ Club, formed in the nineteenth century as a bastion of the city’s privileged males, was one of Baltimore’s most prestigious institutions. Each autumn, their board of governors met and together reviewed a list of the year’s debutantes. Unlike other events during the debutante season, the Bachelors’ Cotillon remained inaccessible: only a lucky forty-seven debutantes, of the hundreds whose names were submitted, received invitations, and this selectively marked out the event—and its eventual invitees—as the most socially prestigious in Baltimore.
Along with other hopeful debutantes, Wallis eagerly awaited news of the invitation list. She later recalled that she spent many restless nights worrying whether she would receive the all-important piece of paper. Finally, she was rewarded: Wallis’s name appeared on the list. In truth, she had little reason to worry. Her father had been a member of the Bachelor’s Cotillon; her uncle was one of the city’s most important businessmen; the Warfields were greatly respected; and she herself had gone to the best schools.
Wallis could not afford to purchase one of the new, fashionable frocks which filled the store windows of Baltimore’s smart shops. Instead, she impatiently sat through numerous fittings with a local seamstress, who designed a gown according to the young debutante’s specifications. Wallis had admired a dress worn by fashionable dancer Irene Castle during an appearance on Broadway, and it was this dress that was so faithfully copied. She was less pleased at the result of the new white gown against her already pale features, however, and it took some considerable effort on her mother’s part, along with the new and calming influences of face powder and rouge, to appease Wallis’s fears.17
Each debutante was allowed to invite several male escorts, along with family members, to accompany her to the cotillion. It was common practice for the girls to choose older relatives rather than current boyfriends. Wallis was to have two dates: her mother’s cousin Lelia Gordon’s husband, George Barnett, was a major general in the U.S. Marine Corps and promised to present a gallant figure in his sleek uniform; and her cousin Henry Warfield, who, at twenty-seven years of age, was guaranteed to turn heads with his dashing good looks.18
The Bachelors’ Cotillon took place on December 7, 1914. Wallis spent the afternoon carefully preparing for the event, dressing in her new gown and letting her mother fuss over her hair and daub her cheeks with rouge. Her gown, of white satin with chiffon, fell loosely to her knees in a series of folds. The low-cut shoulders were covered with a light chiffon wrap, and the front panels of the gown had been finely embroidered and sewn with seed pearls.19
Once ready, Wallis waited expectantly in the parlor. Finally, the doorbell rang and her cousin Henry Warfield confidently strode into the room, attired in white tie and tails. He bowed low before Wallis, presented her with a massive bouquet of American Beauty roses, and declared, “Kiddo, I can assure you that you will be the most enchanting, most ravishing, most exquisite creature at the Cotillon.” Satisfied, Wallis allowed him to escort her to the waiting Warfield Pierce-Arrow, which Henry had borrowed for the evening from Uncle Sol, and together with Alice and General and Mrs. Barnett, they set off through the streets of Baltimore to the Lyric Theatre, where the cotillion would be held.20
