WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST
Wallis Simpson's Diary

Wallis Simpson, the pre-war schemer and seducer and the woman we love to hate, is back. Our fascination with this twice-divorced American gold digger, who bewitched and snared the king of England, continues in 2011. She figures in several recent television period dramas, Upstairs and Downstairs and Any Human Heart and in the film The King’s Speech.

Born Bessie Wallis Warfield, she infatuated the Prince of Wales in 1931 at a dinner party when she was still married to the boring businessman, Ernest Simpson. Her kindly husband took the blame for adultery when they divorced to spare her the embarrassment. Wallis and the POW’s relationship dominated the world press and divided the country. She was accused of being a hermaphrodite, a lesbian, a nymphomaniac and a spy for the Nazis. Her most memorable remark was,“You can never be too rich or too thin.”

Wallis Simpson’s Diary is a shrewdly imagined and richly researched fictional satire of one of the most infamous figures of the 20th century. Edited using the nom de plume of Helen Batting, this journal goes a long way to understanding Wallis Simpson, widely considered a femme fatale or a “jezebel.” Helen Batting considers the question which bothers most people: how did this woman with a mannish figure, dubious charms and questionable beauty dazzle the world’s most eligible bachelor, who gave up his throne for her?

The upbringing of Edward the VIII, later known as the Duke of Windsor, was similar to that of the current Prince of Wales. They both had parents preoccupied with royal duties which left little time to provide the love and attention normal children require. Stern Scottish nannies were put in charge. Both princes sought solace and confirmation of their manhood in the arms of older women.

Wallis was born in affluent circumstances in America and was sent to Oldfields, a finishing school outside Baltimore. She married twice, and one of her husbands took her to the Orient, where she learned a sexual technique known as the “Shanghai Clinch.” The author leaves us to imagine what this manoeuvre involved, but it seemed to work well with the prince.

1934 was the depth of the Great Depression. The prince was tremendously popular both at home and abroad. He was a handsome, debonair icon of English sophistication. Women fell for his boyish looks and his sense of fun. He admired Hitler for putting the unemployed to work on the motorways, and Mussolini for making the trains run on time. His idea for relieving the misery of the English masses was to build an uninterrupted string of golf courses stretching from Edinburgh to London.

Wallis had to hustle to keep up. The author takes us on her shopping sprees for the latest fashions. She never has enough money but finally gets the better of Osborne, the king’s butler, as she gradually insinuates herself into TLM’s household.

Finally she gets him into bed.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that a girl’s surest way of catching her man is by playing hard to get.“

As soon as she plays the hard-to-get card, the tables turn. The huntress becomes the hunted. Everyone is a lot happier, and those oriental techniques do the trick.

This is not an attractive portrait of Wallis, TLM, or any of their set. He is portrayed as a spoiled, semi-literate, self centered lightweight who was never allowed to grow up, yet this was what charmed Wallis and the world.

I look forward to the next promised instalments. I frankly think he would have made a competent war-time king. He had the charisma and energy his brother lacked. Wallis would have made a man of him. Who knows, with her at his side America might have come into the war earlier.