Once Upon a Time

So far as David's family or the Court were concerned, I simply did not exist.

--The Duchess of Windsor

This short line compresses the bitterness of 30 years. But last week, as Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David, Duke of Windsor, lay shrouded in bandages after three operations for a detached retina of the eye, the glacial attitude of the royal family at last was softening. Queen Elizabeth graciously let it be known that she would visit her uncle as soon as his condition would permit. And she would not only take note that the duchess existed, but would extend her the royal hand in friendship.

Many Britons thought it was about time, for the mood of the nation has mellowed. Partly it is because the monarchy has long since overcome the shock of the duke's abdication, and partly because of a different moral atmosphere. In the old days, the most adamant member of the royal family was Queen Mary, that staunch Victorian who could never swallow the idea of her son's marrying a divorcee. "My mother's mind was set," wrote the duke of their infrequent later meetings. "No reconciliation . . . she never forgave."

Misread Mood. At the crisis point of Windsor's life 30 years ago, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin harshly gave the King the choice of abdicating and marrying Wallis or giving her up and remaining King. Winston Churchill took up the King's cause in the Commons, insisting that the government accept a morganatic marriage.* But Churchill misread the mood of the Establishment. His efforts were hotly resented in Parliament, and the Times thundered that the woman the King wanted to marry was not fit to be Queen.

And so it was. Winston Churchill had one final task: to help the King write his masterly speech of abdication. It commenced, "At long last I am able to say a few words," and ended hauntingly, "And now we all have a new King. I wish him and you, his people, happiness and prosperity with all my heart. God bless you all. God save the King!"

Harm's Way. With the coming of World War II, both duke and duchess made an effort to serve in the ranks. In the quiet months of the "phony" war, Wallis was with the French Red Cross and the duke tried to make himself useful at the British Military Mission at Vincennes. Perhaps to get them both out of harm's way, the duke was then made Governor of the Bahamas.

The decades after the war were mostly spent in France, first at a Riviera villa and later in a town house on the outskirts of Paris. Visits to Britain became more frequent, and the duke could call on the Queen -- always alone. When Elizabeth was a child, the duke was her favorite uncle, and such he remains to both the Queen and her sister, Princess Margaret. But for the duchess nothing changed. As before, she saw herself "confronted with a barrier of turned backs, rigid and immovable."

At the time of the Windsors' 25th wedding anniversary in 1962, there were a few sporadic demands for a "reconciliation" in the British press, but nothing came of it. Yet the ranks of those who loved the golden Prince of Wales and those who hated "this woman who had three husbands and wanted to be our Queen" have both been thinned by time. The younger generation could scarcely care less about this old and seemingly unimportant scandal.

*Under which a wife does not acquire her husband's rank, nor can the children succeed to the crown.

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