The Woman Who Cost a Kingdom

By WALTER ISAACSON

Whatever they thought of the American divorcee he was to marry or of his abdication as King of England after just ten months on the throne, Britons and millions of others around the world were deeply moved when King Edward VIII spoke on the radio in December 1936. The King's voice swelled with emotion as he made his declaration: "You must believe me when I tell you that I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do, without the help and support of the woman I love."

Besides being the climax of the romance of the century, that famous speech marked the beginning of the public reign of Mrs. Wallis Warfield Simpson, the dark, angular, citrus-tongued siren for whom Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David had set aside his crown. She swiftly became the most discussed and written-about woman in the world, fawned over by fashion designers for her "perfect elegance," gushed over by gossip columnists and probed endlessly in tabloid serials, books and, eventually, TV dramatizations. The final chapter of her star-crossed love story--Or was it merely the tale of a woman who happened to snag the world's most eligible bachelor?--closed last week when Wallis, the Duchess of Windsor, died in Paris at 89.

The duchess, nee Bessie Wallis Warfield of Baltimore, came from two of those old Maryland and Virginia families that like to trace their ancestry to William the Conqueror. But the Warfields' relative social prominence was not matched by wealth, especially after Wallis' father died when she was only a few months old. She married her first husband, Earl Winfield Spencer Jr., a Navy officer, in 1916. Intensely jealous, he occasionally locked her in her room; they were divorced in 1927 after years of separation. The following year she married Ernest Simpson, a quiet, scholarly, American-born Briton, also recently divorced, whose family had a prospering shipping firm.

The Simpsons became social mainstays in smart, young London. He was moneyed; she was witty. She liked to say that one can never be too thin or too rich, and she lived by that dictum. By the fall of 1930 the Simpsons were introduced to King George V's slim, somewhat dandyish son David, the Prince of Wales. Three years later, they were good enough friends that the future King was host of a party for Wallis' 37th birthday.

Early in 1936, when the Prince was 41 and Wallis was 39, George V died, and David ascended the throne as Edward VIII. Later in the summer, Mrs. Simpson accompanied the King on a Mediterranean cruise. Although the American press was avidly chronicling these goings-on, the English press, in deference to the royal family, printed not a word about the burgeoning romance, even after Mrs. Simpson made a scandalous marriage possible by applying for a divorce.

The restraint soon ended. In November, even before Wallis Simpson's second divorce was final, the King informed Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin of his intention to marry her. Baldwin vowed to resign rather than allow an American divorcee to become Queen; he also argued that tradition did not permit a morganatic marriage, in which she would not assume royal prerogatives.

At the height of the furor, Wallis told the King that she was having second thoughts about the marriage, but he persuaded her to go through with it and then abdicated, becoming Duke of Windsor. She became Duchess of Windsor on June 3, 1937, in a small wedding in France at a chateau near Tours. Ostracized by the royal family but reportedly provided with a -L-2 million settlement and a yearly income of -L-60,000, she and the new duke began cultivating the fine art of doing nothing during years of elegant exile. They took up residence in a 30-room house in the Bois de Boulogne, provided by the city of Paris for a nominal rent. They also had a smart converted mill in the French countryside, a luxurious apartment in New York City's Waldorf Towers and lots of accommodating chums to put them up in Florida's Palm Beach.

Except during the duke's wartime service as Governor of the Bahamas, the couple looped constantly around the international social circuit. His faintly flashy clothes and her severe elegance became fashion standards. When she stopped wearing hats, so did everyone else. Wherever they went, with their large personal staff, mountains of luggage and pet dogs, they were accorded the regal status denied them in Britain. In return they offered the world a romantic fantasy of elegance and wealth.

It was not until 1967 that Queen Elizabeth II ended the couple's ostracism by inviting them to attend a ceremony in London commemorating the duke's mother, Queen Mary. Elizabeth paid the couple a visit in Paris in 1972 during her uncle's final illness. When he died shortly after, the duchess returned to England for the funeral and, at the Queen's invitation, stayed at Buckingham Palace.

Her body is to be flown to London for a private funeral in Windsor Castle and then buried alongside her husband under a spreading tree in the royal burial ground at Frogmore in Windsor Home Park. Buckingham Palace announced that the royal family would observe four days of mourning.

The estate, which includes everything left by the duke, was estimated at more than $10 million in the 1970s. It includes much art and many mementos, among them the desk from which the abdication speech was made. Wallis continued to put paper clips and fresh ink on that desk, as if to keep it ready for him to use. And while she was still able, she would end each day by walking into his empty room to whisper "Good night, David" to the man who had loved her. --By Walter Isaacson. Reported by Claire Senard/Paris

With reporting by Claire Senard/Paris