Wallis, Part 7

Okay, I actually had something long written for part seven on Wallis Windsor, but I lost it. I also had a long Part Two on Mathilde which I cannot find right now, but think might be on my other computer, so I will look for that tomorrow night. I had written some stuff last weekend that I was unable to post and now I can't seem to find most of it.

So, I'm rewriting most of it.

When we left off, Wallis and David were on a boat headed for the Bahamas, where he had an appointment as Governor General. After a stop off in Bermuda, they arrive in Nassau on August 17, 1940.

Wallis was not happy. It was really hot, and this was before air conditioning. Wallis considered herself delicate when it came to hot temperatures. When they got into Government House, their residence during their tenure, they discovered it was not in good condition and had some bug problems. Wallis didn't feel it would do at all, and wanted the British government to fork over some money for renovations. Meanwhile, The Firm had sent over some tough regulations on how Wallis was to be treated and how she was not a member of the royal family. David was going to complain on her behalf, but Wallis talked him out of it and encouraged him to instead complain about how bad their accommodations were. Money was set aside for the repairs (not enough in Wallis's opinion) and the Windsors stayed in other people's houses while Government House was renovated.

Now, Wallis was very interested in Marie Antoinette (as well as Anne Boleyn, and other royal ladies who ended up getting decapitated) and in some ways during her first few months as Governor's wife she began to emulate her. Wallis insisted that a swanky celebrity hairstylist be flown in from New York to do her hair. She also tried to go to the U.S. as much as possible, and wanted David with her when she did. Once they went to her hometown of Baltimore, the place she'd dreamed of getting away from as a child, and people lined up for miles to greet her. Wallis constantly complained to her friends and family back home about their "exile" in the Bahamas, and compared it to Napoleon being exiled in St. Helena. She even found time to slip up to New York for a facelift, which were both dangerous and unattractive in that time period.

After Government House was renovated, the interior design and comfort level matched more with what Wallis had become used to. But there were still bugs. Wallis and David slept with a mosquito net over their bed, and Wallis regularly found roaches crawling around all over the place. She'd never lived in a tropical climate before and found that she really didn't like it.

By the time they got there, they already had some enemies. The local Anglican Church sent out a press release to let the Windsors know that Jesus doesn't actually love everyone and thus they were not allowed to join the church. Eternally damned sinners, and all. Within their first few days they also managed to pick a fight with a major local newspaper editor and a few monarchist businessmen.

In 1940, the Bahamas had a population of about seventy thousand people, most of them Black or mixed race. Despite popular belief, the Windsors were not that racist. You know, for rich White people living in the 1940's. But, of course, by twenty-first century standards, they would be considered very racist. But, again, we're talking about rich White people in the 1940's. Being that this was part of the "British Empire" and the whole situation reeked of colonialism, the White population of the Bahamas basically ruled over the Black population. Obnoxious rich guy, Sir Harry Oakes, commented on their arrival:

"He will learn that the best way to govern the Bahamas is not to govern the Bahamas at all. If he sticks to golf he will be a good Governor and they'll put up statues to him. But if he tries to carry out reforms or make and serious decisions or help the (insert plural racial slur here) he will just stir up trouble and make himself unpopular."

David, always the multitasker, managed to both play golf and make himself unpopular. At the time Nassau was controlled by the "Bay Street Boys", a group of White business men who were like the colonialist mafia. They held significant political power and basically did everything they could to keep the non-White population down and make themselves rich. David, who for the first time in his life had actual political power, thought that the "Bay Street Boys" weren't particularly nice and set about trying to take away their political power. He fired them from his executive council, and dissolved the House of Assembly (the Bahamas legislature) and ordered new elections in the hopes of getting some different people in. That's one of the disturbing things about British colonialism. The British royal family wants to send away their black sheep so they don't have to deal with him and he ends up in an Executive position where he has significant power over thousands of innocent people. If he had been the mentally unstable Nazi fanboy he's often accused of being, he could have really done some damage.

Wallis, meanwhile, remembered that things hadn't worked out all that well for Marie Antoinette. She also realized that there were people living in the Bahamas who actually had it worse than she did. Wallis was automatically head of the Red Cross as the Governor's wife, and she set to work at hospitals helping tend to the sick. While there she met a nurse who worked was trying to start a clinic to help malnourished children. Wallis gave her a large donation and fundraised from all of her rich friends on her next trip to America. She also opened the first STD clinic in the Bahamas, addressing the kind of unpopular cause that Buckingham Palace usually ignores. When the infant welfare clinic opened, Wallis worked there every Wednesday, bathing, feeding, and changing sick babies. She genuinely went far beyond what was expected of her while the press continued to focus on her Marie-Antoinette-like demands. Though The Firm usually sends out a camera crew every time a princess shakes hands with an orphan, Wallis's charity work received little to no coverage.

When America entered the war in December, 1941, the Bahamas lost their biggest source of income; American tourists. But Wallis wrote to her Aunt Bessie, "I am glad we are going to be in the war which is better than being outside." The economy did suffer, and their was widespread starvation and poverty beyond what there had been before. But in May, 1942, they got a contract with the U.S. government to build an air force base, which created thousands of jobs and stimulated the economy. Beyond her other charity work, Wallis became involved with the canteen for soldiers and helped out by cooking and cleaning. Many men stationed there wrote home about being served a boiled egg by the Duchess of Windsor.

In August, 1942, David's brother Prince George died in a plane crash serving his country. George had been his favorite brother and they had lived together for several years before George got married. They had fallen out after David and Wallis got married and had not seen each other for nearly five years when George died; the last words between then had been angry. David fell into a very deep depression because of his brother's death, and Wallis tried in vain to cheer him up. It was the only time during their years together she felt at a loss to console him. He was forced to snap out of it by impending duties and obligations. It took him several months to get back to normal. George's death was one of the few things that forced the royal family to see the reality of war.

Earlier that year, Wallis had written to Queen Mary about how awful she felt about being "the cause of any separation that exists between mother and son" and suggesting Mary contact one of their friends who would be in London to hear what David was up to. The letter was basically an attempt to guilt Queen Mary into not hating her as much. It actually worked to some extent; Mary obviously didn't write back, but in her next letter to David she told him she "sent a kind message to your wife" and her judgement of Wallis seemed to have moved from "evil adventuress" to just "adventuress".

To help the war effort, Wallis published a cookbook to raise money for British soldier. Eleanor Roosevelt, who had published a similar cookbook, wrote the forward. Eleanor wasn't exactly Wallis's biggest fangirl; she preferred Queen Elizabeth and distrusted Wallis. But they managed to work together for the good of the Allies. I'm sure the money raised did a lot of good; but the cookbook is evil. It is full of recipes to make the most vile and disgusting foods ever devised. Things no sane human being would willingly ingest. Satan himself must have played a role in its creation. I have heard that most cookbooks from the 1940's are full of horrible and disgusting food items, but hers has to have been one of the worst. I do not have a copy on me, so I cannot post a recipe tonight, but I distinctly remember one recipe that involved canned green beans, ketchup, evaporated milk, and a canned cheese-like substance now banned everywhere except prison and school cafeterias. I once borrowed a copy from a friend who collects vintage cookbooks. I could not find a recipe in it that sounded worth making; I finally settled on this fruit dessert things and it tasted terrible. I had to throw it out; no one would eat any of it and I was sure I had done it right because it wasn't something that could easily be screwed up. Fergie published a cookbook in the '90's and that one is actually pretty awesome, but stay away from Wallis's unless you run one of those websites that publishes bad vintage recipes. There are a few anecdotes and stuff, but nothing particularly entertaining. Wallis writes about how she likes frozen food and hanging out at supermarkets because of all the "interesting" people you find there.

During her time at the Bahamas, Wallis gave an interview to Adela St. Johns, a reporter who had promised to write nice things about her. Adela didn't exactly do as she was told, and her and Wallis didn't get along. But the interview included some real gems. She made repeated melodramatic comments about her life, and repeatedly refers to her husband as a saint. One good quote:

"You know, when I first met the Prince of Wales, and he fell in love with me, I was not exactly young and I was not exactly- shall we say inexperienced? Believe me, I would much rather have been the mistress to the King of England than the wife of the Governor of the Bahamas!"

Given she was usually fairly guarded when reporters were around, Wallis may have been a touch tipsy when she said that. Adela was nice enough (considering her dislike of her subject) in the actual article, but she often expressed her true feelings in private: "I always got the impression Wallis Warfield Windsor could play tackle for the Green Bay Packers."

Next time: A murder, a murder trial, a riot, more war stuff, and tons more that was way too interesting to be included tonight.