The Secret Windsor Tapes: Wallis Simpson - 'It Was as Though I'd Committed a Horrible Murder'

You might think that this is a secret exclusive chat with Meghan Markle. Close, but no cigar. It was in fact that other American who found herself the target for abuse and attack when she agreed to marry King Edward VIII even though she had two husbands still living. I am talking about Wallis Simpson, the lady from Baltimore. Like Meghan and Megxit, Wallis was blamed for the abdication.

Ironically, at the time she was in hiding in the south of France in a friend's villa and put out a public statement offering to stand back from the crisis. She even explored the possibility of taking a slow boat to China and had sent a lackey to Genoa to see about purchasing a berth. It was no good. Even though she yelled nightly down a dodgy phone line, "Do not abdicate, listen to your friends" (who included Churchill), it was no good. The King was determined to have her, whatever damage it might do to her reputation and standing in High Society and the public.

Transcript of an interview between Charles Murphy and Wallis Simpson, 1954

Charles Murphy: You mentioned how Herman Rogers, through his strength and his patience, [inaudible], you said to him once that, this will make me hard, it will make me bitter. Is that a correct understanding?

Wallis Simpson: Yes, to which he said, “Don’t read these letters if they’re upsetting you. Why do you keep on reading the letters?” But, of course, I had a taste of these letters, and I had to go on with them because I kept thinking the world can’t be like this.

Charles Murphy: You also mentioned, after reading these letters, carrying the criticism, that I am a woman without a country, I have no place to go, only France.

Wallis Simpson: Yes, because, you see, I had my own country against me and the whole of England and the Dominions, all the British Empire, in other words, who were all talking against me.

I mean, there wasn’t anybody who said — oh, stop it. She can’t be that bad, this thing can’t be that bad. No, everybody just got out their whips and lashed. Nobody tried to see any other angle to it, except that I could have prevented the abdication. They didn’t stop to think of the Duke’s make-up, whether you can prevent a man of his character from doing things or not. They never stopped and said, well, maybe she tried. Not one break was I given in the whole thing. And if I ever said anything, they’d say, oh, come now, there’s been some nice things written about you, and I’d say, well, let’s see them.

I don’t think anybody ever tried to put themselves in my position in any way to realise what I was thrown into, without any guidance and no backing, because I had no father or mother. My uncle wasn’t going to get into it. I mean, he had his own family to think of. He wasn’t going to get into it, and there wasn’t absolutely anybody of any power connected with me who could have said to someone in power, listen, let’s tone this thing down, this is getting pretty bad, and that is one of the things I have to rise above because I did, as I said before, I couldn’t go out and show my face.

It was as though I’d committed some horrible murder, and that was very hard, and Herman was the one that helped me during that time because I had talked it over with him. Sometimes I used to say, well, it’s really more of a day than I can take.

Something, some bad news from England would come, or they’d done another thing to the Duke, you see. I mean, it’s the things he’d tell me on the telephone, and no word of complaint. He’d say, “Oh, they’ve removed me from the Welsh Guard,” things that meant a great deal to him, you see, and I’d come back to Herman and I’d say just one more slash at the Duke now. Well, all those things upset me just as much as they upset him, but we never mentioned it to each other.

Charles Murphy: When were these actions being taken?

Wallis Simpson: [Inaudible] That is to say, one nasty thing after another.

Charles Murphy: This was before you’d moved up to Candé was it?

Wallis Simpson: Well, this was a series along the line. It was the whole six months that we were separated. They thought of some devilish thing to hurt him every six weeks. Then they crashed down with my title at the end. They saved the atom bomb for the end, the week before the wedding or something, they saved that one.

But each thing was done with a reason: to flatten him out in England. If there was any piece of popularity left, they could destroy it. It was a sense of destruction, among the most cleverly devised pieces of destruction of a public man in the eyes of the people, that I’ve ever seen worked. Fiendish, devilish mind.

Why? He’d gone in good grace, they knew his make-up. They didn’t have to do that. He was never going to take advantage of his popularity in England, or any sympathy that he might have had in his cause. He went, and in a very fine way, and they should have taken his word for it.

Instead of that, having built him up to the sky, they went out in these really fine propaganda ways of destroying him, one of which was to make me a terrible character, that he’d married an adventuress, and heaven knows what — that was one of the methods they used, so [inaudible] destroying me, even destroyed me with the British. He was a desolate man who’d fallen in love with this adventuress. That was the basis of the propaganda. And they just really did everything they could to make him unpopular with the British people. Why not let him alone? Let the British people make up their own mind. I have great bitterness there.