The Peoples King by Susan Williams

Brownlow, as well as Katherine and Herman Rogers, the friends with whom Wallis had stayed in Peking. The Captain of the ship found Mrs Simpson 'a most charming lady'. This view was shared by a bedroom steward on the ship, who remembered when Mrs Simpson joined the ship in Poland, and her stay on board until leaving at Constantinople three weeks later. 'I have had to deal with a great many ladies in my time,' he said, 'but I never met a more charming lady than she was.' It was a very happy party, he thought. As on the Rosaura two years earlier, Wallis's bedroom and Edward's bedroom were in the fore part of the ship, while the rest of the guests had rooms in the aft. After the King and his guests had left the Nablin , said the steward, the crew 'naturally spoke about them'; they had all liked Mrs Simpson. A dining room steward noticed that Wallis addressed Edward as 'Sir', but was not submissive - 'I mean that if His Majesty was speaking to other guests Mrs Simpson would butt in with some witty remark. When at the table I have noticed His Majesty leave off talking to others to answer Mrs Simpson.' 101
    Lady Diana Cooper seemed to resent Wallis's presence. 'It's imposs­ible to enjoy antiquities with people who won't land for them and who call Delphi Delhi', she wrote, snobbishly. 'Wallis is wearing very very badly. Her commonness and Becky Sharpishness irritate', she added, likening Wallis to the social climber in Thackeray's Vanity Fair. 105 Diana's hostility may have been fed by annoyance that the King was not paying her much attention on the cruise. As the daughter of the Duke of Rutland and someone who was generally regarded as one of the most beautiful women in London, she was usually at the centre of anything that was going on.
    Although the Nahlin voyage had been planned as a holiday, Edward also visited the battlefields of Gallipoli and performed a number of royal duties. He visited the King of Greece and the King of Yugoslavia, helping to cement friendly ties between these nations and Britain. While they were in Greece, Sir Sydney Waterlow, the British Ambas­sador in Athens, was impressed by the bond between Wallis and Edward. He wondered 'whether this union, however queer and gener­ally unsuitable and embarrassing for the state, may not in the long run turn out to be more in harmony with the spirit of the new age than anything that wisdom could have contrived.' 106 Edward also met with Kemal Ataturk, the ruler of Turkey. This was the first time a British king had ever been to Turkey, and the occasion was a great success. On his way home Edward visited Vienna, where he made a point of looking at housing estates for the poor. An Austrian living in London later wrote to a member of Edward's staff to tell him of the King's immense popularity in her country, for which he has done such a lot. We have the greatest trust in him to prevent another war at all costs and admire his genuine concern for the people and their problems. It really made an impression in Vienna when the King visited the Workmen's blocks of flats with such interest. 107
    Despite her divorced status, her nationality and her lack of the kind of social status that counted in Britain, Wallis had many friends, among them journalists, politicians, diplomats and artists of all kinds. Elsie de Wolfe, a Parisian hostess, instructed her on entertaining and introduced her to fashion designers such as Schiaparelli and Mainbocher. One lively friend was 'Foxy' Gwynne, whom Wallis had got to know in Paris during her stay there years before. Foxy had once been a fashion model and owed her nickname to her red hair. She was later to marry the Earl of Sefton, who was a good friend of Edward's.
    An especially close and loyal friend in London was Sybil, Lady Colefax, a pretty and popular social hostess in her early sixties. Many people shared Charles Lambe's view that 'Lady Colefax was nice, intelligent and sympathetic. I felt at ease with her.' 108 Like Wallis, she was a