Wallis & Elizabeth
Bloggers' Corner
I've gained a certain respect for the Duchess of Windsor per se. I think that Edward VIII was not really the right man for the job, *especially* for what was coming, and what happened showed that. She was willing to go away from him but he was not willing to give her up. She spent the rest of her marriage living very well, yes, but oftentimes doing little more than babysitting a fussy boy and having to look divinely happy for everyone around. She was not a shrew, but people were angry about it all, and of course the English were kept in the dark by their newspapers about what was going on practically up to the point of the abdication, when suddenly they heard about ... this woman. (When we consider the latest pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry, we know that such a situation could not occur today!) So of course it was easier to blame this American divorcee for what happened than their own childish monarch. However, as I said, this was one abdication that was fortuitous, because the capable brother rose and carried a nation on his seemingly frail shoulders while the feckless former king practically consorted with the enemy. And when the toll of the promotion proved too much for the former Duke of York, his elder daughter stepped forward, as eventually she would have ... but can you imagine "Uncle David" going to all those places in Africa etc.?
However, I have always admired Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. She was glamorous in an upper-crust English way until she joined the royal family; she was a sprightly debutante and turned down Prince Albert several times before saying yes, not that she didn't like him, but that because, although the royal family was not then the fishbowl it now is, it *was* very restraining and she was already the beloved youngest daughter of a top British peer, being courted by eligible dukes and marquesses ... what did the royal family really have to offer *her*? However, Albert won her over eventually, and once she loved him she loved him entirely, which was good for the two of them, but ultimately (and which could not have been forseen at the time, when the Prince of Wales was the most eligible bachelor in the world) would be very good for Britain and dare I say for what we used to call "the Free World". She became a bit ... mmm frumpier as she passed 35, but that was what ladies in middle age and beyond were supposed to do; however she always wore charming colors and fabrics.
She never forgave Wallis (and the Duke of Windsor) for what she considered, almost certainly correctly, the early end of her husband's life. The Windsors were two huge, glaring exceptions to her famous hospitality. I like the picture you have on your site post, Tat ... I can just imagine Wallis crying behind her veil, feeling both lost and freed, and Elizabeth walking behind her, eyes boring into that tight black bun, thinking, "Go on, cry, at least you had another twenty years ... bitch." (Yes, the dear QM is recorded as having referred to the Dss of Windsor that way on more than one occasion!)
