That Woman
Friday 3rd February 2012
I am obsessed with a new biography: That Woman by Anne Sebba.
That Woman is of course Wallis Simpson.
It’s so good. Really pacey and full of fascinating details. For example, while Wallis and Edward were apart but in exile after his abdication and awaiting the final stage of her divorce, he knitted her a sweater. He was, briefly, the King and yet while he fretted and pined in his German castle, he knitted for Mrs S. I am willing to bet she never wore it.
They are not given a sympathetic treatment nor are they demonised. Sebba doesn’t need to do that because the facts just sprint right up to the battlements of Windsor Castle all on their own and yell: ‘we were both so selfish, greedy and possibly insane, it was just as well we married each other!’ Geez she comes across as a real piece of work and he seems to have been mentally unstable, weak and just very, very strange.
All this is conveyed with simple if sometimes uncomfortable facts, using source contributions from both sympathisers and detractors – and it does seem balanced. I wonder if a biographer initially likes his or her subject or maybe comes to like or sympathise with them? This does not seem to have been the case here, nor does Sebba seem to dislike Wallis. I really appreciated that neutrality. But, you can’t escape what happened and it’s the details that make it so compelling. OK, the headline: ‘monarch gives it all up for woman he loves’ is pretty compelling, but get this for an example of fascinating detail: WS, after her first divorce, and while still living in the USA, just walked right into the home of a former friend,
while that friend was in hospital, and moved in on her husband, Mr Simpson, later cuckolded by HRH of course – but Wallis also took this other woman’s
clothes!
The shattering impact the abdication had on the Royal Family is there in passing, who emerge as furious but dignified, quite an achievement really, as on the odd occasion when fury overtakes me, dignity, accompanied by coherent speech, hurries off on an urgent errand. Also fascinating are the various political and diplomatic results. Really, world-scale stuff, given the political turmoil that was fermenting at that time.
All that said, I think they were really totally unprepared for the misery that dogged the rest of their lives. However bright the sunshine, however posed the happy snaps, the life that followed was very unhappy. She was about ten times more intelligent that he was – mind you, so is my cat. I think they both felt trapped, bored, lonely and sad. Puzzled. It wasn’t supposed to turn out that way, was it Wallis?
There is an odd and recurrent reference throughout the book – that cannot be more than a theory as Sebba provides no actual evidence for it – to Wallis having possibly been born with both male and female sexual characteristics, and she does go on at some length about this. Was the fact that she didn’t have children, had ‘large hands’ and a deep (ish) rather gravelly voice all part of this? I seriously doubt it. Mainly because there is, as far we know, no real proof. None is provided in the book anyway. But also, they smoked like kippers and drank like camels on a rare pit-stop, so that may have had something to do with it. Or maybe she just didn’t want to have children. Whatever, this theme was for me the weakest element. I’d also have liked a bit more detail on the many years of Wallis’s life after the death of Edward. These long years are shunted into a very small space. It seems they were empty years, like many of those that preceded them only these were spent by Wallis alone.
She did have an odd childhood and he certainly did. Her obsessions were security (by which she meant money and posessions); notoriety at literally any cost; and fashion. And that was basically it. Two sad lives, friendless in the real sense of that word save for each other, and that is open to some dabate since he was certainly morbidly and unhealthily dependent upon her and she was I felt, usually angry with him; bitter and baffled.
I do really commend this book to you, Royalist or not. (I’m not, by the way, but I am ardently interested in them and how their hand has guided our journey). The thing is, if you or I wrote this story and sent it off to a publisher, they’d laugh it out of the office as ludicrously far-fetched. What amazes me is how it ever came to pass.
It’s so good. Really pacey and full of fascinating details. For example, while Wallis and Edward were apart but in exile after his abdication and awaiting the final stage of her divorce, he knitted her a sweater. He was, briefly, the King and yet while he fretted and pined in his German castle, he knitted for Mrs S. I am willing to bet she never wore it.
They are not given a sympathetic treatment nor are they demonised. Sebba doesn’t need to do that because the facts just sprint right up to the battlements of Windsor Castle all on their own and yell: ‘we were both so selfish, greedy and possibly insane, it was just as well we married each other!’ Geez she comes across as a real piece of work and he seems to have been mentally unstable, weak and just very, very strange.
All this is conveyed with simple if sometimes uncomfortable facts, using source contributions from both sympathisers and detractors – and it does seem balanced. I wonder if a biographer initially likes his or her subject or maybe comes to like or sympathise with them? This does not seem to have been the case here, nor does Sebba seem to dislike Wallis. I really appreciated that neutrality. But, you can’t escape what happened and it’s the details that make it so compelling. OK, the headline: ‘monarch gives it all up for woman he loves’ is pretty compelling, but get this for an example of fascinating detail: WS, after her first divorce, and while still living in the USA, just walked right into the home of a former friend, while that friend was in hospital, and moved in on her husband, Mr Simpson, later cuckolded by HRH of course – but Wallis also took this other woman’s clothes!
The shattering impact the abdication had on the Royal Family is there in passing, who emerge as furious but dignified, quite an achievement really, as on the odd occasion when fury overtakes me, dignity, accompanied by coherent speech, hurries off on an urgent errand. Also fascinating are the various political and diplomatic results. Really, world-scale stuff, given the political turmoil that was fermenting at that time.
All that said, I think they were really totally unprepared for the misery that dogged the rest of their lives. However bright the sunshine, however posed the happy snaps, the life that followed was very unhappy. She was about ten times more intelligent that he was – mind you, so is my cat. I think they both felt trapped, bored, lonely and sad. Puzzled. It wasn’t supposed to turn out that way, was it Wallis?
There is an odd and recurrent reference throughout the book – that cannot be more than a theory as Sebba provides no actual evidence for it – to Wallis having possibly been born with both male and female sexual characteristics, and she does go on at some length about this. Was the fact that she didn’t have children, had ‘large hands’ and a deep (ish) rather gravelly voice all part of this? I seriously doubt it. Mainly because there is, as far we know, no real proof. None is provided in the book anyway. But also, they smoked like kippers and drank like camels on a rare pit-stop, so that may have had something to do with it. Or maybe she just didn’t want to have children. Whatever, this theme was for me the weakest element. I’d also have liked a bit more detail on the many years of Wallis’s life after the death of Edward. These long years are shunted into a very small space. It seems they were empty years, like many of those that preceded them only these were spent by Wallis alone.
She did have an odd childhood and he certainly did. Her obsessions were security (by which she meant money and posessions); notoriety at literally any cost; and fashion. And that was basically it. Two sad lives, friendless in the real sense of that word save for each other, and that is open to some dabate since he was certainly morbidly and unhealthily dependent upon her and she was I felt, usually angry with him; bitter and baffled.
I do really commend this book to you, Royalist or not. (I’m not, by the way, but I am ardently interested in them and how their hand has guided our journey). The thing is, if you or I wrote this story and sent it off to a publisher, they’d laugh it out of the office as ludicrously far-fetched. What amazes me is how it ever came to pass.
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