https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1773898/edward-viii-death-wallis-simpson-spt?utm_source=express_newsletter&utm_campaign=royal_evening_newsletter2&utm_medium=emailEdward VIII's tragic final days, abandoned by Wallis who 'wasn't as devoted as claimed'
EXCLUSIVE: Wallis Simpson "never" came to visit the exiled King on his deathbed leaving him to suffer "pitiful and pathetic" final weeks.
By Rhiannon Du Cann
09:00, Sun, May 28, 2023 | UPDATED: 07:16, Tue, May 30, 2023
Edward VIII’s “pitiful and pathetic” final few days alive were spent alone with nurses as Wallis Simpson “never” came to see him, his nurse revealed. During the final weeks of his life, as he was dying from throat cancer, the Duke was under 24-hour care at the 14-bedroom "Villa Windsor", the home he shared with the American divorcee in France. Although she slept in a nearby bedroom, his nurse, Juliana Chatard Alexander, claims Wallis did not see, kiss, or say goodnight to her dying husband in the final weeks of his life ahead of his death 51 years ago, on May 28, 1972. The former King, whose health had deteriorated so badly he weighed just six stone, would cry out for his wife “like a lamb”. Yet he sought to keep up a front until the very end. In the ITVX documentary, The Real Crown: Inside the House of Windsor, released earlier this year, Ms Alexander said Edward was “very, very concerned about his appearance” until the very end, "[insisting] that he'd be sitting up in a chair, not in bed, and wearing clothes to hide any tubes, like intravenous tubes he had."
Despite his sorry state, historian Andrew Lownie, author of the 2021 book Traitor King, noted that Edward made the “herculean” effort to get dressed to see Queen Elizabeth when she paid him a visit — a task that took him four hours. Just ten days prior to his death, the Queen, the now King Charles and the Duke of Edinburgh stopped by for half an hour during a state visit to France. While the Queen may have paid a visit, according to Edward’s night nurse, Wallis was fairly absent during this period with Mr Lownie telling Express.co.uk: “Wallis was not as devoted as biographers have claimed.”
Ms Alexander cared for the Duke for three weeks but said that not once did she see Wallis come and see her husband, despite the fact that her bedroom was on the same floor as his in their sprawling house near Paris. Wallis’s absence “shocked” Ms Alexander, Mr Lownie writes, with the Duke then desperately calling out for her. Ms Alexander, quoted in Mr Lownie’s book, said: “[She] never came to see him or kiss him good night or see how he was. Not once. Poor fellow. “He would call her name over and over: ‘Wallis, Wallis, Wallis, Wallis.’ Or ‘darling, darling, darling, darling.’ It was pitiful and pathetic. Just so sad, like a lamb calling for its mother.”
But the Duke continued to profess his love for Wallis as he told his friend, David Bruce, that “nothing that I gave up for her equals what she has given to me: happiness but also meaning”.
The Duke also told the American actress C.Z. Guest: “The Duchess gave me everything that I lacked from my family. She gave me comfort and love and kindness.”
Then, at 2:30am on May 28, the King who was never crowned, died. There are several, differing accounts of where Wallis was when he passed away. As Mr Lownie notes in the book: “The myths, which surrounded the couple throughout their lives, continued even in death.”
Wallis’s friend, the American socialite Aline Griffith, Countess of Romanones, said Wallis rushed to his bed in the middle of the night and after Edward looked into her eyes, he tried to talk but could only muster “darling” before dying in her arms. A nurse, Oonagh Shanley, who was interviewed by the biographer Greg King, similarly recounts how Wallis kissed her husband and said before he died: “My David you look so lovely”.
But according to Wallis and Edward’s secretary John Utter, she was asleep when he died and he had woken her to break the news. Just days after his death, Edward’s body was flown to the UK where it lay in state for two days at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, as 60,000 came to show their respects. His body travelled to England alone as Mr Lownie explained that Wallis had been too “distressed” to make the journey, arriving later in early June. Wallis was deeply saddened by her husband of 35 years’ death as Lord Mountbatten, writing in his diary, recalled that when visiting his coffin Wallis bowed her head and said: “He was my entire life. I can’t begin to think what I am going to do without him, he gave up so much for me and now he has gone. I always hoped that I would die before him.”
He was later interred at the Royal Burial Ground at Frogmore a dying wish, granted by the Queen. Upon her death in 1986, Wallis followed her husband and was buried alongside him.
Andrew Lownie’s 2021 book, Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, published by Blink Publishing, is available here.
