78 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • AUGUST 2020
REAR VIEW
THE DUKE OF WINDSOR ROYALS ON LONG ISLAND
BY ANNIE WILKINSON
He was a wannabe surfer and jazz
drummer who personified the Roaring
‘20s, a decadent playboy partying at luxurious
Long Island mansions. And this
charismatic, fashionable 30-year-old
who danced all night and played polo
all day was the future King of England.
The blue blood said, “America meant
to me a country in which nothing is
impossible,” embracing all things
American — especially women. But one
woman tamped down his promiscuity:
a divorced American socialite he met in
1931 in London. His affair with seductive
Bessie Wallis Simpson generated headlines,
especially after he became king.
King Edward VIII, formerly the Prince
of Wales, abdicated to marry “the
woman I love,” he said. Their marriage
and globetrotting were scrutinized,
especially as rumors swirled about anti
Semitic, Nazi sympathizer leanings.
Today, their story may seem tame.
But the myths and truths about the
disgraced king — Prince Harry’s
great-granduncle — are still news:
Their summer retreat on the Island’s
North Shore in New York is on the
market for $5.9 million.
JAZZ COWBOY
If the LI mansions’ walls could speak,
they would spill the salacious secrets
of the over-the-top galas honoring the
prince. Throughout the 1920s he hobnobbed
with the North Shore elite at
William R. Grace’s Crossroads estate at
Old Westbury: home base was Woodside,
iron magnate James Abercrombie
Burden’s Syosset country estate.
“One shindig featured a ballroom on a
600-acre estate with thousands of roses
and hundreds of tables with lobsters
piled several feet high. Another banquet
at the exclusive Piping Rock Club in
Locust Valley had Will Rogers roasting
the prince about his late-night shenanigans
and his uninspiring polo playing,”
wrote the New York Post’s Braden Keil.
Enamored of the American West,
Edward cultivated a friendship with
The royal couple meets Hitler.
Rogers, bought a horse ranch, learned
to lasso, and wished to be a cowboy,
far from the stultifying dictates of the
family he claimed to despise.
And he loved surfing, which he mastered
while visiting Hawaii, and jazz, whether
sitting in with Duke Ellington’s orchestra
or the Rivers Chambers society quartet
in Baltimore (he told the bandleader, “I
can play the drums a little”).
WOOING WALLIS, HEILING
HITLER
The prince gave up his womanizing
after falling in love with Simpson; by
1934 they were lovers. He looked away
from the raw ambition others saw, did
not hear them whispering that she
was an opportunistic ladder climber
yearning to be queen. But that title was
beyond reach: The monarchy shunned
her because she was still married to her
second husband.
After his father died, the prince
became king in January 1936; in December
of that year he abdicated. He
wed Simpson in June 1937 in France,
after her divorce became final; he was
41, she was 39. Royals were forbidden
to attend, no wedding pictures were
shown in Britain, and his name was
seldom mentioned among his family.
He was demoted and named the Duke
of Windsor.
As if the abdication-marriage scandal
were not enough, he allegedly supported
fascist ideology, which valued nation
and often race above the individual and
supported a dictator-led autocratic government.
When the newlyweds honeymooned
on the Venice Simplon-Orient
express, fascists showered them with
flowers. Photos from 1937 show the couple
at German Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s
mountain retreat, all smiles; the duke
reportedly gave Hitler the Nazi fascist
salute.
In 1939 England declared war of Nazi
Germany. The ex-monarch was appointed
governor of the Bahamas in 1940,
to keep him away from the front. The
Duke and Duchess of Windsor stayed
there until 1945, then settled in France,
exiles entertaining Elizabeth Taylor
and Richard Burton, Aristotle Onassis
and Maria Callas, Marlene Dietrich, and
other celebrities.
EXILED FROM ENGLAND
The socialites traveled frequently to
America, often as guests of American
presidents including Dwight D. Eisenhower
and Richard Nixon. The couple
summered in 1948 at Severn, the French
Normandy estate at 11 Horse Hollow
Road in Lattingtown, surrounded by
four acres of climbing roses, walled
gardens, and specimen trees, just steps
from the exclusive Creek Club.
In 1957, documents allegedly hidden
by the British monarchy surfaced,
revealing the Nazi dalliances. Pulitzer
Prize winner Russell Baker discounted
their validity, writing in The New York
Times, “…whether they were merely ...
cocktail party gossip is impossible to tell
from the diplomatic reports.” Celebrity
biographer Andrew Morton wrote that
the prince “thought Hitler was a good
fellow and that he’d done a good job in
Germany, and he was also anti-Semitic,
before, during and after the war.”
History has judged the duke, as Emily
Gaudette wrote in Newsweek: … “It feels
especially hollow to remember that he
simply lived out his life of luxury in
France, socially ostracized but not tried
for treason.”
After his death from throat cancer in
Paris in 1872, Queen Elizabeth II invited
his widow to stay at Buckingham Palace.
“America meant to me a country in which
nothing is impossible,”
said the former King Edward VIII.
The Duke of Windsor with his wife,
Bessie Wallis Simpson.
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