The Widow of Windsor

Among those who were conspicuously not invited to Princess Anne's wedding was the widow of her Great-Uncle David, King Edward VIII. Wallis Warfield Spencer Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, whose husband relinquished the British throne for "the woman I love," lives quietly in an elegant French-owned villa on the fringe of Paris' Bois de Boulogne. Charles J. V. Murphy, a former editor of FORTUNE and LIFE and an old friend of the Windsors', recently visited the duchess. His report:

In his final hours, the duke was haunted by the realization that all too soon he would no longer be around to shield her. He was right: 17 months after his death, the widow of Windsor, 77, is a bored, lonely and sometimes ailing woman. The duchess continues her usual rounds of the couturiers, hairdressers and restaurants. But more and more she spends her dwindling evening hours with a detective story or TV. She reads the newspapers, French and English, from front to back. ("It is a bombshell world," she says, "full of violence and horror. I no longer understand or like it too much.") Except for flowers (about which she knows a lot) and running a house (her greatest talent), she has no hobbies or serious interests.

Still, she loves to entertain even now, and gives her usual "little dinners." She has a knack for bringing a table to life. "I need company," she says. "Not many at a time, though. Three or four, or half a dozen at most. Nowadays, two tables of ten represent a real gala." In the duke's day it was nothing for 40 to sit down to crested linen and crystal, to incomparable wine and food. "We usually had music. The duke loved to dance and to take a turn at the drums. But I don't dance any more, nor do my friends. We've suddenly become old."

She finds it difficult to line up guests who are congenial and interesting and yet not tiring. Many former regulars at her table have died, and others have simply drifted away. Often the duchess dines with either her present or former secretary. The current secretary was once a U.S. Foreign Service officer. The other is a onetime Air France stewardess. Her royal in-laws, numerous enough to fill a banquet hall, never approved of the marriage and have never sat at her table, though Prince Charles and Princess Alexandra come by for tea when they are in Paris. They call her Aunt Wallis.

When the duke died, there were no bequests to church or charity, to relatives, godchildren, lifelong friends or faithful servants. He left his entire estate to his wife, and they agreed before his death how their possessions would be distributed after she goes. Only the duchess and her bankers know the estate's value, which is probably well in excess of $10 million. This does not include the silver services and objets d'art, the superb porcelains, the furniture and paintings. Nor does it take into account such historic treasures as the desk from which he delivered his abdication speech at Windsor Castle.

His many uniforms and scores of decorations have been sent back to England for permanent display, but all his other personal possessions remain where they were. His shirts are still stacked neatly in his bedroom drawers, his suits hang in his dressing room closet. His toilet things are spread in his bathroom. His desk is ready for instant use, with ample supplies of paper clips, pipe cleaners, pens and pencils and different inks. His favorite photographs (23 of the duchess alone) stand on his mantel and bookcases, all exactly as he left them. Every night the duchess comes to his bedroom before retiring to her own. She makes sure that everything is in place, then says aloud: "Good night, David."

Iron Fence. Her desire to be surrounded by her possessions and his explains why she abandoned her plan to move to a hotel: "I like to be with my own things. Besides, the duke wanted me to go on this way." Another reason is her reluctance to disband her staff of 17 servants. Still another factor: Black Diamond and Gin-Seng, the last of the dynasty of pug dogs who pranced about the Windsors in a thousand news photos. "We are all happier here, and safer than in a hotel," says the duchess. "I have always been timid," she admits. "Thunderstorms frighten me, and I won't travel in planes if I can avoid it."

A high, spiked iron fence surrounds the house on the Bois. The heavy gate, always locked, is guarded round the clock, and an electronic alarm system supplements the bars at every window. A former French paratrooper patrols the grounds. The duchess has her own "hot line" to the police station at the corner. Special security agents are on call to accompany her when she goes out in the evening. She never uses sleeping pills or earplugs. "I want to be alert," she says. Often at night she gets up and goes to the windows to see that the watchman is on his rounds. On her bed table she keeps the duke's pistol.

These autumn evenings, she likes to reminisce about happier days. Recently, she surprised some guests by singing the German words to a sentimental old waltz that she and the duke first heard in Vienna long ago. Translation:

I know a small hotel in the Wieden*

On a small hidden street.

The night is so short.

And the day comes so quickly . . .

Come with me, my little countess!

Inevitably, the strains of that romantic waltz are receding into the corridors of her memory, along with the echoes of those exquisitely heady days at Biarritz and Palm Beach, of yachts and private railroad cars, suites and great houses, and--not the least--of the near accession to a throne.

She has chosen her tombstone--cream-colored Welsh marble--to match the duke's. She has even settled on the inscription: "Wallis, Duchess of Windsor." One day her stone will be placed alongside his under a wide-spreading plane tree on the lawn at Frogmore in Windsor Park, where the bodies of Victoria and Albert also lie. In life, the royal family would not receive Wallis Warfield Spencer Simpson. One day she will be among them forever.

* A quiet residential section of Vienna.

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