Exclusive extract from Gone With The Windsors (HarperCollins) by Laurie Graham.
Gone With The Windsors is the story of the affair between American widow Wallis Simpson and the Prince of Wales and the crisis that followed when Edward chose love over duty and abducted from the throne. Based loosely on historical fact and set in 1930s uppercrust London, it is told from the point of view of Maybell Brumby, fictitious confidant of Wallis. The novel unfolds in the form of a hilarious and fascinating journal, kept by Maybell.
13th March 1932
A letter from sister Violet. “Why not come to London, Maybell?” she begs. “It will lift you out of yourself. It’s impossible to remain sad for long in a house full of happy children.”
Well that is a matter of opinion.
“Pips Waldo is here,” she writes. “You always liked Pips. And Judson Erlanger. Remember him? He’s married to one of the Chandos girls”
I’ll say I remember him! Judson Erlanger took me to the Princeton Ball.
“It’s getting to be a real Little Baltimore over here,” she concludes. “And who knows, we may even find you another husband. Melhuish knows quite everyone.”
I have already endured thirteen years of Violet’s condescension, brought on by her marriage to Donald Melhuish, Lord Melhuish as she reminds me with tedious regularity. The truth is, I could have snagged Melhuish for myself, had my tastes run to cold castles and men in skirts, but I allowed Violet to have him and I’ve said nothing since to disturb her smug satisfaction in her title and her connections and her lumpen Melhuish offspring. To some it is given to tread the wilder track, to risk the ravine in order to conquer more majestic peaks, and I have always had a head for heights.
12th April 1932
Another letter from Violet. The most extraordinary thing, she wrote. You’ll never guess who has appeared on the scene. She then digresses, recounting in unnecessary detail various antics of the brood. Ulick won a trophy for shooting. Flora wet her drawers at Lady Londonderry’s. Rory fell off his new pony and knocked out two teeth. On and on it went without at all getting to the point. Violet’s meanderings are so fatiguing. I had to turn two pages before I learned who it was who had so extraordinarily appeared on the scene. Minnehaha, no less. Well!
I ran into Pips Waldo she writes, who told me all she knew. Apparently she’s married to someone who was in the Guards but is now in business. They have a little place somewhere north of Marble Arch and from what Pips has heard she’s quite on the make.
I can imagine. Her people didn’t have a dime, but Bessie Wallis never allowed that to hold her back. She had sharp elbows and a calculating mind and she didn’t miss a trick. It must have been around 1909 when she came to Arundell. An uncle was paying for her. Violet and I were already well established there and one didn’t expect a new girl to start throwing her weight around, especially a girl who was a charity case, but on her first day she announced that she’d just ignore anyone who addressed her as “Bessie”. I could see her point. It’s more a name for a cow or a Mammy than someone who hopes to make something of herself.
She said, “I’m Wallis, so don’t bother calling me anything else or you’ll be sorry.”
Behind her back we call her Minnehaha, because of her cheekbones and the way she braided her hair. I think it was Pips who started that. Me, Pips Waldo, Luci Mallett, and Mary Kirk, we were her only buddies and I’m sure she was grateful for our friendship. Her uncle may have paid for Arundell but we all knew the dirt. Her mother took in the boarders. I suppose that’s why she craved to be around the right kind of people, and in Baltimore the right kind of people weren’t all as charitable as we Pattersons. We invited her into our home and she’d suck up to Mother so, admiring our good things, asking toady questions. She was such an apple-polisher.
So now she’s shinning her way up London society. Well, this I have to see. I shall leave for England the very moment the help has packed my trunks.
11th May 1932
A whole month since I found the energy for my diary. Can there be anything more prostrating than travel. And my recovery is being made a thousand times harder by the chaos in sister Violet’s establishment. She and Melhuish had been in the country so when I arrived Carlton Gardens wasn’t properly aired and my bed was distinctly damp. I threatened to move to Claridges so Violet asked a rebellious looking domestic if she might find the time to fill a rubber bottle with hot water and rub it between my sheets, and seemed to think that addressed the problem. Said rubber bottle finally delivered with heavy sighs an hour after I had fallen exhausted into my bed. If this house is anything to go by England is on the very edge of revolution.
Violet has grown stouter and probably hasn’t had her hair attended to since the day she left Baltimore. She clips it up and she’s no sooner clipped it than it escapes. There seems to be more of Melhuish too, except for his hair which is now in the final stages of retreat.
12th May 1932
Lunch with Ida who screamed for joy when she heard my voice. She told me she lost everything in the Crash, though by my recollection Ida never had a whole lot to lose. But she made her way to London and started a new life, which must have taken some courage. She said she decided to cast off the shackles of conventions and find herself. At present she’s finding herself in a rooming house full of white Russians. I hadn’t realized Russians came in any other colour.
Dinner with Pips and Freddie Crosbie. He’s in Parliament, though not in the same bit as Melhuish, and is very sweet in a dithering English way. Pips seems very happy and is still as sharp as a tintack. Her money must be a great help to him too because Members of Parliament only make four hundred a year.
Pips recommends Monsieur Jules of Bruton Street and is taking me there next week. She says Wally Warfield, now Simpson, is in a new apartment building on George Street and has started entertaining in a small way although she and Freddie haven’t been invited. Maybe she doesn’t have enough chairs.
Tomorrow without fail to Swan and Edgar for woollen camisoles.
13th May 1932
Swan and Edgar’s store knows nothing of customer service. They told me there was no demand for woollen camisoles at this time of year, when only two minutes earlier I had demanded them. They advised me that their next supply will arrive towards the end of August and asked would I care to leave my name and number. I said, “There’s no point. I shall be dead of the cold.”
This evening to the Argentine embassy with Pips and Freddie. As Pips says, attendance at one cocktail party begets invitations to ten more so there is no faster way to meet the gratin of London. Ida will be tagging along.
Violet and Melhuish are dining with the Bertie Yorks. He’s a brother of the Prince of Wales. She said, “I’ll have Smith prepare you a tray. I hope you understand. It’s not the kind of dinner where one can arrive with an extra.” Violet makes such a silly fuss about these things.
I said, “I”m sure there’ll be another time.”
Extra indeed! I have no great desire to dine with royalties, not even junior ones. I can think of nothing worse for the digestion.
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