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Two Houses
I
N THE SPRING OF
1938, Wallis learned that La Croë, the villa near Cap d’Antibes that she had originally considered a suitable setting for her marriage to the Duke, was available for rent. La Croë was a large house, set in an immaculately landscaped park big enough to ensure their privacy and boasting magnificent views of the Mediterranean. Both she and David enjoyed the surroundings and the warm weather, and so they signed a [ten-year lease] on the estate, at a cost of some 100,000 francs a month (approximately $3,000 U.S.).
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It was to become their first real home together and also their undoubted favorite.
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La Croë offered Wallis a welcome outlet for her creative talents. Few women of the twentieth century have been as well known for their style and taste as the Duchess of Windsor; through lavish surroundings, beautiful clothes, and studied sophistication, Wallis elevated the daily life of both herself and David to a fine art form. Her flair for decoration inspired and drew admiration. “There are not many women,” wrote Rebecca West, “who can pick up the keys of a rented house, raddled by long submission to temporary inmates, and make it look as if a family of cheerful good taste had been living there for two or three centuries.”
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In all of her houses, Wallis set out to fashion and furnish, to the best of her ability and talent, deliberate re-creations of those rooms and atmospheres in which her husband had been raised and lived. He had given up his entire heritage to be with her; now she supervised construction of miniature kingdoms over which they would both rule as king and queen. These houses, like those that David had left behind in England, were powerful statements not only of privilege but also of heritage and instantly both impressed and demanded respect. The Windsors’ palaces of exile included splendid rooms in which they could receive and entertain appropriately and were filled with the trappings of royalty: important paintings of titled ancestors; Fabergé boxes and trinkets; family photographs in crested leather frames; and regimental trophies awarded to the Duke through his years of military service. Surfaces of stationery, buttons of liveries, cigarette cases, and crests on picture frames were embossed and crowned with coronets and monograms, further emphasizing the royal associations.
The results were all the more remarkable because Wallis brought little experience to her role of chatelaine. Through sheer effort and the welcome advice of others, she managed to succeed. Her talents lay not only in recognizing what a room needed but in setting aside her own ego and allowing those more skilled than she to craft her own style.
The success of Wallis’s first experiments at La Croë became apparent when the Windsors arrived to take up residence at their villa. The twelve-acre estate lay hidden behind a tall stone wall and tall, carefully clipped hedges which completely ringed the grounds on the three sides facing the land. On either side of the entrance gates were small lodges, one of which housed the secretaries and members of the household, the other serving as the house of the concierge, Monsieur Valat, and his family. The gates were always kept locked; a telephone call alerted the lodge at the expected arrival or departure of a car to the estate, and Monsieur Valat always stood ready with his keys to open the gates.
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From the entrance gates, visitors could not see the villa; the drive swept in a great curve through the green lawns of the park, shaded by fir, pine, yew, eucalyptus, and cypress trees. A service drive branched off from the main road, leading through the thick groves of trees to the garages and kitchen court; hidden by a screen of flowering shrubs lay the tennis court and vegetable and cutting gardens.
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At last the trees parted to reveal the tall, gleaming white villa, its windows hung with green shutters and shaded by matching awnings. “It was exquisitely simple and beautifully proportioned,” recalled Dina Wells Hood, “and there was about it a certain air of remoteness. It seemed to me a dream-like place, cool, serene and aloof.”
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Perched at the edge of the sea, La Croë rose three stories above the green lawns and stone terraces. A central portico supported by corinthian columns marked the main entrance to the house; above, a low balustrade rimmed the hipped roof, which was crowned with a small belvedere overlooking the Mediterranean. On the opposite façade, facing the sea, was a semicircular colonnade with ionic columns and enormous blue-and-white-striped awnings.
To advise her in decorating her new house, Wallis called upon the talents of her friend Lady Elsie Mendl. Lady Mendl arrived at La Croë with two assistants: Tony Montgomery, a former apprentice and an authority on antique furniture, and John McMullin, a features editor for Vogue and a respected arbiter of international taste and style. With Wallis, they pored over paint and fabric samples, examined artists’ sketches, and planned and replanned the arrangement of furniture. Wallis wished to emulate the sense of light and space beyond the house, and Lady Mendl advised her to paint the rooms in bright colors and use mirrors and the tall windows of the house itself to reflect the sea and sky beyond. Under her guidance, La Croë shone: the gilding of the woodwork, the lacquered screens and consoles, the enormous mirrors and glittering silver, all contributed to the sense of being adrift, creating a luminous prism of sun and sea. Before the Windsors took up residence, central heating and air conditioning were installed, along with an elevator.
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La Croë gave Wallis and David a chance to fill the house with their belongings that had been stored in England. The Duke’s things from the Fort and York House, along with Wallis’s possessions from her London flats, were shipped to the south of France. One afternoon, a long line of moving vans rolled up the drive at La Croë, and for the next few days, Wallis supervised the unpacking and distribution of crates of china, furniture, boxes of books, trunks of clothes, chests of linen, and hundreds of personal souvenirs, photographs, and paintings.
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From the portico at La Croë, tall double doors opened to a marble-floored vestibule, which in turn led to a large hall rising two stories. A magnificent marble staircase twisted to a second-floor gallery with wrought-iron railings, resting atop piers of grouped pilasters jutting into the room. The hall was dominated by the Duke’s Order of the Garter banner, the ceremonial flag which had hung above his choir stall in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. Below it stood an antique lacquered Dutch chest on which rested a leather guest book.
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Directly through a set of mirrored double doors was the salon, an oval room with three tall French doors opening on to a semicircular colonnade. No one ever used the salon at La Croë; it was designed as a very formal space, an extension of the hall, and a means of reaching the terrace. Gilded consoles supported tall mirrors reflecting the shifting sunlight during the day and the glow of candles burning in the carved wall sconces at night, but there was little furniture.
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These two rooms served as an immediate and stunning introduction to the splendors of La Croë. There were only three principal rooms on the first floor—a drawing room, a library, and a dining room—but the effect created by their deliberate, almost theatrical decoration could not have been greater. Ceilings rose twenty feet, supported by walls paneled in elegant boiserie and pierced with French doors, which provided welcome breezes from the sea on long summer afternoons. Entire sections of wall were covered in mirrors surrounded by white-and-gold cornices and moldings; doors were also mirrored to provide an even greater sense of light and space. The luxurious effect was heightened by the antique Chinese vases and porcelain bowls kept filled with lavish, towering displays of the Duchess’s favorite white arum lilies and orchids.
Wallis decorated the drawing room in shades of white, blue, and yellow, with accents of red and gold. The French doors were hung with yellow-and-light-blue curtains, which echoed the upholstery of the sofas and overstuffed chairs that had been brought from the Fort. Between the French doors stood gilded consoles on which sat two antique Chinese chests in red, gold, and black lacquer. The most significant piece of furniture in the room was the large mahogany desk on which David had signed the Instrument of Abdication, a rather curious piece, laden with memories, which would follow the Windsors to every house in which they lived.
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The library, used primarily by the Duke, was dominated by a portrait of Queen Mary, painted in the robes of the Order of the Garter, which hung above the marble fireplace. Two walls were covered with bookshelves of light oak; these were filled with his collection of presentation volumes and military awards and trophies. The sofas and chairs, carpet and curtains, were in red and white, designed by Wallis to provide both sharp and neutral contrasts to the pale beige of the bookshelves. In a far corner of the room stood a Steinway grand piano, used by the Windsors while entertaining.
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The dining room, like the other main rooms on the first floor, occupied a corner of the house, with windows on both outside walls. Wallis wanted a space which would dazzle in candlelight. The walls were painted white, with delicate boiserie picked out in blue and gold; the double doors and rounded overdoors were mirrored to reflect the yellow, white, and blue curtains which hung at the French doors. A large Chippendale table occupied the center of the room, surrounded by Empire-style chairs in white and gold. Above the sideboard hung a masterful equestrian portrait,
The Prince of Wales on Forest Witch,
painted by Sir Alfred Munnings.
The Duke and Duchess of Windsor each had a suite of rooms on the second floor. At La Croë, Wallis faithfully duplicated if not the exact surroundings then at least the spirit of David’s bedroom at Fort Belvedere. The walls were painted cream, with white mouldings and cornices, which contrasted with the beige-and-scarlet curtains and carpet. The comfortable furniture was upholstered in chocolate and red. Against one wall hung a large damask tapestry in black, scarlet, and gold, showing the arms of a knight of the Order of the Garter.
Wallis’s bedroom was decorated in shades of pink and apricot. Most of her furniture was in the fashionable art-deco style, with rounded edges and chrome accents; across her bed lay a heavily tufted satin spread embroidered with her intertwined initials. The most fascinating pieces of furniture were a dressing table and matching chest, painted with trompe l’oeil reminders of her relationship with the Prince of Wales: duplications of his letters to her; an invitation bearing the royal crest; a fan; a pair of long white evening gloves; a lipstick; a jeweled handbag; and a pair of David’s golf socks.
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Her bathroom, in scarlet and black, was dominated by an enormous gilded tub in the shape of a swan.
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There were six guest rooms at La Croë, two on the second floor and four on the third. The Rose Room took its name from the color of its decoration; French doors opened to a balcony overlooking the sea. Two antique red-and-gold beds, with a matching bow-fronted chest, gave the Venetian Room its exotic flavor. A staircase and elevator connected to the third-floor guest rooms: the Wedgwood Room, in blue and white; the Toile de Jouy Room, in red and white; the Blue Room, in pale shades of blue and white; and the Directoire, in gray and blue. Wallis kept these rooms filled with fresh flowers, selected especially to match the decoration of the room; towels, linens, even bath soap, were all coordinated to match the decorative scheme.
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At the very top of the house was the belvedere, surrounded by the roof terrace. Aside from a wet bar, a closet, and bathroom, the belvedere consisted of one large room which David used as his study. Wallis took particular care over this room and gave it a nautical theme to complement the rest of the house as well as the views of the Mediterranean. The walls and carpet were white, while the curtains at the enormous windows were navy blue, with anchors and rope designs in white. Most of the comfortable, overstuffed furniture was white, edged with navy blue piping. Shelves on two sides of the room held David’s family photographs, further military awards, and racing and jumping trophies.
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The swimming pool stood at the edge of the sea, reached by a twisting staircase which led from the lawns above to the beach. Burton had cut the pool out of the side of the bluff; it was surrounded by rocks and resembled a natural tide pool. Two small pavilions also stood here, containing dressing rooms shaded by large red-and-white awnings. The red-and-blue-striped sun mattresses, deck chairs, and white lifebuoys were all crested with the Duke’s coronet and the intertwined initials WE, for Wallis and Edward.
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La Croë also gave Wallis and David an opportunity to reestablish some of the trappings of the world which he had left behind in England. The Duke consulted his tailor in London, who produced the various liveries for the footmen: scarlet coats with gold collars, cuffs, and buttons for formal occasions; black suits with crimson, white, and gold—striped waistcoats and silver buttons for ordinary day and evening wear; and lightweight dress suits of pale gray alpaca for summers at La Croë. The buttons on these liveries were also crested with the Duke’s coronet and the intertwined initials. This monogram also began to appear on stationery, note cards, envelopes, linens, and menu cards.
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