The royals - Kitty Kelley [119]
The death of the Duke of Windsor in May 1972 revisited the shame of the former King’s abdication and the lonely exile forced on him—all because of an inappropriate marriage. Despite the hostility of his family toward the Windsors, Charles felt sympathy for the Duke and Duchess. He had accompanied his parents on an official trip to Paris and visited briefly with his great-uncle ten days before he died.
Knowing the seventy-seven-year-old duke was terminally ill, the Queen agreed to see him during her five-day state visit to France. Despite urgent calls from the Duke’s doctor, Jean Thin, the Queen would not rearrange her schedule. The doctor implored the Queen’s secretary to relay how gravely ill the Duke was. “He’s on the verge of death,” said the doctor. The next day, the doctor received a call from the British ambassador, Christopher Soames, who was concerned that the Duke’s death might interfere with the Queen’s state visit.
“Now, look here, doctor,” Jean Thin recalled the ambassador saying. “The Duke has got to die before or after the Queen’s visit but not during the visit. Do you understand?”
A reporter questioned the Queen’s secretary about Her Majesty’s apparent callousness toward the Duke of Windsor. The Queen’s secretary told the reporter, “You know he’s dying. I know he’s dying. But WE don’t know he’s dying.”
Charles, who accompanied his parents to the Windsors’ home in the Bois de Boulogne outside Paris, had been jolted by the sight of the fragile old man, wasted by throat cancer. Although racked and emaciated, the former King had insisted on getting out of bed to pay proper homage to his sovereign. Charles was touched by his gallantry.
The Duchess of Windsor, who had been reviled by the royal family, found the Queen cold and remote. “Her manner as much as stated that she had not intended to honor him with a visit,” the Duchess told the Countess of Romanones, “but that she was simply covering appearances by coming here because he was dying and it was known that she was in Paris.”
Upon the Duke’s death, Charles wanted to extend kindness to the Duchess, who had been vilified for so long by the royal family. He graciously offered to meet her plane in London and to escort her to her husband’s funeral, but the Palace said no. The Queen’s courtiers explained that as heir apparent he would embarrass the throne by making such a royal gesture to a twice divorced commoner. “It might be misinterpreted,” said the Queen’s secretary. Charles realized that the obstacle continued to be the Queen Mother, and he could not offend his beloved grandmother. So the Earl Mountbatten of Burma was dispatched to meet the Duchess. She was invited to stay in Buckingham Palace, but only for the duration of her husband’s funeral.
“Immediately afterward, everyone in the royal family went to Windsor and left the Duchess by herself,” recalled one of the Queen’s stewards. “I was working in the gold-and-silver pantry then and I remember them all—the Queen Mother, the Queen, and Princess Margaret—planning to leave for the country without the Duchess of Windsor. It was despicable to treat her like that after all those years. I can still see her thin and withered face peeking out from the window sheers of Buckingham Palace after everyone left. She looked so alone