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Edward VIII of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas,
Emperor of India. ‘To everyone in the congregation’, his biographer wrote, ‘this roll-call
of heraldic honours must have provided a vivid reminder of how much he had given up;
the slim, wasted figure of the widow in black recalled with equal vividness why he had
made the sacrifice…’ Had he not abdicated, he would have rested with the other
sovereigns in the family vault under St George’s. As it was, by his own wish his coffin
was later taken to Frogmore to be interred under a simple stone in the grass to await
the day when his wife would be buried by his side.
A photograph of the time shows the Duchess in black, anguished, confused, staring out
from behind a lace curtain at the window of Buckingham Palace, an unfamiliar and
hitherto hostile environment. She was, perhaps, beginning to suffer the effects of the
mental and physical paralysis which was to overtake her, the result, some people
unkindly said, of too much anaesthetic for too many facelifts over the years. She
appeared confused during the funeral at which she sat beside Elizabeth. The Countess of
Avon, wife of the former Sir Anthony Eden, noted that ‘she seemed very strange… did
nervous things with her hands and kept talking, “Where do I sit? Is this my seat? Is this
my prayer book. What do I do now?…”’ Elizabeth was concerned, showing what
Clarissa Avon described as ‘a motherly and nanny-like tenderness and kept putting her
hand on the Duchess’s arm or glove’. Afterwards there was a luncheon for forty people
at the Castle where the Queen Mother drew the Duchess aside to sit chatting with her on
a sofa while drinks were served. At the luncheon the Duchess sat on Philip’s right, with
Mountbatten on her right. The final ceremony of interment took place that afternoon at
Frogmore, where the Duchess, under the influence of sedatives given her by her doctor,
seemed even more disorientated, wandering from person to person asking ‘Where’s the
Duke?’, or ‘Are you having a good time?’ and ‘Why isn’t the Duke here?’ The Queen
Mother took her arm. ‘I know how you feel,’ she said. ‘I’ve been through it myself.’
Mountbatten and Charles later saw her off from the Castle. ‘She kept on telling me
what a charming young man Charles was and what a comfort to her,’ Mountbatten
recalled. ‘Charles certainly was splendid in supporting her… I must say I am desperately
sorry for her – she is so lonely and sad, and yet kept saying how wonderful the family
were being to her, and how much better the whole thing had gone than she had
expected.’
Just over a year later on 11 July she was back at Windsor to visit her husband’s grave,
arriving on an aeroplane of the Queen’s Flight to be met at the airport by Mountbatten
and the Duke of Kent. She had tea at the Castle although Elizabeth was absent on duty
in Edinburgh and never saw her aunt-by-marriage again. The Duchess returned to Paris
and the house she had shared with the Duke surrounded by mementoes of him; his
bedroom an untouched shrine into which every night she would go and say ‘Goodnight,
David’. Although convinced of her poverty, she remained an extremely rich woman with
liquid assets of some £3 million and millions more in jewellery, paintings, furniture and
objects. (Her jewellery and various objects belonging to the Duke when sold by
Sotheby’s in Geneva in April 1987 made over $50 million, with the engagement ring