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Wallis Simpson, 'That Woman' After the Abdication

31.12.69

Their first trip to England together in the fall of 1946 was a disaster. They stayed with their friends the Earl and Countess of Dudley at Ednam Lodge. On Oct. 16 a burglar broke into the house and stole Wallis’s jewelry, which she had left unsecured when they went out for the evening. Wallis was distraught; the jewelry had defined her romance with the then prince and given her security. An exotic bird of paradise brooch, with a cabochon sapphire breast and a plumage of diamonds, had just been made for her by Cartier that year. She never saw it, or any of the other stolen pieces, again.

The household was in turmoil, as police taking fingerprints jostled with reporters seeking interviews. The quiet visit with a minimum of publicity that they had promised an “unrelenting royal family” was now splashed all over the press. In a country hard hit by postwar austerity, discussion of such a fabulous haul of jewelry (estimated by the Windsors at $80,000) elicited little sympathy. According to Lady Dudley, Wallis in the hours after the robbery showed “an unpleasant and to me unexpected side of her character. . . . She wanted all the servants put through a kind of third degree. But I would have none of this, all of them except for one kitchen maid being old and devoted staff of longstanding. . . . The duke was both demented with worry and near to tears.”

Source: New York Times (blog)