3
Youth
L
IFE AT 212 BIDDLE STREET
slowly settled into a quiet, relaxed pattern. Although Wallis became fond of her new stepfather, their relations remained marked with a certain distance and formality. Rasin was a curious, almost-minimal presence within the household; he was always disappearing behind the library doors, where he spent his days reading newspapers and smoking cigarettes. He had no need to work and drew his monthly income from a sizable trust fund.
1
Rasin’s money allowed Alice to entertain again, and she filled the rooms of 212 Biddle with attractive new furniture, carpets, and a piano. Alice also tried to provide some of the finer things for her daughter and hired an elderly lady called Miss Jackson to give Wallis piano lessons. Miss Jackson came one afternoon a week and supervised as Wallis sat pounding away at the keyboard. Not surprisingly, the young girl hated these lessons, for she was tone deaf. She begged her mother to be allowed to quit, but Alice refused, and Wallis stuck it out until her first recital. When she had finished, the audience duly applauded; “not exactly an ovation—a kind of gratitude that the thing didn’t last any longer,” Wallis later wrote. This disaster was enough to convince Alice to heed her daughter’s pleas, and Wallis was allowed to stop her lessons.
2
Two months before her fourteenth birthday, Wallis was confirmed into the Episcopal church. Neither Alice nor Rasin was particularly religious, but the influence of her grandmother remained strong, and Wallis’s religious instruction was not neglected. Wallis learned her catechism, and on April 17, 1910, dressed in a plain white dress, she joined the rest of her class at an elaborate ceremony held at Christ Church in Baltimore.
With Rasin’s money, Wallis attended the fashionable Burrlands Summer Camp, run by her athletic instructor at Baltimore’s Gymnasium, Miss Charlotte Noland. Her previous summer holidays had always been spent with wealthy Warfield relatives in their country estates outside Baltimore, surroundings in which Wallis inevitably felt very much a poor cousin. Burrlands, therefore, was a welcome relief. Situated deep in the lush countryside near Middleburg, Virginia, Burrlands offered a taste of life in the old South, with its white-columned, Greek-revival plantation house, afternoons spent riding, playing lawn tennis and croquet, and concentration on good manners. Rough edges were polished through elaborate afternoon teas, carefully chaperoned parties, and formal Sunday dinners.
In this environment Wallis blossomed—and developed her first real crush. The object of her affection, Lloyd Tabb, was a handsome seventeen-year-old whose family lived at the nearby Glen Ora estate, which would later be used by John F. Kennedy as a weekend retreat from the White House. Lloyd Tabb was a tall, athletic young man with a passion for football, swimming, and riding. Wallis did not particularly care for such pursuits, but she was canny and managed to quickly endear herself to Lloyd by learning all she could about his tastes and flattering him no end. With Miss Noland’s permission, she visited the Tabb estate, sitting for hours with Lloyd on the veranda, reading aloud from books of poetry or listening (though rarely joining in) as the family sang together.
“Being full of romance and poetry at that age,” Lloyd recalled, “we would maneuver around and find a secluded spot in which to ‘speak of love’ and ‘give the direct gaze.’ “ His impressions form the first real, independent picture of Wallis as a young woman. He recalled “a touch of pathos and sweetness bordering on wistfulness” in her character. “No one who really knew Wallis well ever said anything against her,” he declared. She never acted “silly” around boys, he said.
She was always very feminine but clever, and at times shrewd.... She was not impulsive; on the contrary, she seemed rather studied or thoughtful in determining on a course of action. We used to have close harmony parties on the porch, or down in the garden of our house. Curiously enough, Wallis rarely joined in the singing, though she obviously enjoyed the efforts of others, and was one of the best at thinking up new numbers. Having made suggestions, she would lean back on her slender arms. Her head would be cocked appreciatively, and by her earnest attention she made us feel that we were really a rather gifted group of youngsters.
3
In 1911, Wallis left Arundell. She could have remained and completed her education, but for a girl of her social background, it was considered obligatory to attend one of the local finishing schools. Both Alice and her sister Bessie suggested Oldfields, at Glencoe, Maryland, some distance from Baltimore. That it was also the most expensive and fashionable school for girls did not escape Wallis’s attention, and she eagerly agreed to the idea.
Oldfields had been founded in 1867 by Rev. Duncan McCulloch and his sister, Anna, on her family estate along the Gunpowder River. A large white clapboard-and-brick mansion, set in the middle of several hundred acres of woodlands, formed the center of the school. Students were housed in a large wing, added onto the main house; several other buildings, including a gymnasium and an infirmary, stood nearby. The old mansion still retained a touch of its former grandeur, with a magnificent grand staircase, drawing rooms hung with silk, and a ballroom, with crystal chandeliers, in which the girls practiced their dancing lessons. Through the trees Wallis could catch a glimpse of the local parish church where students attended services each Sunday.
Anna McCulloch struck Wallis as “a replica of my grandmother.”
4
In her early sixties, Anna, called Miss Nan by the students, was tall and thin, draped in black silk dresses with white collars. She was careful to instill in the girls a sense of gentility and grace. Signs reading Gentleness and Courtesy Are Expected of the Girls at All Times, were posted on the doors of the dormitories, and the school’s two basketball teams were also called Gentleness and Courtesy.
5
Boarding school was a new experience for Wallis. Inevitably, her new friends were wealthy, privileged girls whose settled lives contrasted sharply with the uncertainties and struggles she had faced. Her most valued friend at Oldfields, Mary Kirk, was a dark-haired, blue-eyed girl whose family owned the Kirk Silverworks in Baltimore. Mary would remain a friend for many years to come and play a pivotal role in Wallis’s later life. Two other close friends were young heiress Renée du Pont and Ellen Yuille of North Carolina, whose father worked for Duke Tobacco.
Days at Oldfields were strictly organized and followed religious principles. Each morning, a bell summoned the girls to prayers, said according to the Episcopalian church’s
Book of Common Prayer.
There were few privileges: only two at-home weekends, in addition to regular holidays, were allowed each girl during the entire school year, and before leaving for Christmas break, each student had to memorize and recite a chapter from the Old Testament before the ever-vigilant Miss Nan. The girls could not write letters to boys and were not allowed to receive letters from any men other than relatives. In the evening, before dinner, students gathered to sing hymns. On Sundays, all students had to memorize the collect and gospel before joining the congregation in the nearby parish church; at half-past five on Sunday afternoons, there was an Evensong service and, following dinner, further hymns. By ten o’clock, lights were extinguished; there were severe penalties for breaking curfew.
6
Wallis enjoyed her first months at Oldfields. She liked most of the other girls, studied hard, and thrived. However, with her growing streak of independence and headstrong nature, she soon resented the tight discipline. To escape the strict daily regimen, she began to complain of ill health: one week it was a cold; the next, a headache, followed by stomach flu or weakness. She enjoyed being coddled and indulged, although the other girls seemed to have quickly realized that most of Wallis’s infirmities were an act. Still, she managed to manipulate those around her through uniquely creative means. She even went so far as to have her mother write a note asking that she be excused from taking algebra classes, asserting that prolonged exposure to mathematics gave her hives.
7
Somehow her charming craftiness overcame all objections, and she usually won in the end.
Undoubtedly, Wallis was a unique presence at Oldfields. The other girls were either pretty or plain, but Wallis managed to comfortably embrace her assets and make the most of her shortcomings. “My endowments were definitely on the scanty side,” she later recalled. “Nobody ever called me beautiful or even pretty.”
8
Of medium height, thin, and slightly flat-chested, Wallis was not conventionally pretty: Her jawline was a bit too square, her eyebrows were thick, and a very prominent mole distracted from her face. But her hair continued to be a special pride, and, above all, it was her blue-violet eyes which captivated. Adela Rogers St. John recalled that “she had the most beautiful eyes I ever saw.”
9
As she grew older, Wallis began to experiment with fashion. The lacy gowns and hobble skirts of the era were not at all to her taste. Instead, she liked to wear men’s shirts and bow ties with her long skirts, wrapping tight belts around her waist to emphasize its slenderness. At one time, she took to wearing a monocle, in what one must conclude was an effort to both challenge convention and attract attention to herself.
In manner, she was generally charming and good-natured. Her high-pitched voice, a curious mixture of eastern accent and southern drawl, could often be heard when she was laughing and joking with fellow students. And yet she seemed somehow different from the other girls, more mature, sophisticated if not cultured, with a certain weariness which she masked behind an ebullient façade. In part, this was owing to her childhood experiences, but it also reflected a growing consciousness on her part. All around her—in the country estates of her relatives, in her grandmother’s solid house, in the lifestyle of the girls who attended school with her—was money, an asset Wallis lacked. She craved excitement, acceptance, and prestige and realized that if society were to deliver these things to her, she, in turn, had to compensate for what she did not possess. Most twelve-year-old girls entering Oldfields were not at all concerned about wealth or power or position, but Wallis was extremely aware of their importance. Her carefully crafted sense of style, the ease of her conversation, her slightly theatrical quality, were all meant to attract attention and open doors.
Wallis was serious when necessary but was known among her friends for her love of excitement and slightly dangerous adventures, characteristics which only enhanced the exotic quality she cultivated. She knew this would entice the girls, but it had the added benefit of making her terribly attractive to young men as well. “She tended to be interested in boys,” one man later recalled. “Girls were just people who happened to be around . . . and some of the young ladies were critical of her because she cut in on their preserves a bit.”
10
Wallis was known for her independence: “In those days,” recalled a friend, “that was considered forward for a young lady.”
11
Several girls at Oldfields later described the Wallis they had known as “fast.” But this designation meant something quite different then. No one ever indicated that Wallis was promiscuous, or that she chased after boys. She seems to have enjoyed flirting, which made her friends uneasy, but had she been aggressive in her pursuits, Wallis would undoubtedly have been cut dead by her fellow students.
One of Wallis’s first serious boyfriends was Carter Osborne, son of a Baltimore bank president. Osborne was an attractive, athletic young man who shared Wallis’s love of laughter and fun. Theirs was an almost charmingly innocent relationship, fraught with danger on both sides, as Osborne later recalled: “I used to take my father’s car and drive down a dirt road. I wasn’t allowed to have the car, but I took care of that. At a certain point in the road, I’d stop, and Wally could see the car from her dormitory window. The moment she spotted it, she’d slip out. I don’t know yet how she managed it, but as far as I know, she never got caught. She not only got out, but she also got back in without being observed. She was very independent in spirit, adhering to the conventions only for what they were worth and not for their own sake. Those dates were all the more exciting for being forbidden.”
12
It was during Wallis’s senior year at Oldfields that tragedy once again struck her family. Her stepfather had not been well for some time; when doctors were eventually called in, they diagnosed Bright’s disease, an unfortunate, and ultimately fatal, effect of Rasin’s frequent drinking binges. Hoping that the sea air would somehow revive his health and postpone the inevitable, doctors advised Rasin to take a cottage at Atlantic City, New Jersey. He and Alice moved there in the spring, but his condition worsened. On April 4, 1913, Wallis was called out of class at Oldfields and asked to go to Miss Nan’s office. There she learned that her stepfather had died. Wallis immediately packed a suitcase and returned to Baltimore.
The next day, Wallis stood waiting on the railway platform, watching as the train carrying her mother and her stepfather’s body slowly steamed into the station at Baltimore. Wallis spotted her mother as soon as she climbed down the steps of her carriage. Wrapped in black, she stumbled across the platform and collapsed in her daughter’s arms. The loss of her second husband left Alice inconsolable. Her near hysterics tore at Wallis; although she had grown fond of Rasin, she had not realized the extent of her mother’s devotion until his death. Throughout these days, Wallis dealt with the funeral arrangements, looking after her mother and easing tensions between Warfield and Rasin relatives, a measure of her maturity.