The job at the Continental Trust was scarcely glamorous, and T. Wallis seems not to have much cared for the career chosen by his family. But his continuing financial dependence ensured his silent cooperation. In these gloomy, routine surroundings, the young man’s romantic inclinations remained carefully cloistered. Then, at the age of twenty-five, he fell in love.
The object of his affections was twenty-four-year-old Alice Montague, daughter of insurance salesman William Montague and his wife, Mary Anne. In later years Alice left no record of her first meeting with her future husband, nor did her daughter seem too inquisitive. We know nothing, therefore, of their first acquaintance and very little of their courtship.
Alice Montague, like her future husband, was the product of distinguished stock. The family was an old and respected one in their native England. They could lay claim to at least one king, Sir Simon Montecute, who was head of the House of Montague in the fourteenth century and married Aufrica, daughter of the King of the Isle of Man, in the Irish Sea. When Aufrica’s father died, Simon inherited his throne and reigned as king for over fifty years. Ties with the British aristocracy were equally dose. The Montagues were not only nobles in their own right but were also related to the Dukes of Manchester and the Earls of Sandwich.
9
In 1621, some forty-one years before the first Warfield arrived, Peter Montague (Wallis’s first U.S. ancestor) left Buckinghamshire and took up residence in the New World, settling in Virginia on a land grant, which, under King Charles II, was further expanded. He became a successful farmer, took a seat in the House of Burgesses, and married the daughter of the Virginia colony’s governor.
10
Like the Warfields, the Montagues fought valiantly in the American Revolution, and one even threw himself in the path of a charging soldier, taking a saber cut meant for Gen. George Washington.
11
“Beyond the fact that the Warfields and the Montagues shared the Mason-Dixon line as a common frontier,” the Duchess later wrote, “they had almost nothing in common.”
12
Unlike the staid Warfields, with their indomitable sense of duty, the Montagues placed more emphasis on enjoyment of life. Their magnetic personalities captivated and bewitched, and their slightly bohemian habits gave them a reputation as true southern eccentrics. Whereas solemnity and dignity were hallmarks of the Warfields, the Montagues were frivolous and carefree. As the years passed, the lands, prestige, and wealth faded. By the end of the nineteenth century, they were still regarded as one of Virginia’s most distinguished families, although reduced circumstances meant that they no longer lived in the style to which their ancestors had become accustomed. According to the Duchess, her family’s money had all but disappeared: “It had been a painfully long time since any except the most venerable of them could remember having enough to support themselves in the style they considered traditionally their own.”
13
Although their once-great houses crumbled from lack of funds, they continued to live in them like relics of some vanished civilization, holding fast to a heritage peppered with notable names and cultivated charms.
Whatever the attraction that initially drew these two diverse personalities together, T. Wallis and Alice fell in love. The Montagues were themselves none too pleased that their lovely, energetic daughter had seemingly fallen in love with a melancholy young man who was already beginning to show the first signs of the tuberculosis that would eventually kill him. They felt that Alice, with her great beauty and charm, deserved a better match. Nor, despite their slightly cavalier attitude toward money, were the financial implications of the proposed marriage lost on the Montagues. T. Wallis, as the youngest son, possessed only fairly good prospects for the future, and there seemed little promise, with three older brothers, that this situation would be remedied with any estate settlement.
Nor were the Warfields any more enthused about the proposed match: The Montagues could scarcely be regarded, whatever their past glories, as a prosperous, socially prominent family, and Alice herself, with her buoyant good nature and free laughter, struck a discordant note in the serious, closeted world the Warfields inhabited. T. Wallis’s family was also acutely aware of his illness, and the odds that he would be able to support a wife and family seemed dismal. Later, the Duchess would only half-jokingly refer to her parents’ romance by relating it to the warring Montague and Capulet families in Shakespeare’s tragedy
Romeo and Juliet.
14
Family conclaves were held; arguments were presented and voices raised, but no one seemed able to convince the young lovers that their marriage would be a disaster. Alice seemed oblivious of her future husband’s illness, and he himself saw no reason, given his uncertain future, to forestall whatever happiness might temporarily be granted him.
When the couple married in a quiet service on November 19, 1895, no member of the Warfield or Montague families attended. Given the expressed reservations of both the Warfields and Montagues, it is entirely possible that neither T. Wallis nor Alice bothered to inform either their friends or their families until after the union had taken place. Such an attitude of opposition, adopted by both families, helps account for the complete silence surrounding the union, for no announcement ever appeared in any Baltimore newspaper.
This, at any rate, is the most favorable explanation. But more than one author has suggested that the quiet wedding and lack of family attendance indicated another reason: that Alice learned she was pregnant and that the couple wed privately to avoid any public scandal.
Since the future Duchess of Windsor was born a mere seven months after her parents’ wedding, this idea is not without merit. Even in the morally rigid Victorian era, it may be that because of Alice’s impetuous and carefree character and the weight of T. Wallis’s illness a heavy portent, the Duchess’s parents consummated their relationship prior to their wedding. This is almost certainly what the Duchess herself believed and helps account for her deliberate ambiguity and revision when writing her memoirs. Having herself been born in June 1896, she apparently feared, not unreasonably, that the date of her arrival in the world would cast a shadow over her conception.
The evidence that Wallis arrived prematurely, however, is equally strong. Thus, it is impossible to say a hundred years after the fact what forces—family disapproval or unexpected pregnancy—drew T. Wallis and Alice into the rectory drawing room that cold November day. For all of the Duchess’s well-intentioned plans, her fearful alteration would result only in even more outrageous claims a century after her birth.
The newly married couple first lived quietly in T. Wallis’s former bachelor apartment at 28 Hopkins Place, a small, dreary flat in a less than fashionable section of Baltimore. Whatever family tensions existed apparently remained unspoken, if not forgiven. T. Wallis returned to his job at the Continental Trust, and by the end of 1895, Alice was expecting a child.
Baltimore could be miserable in the summer, especially for one suffering from tuberculosis. The stale, still, humid air did nothing for T. Wallis’s health, and he and Alice decided to spend the season elsewhere.
They chose Blue Ridge Summit, a small resort town nestled high in the mountains of Monterey County, along the Pennsylvania-Maryland border. The Warfields took up residence in a two-story cabin known as Square Cottage. Owned and operated by the town’s Monterey Inn, their new home offered the couple two benefits: a long, wide veranda from which to take the air and, perhaps more important, privacy.
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On June 19, 1896, Alice went into labor. No preparations had been made; Alice’s own doctor was unavailable; instead, one of his newly graduated students, Dr. Lewis Allen, was hurriedly dispatched, arriving in Blue Ridge Summit with scarcely enough time to supervise the delivery. On that day, T. Wallis and Alice’s only child, Bessie Wallis Warfield, was born.
Like the wedding that had united her parents, a curious silence accompanied Wallis’s birth. No formal announcement was made, and this newest addition to the illustrious Warfield clan was all but ignored. Nor was the birth registered.
Such circumstances have led at least one of the Duchess’s biographers to speculate that she was not born in 1896 at all. Charles Higham declared that not only was the Duchess born a full year earlier than has always been assumed but that her parents did not bother to marry until November 1896, seventeen months after the event. To bolster his argument, he relies not only on the circumstantial evidence that no mention of the Duchess’s birth was made at the time she was born but also quotes a census report of 1900 in which a birth date of 1895 is given.
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However much this scandalous assertion of illegitimacy enlivens the telling of the Duchess’s life, the evidence to support it is slim indeed. T. Wallis Warfield and Alice Montague certainly married under a dark cloud, but it seems likely to have been imposed as much by the strong disapproval of their respective families as by a possible out-of-wedlock pregnancy. The very fact that the Warfields and Montagues opposed the match seems to have led the couple to take such secretive measures; after the fact, they certainly would not publicize such a controversial union. If a general announcement was made, almost certainly questions as to why the families had opposed the match—not to mention why the couple had felt compelled to marry secretly—would have become fodder for Baltimore gossips. The most reasonable step, therefore, seems to have been the one selected by T. Wallis and Alice: a private marriage, unpublicized, followed by their discreetly notifying family and friends.
Even if we are to assume, for the sake of argument, that Alice conceived her child out of wedlock, it strains credulity to believe that she and T. Wallis would wait seventeen months after discovering this fact to legitimize their union. Higham rightly points out the scandal and stigma which would attach itself, in the Victorian era, to birth out of wedlock but seems not to make the logical progression that learning of this alleged pregnancy, then not only giving birth to the child but waiting seventeen months to marry, could only have threatened even further scandal. That Alice had conceived the child out of wedlock would certainly have been discovered shortly thereafter. If the parents—with their staid, religious, proper upbringing—were worried about such a scandal, would they really have waited so long to make their union legal? Such a scenario utterly contradicts everything known of upper-middle-class Victorian values. A quick, private marriage would at least guarantee the child’s legitimacy and thus prevent further scandal.
The suggestion that Bessie Wallis was born in June 1895 rather than a year later rests entirely on a 1900 census report. Given the weight of the available evidence, it seems likely that the year of birth was simply mistranscribed by the census taker or that whoever supplied the details accidentally wrote down the wrong year.
The lack of a birth certificate and failure to register the baby’s arrival have assumed sinister proportions in recent years. Not only have these facts been held up as evidence that the Duchess might have been born a year earlier or was conceived out of wedlock, but most recently author Michael Bloch has questioned whether they might have indicated that the future Duchess of Windsor was born gender confused, with both male and female genitalia.
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Happily, this last theory can be definitely put to rest by the physician who treated the Duchess until her death in 1986. According to Dr. Jean Thin, “her genitalia were simply normal, female genitalia, and you can quote me on this issue.”
18
Although it is possible that the child was conceived out of wedlock, the circumstances of her birth actually argue in favor of a premature arrival. Had the marriage followed an unexpected pregnancy and the time frame cut short, it should scarcely have come as a shock that Alice was expecting while they were in residence at Blue Ridge Summit. As it was, the parents were apparently surprised when the child was born. They were some distance away from their regular doctor, no arrangements had been made in advance, and a physician had to be hastily called in from Baltimore to assist in the delivery. All of this argues heavily for a premature birth.
Nor is there anything particularly sinister in the fact that the birth was not registered. As Michael Thornton points out, there was no legal requirement in Pennsylvania to do so, nor was it always done as a matter of course.
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That the parents were themselves residents of Maryland rather than Pennsylvania might also help explain the lack of action; neither T. Wallis nor Alice were particularly well versed in the ways of the world, and it is possible that they simply assumed the birth should be registered in their usual place of residence. Upon their return, when T. Wallis fell very ill, such a legal nicety may well have been forgotten. It is also possible that the couple believed that it was the doctor’s duty to register the birth, while the doctor assumed that the parents would do so.
Little should be read into the lack of registration: another famous and formidable lady, born five years after the future Duchess of Windsor, likewise seems to have arrived unexpectedly. The parents of the Honorable Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon waited a considerable time before reporting her birth to the proper authorities and paid a fine for having neglected the law. This, in turn, has led to speculation as to the exact time and place of birth of the woman who was to become Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.