Queen to Don Black, Mourn Five Dyas for ‘Aunt Wallis’ : Duchess of Windsor Dies at 89

The Duchess of Windsor, the American divorcee who became dearer to a king than his crown, died today of pneumonia at her home in Paris. She was 89.

Shunned by the British Royal Family during her lifetime, the duchess will be honored by them in death.

Buckingham Palace announced that she will be buried at Windsor Castle Tuesday beside her husband, Edward, and Queen Elizabeth II and her immediate family will wear black during five days of mourning for the woman Prince Charles called “Aunt Wallis.”

Although she had said she would hate England “to my grave,” the duchess will be buried at Frogmore near the castle beside the duke, who died in 1972. The man who gave up the throne to marry her had threatened in 1957 to be buried in Baltimore if the queen did not accede to that wish.

Buckingham Palace declared five days of “family mourning” will begin Friday. Flags on government buildings will fly at half-staff Tuesday.

Queen’s Flight Seen

The palace said an aircraft of the Queen’s Flight probably would be used to bring the body to England, whose Establishment once so soundly rejected the duchess.

The romance between King Edward VIII and Wallis Warfield Spencer Simpson, which Winston Churchill called “one of the greatest love stories of history,” roused the wrath of England, rocked the British Empire and changed the course of the British monarchy.

Edward gave up the throne for her after a reign of 325 days and they were married in France in 1937.

When he had made his decision to abdicate, Edward told his subjects around the world in a moving radio address on Dec. 11, 1936:

“I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.”

The duchess had been bedridden for several years and died at 11 a.m. in the three-story mansion in the Bois de Boulogne where she and the duke set up house in the late 1940s.

American journalist H. L. Mencken described the love affair between Edward and Mrs. Simpson, who obtained her second divorce to marry him, as “the greatest story since the Crucifixion.” She herself called its outcome “monstrous.”

Kept Secret Two Years

The liaison between the king and the divorcee--who was in her own words not beautiful “or even pretty”--was kept secret for two years. It became public after Edward succeeded to the throne in January, 1936, on the death of his father, King George V, and divided the government, the royal household and the empire.

It “was to lead in five short years to a terrible conclusion of which I had not the slightest intimation,” the duchess wrote in her autobiography, “The Heart Has Its Reasons.”

Huge crowds, for and against the love affair, gathered outside Buckingham Palace. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin threatened to resign and the Church of England was outraged.

The prime ministers of South Africa, Canada and Australia, then crown dominions, threatened to secede.

Her or the Throne

Baldwin finally gave the 41-year-old bachelor king a choice: Mrs. Simpson or the throne. He chose the former, abdicated and they began a life of exile.

Mrs. Simpson, who was 39, had slipped out of England a week earlier. She wept bitterly as she listened to Edward’s radio broadcast at the home of a friend in Cannes, on the French Riviera.

“I found myself whispering, as to another self, that nothing so incredible, so monstrous, could possibly have happened,” she wrote in her autobiography.

Edward left England for Austria the night of Dec. 11, after the radio address. Mrs. Simpson remained in Cannes awaiting her divorce from American-born shipping magnate Ernest Simpson, which became final May 3, 1937.

Married in France

They were reunited in the Chateau of Cande, near Tours in central France, and were married there June 3.

A civil ceremony was conducted first, then a religious one by the Rev. Robert Anderson Jardine, an Anglican clergyman who defied the Church of England’s ban on marrying divorced people. The couple said they “would always remember with gratitude his Christian act.”

King George VI, who became monarch after his brother abdicated, named Edward the Duke of Windsor, a title that automatically applied to Mrs. Simpson.

Baldwin, the prime minister, barred any children from inheriting the title and forbade designating the duchess “Her Royal Highness” lest she be considered one of the Royal Family. The duke and duchess had no children.

Prominent Baltimore Family

The duchess was born Bessie Wallis Warfield in Blue Ridge Summit, Pa., on June 19, 1896, to a prominent Baltimore family.

She married Navy pilot Earl Spencer when she was 20, and dropped the name Bessie because it was “a name given to cows.”

She pronounced herself “completely, totally and helplessly in love,” but Spencer was an alcoholic and the marriage crumbled. They were divorced in 1927.

After brief whirls with American and English diplomats, and English and Italian naval officers, the future duchess met her second husband in a Warrenton, Va., hotel where she was awaiting her divorce decree.

Ernest Simpson’s marriage was in trouble, Wallis wrote, “and I was attracted to him and him to me.” They were married July 21, 1928, in London’s Chelsea registry office.

Met at Dinner Party

Mrs. Simpson plunged into the London social round. In the fall of 1930, she was seated next to Edward, then Prince of Wales, at dinner during a country hunting weekend. They chatted about the differing British and American attitudes toward central heating.

“I was petrified,” she wrote in her autobiography. “But I decided the Prince was truly one of the most attractive personalities I ever met.”

Simpson watched the relationship develop--first with amusement, then concern and finally with indifference. He attended the wedding in 1937 and remained in touch with the couple until his death in 1958.

Life in France brought the couple “a great measure of contentment and happiness,” the duchess wrote. She was a leading hostess for many years, but she became increasingly secluded after Edward died and her health deteriorated.

A person who knew her well said that, several years ago when the duchess could still get about in a wheelchair but was not well enough to join dinner guests, curtains would be drawn from a darkened alcove and the guests would turn and bow as she briefly surveyed the gathering.