Couples’ Letters Show Unyielding Bitterness : Windsor on His People: ‘I Hate The Lot’

Letters exchanged by the late Duke and Duchess of Windsor and published today show the depth of their resentment against the royal family during the first months after he abdicated as King Edward VIII.

“God, how I hate and despise the lot,” the former king wrote in one of the letters, published in the Daily Mail. “I hope one day to, and I mean to, get back at those swine and at least make them realize how disgustingly and unsportingly they have behaved.”

The letter, dated March 22, 1937, was written to American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson, for love of whom he had abdicated on Dec. 11, 1936.

The couple spent several months apart, he in Schloss Enzesfeld, a castle in Austria, and she at a friend’s villa at Cannes in southern France, while she waited for her divorce from her second husband to be made final.

Edward and Simpson married in France on June 3, 1937.

“I hate the waste of these 4 1/2 months of our lives which are so vital and precious to us,” Edward said in the letter, in which he referred to “this ridiculous and humiliating separation which has been imposed on us.”

After the abdication, Edward’s brother, the father of Queen Elizabeth II, became King George VI. It was ruled that Edward would get no pension, and George either no longer wished or was no longer allowed to talk to Edward on the telephone.

Edward wrote to Simpson on Feb. 18, 1937, “Oh! darling, one really does wake up some mornings wondering whether one will keep one’s sanity if this separation goes on much longer.”

She wrote in an undated letter: “What have I done to deserve this treatment? I have never had a word said in my defense or kind word in the press. Surely your brother can protect me a bit--not to be the butt of musical comedy jokes on the radio etc.

“It has been such a lone game against the world for me and a woman always pays the most--and you my sweet haven’t been able to protect me.”

In a March 6 letter, she said of the British: “They are a nation of cads where women are concerned.” In a March 31 letter she spoke of “your wretched brother,” the king.