december-2010

outbuildings, La Maison des Amis and La Célibataire,
guests breakfasted in bed, eating off china served by
housemaids in uniforms that matched the furnishings.
In an intriguing coincidence, W.E., the fi lm directed by
Madonna which in part recounts the Simpson-Windsor
love affair, is due for release next year, at the same time
as the mill house and its guest quarters are now available
to rent through the British building preservation charity
The Landmark Trust.
After the chain-smoking Duke was diagnosed with throat
cancer in 1971, the property was sold to various owners
and fi nally, in 2006, to Patrick Deedes-Vincke, an Anglo-
Belgian photographers’ agent who subsequently spent two
years restoring La Maison des Amis and La Célibataire.
Unable to fi nd suitable tenants, however, Deedes-Vincke
decided to hand over the refurbishment of the mill and the
rental of the three buidings to the Landmark Trust.
From the outside, the shuttered stone buildings still
look much as they did in the 1950s. The gardens, though
very pretty, are no match for the Duke’s elaborate
planting scheme, masterminded by leading landscape
architect Russell Page. Nor do the current austere-yettasteful
interiors – dainty dark-wood chairs and towel
stands, contemporary-rustic kitchens with well scrubbed
wooden tables, comfortable sofas and casual soft
furnishings – bear much resemblance to the sumptuous
country retreat of the Windsors’ day.
There are, however, vestiges of the couple’s time here to
fi re the imagination. La Célibataire and La Maison des Amis
still have their original starfi sh taps and 1950s baths. The
lovely Maison des Amis still has its original wood-panelled
hall, overlooking six giant domes of box, planted by Page,
and a peace rose presented to the Duke by Henry Ford.
The Windsors’ swimming pool is due to be covered over,
but the his and hers changing cubicles are there in a little
stone tower, as is the summer dining room, decorated with
ceramic trees and birds by designer Stéphane Boudin, who
later worked for Jackie Kennedy at the White House.
In the Duchess’s bedroom, a photograph shows the
original tented ceiling and pastel-checked bedcover, a 56th
birthday present from the Duke. The French doors in what
used to be the Windsors’ drawing room open on to an iron
railing twisted into the WE motif that Edward – or “David”
as Wallis and his family and friends called him – liked to
use for the couple.
To bring these details to life, Landmark Trust historian
Caroline Stanford has put together a fabulous history and
photographic album, as well as stacking the shelves with
books such as Suzy Menkes’ The Windsor Style and Hugo
Vickers’ The Private World of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
The Duke’s memoirs (dedicated “to Wallis”) and the Duchess’s
autobiography (dedicated “to David”) are also there, so
guests can read up on all aspects of the couple’s lives,
including the naive visit they paid to Hitler in October 1937.
The couple’s times at the Moulin, though, were bright and
happy ones, not least because this was the only home they
ever owned, as the Duchess pointed out in an Illustrated
88 METROPOLITAN
News article of October 2, 1954. “Each small object reminds us
of some event in our lives, some shared experience, some old
friend or member of our families,” she wrote.
Wallis, a well-bred but impoverished girl from
Baltimore, was still married to her second husband Ernest, a
British shipping executive, when she was introduced to the
playboy prince by his then mistress, Lady Thelma Furness,
in 1930. She got to know him at her London fl at and at Fort
Belvedere, Edward’s beloved country retreat on the edge of
Windsor Great Park. It was to this 18th-century folly with its
crenellated parapets and 31 cannons that Edward escaped,
hosting pool parties and playing the bagpipes.
The Fort, now privately owned by Selfridges boss Galen
Weston, was central to the abdication crisis. It was from
here than Wallis fl ed to Cannes, and here that Edward
signed the Instrument of Abdication. The couple were
reunited for their wedding, on June 3, 1937, at the Château
de Candé near Tours, which the owner, Charles Bedaux, had
offered to Wallis as a refuge. Wallis described the day as a
“supremely happy moment”, but also as deeply sad – not
one member of Edward’s family attended.
But there were those fabulously glamorous photographs
by Cecil Beaton that set the tone for the years that followed.
After shuttling between Le Meurice and a villa at Versailles,
the couple took leases on both the Château de la Croë in Cap
d’Antibes, a porticoed palace now owned by Stavros Niarchos,
and 24 Boulevard Suchet in Paris’s 16th arrondissement.
To keep the Duke out of trouble during the war, Churchill
posted him to the Bahamas. Back on French soil, the couple
spent much of their time at La Croë, although they also had