How The Duchess Slept, Ate

It will surprise none of you to learn that I never knew the late Duchess of Windsor. But I was in her bedroom once.

Some years back I stayed at the Ritz in Paris, an elegant hostelry favored by royalty fronting on the Place Vendome.

I wangled a tour of this storied teepee, including the Ritz bar, a favorite hangout of Ernest Hemingway and other American expatriates, mostly writers. Hemingway is alleged to have "liberated" the Ritz bar when the Allies recaptured Paris in World War II. The Germans had made the Ritz their high command headquarters.

"This suite," my guide proclaimed, "is a favorite of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. They love it here."

The place was thick with antique furniture and gold-brocaded draperies. While the bed was not quite as wide as a badminton court, it seemed so at the time.

Anyway, that is how I got into the Duchess of Windsor's bedroom.

You may remember the duchess. She was the former Mrs. Wallis Simpson, a twice-divorced mistress of the King of England, Edward VIII.

I remember being herded into the assembly hall at Franklin High School in 1936. We were all instructed to listen to the king's abdication speech, the one in which he said he could not carry out his kingly duties "without the help and support of the woman I love." A lot of Franklin girls cried over that speech.

The beastly British would not permit Edward to marry a twice-divorced commoner from Baltimore. So he threw up his hands and said, in effect, "to hell with it," and got out of the king business.

He was broken to the rank of duke and that is how the former Wallis Simpson became a duchess.

Alistair Cooke once described the former Mrs. Simpson as having coiled braids, dark hair, darting blue-black eyes. Cooke added, "She also had a mid-Atlantic accent grafted on a faint Southern base."

I will get to the point of this column as soon as I add that Mrs. Simpson did England a great favor. By forcing Edward's abdication, Mrs. Simpson spared the British from living under what can only be described as a lousy monarch.

Later biographies show Edward VIII to have been selfish, lazy, vainglorious and probably quite dumb. It is well documented that the Nazis, under Hitler, fully intended to put a willing Edward back on the English throne, once they got finished with the formality of bombing London into submission.

Both Edward and Wallis wrote books, his called "A King's Story," hers called "The Heart Has Its Reasons." But this is the first time, until now, that I knew the duchess wrote a cookbook.

I have it here in my hot little hand, picked up for a bargain $1 from Bowie's used bookstore in Pioneer Square. Its title is "Some Favorite Southern Recipes of The Duchess of Windsor."

Southern, to be sure, for the lady is from Maryland. It was published in 1942. The publication date is in Roman numerals, so I could be off a few years.

It reads like a splendid cookbook, all recipes quite simple and easy to follow. There are recipes for Maryland Chowder, Charleston Crab Soup, Maryland Oyster Pie, Lord Baltimore Crab with Caper Sauce, Chicken Oyster Shortcake, Sauteed Eggplant and so on - 140 recipes in all.

Here is something I can't explain. Why did this woman, a worldwide figure, write it at all? Or who wrote it for her? Did she and the Duke need money? Surely not.

Why? If any of you out there know anything about this strange, but illuminating, list of "favorite" recipes, do write. I might even share a recipe or two with you.

Emmett Watson's column appears Thursday and Sunday in the Local News section of The Seattle Times.