LOS ANGELES — When in doubt, look for the maid. If you want the dirt on what goes on behind the doors of the rich and the famous, she is always the best source.
In this case, it was the maid who came up with evidence that "fundamentally damages the greatest love story of the 20th century below the waterline," according to British author and journalist Christopher Wilson.
The tale of King Edward VIII, who gave up Britain's throne in 1936 to marry the (divorced American) woman he loved, has fascinated romantics and vexed royalists for decades.
Virtually banished by the royal family, Edward — demoted to the Duke of Windsor — and his wife, Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, embarked on a seemingly glamorous life of foreign travel, parties and "grace and favor" appointments in far-flung corners of the British empire.
But Wilson smashes the romantic myth in "Dancing With the Devil" (St. Martins), saying the duchess enjoyed a four-year affair with wealthy American playboy Jimmy Donahue, who was not only 20 years her junior but also a flamboyant homosexual.
To add insult to injury, Wilson claims, the duke not only knew of the affair but did nothing about it and allowed Donahue and his rich socialite Woolworth-heiress mother, Jessie, to bankroll the Windsor's lavish expatriate lifestyle.
"I think it does actually rewrite history," Wilson said. "The belief up until this point was that the king gave up his throne for the woman he loved and she gave up everything to be faithful to the man who had given up everything for her," he told Reuters in an interview.
"Yet it is clear that, 14 years after the abdication, she drew Jimmy Donahue into her bed, and there he stayed for the next four years and three months."
Donahue, an indolent hedonist who died in 1966, was a constant companion of the Windsors in the 1950s, appearing with them at parties and luncheons both private and public. His homosexuality, at a time when homosexuality was illegal, provided the perfect camouflage for a scandalous affair in an age of polite society.
With all three protagonists long dead, Wilson spoke to dozens of friends of the Windsors and the Donahues about the bizarre triangle of sexual attraction, wealth and social climbing. But it took a lowly, unnamed maid to transform the outrageous flirtation recalled by numerous countesses, princesses and ladies of the realm into adultery.
"The evidence is there that sexual exchange took place between the duchess and Jimmy and the evidence is always from the best source — which is the maid. If the maid was there immediately afterward, she is able to tell better than anyone else what went on behind closed doors," Wilson said.
"The maid told Barbara Hutton's secretary, and the secretary told me," he said. Woolworth heiress Hutton and Jimmy Donahue were cousins and close friends, and she often provided the discreet hotels and bedrooms where the couple allegedly romped.
Wilson said the affair began onboard the Queen Mary in 1950 when Donahue was 35 and the duchess was a "sexually frustrated" 53-year-old. Sparing the reader too many details of their sex life, Wilson floats a rumor that the duchess, who died in 1986, may have had the genetic characteristics of a male and that Donahue found "the trigger to her ambiguous sexuality."
While the book casts the duchess in a poor light, it hardly bolsters the image of the duke, who died in 1972 but is still maligned by the occupants of Buckingham Palace for sparking one of the biggest crises in the 1,000-year-old monarchy.
Wilson, who has also written about the late Princess Diana and penned one of the first inside books about Prince Charles' lover, Camilla Parker Bowles, said the affair "fundamentally alters one's perspective of the duke as a man."
"Up until this point he has been seen as a sort of brave soldier who hobbled along, and suddenly you see him as being someone who was cuckolded, aware of it, and happy to accept gifts in return for it," he said.
After a decade of scandals, affairs and divorces that soured the image of the British monarchy in the 1990s, Wilson's allegations about the duchess and Donahue are unlikely to keep Buckingham Palace awake at nights.
"The whole purpose of the royal family is to put distance between themselves and Edward VIII," Wilson said.
"The present management are only too keen to make this present generation of the monarchy look absolutely fantastic, and if that means trashing the Windsors, they don't mind. So of course they are thrilled to bits."