In chilly mid-December 1936, King Edward VIII suddenly threw in the towel, tossed away his throne and empire, and abdicated.
It wrecked his Christmas plans.
As the reigning sovereign he’d been due to spend time at Sandringham, in time-honoured tradition, before heading off for Fort Belvedere, his romantic mini-castle in Windsor Great Park, cuddled up with Mrs Wallis Simpson.
But by the time Santa came to call, the ex-king was holed up in a place he’d never been – Schloss Enzesfeld, an ancient castle set deep in the Austrian countryside 25 miles from Vienna.
He ate his Christmas dinner alone.
How come the ex-king and emperor ended up in such an obscure bolthole?
The castle had been offered to him by Wallis Simpson’s American friend Kitty de Rothschild, wife of an Austrian baron. The plan was that Edward would hole up there until Wallis’ divorce was finalised four months later and they could marry.
However grand this 11th century castle was, the fussy Edward didn’t want it, didn’t like it, and he didn’t want to get stuck with a family of people he barely knew.
On top of that, it turned out he was the house-guest from hell.
Edward VIII giving his abdication speech to the nation on 11 December 1936
The ex-king stayed in the Schloss Enzesfeld an ancient castle set deep in the Austrian countryside 25 miles from Vienna
Kitty Rothschild was a glamorous, socially ambitious, thrice-married doctor’s daughter from Philadelphia. Her third husband was the colossally rich Baron Eugene de Rothschild, owning the vast hunting lodge but preferring to live in Paris. The couple rarely visited the place.
But now the baroness threw everything at getting the schloss ready – hiring in shoals of staff, polishing the furniture and dusting the chandeliers, even buying a string of white Lippizaner horses to make the stables look lived-in.
Was all the effort and expense worth it?
When he arrived at Enzesfeld, Edward showed not the slightest interest in the lavish preparations made for him, and greeted his hostess without enthusiasm. ‘He seemed to regard Enzesfeld as his own domain and consider Kitty, his hostess, as a somewhat unwelcome house guest,’ wrote her biographer Stephen Birmingham.
On arrival, the first thing the ex-king did was telephone Wallis, sitting it out in the south of France – the couple could not meet until her divorce came through. The line was always bad and they had to shout at each other, but that did not stop him from calling her up to a dozen times a way.
‘When the first colossal telephone bills came in, the Baron de Rothschild, though a very rich man, was more than a little annoyed,’ wrote Birmingham.
‘Nonetheless Kitty planned a surprise Christmas Eve gala, with musicians and entertainers and decorators dragged all the way from Paris, and redid an entire salon for the party complete with a massive Christmas tree.
‘On the night of the party, the Duke sent word that he would not attend.’
And the following day he ate his Christmas dinner on his own.
Kitty Rothschild was a glamorous, socially ambitious, thrice-married doctor’s daughter from Philadelphia
The ex-king turned out to be the house-guest from hell and was never invited again
As a man who nobody had ever said ‘No’ to before, he could not get used to the idea he was prevented by legal convention from seeing Wallis until her divorce Increasingly he picked up the telephone.
‘Wallis’s cruel streak, born of her deep-seated insecurity, was not long in bubbling to the surface,’ wrote biographer Andrew Morton. ‘She accused him of having an affair with Kitty.
‘Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only was Kitty worried about the cost of entertaining a man who had no conception of money, she was counting the days until he left.’
When he took a chauffeur-driven Rothschild limo into Vienna to go shopping, Edward had the bills sent on to the Baron. ‘But most outrageous was the fact that the Duke seemed to regard Enzesfeld as his own – and to consider Kitty as a somewhat unwelcome house guest,’ wrote Birmingham.
Back at Sandringham, life went on as normal – ‘The king is dead, long live the king’ – and Edward’s younger brother Bertie, who despite being almost 41 had sobbed on his mother’s shoulder when told he’d have to be king, manfully entered into the spirit of being top dog. It was indeed a Merry Christmas that year up in the chilly wastes of Norfolk.
But after three months ex-King Edward’s obliging hosts had had enough. ‘As far as I’m concerned, anyone can have him any time’ snarled Kitty. And the Baron, though fantastically rich, called a halt to the Duke’s extravagance by having all bills directed to him.
Edward and Wallis Simpson on their wedding day at a chateau near Paris in 1937
Startled by how much it cost to live in such a fine home – he’d never had to personally pay bills before – the penny-pinching Duke packed his bags and moved into a $10-a-day pension a couple of hundred miles away. When he finally departed, he couldn’t even be bothered to go and find his host and hostess to say thank you and goodbye. Truly, the house-guest from hell.
Needless to say when Edward and Wallis reunited and arranged to get married near Paris a few months later, the ex-king’s invitation to the Baron and Baroness de Rothschild went unanswered.
He was never invited again.
