Credits: www.the-cartiers.com
Emerald is a wonderful stone that has enchanted the hearts of men and women for millennia, since the time of the unforgettable Cleopatra. It still exercises its charm and we can admire it on the fingers of the most beloved celebrities, such as Rita Ora, Dakota Johnson and Megan Fox, just to name a few.
Emerald is usually considered unsuitable for an engagement ring that you want to wear all day and every day. The reason is of a practical nature because the emerald is delicate and subject to scratches, it may consequently be considered “inappropriate” from a symbolic point of view. The traditional diamond, which is more resistant, is generally preferred to represent an indestructible and eternal relationship. However, if your preference still falls on emerald, remember that the choice of the setting is essential to preserve the beauty of this stone and to enhance its intense, vivid and deep color.
To learn more about these topics, please read this article.
Today, to celebrate emeralds and the month of May, to which they are traditionally linked, I would like to tell you the story of a very special ring, which has been at the center of one of the most controversial, daring and rebellious love stories of the last century.
The ring that King Edward VIII gave to Wallis Simpson is an iconic, modern jewel, which breaks with English tradition and which, not so surprisingly, well symbolizes the split with the Crown.
Before Edward
Bessie Wallis Warfield was born illegitimate on June 19, 1896, following a clandestine affair between her parents. Although the two settled the matter shortly after, with a belated shotgun wedding, her birth was obviously considered scandalous.
Credits: americanaristocracy.com
She soon lost her father and had poor finances, so at just eighteen years old she decided to marry the young US Navy pilot Earl Win Spencer Jr. He soon showed a strong addiction to alcohol, but in 1917 the United States entered the war, so while he was sent to a training course firstly and to China afterwards, she dissolved her discontent and disappointment by flirting with some gentlemen, including the well-known Felipe Espil, secretary of the Argentine Embassy.
Wallis and her first husband, Earl W. Spencer in 1918; Credits: en,wikipedia.org
When the Naval Service headquarters proposed her to reunite with her husband in China, Wallis accepted and arrived in 1924 in Hong Kong, which was then a colony of the English Crown. It is rumored that she began to visit with her husband the most luxurious brothels in the area and that she learned numerous sexual techniques, so much so that she became a true master of them.
Credits: www.dailymail.co.uk
Wallis and her husband soon drifted apart, also because he fell in love with a young painter, so Wallis, moved alone first to Shanghai and then to Beijing. In the Chinese capital, she started love affairs with several men, including young Galeazzo Ciano. It is said that Wallis became pregnant during this liaison and that the resulting interruption of pregnancy condemned her to sterility.
Wallis and her second husband Ernest Simpson; Credits: annesebba.com
Having returned to the United States, she hurried to complete the divorce proceedings from her first husband and in 1928 she had already thrown herself into her second husband’s arms. Mr. Ernest Simpson was the director of a maritime transport company and an enthusiast of England, where he had contacts with high society names. For Wallis, who had always been focused on social climbing, this quality of her husband was a fundamental advantage. When the pair arrived in London, the inauguration of the social season was about to begin and Wallis immediately became friends with Thelma Morgan, i.e. Lady Furness, wife of the very rich Viscount Marmaduke Furness, therefore an aristocrat and above all a friend (very “intimate”, according to what is said) of the Prince of Wales.
The meeting
At that time, the prince was one of the most elegant men of his time, shy and fragile, took great care of his physical form, ate little, he was able to embroider, frequented some lovers, preferably married ones so that the most absolute discretion could be guaranteed. In his inner circle, there were rumors about his alleged and latent homosexuality, his lack of virility and a certain predilection for masochism, however no scandal had hit him so far.
When Lady Furness organized a hunting weekend at her country house in Burrough Court, a couple of guests fell ill and were forced to cancel and so the choice of the landlady fell on the Simpsons. By pure chance, the future king and the American socialite met for the first time.
In her autobiography “The Heart Has Its Reasons,” Wallis recalls: “I was petrified, but I decided the Prince was truly one of the most attractive personalities I ever met.”
The Simpsons invited the prince to dinner in London and then he, in turn, reciprocated the invitation to his country house Fort Belvedere. In short, they started dating and it soon became clear that he was completely enchanted by Wallis.
She was aware that she was not beautiful, however she managed to make up for this shortcoming by taking great care of her appearance, her sophisticated elegance, her witty and pleasant conversation, her iron character.
Having understood the situation, Mr. Simpson disappeared from the scene with great finesse. Wallis was always at the prince’s side.
English magazines had not cared about her until an American newspaper published an article entitled “A Yankee at Edward’s Court”. Only then do the English newspapers began to pay attention to her and the subjects discovered that their future king had fallen in love with an American commoner, twice married, with a turbulent past as adventuress.
Credits: agnautacouture.com
Edward always maintained that he and Wallis did not begin any romantic relationship as long as she remained married to Ernest Simpson and, in fact, he denied their relationship to his father, King George V. The latter, who considered his eldest son weak and unfit to reign, died in January 1936 passing the throne to his son, who succeeded him to the throne with the name Edward VIII.
On the day of the proclamation, a photographer managed to immortalize the images of Wallis and Edoardo behind the windows of S. James Palace.
The proposal
When their love affair became public knowledge, Edward began a difficult negotiation with the Conservative Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin. Edward aspired to marry Wallis (who in the meantime had started the proceedings of her second divorce) and did not even wanted to hear about morganatic marriage.
However, the objections to this union were innumerable: political, moral and even religious because Edward was the head of the Anglican Church, for which Wallis was still married before God to her first husband. Faced with this position, Edward would appear to be lover and concubine, a role obviously unacceptable to public opinion.
The Prime Minister urged the king to renounce this marriage, although not using too much energy because Edward was viewed with distrust and perplexity by members of the English government, also due to an unconcealed sympathy for Nazism.
The fact is that on 27 October 1936, the divorce hearing between Wallis and Ernest Simpson finally took place and Edward popped the question.
Credits: alfemminile.com
Credits: thebeaumonde.org
Dicember 1936: Edward abdicates the throne
The following month, Edward informed his family and the Prime Minister of his adamant desire to marry Wallis and said he was ready to abdicate, since he felt he could not serve his country properly without Wallis by his side.
On December 10, Edward signed the act of abdication and then delivered a speech to his subjects over the BBC microphones in which he declared:
“‘I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.”
Credits: it.wikipedia.org
Credits: www.dailymail.co.uk
The throne passed to his younger brother Albert (father of the future Queen Elizabeth II), who took the name King George VI and granted Edward and Wallis the title of Dukes of Windsor (but she was not granted the title of Her Royal Highness).
The wedding
As soon as the divorce between Wallis and Ernest Simpson became official in May 1937, Wallis called the Duke of Windsor, who immediately joined her at the Château de Candé in France. It was here that the couple had been practically exiled and it was here that they tied the knot on 3 June 1937.
Credits: agnautacouture.com
Credits: www.hellomagazine.com
Credits: alfemminile.com
Credits: thebeaumonde.org
The wedding day was happy, although no member of the royal family took part and despite the great pain caused by the sudden death of one of their beloved pugs (the poor little animal had been bitten by a snake).
Wallis wore a beautiful dress by Mainbocher fashion house in pale blue, which was soon renamed “Wallis blue” and matching gloves, especially made for her so that she could accomodate her impressive engagement ring.
Credits: agnautacouture.com
On her wrist, she displayed a precious bracelet with cross pendants.
Symbolically, the Duke had a wedding band prepared for her identical to the Welsh yellow gold wedding bands worn by the queens of England.
Relocations
After the invasion of France by the Germans, the couple moved to the south of France, then to Spain and finally to the Bahamas, where Edward held the position of Governor until the end of the war.
Credits: agnautacouture.com
Credits: agnautacouture.com
At the end of the conflict, they returned to France and moved to the Bois de Boulogne. Here they lived in a luxurious residence, where they received guests and led a very worldly life, far from the rigor and sobriety that the English royal family had decided to undergo after the war.
Following the diagnosis of throat cancer, Edward died on 28th May 1972. He was buried near Windsor and Wallis attended his funeral.
She survived him by many years and passed away in their elegant residence in Bois de Boulogne in 1986. She was buried next to her husband.
The auction
In almost forty years of love, Edward covered Wallis with beautiful and precious jewels. After the Duchess’s death, at her behest the collection was auctioned at Sotheby’s in Geneva in 1987. Among the buyers, we remember Elizabeth Taylor, who managed to get the famous flamingo-shaped brooch.
The money raised from the auction was then donated to the Pasteur Institute in Paris for AIDS research, as expressly requested by the Duchess.
Their small palace in Bois de Boulogne also ended up at auction. In fact, due to the bizarre coincidences of life, a few decades later Mohammed Al Fayed, Dodi’s father, set his sights on the house and bought it. He restored it with the intention of turning it into a museum, but after the tragic accident involving his son Dodi and Princess Diana, he decided to get rid of it and put it up for auction.
The engagement ring
And now let’s finally talk about the bling ring!
Edward popped the question to Wallis with a ring that most certainly meant liberation for him, from every point of view: liberation from her second husband, liberation from the leadership of a nation that looked at her with suspicion and considered her an immoral social climber, liberation from the royal family, which despises Wallis and believed she only wanted to marry the Kingdom golden bachelor and, finally, liberation from the terrible burden of having to choose between duty and love.
To better underline this “rupture”, Edward did not turn to an English jeweler, but to the king of French jewelers: Jacques Cartier, who ran the English branch of the famous maison.
Credits: thebeaumonde.org
Credits: thebeaumonde.org
Furthermore, Edward did not choose a diamond, to symbolize his eternal and tenacious love, but an emerald, which is a softer gem that requires delicacy, prudence and attention and that no lady of the time would have dreamed of wearing as an engagement ring. A unique ring, different from all the others, rebellious, almost insolent: in short, it was just perfect for Wallis.
Credits: hellomagazine.com
This surprising and revolutionary choice as much as their relationship has fully entered the list of the most iconic rings of all time.
The ring featured a magnificent, exaggerated rectangular emerald 19.77 carats, flanked by baguette-cut diamonds, mounted on a platinum band. Inside, Edward had his very famous message engraved: “We are ours now 27 X 36”, reading the date of their engagement and the day of Wallis’ divorce proceedings from Ernest Simpson began.
Credits: thebeaumonde.org
In her book “The Cartiers. The untold story of the family behind the jewelry empire”, Francesca Cartier Brickell declares that Jacques Cartier had sent one of his trusted salesmen to Baghdad to buy some gems. When the collaborator returned home with the precious bag, Cartier expected there to be many small gemstones inside. Instead, he found one magnificent emerald the size of a bird’s egg, which had belonged to the Mughal dynasty. It was very difficult to find a buyer for a gem of this size at that time, so Cartier was forced to cut the precious rock into two parts: one half was purchased by an American millionaire, while the other half was chosen by Edward VIII to become centerpiece of the engagement ring for Wallis.
Credits: thebeaumonde.org
Cartier documents show that the jewel was paid for and collected on 30 October 1936. Since Edward was an important client for the firm, Cartier invoiced him the special price of £10,000 (around £500,000 today).
Credits: thebeaumonde.org
Credits: thebeaumonde.org
The Duchess of Windsor has proudly showed off her ring on several occasions and photoshoots, maintaining the original design for twenty years.
To celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary in 1957, Wallis commissioned Cartier with the restyling of the ring, which was to reflect a more opulent and lavish style, typical of that period. The new jewel was created on a yellow gold and platinum band, with floral motifs and round brilliant-cut diamonds mounted around the emerald.
Credits: www.cartier.com
Credits: @Cartier_www.dailymail.co.uk
Credits: highjewellerydream.com
Credits: thebeaumonde.org
Despite having up-to-dated her jewel, Wallis chose to keep the original platinum setting.
The new ring and the original setting; Credits: thebeaumonde.org
The original setting; Credits: thebeaumonde.org
Upon Wallis’s death, this stunning engagement ring, along with the original platinum setting, was auctioned off at Sotheby’s along with the rest of her jewelry collection. The ring was purchased for £1.98 million by the famous jeweler Laurence Graff, who gave it to his lucky wife.
Credits: agnautacouture.com
Did you like this story? And what do you think about this “rebellious” jewel? Write me your opinions!
Thanks for reading this article, see you next time!
Fonti:
www.the-cartiers.com
www.theadventurine.com
www.marieclaire.it
www.dailymail.co.uk
www.vanityfair.it
www.hellomagazine.com
www.brides.com
thebeaumonde.org
shop.kenanddanadesign.com
www.theknot.com
“LE SCANDALOSE: Wallis Simpson, la donna che sfidò un impero (ALLE OTTO DELLA SERA), Rai 2, a cura di Patrizia Carrano
Francesca Cartier Brickell, “The Cartiers. The untold story of the family behind the jewelry empire”, Ballantines Books, New York, 2019
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