The queens across the water
Nicky Haslam
DANCING WITH THE DEVIL THE WINDSORS AND JIMMY DONAHUE by Christopher Wilson HarperCollins, £16.99, pp. 270 Poor Wallis Windsor. First she's labelled ill-born, then she's a prostitute in Shanghai, then she's a twice divorced (cor blimey) scarlet woman, then she's a witch, then she's a Nazi spy, then she's a man, and now, according to this book, she commits the socially degrading sin of enjoying going to nightclubs, or on holidays, or shopping, with a rich, good-looking, amusing fairy. Well, I've got news for Mr Wilson. Lots of women enjoy doing exactly that, but they don't want to marry the guy, any more than the Duchess would have dreamt of marrying Jimmy Donahue, fed up though she must have been with her crosspatch, frequently drunk, and congeni- tally tight-fisted husband.
I knew Jimmy Donahue towards the end of his life. We met up at a bar on Fire Island. He was pretty rat-arsed, but he had great charm. So much so that somehow he inveigled me into driving him, in his vast Cadillac, back to his Long Island house. Somehow I did. Arriving at dawn, Jimmy showed me to a tiny room, said thank you, goodnight. I mumbled something about having no money . . . I was working for Vogue. Go figure, as Taki would say ... to get back to the city 'Don't worry,' said Jimmy, 'I've always bought my friends.
He certainly appears to have bought the Duchess and the Duke. Our royals are pretty partial to a freebie and the Windsors were no exception, though it seems it was his dumpy, whey-faced mother Jessie, a Woolworth heiress (with, among others, Barbara Hutton) who bankrolled her son's dalliance with the Merry Wife, longing to be Four Hundred rather than Five-and- Dime, but too plain and comme-il-faut to compete with cousin Barbara's slew of largely bogus princeling husbands. For years it paid off. Jimmy and Jessie were gone on, and gone with, the Wind- sors, her millions and his unconventional attitude giving Wallis a buzz she wasn't get- ting at home. Or was it all quite as simple? The author quotes the Windsors' publicist (to, among others, Mussolini!), one Guido Orlando, to the effect that it was the Duke who originally had an affair with Donahue. I have it on first-hand authority, from a sweet man called Eddie Page who used to make curtains for me that Prince David, as Eddie correctly and tellingly referred to the Duke, was queer. It seems the ever-canny and perspicacious Duchess was finessing a situation that would have rendered their already tinny crown terminally hollow. But marriage? The sole evidence produced by the author that it was on the cards is even hollower — merely 'All are agreed that Wallis quite seriously considered. . . it . . because a friend, probably Sylvia de Castel- lane, mentioned it to Jessie', while he makes no mention of the man with whom the Duchess was known to be smitten, Rus- sell Nype, co-star to Ethel Merman, in Call Me Madam. Miss Merman who with charming brashness called the Windsors 'Boy' and 'Girl' to their faces, wrote:
Anyone who read a newspaper couldn't have missed stories about the Duchess and Rus- sell...There is no doubt she had a mad crush on him. Gifts from her used to come backstage.. .The Duchess was not for him
but Wallis was hardly likely to leave the Duke for either Nype or Donahue.
Donahue's looks, generosity and outra- geous sense of humour certainly made him very close to Wallis, who, while many years older, had enormous energy, joie de vivre and curiosity. Their friendship, until he kicks her so hard he gets the heave-ho, seems like that of two bitchy but adoring siblings. And unconventional, louche and degenerate as Jimmy was, it is hard to see him as satanic as the title implies. Even the one diabolic scandal of his life is here given the lie. The salacious magazine, Confiden- tial, printed a story saying Jimmy had picked up a serviceman, and during some rather intimate depilatory horseplay the razor slipped, giving a whole new grisly meaning to dismemberment. However, Wilson writes that the truth was far less traumatic — merely a chunk taken out of the man's ear — though a cool million dol- lars from Jessie helped to staunch the wound, and get the case dropped. Or maybe Jimmy was taking the Duchess too literally when she asked him for cocktails. Whatever the truth and consequences behind the relationship of this decidedly unholy trinity, the book is a riveting read, crammed with horrific and hilarious char- acters (Tallulah Bankhead being brilliantly rude to Libby Holman) and vignettes (Car- dinal Spellman's fittings for his ball dress- es) in a world that revolved around the former king, 'the woman I love' and, as Noel Coward put it, that 'insane camp Jimmy Donahue.
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