The Duchess of Windsor And Me - The Adventures of Wallis Warfield Simpson and the Warfield Family

INSCRIPTION FROM WALLIS’ OLDFIELDS YEARBOOK

Dedicated to Win, Allegra, and Wallis

CONTENTS

Introduction

1. Painting a Family Portrait

2. Meet the Parentals

3. The Startup of Me

4. My Cousin Wallis: the Duchess of Windsor

5. Dead Warfields

6. The Twain Shall Meet

7. The Duchess and Hitler

8. The Duchess and Steamboats

9. Exodus

10. Scionism to Internet Mania

11. Zen and the Art of Speed Skiing

12. The Feminine Mystique: the Duchess and Judy Steir

13. W.E.: the Duchess and Madonna

14. The Duchess and Grave Issues

15. Every Chapter Is Extra

The After Book

The Book of Life

Warfield Genealogy

People Index

Select Bibliography

Photo Credits

“I am not beautiful, so I have to dress better than everyone else.”

–The Duchess of Windsor

Introduction

The Duchess and Me began in the spring of 2003 as a non-genuflecting chronicle of various notable members of my family, beginning with Richard Warfield’s departure from London for the New World in 1659, and continuing with Warfields who played significant roles in the Revolutionary War, Civil War, and World War II, and Warfields who thrived as successful businessmen, prominent statesmen, and world-champion athletes. Then I set aside the book, allowing it to simmer, untouched, for 15 years. But the characters involved and their adventures never left me, and in the winter of 2018, with a more seasoned perspective, I felt it was time to finish the project.

As I perused my original manuscript, I realized that my cousin Wallis Warfield Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, whose romance with (and subsequent marriage to) King Edward VIII of England would prompt his abdication in 1936 — sometimes hyperbolically referred to as “the greatest love story of the 20th century” — had been accorded only a cameo. That struck me as skimpy treatment, particularly in light of the fact that, in 2016, two years before I resumed work on the book project, Britain’s Prince Harry had married American actress — and divorcee — Meghan Markle, echoing Wallis and Edward.

It became apparent to me that Wallis’ life — from Baltimore debutante to jet-setting duchess to Parisian dowager — represented an important Warfield adventure, one that cried out for considerably more attention. After all, renowned author, journalist, and wit H. L. Mencken — another Baltimorean — waggishly wrote that the abdication of King Edward VIII to marry Wallis was “the greatest news story since the Resurrection.” And so Warfield family adventures of war and peace morphed into adventures of war and peace

and love with the addition of previously unexplored aspects of the Duchess of Windsor’s life as seen through a Warfieldian lens.

The Meghan/Harry echo of Wallis and Edward grew even louder in early 2020 when Harry and Meghan surprisingly announced that they would “step back” from their responsibilities as “senior royals,” in effect banishing themselves to independent new lives in the United States, just as Wallis and Edward had lived for decades as exiles, divorced from the monarchy, in France after the abdication. And after Meghan and Harry sat down for a revealing interview with Oprah Winfrey in spring 2021 — openly discussing the antipathy Meghan experienced both within and without the royal family while living in England — the echo was amplified to deafening proportions by a blizzard of print, online, and on-screen stories connecting Meghan and Wallis, who was scorned by the monarchy, the British people, and the press in the wake of Edward’s abdication.

But, in truth, even prior to the Harry/Meghan brouhaha, Wallis existed as something of an evergreen in the public consciousness. In recent years, her saga — and the attendant story of the abdication — has been disinterred, reassessed, poked, prodded, and parsed in at least a dozen books (Wallis in Love, The Real Wallis Simpson, etc.), in film (Madonna’s 2011 feature W.E., 2010’s The King’s Speech), on television (The Crown), and on the stage (Only a Kingdom, written, not incidentally, by the mother of my best friend from high school).

Finally, although I initially planned not to include myself in this book, the more I reflected on my professional career in publishing — and the more I researched my family’s exploits, particularly those of Wallis — the more I realized that my life might also amount to something of a Warfield adventure, one that I hope is worthy of inclusion. Serendipitously, the process of assembling and writing The Duchess of Windsor and Me, as well as going through a series of serious health challenges, has taken me on a journey of self-discovery, while simultaneously connecting me to my heritage.

A Warfield family portrait at Oakdale

1Painting a Family Portrait

“ Vitality shows not only in the ability to persist, but in the ability to start over.”

–F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

In March of 2003, I was suffering from what appeared to be post-traumatic stress disorder. The digital media company I had created had been restructured with significant losses to me and my investors, while a costly divorce and a scorched-earth family battle only added to my stress.

“Situational depression” my doctor mumbled, raising his eyebrows at my 20-pound weight loss, but not wanting to hear the details of my sleepless nights, which were really sleepless decades. His diagnosis inadequately described my genetic inheritance; it would take 15 years to understand that my insomnia was the result of an “unquiet mind.”

Around that time, I met my second wife, Lynn (now my ex-wife), who described me to her friends as a “train wreck.” I had been hypermanically creating large, messy collages in my apartment; this “art” consisted of images, words, and photographs chosen for their painful significance of loss.

While knowledgeable about fine art, Lynn nonetheless encouraged these crude and amateurish projects because she recognized my need for therapy, having recently gone through her own divorce.

One Sunday morning, as she reclined on her sofa quietly listening to my manic monologues, she said tactfully, “Edwin, perhaps your artistic skills are more verbal than tactile. I think you should write a book.”

“Out of your wreckage…came a book.”

–CAROLYN BLACKWOOD

Poet Robert Lowell’s wife commenting on his 1977 collection, Day by Day

Eventually, I pulled out of my torpor and decided to escape Florida, where I was then living, and return to my hometown, Baltimore. Florida is a favorable onshore tax haven and a suitable AARP rest stop before entering the Pearly Gates; however, it is not an ideal locale for midlife angst, reconciliation of one’s past, or any task requiring cerebral acumen. Soul and history are not in Florida’s DNA, but they are Maryland’s heart.

A new start in a familiar place would amount to a personal reclamation project. The Warfield family history heralds a broad swath of politicians, authors, war heroes, governors, one seductress of a king, and a speed skier turned Mt. Everest hang glider. I was eager for rebirth and a Warfield adventure.

Adventures of Warfield, circa late-19th century

Having reached the half-century mark, I was ready to explore the past — the taxonomy of my heritage. In this exploration, I hoped to absorb from my more illustrious relatives their ability to accept life’s ambiguities and to persevere. I craved what I knew was their preference for adventure over legacy — thus the title of this book.

The [Baltimore] Sun Also Rises

November 20, 2003, was a typically overcast Baltimore day, best captured decades earlier in the smog-induced chiaroscuro photographs of The Baltimore Sun pictorialist A. Aubrey Bodine. I arose with a sense that this might be the start of a new adventure for me — looking for mezzanine funding for the acquisition of a 10-year-old, New York-based financial newsletter.

That morning, I was to pick up banker David Lamb, who was flying in from Hartford, Connecticut. Affiliated with Veronis, Suhler & Associates, David had been my investment banker back in 1990 when he assisted me in the buyout of The Daily Record, the legal newspaper that my great-grandfather established in 1888.

One century later, The Daily Record had amassed a hodge-podge of some 80 shareholders: Baltimore Typographical Union members, East Baltimore union pressmen, curmudgeonly lawyers, a law book dealer, a few relatives, my father’s two-percent interest, a Florida legal newspaper publisher, and hard-to-locate trusts and trustees. There were even a few dead shareholders. While I inherited the right to work at the paper, I had to buy out every share.

It had been almost 14 years since David and I had worked together. An oldschool gentleman banker despite being only in his early 40s, he was honest, discreet, strategic, and reflective. He arrived in bespoke English shoes and a suitable-for-capital-raising pinstripe suit. As he approached my car, he blurted, “Edwin! Have you seen it?”

“What?”

“The article in The Baltimore Sun.”

“What article?” In my haste to pick up David, I had not read the city’s daily newspaper.

“While I was getting a shoe shine, I read this article in The Baltimore Sun on the Warfields,” David exclaimed.

He raced back to the terminal and picked up a copy that included a feature story headlined “Painting a Family Portrait,” which detailed an exhibit that was about to open at the Howard County Historical Society about my family’s rich heritage.

My initial response: What perfect timing! Positive press and a road show in my hometown on the same day. My toned-down second response: the absurdity of it all. Who would really care? Okay, there is the Duchess of Windsor, but most Warfields do not claim her; some even view her as either trailer trash, reprehensible gay icon, or monarchy disrupter.

As I drove, David read aloud: “Richard Warfield was alone when he came to Maryland in the 1600s as an indentured servant, but today his descendants are spread across the state and the world. When Jean Keenan, a Warfield descendant and [Howard County] Historical Society volunteer suggested the display, the society’s executive, Michael Walczak, said he wasn’t sure it would appeal to anyone outside the family.

“Its branches include Maryland Governors Charles Carnan Ridgely and Edwin Warfield; The Great Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald; and Paul Warfield Tibbets, who flew the Enola Gay to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Wallis Warfield Simpson, for whom King Edward VIII abdicated the throne of England, is also a relative, among others who were accomplished writers, soldiers, and doctors.”

My brain started to hyperlink…F. Scott Fitzgerald…Hiroshima…mon amour...the Duchess…abdication….

Well, I thought, this is a rather inclusive, if not revisionist, view of the family. I knew the Warfields were virile, but the extent of it was news to me.

David went on: “One of the first Warfields to become well known was Dr. Charles Alexander Warfield, who led a group from what is now Howard County — part of Anne Arundel County at the time — to Annapolis in 1774 to protest the arrival of a ship full of tea. Colonists had put an embargo on tea in protest of British taxes, and angry rebels demanded that the ship’s owner, Anthony Stewart, burn the ship or be hanged. Stewart chose to save his life.”

I was now flashing back to my father and his oft-heard dictum “Lead, follow, or get out of the way.”

TOP TO BOTTOM:

Dr. Charles Alexander Warfield, Governor Edwin Warfield, Paul Warfield Tibbets, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Our meetings with commercial banks and mezzanine capital sources went well that day, but it was hard to focus on fundraising knowing that my relatives were on display. And there was a new one, at least new to me: F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The Warfield/Fitzgerald familial connection traces back to 17th-century Maryland, making F. Scott and the Duchess of Windsor fifth cousins, once removed, as well as seventh cousins. Oh, and something of a non-literal tie exists through Scott’s wife, Zelda. One of the popular alma maters of a handful of Warfields is a place Zelda also frequented: Sheppard Pratt Hospital, described colorlessly on its website as “providers of mental health and addiction services.” (It would take 15 years before I realized I had another important genetic connection to Scott.)

David returned that evening to his home in Massachusetts, and I returned to mine for an evening of online research. Thanks to Google, scripophily.com, ancestry.com, and eBay, I discovered various Warfield relatives. The jigsaw pieces of my family’s history were reassembling into a cascade of revelations and insights.

One of my first searches brought up a listing on scripophily.com — a website for historical documents and worthless stock certificates not traded by or on nasdaq, easdaq, LaBranche & Co., nyse, otc, Instinet, the pink sheets, or any other exchanges.

Given that the Warfields are Democrats and middle class — more adventurers than entrepreneurs — my search expectations were modest. Our wealth had peaked before 1860, with a slight uptick in 1889, and then a century of decline.

Up for sale on scripophily.com was a dwarf stock certificate from the Slide Mining Company of Ouray, Colorado; it was dated 1893 and signed by Edwin Warfield, president of the Fidelity and Deposit Company. Founded by my great-grandfather Edwin Warfield (later Governor of Maryland, 1904 to 1908), Fidelity and Deposit Company was one of only a handful of companies involved in the bonding business back then.

From the certificate’s inscription: “Ouray was founded in 1876. The first non-Indians in the valley were looking for gold and silver. Ouray is nestled in the San Juan Mountains, the Shining Mountains of the Ute Indians — their sacred hunting grounds.”

The first Edwin Warfield, it seems, had backed gold and silver speculators — derivative adventures in America. Now, I, too, was mining in America, this time for family history.

Pictures at an Exhibition

The Warfield exhibit at the Howard County Historical Society opened on November 22. I was expecting a folksy atmosphere, at least from a curatorial perspective, and I was not disappointed. I looked around the room. There were many strains of Warfields, few of whom I knew. The exhibit had brought us all together: teachers, lawyers, farmers, real estate agents, political consultants, a biotech entrepreneur from San Diego, and one Republican Warfield — perhaps the first in 300 years (somebody needed to check his DNA). There definitely was no royalty, just modest, hard-working, made-in-America Warfields.

The day before, I had dropped off a few of my personal heirlooms for the exhibit: a prize cup presented to Governor Edwin Warfield by the City of Baltimore declaring him “the most handsome Governor”; manuscript letters by my grandfather from his trip around the world in 1912-1913; a print of the Governor founding the Fidelity and Deposit Company; and a Gorham silver cup dedicated to the Governor, which I purchased at a local auction. (My father, incidentally, had minimal interest in family artifacts and had sold or given most of them away over the years, a kind of personal purging.)

Before I acquiesced to lending my Warfield items, I negotiated the inclusion of a photograph of my son, Win, resplendent and warrior-like in his high school hockey uniform. I ceremoniously placed it on a table at the end of the exhibit with a small sign that read “Edwin Warfield, West Palm Beach, Florida.”

Randomly yet purposefully, I began perusing the exhibit. In the first display case was a piece of charred wood from the Peggy Stewart, the ship that was burned because of its cargo of tea.

Next, there was a chair believed to have been made by an 18-year-old Edwin Warfield when he worked as a schoolteacher; there was also a photograph of the Governor with prominent late-19th/early-20th century Democratic politician and orator William Jennings Bryan.

I read a framed story about the Governor’s two older brothers, Albert Jr. and Gassaway, both of whom served in the Civil War (the former was imprisoned

Taking stock: late-19th century certificate from a firm owned by Solomon Davies Warfield, Wallis’ “Uncle Sol”

twice, the latter died a prisoner of war). There were pictures of Warfield Church, founded in the town of Warfield, Berkshire, England, and a poster of Paul Warfield Tibbets, and the Enola Gay. I was especially intrigued by the story of the President Warfield, the ship that carried displaced Jews (homeless after WWII) to Israel in 1947.

There were many more photographs, knick-knacks, swords, and uniforms. My curiosity about my past was overwhelming. It was time to drive back to Baltimore. Before leaving, I glimpsed inside a case that included samples of work by various Warfield writers: Professor Joshua Warfield, F. Scott, Warfield Lewis, Clare Hill, and Dr. George Scheele. Warfields as authors. That was news.

The Duchess and Duke of Windsor in Maryland

I left knowing that the exhibit had failed to include some important dead Warfields who had inspired me. Where was my cousin Steve McKinney, four-time holder of the World Speed Skiing record? And where was Steve’s sister Tamara, the nine-time U.S. Ski Champion who won four World Cups?

I also came away suspecting that there were many more Warfields waiting to be disinterred and remembered. So I returned to my online search and found one new to me, Solomon Davies Warfield, when I purchased from scripophily.com what the site described as a “beautifully engraved certificate from the S.D. Warfield Company issued in 1892” — a stock certificate, it turns out, for an 1880s “planned community” in Indiantown, Florida. A muscular arm holding a sledgehammer is etched into the certificate’s center.

According to the Harvard Business School list of Great American Leaders of the 20th century, Solomon Davies Warfield was a world-class businessman who, as president of Seaboard Air Line Railroad, expanded the route from Virginia and North Carolina south into Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and north into Washington, D.C., and New York. Not insignificantly, he was also the uncle and occasional benefactor of Wallis Warfield before she became the Duchess of Windsor.

“ You hit that extreme speed and boom! Suddenly, there is no sound, no vision, no vibration. At that crescendo there is no thought at all.”

–STEVE

MCKINNEY, champion speed skier, philosopher, classic Warfield adventurer

It seemed to me that his Warfield Adventure — like Charles Alexander Warfield’s, like Governor Edwin Warfield’s — needed to be told, or retold. At age 50, our ambitions start to collide with our legacies: What of any value will we leave behind? It was becoming increasingly apparent that I was going to write a book. The agony of waking up every morning without my son, who had left for boarding school, triggered an aching longing. And I missed my parents,

The King of Speed: Steve McKinney

both deceased, wondering for the first time how they might have advised and comforted me. I thought of how my father survived for four days on a tiny life raft in the Pacific after being shot down in his fighter plane during World War II, and yet how his divorce from my mother was even lonelier. And I thought of my first cousin, Steve McKinney, who broke the world speed skiing record in 1974 at 120 mph and then died at age 37 in a car accident.

Emotions were brewing in the lost and found of my brain. Dead Warfields now hung over this barely alive one. My history hit me over the head. In response, I began assembling all of the family photographs I could get my hands on. I rifled through files and called relatives and various newspapers until I had accumulated an impressive collection of Dead Warfield images. Their stories would follow, stories of adventure, war, and love — in effect, my legacies, ones that would form the foundation of a book that also would serve as an adult timeout, a kind of life restructuring, an opportunity to finally connect with my family.

The Right Stuff: Edwin Warfield III with a F-86E Sabre

Meet the Parentals

2

“They called me Wally...which annoyed me mightily.”

–TED WARFIELD

All of my life, people have approached me to share stories of how my father influenced or enriched their lives. I will depend on such history, written and spoken, to tell his story.

Edwin “Ted” Warfield III was many things to many people: a husband; a father; an award-winning fighter pilot during World War II; a delegate in the Maryland General Assembly, the state’s legislative body; a newspaper publisher; and Adjutant General of the Maryland National Guard. In each of these roles, he left an indelible mark. And, oh, he also was a sixth cousin to Wallis Warfield Simpson, 17 years his senior.

Born on June 3, 1924, Ted grew up on the family’s 265-acre estate known as Oakdale, located 20 miles west of Baltimore in the Central Maryland hamlet of Daisy, Howard County. Oakdale exudes history, lots of history. Based on a land grant issued in 1766, its original house was built two years later by Benjamin Warfield. In 1838, his great-grandson, Albert G. Warfield, constructed a more elaborate manor house on the estate, which he named Oakdale; slave quarters made from logs already existed on the property.

The formidable first Edwin Warfield, a governor of Maryland (1904 to 1908), friend of Mark Twain, and third cousin to the Duchess of Windsor, took up residence at Oakdale in 1891, expanding the manor house to more than 20 rooms. The estate also boasted a tenant house, carriage house, stable, smokehouse, springhouse, gardener’s cottage, wagon shed, and glass octagonshaped greenhouse. His son, Edwin Warfield, Jr., an attorney and newspaper publisher, and Edwin Jr.’s wife, Katharine Lawrence Lee Warfield, moved in upon the death of Edwin Sr. in 1920, and there they raised five children: chronologically, Ted, Frances, Kitty, Louise, and Bobby.

Ted attended the Gilman School (as I would) in Baltimore, and then the Kent School in Connecticut, from which he graduated in 1942, at which point he began studies at Cornell University.

“If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships — the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace.”

–FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

He left Cornell in 1943, in the midst of World War II, to enlist in the Army Air Corps, and trained to fly P-51D Mustangs, the military’s workhorse fighter for much of the war, at Pinellas Field near Tampa. After 125 hours of combat training, he was assigned to the 505 Fighter Group in the Pacific theater, where Mustangs played an important role escorting B-29 bombers in the air war against the Japanese.

Ted was stationed on the island of Iwo Jima in the summer of 1945. The main purpose for securing Iwo Jima was to provide a rescue station for crippled B-29 bombers returning from Japan, as well as to serve as an advance fighter escort base for Mustangs. The invasion of Iwo Jima took place in February 1945, lasted four weeks, and incurred thousands of American casualties.

On July 16, 1945, the atomic bomb was successfully tested in the New Mexico desert. That same month, Ted was flying on a bombing raid over Tokyo when his Mustang was hit by ground fire. His plane leaking gas badly, he knew

Dad — a General in Full.

The U.S. Army Air Forces firebombed Tokyo by night in March 1945. The raids left an estimated 100,000 dead and more than one million homeless.

he would not make it back to base. Miraculously, he was able to stay in the air for another 50 minutes, then parachuted into the Pacific before his Mustang hit the water.

During my lifetime, I must have heard my father tell his adrift-in-the-ocean survival tale what felt like twice a day. Regrettably, it was only during the last four or five recountings that I really listened. Fortunately, he told his story for posterity, including the following account, which appeared in The Baltimore Sun on March 23, 1980. Still, I wish he were still around to tell it to me in person one more time.

The sky was a perfect blue, and the Pacific was as smooth as a millpond. Between daydreams, I reviewed the briefing instructions and tried to keep as comfortable as the little cockpit would let me. The P-51 was a little sweetheart of a plane. It was fast, slim, and trim, but it was designed by an engineer who must have hated pilots my size. Also, the large air scoop to the belly caused the plane to plunge vertically and sink right away if you had to ditch over water.

We were over Japan. From our top cover we watched the Blue and Green [camouflage colors for planes] ruin the day for a lot of Japanese. Over an airfield, I blasted a row of parked planes.

As I pulled up in a tight turn, I heard a loud thump in the nose section. Oil immediately covered the windscreen. I had been hit. About 10 miles from the coast, I remembered the Japanese were not friendly to downed pilots, and you were lucky if you lived to become a POW. I headed for the coast. I planned to bail out near our rescue sub in Tokyo Bay. My radio was out, and hot oil was streaming over my face and goggles.

I sure didn’t want to bail out over Japan, so I headed my limping engine towards Iwo. I was beginning to think I might make it all the way when the engine quit. I bailed, and when the water closed over me, it seemed I would never get back up to the surface with my 160 lbs., G.I. boots, deflated raft, survival vest, and pistol. When I finally surfaced, I inflated the tiny dingy, climbed in, and wretched oil and seawater for an hour.

Day 1 – July 28, 1945

Looking over the meager aspects of my domain, I found a sea anchor, which was a plastic funnel hooked to a cord. A cup to bail with. I tied it to the raft so that I would not lose it. A tiny blacksmith bellows device to keep the raft pumped up. I used it every two hours for the next four days. A book in my survival vest (How to

Live in the Jungle). I threw it overboard. My G.I. boots rubbed the skin of the raft. I threw them overboard. I saved my ‘chute to cover myself with. I found sunburn salve and used it. Four bars of concentrated candy — four tins of water. I resolved to ration myself and decided that I could make it for 10 days with a little fortitude and a lot of luck.

I never lost hope that I would be rescued, even though no one had seen me bail. I lit flares and dyed the water when some B-29s flew over, but on they went.

Day 2 – July 29, 1945

A sunny dawn broke. I bailed. I rested and slept. Some small bits of the candy bar two or three times a day, violent hunger cramps all day. Then my appetite seemed to fade and cause no problem. The raft was tiny, maybe four feet around. The sun was hot, and my face and shins got sunburned. One more night. The sea got rough and choppy. The raft rose and fell like a cork as the Pacific churned into a storm. The sea anchor held the raft true. I heard a plane engine in the distance — the 29th ended.

Four days in the Pacific - July 28 - 31, 1945

Day 3 – July 30, 1945

The third day dawned. The storm abated; the ocean calmed. No sign of rescue. A shark passed the raft, flipped under it sideways, and tapped it with his tail. I was transfixed, did nothing, and he left. An ugly fish with bulging eyes flipped by, and I grabbed it with my bare hands. I looked at it and could not bring myself to eat it. Threw it away. No sign of rescue — no hope of rescue. The third day passed — no aircraft sighted.

Day 4 – July 31, 1945

The fourth day dawned. I was wet, tired, less confident. Toward mid-afternoon, a hum, a buzz, a roar. A Navy B-24 patrol plane approached on the Western horizon. I had no flares remaining, just a small signal mirror. I focused it on the setting sun and pointed it toward the plane. It banked, turned, and flew directly over me. A crewman waved out the back hatch — I cheered, I saluted, I waved. They dropped me an 11-man raft. It seemed as big as a dance floor. I paddled to it, pulled the cord to inflate it and got in it. I knew I was saved. I felt that if I could spend four days in a one-man raft, I could spend 30 days in this larger raft.

I tied my smaller raft alongside in case the bigger one sank. My Navy friends circled for an hour, dropped a Gibson Girl signal radio, a kite to send up the aerial, a kit to turn saltwater into fresh. In the time-honored signal, the Navy pilot rocked his wings and headed south. He had called his patrol mate to circle me while he returned — low on fuel. The second patrol plane arrived on the scene and made lazy circles.

Suddenly, a submarine surfaced beside me. It was the U.S.S. Haddock, and the crew were waving and saluting. They pulled me off the raft. I looked like a Biafran native. They gave me some soup and a Navy uniform. I would’ve preferred some Jack Daniel’s.

I stayed on the Haddock for two weeks. When we arrived in Midway, a message came over the intercom: “We have dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki… the war is over...be careful who you talk to…do not trust anyone.” Soon, a Navy doctor checked me out and said, “You’re back on duty.”

During the war, Ted flew a total of 11 combat missions, putting in dozens of hours that included bomber escort, submarine cover, and strafing targets on land. For his efforts, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, the

Air Medal with two Oak Leaf Clusters, the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Unit Citation, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, two Bronze Service Stars, and the Maryland Distinguished Service Cross.

(Ted was not the only member of his family to participate actively in World War II. Two of his first cousins, once removed, brothers Albert G. Warfield and Marshall T. Warfield Jr., served with the U.S. Army in Europe. Albert, a captain in the 29th Division, landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy on June 6, 1944, during the D-Day invasion, and fought with his unit all the way to the Rhine river, ending the war with the rank of major; afterward, he became a member of the Maryland National Guard, ultimately retiring as a lieutenant

U.S.S. Haddock

On Monday, August 6, 1945, at 8:15 a.m., the Enola Gay, flown by Paul Warfield Tibbets, dropped the nuclear weapon “Little Boy” on Hiroshima. It killed an estimated 70,000 people, including 20,000 Japanese combatants and 2,000 Korean slave laborers.

colonel. Albert went on to a career in investments, rising to become manager of the Baltimore office of Merrill Lynch. He passed away in 1983. Marshall, a first lieutenant in the 712th Tank Battalion, was killed in action east of Metz, in France, in September 1944. Both brothers are buried at Cherry Grove, the Warfield family cemetery, at Oakdale.)

Discharged from the Army in 1946, Ted returned to Baltimore, where, in 1947, he married my mother, Carol Phillips Horton. Ted and Carol divorced in 1964, and, three years later, he married the former Ellen “Niki” Owens. They lived in a new home he had built at Oakdale in 1966. He sold the original manor house, plus 54 acres of the estate, in 1974. Oakdale was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2014. (Below, I address my parents’ lives together.)

After studying at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Ted transferred to the University of Maryland, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in agriculture in 1950. That same year, he joined the Maryland Air National Guard unit based at Martin State Airport east of Baltimore; later became the unit’s commander; and, ultimately, was promoted to the rank of brigadier general before rising to commander of the air guard.

In 1952, Ted took over as publisher of The Daily Record, which covered Baltimore’s court and commercial news. The paper began publishing under that name in 1888 under the stewardship of my great-grandfather, the first Edwin Warfield, and later was run by my grandfather, and, eventually, me.

In 1962, running as a Democrat, Ted was successfully elected to the House of Delegates, one-half of the Maryland General Assembly, as a representative from Howard County. He spent eight years in the House, serving as chair of its Agricultural Committee and as a member of the Ways and Means Committee. Unseated in the 1970 election, he segued full time into his role as Adjutant General of the Maryland National Guard, to which he had been appointed earlier that year.

These were turbulent times for the National Guard nationwide, given the growing opposition to the United States’ participation in the Vietnam War. Unrest on American campuses was widespread, and the Guard was frequently called in to quell protests, most famously — and tragically — in 1970 at Kent State University in Ohio, where four students died during a confrontation with soldiers.

Demonstrations also gripped the University of Maryland, located in College Park, just outside Washington, D.C., and for three consecutive springs, 1970 through 1972, my father was ordered to send the Guard there in an effort to maintain peace. He dealt with the potentially explosive situations with what Michael Olesker, a former columnist for The Baltimore Sun, later termed “composure, strength, and heartfelt humanity.”

Ted retired from his Adjutant General post — and the Guard — in 1980. Under his leadership, minority recruitment, a priority for him, increased to 44 percent. To honor his service, the National Guard base at Martin State Airport was named Warfield Air National Guard Base.

During much of this time, my father suffered from alcoholism. Jack Daniel’s began taking over his life in the late 50s, and he remained Jack-impaired until the mid-80s. Around that time, he met a man who changed his life: Father Joseph Martin, a Catholic priest who pioneered the treatment of alcoholism.

In 1983, Father Martin, a recovering alcoholic, co-founded Ashley, a substance-abuse treatment facility located north of Baltimore that takes a compassionate and innovative approach to addiction. It took a couple of visits to Ashley before Father Martin and his staff exorcised Jack Daniel’s from my father’s body. The war within him was over, and every sober day was extra. In my father’s eyes, Father Martin was the equal of Winston Churchill and FDR: They saved the world; Father Martin saved Dad.

Ted’s love of flying, meanwhile, never diminished, and he continued to pilot his own plane, a Cessna 182, until he was 71. He referred to it as “TWA” — Ted Warfield Airlines. In his later years, he bribed doctors in order to pass his physical so that he could continue to fly over the farmland of Howard County; at least, that’s what I’ve heard.

Ted died of congestive heart failure at age 75 on October 4, 1999. His funeral befitted a general from what former NBC anchorman/reporter Tom Brokaw famously called the “Greatest Generation,” also the title of his best-selling 1998 book about Americans who grew up during the Depression and then went on to fight in World War II, as well as serve in support roles on the home front. The pomp and circumstance given my father was very moving, and I will never forget a single detail.

His funeral service was held at St. John Episcopal Church in Ellicott City,

in Howard County. I delivered the eulogy, highlighting several of his fatherto-son maxims. Regarding loyalty: “A man is lucky if he can count his real friends on one hand.” Leadership: “Lead, follow, or get out of the way.” And the human species: “Be wary of people carrying a Bible in one hand and a dagger in the other.” All of these lessons took me a lifetime to appreciate.

Outside the church, planes from the Maryland Air National Guard swooped down in perfect formation, while Guard members on the ground fired a 21-gun salute. After the ceremony, what appeared to be the entire Maryland State Police force blockaded parts of Route 70 for the funeral motorcade, which made its way from the church to Cherry Grove, located 20 miles west.

Fourteen years later, in 2003, I married for a second time. The ceremony took place in a church near the Fifth Regiment Armory, headquarters of the Maryland National Guard, located in midtown Baltimore. A Methodist minister presided. He asked me, “Are you related to Edwin Warfield — the general of the Maryland National Guard?”

“Yes, he was my father.”

“I was in the National Guard with him,” he continued. “He was a great man.”

Mother Superior

My mother was born in 1922 in New York City, where, when she was five years old, she and her older brother were put up for adoption. She never knew her birth parents. She and her brother were adopted by a wealthy Park Avenue couple in an attempt, I was told, to salvage their failing marriage. Her adoptive father, William A. Phillips, was a partner at Dillon, Read & Co., an old-line Wall Street investment bank, now Warburg, Dillon, Read. Her mother was Elizabeth B. Phillips. The couple named their new children Carol and John.

That marriage eventually ended in divorce, and Elizabeth married Frank N. Horton. My grandmother and her two children moved to England to live with their new stepfather at his lavish country estate, Idlicote, an Elizabethan manor in the English Cotswolds, and, at age eight, Carol was sent to boarding school.

Later, the couple sold Idlicote and moved to the U.S., maintaining several residences: a suitably grand Park Avenue apartment, a summer home in the mountains of western North Carolina, and a house in Palm Beach. The children attended private boarding schools: John at Choate in Connecticut, Carol at Garrison Forest outside Baltimore.

The Hortons’ Palm Beach house was located within walking distance of the private Bath and Tennis Club (B&T), of which my grandparents were members, and which, in my memory, boasted the most incredible oranges on earth. When we visited, Mother, in an effort to protect us from any potential affluenza infections, booked us into a nondescript motel in Delray, 20 miles south of Palm Beach.

The upside of Carol’s Annie-like adoption was financial security; the downside was the absence of any sense of family or history. As for love, are you serious? The 15th-century maxim “children should be seen and not heard” was extrapolated by my grandmother to include not being seen, too. Given the Hortons’ chilliness, Carol grew up seeking a sense of family elsewhere. (As an adult, she fruitlessly attempted to track down her biological parents, but the adoption agency refused to provide the necessary information.)

At Garrison Forest in the late 1930s, Carol met — and became friends with — the Warfield sisters, Frances and Kitty. Horsey, feisty, and independent, they exuded an esprit de corps that my mother found irresistible, and they introduced her to their tall, dashing brother, Ted, then 18 and a student at Cornell University, soon to enlist in the Army Air Corps.

Carol was invited by her Warfield girlfriends to share family holidays at Oakdale. Raised in orphanages and boarding schools, she saw in Oakdale and the Warfields the family she desperately craved. Ted and Carol began dating, and she soon dreamed of filling the halls of Oakdale with children and its fields with horses, riding having been one of her childhood passions.

Upon graduating from Garrison Forest, she attended the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women, just north of Philadelphia. And when my father returned from the war, he and Carol resumed their courtship, married in June 1947, and moved into Blenheim, a separate house on the Oakdale property. It was a merger straight out of central casting: money meets history, LLB meets MBA. Eventually, they would have four children: me (the oldest), Beth, Diana, and John.

Carol returned to Garrison Forest as a riding instructor, and soon became the Master of Foxhounds of a small hunt in Howard County. Despite her upbringing, she eschewed the accoutrements of the wealthy. Except for good horseflesh, her tastes were simple. Her passions, in order of preference, were horses, children, and men. The horses were fed first. Our evening meals consisted of TV dinners, Hamburger Helper, and Stouffer’s spinach souffle. The only hired help worked in the barn.

Mom — HRH of Hounds

Carol was not well known on the glamorous Madison Square Garden horse show circuit, but, rather, thrived in the world of pony club and girls’ school riding instructors, where she was loved and respected. In a 2001 column in The Chronicle of the Horse magazine, John Strassburger writes, “What we all have in common is a fear of failing. It’s just that for some, it’s a motivation and for others it’s an impediment.

“And that thought reminded me of a Pony Club regional supervisor who was very influential to me and others. Her name was Carol Horton, and she was in charge of our expedition to the 1978 National Rally in Boyce, Virginia. Mrs. Horton was never daunted by any obstacle, nor would she allow us to be. No matter what the problem or concern, her advice was always, ‘Oh, bloody hell, just press on!’”

That attitude — fierce independence and strong will — clashed head on with Ted’s my-way-or-the-highway ethos; ultimately, the highway prevailed in the form of a divorce and a hurtful-to-all-involved custody battle over me, a complicated subject that I address in detail in the next chapter.

Carol had a short-lived second marriage to Phillip Fanning, an ineffectual, fox-hunting gentleman with two middle names and, eventually, three ex-wives, all Masters of Foxhounds. Together, Carol and Phillip had a daughter, also named Carol but known as Mini.

By the 1970s, Carol was divorced for a second time and living with Mini in the Basking Ridge area of New Jersey, where open land for fox hunting was becoming increasingly scarce due to development. Die-hard equestrians had no choice but to relocate, and, in 1979, Carol packed up her belongings and Mini, and moved to the epicenter of Virginia horse country, Middleburg, where she bought a four-acre farm. Appropriate to her priorities, the stable was larger than the house.

Except for a bout with breast cancer that had been in remission, Carol had always been healthy and energetic. To her, Middleburg was heaven on earth, and with her children grown and husbands gone, it was finally time to do what she loved: riding horses each day and fox hunting several times a week.

Back in 1979, I was living in New York and working at Phillips Auctioneers when I visited her for Thanksgiving. As I left after a pleasant stay, we decided that my next visit would be just before the New Year. We talked on the phone

on Christmas, and she said that she was going fox hunting the next day. Twenty-four hours later, I received a call from my sister Diana in Baltimore: “Mother is in the hospital in Winchester, Virginia,” she told me. “Her horse fell, and she is in a coma.”

I remember being unable to respond. Would she be able to recognize me? Most comas rarely last more than two to four weeks. My mother’s lasted three years. Over time, her condition gradually progressed to what is termed a “vegetative state,” in which the eyes are open and there is some degree of recognition, but no speech. That gave our family hope that further improvement was possible.

A perfect jump

Carol had led a vigorous and outgoing life. There was never enough daylight for all she wanted to do. I despaired at seeing her in this undignified state, knowing how she would loathe it. Court battles rage over just such medical conundrums: To pull the plug or not. The power to choose life or death for another human being is too great a burden for any mortal. My cousin Steve McKinney, a world-class speed skier and scholar of the Tibetan branch of Buddhism, often quoted from The Tibetan Book of the Dead to explain certain aspects of his philosophy. His approach to life’s journey was similar to my mother’s in grace, passion, and lack of fear.

I bought the book and read about the stages between life and death as both essential and valuable. According to the book, regardless of a lack of measurable brain waves, the mind remains linked to soul and spirit. The physical body loses all importance; gone are lust, aggression, delusion, and pain. These stages provide a gateway to liberation — peaceful and translucent. An excerpt reads:

“Now, when the dream between dawns upon me, I will give up corpse-like sleeping in delusion, And mindfully enter, unwavering, the experience of reality. Conscious of dreaming, I will enjoy the changes as clear light. Not sleeping mindlessly like an animal, I will cherish the practice merging sleep and realization.”

My mother died in Baltimore on October 8, 1982, of pneumonia, age 59, and was laid to rest at Cherry Grove.

Mom and Me: She felt it more important that I ride before I walked.

The Startup of Me

3

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”

–MARK TWAIN

My birth on April 30, 1954, was poorly timed, at least from my parents’ perspective. The last weekend of April in Maryland marks a WASP celebration more important than Christmas and Thanksgiving combined: the Maryland Hunt Cup — a steeplechase-racing and social-climbing event once chronicled by Charlie Rose on 60 Minutes prior to his ignominious demise. Think of the Hunt Cup as Woodstock with horses, followed in the evening by the more elegant Hunt Ball.

My birth also constituted the long-sought beginning of my mother’s family. Her brother, John, also adopted, would find his family in the gay community of Greenwich Village in the 1950s and 1960s, and later move to New Hope, Pennsylvania, in the 1970s, where he spent his later years with his AfricanAmerican husband.

As for my heritage, it is a curious combination of 50 percent old-line Maryland and 50 percent in need of an ancestry DNA test. My first five years,

spent at Oakdale, were bucolic, isolated, and relatively uneventful. The estate was — and remains — located in the western Howard County hamlet of Daisy. Back then, Daisy consisted of a mix of farms, the vestiges of racial segregation that included the great-grandchildren of a slave, and Warfields. Literature in our household was limited to the Chronicle of the Horse and Time magazine. It was a lifestyle that could have been portrayed in a Mark Twain novel or a Norman Rockwell painting. In short, Mayberry.

One of my earliest childhood memories is that I could ride a pony before I could walk. The image of my mother teaching me to ride was made by the celebrated Baltimore Sun pictorial photographer A. Aubrey Bodine. For good reasons, my expression of dread implies a premonition that horses symbolized death, as opposed to a highly refined Maryland gentleman’s pursuit.

“I was born modest, but it didn’t last.”

–MARK TWAIN

My cousin Jimmy Stump, a noted steeplechase rider, was killed at age 20 in a race-riding accident. It was morbidly perverse, if not morose, to see his parents, Humpy and Louise, continue to attend steeplechase races afterward. My mother also experienced a serious horse-related accident, falling during a fox hunt. Taken together, these events cemented my aversion to horses, not forgetting my equine-related chores of mucking out stalls, mowing acres upon acres of fields, and creosoting miles of fences during my high school years.

Horses represented death, hard work, and toxic fumes that were probably more harmful than either LSD or Jack Daniel’s. By fifth grade I had announced my retirement from riding and fox hunting, pursuing, instead, the ungentlemanly sport of ice hockey — real boys played ice hockey.

When I started working on this book in 2003, I reached out to Jennifer Bodine, the daughter of A. Aubrey Bodine. My quest was for photos of the President Warfield, a 1920s-built steamship that famously (and infamously) was repurposed in 1947 as the Exodus to ferry 4,500 Jewish immigrants, the majority of them Holocaust survivors, from France to Palestine, at that time under British control.

Mom’s priorities: horses, hounds, children, husbands

In the process of searching for images of the ship, we stumbled upon an article that appeared in The Baltimore Sun’s Sunday Magazine in the late 1950s that depicted my mother and father, including photos of my mother fox hunting and herding cattle.

The accompanying photos reflect an early childhood safeguarded by matrimonial harmony, a becalmed domesticity, a time of innocence and love — a love that I do not remember. My childhood memories begin, instead, at age six with my parents’ marriage crashing and burning — Jack Daniel’s-spiced arguments, not-so-dangerous liaisons, and the final act, my mother’s exodus from Maryland with her four children in tow.

One particular incident stands out in my mind: an alcohol-infused car accident that chopped a telephone pole in half. My father was driving. Both parents miraculously survived the crash; their marriage did not. Father’s affair with

TWA: Ted Warfield Airlines — Dad with Mom in the cockpit of his private plane

the bottle deepened; Mother’s affair with a dashing polo player blossomed; their children remained clueless.

Daisy really did resemble Mayberry: The closest restaurant was 15 miles away, while the local general store appeared to be out of the 19th century. Daisy was also an hour’s drive from the Green Spring Valley, where my father’s sisters, fox hunting, and my mother’s aspirational social world existed. Despite her eschewing her Park Avenue/Palm Beach upbringing, she found the Howard County social scene to be nevertheless stultifying, primarily limited to other Warfield spouses.

All this caused Mother’s sense of isolation to worsen. Finally, during the third week of August 1964, she executed the first step in her great escape, loading Beth, Diana, John, and me into the back of our Ford station wagon to visit her bedridden mother in Asheville, North Carolina. Mother was looking for financial support in order to move to what she perceived as the promised land — Far Hills, New Jersey. My grandmother obliged.

Far Hills’ origins date to the mid-1880s, when Evander H. Schley, a land developer and real estate broker from New York, purchased thousands of acres in Bedminster and Bernards townships. In 1887, Schley’s brother, Grant, and Grant’s wife, Elizabeth, arrived by horse-drawn carriage to see Evander’s farms. Elizabeth remarked on the landscape of the “far hills,” thus giving the place its name.

Almost a century later, Far Hills residents included Nicholas Brady, treasury secretary to both Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, as well as chairman of investment bank Dillon, Read & Co.; Malcolm Forbes, publisher of Forbes magazine; and Charles W. Engelhard, Jr., who amassed a fortune in mining and metals.

In addition to this modern-era gentry, Far Hills also featured an equine attraction: fox hunting with the Essex Fox Hounds. Not far away, in the town of Peapack, Jackie Onassis owned a horse farm from the 1970s until her death in 1994. Like my mother, Jackie possessed a passion for fox hunting. Meanwhile, Jackie’s sister, Lee Radziwill, boarded her horses on our farm.

Nicholas Brady’s family — fun-loving, all-American aristocracy — became my Brady Bunch. Their compound included motorbikes, a paddle tennis court, delectable chocolate chip cookies, and a role model marriage: Nick and his wife, Kitty, who had the grace of Grace Kelly, the classic beauty of Brigitte

Even cowgirls get the blues: Mother herding cattle

Bardot, and the cheerfulness of Florence Henderson. Her french fries were memorable, her hospitality extraordinary.

Their children were similar in age to our family’s: At Far Hills Country Day School, Nick Jr. was in my class; Christopher in my sister Beth’s class; and Anthony in my sister Diana’s. As testosterone-laced teenagers, the Brady boys and I committed various misdemeanors, but Kitty graciously tolerated us, understanding that these were privileged rites of passage.

Kidnapped: Coup d’Edwin

My memories of my father kidnapping me at age 14 remain vague. They have been expunged, deleted. My siblings have only slightly stronger recollections. Not long ago, over dinner, my Middlebury, Vermont-encamped, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy-graduated (at Tufts University), wickedly smart sister Beth mentioned, in passing, the kidnapping. (In the context of sibling rivalry, the fact that I was the only one kidnapped probably would provide fodder for a therapist.)

“We went to a horse event,” she told me. “You stayed home or something to that effect. Dad flew up to pick you up. That is all I recall.”

I’m pretty sure that I have created a psychic firewall related to the incident. The son of a general whose plane was shot down in WWII and a mother who was shipped off to boarding school at age eight definitely has the necessary genetic code to erect firewalls.

“Grin and bear it” or “bloody hell, press on,” my mother often declared.

“Lead, follow, or get out of the way,” my father barked.

Trauma lodges in the deep recesses of our memory. Hit delete. Move on with life. Muck out a stall. Creosote a fence. Grin and bear it. As for bringing in the services of a psychiatrist or therapist, that would not have been on my parents’ radar.

Not surprisingly, a custody battle over me ensued. My memories of this, unlike the kidnapping, are more vivid. There was a courtroom appearance during which the judge took me back to his chambers and asked me which parent I wanted to live with. My 14-year-old response was “both.” Accordingly, the judge awarded joint custody. (Curiously, my brother and sisters never entered the legal picture, with Mother retaining full, uncontested custody of them.)

The Importance of Being Ernest: Ernest Simpson, the Hill School graduate and second husband of Wallis Warfield

With the settlement in place, I became a weekday boarder at Gilman School in the fall of 1968. Weekends alternated between Far Hills and Oakdale. Ice hockey, a social life, and the Brady bunch one weekend; skeet shooting, Jack Daniel’s, isolation, Warfields, and more Warfields the next.

Gilman was founded in 1897 as the Country School for Boys. Named after Daniel Coit Gilman, the first president of Johns Hopkins University, it was the first country day school in the U.S.

I was one of approximately a dozen weekday boarding students living unceremoniously in makeshift conditions on the third floor of the school’s main building. Gilman was never meant to be a boarding school. Five-day boarding was a necessary convenience for parents reluctant to send their sons off to a full-time boarding school, as well as for those whose geographical distance from Gilman precluded commuting.

A more convenient solution for the joint-custody arrangement was worked out for the next academic year: I would attend the Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, a boarding school equidistant from both parents. At the time, Pottstown was famous for Mrs. Smith’s pies and the iron and steel that were blasted from the town’s furnaces. Among Hill’s more notable alumni are Lamar Hunt, George Patton, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Oliver Stone, and, significantly, a 1915 grad named Ernest Simpson, who became the second husband of the Duchess of Windsor.

The Hill School was a bleak house, or, in Dickensian terms, Bleak House.

From the rear-view mirror of a 65-year-old, Hill was a depressing place. First and foremost, it was boys-only. Arranged dances with “appropriate” girls’ schools required crossing the state line to Garrison Forest in Maryland or Purnell in New Jersey. The year before my arrival, dozens of students were kicked out of Hill for pharmaceutical dalliances, which, I’m guessing, can be attributed to the school’s dispiriting environment and its lack of female diversions.

At the end of my sophomore year, I changed schools again, rejecting my parents’ and the judge’s judgments. In effect, I gained custody of me, taking control of my own academic decisions by transferring to Milton Academy, fortified by the school’s motto of “Dare to Be True.”

Milton: Paradise Regained

Milton Academy was founded in 1798 via a charter granted by the state of Massachusetts. With the advent of Milton High School, a public institution, in 1866, the academy’s operation ceased, but the school was resurrected 18 years later by John Murray Forbes, a railroad magnate/philanthropist who reestablished it on a new 100-acre site. Illustrious Milton graduates include T.S. Eliot, Buckminster Fuller, and both Ted and Robert Kennedy.

When now asked about my seemingly random choice of schools, I facetiously tell people that my interest was inspired by Milton alum “Sweet Baby” James Taylor, whose music suffused the cultural zeitgeist in 1970. (Later in life, I would learn that I had even more in common with Taylor. While many of his classmates headed to Harvard upon graduation, James headed to McLean Hospital — a psychiatric facility in Belmont, Massachusetts — for eight months. More to come on my psych-ward experience.)

More important, there were girls at Milton, and its proximity to Boston nurtured my burgeoning affection for urban environs — an apparent reaction to a childhood spent in the country. Other criteria for choosing Milton include its curriculum focusing on literature, art, and music, not forgetting its geographical location far removed from both of my parents.

My friends at Milton included other transfer students. Like myself, some were dealing with divorce or, in the case of Marshall Stone, the death of his mother when he was 16. Marshall had been asked to not return to St. Marks, also a Massachusetts prep school, because of his protests against the Vietnam War. Ultimately, he became a pediatric surgeon.

Another friend, Richard Perry, transferred from Deerfield Academy, yet another Massachusetts prep school, where his interest in arbitrage and the inefficiency of markets was kindled. Eventually, he took a post working in the arbitrage department at Goldman Sachs before starting a hedge fund whose assets peaked at $15 billion in 2007.

Then there was Mitch Steir, my senior-year roommate. Mitch was the de facto class ringleader — an amalgam of Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, and Howard Hughes. We signed non-disclosure agreements at the time, thus our merry prankster activities are not shared herein. Mitch has enjoyed a very successful career in commercial real estate as chairman of Savills Studley. My memories of

TOP TO BOTTOM: Milton mavericks

T. S. Eliot, Buckminster Fuller, Robert F. Kennedy, James Taylor

Milton remain fond, and some of the friendships I initiated there have continued until today. When you spend 10 months together at a boarding school, the resulting relationships can be almost as important as those with your parents’.

I learned not to drink from finger bowls from my grandmother, leadership and loyalty from my father, and stoicism from both of my parents. However, my intellectual DNA, curiosity, soul, and spirit all came from Milton.

In keeping with the tenor of the times, drugs played a prominent role during my prep school years. At Milton, the nearby graveyard served as our mosh pit, a place where we smoked Nepalese hash. The indulgences at the Hill School consisted of marijuana and, occasionally, LSD. One of my Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds trips got out of control, bringing that particular pharma experiment to an end. By college, my flirtation with drugs had ceased entirely. (At 62, I would be diagnosed with a condition that hinted that these drug forays may have been attributable to self-medication rather than a case of mere youthful exuberance.)

As for alcohol, I was a teetotaler for the first three-and-a-half decades of my life, not a surprising development in lieu of my father’s affair with Jack Daniel’s. In my late 30s, however, I became acquainted with chardonnay, initially drinking on weekends only. Over time, I also developed an interest in malbec, another step in my journey to a wonder drug that would later change my life.

My college years were, like those spent in prep schools, peripatetic; more significantly, they represented an angst-y mashup of the practicality of business and the passion of art. And while my quantitative college scores would have supported a career on Wall Street, my genetic inheritance did not. I was a conflicted, confused boy/man caught between culture and commerce — a prime example of the classic right-brain-versus-left-brain battle. The upshot: I majored in business at McGill University in Montreal, before attending the Sotheby’s Works of Art Course in London.

The year at Sotheby’s was heavenly, with classmates who were similarly passionate about art, a veritable international Noah’s Arc of Eccentrics. Most unforgettable among them: the always-dressed-in-black Ivor Braka, a cross between Frank Zappa and Iggy Pop. Ivor would become a very successful art dealer, specializing in works by Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon.

We made trips to the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum, the Tate, and the Wallace Collection. Such institutions have always been my sanctuary in the city — the perfect antidote for what I call my “unquiet mind.”

I met Amy, my first wife, at the Sotheby’s program. The marriage would last 25 years and produce two beautiful children — Allegra and Win. Amy had been adopted by her stepfather. Like my mother, she would marry into a family with a rich history (emphasis on “history”).

“My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.”

–MARK TWAIN

Upon graduation from the program in May 1978, I was offered a job at Sotheby’s Belgravia in London for £5,000 per year (the equivalent of $6,500) to catalogue 19th-century English ceramics. That seemed a too-meager sum to me, so I graciously declined and, instead, returned to New York, where I landed a job at a more acceptable salary in the European painting department of Phillips Auctioneers. Eventually, however, I realized that my passion for art probably would not develop into a sustainable career, so I enrolled at New York University’s Stern School of Business at night, from which I graduated in 1983 with an MBA.

At that point, I needed to make a critical decision: pursue investment banking in New York or return to Baltimore to become the fourth-generation publisher of The Daily Record. My mother, who died the year before, had spent her last three years in a coma, while my father had graduated from an addiction treatment facility, thus ending his affair with Jack Daniel’s.

After a decade-long hiatus, I determined that it was time to reconnect with my Maryland roots, my father, and what amounted to my privileged publishing destiny.

LONG LIVE THE ABDICATION

Eward VIII’s abdication of his kingly throne has long fascinated and preoccupied the purveyors of popular culture, who periodically recreate and reimagine the event in books, on the stage, and on both the big and small screens. After all, the guy willingly walked away from perhaps the cushiest gig on earth. He was not beheaded (Louis XVI) or deposed, imprisoned, and shot (Nicholas II) or shamed into resigning (Richard Nixon). Edward just quit. All for the love of a then-still-married commoner. Juicy stuff. Catnip for screenwriters.

Recently, the abdication has experienced a decadelong revival, depicted in Madonna’s 2011 film W.E., in the 2010 movie The King’s Speech (winner of the Oscar for Best Motion Picture), and in the ongoing TV series The Crown (those last two pictured here). Apparently, we can’t get enough of it.

“The abdication was the greatest news story since the Resurrection.”

– H.L. MENCKEN

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT:

King Edward VIII (Guy Pearce) announces his abdication in The King’s Speech; Alex Jennings and Lia Williams portray the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in The Crown; the Duke of Windsor (Alex Jennings) in The Crown; King George VI (Colin Firth, left) receives coaching from Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) in The King’s Speech; Winston Churchill (John Lithgow, left) confers with King Edward VIII (Alex Jennings) in The Crown; Queen Elizabeth (Claire Foy) tries on new headgear in The Crown.

4 My Cousin Wallis: the Duchess of Windsor

“ You have no idea how hard it is to live out a great romance.”

– WALLIS WARFIELD SIMPSON

Yes, the Duchess of Windsor was a Warfield, and was, in genealogical terms, my sixth cousin, once removed. In a book that would praise heroes and heroines, the inclusion of the Duchess of Windsor required consideration. The Love Story of the Century, as some have called it, may be merchandisable, but Wallis Warfield Simpson’s character was at the very least controversial.

Gay icon? Oh, yes.

Social butterfly? Indubitably.

Sexual siren? You could make a case.

Nazi sympathizer? The Brits think so.

Hermaphrodite? There’s talk.

Debauchee debutante? Dubious.

The Love Story of the Century has definitely been tarnished, mostly because the Duchess was so much fun to hate. She really never had a chance. It is important to understand that Great Britain probably had never had an heir apparent so adored and so perfectly suited for his future role as king as Edward.

Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David Windsor — the eldest son of King George V and Queen Mary, and, as such, the Prince of Wales — was handsome, articulate, and thoughtful. He had been polished and groomed for the job. As a bonus, he appeared to be especially attuned to the problems of the common man. The monarchy had been feeling insecure for some time about the government deeming it obsolete. If the populace loved Edward, that certainly strengthened its position. Meanwhile, his brother Bertie (Albert), who was next in line to be king, had a speech impediment and lacked Edward’s charisma.

So the public, and even more so the monarchy, simply could not accept his rejection of them when he famously abdicated his throne as King Edward VIII a mere 11 months after ascending to it. And for what? His love for Wallis, a commoner, a divorcee, and an American? This woman had better be damned perfect, or everyone was going to use her as a scapegoat for their rage. Despite the fact that she radiated style, panache, and savoir faire, she still was far from perfect, so that is exactly what happened.

The gossip about the Duchess is fun to read, but, for the most part, impossible to prove. In deference to her admirers, my purpose here is simply to present the aggregated information and, with luck, avoid the burden of personal opinion. The dirt on Wallis continues to titillate long past her death, and the 2018 marriage of American actress Meghan Markle to Prince Harry has served as a catalyst for exhuming her, with myriad headlines screaming variations on the Daily Mail’s “Style snap! Meghan Markle and Wallis Simpson — two glamorous American divorcees who met their smitten princes before they were 34.” The Meghan/Harry union also helped generate a pair of recent Duchessrelated books: Andrew Morton’s Wallis in Love: The Untold Life of the Duchess of Windsor, the Woman Who Changed the Monarchy (2018), and Anna Pasternak’s The Real Wallis Simpson: A New History of the American Divorcee Who Became the Duchess of Windsor (2019).

My father used to say that the only thing that terrified him more than being shot down over the Pacific was having to dance with his cousin Wallis. And in a 1996 Baltimore Sun article about a recently released documentary on

Wallis Warfield Simpson: Time magazine’s 1936 Woman of the Year

Edward VIII, Dad conceded that “she was never so conceited that she forgot her Baltimore roots.”

One could read between the lines that he probably considered her life a bit frivolous — after all, her main skills were decorating and entertaining; she lived extravagantly and self-indulgently — but a good Baltimore boy will always defend a Baltimore girl even if it is with circumlocution.

I’m still not sure if Dad had answers to any of the rumors or myths that have developed over the years about Wallis, but he never engaged in trash talk. Never. One of his favorite quotes was Mark Twain’s “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

“I’ve Danced With a Man, Who’s Danced With a Girl, Who’s Danced With the Prince of Wales.”

–HERBERT FARJEON, title of his popular 1927 song

Some say the Duchess never loved the Duke (Edward was named Duke of Windsor after his abdication), and that they never had sexual intercourse. Others believe Wallis was devoted to her “David” (Edward’s intimate name), dedicating her life to making him happy: the Love Story of the Century Theory.

Meanwhile, Queen Mary, Edward’s mother, called Wallis “the lowest of the low, a thoroughly immoral woman.” In fact, the Duchess was never allowed anywhere near the royal family after Edward stepped down as king. The title Her Royal Highness should have come automatically with her marriage to the Duke, but Edward’s brother Bertie, who as King George VI took the throne when Edward stepped down, denied it, resulting in a huge insult to Wallis and a lifetime of grievance by the Duke.

Was the Duchess an opportunist or devoted wife? Nazi supporter or allAmerican girl? Most Warfields do not claim her.

However, the Montagues of Virginia do. Her mother was Alice Montague from an old Virginia line. Her father was Teackle Wallis Warfield of the Maryland Warfields. Wallis was their only child. Each family produced a governor of its respective state. The Warfields were a stern, hard-working dynasty; the Montagues were known for their wit and good looks. Wallis did not inherit the latter.

In her 1956 autobiography, The Heart Has Its Reasons: The Memoirs of the Duchess of Windsor (ghosted by Charles Murphy), Wallis writes, “So my legacy was this curious Warfield-Montague admixture, which had the effect of endowing my nature with two alternating sides, one grave, the other gay. If the Montagues were innately French in character and the Warfields British, then I was a new continent for which they contended. All my life, it seems, that battle has raged back and forth within my psyche. Even as a child, when I misbehaved, my mother taught me to believe that it was the Montague deviltry asserting itself; when I was good, she gratefully attributed the improvement to the sober Warfield influence. However, it was my private judgment that when I was being good, I generally had a bad time, and when I was bad, the opposite was true.”

“The fault lay not in my stars but in my genes.”

– EDWARD VIII, the Duke of Windsor

Michael Bloch — assistant to the Duchess of Windsor’s French lawyer, Suzanne Blum — wrote five thoroughly researched books about the Windsors, including his 1996 biography of Wallis, The Duchess of Windsor. In that book, Bloch notes that Wallis’ birth was never registered, and suggests that there was some confusion related to the baby’s gender, which made a name choice for the child difficult.

The questionable nature of the Duchess’ gender is a central theme in Bloch’s Duchess bio. Whether or not it is mere titillation rather than fact seems to be difficult to ascertain for historians, although not for lack of trying. Bloch produces the best available evidence in statements from Dr. John Randell, an expert on gender at London’s Charing Cross Hospital, who gave clinical substantiation that Wallis suffered from androgen insensitivity syndrome, also known as testicular feminization caused by having XY chromosomes. Blum, the attorney to whom the Duchess gave control of her affairs in 1973, claims that the Duchess died a virgin.

Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon

Wallis’ father died of tuberculosis in 1896 when she was five months old (she was born on June 19 that year), and she and her young mother, Alice, moved into the Baltimore townhouse of Wallis’ paternal grandmother, Anna Warfield. The man of the household was Solomon Davies Warfield, Wallis’s bachelorbusinessman uncle, who became infatuated with Alice. His advances were unrequited and may have precipitated Alice and Wallis’ move to the home of

For whom the bell tolls: the Duke at the Maryland estate of Clarence and Eleanor Miles

Second thoughts on the abdication?

the latter’s Aunt Bessie Merryman until they found a rented apartment of their own. And yet Uncle Sol supported Wallis financially from childhood through young adulthood.

About him, Wallis wrote in her memoir: “Cold of manner, with a distinguished if forbidding countenance, he was already, while still in his thirties, a banker of means and an entrepreneur of daring and imagination in numerous fields, such as transportation, public utilities, and manufacturing.... Of all the Warfield brothers, Uncle Sol was to have the most influence upon me. For a long and impressionable period, he was the nearest thing to a father in my uncertain world, but an odd kind of father — reserved, unbending, silent. Uncle Sol was destined to return again and again to my life — or, more accurately, it was my fate to be obliged to turn again and again to him, usually at some new point of crisis for me and seldom to his liking. I was always a little afraid of Uncle Sol.”

“As the Duchess of Windsor, she created an eternal signature style, which became her personal armor.”

– ANNA PASTERNAK, from The Real Wallis Simpson

Eventually, Alice remarried; her new husband, John Raisin, was the scion of a wealthy political family, and Wallis was sent to Oldfields, an exclusive girls’ boarding school located outside Baltimore. Alice managed, with help from Uncle Sol, to have Wallis presented in Baltimore society as a debutante at the Bachelors Cotillion.

Wallis was 20 years old when she met Earl Winfield Spencer, Jr., a naval flight officer. They wed several months later, and throughout her unhappy fiveyear marriage she was subjected to his drinking and physical abuse. (Twenty years later, Wallis confided to Herman Rogers, an old friend who gave her in marriage to the Duke of Windsor, that she had never had sexual intercourse with either of her first two husbands — Spencer or Ernest Aldrich Simpson.)

Wallis lived for two years in Warrenton, Virginia, while awaiting her divorce from Spencer, which became official in December 1927. On a trip to New York with Oldfields school chum Mary Rafray, she was introduced to Simpson, the son of a successful English shipping broker.

Wallis was 32 when, in July 1928, she and Ernest married and began a comfortable, affluent life in London. Wallis’s mother died a year later, and Wallis sought solace in what would become years of writing letters to her Aunt Bessie, correspondence that chronicle both quotidian and emotional aspects of her life.

Wallis and Ernest’s upper-middle-class life in London was pleasant, albeit lonely for her. His job as a shipping executive provided a considerable income, and Uncle Sol’s will — he died in 1927 — also left a little something for Wallis. The couple moved from a rented townhouse in Marylebone when they bought a flat in fashionable Bryanston Court.

Wallis had a good eye and a knack for entertaining, and soon became known for throwing lively dinner parties. Her cousin Corinne Mustin moved to London with her husband, who worked for the United States Embassy, and soon, Wallis and Ernest were mingling with the American business community in London. One of the embassy wives was Connie Morgan, sister of Thelma, Viscountess Furness, the beautiful socialite and mistress of the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VIII.

Wallis was presented at court that June, having borrowed formal dresses from Connie and Thelma. This marked her official entry into London society, and soon the Simpsons invited the Prince to dinner at Bryanston Court.

The Duchess of Windsor (second from left) with Prince Philip (left), Queen Elizabeth, and Prince Charles in Paris, May 1972, during the final days of the Duke’s life

Wallis wrote Bessie that their dinner party carried on until 4 a.m., “so I think the Prince enjoyed himself.” Not long afterward, the Simpsons received the first of what would be many invitations to visit the Prince at his favorite residence, Fort Belvedere, a miniature castle in the countryside near Windsor Castle.

From the start, Edward seemed enchanted by Wallis’ wit and her lack of the usual reverence employed by others while in his presence. She engaged him in conversations about gardening and interiors, topics he enjoyed, and he quickly became smitten by her sense of fun and her outspokenness.

Early in 1934, Thelma left London to spend two months in America, asking Wallis to look after the Prince in her absence. Within a short time, he was calling or dropping by daily, and by late spring Wallis had supplanted Thelma for his affections.

Their relationship has been the subject of endless speculation. It has been said that the Prince was absolutely dependent on Wallis for his happiness. Winston Churchill wrote, “He found in her qualities as necessary to his happiness as the air he breathed.... The association was psychical rather than sexual.”

And Walter Monkton, trusted advisor to Edward, wrote, “No one will ever understand…the intensity and depth of his devotion to Mrs. Simpson. It is a great mistake to assume that he was merely in love with her in the ordinary physical sense of the term.”

Edward appeared to have been lacking in focus and ambition, so Wallis soon took over directing the details and decisions of his life, and he was quite content to cede to her this role. Michael Bloch suggests that the Prince was a repressed homosexual and that Wallis, with her masculine qualities, satisfied this subconscious attraction.

Let’s get some historical facts under our belts: In January 1936, Edward VIII ascended to the throne upon the death of his father, King George V. Towards the end of 1936, there was a crisis stemming from Edward’s wish to marry the twice-divorced Wallis. Because both ex-husbands were still alive, the government took the view that she could not be Queen. In a standoff, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin claimed that the populace was opposed to the marriage, and floated the possibility that his government might resign.

Baldwin denied Edward’s request for a morganatic marriage (meaning that Wallis would not be crowned and any children Edward might eventually have

could inherit his title), or for any marriage at all between Wallis and Edward while he was King. Her divorced status was cited as the reason. By British law, Edward could have done as he pleased. If that were to happen, however, the government would resign, Baldwin already having convinced this Cabinet to leave with him.

Winston Churchill — out of government at the time but still a highly influential public voice, and three years away from becoming prime minister — advised Edward that the government could not force him to step down and that he should wait until six months after the official coronation, set for May 1937, to broach with the government the marriage issue. Churchill, working on Edward’s behalf, hoped that, by then, with Edward crowned and the majority of the populace in favor of him as King, the atmosphere might be different.

“I’ve found that if you bring up King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson at a dinner party or a social gathering, it’s like throwing a Molotov cocktail into the room.”

– MADONNA

Due to the extensive daily coverage in the news of Edward’s dilemma and his discussions with Baldwin, it became evident that two very emotional camps were evolving. On one hand, younger and more liberal Brits felt that Edward should be allowed to marry the woman he loved and remain King. On the other, the government and the Church of England were intractable in their position that Edward must make a choice between Wallis and the throne.

Some historians claim that Wallis was not in love with the King and was reluctant to divorce Ernest Simpson. Her letters to Aunt Bessie clearly show that she did not want the King to abdicate. The horror of having all of England despising her was more than Wallis could bear, and she tried to break off her relationship with Edward.

Indeed, she wrote to him: “I must return to Ernest.... I am sure you and I would only create disaster together. I am sure that after this letter you will realize that no human being could assume this responsibility and it would be most unfair to make things harder for me by seeing me.”

Henry M. Warfield with the Duke in 1941

Edward’s pitiful reply: “Why do you say such hard things to David?” (as his intimates addressed him). He refused to let her go. Additionally, the King’s assistant private secretary, Alan Lascelles, reported that Edward threatened to cut his own throat if Wallis left him.

In his 1951 autobiography, A King’s Story: The Memoirs of the Duke of Windsor (like Wallis’ memoir, ghostwritten by Charles Murphy), Edward took a sober approach to addressing his abdication and the period leading up to it, devoting its last 10 chapters to the subject. He contends that he never considered renouncing Wallis. However, it occurred to him that if he publicly addressed the people, he could garner their favor and the government might back down. Baldwin probably feared this as well and denied him to speak. Edward ultimately decided not to challenge the Prime Minister in any fashion because of the inevitable wedge it would drive into the nation’s unity.

“I am so anxious for you not to abdicate and I think the fact that you do is going to put me in the wrong light to the entire world, because they will say that I could have prevented it.”

– WALLIS WARFIELD SIMPSON

Clearly, his horror that a schism comparable to civil war could occur because of him led him to abdicate. He claims his “cherished conception of the monarchy above politics” would be shattered. He asked himself if he and Wallis could be happy if they were the cause of a fatal blow to the social cohesion of the empire. His answer was no.

From her hiding place in France, Wallis released a public statement to the press: “Mrs. Simpson, throughout the last few weeks, has invariably wished to avoid any action or proposal which would hurt or damage His Majesty or the Throne.

“Today, her attitude is unchanged, and she is willing, if such action would solve the problem, to withdraw forthwith from a situation that has been rendered both unhappy and untenable.”

The Duke and Duchess on their wedding day — no royals attended

She telephoned the King and said that if he would not renounce her, she would go into hiding. Edward pleaded with her: “But it’s too late. The abdication papers are being drawn up. The cabinet is meeting this very moment to act upon them. Of course, you can go wherever you want, to China, Labrador, or the South Seas. But wherever you go, I will follow you.”

The Instrument of Abdication was delivered to Edward that evening. The next day, with his brothers as witnesses, Edward signed the documents that would so drastically alter his life and England’s history: “I, Edward the Eighth, of Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Emperor of India, do hereby declare My irrevocable determination to renounce the Throne for Myself and for My descendants, and My desire that effect should be given to this Instrument of Abdication immediately.

“In token whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this tenth day of December nineteen hundred and thirty-six, in the presence of the witnesses whose signatures are subscribed.”

Edward made only one request of Baldwin: that he do justice to Wallis by relating to the British people her steady “attempts to dissuade the King from his decision.” Baldwin, for reasons never divulged, declined.

Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip, and the Duchess of Windsor at the Duke’s 1972 funeral

Royalty Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Amid this royal crisis of extreme gravitas for the British, a renowned American fiction writer weighed in with an atypically whimsical take on the whole affair. Upton Sinclair, the Baltimoreborn author best known for his 1906 novel The Jungle, an expose of appalling labor and sanitary conditions in the U.S. meatpacking industry, published, in late 1936, a hilarious one-scene play entitled Wally for Queen! — The Private Life of Royalty. It sold for 25 cents (six for $1). In effect, Sinclair spoofs the standoff between Edward and Wallis on one side, and Baldwin and the Archbishop of Canterbury on the other, as well as the attendant public and media uproar. Curiously, despite his hefty literary reputation, Sinclair apparently encountered indifference when he attempted to publish Wally for Queen! In its introduction, he bemusedly laments, “I wrote this little sketch quite innocently thinking to provide a little fun for magazine readers. The first editor wired: ‘Swell, but unpublishable.’ My literary agency wired: ‘Desolated but compelled to agree, skit unprintable, very charming.’

“I sent it to a big printing firm, which has made my books for 20 years. They refused to print it!

“It appears that a Baltimore girl is fighting the British Empire. Many Americans are saying ‘Atta girl.’ Myself, I take no sides; but I do consider the British royal family altogether divine, and I do not see why American editors have to be paralyzed in awe.

“Laugh and the world laughs with you.”

In his farewell abdication speech, broadcast on the BBC on December 11 and carried by radio stations around the world, Edward summed up his actions by saying, “It is impossible to do my duty as King and Emperor without the help and support of the woman I love.” He was succeeded by his brother Albert, Duke of York, who became King George VI.

Wallis’ divorce from Ernest became official in May 1937, and Edward, now the Duke of Windsor, married her in France on June 3, 1937. The wedding was boycotted by the entire royal family; none of the Duke’s relations or close friends dared to attend; and King George VI and Queen Elizabeth initiated steps to deprive the Duchess of Windsor of the Her Royal Highness title.

“The people of this country do not mind fornication, but they loathe adultery.”

– U.K. PRIME MINISTER RAMSAY MACDONALD

Edward and Wallis were married at the beautiful, modernized Château de Candé in the Loire Valley, offered to them by Charles and Fern Bedaux, friends of Wallis intimates Herman and Katherine Rogers. As usual, and as the Duke so liked for her to do, Wallis assumed all arrangements for the wedding, even advising the Duke when and how to write to his brother the King of their plans.

The couple honeymooned for three months at Schloss Wasserleonburg, a fairy tale castle in Austria, also arranged by the Duchess, and afterward they were invited to the Hungarian hunting lodge owned by the Bedauxes.

The Duke and Duchess: Post-Game of Thrones

After the abdication and the wedding, the Duke took up two critical issues, almost to the point of obsession. The first was when he would be able to return to England; the second, that Wallis, now his Duchess, would be welcomed there with him.

Originally, the day before the abdication, incoming King George VI agreed to give outgoing King Edward VIII an annual stipend of £25,000. Later, postabdication, George proposed the lesser sum of £21,000, and only if the Duke

Henry M. Warfield with the Duke in 1941

swore that he and the Duchess would not return to England without the monarchy’s consent; though peeved, the Duke nevertheless signed off on the deal; and he certainly wasn’t hurting for money, having amassed more than £1 million while he was Duke of Cornwall. George apparently felt threatened by Edward’s popularity among the British public, and wanted to get comfortable in his new role with his brother out of sight/out of mind. And like the Queen Mother, he intensely disapproved of the Duchess.

Not knowing how long their exile would last, the Windsors rented a series of lovely residences in France. The French were hospitable and granted them immunity from taxes, enabling them to rent a magnificent suite overlooking the Tuileries in Paris’ elegant Hotel Meurice until, in early 1938, they leased a furnished villa in Versailles for three months, becoming friends with Sir Charles and Lady Elsie Mendl. The latter would help Wallis decorate her future residences in the style for which the Duchess became renowned.

After signing a 10-year lease on a chateau, La Croe, in Cap d’Antibes on the French Riviera, the Duchess sought an appropriate residence in Paris as well. In early 1939, she found an airy and sunny townhouse there, one suitable for entertaining, and the Windsors took out a long-term lease, spending

An abdication and resignation ménage à trois: Wily Wally, Tricky Dick, and Peter Pan

the next six months decorating it with the help of Elsie and the notable interior designer Stephane Boudin. The Duchess shopped tirelessly for the perfect antiques, rugs, and accessories, and sought to surround the Duke in treasures and bibelots to remind him of England.

By summer 1939, the house was finished to her exacting standards — a testament to her taste, her organizational skills, and her devotion to the Duke’s comfort. She hired an English butler, a French chef, three English secretaries and, in all, a domestic staff of about 30.

The elegance of Paris suited the Duchess. She dressed beautifully, usually in the designs of the fashion house Mainbocher, and kept herself mannequin thin. Later, designers such as Balenciaga and Givenchy would create dresses exclusively for her. Her fantastic jewelry collection is legendary, and the Duke used every conceivable occasion to bestow some extravagant bauble on his beloved Duchess.

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, triggering World War II; two days later, Britain and France, by virtue of a mutual assistance agreement with Poland, entered the war. While the Duke was assigned to the British

A cordial close encounter: Prince Charles shakes hands with the Duchess of Windsor at the conclusion of his 1972 visit to the Paris home of the exiled royal couple

Military Mission in France with the rank of major-general, the Duchess busied herself with war charities and the French Red Cross. On June 10, 1940, Italy declared war on the Allies, and nine days later the Windsors tearfully left their two lavish houses in France for neutral Spain, and, subsequently, Portugal. That last day in France, the Duke gathered one final bouquet from the garden at La Croe for the Duchess — it was her 44th birthday.

Churchill, now Prime Minister, wanted the Duke to return to England, but the Duke refused unless the Duchess was received by the King and Queen. As an alternative, Churchill, given whispers about Edward’s Nazi sympathies, offered him the governorship of the Bahamas, which he accepted. The Duchess hated their time there (1940 to 1945), and wrote to Aunt Bessie of the oppressive heat, boredom, and her resentment of the British government for their exile: “I would rather have been the mistress of the King than the wife of the Governor of the Bahamas.”

“There was something about her that made you look twice.”

– DIANA VREELAND, Vogue editor

She busied herself working with the local Red Cross and two welfare clinics established to reduce infant mortality rates among the population.

They were not welcome in England, and, in fact, the Duke’s small salary from the King was contingent on their staying away.

In the autumn of 1941, the Windsors visited the United States, where they were greeted as celebrities in New York, Washington, and the Duchess’s hometown of Baltimore, where a reported 200,000 lined the streets to hail them.

In 1942, the Duke asked the King to recognize the Duchess with a royal title for her charitable work in the Bahamas. The answer was a resounding no.

In spite of all the rejection, the Duchess boldly wrote to Mary, the Queen Mother, “It has always been a source of sorrow and regret to me that I have been the cause of any separation which exists between Mother and Son; and I can’t help but feel there must be moments, however fleeting they may be, when you wonder how David is.”

With the conclusion of the war in 1945, the Duke wanted very much to

The Duchess donated her “Monkey Dress” to the Maryland Historical Society (now the Maryland Center for History and Culture) in 1961. Designed by Hubert de Givenchy (pictured here with Wallis) for his 1954 Spring/ Summer collection, it was inspired by depictions of monkeys on the wallpaper at les Hôtels de Soubise et de Rohan-Strasbourg.

return to England, but only if the royal family would accept his wife. This still impossible, they spent the summer in America, which became a back-up consideration for residency. The Duke hoped to secure a diplomatic post there, which would enable the couple to live tax-free as well as provide a salary. When this did not eventuate, the Windsors returned to La Croe, on which they still maintained a lease, living there until 1949.

“People were always nasty about Wallis. You must remember how jealous people felt when the Prince of Wales fell in love with her.”

– LADY MONCKTON, peeress and Conservative member of the House of Lords

Their financial situation was becoming increasingly difficult; thankfully, that same year, a wealthy French friend offered to lend his Paris house to them. With her usual flair, the Duchess soon transformed the home into a suitable showplace; and it was there that the Duke began writing his memoir, which became a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic.

In February 1952, King George VI died of lung cancer, and the Duke returned to England for the funeral. The Duchess was not invited to accompany him. The following year, Edward returned to England to sit at the deathbed of his mother, Mary. Even after her death, he never forgave her for not allowing him to bring the Duchess to England, despite his pleas.

By now, the Windsors had established a life in France. In spring 1953, they moved into a city-owned townhouse in Paris, paying only a token amount as rent (President Charles de Gaulle had lived there just after the war). Aided by her staff, the Duchess transformed the residence with her usual flair, creating an ambiance of opulence with less money than one might expect.

Additionally, in 1952 they leased a house in the French countryside, only a 45-minute drive from Paris; sales from the Duke’s memoir enabled the couple to eventually buy and restore the place, known as Le Moulin de la Tuilerie (The Mill of Tuilerie). And the Duchess set about writing her memoir. Published in 1956, it, too, sold well, helping defray expenses at the Paris townhouse.

At the mill, she decorated with a relaxed, informal elegance, while the Duke puttered in his garden. This period marked a rather frenetic spell of entertaining and jet-setting, probably a last spurt of the Duchess’ formidable energy as the Duke began to fade.

They traveled often to the U.S., establishing friendships with the millionaire set in New York and Palm Beach. It was around this time, the early 1950s, that the Duchess is rumored to have had an affair with Jimmy Donahue, the flamboyant heir to the Woolworth dime stores fortune. The fact that Donahue was blatantly homosexual in an era when few were openly gay merely fueled speculation about the Duchess’ sexual ambiguity.

“Edward gave up the most powerful position in the world for this woman. The fact that he abdicated his throne left many people devastated, and of course they had to demonize Wallis.”

– MADONNA

The Duke, as well, was not exempt from popular gossip. Some surmised that he was latently homosexual and drawn to Donahue as well. In the deliciously gossipy 2012 memoir Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars, liaison arranger (to put it as genteelly as possible) Scotty Bowers claims to have procured same-sex partners for numerous highprofile stars, including Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, and Cary Grant, as well as, you guessed it, both the Duke and the Duchess.

Close friends of the Duchess have commented that her affair with Donahue lasted about five years and was tolerated by the Duke, albeit with sadness and desperation. The Donahue episode dovetails neatly with the notion of Wallis as gay icon.

On a personal note, throughout my life I have often been asked, “Are you related to the Duchess of Windsor?” Many of these inquiries have come from gay men. Marylanders, on the other hand, rarely have mentioned her to me, a phenomenon best exemplified by my father, who acknowledged Wallis

publicly only when contacted by a newspaper for a quote. Invariably, he called her “merchandisable,” which showed a subtle humor that I did not appreciate at the time.

The Duchess’ appeal to the gay community, as best I can tell, stems from a combination of her outcast status and her preoccupation with style and fashion. And, of course, her connection to a clutch of members of the Gay Icon Hall of Fame (British division) — Cecil Beaton, Sir Henry “Chips” Channon, and Somerset Maugham — has merely served to enhance her bona fides. Tellingly, the Duchess enjoys such enormous truck in these quarters to have inspired the popular British drag queen Jonny Woo to portray her on stage.

“She is, to look at, phenomenal. She is flat and angular and could have been designed for a medieval playing card. I should be tempted to classify her as an American woman par excellence were it not for the suspicion that she is not a woman at all.”

– JAMES POPE-HENNESSY, British biographer

Drag queen Jonny Woo (left) as the Duchess of Windsor (right)

H. L. Mencken

COURTING DISASTER

Not surprisingly, H. L. Mencken, the American journalist/editor/ cultural and literary critic, cast his skeptical eye on the brouhaha surrounding King Edward VIII’s abdication in a lengthy column for The Evening Sun, Baltimore’s afternoon newspaper, on December 21, 1936, 11 days after the king royally defenestrated himself.

Mencken did not suffer fools — gladly or in any other fashion — and he regularly skewered them in print. That includes Edward, whom Mencken had recently labeled “an idiot.” He begins his Evening Sun piece by meticulously providing pre-abdication background on the fraught relationship between King Edward and both the U.K. government and the Church of England, portraying Edward’s actions as a monarchal power grab.

“If he had won,” Mencken writes, “he would have been the undisputed boss of Britain, and the first real King on the throne of his fathers since Henry VIII. But he lost.”

Next, Mencken homes in on Edward’s questionable lifestyle. “The fact remains that his late Majesty kept the kind of company that most men of any sense and dignity try to avoid,” he asserts. “His project of marrying La Simpson was only the climax of a long series of lesser jackanaperies, all of them unworthy of a man holding responsible office in a civilized state. In its first form, it appears, it actually involved making her Queen.... [But] kings do not marry ladies who have other husbands out at pasture.”

Shaking his head, Mencken concludes his vivisection of Edward: “He is a poor fish who has brought his life to complete disaster, and if, in his lonely despair, he now regrets his monumental folly, it is certainly no wonder. It will be, indeed, no wonder if he shoots himself before La Simpson shakes off her shackles [divorces]. But he has no one to blame for his miseries, present and to come, but himself. He has walked straight into the buzz saw, his eyes to the front and whistling gaily.”

According to author Fred Hobson’s well-received 1994 biography Mencken: A Life, the newspaperman “was not surprised to hear,” Hobson relates, “that Wally Simpson, a Baltimore native, found [the column] ‘very unfriendly.’”

Win at Cherry Grove, the Warfield cemetery at Oakdale

Dead Warfields

5

“An inglorious peace is better than a dishonorable war.”

–MARK TWAIN, Glances at History, 1906

The Warfield clan in America hatched when Richard Warfield (born in August 1647 in London) left his parents behind and was brought to Maryland in 1659, age 12, as an indentured servant to a man named John Sisson, who, in turn, bequeathed him to Cornelius Howard. Richard completed his service in 1670.

His emigration from England may have saved his life. In 1665, the Black Plague killed 200,000 people in London, including, apparently, Richard’s father, John Warfield. The following year, the Great Fire of London destroyed much of what remained of the city, post-plague.

In the New World, Richard married Elinor Browne, daughter of Captain John Browne, a mariner who traveled between London and Maryland; the couple settled in Anne Arundel County, south of Baltimore, where Richard prospered as a farmer.

He was a New World man in full, becoming a major landholder, his property consisting of nine tracts, each bearing a separate name; my favorites are “Hope” and “Warfield’s Right.” He also owned the Black Horse Tavern.

The Warfields were a prolific bunch. In avoidance of interminable lists of who begat whom, let us proceed to the fourth generation of Warfields, based, like Richard, in Anne Arundel County. Charles Alexander Warfield, born in December 1751 to Azel and Sarah (Griffith) Warfield, attended the University of Pennsylvania, married Elizabeth Dorsey Ridgely in 1771, and purchased half of the 1,300 acres of Ridgely’s Great Park, the other half being his bride’s dowry. There, on an estate he called Bushy Park, he built a stately home and operated a plantation maintained by slaves, while also becoming a successful businessman and physician (he obtained a diploma from the College of Medicine of Maryland).

Three years after his marriage, the war cry of revolution echoed throughout Maryland. Warfield was a leading member of the local Whig Club, which espoused independence from Britain; in fact, its constituents wore hats inscribed with the slogan “Liberty and Independence, or Death in pursuit of it.” He also was appointed a major in the Anne Arundel militia.

Such was the spirit in Maryland when, on October 14, 1774, the brig Peggy Stewart arrived in the port of Annapolis from London carrying a ton of tea (among many other commodities, plus 53 indentured servants), a good taxed by the British and which rebellious colonists vowed to ban from import.

Anthony Stewart — co-owner of the ship, a local merchant, and an unabashed royalist — paid the tax on all the required goods on board the vessel, including the tea (which had been smuggled onboard, unbeknownst to him, by the cargo’s importer, Thomas Charles Williams & Co.).

Stewart was afraid that if he did not comply with the law and pay the tea tax that the Peggy Stewart (named for his daughter), already leaking water, would be sent back to London with all of its goods, plus the indentured servants, still unloaded, risking not only their lives, but those of the crew.

His compliance with the hated tea tax did not sit well with local political incendiaries, including Warfield; they called for the burning of the ship. Warfield, along with others, helped incite his disgruntled Whigs and likeminded patriots into something of a mob hysteria. In a conciliatory move,

Record of 1769 shipment of Warfield tobacco to London

OPPOSITE PAGE:

“The Burning of the Peggy Stewart,” by Francis Blackwell Mayer, 1896

on October 19, the owners of the Peggy Stewart, along with the importers of the ship’s cargo, torched the brig and its tea themselves after all of the other goods and the indentured servants were brought ashore. The ship burned to the waterline and sank in the harbor. The episode came to be known as the Annapolis Tea Party, modeled on the considerably more famous Boston Tea Party of December 1773. This act on the part of Warfield and others helped guide the course Maryland was to pursue in the looming American Revolution.

“In the South, the war is what A.D. is elsewhere; they date from it.”

– MARK TWAIN,

Life on the Mississippi, 1883

Two years after the Annapolis Tea Party, Warfield was named First Major of the Elk Ridge battalion of the state militia in the war with Britain, and undertook the manufacture of saltpeter for the revolutionary cause. The next year, 1777, he became a judge of the Anne Arundel County court. He died in January 1813, age 61. His legacy lives on, however, in the form of several paintings: the mural The Burning of the Peggy Stewart, by Charles Yardley Turner, commissioned by the city of Baltimore in 1904 and unveiled the next year, adorns the west wall of the lobby of the Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr., Courthouse downtown; Jack Manley Rose’s 1943 mural of the same name now resides in the collection of the museum of the non-profit group Historic Annapolis; and Francis Blackwell Mayer’s 1896 The Annapolis Tea Party of 1774 can be found in the Maryland State Archives.

Choosing Sides

Albert Gallatin Warfield, known as “A.G.,” was born on February 24, 1817, in the original colonial house built on the Oakdale property in 1768 by his father, Benjamin, from whom he inherited numerous slaves and a portion of the estate’s plantation. In 1838, he commissioned an elegant manor house for Oakdale, spending a long and comfortable life there with his wife, Margaret Gassaway Warfield, daughter of 96 Gassaway Watkins of Revolutionary War fame. Together, they raised six children: one daughter and five sons.

Warfield was considered a cultivated, refined, and courteous gentleman. Although one of the largest slave owners in the state, he nonetheless felt moral ambiguity about the institution of slavery, and manumitted (freed) his slaves when they turned age 40. He was affiliated with the Democratic Party, and, although approached, never accepted a chance to serve in a high political office; he did, however, agree to take on the role of president of the Howard County school board.

Two of his sons, Albert Jr. and Gassaway, served in the Confederate Army. A third, Edwin, became Governor of Maryland, president of the Fidelity and Deposit Company of Baltimore, and owner of The Daily Record, the city’s business newspaper, for which John, a fourth brother, worked as publisher. The fifth brother, Frank, died as a toddler.

“Our Civil War was a blot on our history, but not as great a blot as the buying and selling of Negro souls.”

–MARK TWAIN,

Quoted by Clara Clemens Gabrilowitsch in a letter to the New York Herald Tribune

, November 19,

1941

The period between 1854 and 1868 was a tumultuous one in both Maryland and the rest of the nation. The growth of sectionalism shattered the existing political alignment, and a reluctant Maryland was swept into the Civil War.

Albert Jr., born at Oakdale on October 6, 1842, was the first son to enlist, signing up in 1862. He was 20 when he left Stanmore academy, a private school, in Sandy Spring, Montgomery County, Maryland — located about 15 miles from Oakdale — to join the Confederate cause. Sandy Spring was populated by numerous Quakers, ardent abolitionists, most of whom had freed their slaves by the early 1800s. The town, in fact, served as a station for the Underground Railroad, which guided slaves there from the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Virginia. Many of the houses in Sandy Spring had trap doors that led to cellars, from which slaves moved north to freedom.

Having read about A.G.’s conflicted views of slavery and knowing that Albert Jr. was educated among Quaker abolitionists, I was confused by Albert Jr.’s Southern loyalties. My father’s simplistic theory was that people like him “just didn’t want the Yankees tellin’ ‘em what to do.”

The Civil War Battle of Antietam was fought on September 17, 1862, between Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and Union General George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac. It occurred near Sharpsburg, Maryland, located 40 miles from Oakdale, the Warfield estate, and remains the bloodiest day in United States history, with a combined tally of 22,717 dead, wounded, or missing.

Numerous Marylanders experienced severe trauma in choosing sides in the Civil War. Western and Northern residents held fast with the Union, while the plantation regions of Southern Maryland and on the state’s Eastern Shore sympathized with the Confederacy. Despite this schism, in April 1861, the state’s General Assembly voted overwhelmingly not to secede from the Union, citing a lack of authority to do so. But the body also stipulated that the Union could not use state roads for troop movement.

Albert Jr. joined the 1st Maryland Cavalry of the Confederate Army, in which he was to spend three frustrating years. Within weeks of his enlistment, he came down with typhoid fever. As he lay ill in Winchester, West Virginia, his unit evacuated to avoid an impending Union attack. Too sick to follow, he hid successfully for 10 days, but was then captured and put on a train and sent to the Camp Chase prison in Columbus, Ohio.

“A wanton waste of projectiles.”

–

MARK TWAIN, from his 1881 speech “The Art of War”

By spring 1863, Albert Jr. was transferred to Fort McHenry in Baltimore, where he was exchanged for a Union soldier. He was not with his regiment for long when he was sent on an important scouting expedition with five other men. Almost immediately upon setting out, all were captured by Union soldiers and taken to Point Lookout prison camp in St. Mary’s County on the Eastern Shore, infamous for its cruel treatment of inmates. There were no barracks. Instead, the men slept in leaking tents with no fires for heat. During the intensely cold winter months, four to seven men froze to death each night. Rations were so meager that inmates suffered pitifully from hunger. Albert Jr. spent three miserable years there.

An indomitable spirit kept him alive. He made two determined escape attempts. For the first, he dug a tunnel from his tent to a point outside the prison using a pocket knife, carrying the excavated dirt out in his pockets. Once finished, he dragged a canoe he had built through the tunnel, planning to cross the nearby Potomac River in it. But he was confronted by Union soldiers just as he emerged. Ordered to halt, he made a break for it, but was

quickly captured when soldiers fired upon him, a musket ball grazing his temple just under the scalp and exiting behind an ear.

It would be hard to top digging a tunnel with a pocket knife, secretly building a canoe, and surviving a musket ball to the head. However, Albert Jr.’s second attempt at freedom was at least as dramatic. A smallpox hospital was located just outside Point Lookout. At three o’clock each afternoon, the hospital’s ambulance would come by to pick up prisoners whom the doctors had diagnosed with the disease. Warfield procured a piece of wire, which he heated red-hot and applied to his face, creating the appearance of red papillae. In this way, he was assumed stricken with the disease and secured a ride in the ambulance. Once outside the prison gates, he slipped out of the ambulance, hiding until nightfall, and then headed south, but was soon captured by Union soldiers.

In late March 1865, as the war was winding down, Albert Jr. was exchanged a second time for a Union prisoner. He rejoined the Confederate Army and witnessed the rebels’ evacuation of Richmond, the Confederacy’s capital, on April 2, 1865, and tells of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, conferring with three of his generals — J.C. Breckinridge, Braxton Bragg, and George Gibbs Dibrell — at Abbeville, South Carolina, on May 2. Albert Jr. was among those who surrendered at Washington, Georgia, on May 9. A month later, with the war over, he was back at Oakdale.

The Union prison camp at Point Lookout in Maryland — the scene of Albert Warfield Jr.’s daring escapes

He remained there only briefly before embarking on a successful career as a civil engineer, working mostly in railroad construction, and married Celina Duperu in 1879. Four years later, he died, age 41, of an aortic aneurysm, speculated to be a residual effect of his exposure to harsh prison life during the war, and was buried in Oakdale’s family cemetery, Cherry Grove.

“There is not a single celebrated Southern name in any of the departments of human industry except those of war, assassination, lynching, murder, the duel, repudiation, and massacre.”

– MARK TWAIN, Notebooks & Journals, Volume II, 1877-1883

Gassaway Watkins Warfield, Albert Jr.’s younger brother, was born on November 29, 1846, at Oakdale, the third son of A.G. and Margaret. He attended Rock Hill College, in Ellicott City, Howard County, from 1861 until July 1864. Longing to join his big brother, Gassaway signed on with the Confederate Army’s 1st Maryland Cavalry, the same unit to which Albert Jr. belonged. Its first mission was to raid Point Lookout to free Confederate prisoners, among them his brother, but that effort was abandoned in favor of assisting in the bombardment of Washington. Under heavy fire, however, his company retreated to nearby Poolesville, in Maryland, rested for a few days, and then started on a raid into Pennsylvania, where it burned the town of Chambersburg.

They moved on to attempt to capture Keyser, West Virginia, but were repulsed by Union artillery, and in retreat crossed the South Branch Mountain ridge from Romney into Moorefield, where they slept for the first time in seven days.

At the break of dawn on August 6, 1864, they were awakened by Union cavalry, and, without a shot being fired, made prisoners of war and marched on foot to Wheeling Penitentiary for three days, before being sent to Camp Chase in Ohio. Gassaway’s active duty amounted to only 26 days.

By that time, conditions at Camp Chase, where Albert Jr. had been imprisoned two years earlier, had drastically deteriorated. The facility had been built

for 4,000 prisoners, but now held 10,000. The constant mud, open latrines, pitiful rations, and filthy conditions were a living hell. Men slept on naked planks, causing sores on their skeletal bodies.

Many were dressed in rags and froze to death, as fires were not allowed after dark. Rations did little but keep the men ravenous — a one-inch slice of bread and a spoonful of navy beans a day. The cruelties of the guards were widespread. Smallpox raged among the inmates.

Gassaway fell ill with a fever that October. Fellow prisoners, convinced that he could not survive in prison, wrote to A.G., urging him to do something to procure the release of his son. A.G. used his connections to ascertain that Gassaway could indeed be released if he would swear an oath of allegiance to the United States. Gassaway refused, saying, “I would rather die than sacrifice my principles and forsake the cause I have fought for.”

After a long period of suffering, Gassaway died January 14, 1865, and his remains were returned to Oakdale, where he was buried at Cherry Grove.

As for A.G. and Margaret, they spent their declining years happily at Oakdale. He died on November 4, 1891, while Margaret lived until August 5, 1896. Both joined sons Albert Jr., Gassaway, and Frank in the family cemetery.

The Twain Shall Meet

“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

–MARK

TWAIN, Mark Twain’s Notebook, 1894

The “Mona Lisa,” with her enigmatic countenance, has enchanted the world for centuries. Her beguiling smile embodies a universal human mystique.

A photo of my paternal great-grandfather Edwin Warfield, together with Mark Twain (nom de plume of Samuel Clemens), taken in 1907, has always been my personal visual talisman — Men in Full representing the best of their era. They invented, reinvented, and then re-reinvented themselves, pivoting and pirouetting as necessary.

Twain had been a typesetter, steamboat operator, gold speculator, lecturer, newspaper reporter, technology investor, humorist, and, of course, popular author. My great-grandfather had been a schoolteacher, lawyer, surveyor of the port, register of wills, insurance company entrepreneur, newspaper publisher, state legislator, and, at the time of the photo with Twain, served as Governor of Maryland.

Mark Twain (right) with Edwin Warfield at the Governor’s Mansion in Annapolis in 1907

Twain came to Annapolis, the state capital, in May 1907 at the invitation of the Governor’s wife (my great-grandmother), Emma Nicodemus Warfield, as a special guest and entertainer for a charity event to be held at the Governor’s Mansion, the residence for the state’s highest elected official, that would raise money for a Presbyterian church. Twain was 71 at the time, and it would be one of his final public performances.

An overwhelming demand for advance tickets, however, forced the event to be moved to the larger State House, home of the General Assembly, Maryland’s legislature. The fundraiser brought in a whopping $600, a not inconsiderable sum in that day, and sparked a friendship between the Warfield and Clemens families.

At a dinner held in Twain’s honor the following night, he told the story of how he was almost arrested for smoking while touring the Naval Academy grounds during his stay in Annapolis. He also defended his practice of wearing white suits to dinner; he said they made him look younger.

“It was all done by Mrs. Warfield, not the Governor,” notes Mimi Calver, a staffer with the Maryland State Archives. “It was all her doing.”

Perhaps apocryphal, perhaps true, Twain supposedly paid a visit to Governor and his wife at nearby Oakdale while in town. It makes sense when you consider that they were, in effect, Twain’s hosts for the Annapolis trip.

Anyway, the anecdote goes that while gazing out at the horizon on the expansive estate, Twain noted, in his famously epigrammatic fashion, “God, the Indians, and Warfields.”

Another Warfield Big Fish story? Maybe, maybe not. But what difference does it make, because not to mention it would constitute a criminal omission.

My visual impression of my great-grandfather’s iconic stature comes in large part from his photographic history, particularly images of him with Twain, plus others with three-time presidential candidate, Congressman, and noted orator William Jennings Bryan. If a picture is worth a thousand words, Edwin Warfield’s photographic legacy is encyclopedic.

April 1907 invitation from my great-grandmother

Emma Warfield to Samuel Clemens

Born at Oakdale on May 7, 1848, Edwin was the third of six children of Albert Gallatin Warfield and Margaret Gassaway Watkins Warfield. Unlike his two older brothers, Albert Jr. and Gassaway, he did not fight in the Civil War; quite simply, he was too young.

Edwin was educated at Howard County public schools and at St. Timothy’s Hall, a private institution in Baltimore County. In 1866, he became a public school teacher, even though he had no special training to be one. While he taught, he studied law and later was admitted to the state bar. Additionally, because the Civil War had left the family with little besides its land, he interrupted his education to work on the estate’s plantation for several years.

“I am quite sure that (bar one) I have no race prejudice, and I think I have no color prejudices, nor caste prejudices. Indeed, I know it. I can stand any society. All I care to know is that man is a human being — that is enough for me; he can’t be any worse.”

–MARK

TWAIN, “Concerning the Jews,” Harper’s Magazine, 1899

Warfield successfully combined political and entrepreneurial careers. His life in public service began in 1874 when he was named the register of wills in Howard County, remaining in the post until 1881, the same year he was appointed to the Maryland Senate, one-half of the state’s legislature, to fill a vacancy. He was reelected in 1883, and ascended to its presidency during the body’s 1886 session. As a reward for his considerable support of Grover Cleveland’s successful Presidential campaign of 1884, he was appointed surveyor of the port of Baltimore, officially assuming the position in April 1885 and staying on until 1890.

During a whirlwind period of activity, he began practicing law in Ellicott City, in Howard County; purchased the town’s newspaper, the Ellicott City Times, which he edited between 1882 and 1886; and founded a bank there, at which he worked until 1890, the same year he married Emma Nicodemus, with whom he would have four children: Carrie, Louise, Emma, and Edwin Jr. Additionally, he bought a Baltimore legal and real estate newspaper in 1887,

Edwin Warfield (fourth from left) with fellow founders of the Fidelity and Deposit Company, 1890

rebranding it as The Daily Record and installing his brother John as its editor. But his most successful and important business accomplishment was his founding of the Fidelity and Deposit Company (F&D), a bonding firm, in 1890.

At the time of F&D’s launch, there were only two companies involved in the bonding business. The Guarantee Company of North America was underwriting fidelity bonds for corporate officers, and the American Surety Company was performing similar tasks for contractors and fiduciaries.

“ When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.”

–FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

Warfield’s significant experience in public service was the catalyst to establish F&D; prior to its formation, public employees were bonded by their friends and family, who acted as sureties. He became F&D’s president, owned 100 shares of its stock, and received an annual salary of $1,800. The company’s ultimate success can be attributed to his business acumen.

In 1892, F&D expanded beyond Maryland, notably to Kentucky, whose major whiskey distilleries were required by the U.S. Department of the Treasury to provide a bond each time their products were warehoused. By the turn of the century, F&D was underwriting businesses in every state in the nation.

(Incidentally, in 1920, Franklin Delano Roosevelt joined Fidelity and Deposit as the vice president of its New York office, working there until 1928, when he was elected Governor of New York, and, four years later, President of the United States. Four F&D officers also went on to be governors of Maryland, including Warfield.)

In 1899, after securing board approval from Fidelity and Deposit, Warfield announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination to become Maryland’s governor. He faced strong opposition from U.S. Senator Arthur Pue Gorman, who led the party’s state organization (and, curiously, whose seat Warfield had assumed in the Maryland State Senate back in 1881); I. Freeman

Basis, who headed the party in Baltimore City; and John Walter Smith, a U.S. Congressman from Maryland’s Eastern Shore. While Warfield received considerable support, Smith secured the nomination and went on to win the general election, serving as governor until 1904.

Building on the strong base he established in the 1899 campaign, Warfield again ran for governor in 1903, was chosen unanimously at the Dems’ state convention, and defeated the Republican candidate, Stevenson A. Williams, by more than 12,600 votes in the general election. He was inaugurated as Maryland’s 45th governor on January 13, 1904; in a move unthinkable today, he continued to perform his duties at F&D while in public office.

Less than one month later, beginning February 7, the Great Baltimore Fire raged for 30 hours, destroying more than 1,500 buildings and causing more than $100 million (in 1904 dollars) in damage. Its advance was halted less than a block from the headquarters of Fidelity and Deposit. By proclamation, Warfield immediately declared a legal holiday in the city until February 15, because banks and trust companies were unable to access their vaults amid the fire’s resulting debris. He also chaired the Relief Fund Committee established in the wake of the blaze.

The most important political event to occur during his administration was the campaign for the adoption of what was known as the Poe Amendment to the Constitution of Maryland, which would have disenfranchised many of the state’s African-American voters. Written by John Prentiss Poe — dean of the University of Maryland School of Law, a committed segregationist, and a political confrere of Arthur Pue Gorman, still a U.S. Senator and leader of the state’s Democratic Party — the amendment’s “grandfather clause,” according to the prolific author and historian Elihu Riley, “would not deprive a white man of his vote, and affected colored people only.”

While championed by Gorman and fellow Democrats, the amendment was staunchly opposed by Governor Warfield, who feared that its vague wording eventually could jeopardize every citizen’s right to vote, including whites’. The amendment attracted national attention. In fact, celebrated educator, author, orator, and presidential advisor Booker T. Washington sent monetary resources

toward the printing and distribution of pamphlets advocating against it. Placed before state voters in a referendum in November 1905, the Poe Amendment was soundly defeated, scuttled by an alliance of foreign-born citizens, Republicans, and blacks.

Democrats never forgave Warfield for his actions. Toward the end of his term, with party leaders firmly aligned against him, he decided not to run for reelection in 1907.

Warfield’s time as governor was marked by a keen sense of patriotism and an interest in Maryland history. He was responsible for restoring the Old Senate Chamber in the State House in Annapolis to the same condition it was in when, in December 1783, George Washington resigned his commission as commander-in-chief of American Revolutionary War forces there during an address to the Continental Congress. Warfield also made arrangements for the return of the body of John Paul Jones, the Revolutionary War naval hero, from its place of burial in Paris to be re-interred at the Naval Academy. And he was responsible for issuing a proclamation declaring the third Thursday of November as the state’s official day of Thanksgiving.

The Great Baltimore Fire, February 1904

Out of office, he segued full time into his duties at Fidelity and Deposit, and, from 1913 until 1920, served as president of the Maryland Historical Society (now the Maryland Center for History and Culture), where his papers now reside.

In late 1919, Warfield’s health began to fail, and he died on March 31, 1920, age 71; like so many of his relatives, he was buried at Oakdale’s Cherry Grove.

“The idea of making negroes citizens of the United States was startling and disagreeable to me, but I have become reconciled to it; and being reconciled to it, and the ice being broken and the principle established, I am ready now for all comers. The idea of seeing a Chinaman a citizen of the United States would have been almost appalling to me a few years ago, but I suppose I can live

through it now.”

–MARK TWAIN, “The Treaty With China,” New York Tribune, August 1868

In its obituary for Warfield, The Baltimore Sun summarized his stewardship of Maryland this way:

As Governor of the State, Mr. Warfield will be remembered not so much as for concrete things — though he accomplished not a little — as for brave defiance of dictation, his honest and unswerving devotion to public interests, his demonstration that a Marylander need not beg the consent of anyone to serve his State, if he have any real Maryland manhood in him. He reinvested the office of Governor with the dignity and independence that belonged to it in the old days. He converted it from the satrapy of a powerful machine into an unfettered agency of the people, a public trust responsible only to the public. For this, had he done nothing else, he would richly deserve to be held in grateful memory. He was one of our “pioneers” in this as in business, and his vision, faith, and courage remain moral guerdons — for cleaner and freer government.

As Clear as Black and White

My interest in our family’s varied and conflicted history of tolerance as it applied to slavery was piqued after I began corresponding in the late 1990s with Stefany Strong, the great-granddaughter of Alexander Cook, Edwin Warfield’s coachman — in effect, Cook, an African-American, was the Governor’s chauffeur.

Although born and raised in Baltimore, Stefany has lived in Florida since 1986. There, she has worked as a news reporter and anchor in television, as a public information officer with the Florida Department of Health, and, most recently, as a freelance writer. Throughout, she has remained passionate about her Maryland roots, especially as they relate to slavery, and has devoted considerable time and energy to unraveling her heritage, including enlisting my help with her genealogical crusade.

Stefany and I have exchanged emails over the years. In 2004, she wrote:

We have Alex Cook’s birth certificate. The story about Alex and the Governor has been going through the family from generation to generation. Everyone talks about how special the relationship was between the Governor and his coachman. Alex was very fond of the Governor. He was a loyal, trusted coachman. It was a very honorable job to drive the Governor. The Governor gave the family some handme-down furniture from the Governor’s mansion or Oakdale. The furniture was

The Governor (left) and his coachman (right)

expensive and had to be cherished. He said the Governor was nice to him and the other servants. Alex loved horses. That’s all he cared about, day and night. Horses, horses, horses. I still believe that Alex’s parents were slaves for the Governor’s father.

That same year, Stefany faxed me a short article that appeared in the December 1904 edition of The Advertiser in Annapolis. Headlined “Mrs. Warfield in Runaway Accident,” the account reads:

Mrs. Edwin Warfield, wife of the Governor, and Mrs. Oswald Tilghman, wife of the Secretary of State, were in a runaway accident Monday afternoon, and serious injury to both of them was narrowly averted by the cool-headedness of the colored coachman. The carriage was almost demolished. The accident occurred near Germantown, about one mile from Annapolis. They were driving behind two of the Governor’s horses. Suddenly, the animals became frightened and started to run. They became unmanageable, and the driver, realizing the seriousness of the situation, concluded to guide them into a pole alongside the road. This was done so that the carriage collided with the pole and the animals were brought to a standstill.

Stefany’s great-grandfather might have saved the life of my great-grandmother.

WALLIS IN BALTIMORE

When Wallis returned to Maryland, it was for practical issues such as finding a cemetery and social reasons such as catching up with friends and attending the Maryland Hunt Cup and Hunt Ball. While she may have been considered the black sheep of the royal family, in her hometown of Baltimore she was a royal icon who commanded pomp and circumstance.

Over the years, the Duke and Duchess made numerous trips to Baltimore, but none compares to the public fanfare associated with their October 1941 visit — five years after the Duke abdicated his throne — a spectacle worthy of a reigning queen and king. More than 200,000 watched as a motorcade took the couple from Baltimore’s City Hall to the Baltimore Country Club. There, the Windsors greeted nearly 1,300 guests for a tea held in their honor, including a bevy of Wallis’ old chums and, significantly, her first teacher, Ada O’Donnell, whose kindergarten Wallis attended.

Local banker and philanthropist W. Wallace Lanahan served as the reception’s chairman, aided by his wife, Eleanor, Wallis’ friend from the 1920s when the two women fox hunted together in Virginia. The previous evening, the Duke and Duchess dined at the Lanahans’ home. Also on hand, my grandfather, Edwin Warfield, Jr., and his wife, KayKay, plus Wallis’ uncle, General Henry M. Warfield and his wife, Rebecca, with whom the Windsors stayed during their visit. During the reception, celebrated operatic soprano Rosa Ponselle, by then retired and living at a villa outside Baltimore, sang “Home, Sweet Home,” “The Star Spangled Banner,” and “God Save the King.”

Post-abdication, the Windsors, in effect banished from England, lived in several places in France, ultimately settling (thanks to French largesse) into an almost rent-free villa adjacent to Paris’ Bois de Boulogne. The Duke’s chilly relations with the British monarchy meant that a royal burial back home in England was not an option; this circumstance launched the Windsors’ search for an appropriate permanent resting place, including a 1950s trip to Baltimore to

confer with prominent Baltimore lawyer Clarence Miles, who served as their cemetery counsel and consiglieri. Clarence had married Wallis’ friend Eleanor in 1952, four years after the death of W. Wallace Lanahan, and the two couples became close friends.

Years later, before fashion became a fixture in museums, the Duchess demonstrated her love and respect for her hometown by donating one of her treasured gowns, the “Monkey Dress,” to the Maryland Center for History and Culture, located in midtown Baltimore. Created by Givenchy in 1954, it featured layers of white silk organza embroidered with green and teal tracery and a half-dozen monkeys playing musical instruments.

“I danced with her one time at the Hunt Ball, and found her to be a beautiful lady,” Ted Warfield said,“noting that she was 17 years older than he.”

–EDWIN WARFIELD III, The Washington Post, April 26, 1968

FROM TOP LEFT: Wallis and her Uncle Henry Warfield in 1941; Wallis eyeballs Henri Matisse’s 1927 painting “Ballet Dancer Seated on a Stool” at the Baltimore Museum of Art in January 1955; the Duke and Duchess of Windsor with their friends Clarence and Eleanor Miles during a visit in the 1950s; the Duchess and Duke stroll through the crowd at the 1947 Maryland Hunt Cup; Clarence Miles, the Duke, and the Duchess greet opera soprano Rosa Ponselle at a cancer fundraising event at the Belvedere Hotel in January 1955.

CLOCKWISE

Guest List for Reception with Duke and Duchess of Windsor at the Baltimore Country Club, October 13, 1941

Abell, Mrs. Arunah S.

Abell, Mr. & Mrs. Arunah S., 3d.

Abell, Mr. & Mrs. Edwin F., 2d. Abell, Miss Margaret A.

Abell, Mr. Robert L.

Abell, Mrs. Walter W.

Abramson, Mr. & Mrs. Leon

Adams, Judge & Mrs. Rowland K. Aiken, Mr. & Mrs. Newton Alcock, Mr. John L.

Alexander, Mr. & Mrs. Charles B. Ambler, Miss Virginia

Ames, Mr. & Mrs. C. Delano.

Anderson, Miss Catherine G.

Anderson, Mrs. Oliver S. Appel, Mr. & Mrs. John F. Appel, Mr. & Mrs. Lawrence F.

Armor, Mr. & Mrs. George M.

Arthur, Mr. & Mrs. James F.

Arthur, Mr. & Mrs. Joseph

Baetjer, Mr. & Mrs. Charles H. Baetjer, Mr. Harry N. Baetjer, Mr. Howard

Baetjer, Dr. Walter

Baker, Mr. D T., 3d.

Baker, Mr. & Mrs. Richard M.

Baker, Mr. & Mrs. William G. Baldwin, Mr. & Mrs. II. Streett Baldwin, Mr. & Mrs. Summerfield, Jr.

Banks, Mr. & Mrs. Andrew, Jr. Barnett, Mrs. George Barrett, Doctor & Mrs. Arthur G. Barrett, Mrs. Elsie Bartle, Mr. & Mrs. Thomas P. Barton, Mr. & Mrs. Carlyle

Barton, Mr. & Mrs. Randolph. Jr. Baskervill, Mr. & Mrs. William M. Bass, Mr. J. August, Jr. Battye, Mr. & Mrs. K. Baugh, Mrs. Ernest V., Jr. Baugh, Mrs. Fred H. Beach, Mr. & Mrs. Robert W. Beale, Mr. & Mrs. James B. Beer, Mr. Eugene H. Beer, Eugene H., Jr.

Beer, Mrs. Eugene H., Jr. Benton, Mrs. Luther Berney, Mr. & Mrs. Sidney. Bird, Mr. & Mrs. Aldine R. Black, Mr. & Mrs. Gary. Black. Mr. & Mrs. Harry C. Blackford, Mr. Eugene Bland, Mr. & Mrs. R. Howard Boak, Commander & Mrs. James Earl Bond, Miss Anna Bond, Judge Carroll T. Bonnett, Mr. & Mrs. William Boone, Mrs. R. Sanchez Bonnell, Mr. & Mrs. Robert O. Bosley, Mr. & Mrs. Charles B. Bowman, Doctor & Mrs. Isaiah Boyce, Mr. & Mrs. Howard.

Bramble, Mr. & Mrs. Glenn C.

Bradley, Mr. & Mrs. R. Emmett Brandt, Miss Anna D. Bratney, Mr. Bertrand H.

Brent, Mrs. Duncan K.

Brewster, Mr. & Mrs.

Benjamin, 3d.

Briscoe, Mr. & Mrs. Philander B. Briscoe, Mr. Straith

Broening, Mr. & Mrs. William F. Brookes, Mr. & Mrs. A. G.

Brooks, Mrs. Archie H.

Brown, Mr. & Mrs. Charles H.

Brown, Mr. & Mrs. George, Jr.

Brown, Mr. H. Carroll

Brown, Mrs. Hunter

Brown, Mr. Joseph A.

Browne, Mr. & Mrs. C. Willing, Jr.

Broyles, Dr. & Mrs. Edwin N.

Bruce, Mr. & Mrs. Albert C.

Bruce, Mr. & Mrs. Howard

Bruce, Mr. & Mrs. James

Bruce, Mr. & Mrs. William Cabell

Byran, Mr. & Mrs. Charles E.

Buckler, Mrs. E. S.

Budeke, Mrs. George M.

Burker, Mrs. Leslie

Busch, Mr. & Mrs. Frank F.

Butcher, Colonel & Mrs. Edwin Butler, Mr. & Mrs. Thomas B. Byron, Rep. Katherine Edgar

Carey, Mr. & Mrs. George A. Carman, Mr. & Mrs. Robert R. Carroll, Mr. & Mrs. Douglas G. Carton, Mr. & Mrs. Lawrence R.

Casey, Mr. & Mrs. William J. Cashman. Mr. H. S.

Cassell, Mr. & Mrs. W. Barry Chambers, Mr. & Mrs. Daniel B., Jr.

Chapman, Mr. & Mrs. R. Bayley Chappell, Mrs. Lillian S. Chesnut, Judge W. Calvin Christansen, Mrs. C.

Clark, Mr. & Mrs. Raymond S. Clemson, Mr. & Mrs. Charles O. Clothworthy, Mrs. C. Baker

Coate, Mr. & Mrs. Joseph M. Cobb, Mr. & Mrs. George

Cochran, Mr. & Mrs. William F.

Cochran, Mr. & Mrs. William F. Jr.,

Cochrane, Mr. & Mrs. Lawrence V.

Coffin, Mr. & Mrs. Phillip O.

Cohn, Mr. Charles M.

Cole, Rep. & Mrs. William P., Jr.

Coleman, Judge & Mrs. William C.

Collingsworth, Mr. & Mrs. Robert L.

Colston, Dr. & Mrs. J. A. C.

Conroy, Mr. & Mrs. John F.

Cooney, Mrs. Michael J.

Cooper, Mr. &

Mrs. J. Crossman, Jr.

Cooper, Mr. & Mrs. Joseph W. J.

Coulter, Mr. & Mrs. C. Harold

Cross, Mr. & Mrs. Alfred E.

Cross, Mr. & Mrs. Francis

Cullen, Dr. & Mrs. Thomas S.

Cutler, Mr. & Mrs. George.

Dabney, Doctor

& Mrs. William M.

D’Alesandro, Representative and Mrs. Thomas, Jr.

Daiger, Mr. & Mrs. Matthias L.

Dallam, Mr. & Mrs. C. B.

Daney, Mr. & Mrs. Bryan

Daniell, Mrs. Isabell K.

Darby, Mrs. Cecilia

Darrell, Mr. & Mrs. H. Cavendish

Davis, Mr. & Mrs. E. Asbury

Davis, Mrs. Edward

Davis, Mr. & Mrs. Harry Hartman

deBullet, Mr. & Mrs. Eugene

DeCock, Mr. & Mrs. Frederick T.

Deetrich, Mrs. Walter

Deford, Mr. & Mrs. John E.

Deford, Mr. & Mrs. Robert B.

Delano, Captain & Mrs. John S.

Dell, Mr. & Mrs. A. L.

Denison, Mrs. Charles C.

Dennis, Mr. Oregon Milton

Dennis, Judge & Mrs. Samuel K.

Dickerson, Judge Edwin T.

Dill, Mr. & Mrs. Alan

Dinning, Mr. & Mrs. E. Lawrence, Jr.

Dorsey, Mr. & Mrs. Francis C.

Dreyer, Jr., Mr. & Mrs. E. D.

Duer, Mr. & Mrs. A. Adgate

Dugan, Mr. & Mrs. Daniel B.

Dugdale, Mr. & Mrs. Horace K.

Dunean, Mr. & Mrs. A. E.

Dunn, Miss Elizabeth Irwin

Dunn. Mrs. Herbert, O.

Duvall, Mr. & Mrs. Wirl A., Jr.

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Earnest, Mr. & Mrs. C. Bruce

Eaton, Doctor & Mrs. George O.

Eberenz, Mrs. Agnes

Edelman, Mr. & Mrs. Jacob J.

Elderkin, Mr. & Mrs. Clarence E.

Ellet, Mrs. Katherine W.

Elgett, Mr. & Mrs. Harry E.

Ellison, Mr. & Mrs. Daniel

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Evans, Doctor & Mrs. John A.

Everitt, Lieut. George H.

Evers, Reverend & Mrs. Fritz O.

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Ewell, Mrs. Emmett

Eyring Mr. & Mrs. Edward

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Finlay, Mr. & Mrs. Walter H.

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THEY SHOOT DUCHESSES, DON’T THEY?

Cecil Beaton had already established himself as an internationally renowned society, fashion, and Hollywood celebrity photographer by the time he began shooting members of Britain’s royal family in 1930. From then until 1979, his images of the monarchy, from formal portraits to intimate moments, featured Queen Elizabeth and King George VI; their daughters, Princess Margaret and Princess Elizabeth, including the latter’s 1953 coronation as Queen, and her husband, Prince Philip; and their children: Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, and Prince Edward, plus various members of the House of Windsor.

Beaton also was chosen to cover the June 1937 wedding in France of Wallis Warfield Simpson to the newly minted Duke of Windsor, who less than six months earlier had stepped down from his throne as King Edward VIII. Although Beaton became chummy with Wallis before her marriage to Edward and stayed friends with her thereafter, he nonetheless could be brutally frank about her (as he was, privately, about everyone), once describing Wallis as “a brawny great cow or bullock,” a “common, vulgar, strident, second-rate American with no charm.” With friends like that….

“The closer I got to Wallis’ true character, the greater my incredulity and mounting fury that the world has judged her unfairly and unkindly.”

–

ANNA

PASTERNAK,

from her 2019 book The Real Wallis Simpson

Every picture sells a story: (from left) Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Duchess and Duke of Windsor, and Adolf Hitler, October 1937

The Duchess and Hitler

7

“The people who caused me the most trouble were Wallis Simpson and Hitler.”

–QUEEN MARY, Mother of the Duke of Windsor

Fifteen years after I had begun — and then abandoned — this book, stories and people from the past had begun to materialize in my mind. While the book continued to hibernate, another platform for expression emerged: filmmaking. After downloading a movie-making software program, I started crafting a documentary film about the Duchess — a Baltimore boy telling a Baltimore girl’s story.

It seemed to be an auspicious time to resurrect the Duchess, given the recent publication of Andrew Morton’s Wallis in Love. Additionally, my Duchess film would jibe nicely with Edward on Edward, the 1996 two-part TV documentary about Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII’s saga, written and narrated by Prince Edward (the Duke’s grand-nephew and youngest son of Queen Elizabeth II). Mine would be Edwin on Wallis.

My working premise was that the Duchess was an entrepreneur who specialized in men, a mensa of male manipulation, but that her discrimination and discernment were limited. For example, take her scandalous early-1950s affair,

while married to the Duke, with Jimmy Donahue, the gay, party-hearty, 20-yearsher-junior socialite and heir to the Woolworth’s dime stores empire. Even more notoriously, consider her apparent embrace of Adolf Hitler, infamously depicted in a 1937 photo of Wallis delightedly — with Edward smiling approvingly beside her — shaking hands with an equally enchanted Fuhrer, who bends to kiss hers.

“I decided I wanted to spend the rest of my career rehabilitating women whom history has treated badly, and obviously there was no woman in the royal family who I think has been treated more appallingly than Wallis.”

–ANNA PASTERNAK,

The Real Wallis Simpson: A New History of the American Divorcée Who Became the Duchess of Windsor

But before I dove headfirst into the project, I wanted to ascertain if my nascent doc idea was viable. So I contacted Richard Chisolm, a Baltimorebased, Emmy Award-winning cinematographer and filmmaker whose work includes the acclaimed TV series The Wire, as well as numerous documentaries. Richard, in turn, put me in touch with Ted Bogosian, a Providence, Rhode Island-based director/producer who lists An Armenian Journey, The Press Secretary, and Nine Days in New Hampshire among his documentary credits. Both men expressed enthusiasm for my film’s concept.

Just as my Duchess documentary started to garner outside interest in June 2018, its death knell struck in the disturbing form of back-to-back suicides: first, fashion designer Kate Spade, followed three days later by celeb chef, author, and filmmaker Anthony Bourdain.

One evening shortly after those tragic events, my girlfriend, Mimi (aka La Petite Princess), gently suggested, “Why don’t you work on a documentary where you have real expertise, where your late-in-life discoveries can be shared.”

Her entreaty persuaded me to abdicate my emerging documentary — tentatively titled Duchess of Maryland or America’s Royalty: Wallis and Meghan); or, maybe, like this book, I have merely tucked it away in a drawer until a more auspicious moment.

Edward, then the Prince of Wales and Winston Churchill, 1919

Sympathy for the Devil Research for my documentary made me more curious about the Windsors’ supposed flirtation with the Nazis, indelibly encapsulated for the ages in that hand-kissing-with-Hitler photo. So I hit the books and, of course, the Internet. Their meeting with der Fuhrer occurred at the Berghof (“Mountain Court”), his Bavarian Alps vacation chalet, located not far from Germany’s border with Austria — one of many photo-op pit-stops during the couple’s 11-day tour of Germany in the fall of 1937, arranged by French-born American millionaire/ businessman Charles Bedaux, whose 16th-century French castle served as the site of Wallis and Edward’s wedding. (The Duke and Duchess were introduced to Bedaux and his wife, Fern, by Wallis’ old chums, Herman and Katherine Rogers.) The German government, not incidentally, agreed to cover all expenses during the Windsors’ stay.

Bedaux had suggested to Edward that he make a world tour as a statesman promoting international peace, offering to sponsor it through his international business empire. The Duke, having little else to do and thinking the Duchess might enjoy it, naively agreed without consulting anyone. First stop: Nazi Germany. Ostensibly, the visit allowed the Duke to observe first-hand German

The picture worth tens of thousands of words: the Duke and Duchess of Windsor meet Adolf Hitler in 1937

To the Leader and Chancellor.

Upon leaving Germany, the Duchess of Windsor and I sincerely thank you for the great hospitality you have given us and for the many opportunities to see what is done for the benefit of the working Germans.

We take a deep impression of our journey through Germany and will not forget, with what attention we have been surrounded by your representative, and a heartfelt welcome we have found everywhere.

We especially thank you for the nice hours we spent with you on the Obersalzberg.

–Edward, Oct. 23, 1937

laborers’ housing and working conditions, issues important to him in Britain. It also gave him a pretext to step back into the spotlight, post-abdication. For his part, Bedaux, with multiple corporate interests in Germany, hoped that the Windsors’ presence there would solidify his existing ties with Nazi high mucka-mucks, whom, he surmised, prized a closer relationship with Edward, who they suspected might prove useful in the future.

Shepherded by fawning Nazi officials in Munich, Dresden, Stuttgart, Leipzig, Berlin, and Nuremberg, the Duke and Duchess toured factories, housing projects, hospitals, and youth camps. They also met with virtually every important member of the Nazi high command: Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels; the regime’s cultured architect-in-chief, Albert Speer; Deputy Fuhrer

LETTER TO HITLER FROM EDWARD, THE DUKE OF WINDSOR

Rudolf Hess; Heinrich Himmler, head of the feared SS (Security Service); and Hermann Goring, who, as Hitler’s right-hand man, oversaw numerous political and military portfolios. Perhaps most tellingly, the couple pow-wowed with Ambassador to the U.K. Joachim von Ribbentrop, with whom Wallis was rumored to have begun an affair two years earlier when von Ribbentrop served as Germany’s ambassador at large, before becoming ambassador to Britain in 1936, and, finally, a few months after the Windsors’ visit, foreign minister in early 1938.

Edward emerged visibly impressed by what he viewed in Germany, and was quoted as saying he “loved the Germans.” Those perceptions — plus the on-thesurface damning images of the Duke and Duchess with Hitler and his top advisors (some of which depicted Edward exchanging the infamous Nazi salute), and others showing the Duke, naive as ever, at a biergarten laughing, singing gaily, and wearing a fake mustache — received a cool reception from the English press, while Buckingham Palace made no attempt to hide its displeasure.

But Winston Churchill, out of government at the time but still a highly influential public voice — and three years away from becoming Prime Minister — put a more sanguine spin on the trip. After conferring with his son, Randolph, a member of the Windsors’ entourage in Germany, Churchill told the Duke that the German tour was a success. Meanwhile, the Nazis, as Bedaux anticipated, took full propagandistic advantage of the Duke’s apparent endorsement of their regime.

Nothing good derived from the Duke and Duchess’ German tour, and, justifiably or unjustifiably, the couple never shook the public’s sense that they, especially Edward, sympathized with the Nazis. That sentiment gained traction in 1957 with the publication of a cache of buried Nazi documents discovered by American forces in Germany in May 1945: 400 tons of Nazi foreign ministry communications (known as the Marburg Files), dozens of which directly involved the Duke. These documents revealed not only several of his flippant comments about the desirability of dictators and Britain’s vulnerability in the face of the seemingly inexorable Nazi war machine, but also a 1940 Third Reich plot, full of wild machinations, that posited the Germans restoring Edward to the throne — with Wallis as his queen — and giving them what they assumed would be a solicitous ear in London.

Mockups for my abandoned Wallis Warfield Simpson documentary

THE DUCHESS of Maryland

THE DUCHESS of Marylan

Churchill, who characterized the documents as mere “German intrigues,” had managed to suppress their publication for 12 years out of consideration for the Duke, but when they finally came to light (initially in the U.S.), both the Royal Family and Edward himself dismissed them as Nazi poppycock.

The Duke and Duchess’ supposed Nazi dalliance resurfaced in 2002 when the British newspaper The Guardian reported that FBI files, in the possession of the U.K. government, showed that President Franklin D. Roosevelt personally ordered covert surveillance of Wallis and Edward during World War II. Roosevelt had received intelligence that the Duchess was passing secrets to von Ribbentrop, and he feared that the couple was being used by the Nazis to obtain information that would jeopardize the Allies’ efforts.

“Do not try to defend us.”

–WALLIS WARFIELD SIMPSON

One FBI memo reads: “It was considered essential that the Windsors be removed to a point where they would absolutely do no harm.” That would account for why Churchill, who took over as Prime Minister in 1940, arranged for the Duke to become Governor of the Bahamas in August 1941. The British government considered Edward capable of the occasional verbal blunder — thereby creating international friction — and wanted him far removed from the public eye.

As a result of the disclosures in The Guardian, Louise Ellman, a Labour MP and vice-chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against AntiSemitism, began pressing the government to release the secret files. In an interview with a Liverpool newspaper, Ellman said, “We now have a new spirit of openness, and I think that it is very much in the public interest to know whether a monarch or former monarch had links to the Nazis. It is time for the truth to be told.”

My view is that Edward (one of whose nicknames was Peter Pan) was a lost boy of sorts, misguidedly drawn to fairy tales, one of which was the Nazis’ alluring-to-the-susceptible New Order, fueled by its miraculous economic recovery after the devastation it suffered in World War I.

“There is no evidence that any ardent German Nazi sympathizers ever visited Fort Belvedere, and nothing was found in the German state archives after the war to indicate that Wallis, or anybody else, passed on to the German government information gleaned from papers in the king’s keeping. Far from planning covert operations with German envoys, all of Wallis’ considerable energies and resources were deployed in the continuing struggle to please, amuse, placate two men.”

PASTERNAK,

–ANNA

The Real Wallis Simpson: A New History of the American Divorcée Who Became the Duchess of Windsor

The Duchess and Steamboats

8

“ When it’s steamboat time, you steam.”

–MARK TWAIN

Solomon Davies Warfield is a long-lost relative of mine — my fifth cousin, twice removed, to be precise — who, I was delighted to discover, connects the dots among such unlikely subjects as the Duchess of Windsor, Indiantown, the Chesapeake Bay, and, surprisingly, Israel.

Born just outside Baltimore in 1859 into a prosperous family, Warfield made his own fortune in banks, insurance, and railroading. The latter came naturally: His father was director of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Solomon Warfield served as president of the Continental Trust Company, and as a director of the Maryland Casualty Company and the New York Life Insurance Company. As the 19th century segued into the 20th, he turned his attention to the Seaboard Air Line Railway, rising from being a director and member of its executive committee to head the company as chairman. Additionally, in October 1918, he became president of the Baltimore Steam Packet Company, a steamboat firm known as the “Old Bay Line,” the “bay” referring to Maryland’s Chesapeake.

Solomon Davies Warfield

In truth, Warfield did not take over day-to-day stewardship of the Old Bay Line until 1920, because on January 1, 1918, less than one year after the U.S. entered World War I, the federal government took over management of all American railroads and steamboat companies, finally returning them to private hands in March 1920. In 1922, the Seaboard Air Line Railway absorbed the Old Bay Line, and Warfield assumed leadership of the combined corporate entity.

Perhaps more pertinent to one particular Warfield Adventure, Solomon Warfield also was the uncle and benefactor of Wallis Simpson — a brother of Wallis’ father, Teackle Wallis Warfield, who died in 1896 when Wallis was five months old. Uncle Sol, as he was known, stepped into the paternal void, supporting his niece and her widowed mother, Alice. Together, mom and daughter moved into Wallis’ paternal grandmother’s Baltimore townhouse, where Uncle Sol, still a bachelor, also lived. Alice and Wallis stayed for four-plus years.

“A pilot in those days was the only unfettered and entirely independent human being that lived in the earth.”

– Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, 1883

In her 1956 memoir, The Heart Has Its Reasons (ghostwritten by Charles Murphy), Wallis describes Uncle Sol as “Cold of manner, with a distinguished, if forbidding, countenance…. For a long and impressionable period, he was the nearest thing to a father in my uncertain world, but an odd kind of father — reserved, unbending, silent. Uncle Sol was destined to return again and again to my life — or, more accurately, it was my fate to turn again and again to him, usually at some new point of crisis for me, and one seldom to his liking. I was always a little afraid of Uncle Sol.”

He paid for her education at a trio of exclusive local schools: first, for a few years when Wallis was very young, at Miss O’Donnell’s, for both boys and girls, run out of the Baltimore home of its namesake, Ada O’Donnell; then, from 1906 to 1912, at Arundell, a posh Baltimore girls’ institution; and, finally, at Oldfields, a fashionable girls’ boarding school in the horse country outside Baltimore that both Wallis’ mother and Aunt Bessie had attended, from which Wallis graduated in 1914. And it was Warfield’s civic and societal prominence that enabled Wallis — one of only 47 invited — to be introduced into Baltimore society as a debutante at the Bachelor’s Cotillion in December 1914.

Later, he was dead set against her divorce from her first husband, Earl Winfield Spencer, Jr., admonishing Wallis that it would bring disgrace upon the family. And when he died in October 1927, two months before her divorce became official — with an estate valued, according to some sources, at $2 million (approximately $20 million today) — his will dedicated almost everything, including his country home, to a refuge for aged women, with Wallis receiving only quarterly interest on $15,000, which was overseen by a trust fund. She immediately contested the will, and, after years of legal wrangling, in January 1930 was awarded $47,500 in her uncle’s stocks. “By then,” Andrew Morton points out in Wallis in Love, “the stock market had crashed and Uncle Sol’s stocks were worth a fraction of their previous value.”

He’s Been Working on

the Railroad

As a businessman, Warfield is best remembered for extending the Seaboard Air Line Railway — through its subsidiary, the Seaboard-All Florida Railway — southward on both Florida’s east and west coasts in the 1920s: in the east from West Palm Beach to Miami, and in the west from Fort Ogden to Fort

Myers and Naples. Additionally, Seaboard laid tracks through Central Florida that ran southward from Coleman to West Palm Beach, with a station in tiny Indiantown. (Amtrak trains still travel today through Central Florida on the route built by Warfield.)

Part of the Florida project included the transformation of Indiantown, located in the heart of the state’s citrus and cattle country, 30 miles northwest of Palm Beach. Indiantown was established by the Seminole tribe early in the 19th century, with white settlers arriving in the 1890s. Warfield planned to make Indiantown the Southern headquarters of Seaboard. His vision was to create a model city. He laid out streets, and constructed a school, houses, and the Seminole Inn, which he envisioned as the focal point for his newly created community. Wallis attended its opening in 1926, and later visited several times. It still exists today.

“ Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”

–MARK TWAIN, The Innocents Abroad, 1869

A breathless description on its website gushes: The twilight grandeur of the “Old South” is captured as you enter through grand double French doors into the main lobby. An open fireplace is graciously framed on either side by winding staircases to the sitting room above lending the nostalgia of an era gone by. A glance through the Inn reveals the original solid brass wall fixtures and bronze chandeliers molded to the crest of royalty. The pesky cypress ceiling and hardwood floors which Mr. Warfield specified in the original plans highlight the room with a grace and style which cannot be described...this is a place to be visited! There’s a mystique that remains unique to the Seminole Inn as its pleasant surroundings bring back a sense of an Old Florida that simply must be experienced.

Warfield had the misfortune to die before his plans for Indiantown were completed. The Seminole Inn is all that remains. On an early-2000s trip to visit my son, Win, in Palm Beach, I decided to make a pilgrimage to Indiantown, with Win a captive participant. The 30-mile stretch of road north of Jupiter was perfectly straight and traveled through flat, lush, and undeveloped farmland.

A map of the Seaboard Air Line Railway’s Florida routes

Solomon Davies Warfield in Arcadia, Florida, on January 7, 1927, celebrating the inaugural run of the Orange Blossom Special into southwest and southeast Florida

As we neared Indiantown, we crossed over the canal Warfield had built as an inlet from Lake Okeechobee. Entering the tiny town, we noticed that most of the small and rundown buildings boasted signs catering to a Spanish-speaking clientele; subsequently, we were informed that the population — a mere 6,100 in the 2010 census — is now mostly Guatemalan rather than Seminole.

In the center of town stands the Seminole Inn, cute rather than grand, with hanging baskets and rockers adding Victorian kitsch to the Spanish facade. Homemade signs, displays of local art, and a restaurant menu that includes fried chicken and fried green tomatoes pay tribute to the current owner’s affection for the Florida “cracker” lifestyle. Keenly aware that the Duchess is its claim to fame, enlarged news clips and photos of Edward and Wallis adorn the Seminole’s walls.

Life on the Chesapeake

Solomon Davies Warfield connects steamboats on the Chesapeake Bay to Mark Twain and his 1883 book, Life on the Mississippi, a memoir of Twain’s days before the Civil War as a steamboat pilot plying the trip between St. Louis and New Orleans. By the 1870s, railroads had begun to supplant steamboats as the main transporter of goods and people in the U.S., a subject Twain addresses in his memoir. Warfield owned railroads and steamboats. In fact, one of his Baltimore Steam Packet Company’s cruisers was named after him.

“Good books, good friends, and a sleepy conscience: This is the ideal life.”

–MARK

TWAIN, Life on the Mississippi, 1883

Warfield’s interest in steamboats was, in part, predicated on his attachment to preserving the lore of Southern gentility. His father had been imprisoned in 1861 by Federal forces during the Civil War, an event Warfield said deepened the intensity of his feelings for the Southern cause. But by the time that Warfield took over the Old Bay Line in 1920, it was a sad-looking mix of aging vessels. Over the next seven years, Warfield worked assiduously to restore the Old Bay Line’s financial viability, hit hard by its involvement in World War I. He concluded that, to have a superior fleet, new steamboats needed to be built. Accordingly, he commissioned four ships — the grandest and finest that the Chesapeake had ever seen: the State of Maryland, the State of Virginia, Yorktown, and a steamer originally named Florida.

Built at a cost of $850,000, the latter was designed to be the duchess of the fleet, with a lavish interior, 171 well-appointed staterooms, and a capacity of 400 passengers. But in October 1927, one month after the keel for the new steamer was laid in Wilmington, Delaware, Warfield passed away at Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore. Leigh Powell, who was at his deathbed and would succeed him as president of the Old Bay Line from 1927 to 1941, suggested to the company’s board that the new ship’s name be changed from Florida to President Warfield.

The christening of the President Warfield was scheduled for February 5, 1928. Two Baltimore ladies were considered to do the honors: famed opera diva Rosa Ponselle, and soon-to-be royal diva Wallis Warfield. However, Wallis was still “gallivanting all over Europe acquiring her second husband,” as her Uncle Sol put it before his death, and was unavailable. Instead, the Old Bay Line tapped another of Warfield’s nieces, Wallis’ cousin and childhood chum Anita Warfield — by then married and known as Mrs. Zachary Lewis — the daughter of Solomon’s brother Henry, an insurance company executive and Adjutant General of Maryland from 1908 to 1920.

A nostalgic throwback to another era, the President Warfield operated between Norfolk and Baltimore. Painted an elegant white, with balconies and a grand ballroom, she was a pleasure steamer for distinguished and wealthy honeymooners, gamblers, and businessmen. Passengers danced to brass bands and dined on lobster and champagne. Prohibition, however, would soon spoil the fun. Required to cooperate with enforcement by the Coast Guard, the Old Bay Line tried to restrict use or possession of liquor on board its vessels. Still, passengers sometimes broke the rules, and the Coast Guard proved more rigid than many Marylanders expected.

For example, one night in March 1929, the President Warfield was making her way up the Chesapeake when a Coast Guard cutter fired a shot across her bow, suspecting the steamer of running a bootleg shipment. Captain P.H. Scott, commandant of Norfolk Coast Guard, stated that it was “unthinkable that a passenger steamer should be stopped…as if she were trying to escape.” And yet the next day, contraband gin was discovered in a roadster on board with the car’s owner nowhere to be found.

In 1932, the steamboat service operating on Lake Champlain abandoned its nighttime service, and by the end of the 1930s, the demise of many steamboat companies seemed imminent.

Somehow, the Old Bay Line kept afloat financially. In fact, in January 1940, the company experienced its most profitable month since 1923. Solomon

Headquarters of the Old Bay Line

Davies Warfield would have been proud to know that despite rate wars, macadam roads, competition, and the Depression, his company hung around long enough to celebrate its centennial anniversary on May 23, 1940, and continued to operate until finally shuttering in 1962.

World War II: A Greatest Generation Steamboat

By 1942, the President Warfield was no longer serving crab cakes and tea on the Chesapeake. The U.S., embroiled in World War II, needed ships, and in the spring and summer of that year, the War Shipping Administration requisitioned all second-class steamboats on the American eastern seaboard, including the President Warfield and four younger Old Bay Line passenger steamers. Most of these were destined for the British Ministry of War Transport.

Initially built for inland use, the steamboats underwent reconstruction to render them seaworthy as hospital ships, training craft, and short-haul cargo vessels. The President Warfield was transformed for transatlantic passage: Her staterooms were knocked out, the afterdeck was cut back to allow for fittings of guns, and she was painted camouflage gray.

In August 1942, the British Navy assembled its new fleet of American ships in St. John’s, Newfoundland, to sail convoy-style across the North Atlantic, a dangerous place, given the ever-present threat of German submarines. The first

Solomon Davies Warfield and opera soprano Rosa Ponselle at the launching of the President Warfield, Feb. 5, 1928

four days of the voyage were uneventful, but on the fifth, the Boston was struck by two German torpedoes and sank; the same fate befell the New York. In all, three steamers went down, and 131 men were lost. For her part, the President Warfield experienced a close call, barely dodging an oncoming torpedo, and successfully completed the trip. That October, British Admiralty planners found a new, utilitarian use for the President Warfield as a floating barracks.

In April 1944, the British decided that the President Warfield had finished her tour of duty, and she was returned to the U.S. Navy. Now operating as the S. S. President Warfield, she began her role as central command for the unloading of ships bringing supplies to the Normandy beachhead during the D-Day invasion, while also providing temporary quarters for transient personnel.

“But this ship ran with destiny. Her life was a succession of dramas enacted in the graveyard of steamboats in America, in the roar of battle off the coast of Normandy, and the silent, savage war that created a new nation. In the quarter-century of her span, she lived three lives, each a separate fulfillment.”

–DAVID HOLLY, from his 1969 book Exodus 1947

When the ports of France opened up to Allied shipping after D-Day, the President Warfield’s wartime duties concluded. In November 1944, the steamer made her way back to the U.S. — specifically, to Hampton Roads, Virginia. The President Warfield was decommissioned on September 19, 1945, stripped of all vestiges of military life, and offered for sale by the Maritime Commission. Her former owner, the Old Bay Line, considered re-converting her to a passenger steamer but decided an overhaul would be too expensive. Steamboats’ days as luxury vessels were over. With no takers, she was delivered to the graveyard for retired ships, the James River Reserve Fleet at Lee Hall, Virginia.

As rats scampered over her decks, the President Warfield was left to her memories. But her duties were far from over.

The birth of a nation — Exodus 1947 flag

9Exodus

“Her life began quietly on the placid, majestic waters of the Chesapeake. It ended in the harsh glare of battle. Within sight of the Promised Land, she was given a new name.”

– DAVID HOLLY, from his 1969 book Exodus 1947

Allied troops liberated the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz on January 25, 1945. Horror unfolded as the soldiers discovered mass graves of decomposing bodies and corpses stacked like cords of wood. The survivors, some too weak to move, stared hollowly at their liberators.

As the President Warfield floated peacefully in Virginia waters, slowly yielding to rot, rust, and rats, 250,000 Holocaust survivors found themselves penniless, homeless, and unwanted in virtually every nation on earth. Tagged “DPs,” for “displaced persons,” with the official end of the war in Europe in May 1945, they were assigned to places with conditions hardly better than the death camps.

The DP camps were either former Nazi army bivouacs, stables, or even the same concentration camps that had murdered their families. There was too little food and too few bunks. Barefoot children were covered in sores and dirt.

Families of five shared one cot, and there was never enough water for bathing or washing, essential to fight disease.

Craving their dignity and not wanting to live another day on the same soil soaked with their relatives’ blood, these homeless Jews shared a common dream — the salvation represented by Palestine. For many Holocaust survivors, Palestine symbolized hope for a life of freedom in a country of their own, one free of anti-Semitism.

Palestine had been governed by the British since 1917, and keeping peace between Jews and Arabs there had been a constant problem. Jewish movement into Palestine from Europe began in the 1930s and swelled until 1936, when Arabs began a campaign of terror. From 1939 onward, fearing more ethnic conflict between Arabs and Jews, the British restricted entry visas to 1,500 per month.

With the conclusion of World War II, the British found themselves in an increasingly precarious position. World opinion favored a Jewish state in Palestine for Holocaust refugees, but Arab nationalists demanded a stop to Jewish immigration in the region. The sheer numbers of displaced Jews seeking a new life presented a problem, and Palestine was primarily Muslim.

It is speculated that the British were more sensitive to the Arabs’ wishes than to the Jews’ needs for several reasons. As World War II began in Europe in 1939, the British needed to ensure the maintenance of the Suez Canal, a critical passage for shipping in the Middle East. Also, Britain competed with the U.S. for Arab oil. Palestine had no oil, but neighboring Arab states were the world’s newest and lowest-cost suppliers. A pro-Arab policy in Palestine served to protect British rights for that precious commodity.

Even after the horror of the Holocaust, Britain was intransigent to changing its policy of not allowing further Jewish immigration. On June 29, 1946, the British arrested leaders of the Jewish Agency, the organization responsible for running the Jewish community in Palestine. And in an attempt to keep peace, the British placed 100,000 troops in the territory, establishing

The reconfigured President Warfield

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT:

Front page of the American Zionist newspaper Americans for Haganah, September 15, 1947.

President Warfield crew member Murray Aronoff salvages a carton of cigarettes after the boat aborted its first attempt to cross the Atlantic, February 1947.

Bernard Marks, a member of the President Warfield’s crew, on the deck of the boat, 1947.

John Stanley Grauel (“John the Priest”): Methodist minister, American Christian Zionist leader, Haganah operative, and President Warfield/Exodus 47 crew member.

A crippled President Warfield limps toward Norfolk’s harbor escorted by a U.S. Coast Guard ship, February 1947.

President Warfield crew members Reuben Margolis, Shmuel Schuller, and Avraham Siegel (left to right) on a pier in front of the boat.

naval blockades to prevent small vessels with Jewish immigrants from reaching shore.

This prompted Jewish DPs to pin their hopes on Haganah, an underground Jewish defense group founded in Palestine in 1920 that was stepping up operations to foil the policy of limited immigration. Dedicated to helping thousands of displaced European Jews find new homes in Palestine, Haganah secured available ships, hired crewmen, and coordinated arrangements to penetrate the blockades. Haganah would come to symbolize the power of Jewish unity.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S., the Maritime Commission put the woebegone President Warfield — still moored at the James River Reserve Fleet in Virginia — up for sale in 1946; she was to be sold for scrap. The commission rejected several meager offers before finally selling her to the Potomac Shipwrecking Company for around $8,000 in early October of that year.

“ Whenever I saw that Jews were in danger, I covered the story.”

–RUTH GRUBER

Three weeks later, Potomac Shipwrecking flipped her to the Chinese-American Industrial Company, and five weeks after that, the President Warfield was sold yet again, this time to the Weston Trading Company for $50,000. Weston, it turned out, was a front for Haganah. By then, the ship had been towed to Baltimore, where it was outfitted at a cost of $130,000. Its planned secret mission: transporting Jewish refugees assembled in France to Palestine. Thirty-five young Jewish volunteers from the U.S. and elsewhere were recruited to crew the ship. Some had naval training, others had none, but all were passionate about the endeavor.

On February 25, 1947, flying under a Honduran flag, the President Warfield left Baltimore, supposedly bound for China, where, it was reported, the ship would revert to its original use as a riverboat. Not long into the voyage, however, the President Warfield ran into bad weather. As conditions worsened, its bilge pumps failed, and the ship took on water. The wooden structure of the old steamer swayed dangerously, and the crew radioed the Coast Guard for help. With the Guard’s aid, she struggled into Hampton Roads, near Norfolk.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT:

Holocaust refugees wait to board the President Warfield on a dock in Sète, France.

Sol Lester, engineer on the President Warfield, prior to its departure for Europe.

Refugees boarding the President Warfield from an adjacent boat in Sète harbor.

Refugees prepare to board the President Warfield on the dock at Sète.

Refugees on board the President Warfield at Sète harbor.

Shumel Urmacher (center) bids his children, Uri and Ruth, farewell as they depart Germany for France and the President Warfield.

There, the necessary repairs were made, and in March the ship moved to Philadelphia. Late that month, it resumed its covert mission, setting sail again across the Atlantic and arriving in the Azores in early April, and then on to Marseille, in France. Next stop: Portovenere, near La Spezia, on the northwest coast of Italy, where the crew stripped the ship bare and began installing wooden bunks. Britain, aware of what was occurring, pressured Italy to threaten the crew with a gunboat. Too frightened to leave port, the crew waited. Finally, President Warfield made a run for it, eluding the Italian boat and slipping away; she then headed for Sète, a port in southeast France.

“I have a theory,” Gruber said, “that even though we’re born Jews, there is a moment in our lives when we become Jews. On that ship, I became a Jew.”

–RUTH GRUBER

In Sète, the crew watched emotionally as a procession of trucks arrived at the dock. One by one, Jewish immigrants solemnly boarded the President Warfield. In all, more than 4,500 Holocaust survivors — men, women, and children — squeezed together on a ship built to hold 400. On July 10, they began their journey into the Mediterranean, bound for Palestine.

As the President Warfield approached Palestinian waters outside the port of Haifa, a fearsome and daunting escort awaited its crew and passengers: British warships surrounded the ship and stayed with her as she progressed toward shore. With no guns or ammunition on board, the crew taunted the British by blasting the song “Pomp and Circumstance” over the ship’s public address system. In response, the cruiser Ajax warned that resistance would prove fatal.

Disregarding that caution, President Warfield’s crew prepared for what seemed an inevitable encounter, and, in an act of defiance, flew the blue-andwhite flag of Zion, while simultaneously turning over boards on either side of the ship that read President Warfield to proudly proclaim its new name – Exodus 1947. Additionally, crew members strung barbed wire on the upper decks and piled potatoes and cans of corned beef to throw at British marines.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT:

Fireboats extinguish the blaze aboard the Exodus 1947 in Haifa harbor, July 1947.

The battered Exodus 1947 berths in Haifa harbor, July 1947.

David Ben-Gurion, future first prime minister of Israel, watches transfer of Exodus 1947 refugees in Haifa.

Protesters demonstrate at the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp after former Exodus 1947 passengers forced to return to Germany, September 1947.

British soldiers stand guard on the pier in the port of Haifa as Exodus 1947 refugees disembark.

Former Exodus 1947 passengers gather outside a row of Nissen huts at the Poppendorf displaced persons camp in Germany.

The original plan for the President Warfield was to enter Palestinian territorial waters at dawn on July 18 and head towards a deserted beach north of Tel Aviv, where trucks and armed soldiers of the Haganah would be waiting to meet it. Not long after 2 a.m. that morning, while many of the passengers of the ship now known as Exodus 1947 slept, two destroyers closed in. They dropped their gangplanks and 50 armed marines swarmed the old steamer, using tear gas and clubs to clear the decks.

“Exodus 1947 in the State of Israel was a national symbol. On her decks, the turning battle had been fought. On her staffs, the Mogen David had flown, even when the battle turned to defeat. She was remembered in Israel. Not because

she had lost the battle. But because she had won the war.”

–DAVID HOLLY,

from his 1969 book Exodus 1947

When the marines tried to take over the pilot house, a bloody struggle ensued. William Bernstein, the 24-year-old chief mate, was hit on the head and lay dying of a fractured skull. In all, three aboard the Exodus 1947 were killed and 217 immigrants and crewmen were injured. The embattled ship, a gaping hole in her port side, surrendered and was escorted into Haifa harbor that afternoon to moor. Its mission was over.

British authorities boarded the refugees onto three transport ships and sent them to Marseilles, where the French, in sympathy with the Holocaust survivors, refused to forcibly disembark the passengers. Of their own volition, they remained onboard the vessels for three weeks, many of them engaging in a hunger strike. At that point (early September), the British, under mounting adverse media coverage, sent the refugees to Hamburg, a part of Germany

Exodus 1947 docks in Haifa harbor

under its postwar control, where they were resettled in DP camps. Nearly one year later, amid international condemnation, British authority over Palestine ceased, and on May 14, 1948, the state of Israel came into existence.

Ruth Gruber, an American, waited on a wharf in Haifa as the Exodus limped to shore after its encounter with British warships. Gruber, a globe-trotting reporter, photojournalist, U.S. government official, and author, had committed her life to activism against oppression and totalitarianism. Her eyewitness dispatches published in the New York Herald Tribune and her graphic photographs in Life magazine of Exodus’ saga aroused the conscience of people around the world to the plight of Jews seeking a new life in Palestine. So, too, did her 1948 book Destination Palestine: The Story of the Haganah Ship Exodus 1947 (republished as Exodus 1947: The Ship that Launched a Nation in 1999). The grateful refugees dubbed her “Mother Ruth.”

Author Leon Uris used Gruber’s book as the basis for his best-selling 1958 novel Exodus, which, in turn, was made into the 1960 major motion picture of the same name directed by Otto Preminger. It starred Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint, and Sal Mineo, with a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo.

As for Exodus 1947, the ship stayed on in Haifa harbor, where, in late August 1952, it caught fire, destroyed to the waterline, and its remains were towed to a nearby beach. Twelve years later, an Italian salvage company attempted to strip its hulk for scrap value, but, in the process, the Exodus 1947 broke into two and sank, an inglorious and unceremonious end for the once elegant Chesapeake Bay steamer President Warfield.

10Scionism to Internet Mania

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

–MARK TWAIN

There is no such word as scionism. I have invented it to characterize multigenerational publishers such as the Sulzbergers (The New York Times) and the Grahams (The Washington Post).

In that vein, I became the fourth Warfield to serve as publisher of the Baltimore-based Daily Record, a daily court and commercial newspaper, succeeding my great-grandfather, grandfather, and father. The paper began publishing under that name in 1888 after my great-grandfather purchased it one year earlier, when, as a weekly, it was called The Maryland Law Record. My father, who took its reins in 1952, treated his involvement with the paper as a secondary interest, less engaged with it than he was in his role as Adjutant General of the Maryland National Guard.

During my high school years, my relationship with my father was limited to six weeks a year: four weeks during the summer, plus Christmas and spring breaks.

Given my parents’ custody battle over me, boy-to-man rites of passage, and wanderlust, my relationship with Dad became strained, and the death of my mother when I was 28, preceded by her three years spent in a coma, obviously left a parental vacuum.

Further straining matters: My father’s relationship with Jack Daniel’s. He finally became sober in the mid-1980s thanks to AA, visits to Father Martin’s Ashley (a local addiction treatment facility), and my sister Beth’s intervention. She helped him understand that sobriety was the path to regaining his children’s engagement, while also explaining that, in the wake of my mother’s death, he had, in effect, won the custody battle. His standard self-deprecating joke was that he had drunk “half a football field of whiskey. But if I’d known how long I would live, I would have taken better care of myself.”

After earning my MBA at New York University, I returned to Baltimore in 1983; rebooted my relationship with my father; and started at The Daily Record (DR), commencing a decade of scionism — a decade of privilege, power, and their related perks in the publishing industry.

One year earlier, The Baltimore Sun, the city’s daily morning newspaper, had noted that it was more interesting to read the Amtrak train schedule than The Daily Record. I took this assessment as an editorial challenge, and began transforming the DR from a moribund court and commercial newspaper primarily

Edwin Warfield (left) and son Edwin Jr. at the offices of The Daily Record

dependent upon public notices — which were required by law — for both its content and revenue, into a must-read local legal and business publication.

I hired seasoned journalists, notably Ken Karpay as editor, to write actual news and feature stories. These chronicled — based on research and interviews — various aspects of the local legal community, which, like the profession nationwide, had begun to undergo tremendous change. For example, in the mid-80s, partners, for the first time, switched law firms in Baltimore, a practice that, up until then, was considered unseemly. The DR reported these developments, and, as a result, the paper’s editorial content increasingly resonated with legal professionals, making it indispensable for those who wanted to keep abreast of colleagues’ comings and goings.

“Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.”

– CECIL BEATON

Additionally, the paper tapped into other legal-world trends, while offering detailed narrative profiles of powerful and influential people — lawyers, judges, and politicians. Coverage of real estate and business began, along with arts and culture reviews and local columns, all of which did not previously exist in the paper.

To augment a solid group of staff writers, a stable of freelancers and interns gradually came on board, allowing the paper to progressively produce more stories. In June 1987, when The Daily Record returned to its original 19thcentury tabloid format — it had been published as a broadsheet since 1923 — thrice-weekly special sections appeared (law, business, and real estate). Finally, new monthly supplements ranged over an array of subjects: health care, the port of Baltimore, advertising, and the building trade, among others.

The foundation for this overhaul involved a major structural change in how the DR was produced. When I took over, the paper’s typesetters had control over

capturing keystrokes. In other words, a writer would submit an article, which the typesetters then retyped — a mind-boggling inefficiency. Not long into my tenure at the paper, I negotiated a flexibility contract with the Baltimore Typographical Union that allowed direct input of editorial content by writers and editors; also, we introduced Apple computers and optical scanners. While the union maintained this arrangement would never work, its fears proved unfounded, and the changes provided the launchpad not only for the dramatic enhancement of editorial content, but also, not insignificantly, a growing profitability, fueled by increased advertising and circulation.

In the midst of this expansion of The Daily Record, in 1986 I started a local, glossy monthly business magazine immodestly titled Warfield’s, with the intention of covering power and money in Maryland (in general) and Baltimore (in particular).

The magazine’s mission: Capture and chronicle the greater Baltimore area’s business community, plus governmental movers and shakers, in a compelling, creative way, with stories, told in a narrative fashion, about company owners and executives — who are they and how did they build successful operations?

And in contrast to the dreary appearance of many business publications at the time, Warfield’s, courtesy of Art Director Claude Skelton, cut a distinctive, attention-grabbing figure, starting with its oversized dimensions of 11 x 14 inches. Inside, each of the magazine’s three components — news section, departments, and feature stories — were afforded a discreet look, all designed to be readable, contemporary (for 1986, anyway), and well-organized, while devoting considerable space to high-quality photography, white space, and big headlines.

Warfield’s plugged into a dizzying business-world zeitgeist. In the vernacular of the moment, that world was considered “hot,” “sexy.” Wall Street’s new captains of industry — and trailblazers in media and business and cuisine and advertising and the legal profession and real estate — were accorded celebrity status, notably the corporate raiders Carl Icahn and T. Boone Pickens, plus Michael Milken (head of investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert’s junk bond department), stock broker Ivan Boesky, and, of course, real estate developer Donald Trump.

Modeled after D.C.-based Regardie’s and New York’s Manhattan, inc., Warfield’s, while drawing from a considerably smaller market than those in

Regardie’s set a standard for business journalism.

D.C.-based

Seriously?

Malcolm Forbes: publishing role model

New York and Washington, nonetheless found myriad stories to tell. And they were waiting to be told, because the field, from a journalistic standpoint, was wide open: The Baltimore Sun paid little, if any, attention to business, and the Baltimore Business Journal (at that time, anyway), a competitor of The Daily Record, followed a meat-and-potatoes, just-the-facts-ma’am approach. Warfield’s jumped into the vacuum, landing on the desks of nearly everyone of importance among city and state professionals via a controlled circulation of approximately 20,000.

As you peeled away the layers of the local business-world onion, lots of story possibilities emerged: from high-flying developers to quirky comestibles makers; from Baltimore’s first black police commissioner, Bishop Robinson, to Maryland’s get-it-done-now governor, William Donald Schaefer. Additionally, Baltimore was home to several power- house national names, notably the assetmanagement firms T. Rowe Price and Legg Mason. Not forgetting the spice maker McCormick’s, retail casual-wear chain Merry-Go-Round, and the more staid Jos. A. Bank clothier.

Under the steady guidance of Editor Eric Garland, joined later by Associate Publisher/Managing Editor Scott Sherman, Warfield’s profiles closely examined these companies and their principals, peppering stories with engaging details. A perfect example: a piece about the uber-successful Harvey brothers — F. Barton Harvey, the CEO and chairman of prominent investment firm Alex. Brown; Robert Harvey, chairman and CEO of venerable banking institution Maryland National Corp.; and Alex Harvey, a distinguished federal judge for the District Court of Maryland.

Usually, these stories cast their subjects in a benign fashion, but also — when warranted — in an unflattering, albeit fair and accurate, light. The most famous — or, in retrospect, infamous — instance of the latter occurred in August 1991. Eric, who at that point had moved on from his editor’s post (as had Scott, to do consulting) to work in New York while continuing to contribute to Warfield’s as a freelancer, wrote a probing piece about New York financier and principal Baltimore Orioles owner Eli Jacobs, whose business dealings had never been seriously scrutinized in a public forum.

Jacobs, Eric found, had built his private equity, venture capital, and real estate empire on the basis of leveraged buyouts (LBO), the go-to deal in the

go-go 1980s. While these were usually accomplished by teams of institutional investors, Jacobs, by contrast, operated as a solo LBO buccaneer. But by the early 90s, his speculative, highly leveraged deals, Eric discovered, were either falling apart or in danger of doing so, based on the huge debts involved. Eric’s extensive research and reporting indicated that dire financial straits could lie ahead for Jacobs.

Jacobs took tremendous umbrage at these implications, slapping Eric and me with a $36-million lawsuit, alleging defamation. Eric told me that he was confident in his reporting and that we should fight the suit, especially because Jacobs seemed unlikely to emerge unscathed from a potential discovery process. In principle, I stood with Eric, and while we had libel insurance, it covered only up to a certain amount, which the insurer, naturally, did not want to exceed. I found myself in a “challenging” situation, in the parlance of today’s business doublespeak.

Ultimately, Jacobs agreed to settle, with no monetary damages, if the magazine printed a retraction regarding the state of his personal finances. Reluctantly, I agreed, and in a subsequent issue we printed a publisher’s note stating, “Warfield’s has no reason to believe now that Mr. Jacobs confronts personal bankruptcy, that his credit standing has been impaired, or that he is in a cash bind.”

As it turned out, Warfield’s was vindicated when Jacobs entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 1993; four months later, in need of funds to pay off his debts, he sold the Orioles at auction.

Jacobs was not the only business Brahmin placed under Warfield’s microscope. In the May and June 1990 issues, the magazine took a similarly unflinching look at Victor Posner. While not a household name like Pickens and Icahn, Posner had nonetheless established an equally enviable portfolio, as well as a reputation as a canny corporate raider, a master of the hostile takeover, and, early in his career, an innovative low-cost homebuilder — some called him a slum landlord — in Baltimore. (Posner decamped to Miami Beach in the mid-1950s.)

Written by investigative reporter Mark Reutter, the two-part profile comprehensively documented Posner’s rise to power: from humble beginnings stealthily accumulating ground rents in Baltimore in the 1940s to aggressively

employing LBOs in the 1980s to extend his tentacles from real estate into varied ventures (fast food, steel, propane, textiles, soda makers, and on and on). Reutter’s story was nominated as a finalist for the 1991 Gerald Loeb Awards for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism — business’ equivalent of the Pulitzers — although it did not win.

Other local-biz-universe celebs profiled with similarly exacting standards included Sandy Weill (CEO of consumer finance company Commercial Credit), Jack Moseley (chairman, CEO, and president of insurance holding company USF&G), Matt DeVito (chairman, president, and CEO of real estate development firm the Rouse Co.), Frank Perdue (president and CEO of his family’s namesake gargantuan chicken operation), and Peter Angelos (powerful personal injury attorney.)

Just as meaningfully, Warfield’s devoted considerable energies to innovative design, and was justly honored with awards from the Art Directors Club of New York, Society of Publication Designers, and the (Washington) DC Ad Club. Not long into its run, however, in an effort to save printing costs and to accommodate standard ad sizes — clamored for by the sales staff — Warfield’s reduced its dimensions to the industry convention of 8.5 x 11 inches.

In addition to its memorable feature stories, the magazine boasted varied, engaging columns, particularly John Boland’s meticulous analyses of local businesses (written with an appealing acerbic edge) and Ken Sokolow’s playful reviews of the fare served at Baltimore’s numerous private clubs.

But because of the onset of a shaky economy, Warfield’s, like so many other businesses, began to wobble, in our case attributable to decreased advertising. With the April 1991 issue, it switched from monthly to bi-monthly (twice per month, but with fewer pages each issue than previously), and from “perfectbound” (a strong, glued spine) to “saddle-stitched” (stapled together). Finally, however, with tremendous sadness, I shuttered the magazine that December, while announcing the beginning of Warfield’s Business Record, a weekly supplement integrated into The Daily Record that preserved Warfield’s editorial commitment to technology, capital, and innovation in the local business community.

Despite Warfield’s demise, The Daily Record soldiered on. At one time, it boasted 80-plus shareholders: a crazy-quilt mix of union web pressmen, a legal publisher from Tampa, a Baltimore bookseller, lawyers, aunts, uncles, and my

father, who controlled two percent. From 1983 to 1986, I acquired a majority of their shares.

A complete buyout of the paper was orchestrated with the advice of John Suhler of the New York City-based private investment firm Veronis, Suhler & Associates; he would become a mentor throughout my business publishing career. In 1990, I obtained $2 million in buyout funding from Maryland National Bank and purchased the DR’s remaining 42 percent from various shareholders. Two years later, I began exploring new technologies that would predate the birth of the browser and Netscape.

By 1994, there were more than 60,000 online bulletin-board systems serving 17 million users. My view at the time was that these new systems offered the best possible platform for public notices and foreclosures, which remained the financial backbone of The Daily Record. That opinion jibed with my increasing paranoia that the print newspaper business would be dramatically eclipsed by emerging technology.

So in May 1994 I sold The Daily Record to Dolan Media for $8 million. Most entrepreneurs would have used that money to improve their golf scores and travel the world. Me? I was about to become manic about the Internet.

Oh, What a Tangled Web

In early 1994, I left Maryland, my ancestral stomping ground, bound for the virtual World Wide Web and the geographical Florida, specifically Palm Beach. Like Richard Warfield, who departed London in 1659 by himself at the age of 12 as an indentured servant and headed to the New World, I started my own journey into uncharted territory — the Internet, still in its infancy.

One of my genetic dispositions has been seeking out unexplored worlds; for me, the Internet represented more a wanderlust-like search than a technologist’s embrace of code. My Internet mania, completely self-diagnosed and a condition that has persisted until today, focused on the local business-news media landscape. (Other personal manias, unaware to me at the time, would be diagnosed professionally later.)

Over the years, many local digital media companies have crashed and burned, most memorably Patch, the hyper- local news site that cost AOL hundreds of millions in losses.

Back in the mid-1990s, a handful of powerful Internet-related media and business disrupters began to emerge. In 1994, a Wall Street hedge fund manager named Jeff Bezos quit his job and headed to Seattle to found Amazon and take over this world (and, maybe, one day in the future, take over undiscovered worlds in space). One year later, Craig Newmark launched Craigslist, a classified advertising juggernaut that would upend the newspaper business. Also in 1995, Pierre Omidyar started what quickly evolved into the groundbreaking auction site eBay. This trio planted the seeds for cataclysmic change in publishing and commerce.

My disruption ambitions were equally grandiose at the time, but from the perspective of the rear-view mirror, they now seem primarily familial and financial. If prudence had prevailed, my successful 1994 liquidity event — the sale of The Daily Record — would have gone straight into the stock market rather than into my manic vision for the World Wide Web.

“Don’t believe the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”

–ROBERT J. BURDETTE, author and humorist, 1883

My obsession with the local business media space migrated from print to digital. Accordingly, I partnered with David Levine, a Yale-educated technologist who had just help build NPR’s website. David was then based in Hampden, a Baltimore neighborhood chronicled by filmmaker John Waters in his 1990 film Cry-Baby.

Back in the early 1990s, David ran a technology company called Husky Labs, which, in 1994, built review.net, my first online local business news site; it covered South Florida and the Tampa-St. Pete-Clearwater area. Following Wired magazine’s lead of introducing ad banners on a national level, review.net became one of the first to do so regionally. While existing figuratively on the World Wide Web, I found myself living literally in that curious place called Florida. Given my interests at the time, my arrival there in my late 40s was probably 30 years premature. The lack of family, seasons, and history there were my non-economic losses of the 90s. However, at that moment, Florida seemed the perfect place to hide from myself and my first marriage.

John Suhlerinvestment banker who helped engineer a buyout of The Daily Record

In 1998, while living in West Palm Beach, I decided to sell review.net and establish a local B2B media company consisting of dbusiness and digital south: The former was an online city-based business-news site; the latter was a regional print magazine that covered the rise of technology and venture capital, topics that were underreported, if they were reported at all. I hired a very young Jason Kelly to serve as digital south’s editor and on-the-road evangelist. (These days, he’s New York Bureau Chief of Bloomberg, where he rides herd on more than 1,200 journalists. He also co-hosts Bloomberg Businessweek, which airs daily on Bloomberg Radio and weekly on Bloomberg Television, essentially talking about the same issues and trends he covered at digital south.)

Meanwhile, dbusiness created a virtual newsroom with reporters working remotely from Baltimore, Washington, Charlotte-Raleigh, Atlanta, South Florida, and Tampa.

Because of our limited publishing footprint, distribution partnerships were necessary with traditional media companies such as Cox (Atlanta JournalConstitution), Tribune (South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel), Times Mirror (The Baltimore Sun), and Media General (Richmond Times-Dispatch).

We also partnered with the online media companies Digital City, Netscape, and Citysearch, expanding our audience — and our distribution — for local business news.

Having already invested more than $2 million of my own money, I started exploring outside venture or strategic capital that would aid in our expansion. The first group of investors I lined up consisted of Hoovers, Media General, and investment banker Bruce Wasserstein’s Wasserstein & Co., a private equity firm with investments in a number of industries, particularly media.

As for Hoovers, it was founded in 1990 as a business research firm that provides information on companies and industries. Nine years later, it went public, and, in 2003, was acquired by Dun & Bradstreet for $119 million and rebranded D&B Hoovers.

But after I made numerous trips to Richmond, Media General backed out of this investor group, which, as a result, quickly blew up. At that point, Patrick Spain, Hoovers CEO, offered $24 million for the entire company. My 40 percent interest would have meant a $9.6 million exit. However, Spain was unable to get his board’s approval. Another kaput deal.

A second group of investors, consisting of Wasserstein’s U.S. Equity Partners, Times Mirror, and Robertson Stephens (a boutique investment bank) emerged in March 2000.

Nicknamed “Bid ’Em Up Bruce” because of his involvement in more than 1,000 mergers and acquisitions, Wasserstein was credited with coining the phrase “Pac-Man defense,” used by targeted companies during a hostile takeover. In 2004, he purchased New York magazine, and in 2007 he sold another media property, American Lawyer Media (ALM), to Incisive Media for about $630 million. Earlier, in 2002, Bruce sold Wasserstein Perella & Co., an investment bank, to Dresdner Bank for $1.4 billion; he then became CEO of Lazard, the financial advisory and asset management company. But he enjoyed his billionaire status for a mere seven years, dying at age 61 in 2009.

“Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.”

–MALCOLM FORBES, President/CEO of Forbes magazine

Anup Bagaria, vice chairman of Wasserstein & Co, spearheaded my second investor group’s $16 million Series A financing: U.S. Equity Partners led with $10 million, roughly $5 million came from Times Mirror’s venture arm (Rustic Canyon), while Robertson Stephens accounted for $1 million.

A graduate of MIT and at the age of 26 one of the youngest partners in the history of Wall Street, Anup was Bruce’s whiz-kid, tasked with managing ALM — which included American Lawyer magazine and New York Law Journal — and New York magazine.

The investment from Times Mirror emanated partially from my existing relationship with The Baltimore Sun, whose vice president of New Business Development at the time, Jean Halle, had taken note of my transformation of The Daily Record.

Then a cruel fate intervened. One week after our funding closed in March 2000, Times Mirror was acquired by Tribune Co. Given the historical animosity between Tribune and Times Mirror, the latter’s board members vacated their positions. Consequently, I was left to deal only with Bruce and his “Flying

Monkeys” — a characterization applied to Wasserstein’s minions by James Dolan, CEO of Dolan Media, purchaser of The Daily Record. (Robertson Stephens, which remained on board, functioned merely a passive partner.)

In short, it was now Warfield and Wasserstein, what then seemed to me to be the perfect marriage. It soon proved otherwise. The next 12 months were a whirlwind — a first-to-market, lose-a-million-dollars-per-month, don’t-worrybe-happy digital land grab. Four months after funding closed, the company, rebranded Local Business Network (LBN) — and minus digital south, in which Wasserstein had no interest — merged with TrueCommerce (TC), a nascent ecommerce firm; both LBN and TC retained its own identity. The synergies were minimal, however, including the fact that TC’s just-outside Boston office was inconveniently located for our South Florida headquarters.

During this time, I became preoccupied with a complicated and troubling family matter, one that required me to take an unscheduled three-week leave of absence from work. I removed myself as LBN’s CEO and became its chairman, meaning that I was not involved in the company’s day-to-day management and in making many of its strategic decisions.

As I attempted to sort out this difficult family issue, I watched helplessly from afar as my digital child was mangled by the Flying Monkeys, morphing until it was no longer recognizable to me. I gave serious consideration to resigning as chairman. My loss of control was devastating.

Six months after Local Business Network merged with TrueCommerce, the two companies unmerged: We were a digital media company; TC was ecommerce. Each was provided six months of funding, a case of truth or die.

When the funding ran out in 2002, Local Business Network filed for Chapter 11. Yet more devastation.

With 15 years to ponder all this unpleasantness, I have come to a few conclusions. First, Local Business Network should have moved from South Florida to New York City, the epicenter of advertising, and where Silicon Alley was starting to coalesce. Scaling advertising would have been easier if we had worked closely with Madison Avenue.

Second, instead of attempting to take over the world based on media distribution partnerships, we should have focused on the top 20 U.S. cities, proving ourselves there before attempting to conquer the nation’s myriad Peorias.

Investment banker Bruce Wasserstein

Finally, I should not have fired myself as CEO, or at least I should have been properly diagnosed and medicated until determining it was time to dismiss myself. I had lost millions. I had lost my soul, my history, my family.

After the collapse of Local Business Network, I felt it was time to flee Florida. What better place to recover than my ancestral home: Maryland, where I officially landed on October 28, 2003.

Beginning to write this book over three months in the spring of 2004 — pertaining only to my family’s history at that point — was cathartic. It would take 15 years before I was ready to write about myself.

“ We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this — through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication, we build these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime.”

–KAY REDFIELD JAMISON, from her 1995 book, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Between those two endpoints, the lens of time has proffered some insights and perspectives. Foremost among them: Since my teenage years, my mind has been unquiet — very unquiet.

This unquietness has manifested itself in chronic insomnia. In fact, one of my weak attempts at humor consists of the line “I haven’t slept in…decades.” I always assumed that insomnia was an innate entrepreneurial disease; real entrepreneurs do not sleep. Most of my insomnia bouts related specifically to business or family or relationships, but, occasionally, they became dramatically more expansive, almost hallucinatory or psychotic in nature.

In Kay Redfield Jamison’s masterful 2017 book Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character — about the celebrated 20th-century American poet who suffered from bipolar disease — she

references Frank Sinatra’s insomnia, noting that, “In Sinatra’s words, ‘I’m for anything that gets you through the night.’”

In the late 1990s, I discovered the medication Unisom, which provided partial relief for my insomnia. Initially, I thought it was a godsend, but it proved merely temporary. So I sought solace in words. In her Lowell book, Jamison describes the role of writing thusly: “Words heal, provide a bandage of grace, give meaning and moment to awful things. The Gettysburg Address, Lowell said, was a ‘symbolic and sacramental act’; it gave meaning to what the war had wrought. Through his words Lincoln had given the field of battle ‘a symbolic significance that it had lacked.’ Words give meaning to the battle.”

The power of words would become my salvation, my therapy.

The King of Speed

Zen and the Art of Speed Skiing

11

“The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there.”

–ROBERT M. PIRSIG,

from his 1974 novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Steve McKinney’s physical presence was impressive. At 6’2” and 190 pounds, he looked like a hippie movie star. Possessed of a spiritually inspired confidence and a defiant desire to win, he seamlessly combined Western hedonism with Eastern introspection, defining his passion for speed and acceptance of fear in terms of Tibetan religious beliefs. Combined, these attributes made him a speed-skiing world-record holder.

Born in Baltimore on August 18, 1953, Steve grew up the fifth child of my Aunt Frances Warfield (my father’s sister), a horse trainer, and Larry Naylor, an executive with the Rouse Company, a pioneering commercial real estate developer. Their other children, Steve’s siblings, were Lee, Laura, and Ouisha. Another child, Kathy, died at six months old, several years before Steve came along. Frances was smart and willful, as are many Warfield women. In late 1956, she left Maryland with her children for Nevada, where she and Larry obtained

a divorce. Frances and her kids settled on a 20-acre farm in Pleasant Valley, outside Reno, and she paid the bills by teaching the two subjects she knew best: skiing and horseback riding. She also homeschooled her kids, with her brood studying from 6:00 a.m. to noon, Monday through Friday, then skiing for the rest of the day.

In Nevada, she married Rigan McKinney, a future Hall of Fame steeplechase jockey whom she had originally met in Maryland; he had followed her to Nevada to successfully court her. Together, they had three children: McLane, Sheila, and Tamara. The Naylor kids took the surname McKinney to become a more cohesive family, although Rigan did not officially adopt them.

Ensemble, they traveled back and forth between Kentucky in the summer (for horses) and Nevada in winter (for skiing). Frances and Rigan established a thoroughbred racehorse breeding and training facility on a 155-acre farm in Lexington, the heart of Kentucky horse country.

“The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.”

“ What else is there to do but follow your dreams.”

–Steve McKinney

– ROBERT M. PIRSIG, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Not surprisingly, given Frances and Rigan’s backgrounds, the McKinney kids were accomplished riders and skiers, although they excelled at the latter. However, the family also experienced extraordinary tragedy. Steve’s only brother, McLane, junior national slalom champion of 1971, committed suicide in the summer of 1988 after Frances died from cancer. I remember little about McLane except for an incident in which he dropped a case of dog food on Steve from a height of about 10 feet, probably Steve’s earliest survival story.

Sheila, meanwhile, made the U.S. Ski Team at 12 and was skiing in international competitions at 13. “She was the best of us all,” Steve said graciously in an interview with Sierra Living magazine, “but during a World Cup race she released from her bindings and hit a lift tower.” Sheila spent 18 days in a coma,

and, after awakening, experienced motor problems that effectively ended her skiing career.

Baby sister Tamara won more World Cup races than any other U.S. alpine racer. In describing her early childhood to People magazine in February 1984, Tamara said, “I had skis on my feet before I could walk. My family strapped them on and toddled me around.”

Her family called her “Runt,” a term of endearment related to her 5’3”, 117-pound frame. Her sprightly personality is captured in that issue of People: “McKinney may be less imposing physically than most of her teammates [on the U.S. Ski Team], but what she lacks in huskiness she makes up for in strength. Witness the time outside the chic French resort town of Megève when McKinney offered a companion a piggyback ride from the peak of 6,000-ft. Mont d’Arbois.

“‘Hop on,’ she urged the 5’7”, 130-pound passenger, and they happily skied down the slopes. ‘There’s Mont Blanc,’ said Tamara, playing tour guide as the trees fled past. ‘Are you frightened?’”

“‘Not at all,’ replied her cargo, and the reason was obvious.

“McKinney maneuvers better on skis than most of us could hope to in sneakers.”

At 16, in 1978, she finished third in her first major race in Europe. Although

Tamara McKinney: 1983 overall World Cup title winner

having been ordained a new star, she failed to finish her next nine races. In 1981, she won three giant slaloms and the World Cup title for that event. However, the following season, she fractured her right arm and hand, and did not win any events.

In 1983, she was back on top again, winning the overall World Cup title, an accomplishment no other American woman had achieved at the time. A year later, she finished fourth in the giant slalom in the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, and then disappointingly failed to complete the course in the Games’ regular slalom. Tamara received a bronze medal in the 1985 world champion combined event in Italy; ditto in the same competition in 1987 in Switzerland. In 1988, she broke her leg, and, because she was not fully recovered, finished neither the giant slalom nor the slalom in that year’s Olympics in Calgary. Bouncing back, she won a bronze medal in the slalom and a gold medal in the combined in the 1989 world championship. But later that year, while training for the 1990 season, she broke her left leg for the third time, and, unhappy with the pace of her recovery, announced her retirement from the sport in November 1990.

The King of Speed

Steve McKinney was a classic Warfield adventurer, but he was also a philosopher, a relentless truth seeker. He pushed himself to new challenges daily, whether climbing Mt. Everest with no oxygen supply or becoming the first person to hang glide from the world’s highest mountain.

He began his skiing career as a downhill specialist with the U.S. Ski Team. “I followed his junior racing career and was aware of his extraordinary talent and athletic ability,” Dick Dorworth — Steve’s mentor, friend, and fellow speed skier and rock climber — wrote in Skiing Heritage magazine in 1999. “By the early 1970s, he was among the most promising young downhill racers in America. He was skilled, smart, strong, and courageous. He was also ambitious and loved the game of competition.”

Despite his emerging potential as a downhill skier, Steve grew disenchanted with the politics and bureaucracy associated with the U.S. team, quitting in 1973. He also had become impatient with downhill courses, craving instead

U.S. skiers Phil Mahre and Tamara McKinney en route to 1984 Winter Olympics

the exhilaration that he had found in speed skiing, which he had been doing in Squaw Valley, not far from his Nevada home; he had been introduced to the sport by Dorworth, who, in 1963, set a world record himself for speed skiing by racing 105.3 mph.

Speed skiing likely has existed as long as skiing itself. Unofficial record keeping for the sport dates from the mid-19th century, when, in 1874, skier Tommy Todd reached nearly 88 mph. In 1930, at St. Moritz in Switzerland, Guzzi Lantschner established the first internationally recognized speed-skiing world record: 65.5 mph. The next year, also at St. Moritz, Leo Gasperl was clocked at 84.7 mph. And in 1955, Ralph Miller shattered the 100 mph mark at Portillo in Chile, caught at 108 mph (although the accuracy of that run has been questioned).

In 1947, an annual speed-skiing competition, the Kilometro Lanciato (the Flying Kilometer), launched at Cervinia in Italy. Throughout the 1960s and into the early 1970s, Europeans dominated the sport and the Kilometro Lanciato, but then came Steve McKinney with his shoulder-length blond hair and unruly beard. The Italian press called him “The Yankee Flyer.”

“At high speed, your senses blend together. No worries about the past or the future, only the here and now. Being in those other places saps your energy.”

–Steve McKinney

“Steve exhibited the elusive term charisma,” Dorworth wrote in the Skiing Heritage story. “He had the physique of a tall Viking warrior, the long blond hair and good looks of a rock star, the confidence of a king, and the personality of a fun-loving sage. He was ‘the man’ in an endeavor that answers the question that occurs to every person who has ever put on a pair of skis, even to those who do not wish to find out: How fast can I go?”

In contrast to his experience with the U.S. Ski Team, the free-form universe of speed skiing suited Steve’s unconventional lifestyle and philosophy — a universe he was primed to remake and to redefine. But fate temporarily intervened.

Steve was still a neophyte rock climber in 1973 when, with his friend Craig Calonica, he decided to scale the Black Wall at Donner Summit near Lake Tahoe. But he fell, breaking his back and spending almost the next 12 months in a body cast.

Having planned to compete for the first time in that year’s Kilometro Lanciato, Steve wasn’t about to let something like a broken back get in the way. Although he did not officially participate in the event, he still attended, skiing in a body cast from his neck to his crotch. The cast held his back straight, forcing him to depend on his legs, an experience he described as the defining moment when he really learned how to race.

“It’s like a peregrine falcon,” he once explained. “That’s what we’re really like, flying down the mountains on a cushion of air. Falcons have been clocked at around 175 miles per hour. That’s a reasonable goal [for speed skiing].

“You push off — skate, skate, skate — then drop into a tuck that you have to hold without movement. Even a finger can throw you off. Early on, there’s no air resistance, and the normal perceptions are there — the rush of the wind, flags here, a rock there. But then you start going faster — 70, 80, 90 mph — and now everything is vibrating. You get above 100, and it’s vibrating very fast. You hit that extreme speed and boom! Suddenly, there is no sound, no vision, no vibration. At that crescendo there is no thought at all.

“As an object approaches the speed of light, its internal time clock slows down. An astronaut launched into space will age more slowly than his twin brother on earth. The same is true for the mind of the speed skier. The faster my body goes, the slower my mind works. It’s like the white light place in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. At high speed, your senses blend together. You come from separateness and enter into oneness, oneness with the mountain, your skis, everything. In that place you are fully in the moment. No worries about the past or the future, only the here and now. Being in those other places saps your energy.”

Steve was describing the “zone” that psychologists and scientists would not begin to understand until three decades ago. In 1990, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, in which he analyzes the connection between peak performance and a new state of consciousness. Five years later, Michael Murphy and Rhea A. White further explored the phenomenon with In the Zone: Transcendent Experience in Sports. And, in 1998, Andrew Cooper followed with Playing in the Zone: Exploring the Spiritual Dimensions in Sports. Steve, in a way, was ahead of all of them, in part due to his embrace of Buddhism.

“ To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here’s where things grow.”

–Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Fully recovered for the 1974 Kilometro Lanciato, Steve headed to Cervinia. With borrowed equipment, he used yoga stretches and deep breathing to center himself while waiting his turn on three runs on three different days. His first two runs went well, but others beat his time. His third proved best.

“Off I went,” Steve wrote in Ski magazine in 1975. “A few harsh moments over the top bumps, then into the fearful, yet strangely comfortable current. I discovered the middle path of stillness within speed, calmness within fear, and I held it longer and quieter than ever before. The clock registered at 189.473 kph [117.47 mph].”

Nirvana. World record. He would go on to set the world record three more times: 121.0 mph at Portillo in Chile in 1977; 124.1 mph the next year, again at Portillo; and 124.8 mph at Les Arcs in France in 1982.

Steve forever transformed speed skiing. His good looks and radiant charm gave the sport a media star. Above all else, on a personal level, he had achieved the kind of life he sought, all the while learning and growing spiritually.

The Top of the World

For a period of about five years in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s, my father and his sister Frances, with children in tow, would reunite each summer in the resort town of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Among the assembled cousins, Steve was the best at surfing and water skiing. Back then, I adored him like the big brother I never had, even though he was only a year older. After I finished high school, however, our family reunions ended, and, as a result, I lost track of Steve.

One Saturday in 1986 I was watching ABC’s Wide World of Sports, and — whoa! — there was Steve hang gliding off of Mt. Everest, the first person to attempt the feat. I could not view this event with any amount of vicarious pleasure, as it appeared that my cousin was on nothing short of a death trip, totally out of control. It was at that moment that I realized the true daredevil

Steve McKinney (center) flanked by his friends and fellow speed skiers Paul Buschmann (left) and Tom Simons (right)

he had become. (Mutual of Omaha sponsored the event, ironic in that Steve’s lifestyle certainly would have disqualified him from obtaining life insurance.)

Nearly 20 years later, when I began writing this book, I discovered Mutual of Omaha’s Spirit of Adventure, a series of six TV specials that aired in 1987. One of the episodes, entitled Wings Toward Everest, chronicles Steve’s Mt. Everest hang-gliding adventure. “It was the last and best challenge on Everest,” he notes early in the program, by way of explaining the quest. “The mountain had been climbed from every side, soloed, skied, and circumnavigated, but it had never been flown down.”

So in the fall of 1986, Steve led an expedition up Everest, joined by a small army of climbers, medical personnel, cinematographers, sherpas, and a pair of experienced hang gliders: Larry Tudor, who had set world records for long-distance hang-gliding flights, and Bob Carter, the first to hang glide off Yosemite’s sheer El Capitan in California. The group also included Steve’s friend and climbing expert, Craig Calonica.

Before making their way to a planned launching point at 24,000 feet, 5,000 feet from the summit, the trio paused at 18,500, where Steve attempted a test flight, during which he stalled and crashed. Shaken but uninjured, he recovered quickly. But when a relentless snowstorm suddenly engulfed the mountain, McKinney, Carter, and Tudor were forced to hunker down and wait for

High on Speed: Steve McKinney, 1981, Silverton, Colorado

five days. After the storm finally subsided, the trio continued their ascent, and, with the understanding that the higher elevations might invite avalanche conditions, decided to take off from 22,000 feet instead.

With winds already picking up, announcing an impending storm, Steve, with help from Larry, hurriedly attached his hang-glider harness and put on his skis. The idea behind wearing skis was that they would give Steve sufficient speed for the take-off and make for a smoother landing from such an extreme height.

Taking advantage of favorable winds coming off the north face of the mountain, Steve launched himself at 10:30 a.m. on October 5. His flight was nothing short of perfect, and Steve skied to a smooth-as-silk landing at 19,800 feet, grinning from ear to ear.

“I think prophecies are being fulfilled here,” Steve explains in Wings Toward Everest. “The Dalai Lama for many, many years dreamed he was a kite — wanted to be a kite. And here we are in the Dalai Lama’s country doing what he most wanted to do himself.”

From One Spirit World to Another

In November 1990, Steve was driving from Craig Calonica’s home near San Diego, where the two were writing a book together, to San Francisco, where he planned to attend a U.S. Ski Team fundraiser with his sister Tamara. Late at night, Steve, tired, pulled his Volkswagen to the side of a freeway about 10 miles outside Sacramento and went to sleep in the back seat. As he slept, another car crashed into Steve’s, resulting in him having a severe head injury. Transported to a hospital in Sacramento, he was temporarily placed on a lifesupport system, but removed soon afterward when it became apparent that he was brain dead. Steve died shortly thereafter, only 37 years old.

“Steve was known primarily as a speed skier, as well as he should be,” Dick Dorworth once wrote, “but he was also a friend, talented writer, musician, horseman, and climber. And he was a philosopher, a thinker, and seeker of the truth.

“Steve was generous, forgiving, funny, and honest, and he was very easy to be with. We had a lot of fun on skis, in the mountains, traveling, climbing, and — yes — partying, all the while discussing the endless mysteries, impasses, challenges, and ideas of what it is to be a human being. Like many others, I am grateful to have known him, but I miss his presence in my life.

Steve McKinney preparing to hang glide off Mt. Everest

“In my mind, Steve McKinney was a great speed skier because he was a great human being, not vice versa.”

Steve defied death for most of his life. In the Sierra Living article, he noted, “What’s really inconceivable is that most people live their lives as prisoners in their own comfort zones. Nothing risked, nothing lost or gained.”

I feel sure that Steve would laugh and call me silly to feel his death was unfair — or at least anticlimactic. But I did nonetheless, until I remembered what Steve, still out of breath, said immediately after completing the first hang glide off of Mt. Everest: “I feel like I’ve been given a blessed gift, that’s for sure, a dream come true,” he says in Wings Toward Everest. “What else is there to do but follow your dreams?”

Hang gliding in Heaven

WALLIS IN PALM BEACH

Long before Donald Trump became the king of Palm Beach with his 1985 acquisition of the Mar-a-Lago estate, real and faux American and European royalty descended upon the island town, a curious mashup of European titles in exile and American heirs and heiresses. That demographic included the Duke and Duchess, who, from 1941 through 1970, were annual visitors to Palm Beach as houseguests at the stately mansions of the enclave’s fabulously wealthy.

Palm Beach was heaven on earth for the Windsors. Edward pursued his passion for golf, and Wallis shopped on tony Worth Avenue. The local social aristocracy embraced the chic castaway sovereigns, with at least two notable hostesses adding royal titles to their names: Real estate heiress Audrey Emery’s husbands included Grand Duke Dmitri of Russia and Prince Dmitri Djordjaze of Monte Carlo; national dime store chain heiress Barbara Woolworth Hutton was a countess, baroness, and a princess twice over via marriage, plus the wife of Hollywood royalty in the person of Cary Grant — and, not incidentally, Jimmy Donahue’s first cousin.

The Duke and Duchess were feted and pampered in Palm Beach throughout the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. One of their more memorable visits occurred in 1968 when cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post hosted a benefit at Mara-Lago, which she and her husband, financier Edward Francis Hutton — yes, the E.F. Hutton, who was also Barbara Woolworth Hutton’s uncle — commissioned to be built in the 1920s. Among the guests: Jacqueline Kennedy, visiting Palm Beach for the first time since Christmas 1963 when she decamped there in mourning for her assassinated president/husband. The Post/Hutton bash included a screening of the 1965 documentary A King’s Story, based on the Duke of Windsor’s 1951 memoir.

Narrated by Orson Wells, the film features archival newsreel footage, still photographs and home movies from Duke’s private collection, and interior scenes of Buckingham Palace. In a harmonic convergence of Hollywood and the monarchy’s political sensibilities, the Duchess is not mentioned in the first two-thirds of the 102-minute film.

THE GUEST LIST

Little-known fact about the Duchess of Windsor: She was the godmother of Cornelia Guest. Yes, Cornelia Guest: third cousin of Winston Churchill, former New York socialite, 1982 Debutante of the Year, and 1980s Debutante of the Decade (announced in 1986, which seems a bit premature). The New York Times dubbed her “the first ‘celebutante,’” predating Paris Hilton and the Kardashians.

Cornelia’s father, the royal-ish Winston Frederick Churchill Guest, was an AngloIrish, six-goal polo champion who married the equally patrician Lucy Douglas “C. Z.” Cochrane at Ernest Hemingway’s home in Havana in 1947, with Hemingway serving as best man. Well-heeled and wellbred, the Guests split their time between an estate on Long Island in New York (where they entertained visitors such as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor) and Palm Beach, Florida, the East Coast version of La La Land.

Born in 1920 the daughter of a prominent Boston investment banker, C. Z. enjoyed a nanoseconds-long acting career in the mid-1940s. After her marriage, she settled into the life of a high-profile socialite while serving as a gardening columnist

OPPOSITE PAGE: Lucy Douglas “C. Z.” Guest

ABOVE: The family that plays together, stays together: C. Z. and Winston Guest with their children

Alexander and Cornelia

LEFT: C. Z. with the Duchess of Windsor

for the New York Post and authoring a handful of books on the subject (the first of these, 1975’s First Garden, was illustrated by Cecil Beaton with an introduction by Truman Capote). A great beauty, C. Z., like the Duchess, graced the cover of Time magazine, in her case the July 20, 1962, issue.

Perhaps C. Z. and Winston’s most fabulous social brainwave was beknighting their friends, Edward and Wallis, as the godparents of the Guests’ two children, Cornelia and Alexander.

Cornelia was born in 1963 in Palm Beach. Given that the Duchess was rather infirm during the last decade of her life, her encounters with Cornelia were limited to the latter’s early childhood.

For a 2018 special edition of People magazine (“The Story of the Royals”), which partnered with ABC to produce a two-part TV documentary of the same name, Cornelia imparted this telling anecdote about the Windsors: “I had lots of dogs when I was growing up, and when [the Duke] would come visit, he was always fascinated to see what new dogs I had.

“I would just take hours carefully washing my pony and braiding his mane and making him absolutely perfect. And he would always come out in the field and talk to me about my horses. He was lovely. [Simpson] was a little more stern. I remember I had to curtsy and say, ‘Hello, Duchess, how are you?’ She was a little scary.”

WALLIS IN NEW YORK

Wallis and Edward loved New York decades before the famous 1977 “I Love New York” advertising campaign. Between 1941 and 1961, they occupied a suite at the grand Waldorf Astoria hotel during their annual pilgrimage to the city for the fall social season. Avatars of cafe society, their friends and acquaintances in that rarefied environment included the elegant fashion diva, actress, and horsewoman C. Z. Guest; the outrageously gay international playboy and refined hedonist Jimmy Donahue; and the nationally syndicated gossip columnist, radio-show host, closeted lesbian, and queen mother to the social A-list Elsa Maxwell.

Born decidedly middle class in Iowa and raised in San Francisco, Elsa Maxwell nevertheless invented herself as “the Hostess with the Mostest,” as the press dubbed her. (Irving Berlin even name-checks her in the song “The Hostess with the Mostes’ on the Ball” from his 1950 Broadway musical Call Me Madam — he wrote its music and lyrics.) She reigned as party-giver supremo for European and American society from the 1920s through the 1950s. Among her flock: the Windsors. Ensconced in a rent-free suite at the Waldorf Astoria, Maxwell befriended co-residents the Duke and Duchess, then famously feuded with Wallis, memorably inscribed in the public consciousness after an especially frosty standoff between the two women at the 1957 edition of the hotel’s glitzy annual April in Paris gala — over which Maxwell presided as commander in chief — when Elsa conspicuously hobnobbed with a radiant Marilyn Monroe.

As for Jimmy Donahue, who maintained a lavish Fifth Avenue apartment, he kick-started the Duchess’ gay icon bona fides by conducting a five-year affair with her in the 1950s, a time period during which Jimmy spent considerable time flitting hither and yon — New York, Palm Beach, and elsewhere — with the Windsors, always paying their way. (Read all about the trio’s escapades, especially the curious sexual bond between Wallis and Jimmy, in author Christopher Wilson’s 2000 tabloid-yummy book Dancing With the Devil: The Windsors and Jimmy Donahue.)

Elsa Maxwell: the Hostess with the Mostess

CHANGING OF THE GUARD

Wallis Warfield Simpson crashed onto the world media’s radar screen in 1936 when her romance with King Edward VIII of Great Britain resulted in an unprecedented monarchial crisis and the abdication of his throne in December of that year. That notoriety prompted Time magazine to name Wallis its 1936 Woman of the Year (she appeared on the cover of the January 4, 1937, issue), and for two decades thereafter, as she and Edward, as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, regally roamed European and American glamor spots as stylish royal exiles, she remained a fixture in the pages of magazines and newspapers.

But by the mid-1950s, the Duchess correctly sensed that the luster on her It-Girl star might be fading. Not that she betrayed this internal fear publicly, where she remained a paragon of decorum. Privately, however, she expressed doubt, even pique. An incident from 1956 tellingly makes clear Wallis’ shaken confidence. Eager to confer about her memoir, The Heart Has Its Reasons, the Duchess invited Charles Pick, her London-based publisher at the firm of Michael Joseph, to her home in Paris. Pick represented a clutch of 20th-century literary heavyweights, notably John Steinbeck, J.D. Salinger, Graham Greene, Roald Dahl, and John Le Carre, as well as a select few celebrity authors. A keen observer, Pick recorded tales of his writers’ quirks, foibles, and neuroses in a memoir that remained unpublished at the time of his death in 2000, age 82. That volume, plus his archive of diaries, letters, interviews, and photographs,

Cecil Beaton photographed Marilyn Monroe — the only session that he conducted with her and for which she showed up an hour and one-half late — at New York City’s Ambassador Hotel in February 1956, just as the actress began receiving critical acclaim for her work. The images here are drawn from the 2014 book Cecil Beaton: Portraits & Profiles, edited by Hugo Vickers.

“If you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.”

–MARILYN MONROE

came alive when Pick’s son, Martin, donated them to England’s University of East Anglia, his own alma mater, in 2012.

Regarding his tete-a-tete with the Duchess, Pick recalls arriving at her Paris villa to find her stretched out on a chaise lounge in her drawing room, “a large, round box of Charbonnel et Walker chocolates within reach of her right hand.

“As she rose to greet me, her opening remark was, ‘Can you please tell me who Marilyn Monroe’s publicity agent is?’

“I had to confess that I had no idea but inquired as to why she wanted to know. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I have all the newspapers each day, and I was generally on the front page. But now I see that Marilyn Monroe is on the front page. Well, somebody has pushed me off.’

“I could see that I was in for a difficult time, but I explained that I wasn’t in any way able to help her in displacing Marilyn Monroe in her favor.”

While Wallis’ memoir racked up decent sales, Monroe’s starring role in the 1956 film Bus Stop further established her bona fides as a serious actress, and in the years that followed, from the lens of the public domain, the two women sped in opposite directions: Monroe ascending, the Duchess descending.

The Feminine Mystique: the Duchess

and Judy Steir

12

“For a gallant spirit there can never be defeat.”

–WALLIS WARFIELD SIMPSON

Judith Shubow Steir is the mother of my boarding school roommate, Mitch Steir.

At Milton Academy, we were best friends — a pair of hellions. Mitch’s family lived nearby in Brookline, Massachusetts, and I vividly remember Judy from those days, especially her good-natured tolerance of our varied mischief. Today, Mitch is CEO of Savills, a national commercial real estate firm; he lives and works in New York and is married to Nancy Ganz, of Ganz body-slimmer fame.

After miraculously raising Mitch and his younger brother and sister — and after having read and inculcated Betty Friedan’s 1963 feminist manifesto, The Feminine Mystique — Judy, in her late 30s at the time, decided to explore her long-suppressed desire to test her creative energies. She hailed from a family that boasted numerous writers and artists, including a concert pianist aunt and a musician-composer cousin. Growing up in Boston, she attended numerous musical theater productions — Oklahoma, My Fair Lady, Camelot, and her favorite, South Pacific.

Stan Chandler as King Edward VIII and Kaitlin Hopkins as Wallis Simpson in the Pasadena Playhouse’s 1998 production of Only a Kingdom

Not surprisingly, then, Judy gravitated toward the gotta-sing/gotta-dance format. The aforementioned musician-composer, Henry Lasker (her father’s first cousin), urged her to develop her nascent songwriting talent, what he called her “art songs.” She possessed no formal training — didn’t play an instrument, didn’t compose with musical notation. Instead, she voiced her songs into the world, singing them, at first, to Henry, and, later, to others, notably Peter Mansfield of the Boston Conservatory. They transcribed the melodies as they heard them.

“When I made up a tune,” she explains, “I wouldn’t be able to remember it unless I also created a lyric.”

Drawing on her English lit and composition studies at Boston University, Judy used her own life experiences — reconciling her commitment to family with her seeking personal expression — to construct music and dramatic sequences that eventually coalesced into a musical she titled Far Above Rubies.

In 1987, Robert Kuss, an aspiring producer who worked in human resources for a large publishing house, gave her the idea to write a musical about the royal controversy surrounding King Edward VIII and Wallis Warfield Simpson: their love affair, marriage, and particularly Edward’s abdication. While countless books, films, and TV shows had been devoted to the couple’s headline-making lives, nothing — at least nothing that Judy could discover — existed for the musical theater.

Having little previous knowledge of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor beyond their media notoriety, she dove into the project, reading everything she could find on the subject. She also conducted copious research, seeking out and speaking with people who knew, or knew a great deal about, the Windsors: Jean Lisbonne, the trustee of Wallis’ estate; Jeanine Metz, a long-time secretary for the Windsors; my father; and author, editor, and Duke and Duchess scholar Michael Bloch.

Her due diligence and perseverance — and the avid support of her husband, Bert — ultimately morphed into the two-act musical Only a Kingdom, with music, book, and lyrics written by Judy. She based the story in large part

Judy Steir with her husband Bert

on Bloch’s 1986’s book Wallis and Edward: Letters 1931-1937 (The Intimate Correspondence of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor).

After an initial reading in New York in 1994, Only a Kingdom premiered in a student production at the Boston Conservatory in 1996. The five-performance run gave Judy insight into the show’s strengths and, more importantly, its weaknesses, and she set about overhauling the work.

“A woman’s life can really be a succession of lives, each revolving around some emotionally compelling situation or challenge, and each marked off by some intense experience.”

–WALLIS WARFIELD SIMPSON

The next year, Mill Mountain Theatre, in Roanoke, mounted the first fullfledged professional production of Only a Kingdom, during which, at the director’s request, it underwent additional revision. From there, it moved on to the Stevens Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and, in late 1998, after yet more nips and tucks, to Los Angeles’ Pasadena Playhouse.

In the program that accompanied the Pasadena Playhouse production, Judy explained her intent with the play:

Steir says that she wanted to look at the story from a “psychological aspect” to answer the question that fascinated the entire world at the time and shook the British monarchy to its core: Why would a man give up a kingdom for a woman, a commoner, and someone who was not particularly attractive?

“He always told her she was the first ‘to pierce his loneliness,’” Steir says. “She was an American, so she was much more forthright with him than his British subjects, most of whom were inhibited in his presence. She made him feel alive and human.”

Edward, whom Steir describes as decent, honorable, naive, and emotionally needy, had the misfortune to fall in love with the one woman who was anathema to the Royal Family and the British Parliament…Edward VIII chose to follow the dictates of his heart, against the wishes of his lover. “She tried to talk him out of it,” Steir says, “but he wouldn’t hear of it. He was obsessed with her.

“These people were not perfect saints, but they have been unjustly maligned. People

They could have danced all night: Stan Chandler and Kaitlin Hopkins as King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson in the Pasadena Playhouse’s 1998 production of Only a Kingdom

can be very bitchy, so I took my research only from their close friends and associates. Much of the bad press was engineered by Buckingham Palace in an effort to improve the image of Edward’s successor [George VI, father of Queen Elizabeth II].

“You have to understand that Edward was phenomenally popular in his day, more popular than Princess Diana was. Every young woman in the world kept a picture of him in her diary…They [Edward and Wallis] were married for 35 years. Their marriage to this day is proof that love does, finally, conquer all.”

The Duchess (Almost) on Broadway

Over the years, Judy has repeatedly reached out to me to discuss her adventure with Only a Kingdom, a concert version (music only) of which I saw in July 2004 at the John Drew Theater in East Hampton, on Long Island.

Throughout our conversations, including when we got together in New York in early 2019, we discussed the history and current status of Only a Kingdom, as well as the real-life Wallis. It came as no great surprise that Judy defended Wallis, regardless of the subject — rumored promiscuity, gender confusion, and alleged collusion with the Nazis — attributing much of the blizzard of bile about the Duchess to the machinations of the Royal Family. Those sentiments bleed through in the following scenes from her play.

A dialogue between Wallis and her Aunt Bessie Merryman before Edward’s abdication:

Act II, Scene 3, Only a Kingdom

Wallis: He insists on marriage, and it seems impossible to me. It’s just so awful (sobbing).

Aunt Bessie: The nerve of those people — thinkin’ you’re not good enough for them. Why, our family can trace its roots much farther back on English soil than the Windsors.

Wallis: Oh, Aunt Bessie.

Aunt Bessie: It makes me so angry people sayin’ you come from common stock. Why, we Montagues of Virginia go back to the Norman Conquest in 1066.

Wallis: Aunt Bessie, please.

Act II, Scene 4

Aunt Bessie: The Windsors are Germans. They’ve only been English for a couple of generations. The old King changed his name durin’ the War. It was some German name — Coburg Saxe Somethin’.

Wallis: Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Aunt Bessie: You know, even the Warfields, although they are newer, go way back in Maryland. They are a distinguished family, even a governor among them. But, I must say, your Uncle Sol Warfield was no gentleman (waving her hand). Well, let’s not go into that now.

Wallis: Aunt Bessie, this is pointless.

Aunt Bessie: When Henry VIII wanted a woman, he caused a lot more trouble. (Pause.) Perhaps by the time there are eight of them, they start to run amok. (Patting Wallis) Why sweetheart, compared to you, those Windsors are nothin’ but Johnny-come-latelies.

During my initial discussions with Judy, I confess that my curiosity about Wallis Warfield Simpson was about the same as my curiosity about visiting Fantasyland at a Disney Magic Kingdom park — none. My lens and interest were the Warfields who were warriors, not the Warfields who were lovers.

Gradually, though, thanks in part to Judy’s play and our conversations, I have become increasingly intrigued by Wallis’ gumption, reinvention, wanderlust, and media vilification. Additionally, the recent hit TV show The Crown and the well-regarded 2006 film The Queen have heightened my — and the public’s — interest in all things royal, or, in the case of the Duchess of Windsor, not so royal.

Meanwhile, since Judy first launched Only a Kingdom, there have been other Wallis-related stage musicals, notably The Duchess: a.k.a. Wallis Simpson, which premiered in 1997. And now, via a mid-2019 premiere at the Hollywood Fringe Festival, comes The Duchess and the Stripper, a fictional fantasy of what transpires when a pair of notorious Baltimore dames, Wallis and legendary stripteaser/nightclub impresario Blaze Starr, meet in their hometown in 1961.

Not forgetting Peter Nichols’ non-musical drama about the Duke and Duchess in exile, WE, commissioned by — and then rejected by — the U.K.’s Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1990s. Lauded for darkly comedic 1960s works such as A Day in the Death of Joe Egg and The National Health, Nichols, regrettably, never was able to persuade a company to stage WE.

It would take Alexander Hamilton 211 years to reach Broadway. He died on July 12, 1804, in Greenwich Village; his musical debut, in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s stupendously successful Hamilton, occurred on July 13, 2015, at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, only 2.3 miles away.

The Duchess is the Queen of Resurrections. She died on April 24, 1986, a mere 32 years ago, and still has 179 years to beat A. Hamilton to Broadway.

Judy’s epic tale of hurdles, hiccups, and hinterland productions with Only a Kingdom make for a true adventure, albeit not a Warfield Adventure. Given her spunk, smarts, chutzpah, and extraordinary fortitude, Broadway still seems within reach.

The royal family on the balcony and the ensemble below from the 1998 Pasadena Playhouse production of Only a Kingdom

Madonna with W.E. star Andrea Riseborough — Harper’s Bazaar, December 2011

and diamond 20th anniversary brooch emblazoned with the Windsors’ “W” and “E” monogram

RIGHT: Emerald, ruby,

W.E.: the Duchess and Madonna

13

“I always thought I should be treated like a star.”

–MADONNA

The British love titles. Obsess about them. For example, before he became king in January 1936, Edward was officially the Prince of Wales. After Edward VIII abdicated his throne in December of that year, he reverted to prince (of no particular place — just Prince Edward), and then, after marrying Wallis in 1937, he morphed into a duke, in this case the Duke of Windsor, making Wallis a duchess — a duchess, however, who was denied a HRH (Her Royal Highness) title by Edward’s mum, Queen Mary. That rejection bugged Edward tremendously. Still, together, the couple established a royal brand of sorts via a monogram: entwined geometric representations of the letters “W” and “E” with a crown hovering over them. (Eighty years later, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle unveiled their monogram, which bears more than a passing resemblance to Edward and Wallis’.)

As a royal, Edward was peppered with titles throughout his life. At birth in 1894, he automatically became Prince of York. At age six, Prince of Cornwall. At seven, Prince of Wales. Upon the death of his grandfather, King Edward

VII, and the ascension to the throne of his father, George V, in May 1910, Edward became the Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay at age 15; one month later, when he turned 16, he took the title Earl of Chester.

Over the years, he acquired a dizzying array of titles. Let’s start with military ranks: from midshipman in the Royal Navy to, as king, Admiral of the Fleet (Royal Navy), Field Marshall (British Army), and Marshall of the Royal Air Force, with nearly a dozen ranks in between. At the outset of World War II, he became a major-general in the Army.

Then there are the honors associated with the British Commonwealth/ Empire: Knight of the Garter, Companion of the Imperial Service Order, Grand Master and Knight Grand Cross of St. Michael and St. George, and Knight Grand Cross of the Bath, among numerous other outre-sounding formal appellations. Finally, an equal number of such mouthfuls from foreign nations: Knight of the Golden Fleece, Knight of the Order of the Elephant, Grand Cordon of Muhammad Ali, Collar of the Order of Carol I, and Grand Cross of the United Orders of Christ and Aviz, etc., etc., ad infinitum.

“I sometimes think I was born to live up to my name. How could I be anything else but what I am having been named Madonna? I would either have ended up a nun or this.”

–MADONNA

That represents only a partial list, but you get the idea. The honorifics portion of Edward’s resume stretched, as “God Save the Queen,” the British National anthem, terms it, “from shore to shore!”

In 1919, then-Prince Edward received perhaps his most unusual title, given him by a Canadian Indian Chief. That year, he ventured on a cross-country tour of Canada, part of what was officially known as the Dominions of the British Empire. In Alberta, he pow-wowed with Young Thunder, chief of a Stoney tribe, who presented him with a feathered headdress and a decorated buckskin suit, proclaiming, “In memory of the happy days that are gone,

I declare you chief of this band of Stoneys and bestow on you the name of Chief Morning Star.”

In case you were growing impatient, here’s where I finally get around to introducing Madonna, who shares more than a few traits with the Duchess of Windsor — a powerful personality, a contradictory nature, a photo-op addiction, and a passion for jewelry, fashion, and style.

In the late 2000s, Madonna, who had moved to London, turned her creative restlessness into directing and co-writing a film based on Wallis and Edward, using their monogram, W.E., as its title. By then, she already had enjoyed a busy career as a screen actress, beginning in 1979 with A Certain Sacrifice, and continuing on with starring roles in Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), Shanghai Surprise (1986), Who’s That Girl (1987), Dick Tracy (1990), Shadows and Fog (1991), A League of Their Own (1992), Body of Evidence (1992), Dangerous Game (1993), Girl 6 (1996), Evita (1996), The Next Best Thing (2000), and Swept Away (2002), among others.

In 2008, Madonna segued into making her own films with Filth and Wisdom, which she directed and co-wrote. W.E. followed three years later, premiering at the Venice Film Festival in September 2011. It enjoyed a one-week limited run in New York and Los Angeles that December, was released theatrically in the U.S. and U.K. the following January, and worldwide a month later.

Parallel-style, W.E. interweaves the romantic trials and tribs of two women separated by six decades. In 1998, distraught New York housewife Wally Winthrop (Abbie Cornish) becomes obsessed with Wallis (Andrea Riseborough) and the controversy surrounding the abdication of Edward (James D’Arcy).

“Edward gave up the most powerful position in the world for this woman,” Madonna told the Evening Standard in 2010, explaining why she was drawn to the subject. “The fact that he abdicated his throne left many people devastated, and, of course, they had to demonize Wallis.”

Interviewed by The Daily Telegraph the same year, she said, “People have accused Wallis of all kinds of things. They’ve said that she put a spell on Edward. They’ve said that she was a hermaphrodite and that he was gay. They’ve said that they were Nazi sympathizers. It’s just the usual lynch-mob mentality that descends upon somebody who has something that lots of other people do not have.”

Madonna noted in the Evening Standard story that whenever she brought up the subject of King Edward VIII and Wallis Warfield Simpson at a dinner party, “It’s like throwing a Molotov cocktail into the room. Everyone erupts into an argument about who they were. I mean, they were very controversial — and continue to be. So, of course, I’m very attracted to that.”

As for her decision not to simply make a Wallis biopic, she told Rolling Stone in 2011 that “We can all read the same history book and have a different point of view. So it was important for me to not present the story and say, ‘This is the one and only story,’ but to say, ‘This story moved me and inspired me.’ That’s how the two love stories were created.”

“Sex is not love. Love is not sex. But when they come together, it’s the most incredible thing.”

–MADONNA

Critical response to W.E. was, at best, mixed. Damon Wise, writing in Empire magazine, offered faint praise: “Let’s give the director a break here. W.E. is flawed, overlong, and confused in its storytelling…. Andrea Riseborough is terrific as the pushy Simpson, as is James D’Arcy as the simple king who so soppily doffs his crown to her.

“It’s easy to dismiss Madonna as a tourist in the film world. But though it often fails, most glaringly in historical rigor, W.E. does have interesting things to say. Unusually for a fashion icon, it says something unfashionable, which is that the brash Simpson, far from being the villain of a dark day in British history, was the victim, trapped by the love of a needy husband. In the short term, this will see W.E. dismissed as a vanity project but, in the long term, history may well find it to be a fascinating comment on 20th-century celebrity from the ultimate insider.”

Mostly, though, both British and American critics enthusiastically eviscerated the film, with The Guardian’s Xan Brooks characterizing it as “a primped and simpering folly, the turkey that dreamed it was a peacock,” and Leslie Felperin in Variety pointing out that it was “burdened with risible dialogue and weak performances.”

Adding injury to insult, W.E. produced anemic box-office receipts, earning a bit more than $868,000 worldwide.

Personally, I came away from two viewings of W.E. with both appreciation and indifference. The Duke and Duchess re-imaginings are impeccably stylish, historically accurate, and consistently well acted — worthy of a MerchantIvory film or Downton Abbey. My indifference relates to the opening scene and the preposterous premise of the late-90s New York-based narrative. The film begins with Wallis’ first husband, Win Spencer, physically abusing her, resulting in Wallis, in spine-chilling bloody detail, miscarrying their baby — pure, gratuitous shock value. As for the idea of unappreciated Upper East Sider Wally falling for a Sotheby’s porter: Oh, please.

“Everyone erupts into an argument about who they were. I mean, they were very controversial — and continue to be. So, of course, I’m very attracted to that.”

–MADONNA, The Evening Standard, July 21, 2010

While obsessing over this chapter, I remembered that my cousin Albert Gallatin “Gally” Warfield III (you’ll recall A.G. Warfield Sr. and Jr. from earlier in “Dead Warfields”) once experienced a glancing, indirect encounter with Madonna. A Princeton graduate who had a successful career as a state’s attorney in Maryland, Gally pursued his mid-life angst by morphing into an author of legal thrillers from the school of Scott Turow. His books, which he writes as Gallatin Warfield, include State v. Justice (1992), Silent Son (1994), and Raising Cain (1996), all published by Time Warner Books.

He was working on State v. Justice at the same time that Madonna, another Time Warner author, was working on her 1992 coffee table book Sex, which boasts adult content in the form of softcore porn and sadomasochistic simulations.

Upon release, Sex caused considerable controversy and generated primarily negative reviews. Writing in Rolling Stone, Anthony Curtis contended that “Madonna herself seems far too eager to shock; that, not even prurient arousal, seems the ideal response the book tirelessly seeks. The overwhelming effect of

the book is numbing.” Caryn James of The New York Times only slightly less critical: “There is plenty here to offend the meek (whips and chains), the self-righteous (gay men and lesbians), not to mention the tasteful (a tacky and cluttered art design).”

And yet Sex was an immediate bestseller: 150,000 copies in the U.S. on the first day it was available, 500,000 by the end of one week, and, ultimately, 1.5 million worldwide, including a copy purchased by me.

Anyway, back to Gally. When I told him that I was including Madonna’s film in The Duchess of Windsor and Me, he related his distant brush with her. “As you may know,” he recalled, “Larry Kirshbaum, president and CEO of Warner Books, personally edited State v. Justice and my other books. I was meeting with him in his office in New York going over some of the pages [in State v. Justice] when his secretary informed him that ‘Madonna was on the line.’ He told her to ‘take a message,’ that he was ‘busy with Gally.’ I must admit, that made my day.”

The Duchess’ gem-set (emerald, sapphire, ruby, aquamarine, amethyst) and diamond cross bracelet — worn on her wedding day

As part of assembling The Duchess of Windsor and Me, I, too, enjoyed something of a 27-degrees-of separation connection to Madonna. Because I wanted to spotlight some stunning stills from W.E. shot by photographer Tom Munro, I contacted him about that possibility. He responded that before he could say yes or no, he needed to confer with Madonna’s “people.”

I had, at best, low expectations that Madonna would bless my project, but a week later, Tom emailed that Madonna’s “people” approved, and I could publish the W.E. photos.

“People have accused Wallis of all kinds of things. They’ve said that she put a spell on Edward. They’ve said that she was a hermaphrodite and that he was gay. They’ve said they were Nazi sympathizers. It’s just the usual lynch mob mentality that descends upon somebody who has something that lots of other people don’t have.”

–MADONNA

MADONNA’S W.E.

Dissatisfied with the way her own life is playing out, New York-based Wally Winthrop (Abbie Cornish) becomes obsessed with the romance between American divorcee Wallis Simpson (Andrea Riseborough) and England’s Edward VIII (James D’Arcy) when Sotheby’s holds an auction of the royal couple’s belongings. Wally is especially drawn to Wallis’ side of the story, and as certain events transpire in her life, the line between fantasy and reality begins to blur.

— Summary of W.E. from the website Moviefone

— All photographs from W.E.

EDWARD DOES AMERICA

Before Edward fell in love with Wallis, he fell in love with America. Edward found Americans sassy, irreverent, and modern. The monarchy, by contrast, was stuffy, stilted, and stuck in the 17th century — in short, a bore.

Ted Powell’s 2018 book King Edward VIII: An American Life tells the full story of Edward’s relationship with America, from hanging out with Hollywood stars such as Charlie Chaplin to surfing in Hawaii to fox hunting with the creme de la equine creme on Long Island.

“His populist appeal and Americanized lifestyle represented too radical a departure from the backward-looking conservatism of the King George V,” writes Powell. “In 1936, the romantic obsession with Wallis Simpson outweighed his desire to implement the modernization of the British monarchy. Because of his determination to marry an American divorcee, he was unable to articulate the case for change in the face of the conservative forces of Church and State arrayed against him.”

LEFT: Edward goes native: the then-Prince of Wales, dressed in full North American Indian attire — feathered headdress and decorated buckskin suit — circa 1919-1920, when he toured Canada extensively and also visited the U.S.

ABOVE: “I like going there for golf. America’s one vast golf course these days.” –the Duke of Windsor

FAR LEFT: The Duke with New York Yankees manager Casey Stengel at Yankee Stadium in 1953

ABOVE: The Duke of Windsor during the filming of 1965’s A King’s Story

LEFT: A youthful Edward, then the Prince of Wales, demonstrates his rowing technique on Waikiki Beach in pre-statehood Hawaii circa 1920.

The Duchess and Grave Issues

14

“ Wallis, you’re the only woman who’s ever been interested in my job.”

–DUKE OF WINDSOR

As King for 11 months in 1936, Edward had few responsibilities other than showing up. Post-abdication, however, in addition to attempting to negotiate more favorable terms for his return to Britain — he had agreed not to do so without the crown’s benediction — the ex-King occupied himself with two tasks: relentlessly pursuing Her Royal Highness (HRH) title status for his wife, and intermittently searching for an appropriate graveyard for the couple’s interment. His quest for a proper cemetery was not without its challenges, and it would continue, in fits and starts, from 1937 until 1965. The cemetery at Windsor Castle was not an option, given the Duke and Duchess’ ongoing cold war with the Royal Family.

By the end of the 1950s, Edward began to consider Baltimore, Wallis’ hometown, as their final resting place, based on her familial ties to Green Mount Cemetery, a notable city graveyard. That required the couple to visit Maryland, to which Wallis returned on numerous occasions from the 1940s through the

1960s seeking respect, recognition, and recipes. Her cooking had been an important component in her seduction of the Duke, and her culinary skills, notably Maryland dishes such as fried chicken and sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows, gave rise to her 1942 book, Some Favorite Southern Recipes of the Duchess of Windsor, published while the Windsors lived in the Bahamas, where the Duke served as governor in what amounted to a benign banishment.

Wallis dedicated author’s royalties from the cookbook’s sales to the British War Relief Society, Inc., and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt pitched in to write an earnest Introduction.

Harvey Ladew: gay gallivanter and close chum of the Duke of Windsor

“Every country in Europe has certain dishes for which it has always been famous,” Wallis notes in the book’s Foreword. “That is many times true of the United States, which has a different culinary tradition for every large section. I myself am most familiar, of course, with Southern cooking, and especially the dishes of Maryland. I have been very happy to help carry some of the well-known dishes of my native land to other countries, and especially to have served on my table Southern dishes which appeal to the Duke. It is the simple dishes of my homeland which are most popular with me, and which are the ones most frequently served at my table.”

Those “simple dishes” include a peck of concoctions that very likely would appall today’s persnickety foodies: Jellied Veal, Virginia Boiled Tongue, and Fatty or Cracklin’ Bread, plus Lord Baltimore Cake and Lord Baltimore Frosting, a nod to her hometown.

During her stays in Maryland, Wallis acted as if nothing much had changed since her fox-hunting and debutante days. And, in truth, none of her old friends and acquaintances gave a hoot if she did or didn’t have an “HRH” appended to her name; in the Greenspring Valley, “MFH” — Master of Foxhounds — carried more gravitas.

For his part, Edward visited Maryland to see his separated-at-birth friend, Harvey Ladew, the gay bon vivant heir to a leather-tanning business. They shared interests in fox hunting, topiary, and fantasy. Like the Duke, Ladew grew up in a life of extreme privilege, a non-royal Richie Rich. (His famed topiary gardens on his Baltimore County estate are a fantastical Disney-like display representative of his equine and monarchical obsessions, and since 1971 have been run by a nonprofit organization that opens them, along with Ladew’s majestic home, to the public from April through October.)

Harvey’s childhood was a pampered American prince’s story. An only son, he spoke French before English, studied drawing as a child at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and traveled with his parents to Ireland, England, and France.

Harvey Ladew’s nude portrait of celebrated interior decorator Billy Baldwin

At age 26, upon the death of both his mother and father, he and his sister liquidated their parents’ considerable assets and divided them. His adult life was consumed by costume parties, month-long vacations, and peripatetic pleasure-seeking. (It sounds remarkably similar to the Duke and Duchess’ postabdication cafe society wanderlust.)

Ladew’s friendship with the Duke started in September 1924 when the thenPrince of Wales visited the U.S. for fox hunting and polo. During this trip, Ladew lent one of his prize horses to the Duke for a hunt with the Meadow Brook Hounds on the north shore of Long Island. After the hunt, there were polo matches. The Duke enjoyed himself immensely, launching a 45-year friendship with Ladew.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Ladew visited the Windsors in Baltimore, Florida, and the Bahamas during the Duke’s governorship there. And in summer 1947, he spent 10 days with the Duke and Duchess at La Croe in France.

In addition to Ladew, Marylanders Clarence and Eleanor Miles were longtime friends of the Duke and Duchess. Eleanor had known Wallis since the 1920s. They met at fox-hunting events in Warrenton, Virginia, during a period when Wallis lived there in order to expedite her divorce from Win Spencer.

The women remained friends for decades. In 1941, Eleanor and her first husband, William Wallace Lanahan, entertained the Duke and Duchess at their home, Long Crandon, in northern Baltimore County. And in 1949, Eleanor, then a widow, stayed with the Windsors at La Croe. She married Clarence in 1952, and, three years later, she chaired the Cancer Ball, a charity gala, held at Baltimore’s Belvedere Hotel, which the Windsors attended.

Clarence, a native of Maryland’s Eastern Shore, founded one of Baltimore’s most prominent law firms, Miles & Stockbridge, in 1932, and 21 years later became chairman of the board of the Baltimore Orioles Major League Baseball team, quietly and determinedly orchestrating its purchase and relocation from St. Louis.

During spring 1959, the Duke called Clarence, requesting an April visit, during which he and the Duchess planned to attend the Maryland Hunt Cup and its attendant ball. (Although I was only four at the time, I am pretty sure that my parents were on hand for both the races and gala that year.) The Windsors brought along a valet, a maid, and about 20 pieces of luggage, thoughtfully leaving behind their three pugs — Trooper, Dizzy, and Davy Crockett — in their suite at the Waldorf Astoria in New York.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, along with two of their pugs, arrive at Baltimore’s Penn Station in 1955, greeted by friends Clarence and Eleanor Miles.

Upon arrival, the Duke and Duchess first stayed at the Mount Vernon Club, a private women’s club founded in 1929 that was located in the midtown Baltimore neighborhood where Wallis grew up. Eleanor, a club member and one of its past presidents, made special arrangements for her friends in advance, and yet the place failed to meet the Duke’s exacting standards. In his 1986 memoir, Eight Busy Decades: The Life & Times of Clarence W. Miles, Clarence writes that when his wife inquired about the royal couple’s accommodations, “the Duke replied, ‘When was the last time anyone used the shower. It just trickled.’”

As planned, the two couples attended the Hunt Ball, for which the Duchess wore a white gown, and the Duke his scarlet hunting coat. At that point, they moved on to stay at the Mileses’ Eastern Shore estate, Blakeford, and also visited with Morgan and Elizabeth Schiller at their place, Wye House, not far away. Clarence and Eleanor were friends with the Schillers, and Elizabeth was a girlhood chum of Wallis’.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor with Elizabeth Lloyd Schiller on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in 1959

Clarence Miles also figures prominently in the Windsors’ search for a final resting place. On a separate occasion from their 1959 visit, the couple contacted Miles to request a discreet meeting, and traveled by train to Baltimore for the purpose. Over lunch in a private dining room at the Elkridge Club, just outside the city, the Duke and Duchess disclosed to Miles and his wife that, eventually, they wanted to be interred together in Green Mount Cemetery. Miles recalls the episode in his memoir: “They wanted to purchase a large lot in a good location. The lot was to be large enough for landscaping around the edges. To say I was astounded by the request is putting it mildly, but the next day I put one of my law associates to work on the request. Under his name, I purchased an appropriate lot in a good location and informed the Windsors.”

“I married the Duke for better and for worse, but not for lunch.”

–WALLIS WARFIELD SIMPSON

The choice of Green Mount came as no cosmic slap upside the head: The Warfield clan occupied an enormous swath of real estate there. Wallis’ father was buried in the cemetery. So, too, her Uncle Sol. Also: Uncle Henry and his wife, Rebecca; Uncle Richard and his wife, Betty; Uncle Daniel; and two children who died in infancy who would have been her aunts, Ann and Elizabeth. The list goes on: her paternal grandfather, Henry Mactier Warfield, and his wife, Anna; a gaggle of cousins; and, finally, the attorney Severn Teackle Wallis, a close friend of Henry Mactier Warfield, who named Wallis’ father in Severn’s honor (the surname, in turn, passing on to the Duchess). In a Warfield context, if not a Windsor one, Green Mount made perfect sense.

Additionally, the cemetery boasts a certain celeb status, hosting many illustrious dead Baltimoreans, among them: Johns Hopkins, the savvy businessman whose philanthropy established both Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Hospital; Henry Walters, president of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad and philanthropist, whose Walters Art Gallery was bequeathed to the city of Baltimore in 1931 at the time of his death and is recognized as a major

art institution; and A. Aubrey Bodine, the celebrated Baltimore Sun photographer whose images appear throughout this book.

Green Mount’s residents also include an infamous trio: John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Abraham Lincoln, along with his co-conspirators Samuel Arnold and Michael O’Laughlen. Visitors to the cemetery leave pennies on the graves of the three men with Lincoln’s visage facing upward.

However, despite its notables, the cemetery claims no kings or queens, no dukes or duchesses, no marchionesses, no barons, no earls, no counts, and no viscounts — in short, no one like Edward, although it houses a marginally royal-esque personnage: Betsy Patterson Bonaparte, the Baltimore-born wife of Napoleon’s brother Jerome.

Betsy’s brush with royalty bears a passing resemblance to Wallis’. She married Jerome in Baltimore in 1803, much to Napoleon’s dismay. Two years later, the emperor ordered Jerome to return to France, but, once the couple arrived, his wife was forbidden to disembark from their ship. Betsy continued on to England, instead, where her son, Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, was born, and then returned to Baltimore, her baby in tow. The next year, Napoleon issued a state decree annulling the marriage, and Betsy made Green Mount her forever home in 1879.

Till Death Do Them Part

In the 1960s, the Windsors settled into a quieter, more sedate existence at their Paris villa. During this period, a thaw began in the Duke’s relationship with his family. When, in 1965, the Duke revisited the issue of where he and Wallis would rest eternally, the monarchy, at long last, acquiesced, allowing them to be buried in a mausoleum at the royal cemetery at Frogmore, at which point the Duke instructed Clarence Miles to sell their plots at Green Mount.

The Duke died on May 28, 1972, having proved, ultimately, unsuccessful in obtaining a Her Royal Highness title for the Duchess, who flew to London for the funeral, staying at Buckingham Palace and dining with the royal family. Edward was buried at Frogmore, as pre-arranged.

Despite three marriages and more than a few reported romantic dalliances, Wallis died childless on April 24, 1986, just short of her 90th birthday. Buckingham Palace honored its promise and permitted her to be buried

Baltimore’s Green Mount Cemetery

beside Edward at Frogmore after a funeral ceremony in St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle.

Even with the challenges she faced, Wallis always clung to the hope of loving and being loved. She concludes The Heart Has Its Reasons, her memoir, with these words: “But great as have been the achievements of women and wide as have become their horizons in my day, I still instinctively feel that Lord Byron was right when he wrote: ‘Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart. ‘Tis woman’s whole existence.’

“It is silly to portray her as a baddie. If there was anyone who was a baddie, it was Edward VIII.”

–HUGO VICKERS, author of Behind Closed Doors, quoted in The Telegraph, April 11, 2011

“Any woman who has been loved as I have been loved, and who too, has loved, has experienced life in its fullness. To this, I must add one qualification, one continuing regret. I have never known the joy of having children of my own. Perhaps no woman can say her life has been completely fulfilled unless she has had a part in the miracle of creation.

“Of course, no life that has been zestfully and perhaps even recklessly lived can be said to be all of one piece. A woman’s life can really be a succession of lives, each revolving around some emotionally compelling situation or challenge, and each marked off by some intense experience. And of these, I have had a woman’s full share. All I can say is that everything taken together, I have finally found a great measure of happiness and contentment.”

Following her death, the Duchess chose to show her appreciation to France, the country that had welcomed the Windsors after their wedding, donating her 18th-century furnishings to the palace of Versailles and the Louvre, and gifting her collection of trompe l’oeil porcelain to the Sèvres National Ceramics Museum in suburban Paris.

With no children and no siblings, she bequeathed the bulk of her estate to the international medical foundation l’Institut Pasteur, the second-largest the organization has ever received. Her donation, the equivalent of $90 million today, allowed the institute to construct its Science Information Center, which

hosts more than 25,000 visiting scientists annually. Her jewelry collection, gifts from the Duke, was sold at auction by Sotheby’s in 1987 and raised more than $50 million, which also went to the l’Institut Pasteur.

Thanks to the Duchess, the institute broadened its research and reputation. Even in death, Wallis was able to pivot and reinvent herself as a benefactress who left a legacy that could help change the world.

The Maryland Club, located in midtown Baltimore

Every Chapter Is Extra

15

“Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful of your life.”

–MARK TWAIN

Upon my return to Baltimore in 2003, my hypomanic obsession with creating a local digital business news company continued unabated. Hypomania usually lasts only four days; my vision for cracking the code on local business news has persisted for decades. Pivot. Pirouette. Crash and burn. Come back. Think. Rethink.

My previous sortie, Local Business Network, had been part of late-1990s/ early-2000s dot-com mania. This time, prudence needed to prevail for what I had in mind: citybizlist (now citybiz), a daily business news site that encompassed Baltimore, Washington, and Philadelphia. What if I bootstrapped the company? What if my past advertising relationships could be resurrected? What if the talent was globally sourced?

Reading Thomas Friedman’s 2005 book, The World Is Flat, taught me that globalization was altering core economic concepts. The flattening to which the title refers is the result of the personal-computer revolution and workflow

software; Friedman calls it Globalization 3.0. In his book, he mentions Brickwork, an India-based company that offers “virtual executive assistants.” So when I was ready to launch citybiz, I reached out to Brickwork and hired a part-time team of digital media associates, based in Bangalore, to build emails, curate content, and handle customer support.

Over the next 15 years, the business has repeatedly evolved. The original model depended on display or banner advertising. The next iteration embraced a private Groupon-like ecommerce. Today, it is a mix of advertising, content marketing, and CEO interviews.

Somehow, it has survived LinkedIn, Google, programmatic advertising, over- and under- capitalization, pay-per-click, search-engine optimization, and slick dashboards. And while it has not scaled to unicorn status, citybiz has provided me and Team India, as I call them, with a decent living.

“Some people are walking around with full use of their

bodies

and they’re more paralyzed than I am.”

–CHRISTOPHER REEVE, actor and activist

Its challenges, however, have not been strictly corporate in nature. They have been compounded and complicated by corporal obstacles — i.e., my physical and psychological well-being, or, if you will, body and soul.

Back in the mid-1980s, I took up indoor squash, playing almost daily at the Maryland Club in midtown Baltimore. Squash’s racquet skills, workout intensity, dopamine balancing, and innate sportsmanship appealed to me. I found it addictive.

In the early evening of September 9, 2014, I played a not particularly strenuous or memorable round of doubles squash. Afterward, I headed back to the club’s locker room, where I started to undress. The next minute, I was on the floor with my right arm swinging around spasmodically. I could not get up. Reflexively, I attempted to use my left arm to control my right. No good. I was having a stroke.

Apparently, the Maryland Club has a long and glorious tradition of squashassociated strokes, given the fact that, as I lay helplessly on its locker room

Wallis in a Manly Mood

Founded in 1857, the Maryland Club, a private establishment located in Mount Vernon, close to where Wallis grew up, originally catered to Baltimore’s aristocracy and captains of industry. Notably, its first president was Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon’s brother; later, my great-grandfather was a member. In 1861, the Maryland Club made clear its support of the Confederacy in the Civil War. Spitefully, occupying Union troops under the command of General Lew Wallace closed the club and then outraged local residents by turning it into a shelter for homeless former slaves. After the war, it resumed normal operations.

In the early 20th century, the Maryland Club excluded women. That did not stop wild child Wallis from surruptitiosly entering its paneled halls. Well, at least according to one account. In an addendum to Andrew Morton’s Wallis in Love, Mark Letzer, the president and CEO of the Maryland Center for History and Culture, recounts to Morton the story of what Letzer terms a “youthful” Wallis dressing as a man to gain entry to the club.

Fred Rasmussen, an obituary writer for The Baltimore Sun and something of a Baltimore history buff, counts himself among the account’s doubters. (Factchecking is problematic with dead people, because you cannot contact the subject.) When I emailed Rasmussen to see if the story about Wallis going to the Maryland Club in drag could be confirmed, he responded:

Dear Edwin:

I found no basis for that yarn and it might be best to avoid it. It really sounds highly improbable. I was told years ago by an elderly Maryland Club member that she had laid most of its membership, however.

Be well.

Fred Rasmussen

floor, several “gentlemen” nonchalantly walked past me, completely unfazed. WASP decorum. Civility redux. Business as usual. Carpe diem.

Finally, the club’s squash pro arrived and helped me get up, my right arm still flailing, my speech mere gibberish. Twenty minutes later, I was whisked by ambulance to downtown’s University of Maryland Medical Center, 10 minutes away. Within 30 minutes of my admittance to the hospital, my son, Win, 23 at the time, was at my side in the ICU, where I was given a tissue plasminogen activator, which dissolves clots.

The following day, my brother, John, flew in from Boulder, and a couple of friends stopped by. After two days, I was discharged and returned home.

The first week out of the hospital was very, very scary. I was barely able to shave. My typing skills were, at best, rudimentary; my word retrieval and ability to speak in sentences difficult. Since my healthcare package did not cover rehab, I undertook the task myself.

Being 98 percent digital and two percent analog (the latter manifested in my appreciation of hardcover books with dust covers), I downloaded Lumosity, a brain-training app that measures and challenges your cognitive abilities. Over the following weeks I exhibited gradual improvement, more easily summoning words and forming full sentences. Oral paragraphs, never a forte, were in nascent resurrection. Still, returning to work at citybiz remained out of the question.

My digital media company was a 24-hour operation, with my daily involvement requiring 10 to 12 hours, seven days a week. Would it be able to survive my absence? Would the team in India stay on board? Would I regain my ability to communicate? To conduct a business meeting? Would my brain hit “reset”? My heart? My gumption? If not, could I sell the company? How else would I pay alimony to two ex’s? How would I support myself?

As it turned out, over the next two months, while I hibernated at home, tentative about re-entering life personally and professionally, my son and the incredible Team India kept citybiz alive.

Meanwhile, my brain made a miraculous recovery, and I felt sufficiently confident to set up meetings to explore the sale of the company. In mid-November, I received a modest buyout offer that would have provided income for a couple of years, but, ultimately, the interested party was unable to obtain financing. Shrugging, I kept in mind my mother’s edict of “Oh, bloody hell, press on,”

and one year later, in late 2015, I launched a related online venture: Warfield. co, which presented in-the-flesh interviews with innovative CEOs — in essence, a pay-to-meet business development tool for establishing C-suite relationships.

It works like this: Let’s say you wanted to meet Tesla founder Elon Musk. I would reach out to Musk, and, if he consented, you, the sponsor, after agreeing to pay a set fee, would join me to interview him face to face. The resulting Q&A would be published on citybiz and Warfield.co.

The first interview, with Manpreet Singh, CEO of the College Park, Marylandbased TalkLocal, which connects consumers to nearby businesses (roofers, HVAC companies, limo rental), appeared in December 2015. Accounting, law, and commercial real estate firms became the primary clients of Warfield.co, with commercial real estate company Newmark Knight Frank sponsoring more than 70 interviews. These featured innovators, disruptors, changemakers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angels, and visionaries who embraced the industries of the future: edtech, martech, biotech, venture capital, cybersecurity, incubators, social innovation, AI, black entrepreneurs, women entrepreneurs, and foodpreneurs.

Over the past five-plus years, I conducted more than 300 such interviews in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. A few examples:

• Tom Davidson of the D.C.-based online edtech company Everfi, who raised $190 million (led by Bono’s Rise Fund) to teach students online;

• Doug Ward of Baltimore’s Personal Genome Diagnostic, a leader in providing personalized cancer treatments using tissue-based and liquid biopsy technologies;

• Ryan Simonetti of New York’s Convene, who has created a forum for people to meet and work together, fueled by more than $200 million in funding;

• Christy Wyskiel, who oversees Johns Hopkins University’s Technology Ventures group, working on innovation, commercialization, and technology transfer initiatives;

• Luke Cooper, founder and CEO of Fixt (cheekily described as the “Uber of device replacement”), which offers users rapid repair or replacement of malfunctioning mobile phones and computers.

A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste

In the spirit of the only-the-names-have-been-changed-to-protect-the-innocent disclaimer, I have devised pseudonyms for three people who played critical roles before, during, and after the events that I am about to relate.

Bubastis is the Princeton-educated benevolent ruler of a Baltimore-based sultanate — a larger-than-life man in full, intellectually and physically, despite his expertise in “lean investing.” He has been a friend to me through two failed marriages and multiple domiciles, plus various crusades, inventions, reinventions, heart and brain issues, chapters, and episodes, not forgetting fluctuating net worth. Our friendship, however, has entered a froideur stage, given the episode I will shortly describe.

Niarchos is obviously Greek but less obviously has Asperger’s — in fact, my best and only Asperger’s friend. He also was a Wall Street tech analyst similar to the one described in The Big Short, Michael Lewis’ 2010 nonfiction book that closely examined the leadup to the 2008 financial industry meltdown. Now retired, he is learning to play classical guitar, and has committed to performing at my funeral if I pre-decease him.

La Petite Princess, mentioned earlier by that nickname, is my fun, feisty, frisky, fantastic, fashionable, fastidious, fantabulous, and friendly girlfriend of six-plus years. Also, curious, smart (Columbia: BA, University of Pennsylvania: two MA’s), an art lover, independent, wanderlust-y, and, not surprisingly, petite. As for her nom de guerre: The first book that she gave me was Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s classic 1943 Le Petit Prince.

On the night of July 16, 2016, I attended the grand, halcyon-like wedding of the son of Bubastis, held at his uncle’s vast horse farm/manor home, located in an area inhabited by the grandchildren of 19th-century robber barons.

The host is a legendary horseman and savant/investor in new enterprises. He is also, not incidentally, one of my CEO interviews, as well as one of Maryland’s most important angel investors.

The wedding and its reception served as the setting for one of the most painful episodes of my life. For the occasion, I was properly dressed in a white linen jacket, not dissimilar to the ones worn by my two favorite Men in White — Mark Twain and Tom Wolfe.

It was a glorious evening for the son of Bubastis’ wedding party. On the

30-minute drive to the event, I engaged in a nonstop monologue directed at La Petite Princess. As usual, I had not slept for nights, if not weeks. My spiel, as best I can recall, was expansive and elevated, informed by a twilight zone of delusion. Behind the wheel, I drove the posted speed limit, but my brain was racing 120 mph.

When we arrived at the party, I hyper-engaged everyone, socializing both frenetically and promiscuously. My behavior was not attributable to drugs — I was taking only heart medications — and I consumed a mere two glasses of wine all evening. While I won’t share details of my actions, I will note that, towards the middle of the party, they prompted La Petite Princess and a woman friend of Bubastis to tell me that they were confiscating the keys to my car, causing me to hyper-spaz, freak out, and super-emote. In turn, I told them that I was not leaving until the keys were returned.

“Love has, at its best, made the inherent sadness of life bearable, and its beauty manifest.”

–KAY REDFIELD JAMISON, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Around midnight, I pretended to go to the event’s outdoor spot a pot, and, instead, hid in the nearby woods. Eventually, everyone left the party except for the newlyweds, who frolicked in a stream that flowed through the estate. For the next several hours, I attempted, unsuccessfully, to sleep. Finally, I gave up and around 4 a.m., walked past the lone car in the field — mine — and started the eight-mile trek to the closest town. After a three-hour bucolic walk through a beautiful stretch of country, I arrived at my suburban destination and called a cab for the 25-minute ride back to my apartment.

Around 10 a.m., I fell asleep. About an hour later, La Petite Princess was let into my apartment by the doorman, confirming for herself that I was still alive, but, significantly, leaving without a kiss. Several hours later, she called to plan dinner for that evening, informing me that Niarchos would join us for the occasion. However, instead of dining together, La Petite Princess and Niarchos initiated what amounted to an intervention, aided by Bubastis, and the trio escorted me to the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital.

My first day in the clinic, a nurse or doctor would ask, every 30 minutes or so, “Do you have any suicidal thoughts?” Over the next few days, they continued to ask, but less frequently. In truth, I had never considered suicide, even when the most vitriolic divorce attorneys were bludgeoning my soul.

The Hopkins mind mechanics started me on a cocktail of drugs, including lithium, which, they noted, would not produce any discernible effects for several months. I spent almost three weeks at Phipps. On my final day, I was visited by Ray DePaulo, the clinic’s director, who informed me that Edwin Warfield 4.0 was Bipolar 2.0. (By the way, I knew of Ray through my CEO interview with his nephew Alec Ross, author of Industries of the Future.)

During my clinic stay, my second wife’s second (or third, I forget) attorney tried, and failed, I later learned from Niarchos, to serve me papers related to our divorce. My good fortune ran out almost a year later, however, when yet another attorney representing my second wife had me served with papers in the men’s room of Baltimore’s Center Club. Yes, the men’s room. I was hosting an event at the club called City Genius that highlights Baltimore’s innovators, change agents, and disruptors. Luckily, the process server was gracious enough not to disrupt the purpose of my restroom visit — its due process, so to speak.

My initial reaction to my Phipps diagnosis was that it was a collective misdiagnosis. Of course, like many aspects of WASP culture, the subject of mental health invites — no, demands — a certain denial, a topic best swept under the oriental carpets or saved for the obituary. My clinic stay, I reasoned then, paralleled Jack Nicholson’s experience in the film version of Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — someone who was not mentally ill, but, rather, someone seeking an alternative to prison.

Eventually, though, nudged by the gentle persuasion of La Petite Princess, I gradually began the process of coming to grips with my bipolarism, a period of self-reflection regarding the many chaotic and manic vignettes and chapters of my life — in short, my longtime pas de deux with the disease.

My symptoms probably first manifested 50 years ago via bouts of adolescent hyperactivity. My mother’s solution to these was to ask me to creosote a mile-long fence; my father’s was to ask me to mow our 50-acre front yard. This may explain my subsequent aversion to all things related to the country, including my mother’s cherished fox hunting. Next came a five-year stretch of

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT:

Estée Lauder: Her obsessive-compulsive fixation on faces created an empire.

Kay Redfield Jamison: The queen of bipolar

Mark Twain: Late in life, he suffered from “volcanic rages and nasty bouts of paranoia, and he experienced many periods of depressed indolence, which he tried to assuage by smoking cigars, reading in bed, and playing endless hours of billiards and cards.” –from the website biography.com

Theodore Roosevelt: “Hypomanic on a mild day.”

–Kay Redfield Jamison

Ernest Hemingway: “Bipolar disorder, alcohol dependence, traumatic brain injury, and probably borderline and narcissistic personality traits.”

–Dr. Christopher Martin, Baylor College of Medicine

A BIPOLAR GALLERY

teenage drug dalliances that can, perhaps, be attributed to self-medicating my condition. During the following decades of adulthood, I probably hoped that the squash and excessive exercise regimen that I engaged in would reset the dopamines and stifle the mania. Simultaneously, another telltale indication of the disorder persisted: insomnia. Bipolar brains never sleep.

Not forgetting the spells during which I felt an intense need for isolation — antisocial timeouts. These may have reflected the Maserati-like machinations of my unquiet mind. The non-manic me loves people, while the hypermanic me prefers solitude — the yin-yang of my bipolar brain.

A Maniac Scattering Dust

Three bipolar episodes — two major, one minor in nature — bear mentioning. Revisiting them has been part mea culpa, part self-help exercise. Given the foggy memory of time elapsed, a WASP inclination towards opacity, and a familial stigma of mental-health issues, my recollections are sketchy. Apparently, I have consigned their most sensationalist details to the cerebral dustbin in order to ease my pain.

I dismissed these manic episodes at the time each occurred as extensive and unwieldy dreams-cum-mental-obsessions wrapped around seemingly unending bouts of insomnia. Dreams last at most 20 minutes; my bipolar incidents lasted for days. Insomnia was my mania’s petri dish, cultivating and nurturing the mental machinations. There were no timeouts in my warp-speed brain. All three incidents were driven by varying degrees of mania; depression never entered the equation. And, again to varying degrees, they bear a common thread: creation arose from chaos, albeit chaotic creation, including a 200-page book and an amateurish stab at installation art.

In each case, I self-isolated, locked myself down. I ate sparingly and saw no friends or family. In my bipolar cortex, life’s functional rituals disappeared. No sex.

Devastated by the crashing and burning of my digital media company, Local Business Network (LBN), and crushed by the pending scorched-earth divorce from my first wife, in March 2002, while living alone in a loft in West Palm Beach, I embarked on the first of these manic sessions. It lasted 10 hyperactive days and sleepless nights, during which time I cranked out a 200-page

manuscript for a book to be entitled The Perfect Merger: The Warfields and the Wassersteins. The book you now hold was written with the aid of lithium, produced at a pace of approximately one page per day; by contrast, The Perfect Merger, written without the benefit of lithium, was generated at a rate of 20 pages per day, resulting in an astounding 120,000 muddled words.

The 2005 book Bipolar Disorder for Dummies states that a manic session should have at least three of the following symptoms:

• Markedly inflated self-esteem or grandiosity

• Decreased need for sleep (for example, feeling well rested after three hours or less of sleep)

• Excessive talking or the need to talk continuously (pressured speech)

• Flight of ideas: when thoughts flow rapidly and shift topics rapidly and indiscriminately — and/or the feeling that one’s thoughts are racing

• Inability to concentrate and being easily distracted by insignificant external stimuli

• Significant increase in goal-directed activity (socially, at work or school, or sexually) or significant physical movement or agitation (aimless activity)

• Excessive involvement in risky, potentially self-destructive activities, including sexual indiscretions, unrestrained shopping sprees, and optimistic investments in pyramid schemes

Chalk up an almost perfect score for me.

As chronicled earlier, Bruce Wasserstein’s private equity firm was the lead investor in LBN. With The Perfect Merger, I attempted to interweave the history of Wasserstein’s family with the history of mine.

Some of the chapters about my family included in this book were created in their nascent form in The Perfect Merger. Regarding Bruce himself, I chronicled his role in some of the go-go 1980s major mergers and his co-founding of a successful boutique investment bank in the 1990s, while also examining his approach to the art of his deal. At the time, I was a prolific reader of business books, including Wasserstein’s 2001 Big Deal: Mergers and Acquisitions in the Digital Age. Additionally, I explored the career of playwright Wendy Wasserstein, Bruce’s sister, whose 1989 The Heidi Chronicles won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Part self-therapy, part guilt-assuaging for the failure of LBN, the book project ultimately served merely as creative catharsis; in truth, it never crossed my

mind that it had even self-publishing aspirations. Its writing also probably kept me from indulging in dangerous behavior and hamster-wheel activities. Without this word journey, my daily dosage of malbec and unisom would probably have increased; dangerous sexual liaisons may have occurred.

For a week and a half, words served as my safe harbor, my salvation, my solace; words comforted me.

Once this bipolar trip finally concluded and my brain recalibrated, I started to reread the manuscript, a truly painful experience. I had produced only a string of manic-driven semi-non-sequiturs. Without hesitation, I assigned its fate to the dustbin of history via the shredder.

After eight months of relative mental tranquility, I again decamped to one of bipolar hell’s innermost rings, sparked by the completion of my beleaguering divorce. My memories of this second episode remain fuzzy, its details taking on an aura of abstraction.

Around this time, I vaguely remember an uncharacteristically voluntary doctor’s visit, perhaps engendered by my continuing regimen of sleep deprivation and a 25-pound weight loss. My doctor’s guesstimate diagnosis: “situational depression.” Wrong. Most bipolar individuals are diagnosed with the disorder within 10 years of its onset; mine took close to 50 years. Perhaps another example of WASP declinism.

No one ever suggested to me that I was bipolar, and if anyone suspected that was the case, he or she never mentioned it. Meanwhile, no blood or DNA test exists for the disease. Its exact cause remains unknown, although a combination of genetics, environment, and altered brain chemistry may play roles.

My go-to creative platform for my second manic episode was art. My unquiet mind always quiets when I enter a museum or gallery. Over the decades — especially during my 1977-1978 study of the art at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London, when I traipsed through the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Tate Museum, the British Museum, and the Wallace Collection — I have loaded my mental mainframe with images of thousands of artworks: paintings, sculpture, furniture, installations, antiquities, and more.

Many of these elements came into play when I embarked on a frenetic, weeklong art project — not that I have ever pretended to be an artist — that took over my entire apartment: over the floors, on the walls, up the stairs. It

was part collage, part assemblage — 3x3-foot photo montages composed of dozens of small, detailed, close-up 4x6-inch photographs. (Think: rudimentary versions of David Hockney’s photographic collages.) I used hundreds, if not thousands, of images that I had previously shot of West Palm Beach, as well as new ones I made from my collection of art books.

Robert Rauschenberg’s combines, which incorporate everyday objects into paintings, and the collage and assemblage work of West Palm Beach artist Bruce Helander, served as inspirations. (I became familiar with the latter’s art when LBN moved into the loft that he had vacated.)

The mid-1950s/1960s Washington D. C. Color School — abstract painters such as Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, whose art explored the optical effects and transcendent properties of color — also figured into my crazy-quilt creation. Not forgetting the American modernist painter Oscar Bluemner. In truth, all of the “isms” were represented in some manner: Romanticism, Classicism, Impressionism, Symbolism, Pointillism, Fauvism, Cubism, Constructivism, Futurism, Vorticism, Dadaism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism, as well a dollop of Pop Art.

Finally feeling finished — or maybe just physically and psychologically spent after a week’s worth of frenzied artmaking — I collapsed, eventually returning to my quotidian life. Soon thereafter, a tennis pro introduced me to the woman who would become my second wife. It took a day and a half to clean up my apartment to make it date-appropriate. In keeping with my WASP nature, I did not share my recent manic episode with her or anyone. My sane mask took over. Bipolar client privilege.

Since my 2016 bipolar diagnosis, I have taken lithium religiously every morning: before coffee, shaving, and checking in with La Petite Princess. Lithium deserves credit for bringing to my life both mental and relationship stability. My insomnia persists, but not to the same degree; my mind has quieted. Ad meliora.

The third incident — which occurred in January 2018 — while serious, bore only a passing resemblance to the aforementioned twin tornadoes. Instead, it can be best characterized as an extended dream-like state. Clinically, it is known as hypomania, an elevated mood that lasts for a few days. Mania lite. It doesn’t create functional impairment, but nonetheless proves challenging for relationships. This time around, music was my metier.

My son calls me a “faux musician,” an apt description given that I play music (guitar and piano) only that I compose — no cover versions — excepting a sixmonth period in my 30s when I took up the cello with the limited goal of learning how to play the Bach cello suites. And I studied music theory for two years as a teenage student at Milton Academy. As an adult, I have composed/played music primarily during excruciatingly stressful times, particularly when a marriage has degenerated into a pernicious state — music as solace (well, music and malbec).

Now, some pre-third episode background: As my second marriage disintegrated from 2013 to 2015, I wrote more than a dozen songs, and in early 2015 I headed to a small West Baltimore recording studio to make an album, Day Blue — acoustic singer/songwriter material whose lyrics generally address love, longing, and self-reflection, while also examining my feelings on subjects as specific as Baltimore, my daughter, and my stroke.

Weirdly, the album’s third cut, “Starry Night,” serves as a pre-diagnosis premonition that my brain was on bipolar bypass; the song is inspired by the offthe-charts bipolar painter Vincent van Gogh. A snatch of its lyrics:

It’s a starry night

Hold on tight

Meteors a-flight

Van’s gone mad

Brushstrokes flying Colors crying

Go, go, Van Go, van Gogh

Throughout the album, I sing while accompanying myself on acoustic guitar or piano, with support on some tracks from several local musicians. Tracy Beer handled the trickier guitar parts. Tracy, it turns out, figures curiously into my family history. In July 2014, I placed an ad on Craigslist looking for a parttime writer to cover commercial real estate for citybiz. Tracy responded, and we met for a lunchtime interview at a popular local restaurant (we had never

met previously). As we chatted, Tracy asked me if I knew that his father had an affair in the late 50s and early 60s with my mother. I replied yes. Ultimately, we became good friends. No doubt, my mother Carol and his father Bob are amused by this turn of events.

Ryan McBridge, who I discovered playing at the Indian restaurant where I had my last dinner with my second wife, contributed sitar, while also serving as producer. The rest of Day Blue’s musicians were sourced from Google and Craigslist: Charlie Rutan on acoustic highland pipes, irish tin whistle, uilleann pipes, and electric pipe; and soulful back-up singers Shaleese Slater and Tim Slater.

Here’s where the bipolar-lite episode finally kicks in. Two years later, home alone after La Petite Princess decamped to Costa Rica with a girlfriend, I was seized by an urgent and unshakeable fantasy: I would book midtown Baltimore’s Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, home of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO), to perform the Day Blue album in its entirety.

One of the defining symptoms of mania — and in this case, hypomania — is a “markedly inflated self-esteem or grandiosity.” That certainly describes my Meyerhoff delusion. Over the course of nearly 24 hours, I feverishly fussed over my imagined stage debut: its setlist, stage design, and participating musicians, among other things. For example, I plotted to use different props for different songs: a yoga mat would help illustrate “Gandhi Man”; a coffin for “Stroke”; a prayer rug for “Africa.” I would reassemble the recording session “band,” but I also pondered hiring members of the BSO for added accompaniment: perhaps a cellist, a harpist. And with only about an hour’s worth of music, I agonized over whether or not there should be an intermission.

Quite likely, my proposed gig was incited by a real-life precedent, buoying the possibilities that mine could happen, too. Wall Street businessman Gilbert Kaplan — he founded and published Institutional Investor magazine — amassed a fortune that allowed him to fulfill his fantasy of becoming a conductor, and in 1982, at New York’s Avery Fisher Hall, which he rented, he defied skeptics from the musical community by leading the American Symphony and Westminster Symphonic Choir in a performance of Mahler’s idiosyncratic Second Symphony. Obsessed with the piece, Kaplan went on to conduct it more than 100 times, and twice recorded it: first with the London Symphony Orchestra, second with the Vienna Philharmonic.

However, unlike Kaplan’s feat, this less-prominent publisher’s Walter Mittyesque idyll evaporated after a mind-bending day, mercifully curtailed, I suspect, by lithium.

Vincit qui se vincit.

After carefully considering my life-long signposts of bipolarism, possessed of a clearer understanding of the disorder through my reading of Kay Redfield Jamison’s books, and with the staunch support of La Petite Princess, I finally have cast aside my WASP decline-ism and now publicly come clean concerning my condition.

My Heart Has Its Reasons

The weekend of July 11-12, 2020, was meant to be a non-eventful continuation of the COVID-19 lockdown imposed in Baltimore. La Petite Princess and I were happily ensconced: her bingeing on Masterpiece Theater series such as Poldark, Sanditon, and Beecham House; me finalizing changes to this book while coordinating an upcoming Warfield CEO Interview with Wendy Perrow, who heads AsclepiX Therapeutics, a biotech company incubated at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Medicine.

Around noon that Sunday, for no apparent reason, I began to feel chest pain — not overly acute, closer to heartburn than a heart attack. With Warfieldian tolerance, I thought, this, too, shall pass. It did not.

Me being me, I Googled “heart attack” and up popped:

• Sudden severe chest or upper back pain — often described as a tearing, ripping, or shearing sensation — that radiates to the neck or down the back

• Sudden severe abdominal pain

• Loss of consciousness

• Shortness of breath

Bingo.

I called my friend and cardiologist Jim Porterfield, who advised me to drive to nearby Johns Hopkins Hospital’s emergency room immediately. I complied. After being admitted, I was whisked to the hospital parking lot, where, for the next hour, I was tested for COVID-19. Result: negative.

By 3 p.m., I was in surgery. Seven hours later, still unconscious, I was wheeled out of the OR with 14 inches of sutures running down my chest, held

together with Kryptonite super glue (its actual name). Diagnosis: an aortic dissection, which, according to the Mayo Clinic’s website “is a serious condition in which the inner layer of the aorta — the large blood vessel branching off the heart — tears. Blood surges through the tear, causing the inner and middle layers of the aorta to separate (dissect). If the blood-filled channel ruptures through the outside aortic wall, aortic dissection is often fatal.”

Well, not fatal in my case, at least.

I spent four days in the Hopkins ICU. The prevailing coronavirus lockdown meant no visitors were allowed, which was fine with me given my worse-forwear condition. Most unfortunate post-op effect: excruciating pain whenever I coughed or sneezed. It felt like being punched repeatedly by Muhammad Ali. To partially alleviate the extreme discomfort, a nurse gave me a “heart” pillow to clutch against my chest, thereby diminishing any jarring movement. Meanwhile, I used a walker to make my way around.

Mercifully, my brain appeared to have emerged unaffected by the coup de coeur. By contrast, in the wake of my 2014 stroke, it took two-plus insomniafilled months for my mind to reset.

I returned home less than a week after this most recent health “episode,” and as my pain dissipated, I reached the point where I could dispose of the heart pillow; soon thereafter, I set aside the walker. Week three at home was heralded by a Zoom-arranged micro intervention by my daughter, son, and brother, who urged me to banish malbec from my life, noting that wine did not exactly serve as an appropriate chaser for the lithium I have taken since 2016. Considering that I did not consume alcohol at all for the first 36 years of my life, I had zero trouble replacing malbec with pineapple juice — no need for 12 steps or a stay at my father’s alma mater, Ashley Addiction Treatment.

Gradually, I resumed work, conducting or producing Warfield CEO interviews, addressing daily citybiz responsibilities, and, not incidentally, continuing writing this book. More cerebrally, I spent time reflecting on the trifecta of heart and brain emergencies that I had endured in less than a six-year span: the stroke at the Maryland Club, the bipolar meltdown at the wedding reception, and the aortic dissection.

These most recent Warfield Adventures — file under “personal” rather than “professional” — merely strengthened my determination to live up to my

mother’s eternal mantra: “Oh, bloody hell, press on.” Time for the resurrection of Edwin Warfield 4.0 — or maybe it’s 8.0. I’ve lost count.

As I finished this book, I found a link to an article that described the power behind storytelling. It asserted that most people will experience some sort of adversity during their lives, and that, despite these trials, humans have a remarkable ability to recover, become more resilient, and share their experience. Telling our particular story, the piece pointed out, allows us to truly own it, and sharing it enables us to use our journey to help others who are struggling with theirs. A strong, emotional autobiographical story, the article’s author discovered, can be a powerful palliative.

None of this surprises me. What started as therapy 18 years ago has ended as a wonderful adventure filled with childhood memories, exciting people, and new discoveries. My adventure is the adventure of everyone — our heritage, our struggles, our visions, and our stories. While this book may have started as a gift for my son, it has concluded as an unexpected journey of healing for me.

LETTER TO HEAVEN

Dear Wally,

Hope you’re enjoying Heaven and not running into the Queen Mother. In the original draft of The Duchess of Windsor and Me, only one chapter was devoted to you. Despite your obvious merchandisable status, a single chapter seemed more than adequate at the time.

However, as I spent time researching your well-documented life, unrevealed aspects of it occurred to me — hitherto untold yarns, wholly Warfieldian, such as the way that you and the Duke almost wound up interred in the Warfield spread at a Baltimore cemetery instead of on the royal burial grounds of Frogmore. (By the way, did you really barge into the Maryland Club dressed as a man? Just asking.) As a result, additional Wally chapters poured forth, and you now play a leading role — actually, the leading role — in my book.

Now, I wonder what you make of the whole Meghan Markle/Prince Harry tempest, what with their abdicating their royal responsibilities and going rogue, and then raising the monarchy’s hackles — and the public’s eyebrows — by bringing up the issue of racism within Buckingham Palace. You set the benchmark for raising monarchical hackles, not that you were trying, and you certainly paid a heavy price for it — slandered and scorned and sent into exile.

Anyway, that bit of nastiness with Meghan and Harry certainly flung you into the news churn for a while, with countless stories drawing parallels between you and Meghan. This time around, the press seemed considerably more sympathetic to your experience than it did after Edward chose you over kingship — the newspapers flogged you in public back then. I trust that the media’s most recent treatment of your legacy has made you feel, at long last, somewhat vindicated.

Finally, you should know that, for a while, I was working on a documentary film about you, but circumstances dictated that I set it aside…for now. If I decide to resurrect it, you will be the first to know.

Your admiring cousin, Edwin

“Sisu begins where perseverance and grit end. It is the ‘second’ wind of mental toughness, after the individual has reached the limits of their observed mental or physical capacities.”

–EMILIA LAHTI, Above and Beyond Perseverance, 2013

the after book

The Book of Life

The Duchess of Windsor and Me would not have been possible without its f*cking fabulous editors, to whom I am indebted for their critical roles in bringing this book to fruition.

When I started the project in 2003, the focus was on chronicling my family history. Richard Rabicoff who worked as an editor at my news site, Local Business — did a masterful job shaping those initial chapters. Regrettably, my relationship with Richard did not survive my subsequent multiple crashes and burns.

Last year, when I resurrected the book, my friend Fletcher Hall, who passed away recently, recommended another editor: Patti Harman. Given my significant insecurity about my writing and dread about boring the reader, her encouragement was crucial. Importantly, she accepted the slightly odd concept of juxtaposing (exploiting, if you will) the unlikely pair of the Duchess of Windsor and Mark Twain. Patti’s positive karma brought harmony to my voice and vision.

The last f*cking fabulous editor has a unique distinction. When I served as publisher of The Daily Record, Michael Yockel worked as an editor there for five hours. He started at 9 a.m. and by early afternoon had vamoosed with grace. Michael served for many years as editor of Baltimore’s City Paper. He arrived last year to move the book to another editorial level through scrupulous restructuring and polishing.

My idea for the design of The Duchess of Windsor and Me was closer to that of a magazine than a book. Accordingly, I knew exactly the person for the job: Claude Skelton, who served as art director for Warfield’s magazine. Here, he has more than fulfilled my vision — part magazine, part book, and part documentary film.

Much of the fun of making this book lies in integrating recent photos with historical images. Jennifer Bishop, a celebrated Baltimore photojournalist, provided the former, joining me on trips to document the graves of dead Warfields in the family’s private plot and in Baltimore’s Green Mount Cemetery.

By now, you must realize that the hard drive of my upper cranium is similar to the photos on your iPhone — overloaded. I was blessed to find a comrade in Barb Buren, who helped me seek and secure the book’s numerous images. She also deserves credit for one of my favorite photo captions herein, the one that accompanies the Duke of Windsor standing at the end of a diving board: “Second thoughts on the abdication?” Barb is a wonderful collaborator who brought a joie de vivre and enthusiasm to the project.

With kismet karma, Annie Nehra arrived in my life at a book signing of Andrew Morton’s “Walls in Love: The Untold Life of the Duchess of Windsor, The Woman Who Changed the Monarchy.” Considering that Andrew had trashed my great-grandfather during the lecture, I introduced myself as Edwin Warburg...and 20 seconds later as Edwin Warfield. Annie was behind me in the queue and asked, “Are you Win’s Dad?”

We struck up a conversation and I quickly realized that Annie was not only a Lady Di devotee

but had a wiki-like knowledge of the monarchy and today’s royals. How many 29-year-olds know about the Mitford sisters? Annie has become an invaluable collaborator. Barb calls Annie “Alexa.”

For the past 10 years, I have included a different A. Aubrey Bodine photograph in the daily email for citybiz. The famed Baltimore Sun pictorialist was important in chronicling the Maryland part of the Warfield story, notably the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s visits to the state. Discovering a Bodine photo of me at age three on a pony with a countenance of fear and foreboding was a eureka moment. Thanks to Jennifer Bodine and Richard Oban for helping a Maryland boy tell a Maryland story with her father’s Maryland photos.

Not forgetting Madonna, Madonna’s “people,” and photographer Tom Munro for providing us with the fantabulous images from the movie W.E.

One of my father’s favorite expressions was, “A man was blessed if he could count his real friends on one hand.” As my career has risen, crashed, burned, risen, crashed, and burned again, there has been one colleague who was there through heaven and hell, with hell being the most dominant terrain. Thanks to Jean Halle for being my all-weather angel.

The book was written for my children: Win and Allegra. Win was instrumental in giving me feedback to push the envelope. I’m fairly confident this project brought us closer. Hopefully, Allegra will find inspiration in the lives of the Duchess and the other women included here.

One of my favorite movies is Victoria & Abdul, the 2017 British biographical comedy-drama film about the real-life relationship between Queen Victoria and her Indian Muslim servant, Abdul Karim.

The Abdul in my life is Abdul Sanadi, my colleague/partner at citybiz His hard work, judgment, and business acumen have been invaluable. I’m beyond blessed to have him and the rest of the citybiz team — Raju, Kantah, and Abdul’s brother Imran — and I’m honored when they refer to me as “Uncle.”

After I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I began reading voraciously on the subject. Of particular value: Kay Redfield Jamison’s trio of An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness; Exuberance: the Passion for Life; and Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character. Thanks to Kay for explaining BP to me.

Finally, thanks, especially, to La Petite Princess, otherwise known as Mimi Kapiloff, my girlfriend of six years. She shares my love of heaven on earth — i.e., art — and, most importantly, encouraged my coming out as bipolar and allowing me to be me.

Relationship between Edwin Warfield III & Bessie Wallis Warfield

5th Great Grandparents

John Warfield Sr. (c. 1674 MD – c. 1718 MD) married Ruth Gaither (c. 1690 MD)

4th Great Grandparents

Benjamin W. Warfield Sr. (c. 1702 MD – c. 1769 MD) married (c. 1731 MD) Rebeckah/Rebecca Ridgely

3rd Great Grandparents

Benjamin W. Warfield Jr. (c. 1734 MD – c. 1806 MD) married (c. 1769 MD) Catherine Dorsey

2nd Great Grandparents

Joshua Warfield (c. 1781 MD – c. 1846 MD) married (c. 1816 MD) Lydia Dorsey Welsh

Great Grandparents

Albert Gallatin Warfield Sr. (c. 1817 MD – c. 1891 MD) married (c. 1842 MD) Margaret Gassaway Watkins

Grandparents

Edwin Warfield Sr. (c. 1848 MD – c. 1920 MD) married (c. 1886 MD) Emma Nicodemus

Parents

Edwin Warfield Jr. (c. 1891 MD – c. 1952 MD) married (c. 1920 MD) Katherine Lawrence Lee

Clients Father

Edwin Warfield III

4th Great Grandparents

Richard Warfield (c. 1697 MD – c. 1765 MD) married (c. 1720 MD) Mary Ann Caldwell

3rd Great Grandparents

Seth Warfield (c. 1723 MD – c. 1805 MD) married (c. 1744 MD) Mary Gaither

2nd Great Grandparents

Benjamin/Beni Warfield (c. 1755 MD – c. 1829 MD) married (c. 1779 MD) Ariana Dorsey

Great Grandparents

Daniel Warfield (c. 1783 MD – c. 1867 MD) married (c. 1819 MD) Ann Mactier

Grandparents

Henry Mactier Warfield (c. 1825 – c. 1885) married (c. 1850 MD) Anna Emory

Parents

Teackle Wallis Warfield (c. 1869 MD – c. 1896 MD) married (c. 1895 MD) Alice Montague

Duchess of Windsor Bessie Wallis Warfield

Therefore, Edwin Warfield III and Bessie Wallis Warfield were 6th cousins

Relationship between

Edwin Warfield IV & Bessie Wallis Warfield

Edwin Warfield IV’s 6th Great Grandparents & Bessie Wallis Warfield’s 5th Great Grandparents

John Warfield Sr. (c. 1674 MD – c. 1718 MD) married Ruth Gaither (c. 1690 MD)

5th Great Grandparents

Benjamin W. Warfield Sr. (c. 1702 MD – c. 1769 MD) married (c. 1731 MD) Rebeckah/Rebecca Ridgely

4th Great Grandparents

Benjamin W. Warfield Jr. (c. 1734 MD – c. 1806 MD) married (c. 1769 MD) Catherine Dorsey

3rd Great Grandparents

Joshua Warfield (c. 1781 MD – c. 1846 MD) married (c. 1816 MD) Lydia Dorsey Welsh

2nd Great Grandparents

Albert Gallatin Warfield Sr. (c. 1817 MD – c. 1891 MD) married (c. 1842 MD) Margaret Gassaway Watkins

Great Grandparents

Edwin Warfield Sr. (c. 1848 MD – c. 1920 MD) married (c. 1886 MD) Emma Nicodemus

Grandparents

Edwin Warfield Jr. (c. 1891 MD – c. 1952 MD) married (c. 1920 MD) Katherine Lawrence Lee4

Parents

Edwin Warfield III (c. 1924 MD – c. 1999 MD) married (c. 1946 NJ) Carol Phillips Horton

Client Edwin Warfield IV

4th Great Grandparents

Richard Warfield (c. 1697 MD – c. 1765 MD) married (c. 1720 MD) Mary Ann Caldwell

3rd Great Grandparents

Seth Warfield (c. 1723 MD – c. 1805 MD) married (c. 1744 MD) Mary Gaither

2nd Great Grandparents

Benjamin Warfield (c. 1755 MD – c. 1829 MD) married (c. 1779 MD) Ariana Dorsey

Great Grandparents

Daniel Warfield (c. 1783 MD – c. 1867 MD) married (c. 1819 MD) Ann Mactier

Grandparents

Henry Mactier Warfield (c. 1825 – c. 1885) married (c. 1850 MD) Anna Emory

Parents

Teackle Wallis Warfield (c. 1869 MD – c. 1896 MD) married (c. 1895 MD) Alice Montague

Duchess of Windsor

Bessie Wallis Warfield

Therefore, Edwin Warfield IV and Bessie Wallis Warfield are 6th cousins, once removed.

Relationship between

Edwin Warfield IV & Solomon Davies Warfield

Edwin Warfield IV’s 6th Great Grandparents & Solomon Davies Warfield’s 4th Great Grandparents

John Warfield Sr. (c. 1674 MD – c. 1718 MD) married Ruth Gaither (c. 1690 MD)

5th Great Grandparents

Benjamin W. Warfield Sr. (c. 1702 MD – c. 1769 MD) married (c. 1731 MD) Rebeckah/Rebecca Ridgely

4th Great Grandparents

Benjamin W. Warfield Jr. (c. 1734 MD – c. 1806 MD) married (c. 1769 MD) Catherine Dorsey

3rd Great Grandparents

Joshua Warfield (c. 1781 MD – c. 1846 MD) married (c. 1816 MD) Lydia Dorsey Welsh

2nd Great Grandparents

Albert Gallatin Warfield Sr. (c. 1817 MD – c. 1891 MD) married (c. 1842 MD) Margaret Gassaway Watkins

Great Grandparents

Edwin Warfield Sr. (c. 1848 MD – c. 1920 MD) married (c. 1886 MD) Emma Nicodemus

Grandparents

Edwin Warfield Jr. (c. 1891 MD – c. 1952 MD) married (c. 1920 MD) Katherine Lawrence Lee

Parents

Edwin Warfield III (c. 1924 MD – c. 1999 MD) married (c. 1946 NJ) Carol Phillips Horton

Client Edwin Warfield IV

3rd Great Grandparents

Richard Warfield (c. 1697 MD – c. 1765 MD) married (c. 1720 MD) Mary Ann Caldwell

2nd Great Grandparents

Seth Warfield (c. 1723 MD – c. 1805 MD) married (c. 1744 MD) Mary Gaither

Great Grandparents

Benjamin Warfield (c. 1755 MD – c. 1829 MD) married (c. 1779 MD) Ariana Dorsey

Grandparents

Daniel Warfield (c. 1783 MD – c. 1867 MD) married (c. 1819 MD) Ann Mactier

Parents

Henry Mactier Warfield (c. 1825 – c. 1885) married (c. 1850 MD) Anna Emory

Financier

Solomon Davies Warfield

Therefore, Edwin Warfield IV and Solomon Davies Warfield are 5th cousins, two times removed.

Relationship #1 between Bessie Wallis Warfield & F. Scott Fitzgerald

Bessie Wallis Warfield’s 5th Great Grandparents & F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 4th Great Grandparents

John Warfield Sr. (c. 1674 MD – c. 1718 MD) married Ruth Gaither (c. 1690 MD)

4th Great Grandparents

Richard Warfield (c. 1697 MD – c. 1765 MD) married (c. 1720 MD) Mary Ann Caldwell

3rd Great Grandparents

Seth Warfield (c. 1723 MD – c. 1805 MD) married (c. 1744 MD) Mary Gaither

2nd Great Grandparents

Benjamin Warfield (c. 1755 MD – c. 1829 MD) married (c. 1779 MD) Ariana Dorsey

Great Grandparents

Daniel Warfield (c. 1783 MD – c. 1867 MD) married (c. 1819 MD) Ann Mactier

Grandparents

Henry Mactier Warfield (c. 1825 – c. 1885) married (c. 1850 MD) Anna Emory

Parents

Teackle Wallis Warfield (c. 1869 MD – c. 1896 MD) married (c. 1895 MD) Alice Montague

Duchess of Windsor

Bessie Wallis Warfield

3rd Great Grandparents

Alexander Warfield (? MD – c. 1749 MD) married (? MD) Thomasine Worthington

2nd Great Grandparents

John Worthington Warfield (c. 1742 MD – c. 1811 MD) married (c. 1769 MD) Susanna Holland

Great Grandparents

Benjamin Fitzgerald (? – c. ? MD) married (c. 1803 MD) Araminta Warfield

Grandparents

Michael T. Fitzgerald (? MD – c. 1855 MD) married (1850 MD) Cecilia Aston Scottff

Parents

Edward Fitzgerald (c. 1853 MD – c. 1931 DC) married (c. 1890 DC) Mary (Mollie) McQuillan

Author F. Scott Fitzgerald

Therefore, Bessie Wallis Warfield and F. Scott Fitzgerald were 5th cousins, once removed.

Relationship #2 between Bessie Wallis Warfield & F. Scott Fitzgerald

6th Great Grandparents

Richard Warfield (c. 1646 ENG – c. 1703 MD) married Elinor Brown (c. 1670 MD)

5th Great Grandparents

John Warfield Sr. (c. 1674 MD – c. 1718 MD) married (c. 1690 MD) Ruth Gaither

4th Great Grandparents

Richard Warfield (c. 1697 MD – c. 1765 MD) married (c. 1720 MD) Mary Ann Caldwell

3rd Great Grandparents

Seth Warfield (c. 1723 MD – c. 1805 MD) married (c. 1744 MD) Mary Gaither

2nd Great Grandparents

Benjamin Warfield (c. 1755 MD – c. 1829 MD) married (c. 1779 MD) Ariana Dorsey

Great Grandparents

Daniel Warfield (c. 1783 MD – c. 1867 MD) married (c. 1819 MD) Ann Mactier

Grandparents

Henry Mactier Warfield (c. 1825 – c. 1885) married (c. 1850 MD) Anna Emory

Parents

Teackle Wallis Warfield (c. 1869 MD – c. 1896 MD) married (c. 1895 MD) Alice Montague

Duchess of Windsor Bessie Wallis Warfield

5th Great Grandparents

Elinor Warfield (c. 1683 MD – c. 1752 MD) married (c. 1704 MD) Caleb Dorsey Sr.

4th Great Grandparents

Caleb Dorsey Jr. (c. 1710 MD – c. 1772 MD) married (c. 1735 MD) Priscilla Hill

3rd Great Grandparents

Henry Hill Dorsey (c. 1736 MD – c. 1772 MD) married (c. 1765 MD) Elizabeth Goodwin

2nd Great Grandparents

John Scott (? MD – ? MD) married (c. 1788 MD) Elizabeth Goodwin Dorsey

Great Grandparents

John Scott (c. 1789 MD – c. 1840 MD) married (c. 1816 MD) Eliza Maynadier Key

Grandparents

Michael T. Fitzgerald (? MD – c. 1855 MD) married (1850 MD) Cecilia Aston Scottff

Parents

Edward Fitzgerald (c. 1853 MD – c. 1931 DC) married (c. 1890 DC) Mary (Mollie) McQuillan

Author

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Therefore, Bessie Wallis Warfield and F. Scott Fitzgerald were 7th cousins.

People Index

A

ALI, Muhammad - 255

ANGELOS, Peter - 160

ARNOLD, Samuel - 233

B

BACON, Francis - 49

BAGARIA, Anup - 164

BALDWIN, Stanley - 65, 67, 68, 70

BANDY, Way - 188

BARDOT, Brigitte - 43

BASIS, I. Freeman - 103

BEATON, Cecil - 6, 53, 55 80, 116, 139, 140, 184

BEDAUX, Charles - 73, 122, 123, 124

BEDAUX, Fern - 73, 122

BEER, Tracy - 252

BENSON, Harry - 189

BERLIN, Irving - 197

BLIGE, Mary J. - 187

BLOCH, Michael - 60, 65, 202, 203

BLOCK, Kenneth Paul - 185

BLUEMNER, Oscar - 251

BLUM, Suzanne - 60

BODINE, A. Aubrey - 11, 40, 233

BODINE, Jennifer - 40

BOGOSIAN, Ted - 120

BOLAND, John - 160

BONAPARTE, Betsy Patterson - 233

BONAPARTE, Jerome - 233

BONAPARTE, Jerome Napoleon - 233, 241

BONAPARTE, Napoleon - 233

BOOTH, John Wilkes - 233

BOUDIN, Stephane - 75

BOURDAIN, Anthony - 120

BOWERS, Scotty - 79

BOWES-LYON, John - 188

BRADY, Kitty - 43, 46

BRADY, Nicholas - 43

BRAGG, Braxton - 92

BRAKA, Ivor - 49

BRECKINRIDGE, J.C. - 92

BROCKHURST, Gerald - 187

BROKAW, Tom - 30

BROOKS, Xan - 216

BROWNE, Elinor - 85

BROWNE, John - 85

BRYAN, William Jennings - 14, 98

BUBASTIS - 244, 245

BURROUGHS, William - 192

BUSH, George H.W. - 43

C

CALONICA, Craig - 173, 177, 179

CAPOTE, Truman - 55, 184, 187, 188

CARTER, Bob - 177

CHANNON, Sir Henry - 80

CHAPLIN, Charlie - 222

CHISOLM, Richard - 120

CHURCHILL, Randolph - 124

CHURCHILL, Winston - 6, 30, 65, 67, 76, 124, 125, 139, 183, 184

CLEMENS, Samuel - 97

CLEVELAND, Grover - 109

COCHRANE, Lucy Douglas - 184

COOK, Alexander - 107

COOPER, Andrew - 174

COOPER, Gary - 53

COOPER, Luke - 243

CORNISH, Abbie - 214, 220

CSIKSZENTMIHALYI, Mihaly - 174

CURTIS, Anthony - 217

D

D’ARCY, James - 214, 216, 220

DAHL, Roald - 198

DALI, Salvador - 185

DAVIDSON, Tom - 243

DAVIS, Jefferson - 92

de GAULLE, Charles - 78 de GIVENCHY, Hubert - 75, 112

DEMSEY, John - 187

DePAULO, Ray - 246

DeVITO, Matt - 160

DIBRELL, George Gibbs - 92

DOLAN, James - 165

DONAHUE, Jimmy - 79, 120, 181, 197

DORWORTH, Dick - 172, 173, 178

DUKE, Doris - 188

DUNNE, Eileen - 139

E

EDWARD VIII - 57, 58, 59, 64, 65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 73, 74, 76, 78, 116, 120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 133, 181, 195, 197, 198, 200, 202, 203, 205, 209, 211, 212, 214, 220, 222, 225, 227, 233, 234, 236

ELIOT, T. S. - 48

ELLMAN, Louise - 125

EMERY, Audrey - 181

ENGELHARD, Charles - 43

F

FANNING, Carol (Mini) - 35

FANNING, Phillip - 35

FELPERIN, Leslie - 216

FITZGERALD, F. Scott - 12, 13, 15, 261

FITZGERALD, Zelda - 13

FORBES, John Murray - 48

FORBES, Malcolm - 43

FORD, Tom - 187

FREUD, Lucien - 49

FRIEDAN, Betty - 201

FRIEDMAN, Thomas - 239, 240

FULLER, Buckminster - 48

G

GANZ, Nancy - 201

GARBO, Greta - 53

GARLAND, Eric - 158, 159

GASPERL, Leo - 173

GILMAN, Daniel Coit - 47

GOEBBELS, Joseph - 123

GORING, Hermann - 124

GORMAN, Sen. Arthur Poe - 103, 104

GRAND DUKE DMITRI OF RUSSIA - 181

GRANT, Cary - 79, 181

GREENE, Graham - 198

GRUBER, Ruth - 151

GUEST, C. Z. - 6, 184, 185, 188, 189, 192, 197

GUEST, Alexander - 184

GUEST, Cornelia - 6, 183, 184, 187, 188, 189, 192

GUEST, Winston Frederick Churchill - 183, 184

HHALLE, Jean - 164

HALSTON, Ralph - 192

HARVEY, F. Barton - 158

HARVEY, Alex - 158

HARVEY, Robert - 158

HELANDER, Bruce - 251

HEMINGWAY, Ernest - 184, 261

HENDERSON, Florence - 46

HENRY VIII - 206, 209

HEPBURN, Katherine - 79

HESS, Rudolf - 124

HILL, Clare - 15

HIMMLER, Heinrich - 124

HOCKNEY, David - 251

HOBSON, Fred - 209

HOPKINS, Johns - 231

HORTON, Carol - 29, 32, 34, 35, 37

HORTON, Frank N. - 32

HORTON, John - 39

HOWARD, Cornelius - 85

HUGHES, Howard - 48

HUNT, Lamar - 47

HUTTON, Barbara Woolworth - 181

HUTTON, Edward Francis - 181

IICAHN, Carl - 156, 159

J

JACOBS, Eli - 158, 159

JAGGER, Mick - 189, 192

JAMES, Caryn - 218

JAMISON, Kay Redfield - 166, 167, 254

JONES, John Paul - 105

K

KAPLAN, Gilbert - 253, 254

KARPAY, Ken - 155

KEENAN, Jean - 12

KELLY, Grace - 43

KELLY, Jason - 163

KENNEDY, Jacqueline - 181, 192

KENNEDY, Robert - 48

KENNEDY, Ted - 48

KESEY, Ken - 48, 246

KING EDWARD VII - 211

KING EDWARD VIII - 5, 12, 58, 73, 116, 119, 198, 202, 209, 216, 222

KING GEORGE V - 58, 65, 222

KING GEORGE VI - 59, 73, 78, 116, 195

KIRSHBAUM, Larry - 218

KLOTS, Trafford - 185

KUSS, Robert - 202

L

LA PETITE PRINCESS - 5, 120, 244, 245, 246, 251, 253, 254

LADEW, Harvey - 227, 228

LADY GAGA - 263

LAMB, David - 11, 13

LANAHAN, W. Wallace - 111, 112, 228

LANAHAN, Eleanor - 111, 112

LASCELLES, Alan - 68

LASKER, Henry - 202

LANTCHNER, Guzzi - 173

LAUDER, Estée - 187

LEARY, Timothy - 48

Le CARRE, John - 198

LETZER, Mark - 241

LEVINE, David - 162

LEWIS, Michael - 244

LEWIS, Warfield - 15

LINCOLN, Abraham - 167, 233

LISBONNE, Jean - 202

LOUIS, Morris - 251

MMcBRIDGE, Ryan - 253

McKINNEY, Frances Warfield - 20, 32, 169, 170, 176

McKINNEY, McLane - 170

McKINNEY, Rigan - 170

McKINNEY, Sheila - 170

McKINNEY, Steve - 16, 17, 37, 169, 170, 172-179

McKINNEY, Tamara - 5, 16, 170, 171, 172, 178

MADONNA - 214, 216, 217, 218, 236, 263

MANSFIELD, Peter - 202

MARKLE, Meghan - 58, 211

MARTIN, Father - 30, 154

MAUGHAM, Somerset - 80

MAXWELL, Elsa - 197

MAYER, Francis Blackwell - 88

MENCKEN, H. L. - 209

MENDL, Lady Elise - 74

MERRYMAN, Bessie - 63, 64, 65, 67, 76, 131, 205, 206

METZ, Jeanine - 202

MIDLER, Bette - 192

MILES, Clarence - 112, 228, 230, 231, 233

MILES, Eleanor - 112, 228, 230

MILKEN, Michael - 156

MILLER, Ralph - 173

MINEO, Sal - 151

MINNELI, Liza - 192

MIRANDA, Lin Manuel - 207

MONKTON, Walter - 65

MONROE, Marilyn - 6, 192, 197, 199

MORGAN, Connie - 64

MORTON, Andrew - 58, 119, 131, 241

MOSELEY, Jack - 160

MUNRO, Tom - 218

MURPHY, Charles - 60, 68, 131

MURPHY, Michael - 174

MUSK, Elon - 243

MUSTIN, Corinne - 64

N

NAYLOR, Kathy - 169

NAYLOR, Larry - 169

NAYLOR, Laura - 169

NAYLOR, Lee - 169

NAYLOR, Ouisha - 169

NEWMAN, Paul - 151

NEWMARK, Craig - 162

NIARCHOS - 244, 245, 246

NICHOLS, Peter - 207

NICHOLSON, Jack - 246

NIXON, Richard - 236

NOLAND, Kenneth - 251

O

O’DONNELL, Ada - 111, 131

O’LAUGHLEN, Michael - 233

OMIDYAR, Pierre - 162

ONASSIS, Jackie - 43

OWENS, Ellen (Niki) - 29

P

PASTERNAK, Anna - 58

PATTON, George - 47

PERDUE, Frank - 160

PERROW, Wendy - 254

PERRY, Richard - 48

PHILLIPS, Elizabeth B. - 32

PHILLIPS, John - 32

PHILLIPS, William A. - 32

PHIPPS, Henry, Jr. - 184

PICK, Charles - 198

PICK, Martin - 199

PICKENS, T. Boone - 156, 159

POE, John Prentiss - 104

PONSELLE, Rosa - 111, 135

POP, Iggy - 49

PORTERFIELD, Jim - 254

POSNER, Victor - 159

POST, Marjorie Merriweather - 181

POWELL, Leigh - 134

POWELL, Ted - 222

PREMINGER, Otto - 151

PRESLEY, Elvis - 192

PRINCE ANDREW - 116

PRINCE CHARLES - 116

PRINCE DMITRI DJORDJAZE - 181

PRINCE EDWARD - 116, 119

PRINCE HARRY - 58, 211

PRINCE PHILIP - 116

PRINCESS ANNE - 116

PRINCESS DIANA - 205

PRINCESS ELIZABETH - 116

PRINCESS MARGARET - 116

Q

QUEEN Elizabeth - 73, 116, 184

QUEEN Elizabeth II - 53, 119, 139, 184, 188, 205

QUEEN Mother (Mary) - 58, 60, 74, 76, 211, 263

RRADZIWILL, Lee - 43

RAFRAY, Mary - 63

RAISIN, John - 63

RANDELL, John - 60

RASMUSSEN, Fred - 241

RAUSCHENBERG, Robert - 251

REAGAN, Nancy - 188

REAGAN, Ronald - 43

REUTTER, Mark - 159, 160

RIDGELY, Charles Carnan - 12

RIDGELY, Elizabeth Dorsey - 86

RILEY, Elihu - 104

RISEBOROUGH, Andrea - 214, 216, 220

RIVERA, Diego - 185, 189

ROBINSON, Bishop - 158

ROGERS, Herman - 63, 73, 122

ROGERS, Katherine - 73, 122

ROOSEVELT, Eleanor - 226

ROOSEVELT, Franklin D. - 30, 103, 125

ROSE, Charlie - 39

ROSE, Jack Manley - 88

ROSS, Alec - 246

RUPAUL (Andre Charles) - 187

RUTAN, Charlie - 253

S

SAINT, Eva Marie - 151

SALINGER, J.D. - 198

SCHAEFER, William Donald - 158

SCHEELE, George - 15

SCHILLER, Elizabeth - 230

SCHILLER, Morgan - 230

SCHLEY, Elizabeth - 43

SCHLEY, Evander H. - 43

SCHLEY, Grant - 43

SCOTT, P.H. - 135

SHERMAN, Scott - 158

SIMPSON, Ernest - 47, 63, 64, 67, 73

SIMONETTI, Ryan - 243

SIMPSON, Wallis Warfield - 5, 12, 16, 19, 53, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 73, 74, 79, 111, 112, 116, 119, 120, 122, 124, 125, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135, 181, 192, 195, 197, 198, 199, 202, 203, 205, 206, 211, 214, 216, 217, 220, 222, 225, 226, 227, 228, 230, 231, 233, 234, 235, 241

SINATRA, Frank - 167

SINCLAIR, Upton - 71, 261

SINGK, Manpreet - 243

SISSON, John - 85

SKELTON, Claude - 156

SLATER, Shaleese - 253

SLATER, Tim - 253

SMITH, John Walter - 104

SOKOLOW, Ken - 160

SPADE, Kate - 120

SPAIN, Patrick - 163

SPEER, Albert - 123

SPENCER, Earl Winfield (Win) - 63, 131, 217, 228

STALLONE, Sylvester - 189

STARR, Blaze - 206

STEINBECK, John - 198

STEIR, Bert - 202

STEIR, Judy - 201, 202, 203, 205, 206, 207

STEIR, Mitchell - 48, 201

STEWART, Anthony - 12, 86

STEWART, Martha - 263

STONE, Marshall - 48

STONE, Oliver - 47

STRASSBURGER, John - 35

STRONG, Stefany - 107, 108

STUMP, Humpy - 40

STUMP, Jimmy - 40

STUMP, Louise - 40

SUHLER, John - 161

T

TAYLOR, Elizabeth - 192

TAYLOR, James - 48

TIBBETS, Paul Warfield - 12, 15

TIEGS, Cheryl - 188

TILGHMAN, Oswald Mrs. - 108

TODD, Tommy - 173

TRACY, Spencer - 79

TRUMBO, Dalton - 151

TRUMP, Donald - 156, 181

TRUMP, Donald, Jr. - 47

TRUMP, Eric - 47

TUDOR, Larry - 177

TURNER, Charles Yardley - 88

TUROW, Scott - 217

TWAIN, Mark - 5, 6, 20, 40, 59, 97, 98, 134, 244

U

URIS, Leon - 151

V

VICKERS, Hugo - 53, 55

von FÜRSTENBERG, Prince Egon - 188 von RIBBENTROP, Joachim - 124, 125 W

WALCZAK, Michael - 12

WALLACE, Lew - 241

WALLIS, Severn Teackle - 231

WALTERS, Henry - 231

WARD, Doug - 243

WARFIELD, Albert “AG” Gallatin - 19, 26, 29, 88, 89, 94, 99, 217

WARFIELD, Albert Jr. - 14, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94

WARFIELD, Alice Montague - 59, 61, 63, 130

WARFIELD, Allegra - 5, 50

WARFIELD, Amy - 50

WARFIELD, Anita - 135

WARFIELD, Anna - 61, 231

WARFIELD, Azel - 86

WARFIELD, Benjamin - 19, 88

WARFIELD, Beth - 34, 43, 46, 154

WARFIELD, Betty - 231

WARFIELD, Bobby - 20

WARFIELD, Carrie - 99

WARFIELD, Celina Duperu - 93

WARFIELD, Charles Alexander - 12, 16, 86

WARFIELD, Diana - 34, 36, 43, 46

WARFIELD, Edwin - 16, 45

WARFIELD, Edwin, Governor - 5, 12, 13, 14, 16, 20, 89, 97, 98, 99, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108

WARFIELD, Edwin Jr. - 20, 29, 99, 111

WARFIELD, Edwin (Ted) III - 19, 20, 24, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35

WARFIELD, Edwin IV - 10, 11, 14, 241, 246, 256, 261, 263

WARFIELD, Emma - 99

WARFIELD, Emma Nicodemus - 98, 99, 123

WARFIELD, Frank - 89, 94

WARFIELD, Gallatin “Gally” - 217, 218

WARFIELD, Gassaway Watkins - 14, 89, 93, 94, 99

WARFIELD, Henry M. - 111, 135, 231

WARFIELD, Henry Mactier - 231

WARFIELD, Katharine Lawrence Lee - 20

WARFIELD, John - 85, 89, 102, 242

WARFIELD, Joshua - 15

WARFIELD, KayKay - 111

WARFIELD, Kitty - 20, 32

WARFIELD, Louise - 20, 40, 99

WARFIELD, Lynn - 9, 10

WARFIELD, Margaret Gassaway Watkins - 88, 93, 94, 99

WARFIELD, Marshall T., Jr. - 26, 28, 31

WARFIELD, Rebecca - 111, 231

WARFIELD, Richard - 12, 85, 86, 161, 231

WARFIELD, Sarah Griffith - 86

WARFIELD, Solomon Davies - 16, 61, 63, 64, 129, 130, 131, 134, 135, 206, 231

WARFIELD, Teackle Wallis - 59, 130

WARFIELD, Win - 5, 8, 14, 50, 132, 242

WARHOL, Andy - 6, 185, 188, 192, 195

WASHINGTON, Booker T. - 106

WASHINGTON, George - 107

WASSERSTEIN, Bruce - 163, 164, 165, 249

WASSERSTEIN, Wendy - 249

WATERS, John - 162

WATKINS, Gassaway - 88

WEBER, Bruce - 189

WEILL, Sandy - 160

WELLS, Orson - 181

WHITE, Rhea - 174

WILLIAMS, Stevenson - 104

WILSON, Christopher - 197

WISE, Damon - 216

WOLFE, Tom - 244

WOO, Jonny - 80

WYSKIEL, Christy - 243

ZAPPA, Frank - 49

ZEDONG, Mao - 192

ZIPKIN, Jerry - 188

Select Bibliography — Ranked in Order of Personal Importance

Bipolar Disorder for Dummies – Candida Fink and Joe Kraynak

Wally for Queen!: The Private Life of Royalty – Upton Sinclair

BlacKkKlansman – Spike Lee

A Man in Full – Tom Wolfe

King Edward VIII: An American Life – Ted Powell

The Ghosts of Johns Hopkins: The Life and Legacy That Shaped an American City

– Antero Pietila

Eight Busy Decades: The Life and Times of Clarence W. Miles – Jacques Kelly

Perfectly Delightful: The Life and Gardens of Harvey Ladew – Christopher Weeks

Wallis in Love: The Untold Life of the Duchess of Windsor, the Woman Who Changed the Monarchy – Andrew Morton

Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America – John Waters

Exodus 1947: The Ship That Launched a Nation – Ruth Gruber

Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York – Stephen Birmingham

Behind Closed Doors: The Tragic, Untold Story of the Duchess of Windsor – Hugo Vickers

The Real Wallis Simpson: A New History of the American Divorcée Who Became the Duchess of Windsor – Anna Pasternak

The Amiable Baltimoreans – Francis F. Beirne

An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness – Kay Redfield Jamison

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues – Tom Robbins

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values – Robert M. Pirsig

The Beatles: On the Road 1964-1966 – Harry Benson

Lithium: A Doctor, a Drug, and a Breakthrough – Walter A. Brown

Tom Munro – Tom Munro

Photo Credits

Page 2: Scan from Oldfield’s Yearbook - Oldfield’s School

Prologue: Page 4 - Duchess of Windsor in the Monkey Dress, Maryland Center for History and Culture

Chapter 1: Page 8 - Warfield family photo, Edwin Warfield; Page 10 - Marching Warfields, Edwin Warfield; Page 12 - Dr. Charles Alexander Warfield, Snowden-Warfield.com; Governor Edwin Warfield, Wikipedia; Paul Warfield Tibbets, Wikipedia; F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flickr; Page 14 - 19th century certificate, Edwin Warfield; Page 15 - Duke and Duchess of Windsor, A. Aubrey Bodine; Page 16 - Steve McKinney, Tamara McKinney

Chapter 2: Page 18 - Ted Warfield, Edwin Warfield; Page 20 - Young Ted Warfield, Unknown; Ted Warfield, Unknown; Ted Warfield, Wikipedia; Page 21 - Top left to right: Doolittle Tokyo Raiders receiving Congressional Gold Medal, Wikipedia; Doolittle raid, Wikipedia; B-52’s dropping bombs, Wikipedia; Ishikawa, Tokyo Daikushu no Zenkiroku; Bombing of Tokyo, Koyo Ishikawa; Page 23 - Drawing of Ted Warfield on raft, Edwin Warfield; Page 25 - Ted Warfield being rescued, Edwin Warfield; Page 26 - U.S.S. Haddock, U.S. Navy; Page 27 - Paul Tibbets Warfield on the Enola Gay, Alamy; Page 28 - Hiroshima, Alamy; Page 31- Ted Warfield funeral, Edwin Warfield; Page 33 - Carol Horton, A. Aubrey Bodine; Page 34 - HRH of Hounds, A. Aubrey Bodine; Page 36 - Photo of Carol jumping, Edwin Warfield

Chapter 3: Page 38 - Edwin on a horse, A. Aubrey Bodine; Page 41 - Carol Warfield, A. Aubrey Bodine; Page 42 - Ted and Carol Warfield, A. Aubrey Bodine; Pages 44 & 45 - Mom herding cattle, A. Aubrey Bodine; Page 47- Ernest Simpson, National Portrait Gallery; Page 48 - T.S. Eliot, Cecil Beaton, Buckminster Fuller, PBS, Robert F. Kennedy, Cecil Beaton, James Taylor, YouTube

Long Live The Abdication: Page 52 - Guy Pierce, Weinstein Company; Claire Foy, Alex Jennings and John Lithgow, Alamy; Page 53 - Alex Jennings and Lia Williams, Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Alex Jennings, Alamy

Chapter 4: Page 54 - Wallis Simpson, Conde Nast, Getty Images; Page 56 - Time Magazine cover with Wallis, Time Magazine; Page 59 - Duke of Windsor, A. Aubrey Bodine; Page 60 - Duke on diving board, A. Aubrey Bodine; Page 62 - Duchess of Windsor with Royal Family, Alamy; Page 64 - Henry Warfield with Wallis and Edward, The Baltimore Sun; Page 67 - Wedding day for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Cecil Beaton; Page 68 - Duke’s funeral, Alamy; Page 69 - Upton Sinclair, Alamy; Page 70 - Henry Warfield and the Duke of Windsor, The Baltimore Sun; Page 72 - Richard Nixon with the Windsors, Alamy; Page 73 - Prince Charles with the Duchess of Windsor, Alamy; Page 75 - Wallis in the Monkey Dress, Maryland Center for History and Culture; Page 80 - Jonny Woo as The Duchess of Windsor, Louis Banks; Page 81 - The Duchess of Windsor, Cecil Beaton

Courting Disaster: Page 82 - H. L. Mencken, A. Aubrey Bodine

Chapter 5: Page 84 - Warfield cemetery, Jennifer Bishop; Page 86 - 1769 Record, Edwin Warfield; Page 87 - Painting of The Burning of the Peggy Stewart, Maryland Center for History and Culture; Page 90 - The Battle of Antietam, Alexander Gardner; Page 92 - Point Lookout, Maryland Center for History and Culture; Page 95 - Tombstones, Jennifer Bishop

Chapter 6: Page 96 - Edwin Warfield and Mark Twain, Maryland State Archives; Page 98 - Samuel Clemen’s invitation, Edwin Warfield; Pages - 100 & 101, Fidelity and Deposit Company founders, Maryland Center for History and Culture; Page 102 - FDR, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; Page 103 - Fidelity and Deposit Company Letter, The Manhattan Rare Book Company; Page 104 - Edwin Warfield for Governor button, Edwin Warfield; Page 105 - Great Baltimore Fire, Maryland Center for History and Culture; Page 107 - Governor and Coachman, Edwin Warfield; Page 109 - Mark Twain, Alamy

Wallis in Baltimore: Page 110 - Wallis at Timonium train station, The Baltimore Sun; Page 112 - Henry Warfield greets Wallis, The Baltimore Sun; 1955 Cancer Ball, AP/The Baltimore Sun; Page 113 - Mattise painting from Cone Collection, The Baltimore Sun; The Windsors at the Miles’ estate, A. Aubrey Bodine; Wallis and Edward at the Maryland Hunt Cup, The Baltimore News American

They Shoot Duchesses? Don’t They?: Pages 116 & 117 - The Duke & Duchess of Windor, Cecil Beaton

Chapter 7: Page 118 - Wallis, Edward and Hitler, Wikipedia; Page 121 - Edward and Churchill, Alamy; Page 122 - Wallis and Hitler, Alamy; Page 123 - Letter from Edward, Alamy, Page 124 - Covers of Wallis, Claude Skelton

Chapter 8: Page 128 - Solomon Davies Warfield, Maryland Center for History and Culture; Page 130 - Boat on the Mississippi, A. Aubrey Bodine; Page 132 - Map of the Seaboard routes, Wikipedia; Page 133 - S. Davies Warfield, State Library & Archives of Florida; Page 135 - Old Bay Line, The Baltimore Sun; Page 136 - Rosa Ponselle and Solomon Davies Warfield, Maryland Center for History and Culture

Chapter 9: Pages 138, 140, 141, 143, 145, 146 - Crew on the President Warfield, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Chapter 10: Page 148 - Warfield’s magazine cover, Edwin Warfield; Page 150 - Governor and grandfather, Edwin Warfield; Page 152 - Malcolm Forbes, Harry Benson; Forbes Magazine, Regardie’s; Pages 153,155 - Warfield’s magazine covers, Edwin Warfield; Page 159 - John Suhler, VSS; Page 161 - Bruce Wasserstein, Wikipedia

Chapter 11: Page 164 - Steve McKinney, Eric Perlman Productions; Page 166 - Steve McKinney, Gregory Beck, Page 167 - Tamara McKinney, Lori Adamski-Peek; Page 168 - Mahre and McKinney on the cover of Time, Time Magazine; Page 169 - Steve skiing, Eric Perlman Productions; Page 171 - Steve climbing, Eric Perlman Productions; Page 172 - Steve and friends, Tamara McKinney; Page 173 - Steve in Silverton, CO, David E. Carmazzi; Page 174 - Mt. Everest, Craig Calonica; Page 175 - Steve hang gliding, Craig Calonica

Wallis in Palm Beach: Page 176 - Edward & Wallis arrive in Palm Beach, Historical Society of Palm Beach County

The Guest List: Page 178 - C. Z. Guest, Cecil Beaton; Page 179 - The Guest family,Vogue; C. Z. Guest and Wallis, Luscious

Wallis in New York: Page 180 - Elsa Maxwell, Cecil Beaton

Changing of the Guard: Pages 182, 183 - Marilyn Monroe, Cecil Beaton

Chapter 12: Page 184 - Stan Chandler as Prince of Wales and Kaitlin Hopkins as Wallis Simpson from The Pasadena Playhouse production, ©Craig Schwartz Photography; Page 186 - Judy and Bert Steir, Photograph: ©Patrick McMullan; Page 188 - Stan Chandler as Prince of Wales, and Kaitlin Hopkins as Wallis Simpson, ©Craig Schwartz Photography; Page 191 - Pasadena Playhouse production of Only a Kingdom, ©Craig Schwartz Photography

Chapter 13: Pages 192 - Madonna photographing Andrea Riseborough, Tom Munro; Pages 193 - W.E. brooch, Sotheby’s; Pages 195 - Madonna with Andrea Riseborough, Tom Munro; Pages 197 - Madonna’s directing debut from W.E. movie, Tom Munro; Page 200 - Cross Bracelet, Sotheby’s

Madonna’s W.E.: Pages 202 & 203 - Photos from W.E., Tom Munro

Edward Does America: Pages 204 & 205 - Photos of Edward in America, Alamy

Chapter 14: Page 206 - Photo announcing the abdication, Alamy; Page 208 - Harvey Ladew, Ladew Gardens; Page 209 - Billy Baldwin painting, Ladew Gardens; Page 211 - Clarence and Eleanor Miles with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, The Baltimore Sun; Page 212 - The Duke and Duchess of Windsor with Elizabeth Lloyd Schiller, A. Aubrey Bodine; Page 214 - Green Mount Cemetery, Jennifer Bishop

Chapter 15: Page 218 - Maryland Club, A. Aubrey Bodine; Page 221 - Wallis Warfield Simpson, Alamy; Page 227 - Ernest Hemingway, Alamy; Kay Redfield Jamison, Tom Wolff; Edwin and Mark Twain, Jennifer Bishop; Estée Lauder, Alamy; Theodore Roosevelt, WikiMedia

Letter to Heaven: Page 238 - The Duchess of Windsor, Cecil Beaton

All attempts were made to contact the original rights holders to obtain their permission for the use of copyrighted material. The author apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any correction to be incorporated in future reprints or editions of the book.

ALLEGRA, WIN, MOM, DAD, WALLIS, MARK TWAIN AND LA PETITE PRINCESS

In 1659, Richard Warfield left his native Britain and its monarchy for America to become an indentured servant before gaining his eventual freedom. Almost three centuries later, in 1936, Edwin Warfield’s cousin, Wallis Warfield Simpson, rocked Britain and its monarchy when a love-struck King Edward VIII abdicated his throne to marry her — a commoner, a divorcee, an American. And now the Duchess of Windsor. A battle royal ensued.

The monarchy mercilessly orchestrated what Madonna, who documented the whole Edward-Wallis brouhaha in her 2011 feature film W.E., called a “witch hunt.” Who was the baddie in all this? The Duke? The Duchess? The monarchy? The subject still has people on both sides of the Atlantic abuzz — obsessed.

Edwin Warfield interweaves stories of his family — from the American Revolution to the Internet Revolution — with stories of the Duchess of Windsor, giving readers insider insights into her remarkable life. The Duchess of Windsor and Me is part history, part biopic, and all fascinating. A story of war and peace and love.