RICH

 

WORLD WAR I EFFECTS THE RELATIONSHIP OF PRINCE EDWARD ALBERT AND FREDA DUDLEY WARD : PASSIONATE LETTERS

The Prince and Freda seemed to at once feel comfortable with each other and as if they knew each other and that they had common interests and sensibilities.  That says a lot. Soon they were meeting regularly for trysts. Apparently they were also compatible in that way.  His passion for her was considered to be "all consuming"

Excerpt page 217/1074 e-book : If they were apart he would phone her four and five times a night and he would be bereft if she was not in.

*****

Missy here!  I have to wonder if she knew that not being available all the time would keep him interested or if she was simply busy with her own life. Something about Freda gives me the impression that she knew she did need to have a life that was all her own, that didn't always include him.That she had other affairs over the years gives me that impression.

World War I was ongoing and the Prince's father didn't want him having a good time in London, and sent him to Italy, so he wasn't exactly easily available to her either. The intense bombardment of letters continued.

Excerpt page 218-220/1074 e-book:  Once in Italy at the end of March (1918) the prince bombarded Freda with dozens of letters written to "'My Angel' and signed with 'tons and tons of love from your EA. Many were written late at night as he sat in his room trying to recreate her essence by putting some drops of her scent, 'Royal Briar,' on his handkerchief.  He would look at her photograph, which was kept in a little leather frame by his bed when it was not in his picket, and kiss it  He told her that thinking of her made him feel 'fearfully naughty,.' To conjure u their time together he would smoke a cigarette and play their special tunes, 'Have a Heart' and 'The Little Cottage' on his gramophone It was as though he could only go to sleep once he had jotted down his every thought and experience and shared it with her. His letters were often in pencil and full of spelling and grammatical errors. .....

The prince told his mistress that her letters were the only joy of his dull existence, but it also seems that Freda was not so single0minded. She was working with a Voluntary Aid Detachment, nursing at a hospital in Ascot and then Windsor.

*****

It's been a long time since I had a letter writing relationship, but I believe in letters. Today I suppose the Prince might be texting with her or calling her several times a day on his cell phone.

Missy

C 202 Mistress Manifesto All Rights Reserved

PRINCE EDWARD PURSUED THE MARRIED BUT LONELY AND BORED FREDA DUDLEY WARD PASSIONATLEY and DISCREETLY

Before her 19th birthday, Winifred Mary Birkin married William Dudley Ward.  She had been expelled from a private girl's boarding school for climbing over a fence with some friends to go to the horse races at Ascot.  (!) These were the days when aristocratic young women were educated but not so intellectually. Her mother was American and she went on a vacation to American by steamship to visit her mother's relatives. Onboard she met William.  He was sixteen years older than she, but handsome, athletic and after years of bachelorhood, they had what is described as a whirlwind of a romance.  Maybe he need to get married because he soon entered politics. (Shades of John F. Kennedy and Jackie Bouvier?) While Freda's family had money, the marriage elevated her into London society and close to the Royal Family.

Excerpt page 212/1074 e-book : However, by the time the Freda met the prince her marriage was already under strain.  .... With her husband spending late nights in parliament, Freda was bored and soon found new ways of amusing herself.

Her marriage did not prevent her relationship with the price developing rapidly. After their first encounter, Edward (the Prince) wrote to 'Mrs. Dudley Ward' at Lowndes Square proposing another meeting. This caused some confusion with her mother-in-law at the time  The older woman opened the letter and thought that the price wanted to visit her.  Mrs. Dudley Ward Senior invited Edward to tea, which was not quite the assignation he had hoped for. However, this was only a temporary setback and nothing would deter the prince from being with Freda...For Freda, having the most eligible bachelor in the world chasing after her must have been intoxicating.  His charm was legendary. ...

Excerpt page 213/1074 : The besotted couple found ways to be together almost every day.  Their relationship soon became the talk of society.

*****

Like other couples in the same ah - predicament - the homes of friends became the places the two could meet and carry out their relationship without being detected. This included the home of one of her husband's sisters.

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WINDSOR

 

WINIFRED MAY BIRKIN = FREDA DUDLEY WARD : SIXTEEN YEARS AS THE ACKNOWLEDGED MISTRESS OF PRINCE EDWARD ALBERT : HER STORYTELLING AND SENSE OF HUMOR LEAD TO A VIBRANT SOCIAL LIFE

My coverage of  "Mrs. Freda Dudley Ward" - I have rarely heard her name without the Mrs. when it comes to the Prince - comes primarily from this book, which also includes other loves, pre-Wallis Simpson, whom Edward VIII married, and then. The story of the King who gave up his throne rather than not marry an American divorcee is forever fascinating. (Shades of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Harry and Meghan?) First there was Rosemary, then Freda, then Thelma, and then Wallis. For the Prince there were probably others before his marriage.

Freda and the then Prince Edward Albert, Prince of Wales, were involved for about sixteen years, beginning in 1918. That is one long relationship but she/they were so discreet the public didn't know. Their relationship was an open secret to society though and, as has been the case with other Royal Mistresses I've profiled here, her husband could not have not known. She was already married to William Dudley Ward and had two daughters when she and the Prince met. William was a much older man and was used to a lifestyle that included having affairs.  Marriage didn't tame him.  And so it would seem that, like other husbands whose wives become Royal Mistresses, he didn't mind and if he did, well -

The Prince, as described here, was obsessively in love with Freda, however, their relationship was one in which both knew that they could never marry. They also both knew that he must marry. Were they both faithful to each other? No!  A surprise for me was learning that actually their relationship became a Triad. It wasn't just the adultery; Freda and her husband and the Prince. It was also that Freda had a relationship with a man named Michael and so it became Freda and Michael and the Prince.

Now, I usually like to excerpt from the books I read cover to cover, focusing on information that I think is most essential to further the story and meet my reader's interest. But I have to tell you that I read this one as an e-book, so when I excerpt the page numbers will be the e-book and not the hardback. It's always my hope that my curation of books on a subject and the choice of a book or books or other media will encourage my readers to also get the book and read it from cover to cover. 

FREDA DUDLEY WARD

Image from Wikimedia - Public Domain 

1894-1983

Name at birth WINIFRED MAY BIRKIN

Name at marriage FREDA DUDLEY WARD 

(Wife of WILLIAM DUDLY WARD from 1913-1931 divorced.)

Name at second marriage WINIFRED MAY MONES, MARQUESA DE CASA MAURY 

(Married the Cuban-born businessman in 1937; they divorced in 1954.)

*******

Freda and the Prince kept an earnest correspondence and circa 1918 he would also telephone her four or five times a night. His father King George didn't want his son, who was not going to enter the Great War in the military out of London, so he was sent to Italy:

*****

Excerpt page e-book 218-222/1074 : 

Once in Italy at the end of March, the prince bombarded Freda with dozens of letters written to "My Angel" and signed with "tons and tons of love from your E.  Many were written late at night, as he sat in his room trying to recreate her essence by putting some drops of her scent, "Royal Briar", on his handkerchief. He would look at her photograph, which was kept in a little leather frame by his bed when it was not in his pocket, and kiss it. He told her that thinking of her made him feel "Fearfully naughty." To conjure up their time together he would smoke a cigarette and play their special tunes "Have a Heart' and 'The Little Cottage' on his gramophone. It was as though he could only go to sleep once he had jotted down his every thought and experience and shared it with her. His letters were often in pencil and full of spelling and grammatical errors. At first the notes were littered with swear words, but it seems that Freda told him off, so he tried to stop using bad language in correspondence with her.  However, he continued to send her puerile jokes and rhymes which he thought might amuse her.

The prince told his mistress that her letters were the only joy of his dull existence, but it seems that Freda was not so single minded. She was working with a Voluntary Aid Detachments, nursing at a hospital in Ascot and then in Windsor.  There was a photo of the Prince of Wales hung u in the ward where she worked scrubbing floors, and she looked at it occasionally. While Edward was away she had a brief fling with Captain Reginald Seymour, great grandson of the Marquess of Hertford. ....

Freda was equally worldly-wise, and she did not show any concern when the prince admitted to flirtations with other women. While in Rome in May 1918 he attended a party where he misbehaved with some attractive VADs. As was to become his habit, he half confessed to Freda about these incidents but played them down, perhaps partly to salve his conscience while making her jealous or 'thulky' (as they called it in their baby talk). He promised to never to lie to her again and told her : 'I just "grovel" at my idol's feet asking forgiveness.'

Shall we begin?

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PLANNED DOWN TIME NOTICE : MISTRESS MANIFESTO WILL BE "DOWN" AT SOME POINT IN THE NEAR FUTURE

 To my regular readers!

After blogging for so many years, it's time to move MISTRESS MANIFESTO to a new theme and format. Although this, and some other adjustments, may happen quickly and easily, a day or so perhaps, I want you to know that I'm preparing for glitches or more time consuming actions. I will be trying to do technology updates bit by bit at first without disappearing from the Internet, but it's likely my tech will have more recommendations....

Missy

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE KEPT? A COURTESAN? A MISTRESS? TO HAVE A HIGH COURTESAN ASPECT TO YOUR PERSONALITY?

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE KEPT?  A COURTESAN?  A MISTRESS?  TO HAVE A HIGH COURTESAN ASPECT TO YOUR PERSONALITY?  MISSY SPEAKS!

When you write a blog called Mistress Manifesto for several years as I've been doing, you wrangle with the question of what it means to be Kept, or what if any difference there is between a Courtesan and a Mistress!  When I profile Dally the Tall I have no doubt that she was a Courtesan because of the times that she lived in as well as the high art of her presentation and personality and the limitations of her ambitions. 

In other cases I'm not so sure.

Of the three words, I think the one the media overuses and uses incorrectly is Mistress.  A woman in any old affair, even if it was just one night, can be called a Mistress in the media if the man she's involved with is married. (For instance, I don't think the once playful Monica Lewinsky was ever President Bill Clinton's mistress and I would never apply that word to Marilyn Monroe, as confused as she was, though I think both women had a high courtesan aspect to their personalities.) Now that there are so many people who consider themselves committed living apart or who never marry legally, the question of ADULTERY as a key to Mistresshood doesn't count so much. Some relationships are so OPEN that Mistressing seems to be downright OLD FASHIONED, what with all that sneaking around!

Mistress is also used to imply that a person is a dominatrix, or at least powerful in the classroom as a teacher or as the owner of independent estate. I'm sure some people have been looking for a dominatrix when they happened upon my blog! I note that in this case the MISTRESS IS POWERFUL and IN CHARGE. Since so many women are not powerful or in charge this mistress can become quite the fantasy for women, especially because she does this and is still feminine though not weak.

So then we look at what it means to be KEPT and that word seems to imply CONCUBINAGE!  When we say someone is KEPT there are always financial implications, like that the person does not work for pay at anything and are totally dependent on someone else for their needs. It is the financial evidence that we are looking for and it's the financial evidence that makes the news and pushes previously low key mistresses into the public eye.

This one is tricky too because not so long ago most MARRIED WOMEN WERE KEPT WOMEN.  They stayed in the home and were "home-makers" or their work was as mothers and wives but they did not go out and earn any pay.  As married women they were respected for this, even honored.  These days most women work or if they are living off savings, an inheritance, or unexpected windfall, they write a novel or do volunteer work.  These days most women do not want to ask a husband for money to buy everything they want or need. They don't want to go behind his back or be tricky to buy a new dress.  They are almost embarrassed to let a man pay for everything on a date.  They are trying to prove to a man that they do not need him or that they are not less than him, at least not less than him financially.  "I don't need you!" she seems to be saying.

With the financial dependence most often for women that means she is COMMITTED TO HIM and their RELATIONSHIP even if he is not so much to her.  Such a woman may decide to not date others or have sex with others even when he has not given her such a commitment.  (It is my suspicion that this was the case with poor L'Wren Scott.)

The ability to admit to need and the willingness to allow someone else to help them financially without embarrassment or apology is where today's Kept Woman or Mistress or Courtesan prevails. This is also an old fashioned aspect of relationship with so much opportunity for independence today. It can even be an act of great self esteem and self acceptance to admit to someone that yes you can accept their generosity and no you are not an opportunist or user. You will really appreciate it.  And do well with it.

Another way to find meaning in these words is in the personality of a person.

What does it mean to have a High Courtesan Aspect to your personality? 

Why are people who have this so appealing to other people? 

Well, people with this aspect to their personality know how to have fun. They can be silly or sweet. They can be childlike and have wonder about the world even as they get older and older. They know how to seize the moment or the day. They see the beauty in things and they make themselves and their surroundings beautiful. They are apt to be a little too forgiving and to make excuses for people and to keep things light. This light heartedness is contagious. They are apt to see the glass half full rather than half empty. They can't stay mad for too long.  They give perceptive and sincere compliments. 

There is a certain happiness to being able to make do, to invent. Even when they can't afford a decorator their pillows are fluffed and there are guest soaps in the bathroom.

When things are going badly they get up and do the next day anyway, because they have faith that change is inevitable but it will all turn out well enough. 

Often they are the ones who make things happen for others, the job interviews, the dinner parties, the group to the opera, the event at the museum, or the little gift they picked up for you at a garage sale that is just perfect!

Missy

C 2012 - 2026  Missy Rapport/ Mistress Manifestto.blogspot.com  2014  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights   First published June 24, 2014

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