New York City is not the capital of the United States (at least not for more than 200 hundred years). Amongst all the great real estate that exists in this town, it possess no buildings or centers of national power.
It goes without saying that it has no royal palaces or castles -- royalty has never originated in NYC. Quite the opposite, actually -- this city is where royalty was fought and defeated and caste off, giving birth to the American nation.
And yet ... royalty sure does love coming to NYC!
Even more, they like living here. The former King Edward VIII and his American wife Wallis Simpson used to live for three months of each year at the Waldforf Towers. And just a few years ago a Japanese princess and her commoner husband moved to NYC, living in all places, Hell's Kitchen. This fascinating article tells her story and how she seemed just to vanish seamlessly into the lifeblood of Manhattan.
There's something about NYC, part of its paradox, where you can both live in the center of the world and yet hide from it (like Greta Garbo). The stories these streets could tell!
One-hundred years ago tonight Prince Edward of the United Kingdom was honored with a big dinner at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. He was concluding a long North American tour, previously visiting Canada and Washington DC, and was closing it out in grand style in NYC. At this moment in time, Edward was at the center of the world -- the handsome young star of the royal family, icon of the British Empire, and a future King. The world genuflected to him, he was beloved and feted everywhere he went -- and it was impossible to imagine on this night 100 years ago that, less than 20 years later, he would become one of the most famous exiles in history. 1919 was a turning point in world history -- a year after the end of the War to End All Wars, WWI, known then as the Great War. The world was putting itself back to together, trying to pick up the spiritual and literal rubble of the most useless, insane act of violence in world history. The culture was changing too, casting off the crusty old world Edwardian culture and embracing the world of Dadaism and post-structuralism. This brilliant podcast from WNYC is all about how the "shell shock" of the war changed the culture of the world forever.
As for Edward himself, he would return to the Waldorf many years after 1919. He had abdicated the throne, a fallen man, exiled from his country and family, shacking up with his twice-divorced American wife, uninvited to his niece's wedding and coronation. In the new season of The Crown, Edward is shown at the end of his life in 1972, still showing a great, almost masochistic love for the family and monarchy that had doomed him into exile. (Right now, 100 years later, that niece, Queen Elizabeth II, would surely love to exile her son Prince Andrew after his bizarre TV interview where he spoke, badly, about his friendship with the late NYC financier/predator Jeffrey Epstein. While he probably won't be forced into literal exile like Edward was, Andrew probably will be in a kind of functional exile from now on. He shamed himself, and now his family and his country want little to do with him. So into the wasteland of exile he goes.) But exile isn't just for royalty! In the era of #MeToo, any number of formerly prominent men are being exiled from their careers and social lives, banished from their professional circles and polite society. Liked Prince Edward 100 years, they used to exist at the center of things, they were the honored guests in powerful worlds -- only to be cast out, shunned, told to take a physical and reputational hike. What does it mean to be an exile? To be banished from a place or a group of people? It means, most simply, to occupy a negative space -- not to live but simply to exist in a place far away (literally and otherwise) from where you want to be. It means your invitation has been rescinded, your credentials revoked, your entry badge confiscated -- you're persona non grata in a place where you were once very ... persona grata. In short: it means you go from being wanted to unwanted. What's more painful than that?
Here's another great example of a famous exile. The great NYC journalist Pete Hamill, in late 1974, visited San Clemente, California in search of Richard Nixon. Two years earlier Nixon had won the biggest landslide in American presidential history -- he carried 49 states! -- and was as popular and powerful as any president had ever been. Nixon strode the world stage like a colossus, opening diplomatic relations with China, limiting nuclear weapons with the Soviet Union, and winding down the war in Vietnam. And then ... in 1973 and 1974, the Watergate scandal consumed him, forcing him to resign in August 1974 and into exile in California. In this article, Hamill roams around the area near Nixon's home, talking to people there about whether or not they have seen America's most famous exile (they hadn't), wondering about the state of mind of a man who very recently had not only lived in the White House but who also seemed to have the literal world at his feet -- and was now a hermit in a small Southern California town, hidden not only from the world he used to dominate but from his very own neighbors. Later on Nixon would move to NYC (he died here in 1994), not quite as reviled as he had once been but still an exile from the world -- the political world -- that he had once ruled. But being exile isn't just an existential state, it's more a state of mind. Being an exile is defined by a never-ending "wanting", a non-stop desire to have or be something you once had or were, now gone and locked away from you. It's defined by the aforementioned negative space, by a perennial emotional and mental sense of absence. Being an exile is like being a living void, a sort of real-life zombie. Right now, there are hearings going on in DC about whether or not Donald Trump, the most vile president in US history, should be impeached. Maybe he will be, maybe he won't. But we can only hope that this modern day monster will be one day become an exile too, banned not only from the White House and political world but from the America's consciousness. Hopefully he will suffer a poitical and reputional fate, a total and complete exile, as bad as the ones Edward VIII and Richard Nixon and many others have suffered.
Here at Mr NYC we love delving into the past of this great city as well as sharing personal memories and getting wistful at things that change and disappear in it. It's only natural -- the longer you live, the more people and things you see come and go, resulting in a natural sadness.
Such is the force of nostalgia.
But nostalgia can have a dark side -- it can make people mis-remember the past, fetishize the way things used to be, yearn for a distant world that is gone fforever, even if the past wasn't that great to begin with or is gone for a good reason.
That's why I love this long article that looks at the recent Downton Abbey movie and the Netflix series The Crown -- both are brilliant shows, beautifully written and acted, the production values are lavish, and the affluent, upscale appeal of them is huge (both are big hits with audiences). But, as this article states, they are also pieces of dangerous nostalgia, making people long for worlds of British aristocracy that were actually exploitative and oppressive.
And, in their way, they explain Trump and Brexit: yearning for a long ago world and painting it with rose-colored glasses. In these cases, the desire for nostalgia these days is so strong that people are willing to wreck their countries in pursuit of it, their oars against the currents of time, trying to be borne back into an un-real past.
For example, in the Downton Abbey movie, King George V and his wife Mary are presented as kind, lovely people -- in reality, they were monstrous, horribly abusive people. As parents, they psychologically and emotionally abused their children. They were such bad parents that their son, Edward VIII, abdicated the throne in perhaps one of the biggest FUs in history.
Nostalgia, as the article explains, is a fantasy we sell ourselves -- the future be damned.
When I hooked up with my wife I made a great sacrifice -- I moved to Queens. I literally crossed a bridge (the Triborough to be exact) to be with my lady love.
Into Queens for a Queen, you might say. Never regretted it.
All guys do this -- make some kind of sacrifice to get with dames classier than they are (and my wife is WAY classier than me, like that's a surprise).
But no one made a greater sacrifice for love than King Edward VIII who renounced the British Imperial throne in 1936 to marry the woman he loved, American divorcee Wallis Simpson. (As King, he was the head of the Church of England and the head of the church couldn't be divorced or married to a divorced woman back then). This guy gave up a crown, gave up a job he'd spent his whole life preparing for, gave up living in palaces and castles, gave up being a world leader, gave up the literal family jewels, gave up ruling an empire that spanned a quarter of the globe -- for a chick!
Even now, 80+ years later, it boggles the mind that someone would do such a thing. Imagine being a KING, a literal real-life KING, ruling an EMPIRE, the BIGGEST EMPIRE IN HISTORY -- and giving it all up, walking away from it all, vacating your destiny, abandoning everything you have including your family, for, you know ... some dame.
I guess I'm just not enough of a romantic to understand it (don't tell my wife). Almost a century later, it still boggles the collective mind that something like that happened.
Edward VIII died in 1972. He and Wallis lived in exile in France for the last 20 years of his life. But in 1974, Wallis made one of her final visits to the United States when she came to NYC. Even almost 40 years after the abdication and Edward's death, she still fascinated the media and the public at large who would besiege her whenever she came back to her homeland.
What was it about Wallis, what magic did she wield, what sorcery did she exercise, what qualities did she possess, that made a King renounce his Kingdom in order to "hook up" with her?
Let's face it -- she wasn't some great beauty. And, from everything I've read, she wasn't some kind of stunning intellect or even a particularly nice person. Her earthly charms seem elusive.
So what was it then?
Pre-verts have speculated that she had some kind of other-worldly carnal power over the King (you know, she gave great "luvin'" and knew "tricks") but this doesn't really wash. Prior to meeting her, the King (then Prince of Wales) had been with lots and lots of women so that probably wasn't it. My theory -- she was like the mother he never had. Edward's own mother was a monster so, instead of truly loving Wallis, she instead filled an emotional void he'd carried around his entire life. And, for that, beacuse of these mommey issues, this not particularly beautiful or interesting woman rocked an empire to the core and changed the course of world history.
When Wallis came to NYC in 1974 she was an elderly widow simply visiting friends and doing some shopping. She could have been and was, in many ways, just about anyone. At this moment, the Watergate scandal was raging and a presidential resignation -- much like the abdication, something that had previously been thought of as unthinkable -- was on the horizon. And yet the fascination with Wallis and her role in history remained unabated even then -- and even today, more than 30 years after her death.
Tonight are the Academy Awards and many people expect The King's Speech to win several major awards, including Best Picture. I certainly hope it does. I'm a big Anglophile and this was an excellent film, shedding new light on some otherwise well-known history.
The film is about King George VI who came to the British throne in 1936 when his older brother King Edward VIII abdicated to marry "the woman I love," American divorcee Wallis Simpson. George was shy, awkward, and had a terrible stutter (his attempts to cure being the subject of the film). George never wanted to be king but he did his best. Along with Winston Churchill, FDR, and Stalin, George was one of the leaders who led the Allies through WWII and helped to conquer fascism. He died in 1952 and was the father of the current British monarch, Queen Elizabeth.
After his abdication, however, Edward became something of pariah. He and Wallis traveled the world, living in luxurious exile, and generally becoming the first couple we might call "celebutards." Allegedly they were sympathetic to Hitler and engaged in financial shenanigans and were generally just awful.
They also had a connection to NYC. Every year they would come here and stay at the Waldorf-Astoria, bringing loads and loads of luggage, including their own serving china. Edward was actually staying in NYC in 1947 when then Princess Elizabeth married Prince Phillip. And after they left town, rumor has it that this outlaw royal duo would never pay their hotel bills.
That said, they weren't so truly horrible. Apparently, in 1941, Edward visited a tenement on the Lower East Side. For all of his wretchedness, Edward always cared a great deal about the poor and working class. During his brief reign as King, he actually went into working class neighborhoods in England and talked face to face with commoners, even saying at one point "Something must be done" (like Princess Diana fifty year later, who was one of the first public figures who bravely shook the bare hands of AIDS patients). Edward may have been an SOB, and a creepy guy, but he was not totally without merit. And here in NYC, at least at one time, he showed that to be true.
