Letters from a Prince

Edward, Prince of Wales writes to Freda Dudley

The Prince and the Mistress

I visited Randwick soldiers’ hospital the largest in Australia & had to shake hands with over 1000 wounded men ... & I returned here at 2.00 very exhausted & dazed angel … I can hardly bring myself even to talk to these - - Davidsons!! [Governor of NSW] However they are tamer than when we arrived not that that is saying vewy much; they really are the most impossible couple & no wonder the dominions get fed up with the Old Country & want to abolish all Imperial Governors if the Colonial Office will insist on sending out such hopeless boobs!! ... what a lot of harm is done throughout the Empire by the rotten Governors they appoint who are nearly always pompous duds who they don’t want in London!!

In March and April 1920, the twenty-six-yearold heir to the Throne toured New Zealand and Australia. He saw his role as being ‘to make myself pleasant, mingle with the war veterans, show myself to schoolchildren, cater to official social demands and to remind my father’s subjects of the kindly benefits attaching to the ties of Empire’.

For seven months he was away from home and particularly from his mistress Freda Ward née Birkin, aged twenty-six, who had married William Ward in 1913. Edward met Freda in 1918. Their relationship continued until 1934 when Wallis Simpson appeared and the rest is history.
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