I just got an email from Michael Kupperman; humorist, cartoonist, anglophile, provocateur and all-round good egg, and creator of Snake and Bacon – a fine gourmet combination if ever there was one.
On the subject of royal eating he tells me that in later life, when Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson went out to eat in public, she would silently mouth the alphabet in his direction to give onlookers the impression that they were talking to each other.
Since Edward was no longer a royal by then, I suppose it didn’t matter whether or not anybody saw him eating.
The Wallis Simpson story confirms my impression that the kind of people that masses of the public find glamorous and fascinating -- Jacqueline Kennedy is a prime example -- usually turn out to be completely boring. I had to review a Jackie Kennedy bio once, and all I could think was, "This has to be the most uninteresting woman who ever lived." But later I heard that Wallis Simpson was even worse.
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