Wallis Simpson

Wallis Simpson
Duchess of Windsor
The Duke and Duchess on their wedding day
Burial	Frogmore, Windsor
Spouse	Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor (1937–) Ernest Simpson (1928 – 1937) Win Spencer (1916 – 1927)
Names Wallis Windsor
House	House of Windsor
Father	Teackle Wallis Warfield
Mother	Alice M Montague
Occupation	Socialite

Wallis, The Duchess of Windsor previously Wallis Simpson, previously Wallis Spencer (born Bessie Wallis Warfield; 19 June, 1895 or 1896 – 24 April, 1986) was the wife of Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor. She remains a controversial figure in British history.

She was born out of wedlock in humble circumstances, but managed to climb the social ladder with the help of her wealthier relatives. After two unsuccessful marriages, she became the maitresse en titre (official mistress) of Edward, Prince of Wales in 1934. Two years later, after the Prince's accession as King-Emperor of the British Empire, the King proposed to marry her. The desire of the King to marry her, a twice-divorced American with two living ex-husbands and a reputation as an opportunist, caused a constitutional crisis in the United Kingdom and the Dominions which ultimately led to the King's abdication in order to marry "the woman I love".

The abdicated King was created Duke of Windsor by his brother, George VI of the United Kingdom. Six months after the abdication, the Duke and Wallis married. Following her marriage to the former king, she was formally known as The Duchess of Windsor, without the style "Her Royal Highness". Before, during and after World War II, both the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were suspected of being Nazi sympathisers.

In the 1950s and 1960s she and the Duke shuttled between Europe and the United States, living a life of leisure as society celebrities. After the Duke's death in 1972, she lived in seclusion and was rarely seen in public. Her private life has remained a source of much speculation.

Early life

Bessie Wallis (sometimes written "Bessiewallis") Warfield was born in Square Cottage at Monterey Inn, directly across the road from the Monterey Country Club, at the resort of Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania, the only child of Teackle Wallis Warfield by Alice M. Montague. She was born either in 1895 (according to the 1900 census returns) or in 1896 (according to the Duchess herself). Either way, she was born before her parents' marriage, which took place on 19 November 1896. The family later deliberately obscured the birth and marriage dates in order to avoid the social stigma of illegitimacy. She was named Bessie Wallis, in honour of her father and her mother's sister, Bessie Montague, Mrs. David Buchanan Merryman. She was generally known as Wallis. Her father died of tuberculosis in November 1897. For her first few years, she was raised in Baltimore, Maryland in modest, even impoverished, circumstances dependent upon the charity of her much wealthier relatives.

In 1901 her maternal aunt, Mrs Merryman, was widowed and the following year Alice and Wallis moved into her large comfortable house at 9 West Chase Street, Baltimore. A fellow pupil at Wallis's school recalled, "She was bright, brighter than all of us. She made up her mind to go to the head of the class, and she did." Wallis was always immaculately dressed and pushed herself hard to do well.

In 1908 Alice Warfield married a second time to John Freeman Rasin, a 37-year-old bachelor. On 17 April 1910, Wallis was confirmed at Protestant Episcopal Christ Church, Baltimore, even though she had never been baptised. Between 1912 and 1914 her uncle, Solomon Warfield paid for her to attend Oldfields School, the most expensive girl's school in Maryland. There she made friends with heiress Renée du Pont, daughter of Senator T. Coleman du Pont of the du Pont family, and Mary Kirk, of Kirk Silverware.

First marriage

In May 1916 she met Earl Winfield Spencer, Jr., a US Navy pilot, at Pensacola, Florida whilst visiting her cousin, Mrs Corinne Mustin. It was at this time that Wallis witnessed two aeroplane crashes about a fortnight apart, resulting in her life-long fear of flying. On 8 November 1916, they married at Christ Church. Win, as her husband was known, was an alcoholic. He drank even before flying, and once crashed into the sea but escaped almost unharmed. After the United States entered World War I in 1917 Win was posted to a training base in San Diego, where they remained for the rest of the war and until 1920. In 1920 Edward, the Prince of Wales visited San Diego but he and Wallis never met. Later that year, Win left Wallis for a period of four months, but in the spring of 1921 they rejoined each other in Washington, D.C., where Win had been posted. They soon split up again, and in 1923 when Spencer was posted to the Far East as commander of the Pampamga Wallis remained behind, continuing an affair with Argentine diplomat Don Felipe Espil. In January 1924 she was in Paris with her recently widowed cousin, Corinne Mustin. Later that year Wallis sailed out to the Far East aboard a troop carrier; during the trip the passengers were so unruly a man was killed and buried at sea. She and Win were briefly reconciled until she fell ill from drinking contaminated water, when she was evacuated to Hong Kong.

An Italian diplomat remembered Wallis from her time in China, "Her conversation was brilliant and she had the habit of bringing up the right subject of conversation with anyone she came in contact with and entertaining them on that subject." Wallis travelled around China, and was billeted with Herman and Katherine Rogers, who were to remain long-term friends, whilst in Beijing. According to the wife of one of Win's fellow officers, it was here that Wallis met Count Galeazzo Ciano, had an affair with and became pregnant by him; a botched abortion left her unable to conceive children. By September 1925 Wallis and Win were back in the United States, living apart. They divorced on 10 December 1927. Win continued an association with the Italian fascists, and was made a Knight of the Order of the Crown of Italy by Benito Mussolini in 1936.

Second marriage

By the time her marriage to Spencer was dissolved, she had already become involved with Ernest Aldrich Simpson, a mild-mannered half-English, half-American shipping executive and former captain in the Coldstream Guards. He divorced his first wife, the former Dorothea Parsons Dechert (by whom he had a daughter, Audrey) to marry Wallis Spencer on 21 July, 1928 at the Chelsea Register Office, London. Wallis telegraphed her acceptance of his proposal from Cannes where she was staying with her friends, Mr and Mrs Rogers.

The Simpsons temporarily set up home in a Mayfair furnished house with four servants. In 1929 Wallis sailed back to the United States to visit her sick mother, by now married to Charles Gordon Allen. During the trip Wallis's investments were wiped out in the Wall Street Crash, and her mother died penniless on 2 November. Wallis returned to England, and, with the shipping business still buoyant, the Simpsons moved into a large flat with a staff of servants.

Through a friend, Consuelo Thaw, Wallis met Thelma, Lady Furness, the then mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales. On 10 January, 1931, Lady Furness introduced Wallis to the Prince. The Prince was the eldest son and heir apparent of King George V and Queen Mary. Between 1931 and 1934 he met the Simpsons at various house parties and Wallis was presented at court. Ernest was beginning to encounter financial difficulties, as the Simpsons were living beyond their means, and they had to fire a succession of staff.

Relationship with Edward, Prince of Wales

In December 1933, whilst Lady Furness was away in New York, Wallis allegedly became the Prince's mistress, although Edward denied to his father that she was, despite his staff seeing them in bed together as well as evidence of a physical sex act. Wallis soon ousted the Prince's previous companion, Lady Furness, and distanced him from a former lover and confidante, the Anglo-American textile heiress Freda Dudley Ward.

By 1934, Edward was irretrievably besotted with Wallis, finding her domineering manner and abrasive irreverence toward his position appealing; in the words of his official biographer, he became "slavishly dependent" on her. He introduced her to his parents — his father was outraged, primarily on account of her marital history (divorced people were excluded from court). Edward showered Wallis with money and jewels, and in February 1935, and again later in the year, Wallis and Edward holidayed together in Europe. His courtiers became increasingly alarmed as the affair began to interfere with his official duties.

British documents released on 30 January, 2003 revealed that in 1935 Wallis Simpson was being trailed by Special Branch detectives. Their reports claim that Wallis was also secretly conducting a love affair with Guy Marcus Trundle, an engineer and salesman for Ford, who was an upper-middle-class Englishman and son of a respected Anglican canon. However, considerable doubts have been cast on the veracity of these claims, based on comments from a man whose mother was Trundle's mistress for nearly two decades.

Abdication Crisis

File:Wallis Time.jpg

Wallis was named Woman of the Year by Time magazine in 1936, the first ever female to receive the title.

Main article: Edward VIII abdication crisis

On 20 January 1936, King George V died and Edward ascended the throne as King Edward VIII. The next day, he broke royal protocol by watching the proclamation of his accession from a window of St. James's Palace, in the company of the still-married Wallis. It was becoming apparent to court and government circles that Edward meant to marry Wallis. The King’s behaviour and his relationship with Wallis made him unpopular with the Conservative National British government, as well as distressing his mother and brother. Although the pre-war media in the UK remained deferential to the monarchy, and no stories of the affair were reported in domestic press, foreign media reported Edward and Wallis's relationship widely.

The King of the United Kingdom is Supreme Governor of the Church of England. At the time of the proposed marriage, and indeed until 2002, the Church of England did not permit the re-marriage of divorced people with living ex-partners. Accordingly, while there was no civil law barrier to King Edward marrying Wallis, and she would have automatically become Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India, the Constitutional position was that the King could not marry a divorcée and remain as King (for to do so would conflict with his role as Supreme Governor). Further the British government and the governments of the dominions were against the idea of marriage between the King and an American divorcée. She was perceived by many in the British Empire as a woman of "limitless ambition" who was pursuing the King because of his wealth and position.

Wallis had already filed for divorce from her second husband and the decree nisi was granted on 27 October. Her relationship with the King began to become public knowledge in the UK by early December. Wallis decided to flee the country as the scandal broke, being driven to the south of France in a dramatic race to outrun the press. For the next three months, she would practically be under siege at the Villa Lou Viei, near Cannes, the home of her close friends Herman and Katherine Rogers.

Back in the United Kingdom, the King consulted with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Stanley Baldwin on a way to marry Wallis and keep the throne. The King suggested a morganatic marriage, but this was rejected by Baldwin and the Prime Ministers of Australia and South Africa. If the King were to marry Wallis against Baldwin's advice, the Government would be required to resign, causing a constitutional crisis.

In their South of France hide-away, the King's Lord-in-Waiting Peregrine Cust, 6th Baron Brownlow pressured Wallis to renounce the King and on 7 December Lord Brownlow read her statement (which he had helped her draft) to the press indicating Wallis's readiness to give up the King. However, Edward was determined to marry Wallis, as the issue of abdication gathered strength, John Theodore Goddard, Wallis's solicitor stated: "[his] client was ready to do anything to ease the situation but the other end of the wicket [Edward VIII] was determined." This seemingly indicated the King had made up his mind on the basis he had no option but to abdicate if he wished to marry Wallis.

The King signed the Instrument of Abdication on 10 December, 1936, in the presence of his three surviving brothers, the Duke of York (who would ascend the throne the following day as King George VI), and Dukes of Gloucester and Kent. Special laws passed by the British Parliament, His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936 brought Edward's 325-day reign to an end at 1:52 p.m. GMT on 11 December. That day, HRH The Prince Edward made a broadcast to the British people, saying of Wallis, "I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility, and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do, without the help and support of the woman I love".

Afterwards, Prince Edward left the UK and went to Austria, staying at Schloss Enzesfeld, the home of Baron Eugene and Baroness Kitty de Rothschild. Edward had to remain apart from Wallis until there was no danger of compromising the granting of a decree absolute in her divorce proceedings. Upon her divorce being made final in May 1937, she resumed her maiden name of Wallis Warfield. The couple were reunited at the Château de Candé, Monts, France, on 4 May 1937.

Duchess of Windsor

Wallis and Edward married one month later on 3 June 1937, which would have been his father's 72nd birthday. The wedding took place at Château de Candé, lent to them by Charles Bedaux, who later worked actively for Nazi Germany in World War II. No member of the British Royal Family was in attendance. The couple had no children, though the Duchess had been briefly a stepmother by her marriage to Ernest Simpson, who had a daughter by his first wife.

Edward had previously been created Duke of Windsor by his brother, the new King George VI. However, letters patent, passed by the new King and unanimously supported by the Dominion governments, prevented Wallis, now the Duchess of Windsor, from using the style of Her Royal Highness. The King's firm view, that the Duchess should not be given a royal title, was shared by Queen Mary and the Queen. The refusal of the Duke's relatives to accept his wife as part of the family caused embittered and undying resentment in the Duchess. However within the household of the Duke and Duchess she was still addressed as "Her Royal Highness" by those who were close to the couple.

File:Nazi Windsors.jpg

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor with Adolf Hitler.

The Duke and Duchess lived in France in the pre-war years. In 1937, they visited Germany as personal guests of the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, a tour much publicised by the German media. Hitler said of the Duchess, "she would have made a good Queen." The visit tended to corroborate the strong suspicions of many in government and society that the Duchess was a German agent, a claim that she acknowledged (but denied) in her letters to the Duke. FBI files compiled in the 1930s also portray her as a possible Nazi sympathiser. The ex-Duke of Wurttemberg told the FBI that she and leading Nazi Joachim von Ribbentrop were lovers. There were even rather improbable reports during World War II that she kept a signed photograph of Ribbentrop on her bedside table, and had continued to pass details to him even during the invasion of France.

World War II

Following the outbreak of war in 1939 the Duke was given a military post in the British Army stationed in France. According to the son of William Edmund Ironside, 1st Baron Ironside, the Duchess continued to entertain friends associated with the fascist movement, and leaked details of the French and Belgian defences gleaned from the Duke. When the Germans invaded the north of France and bombed Britain in May 1940, the Duchess told an American journalist, "I can't say I feel sorry for them." As the German troops advanced, the Duke and Duchess fled south, first to Biarritz, then in June to Spain. There, she told the United States ambassador to Spain, A. W. Wedell, that France had lost because it was "internally diseased". In July the pair moved to Lisbon, Portugal, where the British ambassador billeted them at first in the home of a banker who may have been a double agent working for both Germany and Britain. In August a British warship dispatched the pair to the Bahamas and the Duke was installed as Governor.

She performed her role as the Governor's lady with competence for five years. However, she hated Nassau, calling it "our St Helena" in a reference to Napoleon Bonaparte's final place of exile. She was heavily criticised for her extravagant shopping trips to the United States undertaken when Britain was under rationing and blackout. In 1941 Prime Minister Winston Churchill strenuously objected when she and her husband planned to tour the Caribbean aboard a yacht belonging to a Swedish magnate Axel Wenner-Gren, whom Churchill stated to be "pro-German", and he complained again when the Duke gave a "defeatist" interview. The British establishment distrusted the Duchess, Sir Alexander Hardinge wrote that her anti-British activities were motivated by a desire for revenge against the country that rejected her as its queen. After the war the couple returned to France and retirement.

Later life

The Duchess of Windsor in 1970

On George VI's death in 1952, the Duke returned to England for the funeral. The Duchess did not attend; the previous October whilst staying in London she had told her husband, "I hate this country. I shall hate it to my grave." Later that year they were offered the use of a house by the Paris municipal authorities. The couple lived at 4 rue du Champ d'Entraînement in Neuilly near Paris for most of the remainder of their lives, essentially living a life of easy retirement. They bought a second home in the country, where they soon became close friends of their neighbours former British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley and his wife Diana. Years later, Diana Mosley claimed that the Duke and Duchess shared her and her husband's views that Hitler should have been given a free hand to destroy Communism. As the Duke himself wrote in the New York Daily News of 13 December 1966: "it was in Britain's interest and in Europe's too, that Germany be encouraged to strike east and smash Communism forever…I thought the rest of us could be fence-sitters while the Nazis and the Reds slogged it out."

At first, the British Royal Family did not accept the Duchess and would not receive her formally, although the former king sometimes met his mother and siblings after his abdication. Some biographers have suggested that Queen Elizabeth, Edward's sister-in-law, remained bitter towards Wallis for her role in bringing George VI to the throne and for prematurely behaving as Edward's consort when she was his mistress. But these claims are denied by Queen Elizabeth's close friends, for example the Duke of Grafton wrote that the Queen "never said anything nasty about the Duchess of Windsor, except to say she really hadn't got a clue what she was dealing with." On the other hand, the Duchess of Windsor referred to Princess Elizabeth as "Shirley", as in Shirley Temple, and to the Duchess of York, later Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother alternatively as "Mrs Temple" or as "Cookie", alluding to her solid figure and fondness for food.

In 1965 the Duke and Duchess visited London as the Duke required eye surgery. The Queen, and Princess Marina visited them. Later, they joined the Royal Family in 1967 for the centenary of Queen Mary's birth. Both the Queen and Prince Charles paid visits to the Windsors in the Duke's later years.

Upon the Duke's death from cancer in 1972, the increasingly senile and frail Duchess travelled to England to attend his funeral, staying at Buckingham Palace during her visit. The Duchess lived the remainder of her life as a recluse, supported by both her husband's estate and an allowance from the Queen. In October 1976 she was due to receive the Queen Mother, but as the Duchess was too frail and mentally absent to receive her, her staff cancelled the visit at the last minute. The Queen Mother sent flowers with a card reading, "In Friendship, Elizabeth." After her husband's death, the Duchess gave her legal authority to her French lawyer, Suzanne Blum. This potentially exploitive relationship was explored in Caroline Blackwood's book The Last of the Duchess, written in 1980, but not published until after Blum's death in 1995. Towards the end, she was bed-ridden and did not receive any visitors, apart from her doctor and nurses.

The Duchess of Windsor died on 24 April 1986 at her home in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris. Her funeral was held at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle attended by her surviving sisters-in-law Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother and Princess Alice. The Prince and Princess of Wales attended both the funeral ceremony and the burial with the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. She is buried next to Edward behind the Royal Mausoleum in Windsor Castle's Home Park, as "Wallis, Duchess of Windsor".

Most of her £5m estate went to the Pasteur Institute medical research foundation, in recognition of the help France gave to the Duke and Duchess in providing them with a home. The British Royal Family received no major bequests. Mohammed Al Fayed, owner of Harrods department store, bought much of the estate including the lease of the Paris mansion. The bulk of his collection was sold in 1998, the year after his son's death in the car accident that also claimed the life of Diana, Princess of Wales. The sale raised more than £14m for charity.

Historical speculation

Wallis was plagued by rumours of other lovers. The otherwise homosexual American playboy Jimmy Donahue, an heir to the Woolworth fortune, claimed to have had a liaison with the Duchess in the 1950s but Donahue was notorious for his inventive pranks and rumour-mongering. The existence of a so-called "China dossier" (detailing the supposed sexual and criminal exploits of Wallis in China) is denied by virtually all historians and biographers. Although there have been rumours of pregnancy and abortion, most notably involving Count Ciano in China, there is no hard evidence that the Duchess became pregnant by any of her lovers or her three husbands. Claims that she suffered from androgen insensitivity syndrome, also known as testicular feminisation, seem improbable given her operation for cancer of the womb in 1951.

The Duchess published her ghost-written memoirs, The Heart Has Its Reasons, in 1956. Author Charles Higham says of the book: "facts were remorselessly rearranged in what amounted to a self-performed face-lift…reflecting in abundance its author's politically misguided but winning and desirable personality." He describes the Duchess as "charismatic, electric and compulsively ambitious." Hearsay, conjecture and politically-motivated propaganda have clouded assessment of the Duchess of Windsor's life, unhelped by her own manipulation of the truth. But there is no document which proves directly that she was anything other than a victim of her own ambition, who lived out a great romance that became a great tragedy.

Biographical films

The Woman I Love (1972, television movie) focused on Edward VIII's love affair with Wallis Simpson. Wallis was portrayed by Faye Dunaway; Richard Chamberlain played Edward. Edward and Mrs. Simpson (1978, seven-part miniseries) was based on Frances Donaldson's 1974 biography, Edward VIII. It was produced by Thames Television, and the focus was on both the romance and the constitutional crisis that triggered the abdication. Cynthia Harris was Mrs. Simpson, and Edward Fox, Edward. The Woman He Loved (1988, made-for-TV movie) starred Jane Seymour as Wallis, and Anthony Andrews as Edward. Wallis & Edward (2005, made-for-TV movie), a Granada production later shown on BBC America, was billed as the first scripted account of the romance from Wallis Simpson's point of view. Joely Richardson played Wallis, and Steven Campbell Moore, Edward.

Titles from birth to death

• Miss Bessie Wallis Warfield (birth - 1916)
• Mrs. Earl Winfield Spencer (1916 - 1927)
• Mrs. Warfield Spencer (1927 - 1928) (American social custom for divorcées traditionally links the maiden and married surnames)
• Mrs. Ernest Aldrich Simpson (1928 - 1937)
• Mrs. Wallis Simpson (1937)
• Mrs. Wallis Warfield (1937) (she resumed her maiden name by deed poll prior to the wedding)
• Her Grace The Duchess of Windsor (1937 - death)
  • During Edward's term as Governor of the Bahamas (18 August 1940 - 28 July 1945), she was entitled to be known as Her Excellency. However, this was subsumed by the superior appellation Her Grace to which she was entitled as a Duchess.
  • Edward could not accept that his wife had been denied the style Her Royal Highness, and she was unofficially styled within their own household as Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Windsor.

Ancestry

The Duchess of Windsor's ancestors in three generations

Wallis, The Duchess of Windsor	Father : Teackle Wallis Warfield	Paternal Grandfather : Henry Mactier Warfield	Paternal Great-grandfather : Daniel Warfield
			Paternal Great-grandmother : Nancy Mactier
		Paternal Grandmother : Anna Emory	Paternal Great-grandfather : Richard Emory
			Paternal Great-grandmother : Anna Gittings
	Mother : Alice (Alys) Montague	Maternal Grandfather : William Latane Montague	Maternal Great-grandfather : Henry Brown Montague
			Maternal Great-grandmother : Mary Anne Moody
		Maternal Grandmother : Sallie Howard Love	Maternal Great-grandfather : Thomas Love
			Maternal Great-grandmother : Frances Priscilla Presbury

References

• Blackwood, Lady Caroline (1995). The Last of the Duchess. Pantheon. ISBN 0679439706.
• Bloch, Michael (1982). The Duke of Windsor's War. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 0297779478.
• Bloch, Michael (1988). The Secret File of the Duke of Windsor. London: Bantam Books. ISBN 059301667X.
• Bloch, Michael (ed.) (1986). Wallis and Edward: Letters 1931-1937. Summit Books. ISBN 0-671-61209-3. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)
• Higham, Charles (2005). Mrs Simpson. Pan Books. ISBN 0-330-42678-8.
• Wilson, Christopher (2001). Dancing With the Devil: the Windsors and Jimmy Donahue. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00-653159-8.
• Windsor, HRH The Duke of (1951). A King's Story. London: Cassell and Co.
• Ziegler, Philip (1991). King Edward VIII: The official biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-394-57730-2.
• Ziegler, Philip (2004), "Windsor , (Bessie) Wallis, duchess of Windsor (1896–1986)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/38277, retrieved 2007-03-09

Further reading

• Bradford, Sarah (1989). George VI. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. pp. pp.145-147. ISBN 0297796674. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
• Windsor, The Duchess of (1956). The Heart has its Reasons: The Memoirs of the Duchess of Windsor. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
• Ziegler, Philip (1985). Mountbatten: the official biography. Collins.