Wallis, Duchess of Windsor

Wallis
Duchess of Windsor
Wallis Simpson in 1936
Spouse Earl Winfield Spencer, Jr.
(m. 1916, div. 1927)
Ernest Aldrich Simpson
(m. 1928, div. 1937)
Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor
(m. 1937, died 1972)
Full name
Bessie Wallis[1] (née Warfield)
House House of Windsor
Father Teackle Wallis Warfield
Mother Alice Montague
Born 19 June 1896(1896-06-19)[2]
Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania
Died 24 April 1986(1986-04-24) (aged 89)
Bois de Boulogne, Paris
Burial Frogmore, Windsor
Occupation Socialite

Wallis, Duchess of Windsor (born Bessie Wallis Warfield, later Spencer, then Simpson; 19 June 1896[2] – 24 April 1986) was an American socialite who married, as her third husband, Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII of the British Empire.

Wallis's father died shortly after her birth, and she and her widowed mother were partly supported by their wealthier relatives. Her first marriage, to a U.S. naval officer, was punctuated with periods of separation and eventually ended in divorce. In 1934, during her second marriage, she allegedly became the mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales. Two years later, after Edward's accession as King, Wallis divorced her second husband and Edward proposed to her.

The King's desire to marry a twice-divorced American with two living ex-husbands caused a constitutional crisis in the United Kingdom and the Dominions, which ultimately led to the King's abdication in December 1936 to marry "the woman I love".[3] After the abdication, the former king was created Duke of Windsor by his brother George VI. Edward married Wallis six months later, after which she was formally known as the Duchess of Windsor, without the style "Her Royal Highness".

Before, during and after World War II, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were suspected by many in government and society 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, the Duchess lived in seclusion and was rarely seen in public. Her private life has been a source of much speculation, and she remains a controversial figure in British history.

Contents

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, in the resort town of Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania. She was the only child of Teackle Wallis Warfield and Alice Montague.[4] She was named in honour of her father and her mother's sister, Mrs Bessie Buchanan Merryman, and was generally known as Wallis.

The dates of her parents' marriage and her birth are unclear.[2][5][6] Neither appears to have been registered, but the dates are usually given as 19 November 1895 and 19 June 1896, respectively.[6][7] Her father died of tuberculosis on 15 November 1896.[7][8] For her first few years, she was raised in Baltimore, Maryland, in modest, even impoverished, circumstances, dependent upon the charity of a wealthy uncle, Solomon Warfield.[9]

In 1901, her aunt Bessie Merryman was widowed, and the following year Alice and Wallis moved into her large and 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."[10] Wallis was always immaculately dressed and pushed herself hard to do well.[11]

In 1908, Wallis's mother, Alice, married her second husband, John Freeman Rasin. On 17 April 1910, Wallis was confirmed at Christ Episcopal Church, Baltimore, even though there are no contemporaneous records of her ever being baptised.[6] Between 1912 and 1914, Solomon Warfield paid for Wallis to attend Oldfields School, the most expensive girls' school in Maryland. There she made friends with heiress Renée du Pont, a daughter of Senator T. Coleman du Pont, of the du Pont family, and Mary Kirk, whose family founded Kirk Silverware.[12]

First marriage

In May 1916, Wallis met Earl Winfield Spencer, Jr., a U.S. Navy pilot, at Pensacola, Florida, while visiting her cousin Corinne Mustin.[13] It was at this time that Wallis witnessed two airplane crashes about two weeks apart, resulting in a life-long fear of flying.[14] On 8 November 1916, the couple married at Christ Episcopal Church in Baltimore which had been Wallis's parish. Win, as her husband was known, was an alcoholic. He drank even before flying and once crashed into the sea, but escaped almost unharmed.[15] After the United States entered World War I in 1917, Spencer was posted to San Diego as the first commanding officer of a training base in Coronado, now known as Naval Air Station North Island. They remained there until 1920.[16] In 1920, Edward, the Prince of Wales, visited San Diego, but he and Wallis did not meet at that time.[17] Later that year, Spencer left his wife for a period of four months, but in the spring of 1921 they were reunited in Washington, D.C., where Spencer had been posted. They soon separated again, and in 1923, when Spencer was posted to the Far East as commander of the Pampanga, Wallis remained behind, continuing an affair with an Argentine diplomat, Felipe Espil.[18] In January 1924, she visited Paris with her recently widowed cousin Corinne Mustin,[19] before sailing to the Far East aboard a troop carrier. The Spencers were briefly reunited until she fell ill from drinking contaminated water, after which she was evacuated to Hong Kong.[20]

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."[21] According to Hui-lan Koo, the second wife of Chinese diplomat and politician Wellington Koo, the only Mandarin phrase that Wallis learned during her sojourn in Asia was "Boy, pass me the champagne".[22][23]

Wallis toured China, and stayed with Katherine and Herman Rogers, who were to remain long-term friends, while in Beijing.[24] According to the wife of one of Win's fellow officers, Mrs Milton E. Miles, it was there that Wallis met Count Galeazzo Ciano, later Mussolini's son-in-law and Foreign Minister, had an affair with him, and became pregnant, leading to a botched abortion that left her unable to conceive.[25] The rumour was later widespread but never substantiated and Ciano's wife, Edda Mussolini, denied it.[26] By September 1925, Wallis and her husband were back in the United States, though living apart.[27] They divorced on 10 December 1927.[4]

Second marriage

By the time her marriage to Spencer was dissolved, Wallis had already become involved with Ernest Aldrich Simpson, an Anglo-American shipping executive and former captain in the Coldstream Guards.[28] He divorced his first wife, Dorothea (by whom he had a daughter, Audrey), to marry Wallis Spencer on 21 July 1928 at the Register Office in Chelsea, London.[4] Wallis had telegraphed her acceptance of his proposal from Cannes where she was staying with her friends, Mr and Mrs Rogers.[29]

The Simpsons temporarily set up home in a furnished house with four servants in Mayfair.[30] In 1929, Wallis sailed back to the United States to visit her sick mother, who was 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 1929. Wallis returned to England and with the shipping business still buoyant, the Simpsons moved into a large flat with a staff of servants.[31]

Through a friend, Consuelo Thaw, Wallis met Consuelo's sister Thelma, Lady Furness, the then-mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales.[32] On 10 January 1931, Lady Furness introduced Wallis to the Prince.[33] The Prince was the eldest son of King George V and Queen Mary, and heir apparent to the throne. 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.[34]

Relationship with Edward, Prince of Wales

In December 1933, while Lady Furness was away in New York, Wallis allegedly became the Prince's mistress. Edward denied this to his father, despite his staff seeing them in bed together as well as "evidence of a physical sexual act".[35] Wallis soon ousted Lady Furness, and distanced the Prince from a former lover and confidante, the Anglo-American textile heiress Freda Dudley Ward.[36]

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.[18] According to Wallis, it was during a cruise on W E Guinness's private yacht Rosaura in 1934 that Wallis fell in love with Edward.[37] At an evening party in Buckingham Palace, he introduced her to his mother—his father was outraged,[38] primarily on account of her marital history (divorced people were excluded from court).[39] Edward showered Wallis with money and jewels,[40] and in February 1935, and again later in the year, he holidayed with her in Europe.[41] His courtiers became increasingly alarmed as the affair began to interfere with his official duties.[42]

In 1935, the head of the Metropolitan Police Service Special Branch told the Metropolitan Police Commissioner that Wallis was also having an affair with Guy Marcus Trundle, who was "said to be employed by the Ford Motor Company".[43] The reports were released to the public for the first time in 2003. Claims of an affair were doubted, however, by Captain Val Bailey, who knew Trundle well and whose mother had an affair with Trundle for nearly two decades,[44] and by historian Susan Williams.[45]

Abdication crisis

On 20 January 1936, George V died and Edward ascended the throne as 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.[46] It was becoming apparent to Court and Government circles that Edward meant to marry her.[47] The King's behaviour and his relationship with Wallis made him unpopular with the Conservative-led British government, as well as distressing his mother and brother.[48] Although the pre-war British media remained deferential to the monarchy, and no stories of the affair were reported in the domestic press, foreign media widely reported their relationship.[49]

Wallis was named Woman of the Year by Time magazine in 1936. It was the first time the magazine had a Woman rather than a Man of the Year.

The monarch of the United Kingdom is Supreme Governor of the Church of England—at the time of the proposed marriage, and until 2002, the Church of England did not permit the re-marriage of divorced people with living ex-spouses.[50] Accordingly, while there was no civil law barrier to Edward marrying Wallis, 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).[51] Furthermore, the British government and the governments of the Dominions were against the idea of marriage between the King and an American divorcée for other reasons.[52] She was perceived by many in the British Empire as a woman of "limitless ambition",[53] who was pursuing the King because of his wealth and position.[54]

Wallis had already filed for divorce from her second husband and the decree nisi was granted on 27 October 1936.[55] Her relationship with the King had become public knowledge in the United Kingdom by early December. Wallis decided to flee the country as the scandal broke, and was driven to the south of France in a dramatic race to outrun the press. For the next three months, she was under siege by the media at the Villa Lou Viei, near Cannes, the home of her close friends Herman and Katherine Rogers.[56]

Back in the United Kingdom, the King consulted with the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, on a way to marry Wallis and keep the throne. The King suggested a morganatic marriage, where the King would remain King but Wallis would not be Queen, but this was rejected by Baldwin and the Prime Ministers of Australia and South Africa.[52] If the King were to marry Wallis against Baldwin's advice, the Government would be required to resign, causing a constitutional crisis.[57]

At her hideaway in the south of France, Wallis was pressured by the King's Lord-in-Waiting, Peregrine Cust, 6th Baron Brownlow, to renounce the King. On 7 December 1936, Lord Brownlow read to the press her statement, which he had helped her draft, indicating Wallis's readiness to give up the King.[58] 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 that the King had decided he had no option but to abdicate if he wished to marry Wallis.[59]

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 George VI), the Duke of Gloucester and the Duke of Kent. Special laws passed by the Parliaments of the Dominions finalised Edward's abdication the following day, or in Ireland's case one day later. On 11 December 1936, Edward made a broadcast to the people, saying, "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."[60]

Edward left Britain for Austria, where he stayed at Schloss Enzesfeld, the home of Baron Eugen 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.[61]

Third marriage: Duchess of Windsor

The Windsors on their wedding day

Wallis and Edward married one month later on 3 June 1937 at the Château de Candé, lent to them by Charles Bedaux, who later worked actively for Nazi Germany in World War II.[62] The date would have been King George V's 72nd birthday; Queen Mary thought the wedding had been scheduled for then as a deliberate slight.[63] No member of the British Royal Family attended, and the marriage was to be childless.

Edward had previously been created Duke of Windsor by his brother, the new George VI. However, letters patent, passed by the new King and unanimously supported by the Dominion governments,[64] prevented Wallis, now the Duchess of Windsor, from using the style of Her Royal Highness. The new King's firm view, that the Duchess should not be given a royal title, was shared by Queen Mary and George's wife, Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother).[65] At first, the 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 (which she may have seen as a factor in George VI's early death),[66] and for prematurely behaving as Edward's consort when she was his mistress.[67] But these claims were denied by Queen Elizabeth's close friends; for example, the Duke of Grafton wrote that she "never said anything nasty about the Duchess of Windsor, except to say she really hadn't got a clue what she was dealing with."[68] On the other hand, the Duchess of Windsor referred to Queen Elizabeth as "Mrs Temple" and "Cookie", alluding to her solid figure and fondness for food, and to her daughter, Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II), as "Shirley", as in Shirley Temple.[69] The Duchess bitterly resented the denial of the royal title and the refusal of the Duke's relatives to accept her as part of the family.[18][70] However, within the household of the Duke and Duchess, the style "Her Royal Highness" was used by those who were close to the couple.[71]

According to the wife of former British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley, Diana Mitford, who knew both the future Queen Mother and the Duchess of Windsor but was only friendly with the latter, the Queen's antipathy toward her sister-in-law may have had a deeper source. As Lady Mosley wrote to her sister, the Duchess of Devonshire, after the death of the Duke of Windsor, "probably the theory of their [the Windsors'] contemporaries that Cake [a Mitford nickname for the Queen Mother, derived from her confectionary fashion sense] was rather in love with him [the Duke] (as a girl) & took second best, may account for much."[72]

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."[73] The visit tended to corroborate the strong suspicions of many in government and society that the Duchess was a German agent,[18] a claim that she ridiculed in her letters to the Duke.[74] FBI files compiled in the 1930s also portray her as a possible Nazi sympathiser. The ex-Duke of Württemberg told the FBI that she and leading Nazi Joachim von Ribbentrop had been lovers in London.[75] There were even rather improbable reports during World War II that she kept a signed photograph of Ribbentrop on her bedside table,[76] and had continued to pass details to him even during the invasion of France.[77]

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.[78] 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."[79] As the German troops advanced, the Duke and Duchess fled south from their Paris home, first to Biarritz, then in June to Spain. There, she told the United States ambassador, Alexander W. Weddell, that France had lost because it was "internally diseased".[80] 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.[81] In August, a British warship dispatched the pair to the Bahamas and the Duke was installed as Governor.

Wallis performed her role as the Governor's lady competently for five years. However, she hated Nassau, calling it "our St Helena", in a reference to Napoleon Bonaparte's final place of exile.[82] She was heavily criticised for her extravagant shopping trips to the United States, undertaken when Britain was under rationing and blackout.[18] Her racist attitudes towards the local population (she called them "lazy, thriving niggers" in letters to her aunt) reflected her upbringing.[83][84] 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". Churchill felt compelled to complain again when the Duke gave a "defeatist" interview.[85] 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.[86] After the defeat of Nazi Germany, the couple returned to France and retirement.

Later life and death

The Duchess of Windsor in 1970

In 1946, when the Duchess was staying at Ednam Lodge, the home of the Earl of Dudley, some of her jewels were stolen. There were rumours that the theft had been masterminded by the British Royal Family as an attempt to regain jewels taken from the Royal Collection by the Duke, or by the Windsors themselves as part of an insurance fraud—they made a large deposit of loose stones at Cartier the following year. However, in 1960, Richard Dunphie confessed to the crime. The stolen pieces were only a small portion of the Windsor jewels, which were either bought privately, inherited by the Duke, or given to the Duke when he was Prince of Wales.[87]

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."[88] 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.[89] They bought a second home in the country, where they soon became close friends with their neighbours, Oswald and Diana Mosley.[90] 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.[91] 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."[92]

In 1965, when the Duke and Duchess visited London as the Duke required eye surgery, Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent, visited them. Later, in 1967, the Duke and Duchess joined the Royal Family in London for the unveiling of a plaque by Elizabeth II to commemorate the centenary of Queen Mary's birth.[93] Both Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles visited the Windsors in Paris in the Duke's later years, the Queen's visit coming only shortly before the Duke died.[94]

Upon the Duke's death from cancer in 1972, the Duchess travelled to England to attend his funeral,[95] staying at Buckingham Palace during her visit.[96] The Duchess, increasingly senile and frail, lived the remainder of her life as a recluse, supported by both her husband's estate and an allowance from the Queen.[97] In October 1976, she was due to receive Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, but as the Duchess was too ill with dementia to receive her, her staff cancelled the visit at the last minute. The Queen Mother sent flowers with a card reading, "In Friendship, Elizabeth."[98] After her husband's death, the Duchess gave her legal authority to her French lawyer, Suzanne Blum.[99] This potentially exploitative 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.[100] In 1980, the Duchess lost the power of speech.[101] Toward 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.[4] Her funeral was held at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, attended by her two surviving sisters-in-law: the Queen Mother and Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester. The Queen, Prince Philip, and the Prince and Princess of Wales attended both the funeral ceremony and the burial. She was buried next to Edward in the Royal Burial Ground near Windsor Castle, as "Wallis, Duchess of Windsor".[102] Until a 1965 agreement with Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke and Duchess had previously planned for a burial in a purchased cemetery plot at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, where the father of the Duchess was interred.[103]

Most of her estate went to the Pasteur Institute medical research foundation, on the instructions of Suzanne Blum. The decision took the Royal Family and the Duchess's friends by surprise, as she had shown no interest in charity during her life.[104] In an auction at Sotheby's in April 1987 the Duchess's remarkable jewelry collection raised $45 million for the Institute, approximately seven times its pre-sale estimate.[105] In recognition of the help France gave to the Duke and Duchess in providing them with a home, and in lieu of death duties, the Duchess's collection of Louis XVI style furniture, some porcelain and paintings were made over to the French state.[106] The British Royal Family received no major bequests. Egyptian entrepreneur Mohammed Al-Fayed bought much of the non-financial 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 £14 million for charity.[102]

Legacy

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.[107] 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.[108] 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,[44][109] seem improbable, if not impossible, given her operation for uterine fibroids in 1951.[110]

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".[111] 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. In the opinion of her biographers, "she experienced the ultimate fairy tale, becoming the adored favourite of the most glamorous bachelor of his time. The idyll went wrong when, ignoring her pleas, he threw up his position to spend the rest of his life with her."[112] Academics agree that she ascended a precipice that

left her with fewer alternatives than she had anticipated. Somehow she thought that the Establishment could be overcome once [Edward] was king, and she confessed frankly to Aunt Bessie about her "insatiable ambitions" ... Trapped by his flight from responsibility into exactly the role she had sought, suddenly she warned him, in a letter, "You and I can only create disaster together" ... she predicted to society hostess Sybil Colefax, "two people will suffer" because of "the workings of a system" ... Denied dignity, and without anything useful to do, the new Duke of Windsor and his Duchess would be international society's most notorious parasites for a generation, while they thoroughly bored each other ... She had thought of him as emotionally a Peter Pan, and of herself an Alice in Wonderland. The book they had written together, however, was a Paradise Lost.[113]

The Duchess herself is reported to have summed up her life in a sentence: "You have no idea how hard it is to live out a great romance."[114]

In popular culture

Wallis was portrayed by Faye Dunaway in The Woman I Love (1972, made-for-TV movie), Cynthia Harris in Edward & Mrs. Simpson (1978, seven-part miniseries), Jane Seymour in The Woman He Loved (1988, made-for-TV movie), Amber Sealey in Bertie and Elizabeth (2002, made-for-TV movie), and Joely Richardson in Wallis & Edward (2005, made-for-TV movie). Jane Hartley portrayed Wallis Simpson in the 1997 West End musical Always.[115] Madonna is reportedly planning a movie-musical about Wallis.[116]

In his 1981 novel Famous Last Words, award-winning Canadian author Timothy Findley depicts "Mrs Simpson" as manipulative yet also tragic. Author Anne Edwards wrote a sympathetic account of Wallis's early life culminating with her marriage to Edward in her 1991 book Wallis: The Novel. Wallis also features in a short story by Rose Tremain called "The Darkness of Wallis Simpson", a play called The Duchess by Linda Griffiths, the 1992 alternate history crime thriller Fatherland by Robert Harris, and in the Young Bond book by Charlie Higson, By Royal Command. Kate Auspitz's 2010 novel, The War Memoirs of HRH Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, portrays Wallis as a tool of the Allies who employ Wallis to knock fascist-sympathizing King Edward VIII off the throne.[117]

Titles, styles, honours and arms

Titles and styles

Ancestry

The Duchess of Windsor had a common ancestor (Mareen Duvall) with two U.S. Presidents (Harry S. Truman and Barack Obama), and actor Robert Duvall.[119][120][121]

The Duchess of Windsor's ancestors in three generations[122]
 Daniel Warfield
Nancy Mactier
Richard Emory
Anna Gittings
Henry Brown Montague
Mary Anne Moody
Thomas Love
Frances Priscilla Presbury
Henry Mactier Warfield
Anna Emory
William Latane Montague
Sally Howard Love
Teackle Wallis Warfield
(1869–1896)
Alice (Alys) Montague
(1869–1929)
Wallis, Duchess of Windsor

Footnotes and sources

  1. ↑ After her marriage to the Duke of Windsor, Wallis probably had no surname—if she did have one, it was his family name, Windsor.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 On a 1924 ship's passenger manifest for the SS France, accessible on ellisisland.org, her birthdate is given as 19 February 1892, though her age was listed as 28. According to the 1900 census returns, quoted by author Charles Higham, she was born in June 1895, before her parents' marriage (Higham, p. 4). Author Greg King, noted that, though Higham's "scandalous assertion of illegitimacy enlivens the telling of the Duchess's life", "the evidence to support it is slim indeed", and that it "strains credulity" (King, p. 11).
  3. ↑ Windsor, The Duke of (1951), A King's Story, London: Cassell and Co Ltd, p. 413 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Weir, Alison (1995), Britain's Royal Families: The Complete Genealogy Revised edition, Random House, p. 328, ISBN 0712674489 
  5. ↑ King, Greg (1999), The Duchess of Windsor, Citadel Press, p. 11, ISBN 1559724714 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Higham, Charles (2005), Mrs Simpson, Pan Books, p. 4, ISBN 0330426788 
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 King, p. 13
  8. ↑ Tombstone in Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore
  9. ↑ Higham, p. 5
  10. ↑ Higham, p. 7
  11. ↑ Higham, p. 8
  12. ↑ Higham, pp. 12–13
  13. ↑ Higham, p. 18
  14. ↑ Higham, p. 20
  15. ↑ Higham, pp. 23–24
  16. ↑ Higham, pp. 26–28
  17. ↑ Higham, p. 29
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 18.3 18.4 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 2 May 2010 (subscription required)
  19. ↑ Bloch, Michael (1996), The Duchess of Windsor, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, p. 22, ISBN 0297835904 
  20. ↑ Higham, p. 38
  21. ↑ Higham, p. 46
  22. ↑ Koo, Madame Wellington (1943), Hui-Lan Koo: An Autobiography as told to Mary van Rensselaer Thayer, New York: Dial Press 
  23. ↑ Maher, Catherine (31 October 1943), "Madame Wellington Koo's Life Story", New York Times: BR7 
  24. ↑ Higham, p. 47
  25. ↑ Higham, p. 50
  26. ↑ Moseley, Ray (1999), Mussolini's Shadow: The Double Life of Count Galeazzo Ciano, New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 9–10, ISBN 0300079176 
  27. ↑ Higham, pp. 50–51
  28. ↑ Higham, pp. 53–54
  29. ↑ Higham, p. 58
  30. ↑ Higham, p. 64
  31. ↑ Higham, p. 67
  32. ↑ Higham, p. 68
  33. ↑ Bloch, The Duchess of Windsor, p. 37
  34. ↑ Higham, pp. 73–80
  35. ↑ Diary of Clive Wigram, 1st Baron Wigram quoted in Bradford, Sarah (1989), George VI, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pp. 145–147, ISBN 0297796674 
  36. ↑ Ziegler, Philip (1991), King Edward VIII: The official biography, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, pp. 227–228, ISBN 0-394-57730-2 
  37. ↑ Rosenberg, Jennifer, King Edward VIII Abdicated for Love (Page 2), About.com, http://history1900s.about.com/od/1930s/a/kingedward_2.htm, retrieved 2 May 2010 
  38. ↑ Ziegler, p. 231
  39. ↑ Beaverbrook, Lord; Edited by A. J. P. Taylor (1966), The Abdication of King Edward VIII, London: Hamish Hamilton, p. 111 
  40. ↑ Ziegler, p. 238
  41. ↑ Higham, p. 113 and p. 125 ff
  42. ↑ Bloch, The Duchess of Windsor, pp. 58 and 71
  43. ↑ Report from Superintendent A. Canning to Sir Philip Game, 3 July 1935, National Archives, PRO MEPO 10/35, quoted in Williams, Susan (2004), The People's King: The True Story of the Abdication, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 75, ISBN 9781403963635 
  44. ↑ 44.0 44.1 Fox, James (1 September 2003), "The Oddest Couple", Vanity Fair (517): 276–291, ISSN 07338899 
  45. ↑ Williams, p. 75
  46. ↑ The Duke of Windsor, p. 265
  47. ↑ Ziegler, pp. 277–278
  48. ↑ Ziegler, pp. 289–292
  49. ↑ Broad, Lewis (1961), The Abdication, London: Frederick Muller Ltd, p. 44 
  50. ↑ Marriage in Church After a Divorce, The Church of England, http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/papers/mcad/, retrieved 2 May 2010 
  51. ↑ Beaverbrook, pp. 39–44 and p. 122
  52. ↑ 52.0 52.1 Ziegler, pp. 305–307
  53. ↑ Sir Horace Wilson writing to Neville Chamberlain quoted in Higham, p. 191
  54. ↑ Ziegler, p. 234 and p. 312
  55. ↑ 55.0 55.1 Ashley, Mike (1998), The Mammoth Book of British Kings and Queens, London: Robinson, p. 701, ISBN 1841190969 
  56. ↑ The Duke of Windsor, p. 359
  57. ↑ Beaverbrook, p. 57
  58. ↑ Tinniswood, Adrian (1992), Belton House, The National Trust, p. 34, ISBN 0707801133 
  59. ↑ Norton-Taylor, Richard; Evans, Rob (2 March 2000), "Edward and Mrs Simpson cast in new light", The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/monarchy/story/0,2763,191136,00.html, retrieved 2 May 2010 
  60. ↑ The Duke of Windsor, p. 413
  61. ↑ Higham, p. 224
  62. ↑ Howarth, Patrick (1987), George VI, Hutchinson, p. 73, ISBN 0091710006 
  63. ↑ Letter from Queen Mary to Queen Elizabeth, 21 May 1937, Royal Archives, QEQM/PRIV/RF, quoted in Shawcross, William (2009), Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother: The Official Biography, Macmillan, p. 422, ISBN 9781405048590 
  64. ↑ Diary of Neville Chamberlain quoted in Bradford, p. 243
  65. ↑ Home Office memo on the Duke and Duchess's title, National Archives, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/releases/2003/january30/edward_duke.htm, retrieved 2 May 2010 
  66. ↑ Higham, p. 437
  67. ↑ Bradford, p. 172
  68. ↑ Hogg, James; Mortimer, Michael (2002), The Queen Mother Remembered, BBC books, pp. 84–85, ISBN 0563362146 
  69. ↑ Bloch, Michael (1988), The Secret File of the Duke of Windsor, London: Bantam Books, p. 259, ISBN 059301667X 
  70. ↑ See also, Bloch, Michael (ed.) (1986), Wallis and Edward: Letters 1931–1937, Summit Books, pp. 231, 233, ISBN 0671612093  cited in Bradford, p. 232
  71. ↑ Higham, p. 232
  72. ↑ Letter from Lady Mosley to the Duchess of Devonshire, 5 June 1972, in Mosley, Charlotte (ed.) (2007). The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters. London: Fourth Estate, p. 582.
  73. ↑ Bowcott, Owen; Bates, Stephen (30 January 2003), "Fear that Windsors would 'flit' to Germany", The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/freedom/Story/0,2763,885183,00.html, retrieved 2 May 2010 
  74. ↑ Higham, p. 203
  75. ↑ Evans, Rob; Hencke, David (29 June 2002), "Wallis Simpson, the Nazi minister, the telltale monk and an FBI plot", The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4451107,00.html, retrieved 2 May 2010 
  76. ↑ Bloch, Michael (1982), The Duke of Windsor's War, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, p. 355, ISBN 0297779478 
  77. ↑ Higham, p. 317
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  82. ↑ Higham, p. 330 and Bloch, The Duchess of Windsor, pp. 153 and 159
  83. ↑ Bloch, The Duchess of Windsor, p. 165
  84. ↑ When telling a story of how Wallis complained about blacks being allowed on Park Avenue (Manhattan), Joanne Cummings, the wife of Nathan Cummings, said of Wallis, "She grew up in the South, at a certain time, with certain prejudices." Source: Menkes, p. 88
  85. ↑ Howarth, p. 130
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  88. ↑ Higham, p. 443
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  100. ↑ Blackwood, Lady Caroline (1995), The Last of the Duchess, Pantheon, ISBN 0679439706 
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  104. ↑ Menkes, p. 200
  105. ↑ Culme, John; Rayner, Nicholas (1987), The Jewels of The Duchess of Windsor, New York: Vendome Press, p. 7 
  106. ↑ Menkes, pp. 198, 206 and 207
  107. ↑ Wilson, Christopher (2001), Dancing With the Devil: the Windsors and Jimmy Donahue, London: HarperCollins, ISBN 0006531598 
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  113. ↑ Weintraub, Stanley (8 June 1986), Washington Post: X05 
  114. ↑ Wilson, p. 179
  115. ↑ Always, the Musical, Record Cabinet, http://www.musical-theatre.net/html/recordcabinet/biographical/always.html, retrieved 2 May 2010 
  116. ↑ Cockcroft, Lucy (16 February 2009), Madonna bid to star in movie as Wallis Simpson, Telegraph Media Group Ltd, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/4636960/Madonna-bid-to-star-in-film-as-Wallis-Simpson.html, retrieved 2 May 2010 
  117. ↑ The War Memoirs of HRH Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, Penguin Canada, http://www.penguin.ca/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780670069286,00.html, retrieved 2 May 2010 
  118. ↑ Wallis resumed her maiden surname and dropped the name "Bessie" by deed poll on 7 May 1937
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  122. ↑ Steinberg, Glenn A, European Royalty during World War II: Genealogical Tables. Ahnenreihe of Bessie Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, http://gsteinbe.intrasun.tcnj.edu/royalty/ahnenreihe/Simpson.html, retrieved 2 May 2010 

References

Further reading

External links

Edward VIII abdication crisis
Main protagonists
Edward VIII · Wallis Simpson
Other persons involved
Joseph Lyons (Prime Minister of Australia) · William Lyon Mackenzie King (Prime Minister of Canada) · Éamon de Valera (Prime Minister of the Irish Free State) · Michael Joseph Savage (Prime Minister of New Zealand) · J. B. M. Hertzog (Prime Minister of South Africa) · Stanley Baldwin (Prime Minister of the United Kingdom) · Alfred Blunt (Bishop of Bradford) · John Theodore Goddard (Mrs. Simpson's solicitor) · Alexander Hardinge (Edward VIII's private secretary) · Prince Albert, Duke of York (Edward VIII's brother, later George VI) · Queen Mary (Edward VIII's mother) · Ernest Aldrich Simpson (Mrs. Simpson's second husband)
Legal documents
Succession to the Throne Act 1937 (Canada) · Executive Authority (External Relations) Act 1936 (Ireland) · His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936 (UK)
Cultural depictions
Edward & Mrs. Simpson (1978) · Wallis & Edward (2005) W.E. (film) (2011)
Category
Time Persons of the Year
 
1927–1950

Charles Lindbergh (1927) · Walter Chrysler (1928) · Owen D. Young (1929) · Mahatma Gandhi (1930) · Pierre Laval (1931) · Franklin D. Roosevelt (1932) · Hugh Samuel Johnson (1933) · Franklin D. Roosevelt (1934) · Haile Selassie I (1935) · Wallis Simpson (1936) · Chiang Kai-shek / Soong May-ling (1937) · Adolf Hitler (1938) · Joseph Stalin (1939) · Winston Churchill (1940) · Franklin D. Roosevelt (1941) · Joseph Stalin (1942) · George Marshall (1943) · Dwight D. Eisenhower (1944) · Harry S. Truman (1945) · James F. Byrnes (1946) · George Marshall (1947) · Harry S. Truman (1948) · Winston Churchill (1949) · The American Fighting-Man (1950)