That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor (48 page)
Read That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor Online
Authors: Anne Sebba
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Royalty, #Rich & Famous
BOOK: That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor
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York, Duchess of>
see
Elizabeth, Queen of George VI
York, Duke of
see
George VI, King
York House, London
Yule, Annie Henrietta, Lady
Zara, Lt (
later
Admiral) Alberto da
Zetland, Lawrence John Dundas, 2nd Marquess of
Ziegler, Philip: on Edward’s character; on Edward at Oxford; on Edward’s exercise regime; on Wallis’s effect on Edward; on Duchess of York’s hostility to Wallis; on Edward’s abdication decision; on Windsors’ wedding; on Edward’s visit to Germany; on Edward’s leaving British Military Mission in France; doubts Edward’s agreeing to be Nazi puppet; on improvements to Government House, Nassau; on Wenner-Gren and Edward; on Wallis’s cancers
A statue in Baltimore’s Mount Vernon Square of the man after whom Wallis was named – lawyer, political reformer and friend of the family, Severn Teackle Wallis.
The house at Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania, where Bessiewallis Warfield was born on 19 June 1896. She always believed she had inherited two conflicting strains: the Warfield toughness and practical ability, and the Montague gentleness and artistic sensibility.
Wallis aged six months with her mother, the spirited and beautiful Alice Montague Warfield, from then on a single parent responsible for Wallis’s upbringing.
Uncle Solomon Davies Warfield, Wallis’s paternal uncle, a wealthy bachelor on whom she depended for her education and who was to disappoint her when he left his fortune to set up a home in memory of his mother.
Wallis’s mother, Alice Montague, was remarried twice more and her hard life helped fuel her daughter’s ambition. ‘Wouldn’t mother have loved it all,’ she wrote to her aunt of the exciting times when she first entered the Prince’s circle.
A signed portrait of Wallis looking demure as she left Oldfields School ready to conquer the world.
The brief time Wallis spent at the house on Biddle Street – a three-storey brownstone in a fashionable district of Baltimore – was happy and free of financial worry.
Wallis wearing a monocle – one of her schoolgirl experiments with different styles while she was a pupil at Oldfields.
Earl Winfield Spencer Jr (
second from left
), a naval officer and pioneer aviator from Chicago in training at Florida sh at"leftortly before he met Wallis.
second from left
), a naval officer and pioneer aviator from Chicago in training at Florida sh at"leftortly before he met Wallis.
Wallis as a debutante, short of money but never lacking style and said to have more beaux than any other debutante after she was introduced to Baltimore high society in December 1914.
Wallis, as Win’s bride, on a cold day in November 1916. The
Baltimore Sun
described the evening wedding as ‘one of the most important of the season’.
Baltimore Sun
described the evening wedding as ‘one of the most important of the season’.
Mrs Wallis Spencer gazing intently at the Italian naval officer Lt Alberto Da Zara, one of many adoring males who fell for her charms in 1924 in Peking.
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