In the 1930s, the strict Court of Windsor felt a stab in its heart when it burst onto the scene. Wallis Simpsonthe ribald and untamed woman who fell in love with Edward VIIIwhen he was still Prince of Wales. The Royalist institution itself seemed to falter as soon as Wallis Simpson divorced her second husband, Ernest Aldrich Simpson, and the King decided that she was the woman of his life and that, no matter what, they would get married. That became a state affair of epic proportions. These days, the publication of the book Her Lotus Year, by Paul French, dismantles some of the most offensive hoaxes about Wallis Simpson; especially, those that refer to his intimate life during his stay in China, from 1924 to 1925, a topic that the Prime Minister and his Cabinet scrupulously analyzed.
© Getty ImagesWhen Edward VIII expressed his desire to marry Wallis Simpson, politicians cried out: that wedding broke with traditions. It was inconceivable that the Sovereign could marry a woman who had two living ex-husbands (The first, Earl Windfield Spencer was a US Navy pilot). Edward VIII’s determination caused a thousand and one arguments to be sought to dissuade the King from abdicating out of love in favor of his brother, George VI. It was then when a series of rumors arose and spread at the speed of light about the most hated woman of the moment in the United Kingdom, Wallis Simpson. Edward VIII cared little about the scandalous actions that were being attributed to his beloved. In June 1937, after abdicating in favor of his brother, he married, in his words, “the woman I love.” Without Corona, but with Wallis at his side, he lived happily with his new title of Duke of Windsor. More than one choked up when they had to refer to Wallis Simpson as the Duchess of Windsor.
© Getty ImagesThe most scandalous slanders
Almost a century after all that, it is curious to imagine the senior officials of English political life snooping into the intimate life of Wallis Simpson. The secret services filled pages and pages of classified, confidential and some of dubious credibility. They thought they were doing their country a favor by reviling the reputation of the American who had ‘bewitched’ their King. One of the most widespread hoaxes reinforced her image of being dissolute. In fact, it was always believed in the existence of China filea report in which theoretically lurid details of Wallis’s sexual life were told during his stay in the Asian country. Apparently, there are notes from Sir Horace Wilson, a high-ranking official, that indicate that the ministers believed that this chapter was going to be more than enough for the King to fall out of love and give up on a wedding that no one viewed favorably. eyes. It wasn’t like that.
© Getty ImagesIn the 1920s, Wallis Simpson joined her first husband in China, with whom she had a stormy relationship. She lived with him in Hong Kong until she divorced. When she arrived in the East, he had already spent some time there. As she wrote in her autobiography, her husband had taken bad steps in those lands: “To his already formidable repertoire of taunts and humiliations, he added some oriental variants. (…) He had spent a good part of his time in the sing-song houses.” That is, in brothels with a very bad reputation. After their separation, according to the rumors of the time, Wallis’s life was linked to scandal, in the intriguing city of Shanghai. The British Intelligence Service searched for mud at that time. Among other data, which today are considered inconsistent, it was rumored that Wallis Simpson had learned extraordinary lovemaking arts in the Far East, and that these had driven the King crazy. Around this hypothesis arose the also spurious rumor that “in Beijing he learned to master the amazing ‘Chinese trick’”, as Caroline Blackwood wrote in her book Latest news from the Duchess. Paul French destroy this idea ensuring that no woman of Wallis Simpson’s status would even look at the places where, in theory, she had been taught those practices typical of a geisha.
© Getty ImagesThere was also a firm conviction that the woman who had caused a tsunami in the English Monarchy had maintained an affair with the very young Count Galeazzo Ciano, twenty-one years old: a declared fascist, who ended up married to Edda, daughter of Mussolini, and who Some time later he was Minister of Foreign Affairs of his country. Throughout the pages of his book, French deny this romance because, as his research demonstrates, Wallis had already left the country when the Italian aristocrat landed in China. However, the rumor mill went very far, because not only did it take the relationship for granted, but it also claimed that it had dire consequences. Rumors told that Wallis became pregnant and that underwent an abortion which almost cost him his life. French claims that there is not a single piece of evidence to certify this fact. Apparently, Wallis left China on August 29, 1925 and arrived in the United States on September 8 to be admitted to a hospital, but the ailment for which she was admitted to a medical center has never been known.
Another rumor, allegedly collected in the China File, said that Wallis had posed in a series of pornographic photographs for hotelier Victor Sassoon. Once again, a rumor is dismantled before unverifiable facts: No image has been found and this Victor Sassonn was not in China when he was supposedly controlling the camera’s shutter.
© Getty ImagesUndermining Walls’ reputation
Wallis Simpson Nor did she help herself much to create an image different from the one she was forging: direct, frank and little given to complying with rules and protocols, she wrote in her autobiography: “When I was good, I usually had a bad time; and when I was bad, the opposite happened to me.” A phrase that is powerfully reminiscent of that of a contemporary of hers, the actress Mae West: “When I am good I am very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better”.
After divorcing her first husband, she quickly found solace in the arms of Ernest Aldrich Simpson, the man with whom she moved to London, a city she cordially detested. “I spent many horrible days wondering what was going to happen to me, and if, like a bottle of champagne that has been frozen for too long, I would end up seeing my spirit lose its bubbles,” he said in his memoirs. According to his detractors, and as appears in some reports from the British Intelligence Services declassified in 2003, Wallis Simpson did not waste time in the capital of the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, was notified that the woman for whom his King was willing to give up his royal destiny, In addition to being a husband, she had a lover. and this was a car salesman named Guy Marcus Trundle, “a charming adventurer, a man with good looks, well educated and an excellent dancer… A born conqueror. Secret meetings are scheduled by appointment when intimate relationships take place,” they detailed. the researchers. However, French assures that this romance was another invention to keep the King away from the arms of the alleged femme fatale that had undermined his will.
© Getty ImagesThe capacity to invent and confabulate is infinite, and Wallis Simpson’s gift for sowing unknowns was not far behind. After Trundle she was assigned another lover. In this case, Joachim Ribbentrop, Hitler’s ambassador in London, and who was executed years later for his war crimes. Until now it had been said that when Ribbendrop and the Duchess broke up, he sent her a bouquet with seventeen red rosesone for each day they had had sexual relations. However, French explains in his book that this romance, aired by the FBI, did not have a very reliable source. The romance was revealed by a curious character, Father Odo, a monk who had previously been Duke of Wurttemberg and who was distantly related to the Queen Mother, Mary of Teck. It was never known why he knew all these ins and outs when he lived in a monastery five thousand miles from London. Furthermore, he did not present a single documentary evidence that gave credibility to his words, but they wanted to believe him to continue creating a distorted image by Wallis Simpson.
Edward VIII reigned for a single month. Although the Intelligence Services of both Britain and the United States worked overtime to present him with evidence of the scandalous past and present of their love, he would not listen to reason. For better or worse, The Dukes of Windsor They remained together until his death in 1972.
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