Wallis Simpson
Bessie Wallis Warfield was born in Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania, in 1895. She was named in honour of her father and her mother’s elder sister, Bessie. Her first marriage, to U.S. naval officer Win Spencer, was punctuated by periods of separation and eventually ended in divorce. In 1931, during her second marriage, she met Edward, then Prince of Wales. Five years later, after Edward’s accession as King of the United Kingdom, she divorced her second husband to marry Edward. Their intention to marry and her status as a divorcée caused a constitutional crisis that led to Edward’s abdication.
About Wallis Simpson in brief
Bessie Wallis Warfield was born in Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania, in 1895. She was named in honour of her father and her mother’s elder sister, Bessie. Her first marriage, to U.S. naval officer Win Spencer, was punctuated by periods of separation and eventually ended in divorce. In 1931, during her second marriage, she met Edward, then Prince of Wales. Five years later, after Edward’s accession as King of the United Kingdom, Wallis divorced her second husband to marry Edward. Their intention to marry and her status as a divorcée caused a constitutional crisis that led to Edward’s abdication. After abdicating, the former king was created Duke of Windsor by his brother and successor, King George VI. 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. In 1940, the Duke and Duchess visited Germany and met Adolf Hitler. In the 1950s and 1960s, the couple shuttled between Europe and the United States living a life of leisure as society celebrities. Before, during, and after the Second World War, they were suspected by many in government and society of being Nazi sympathisers. Wallis was a friend of Reni Renée du Pont, a daughter of Senator T. Coleman du Pont and Mary Kirk, whose family founded Silver Kirkware. A fellow pupil at Wallis’s schools recalled her as ‘bright, brighter than all of us’ She made up her mind to go to the head of the class, and did not dress immaculately, and was always dressed immaculate.
Her parents were married by C. Ernest Smith at Baltimore’s Saint Michael and All Angels’ Protestant Episcopal Church on 19 November 1895, which suggests she was conceived out of wedlock. Her father was Teackle Warfield, the fifth and youngest son of Henry Mactier Warfield. Her mother was Alice Montague, daughter of stockbroker William Latane Montague. In 1908, her mother married her secondhusband, John Rasin Freeman, son of a prominent Democratic party boss. On 17 April 1910 Wallis was confirmed at Christ Episcopal Church, Oldfields, Maryland, and between 1912 and 1914 she attended the most expensive girls’ school in Baltimore. She later married Ernest Simpson, and the couple lived in an apartment, and a house, until they settled in their own home in 1961. She had two children with Ernest Simpson and later had a son with another man, Edward Simpson, who was also a lawyer. She died in April 1986, aged 80, and is survived by her three children and two step-daughters. She is buried at Mount Vernon Cemetery, Baltimore, in Maryland, where she was once a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She also had a daughter, Alice Wallis Simpson, with whom she had an affair.
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This page is based on the article Wallis Simpson published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 08, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
