A fellow pupil at one of Wallis's schools recalled, "She was bright, brighter than all of us. Coleman du Pont of the du Pont family, and Mary Kirk, whose family founded Kirk Silverware. There she became a friend of heiress Renée du Pont, a daughter of Senator T. On April 17, 1910, Wallis was confirmed at Christ Episcopal Church, Baltimore, and between 19 her uncle paid for her to attend Oldfields School, the most expensive girls' school in Maryland. In 1908, Wallis's mother married her second husband, John Freeman Rasin, son of prominent Democratic party boss Isaac Freeman Rasin. In 1901, Wallis's aunt Bessie Merryman was widowed, and the following year Alice and Wallis moved into her four-bedroom house on West Chase Street, Baltimore, where they lived for at least a year until they settled in an apartment, and then a house, of their own. Initially, they lived with him at the four-story row house, 34 East Preston Street, that he shared with his mother. For her first few years, Wallis and her mother were dependent upon the charity of her father's wealthy bachelor brother Solomon Davies Warfield, postmaster of Baltimore and later president of the Continental Trust Company and the Seaboard Air Line Railway. Her father died of tuberculosis on November 15, 1896. Wallis said that her parents were married in June 1895. Ernest Smith at Baltimore's Saint Michael and All Angels' Protestant Episcopal Church on November 19, 1895, which suggests she was conceived out of wedlock. Īccording to a wedding announcement published in The Baltimore Sun on November 20, 1895, Wallis's parents were married by C. Buchanan Merryman), and was called Bessie Wallis until, at some time in her youth, the name Bessie was dropped. Wallis was named in honor of her father (who was known as Wallis) and her mother's elder sister, Bessie (Mrs.
Her mother was Alice Montague, a daughter of stockbroker William Latane Montague. Wallis's father was Teackle Wallis Warfield, the fifth and youngest son of Henry Mactier Warfield, a flour merchant, described as "one of the best known and personally one of the most popular citizens of Baltimore", who ran for mayor in 1875. A summer resort close to the Maryland–Pennsylvania border, Blue Ridge Summit was popular with Baltimoreans escaping the season's heat, and Monterey Inn, which had a central building, as well as individual wooden cottages, was the town's largest hotel. Her private life has been a source of much speculation, and she remains a controversial figure in British history.Įarly life and education A six-month-old Wallis with her mother, Alice WarfieldĪn only child, Bessie Wallis (sometimes written "Bessiewallis") Warfield was born on June 19, 1896, in Square Cottage at Monterey Inn, a hotel directly across the road from the Monterey Country Club, in Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania. After Edward's death in 1972, Wallis lived in seclusion and was rarely seen in public. In the 1950s and 1960s, they shuttled between Europe and the United States, living a life of leisure as society celebrities. In 1940, Edward was appointed governor of the Bahamas, and the couple moved to the islands until he relinquished the office in 1945. In 1937, without government approval, they visited Germany and met Adolf Hitler. Wallis married Edward six months later, after which she was formally known as the Duchess of Windsor, but was not allowed to share her husband's style of " Royal Highness".īefore, during, and after the Second World War, Wallis and Edward were suspected by many in government and society of being Nazi sympathizers.
After abdicating, Edward was made Duke of Windsor by his brother and successor, George VI. The King's desire to marry a woman who had two living ex-husbands threatened to cause a constitutional crisis in the United Kingdom and the Dominions, ultimately leading to his abdication in December 1936 to marry "the woman I love".
Five years later, after Edward's accession as King of the United Kingdom, Wallis divorced Ernest to marry Edward. In 1931, during her second marriage, to Ernest Simpson, she met Edward, then Prince of Wales. Her first marriage, to United States Navy officer Win Spencer, was punctuated by periods of separation and eventually ended in divorce. Her father died shortly after her birth, and she and her widowed mother were partly supported by their wealthier relatives. Their intention to marry and her status as a divorcée caused a constitutional crisis that led to Edward's abdication. Wallis, Duchess of Windsor (born Bessie Wallis Warfield, later Simpson J – April 24, 1986), was an American socialite and wife of the former King Edward VIII.
0 kommentar(er)
