Was the Duchess of Windsor a sexual predator with an insatiable appetite for men who ensnared the future king with her infamous ‘Shangai grab’?
During her romance with Edward, Prince of Wales, did she also bed a lowly used car salesman and a high-ranking Nazi official, plus a fascist Italian aristocrat?
Or did people hate her so much that they just loved spreading lies about her?
One of the most damning pieces of evidence against the Baltimore-born divorcee – which remains highly publicized today – is the infamous “China Dossier,” which was prepared for Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and King George V.
It detailed Wallis Simpson’s bedroom antics in Shanghai in the 1920s, where she lived with her first husband, Earl Winfield Spencer Jr., who was sent to the Far East on the USS Pampanga in 1934.
After their divorce, she traveled the country learning sexual techniques that would enthrall the sexually inadequate Prince of Wales.
Later, during the abdication crisis of 1936, Wallis’s riotous year in China was discussed even at cabinet level, as ministers struggled to find a way to extricate the new king from the woman who kept him in sexual slavery. Sir Horace Wilson’s handwritten notes reveal that ministers felt they had finally found something so damaging that it might break her tenacious hold on Edward VIII.
Only the China file did not exist, as a new book finally proves.
A portrait of Wallis Simpson presented at court in the 1920s, when the infamous ‘Chinese Dossier’ about her bedroom antics was due to take place in Shanghai
The dossier alleged that Wallis Simpson had an affair with Ciano (far right) while in China, later fascist Italian Foreign Minister, and was tipped to take over from dictator Mussolini.
Nor did Wallis’ alleged affair with car salesman Guy Trundle, concocted by the secret services, turn out to be true.
Whether her secret relationship with Joachim Ribbentrop, Hitler’s ambassador to London – who was later executed for his Nazi atrocities during World War II – it never happened.
Or her bedtime activities with Count Ciano, an Italian politician and son-in-law of Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
Wallis Windsor was so hated by the British for stealing their king that no dirty rumor was good enough.
In retrospect, of course, history confirms that she did the nation a huge service by dethroning a weak, obsessive and increasingly erratic monarch who would have proven far less decisive against those in power in the run-up to the Second World War. Nazi threat than his younger brother, King George VI.
Yet both the American and British governments did their best to undermine the twice-divorced socialite’s reputation.
Paul French writes that no woman of Simpson’s social status would be seen dead in such places, “not even in physical education.”
US Navy pilot Earl Winfield Spencer, Jr. (1888 – 1950), first husband of Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, pictured in 1920 (left). Sir Ellice ‘Victor’ Sassoon, who allegedly took pornographic photographs of Wallis Simpson (right)
In the recently published ‘Her Lotus Year’, biographer Paul French forensically dissects the most damning evidence – the China dossier – and proves that the Wallis stories were never more than desperate and poor inventions.
The dossier claimed:
- During his stay in China, Wallis had an affair with Ciano, the later fascist Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, and was tipped to take over from dictator Mussolini. Author French proves it was impossible: Wallis had left China for good before Ciano even arrived.
- It was claimed that while in China she had an abortion, which left her unable to have children later. French says there is no evidence she underwent such a procedure.
- Wallis is said to have posed for pornographic photos taken by Italian hotelier Victor Sassoon. Not only was none of the alleged images ever found; Sassoon wasn’t even in Shanghai when Wallis was there.
In the recently published ‘Her Lotus Year’, biographer Paul French forensically dissects the China dossier – and debunks the stories surrounding Wallis Simpson
- She is said to have learned her skills – including the ‘Shanghai grip’ (described as ‘a technique in which the woman tenses her muscles to make a matchstick feel like a cigar’) – in the city’s brothels. But, French says, no woman of Simpson’s social status would be seen dead in such places, “even if it’s physical education.”
So, love her or hate her, the Duchess of Windsor has finally managed to shake off one of the most damning rumors about her.
But there were others.
In the run-up to World War II, Hitler installed Joachim von Ribbentrop as his ambassador in London. Ribbentrop would later be executed for war crimes, but for a brief period before the war he enjoyed Mrs. Simpson’s company and it was alleged that they had an affair.
He sent her seventeen carnations, which would represent the number of times they had slept together.
But the information came from a ridiculous source.
FBI agents interviewed a Benedictine monk, Father Odo, at a Franciscan monastery in the United States. The monk had once been the Duke of Württemberg, a small German royal family with distant ties to Queen Mary, the king’s mother. Fearing that his own German heritage would make him vulnerable, Odo told the officers what they wanted to hear: that Ribbentrop had been the Duchess’s lover.
How could he know that when he was stuck in a monastery 5,000 miles away? But it was good enough for the FBI – another major smear against the Duchess.
Then there’s the case of Guy Trundle, a used car salesman who allegedly took Wallis Simpson to bed just as her royal lover Edward was about to propose.
Before the Abdication crisis broke out, Secret Service agents followed Mrs. Simpson through London’s high society in an attempt to learn more about her private life—their goal: to discredit her.
A secret report, dated July 1935, begins with a triumphant revelation. ‘The identity of Mrs Simpson’s secret lover has now been definitively established. He is Guy Marcus Trundle and now lives at 19 Bruton Street, Mayfair.’
Wallis was so hated by the British public for stealing their king that no dirty rumor was good enough
Guy Trundle, a used car salesman who allegedly put Wallis Simpson to bed just as her royal lover Edward was about to propose
A Special Branch report on Mrs. Simpson’s secret lover named Guy Marcus Trundle
Trundle, 36, was a charming adventurer, handsome, “well-bred” and an excellent dancer, according to the report.
‘Trundle is an engine engineer and salesman and is said to be employed by the Ford Motor Company. It is not known what salary he receives… Trundle claims to have met the Prince of Wales through Mrs Simpson.
‘It is said that he boasts that every woman falls for him. He meets Ms. Simpson openly at informal social gatherings as a personal friend, but secret meetings occur when intimate relationships occur.”
This, of course, was the glorious boast of a man who may have once met Mrs. Simpson, but then managed to spin a series of fantasies around her, aided by quantities of alcohol poured down his throat by his interviewers.
Historians who know the Wallis Simpson story all agree that once she started dating Edward, she was too single-mindedly focused on getting her king and making her home in Buckingham Palace to make anything to have with just a car salesman.
But the Secret Service believed Trundle – because they wanted to believe him. And so Wallis’s reputation took another blow.
There was plenty to criticize in the Duchess of Windsor’s life, but it seems the authorities were so afraid of the threat she posed to the stability of the monarchy that they couldn’t wait to say even worse things about her think up.
Her Lotus Year by Paul French is published by Elliott and Thompson