Was the Duchess of Windsor a sexual predator with an insatiable appetite for men who ensnared the future king with her infamous “Shanghai grip”?
While she was having an affair with Edward, Prince of Wales, did she also sleep with a lowly used car salesman and a high-ranking Nazi official, as well as a fascist Italian aristocrat?
Or did people hate her so much that they loved spreading lies about her?
One of the most damning pieces of evidence against the Baltimore-born divorcee (still hotly debated today) is the infamous “Chinese dossier,” which was prepared for Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and King George V.
It listed in detail Wallis Simpson’s bedroom antics in Shanghai in the 1920s, where she lived with her first husband, Earl Winfield Spencer Jr, who was posted to the Far East on the USS Pampanga in 1934.
After their separation, she traveled around the country and supposedly learned sexual techniques that would charm the sexually inappropriate Prince of Wales.
Later, during the abdication crisis of 1936, Wallis’s debauched year in China was even discussed at cabinet level, as ministers struggled to find a way to separate the new king from the woman who held him in sexual slavery. The handwritten notes of the prominent mandarin Sir Horace Wilson show that the ministers felt they had finally found something so damaging that it could break their tenacious hold on Edward VIII.
The only thing that did not exist was the China file, as a new book finally demonstrates.
A portrait of Wallis Simpson presented in court in the 1920s, when the infamous “Chinese dossier” depicting her bedroom antics in Shanghai was supposed to have taken place.
The dossier alleged that Wallis Simpson had an affair with Ciano (far right) while in China, later foreign minister of fascist Italy and candidate to replace dictator Mussolini.
Just as Wallis’s alleged affair with car salesman Guy Trundle, concocted by the secret services, turned out to be true.
Or her secret relationship with Joachim Ribbentrop, Hitler’s ambassador to London (later executed for his part in Nazi atrocities during World War II), never happened.
Or her activities before sleeping 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 enough.
In retrospect, of course, history confirmed that he did the nation an enormous favor by removing from the throne a weak, obsessive and increasingly erratic monarch who, in the run-up to World War II, would have shown himself much less decided against the government. Nazi threat than his younger brother, King George VI.
Still, the US and UK governments went to great lengths 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 for the cause of physical education.”
US Navy pilot Earl Winfield Spencer, Jr. (1888 – 1950), first husband of Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, photographed in 1920 (left). Sir Ellice ‘Victor’ Sassoon, who allegedly took pornographic photographs of Wallis Simpson (right)
In the newly published ‘Her Lotus Year’, biographer Paul French forensically analyzes the most damning evidence (the China dossier) and demonstrates that the invented stories surrounding Wallis were never more than desperate and regrettable fabrications.
The file alleged:
- Wallis had an affair while in China with Ciano, later foreign minister of fascist Italy and candidate to replace dictator Mussolini. Author French shows that it was impossible: Wallis had left China forever even before Ciano arrived.
- She claimed that while she was in China she had an abortion that prevented her from having children later. French says there is no evidence he underwent such a procedure.
- Wallis is said to have posed for pornographic photographs taken by Italian hotelier Victor Sassoon. Not only have none of the alleged images been found: Sassoon wasn’t even in Shanghai when Wallis was there.
In the recently published ‘Her Lotus Year’, biographer Paul French forensically dismantles the China dossier and debunks the fabricated stories surrounding Wallis Simpson.
- He is said to have learned his skills, including the ‘Shanghai grip’ (described as ‘a technique in which the woman tensed her muscles to make a match look 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, “not even for the cause of physical education.”
So, like her or hate her, the Duchess of Windsor has finally been able to shake off one of the most damning rumors about her.
But there were others.
In the run-up to World War II, Hitler appointed Joachim von Ribbentrop as his ambassador to London. Ribbentrop would later be executed for war crimes, but for a brief period before the war he enjoyed the company of Mrs Simpson and it was claimed that they were having an affair.
He sent her 17 carnations, which are said to indicate 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 been Duke of Württemberg, a minor member of German royalty with distant connections to Queen Mary, the king’s mother. Fearful that his own German origins might make him vulnerable, Odo told the agents what they wanted to hear: that Ribbentrop had been the duchess’s lover.
Trapped in a monastery 5,000 miles away, how could he know? But it was good enough for the FBI: another huge insult against the duchess.
Then there’s the case of Guy Trundle, a used car salesman who allegedly slept with Wallis Simpson just as her real-life lover Edward was about to propose to her.
Before the abdication crisis broke, Secret Service agents were following Mrs Simpson through London high society in an attempt to discover more about her private life; His purpose was 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 determined. He is Guy Marcus Trundle, now living at 19 Bruton Street, Mayfair.
Wallis was so hated by the British public for stealing from their king that no dirty rumor was good enough.
Guy Trundle, a used car salesman who had supposedly slept with Wallis Simpson just as her real lover Edward was about to propose to her.
A Special Branch report on Mrs. Simpson’s secret lover named Guy Marcus Trundle.
Trundle, 36, according to the report, was a charming, handsome, “well-mannered” adventurer and an excellent dancer.
‘Trundle is an engine engineer and salesman and is said to be employed by Ford Motor Company. It is not known what salary he receives… Trundle claims to have met the Prince of Wales through Mrs. Simpson.
‘He is said to boast that all women fall in love with him. He openly meets Mrs. Simpson at informal social gatherings as if she were a personal friend, but when intimate relationships occur, secret meetings are held.
This, of course, was the glorious boast of a man who once knew Mrs Simpson, but then managed to weave a series of fantasies around her, aided by quantities of alcohol his interviewers poured down his throat.
Historians who know Wallis Simpson’s story agree that once she became romantically involved with Edward, she was too focused on getting her king and making her home at Buckingham Palace to have anything to do with a simple car salesman
But the secret service believed Trundle, because they wanted to believe him. And so Wallis’s reputation suffered another blow.
There was much in the Duchess of Windsor’s life to criticize, but the authorities were apparently so frightened by the threat she posed to the stability of the monarchy that they couldn’t wait to make up even worse things about her.
Her Lotus Year by Paul French is published by Elliott and Thompson