THE BRIDE’S CAREER.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 157, 4 June 1937, Page 7

THE BRIDE’S CAREER.

THIRD MARRIAGE. Before lier first marriage, the Duke of, Windsor’s bride, until recently known as Mrs Ernest Simpson, was Miss Bessie Wallis Warfield. She was born in Baltimore, U.S.A. An uncle was for many years president of the Seaboard Airline Railway in the United States. She is also distantly related to a former Governor Warfield, of Maryland. The Duke’s bride is 42 years of age. She is slim and dark, and has a reputation of wearing smart, but simplydesigned clothes, and for being one of the best-groomed women seen in .Europe. It is also said that the Duke of Windsor once described her as having the most beautiful voice in the world. She speaks with a soft southern American drawl, and is celebrated for her wit and her conversational vivacity. She is also an expert ballroom dancer, and is fond of gardening, with house decoration as a minor hobby. When she was 22 Miss Warfield married Lieutenant Winfield Spencer, of the United States Navy, the wedding being a fashionable one. The Spencers were moved to Pasadena, but in 1927 Mrs Spencer returned to Baltimore and obtained a divorce on the grounds of incompatibility. On July 27, 1928, she married Ernest Simpson, a Canadian broker, who resided, in London. The marriage took place at a Chelsea registry office. Mr Simpson, a former officer of the Coldstream Guards, introduced liis wife to London society, where her popularity was said to be immediate and widespread in the more Bohemian circles. “She had a glib, quick tongue.” remarks one writer, “an ability to absorb opinions from books and people and make them her own —a tireless vitality.” Mrs Simpson is reported to have met the then Prince of Wales through Lady Furness, sister of Mrs Gloria Vanderbilt, and in the summer of 1935 she was present when the then Prince of Wales entertained a few of his friends on the Duke of Westminster’s yacht, the Cutty Sark. Together with Mrs Simpson’s aunt, Mrs Buchanan Merrvman, of Washington, they visited Biarritz, Cannes, Kitzbuliel, in Austria, and other Continental resorts. The name of Mrs Simpson was not included in the published lists of guests on the yacht Nahlin, but many photographs of the King in the company of his American friend were published both in England and America, and a cabled reference to the taking of informal photographs of the King on holiday mentioned that His Majesty had offered no objection, in fact, on one occasion had personally interceded on behalf of a photographer whose camera had been confiscated by the POllCe ' YACHTING CRUISE. Although the friendship between the Duke oi Windsor and Mrs Simpson, according to accounts published at regular intervals in the Press of the United States, has existed lor the past four years, it did not become a matter lor widespread comment until the Duke’s Balkan cruise in Lady rule’s yacht Nahlin, early last year. It was then revealed that Mrs Simp--6011 was among the guests who took part in the King’s holiday cruise, and that he made many of his public appearnces in her company. Previously Mrs Simpson was a guest at St. James’s Palace on occasions of dinner parties, and alter the then King’s return from the Balkans Mrs Simpson was his guest at Balmoral Castle. On that occasion the Court circular of the London Times of September 23 began with the following announcement: —“Mrs Ernest A. Simpscon and Mr and Mrs Herman L. Rogers have arrived at the Ca6tle.” (Mr and Mrs Rogers were also American guests on the yacht Nahlin.) There lollowed on the circular an announcement that “the Duke of York, who was accompanied by the Duchess of York, to-day on His Alajesty’s behalf opened the new building of the Royal Infirmary, Aberdeen.” Among the then King’s friends and relatives staying with him at Balmoral were the Duke and Duchess of Kent, the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, the Earl and Countess of Rosebery and the Duke and Duchess of Buceleuch and Queensberry. The Times’s Court circular dispatched from Balmoral Castle for official publication represented one 0. the first formal published recognitions in England of Mrs Simpson’s friendship with the King. On many previous occasions, however, the American Press had chronicled the appearance of the King in the company of his American friend, and had reported that as long ago as August, 1934, the then Prince of Wales bad been seen dancing with “a Mrs Simpson” in a Biarritz cafe. CHANGE OF NAME. Some months ago Mrs Simpson obtained a decree nisi in divorce from her husband at the Ipswich Assizes, in England, and this was subsequently made absolute, though a stir was created when steps were taken, but not pursued, to secure the intervention of the King’s Proctor. Recently Mrs Simpson, by publication in the London Press, announced that she desired to be known by the name of Wallis Warfield.

For some months she tas been residing at t)ie Chateau de Caude, the scene of the wedding.