Initials Promotion Acceptance Letter Made Easy

Initials promotion acceptance letter

hello my name is ann seber and i'm going to talk about wally simpson and love for the national archives if there's one event in british history which elicits the immediate reaction of are the greatest love story of the 20th century it's the story of wally simpson and edward viii he was a man who apparently gave up everything throne and empire for the woman i love as he famously said in his abdication speech of december the 11th 1936 and that document the instrument of abdication is here in the national archives at queue but what does it really mean and is it a true love story on both sides i am going to give you a rather different version of events based on the documents and letters that i discovered so who was wallace simpson she was born on june the 19th 1896 in a small wooden building known as square cottage at the back of the monterey inn in the summer spa resort of blue ridge summit there was no newspaper announcement of her birth and her parents who had married in secret had gone there because her father tickle wallace warfield was dying of tb and hoped for a cure none was forthcoming and he died a few months after his only daughter christened bessie wallace was born clearly the romance of alice montague and tikal wallace warfield was a genuine story of young love after she was widowed alice montague was always struggling she and wallis were outsiders although both the warfields her father's side and the montagues her mothers were good patrician families in terms of american society alice had to take in lodges sell embroidery and eventually became a hostess so in that situation they relied on the charity of uncle saul a bachelor with mistresses a failed politician who paid alice an allowance but it was irregular sometimes there was a decent amount but others nothing and one is concluded from this you have to rely on a man but on the other hand you can't rely on a man but uncle saul did pay for wallis to go to the smartest school in the area called old fields wallace herself had chosen the school because it was full of the daughters of rich families and she believed that if she became a debutant she'd automatically marry a rich man wallace craved security but the first blow to that scheme came when uncle sol refused to pay for her to have her own coming out ball and that's why as soon as she left oldfields and met a dashing pioneer naval aviator in pensacola she agreed to marry him wynn spencer came from a chicago stockbroking family rich enough but not patricia a heavily involved military family where sacrifice and duty were top priorities but the marriage was stormy from the start he was six years older than her a man of the world but he was not promoted even after america had joined in the war according to u.s naval records he was volatile with a steady and fiery temper which wallace clearly set off only too easily he drank and the alcohol fueled his violence wallis complained but so did his naval superiors as well as two subsequent wives it was a disaster and although we only have wallace's account for it the marriage failed and they hardly lived together wallace returned to baltimore and asked her family to help fund a divorce a suggestion met with horror by both her mother and her uncle uncle sol might have bequeathed her five million dollars if she had followed the rules but he told her that if she went ahead with the divorce she threatened to bring shame on the warfield family which had never had a divorce before and if she did he would disown her and disinherit her so she gave her marriage a second chance not surprisingly and in december 1924 went out to meet wynn by then serving in hong kong traveling to china in 1924 was not only prohibitively expensive for most people it was also exotic and an opportunity to see something of the world and this she realized having had a taste of it from the talk of others in the hot house diplomatic circles of washington was a necessity while in washington wallace had been rejected in love at this time having fallen deeply in love with an argentinian diplomat called felipe s bill who had decided he did not want to marry her therefore she badly wanted her existing marriage to work this time and for a short time it did when on the dock to meet her was looking tanned clear-eyed and physically fit he took her back to his navy supplied apartment in kowloon on the chinese mainland and told her that he had stopped drinking from the day he had heard she was coming but it wasn't true and he was soon violent again apparently even locking her in the bathroom for a night and then forcing her to go out in a threesome to the local sing-sing houses so this time she did not come home later she wrote about her time in the far east as her lotus year when life was good almost too good for a woman and she acquired here a wicked reputation as being fast apparently later on something known as the china dossier was compiled by queen mary a future mother-in-law and prime minister baldwin but even though there is plenty of material in the national archives about life in china at this period under the heading bad hats and sundry suspects clearly it was a very racy place to be there is sadly no mention of mrs wynne spencer wallis decided she must get a divorce so she went to warrenton for a year where she established residency wynn spencer lied in order to give her a divorce by stating that he had deserted her and while in warrington she met a married man ernest simpson who had a young daughter audrey thanks to an introduction from her old fields friend mary kirk ernest was tall good-looking and in shipping which wallace assumed meant he had plenty of money but above all he was kind she had had enough of violent men so as soon as she had her divorce wallis and ernest married and came to london where she thought she could put all of this behind her and start again with a clean slate there was nothing passionate about her marriage to earnest but thanks to connections especially one from ernest's sister mordecai smiley she soon met edward prince of wales who loved all things american especially american women he'd already had two half american mistresses but wallis was the real deal by 1931 wallace and ernest were part of the king's circle but no one talked about the deepening affair between wallace and the prince because of self-censorship among british newspapers and a general attitude of deference to the monarchy wallis enjoyed the attention she was receiving from the prince and believed that this leg up in society was a way of avenging her mother's poverty that her mother would be proud of her it wasn't love but she was building her own security net as she saw it for when the affair was all over as it surely would be the prince however saw it differently and in january 1936 when his father king george v died and wallis was neither divorced from husband number two nor married to edward the situation became more serious in the summer of that year when edward was king but still not crowned he took her on a rather too public sailing trip along the dalmatian coast in a yacht called the gnarlin and suddenly pictures of her started appearing in all the world's press she was now well and truly trapped albeit in a trap of her own making and meanwhile ernest had fallen in love with mary kirk wallace's school friend from old fields who wallis had engineered to come to london and keep him company wallace was furious this was a situation she had always dreaded losing the safety net of ernest but even though she now wrote to the king and tried to call the whole thing off she could not now escape marriage to him she knew he was a weak and needy man she and ernest nicknamed him in private letters peter pan in other words the boy who would not grow up and face his responsibility but as edward was organizing her divorce in ipswich's sizes she had to go ahead with this stage of the divorce even though divorce in late 1930s britain was a fiendishly hot issue both expensive and difficult for some a much greater and more tangible threat to life than anything happening in europe which felt remote to many so wallace and edward continued their relationship while is always believing she would as was normally the case with royal mistresses soon be dumped but she had failed to understand the new king's desperate need for her a sort of obsessive if one-sided love and she was lonely and worried and what she did in those circumstances is truly remarkable because if it had been made public it would have shown that she and the king were conducting a collusive and therefore illegal divorce she continued writing to ernest simpson her second husband the only man she believed really understood her but also the man who in public she was accusing of adultery i discovered a revealing set of 15 letters to ernest the man she now realized she truly loved but it was too late he was lost to her even so she still told him wherever you are you can be sure that never a day goes by without some hours thought of you and for you and again in my elam prayers at night with love wallace enum was a private term of love between them and here is another note revealing what she was thinking as she waited for her case to be heard i really can't concentrate on anything at the moment my dear i have had so much trouble and complications with well everyone i am so worried of the court etc and the us press has done untold harm in every direction besides printing wicked lies i feel small and licked by it all i am sorry for myself i am sorry for the king i hate the us press i hate stuffy british minds and last but not least i don't understand myself which is the cause of all the misery oh give me courage 2 15 tuesday love wallace p.s i am so lonely the two-stage divorce went ahead but the king's proctor a government lawyer was instructed to investigate the legality of the divorce there is some eye wateringly scandalous correspondence kept here in the national archives from ordinary citizens complaining about what they saw as the illegality of the divorce but in the event the king abdicated on december the 11th and after that event the king's proctor was dismissed it would have been too cruel it was decided by the politicians for the king to have given up everything for love only to find that actually he was prevented by law from marrying wallace simpson edward nonetheless had to leave the country to await the final stage of wallace's divorce but having done so they were married finally in june 1937 they became duke and duchess of windsor but only he had royal initials and this effectively meant that the couple were always exiles edward would not come home to see his wife humiliated without royal initials nobody would curtsy to wallace and this edward insisted was a humiliation he could not suffer they lived in the bahamas during world war ii and then moved to paris after the war where wallis became a symbol of elegance through the fashionable clothes she wore but they made a sad couple as ed would never forgave his family for not welcoming wallace and for not treating her as a royal wife the duke died on may the 28th 1972 after six months of appalling pain from throat cancer aged 75. he had been a heavy smoker all his life wallace had remained loyal to the end and she died finally aged almost 90 on april the 24th 1986 they are both buried at frogmore in windsor great park so the love story in wallace's case is complicated she realized how much she loved ernest only once she saw the alternative that she was about to lose him she loved him for his steadfastness for not demanding she change for helping her have her independence and above all for being solid kind and dependable especially after the volatility and humiliating cruelty of win spencer she had dallied with the king because she loved what he gave her jewels furs and security in a financial sense as well as a platform in society she thought she was avenging her mother's poverty she thought she could control his ardor and turn it off but his love was passionate obsessive and not the kind that could be turned off she had allowed a mixture of insecurity and greed to roil her head not her heart she had made an almost faustian pact with jewelry playing the part of the tempting devil so this now very public love affair albeit a one-sided love affair had gone too far wallace was already despised in the country and the commonwealth for representing a brash and brazen new world where perhaps divorce would become the norm and if she refused to marry the king after everything he had given up for her she really feared he might kill himself and then she would be blamed for that too he believed he was fighting for personal happiness and individual fulfillment to be acceptable goals in society here is one of wallace's last letters to ernest she continued writing to him up until 1937. what can i say when i am standing beside the grave of everything that was us and our laughter rings in my ears oh my very dear dear earnest i can only cry as i say farewell and press your hand very tightly and pray to god and here's another dearest earnest i wake up in the night sometimes and i think i must be lying on that strange shays long and hear your footsteps coming down the passage of the flat and there you are with the evening standard under your arm i can't believe that such a thing could have happened to two people who got along so well at least it never should have never should have been like it is now and i am so illogical and so groomed by my pride that when that is touched nothing will stop what i'm capable of doing and this situation shows the truth of that remark because if i had told you i would go to such lengths you wouldn't have believed it humanly possible and of course you had every right to have a flirtation so really you see what a queer girl i am i think peter pan should have written to you too but then he doesn't understand write me sometime please and above all make your life again with care you are so good and sweet so i hope if you look at the documents you will make up your own lines as to what sort of love story this really is and in conclusion if we know one thing about the wallace and edward love story we know that edward was the hunter and wallis the hunthead it's not so much a romantic fairy tale as a dark gothic faustian tale where the devil tempted her with jewelry you