Wallis Simpson - First Marriage

First Marriage

In April 1916, Wallis met Earl Winfield Spencer, Jr., a U.S. Navy aviator, at Pensacola, Florida, while visiting her cousin Corinne Mustin. It was at this time that Wallis witnessed two aeroplane crashes about two weeks apart, resulting in a lifelong fear of flying. The couple married on 8 November 1916 at Christ Episcopal Church in Baltimore, which had been Wallis's parish. Win, as her husband was known, was an alcoholic. He drank even before flying and once crashed into the sea, but escaped almost unharmed. After the United States entered World War I in 1917, Spencer was posted to San Diego as the first commanding officer of a training base in Coronado, known as Naval Air Station North Island; they remained there until 1921. In 1920 Edward, the Prince of Wales, visited San Diego, but he and Wallis did not meet. Later that year, Spencer left his wife for a period of four months, but in the spring of 1921 they were reunited in Washington, D.C., where Spencer had been posted. They soon separated again, and in 1922, when Spencer was posted to the Far East as commander of the Pampanga, Wallis remained behind, continuing an affair with an Argentine diplomat, Felipe de Espil. In January 1924, she visited Paris with her recently widowed cousin Corinne Mustin, before sailing to the Far East aboard a troop carrier, USS Chaumont (AP-5). The Spencers were briefly reunited until she fell ill, after which she returned to Hong Kong.

An Italian diplomat remembered Wallis from her time in Warlord era China: "Her conversation was brilliant and she had the habit of bringing up the right subject of conversation with anyone she came in contact with and entertaining them on that subject." According to Hui-lan Koo, the second wife of Chinese diplomat and politician Wellington Koo, the only Mandarin phrase that Wallis learned during her sojourn in Asia was "Boy, pass me the champagne".

Wallis toured China, and stayed with Katherine and Herman Rogers, who were to remain long-term friends, while in Beijing. According to the wife of one of Win's fellow officers, Mrs Milton E. Miles, in Beijing, Wallis met Count Galeazzo Ciano, later Mussolini's son-in-law and Foreign Minister, had an affair with him, and became pregnant, leading to a botched abortion that left her unable to conceive. The rumour was later widespread but never substantiated and Ciano's wife, Edda Mussolini, denied it. Wallis spent over a year in China. By September 1925, she and her husband were back in the United States, though living apart. Their divorce was finalised on 10 December 1927.