WallisSimpson1
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==Given Many Advantages== | ==Given Many Advantages== | ||
| + | Widowed a second time, Mrs. Rasin continued her efforts to give her daughter the advantages which surely were due a girl who could trace her ancestry back to Noble Knight Pagan de Warfield, numbered in the forces of William the Conqueror when he crossed the Channel in 1066 — to say nothing of being a cousin of the late Edward Warfield, the governor of Maryland, and, on her mother's side of the family, related to Governor Montague of Virginia. | ||
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| + | It was Wallis' wealthy uncle, the late S. Davies Warfield, president of the Seaboard Airline Railroad, who made it possible for her to attend Arundel school. The school, no longer in existence, overlooked aristocratic Mount Vernon Place. Wallis went there four years and, while she wasn't particularly interested in sports, did play on the basketball team. | ||
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| + | One of her classmates was Mary Kirk, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry C. Kirk, Jr. Mary Kirk made her bow in society the same night as Wallis Warfield. Later she was to be one the bridesmaids at Wallis' wedding. Today, as Mrs. Jacques Raffray of New York, she denies emphatically that, in the event of a divorce between Mr. and Mrs. Simpson, she (Mrs. Raffray) will march to the altar with Ernest Simpson. | ||
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| + | "There is not one word of truth in it," says Mrs. Raffray who returned only a few days ago from London where she visited Mrs. Simpson at her Bryanston Square apartment. | ||
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| + | Point seemed to be added to the rumor of a possible romance by the fact that Mrs. Raffray is seperated from her husband, living at 780 Madison avenue, while he occupies an apartment down the street at 675. | ||
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| + | But there will be no divorce, says Mrs. Raffray, denying that Ernest Simpson is on his way to the United States or has any intention of returning. | ||
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| + | Back in the Baltimore days of 1914, a page of Wallis Warfield's diary (if there had been a diary) would have read something like this: | ||
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| + | Monday — Luncheon at the Stafford for Augusta Eareckson, given by her mother, Mrs. W.R. Eareckson. | ||
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| + | Wednesday afternoon — Oyster roast at 1 p.m. at Albert Graham Ober's country place in the Green Spring Valley for his niece. | ||
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| + | Wednesday night — Mr. and Mrs. Frederick B. Beacham's party for Priscilla at Lehmann Hall. | ||
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| + | Thursday — Luncheon at the Baltimore Country Club for Mary Kirk given by her mother. | ||
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| + | Saturday — Trip to Norfolk, Va., to spend the week end with Mrs. Floyd Hughes. | ||
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| + | ==Met Husband in Florida== | ||
| + | Wallis Warfield was at the Lyric theater the night a fashionable audience, gathered to see Anna Pavlowa dance, burst into "ahs" and "ohs" as Harry Lehr, believed to be in Paris, strolled down the aisle, creating more of a sensation than the Russian ballerina on the stage. | ||
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| + | After the holidays, the social rush died away. Wallis Warfield and six other girls planned a party to break the dullness. The invitations issued from the only unconventional note in the hitherto strictly conventional pattern of that debutante year. | ||
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| + | The invitations read:<blockquote>"A hen committee requests the pleasure of your company at a hen dance to be given on the evening of January 8 at 9 o'clock at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. W.B. Clark, 1118 North Charles St." | ||
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| + | There were other cotillions, other parties. During the two years, following her debut, Wallis Warfield spent almost as much time in Washington and Philadelphia as she did in Baltimore. She went to Annapolis to football games and dances. Each year she attended the annual ball given by Major General Barnett and Mrs. Barnett at their country estate, Wakefield Manor, near Washington. Mrs. Barnett was Wallis' mother's cousin. Sometimes Wallis went to parties given by another cousin of her mother, Mrs. Alexander Brown of Baltimore, whose daughter married T. Suffern Tailer. | ||
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| + | Other girls who "came out" in 1914 announced engagements, sent out invitations for their weddings. Wallis remained "Miss Warfield." | ||
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| + | And then, early in 1916, she went to Florida to visit Mrs. Henry Musteyn whose husband was in the naval service at Pensacola. There Wallis Warfield met Lieut. Earl Winfield Spencer, Jr., of Chicago, handsome, indeed, in the uniform of a naval aviator. | ||
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| + | Wholeheartedly, ecstatically Wallis fell in love! | ||
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| + | <blockquote>Next: Marriage and divorce — another chapter in the life of Wallis Warfield, Baltimore girl who became "the most talked-of woman in the world." | ||
