The seemingly never-ending obsession with Wallis Simpson on the part of writers, publishers and (presumably) readers is at this point beginning to seem quite crazed. What more can there be left to say? But always, another book; and always, the Daily Mail will make the most of the scraps it dishes up. Paul French’s Her Lotus Year claims to tell “for the first time” the full story of the months the future Duchess of Windsor spent in China in the mid-1920s. Not only does it arrive highly praised by other Simpson biographers (it’s as if they all belong to a syndicate or something), but the Mail has already run a helpfully piquant piece featuring the sexual techniques Simpson supposedly learned while she was up to nothing-very-much in Hong Kong, Shanghai and what was then Peking.
Only there’s a problem here. French’s book, like others before it, wholly debunks the existence of the so-called “China Dossier”, a document reputedly used by the British establishment to besmirch Simpson’s name at the time of the abdication. The rumours that then swirled round Edward VIII’s American divorcee – that she frequented brothels, was addicted to opium and modelled for pornographic photographs – have, he says, no basis in reality. If she did indeed know how to perform the infamous Singapore grip – pelvic floor exercises avant la lettre – it was a secret kept between Simpson and her lovers (of which she did, at least, have several). Such stories were then, as now, only gossip: “Venom, venom, VENOM,” as Simpson put it.
French is a China specialist, and he has delved into every aspect of the period she was there, from the battles its warlords were then constantly fighting to the standard of room service at the hotels in which she stayed. But however thorough his research, the realities of Simpson’s life in the east remain somewhat less interesting than the myths. At times, his book reads like an old Baedeker guide, all ships and trains and recommended restaurants. Yes, the danger involved for a lone young woman travelling across China when it was close to civil war hugely increases your admiration for Simpson (though, admittedly, the bar is low). But for atmosphere, French has to fall back on accounts other than her own. Broadly speaking, we’re in the realm of W Somerset Maugham’s scandalous novel of 1925, The Painted Veil – and to be honest, there were many moments as I read Her Lotus Year when I longed to be holding Maugham’s brilliant book in my hands instead.
Simpson arrived in Hong Kong from Virginia in September 1924 for a reunion with her estranged first husband, Win Spencer, an American navy officer and heavy drinker who used a large consommé bowl for his dry martinis. At first, all was well. The pair enjoyed a (dry) second honeymoon at a swanky resort. But soon Spencer was back on the booze, at which point Wallis decided to make for Shanghai, accompanied by another naval wife, Mary Sadler (she would later divorce him). As seems to have been the case wherever she travelled, there Simpson immediately made contact with a well-connected man – in this instance, an architect called Harold Graham Fector Robinson (“Robbie”) – and he manfully introduced her to the city’s wealthiest circles. Together, they went to tea dances and the races; when he was working, Simpson shopped, something at which she was very good (later, she would raise funds by “curio” hunting, jade a speciality).
But however sybaritic her lifestyle – according to Maugham, expat dinner tables “groaned with silver” – she stayed in Shanghai, modern and bustling, only a few weeks. Her eye was on the north: a different proposition altogether. She and Sadler left in early December, were detained in the port of Tientsin en route, after which she proceeded alone to Peking, her friend having got cold feet (bandits were said to hold up the trains). How was Simpson able to travel alone like this, and to fund her grand hotels on arrival? Why was she always met at her destination by high-ranking officials? French speculates she was a US government courier, transporting documents, which is plausible but doesn’t fully explain her motivation. War and typhoid were raging, and yet this young woman (she was 28), alone and meagrely resourced, was determined to establish herself in inaccessible Peking. For good or ill, there is something buccaneering about her.
The last section of the book, devoted to the Peking months, is by far the most beguiling. In 1925, the city still had 3,000 ancient hutongs (traditional alleys), and it was on one of these that Simpson made her home, having been invited to live with a wealthy American couple, Kitty and Herman Rogers. French insists Simpson had no way of knowing that Kitty was living in Peking, but it was serendipitous nonetheless: her own living quarters and rickshaw puller; early morning pony rides on the city’s Tartar Wall; country weekends at the temple the Rogers rented, where tiny bells tinkled on vermilion eaves. Simpson may well have mastered only four words in the dialect – “Boy, pass the champagne!” – but in every other respect, she was as embedded in Peking life as a foreigner could be. She loved Chinese food – and for afters, there was her Italian lover, Alberto da Zara, a gunboat commander with “impeccable manners”.
Why did she leave? On 30 May 1925, there was an incident 750 miles away in Shanghai. Protesters demonstrating against the arrest of students who’d criticised foreign imperialism were shot; four died, and more were wounded. Membership of the Communist party grew; protests, strikes and boycotts erupted elsewhere. One night Wallis arrived for dinner at the home of a British attache, only to find that his “number one boy” (a servant) had walked out. Her time was clearly up, and as the summer rains arrived, she began the long journey home. Later, she would look back on her stay in the country as “the most delightful interval” of her youth. But its influence on her was mostly aesthetic – when Man Ray photographed her in 1936, her Chinese-influenced Mainbocher gown competed for attention with a statue of Guan Yu, the god of war – and what knowing more about it adds to the sum of history is really anyone’s guess.
• Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties, and the Making of Wallis Simpson by Paul French is published by Elliott & Thompson (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
