Our Monday Muse for this week is the ever beautiful Wallis Simpson. She was born in Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania and was named after her father, Teackle Wallis Warfield. Her father died of tuberculosis while she was a young girl, so her mother and her lived dependent on her father’s wealthy unmarried brother, Soloman Davis Warfield.

Wallis attended Oldfields School, the wealthiest school in Maryland, paid for by her uncle. There she met and befriended Renée du Pony, daughter of Senator T. Coleman du Pont and Mary Kirk, whose family founded Kirk Silverware. Wallis is reported to have always been a well dressed, intelligent girl. It is said she always pushed herself hard to do well. She is often described as beautiful, clever, and ambitious.

Wallis’ marriage to King Edward VIII was her third. In this case, the third time truly was the charm. Their love story was an extravagant one, and Wallis had expressed that having lived such a great romance was difficult. When they first met Edward was a prince, and Wallis was still married to her second husband, Ernest Aldrich Simpson. During their affair, Edward was crowned King. Around the same time, Wallis filed for divorced. Their relationship soon became public in the United Kingdom, and she had to flee the country to escape the press. Their relationship was a complete scandal at the time, and it was not accepted by the public or government. So, Edward passed the crown. He gave up being a king to be with Wallis.

Wallis lived to an old age. Widowed after cancer took the Duke, she spent her last years suffering from Dementia. There have been many movies made about our beloved Wallis, and in many of them feature some of our other vintage muses. Their stories will to told another Monday.