That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor by Anne Sebba Page A

naturally and thus began ‘without conscious plan or foreknowledge what was beyond doubt the most delightful, the most carefree, the most lyric interval of my youth – the nearest thing I imagine to a lotus eater’s dream that a young woman brought up the “right” way could ever expect to know’. She wrote an ‘ecstatic’ letter to her friend Mary Kirk at this time about her life in China ‘entirely devoted to a lyrical list of the servants that she Wallis was now able to afford from the number one boy down through the whole long roll’.
    If Washington was hazardous, Shanghai dangerous and illusory, Peking was exotic, sexually liberating and pulsing with life, yet all from the security of living with a respectable couple, Herman and Katherine Rogers. Life for a foreigner in that walled city enclave, especially in the legation quarter, where bachelors outnumbered women by about ten to one, was magical. It was, she said later, ‘an ideal place for a woman with time on her hands and a secret sorrow in her heart’ – the sorrow more for Espil than for Win. Almost everything about the charm of Peking captivated Wallis, including the noisy street vendors and camel trains. But the language she never mastered, having decided early on that the effort was too great. Herman and Katherine had a Chinese scholar in a long black gown who came to instruct them every day before lunch. Wallis joined in briefly but gave up; it wasn’t that she lacked the ability had she applied herself, but she did not need the skill badly enough. ‘I’m tone deaf and Chinese has different tones on different levels and they all have different meanings,’ she explained. She had the same inability to appreciate music. She pre desic. Shferred riding, swimming in the big new pool at the American Legation, polo and dinner dances every night until the small hours.
    Word of Wallis and her doings had spread rapidly long before her train actually reached Shanghai. Even her arrival in Peking was immediately the subject of gossip and scandal among the foreign and Chinese communities alike. There was always a story worth repeating about ‘the lively Mrs Spencer’, and her visit was the source of seemingly endless tales according to long-time Peking resident Diana Hutchins Angulo, whose parents were close friends of Herman and Katherine Rogers. The families spent weekends together in the temples of the Western Hills (Rogers rented his own temple), enjoyed outings to the racecourse together at Pao Ma Chang, and explored the many palaces, temples and monuments of the city.
    Herman and Katherine entertained constantly at their courtyard house, with a regular stream of international diplomats passing through, boosting the native coterie of artists and writers. Wallis was often the life and soul of the party. One of those who now fell for Wallis was the Italian naval attaché (later Admiral), Alberto Da Zara, a thirty-five-year-old diplomat, not as handsome as Espil but with a similar gallant charm and perfect manners, love of poetry, command of many languages and broad knowledge, as well as a talent for riding. Based in Peking, he ran military missions along the Yangtze River. Writing of the season of 1924 – 5 and the acres of newsprint devoted to horseracing, beautiful women and other sporting passions in Peking, he said that Wallis Spencer was one of the most enthusiastic racegoers. In his memoirs he talks carefully about their relationship but rhapsodizes about her looks, how ‘her best features were her eyes and her hair worn off the face and the way her classic hairstyle suited the beauty of her forehead’. He then devotes the rest of the paragraph to the exquisite nature of her blue eyes, into which he evidently spent hours staring.
    Others remember the affair rather differently. ‘Mrs Spencer was infamous for arousing bouts of passion among adoring males,’ recalls Diana Angulo, who knew Wallis, Robbie and her Italian admirer not only then but