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Paul French, Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties, and the Making of Wallis Simpson,  St. Martin’s Press, 2024. 298 pgs.

Wallis Simpson will forever be imprinted on British history. Even though King Edward VIII was responsible for his decision to abdicate the throne to marry the American divorcée—twice over—it was Simpson who bore the blame for his renunciation as King of England. When the scandal emerged, critics of their relationship alleged the existence of a China dossier, claiming it detailed a supposed year of debauchery Simpson spent in Hong Kong and China during the mid-1920s. Paul French’s recent book, Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties, and the Making of Wallis Simpson, delves into this brief chapter of her life and debunks the allegations in the infamous dossier.

Long before she became known as Wallis Simpson, she was born as Bessie Wallis Warfield. French notes that she dropped Bessie early on and at the age of twenty married an American naval officer named Earl Winfield Spencer, Jr., known as Win. Simpson’s first marriage took her to Hong Kong and later to Shanghai and Peking.

Win sat out the Great War and felt inadequate for not participating. He was a graduate of the US Naval Academy and felt left behind when his classmates fought in the war while he was stuck in San Diego. As French writes, “The problem was that Win drank… heavily.” His drinking would strain his marriage to Wallis, despite her continued patience with his behaviour. After five difficult years of marriage, during which she tried to avoid Win’s nasty temper, often to no avail, Wallis was left alone in the US when Win was reassigned to Hong Kong. She travelled to Paris to visit friends, but felt that her only chance of saving her marriage would be to follow Win to Hong Kong two years after he departed the US. This is where the book truly begins to shine and French’s talent for describing Old China shines through. For instance, even for those who know Hong Kong well, this description will seem anything but mundane:

Hong Kong was a dramatic harbor by any standards. The imposing cluster of European stone buildings along the Praya water frontage extended away toward the more densely populated Chinese districts of Kennedy Town and Sheung Wan. Behind the Praya, the land suddenly rose steeply, verdant and lush, up to what the British dubbed “The Peak,” scattered with the houses of the wealthy and the colonial elite.

This is the Hong Kong Simpson first saw. It doesn’t seem so different from today’s harbour front, except that the buildings are no longer made of stone. Reunited, Simpson and Win lived in modest military barracks in Tsim Sha Tsui. To show Simpson that he had changed his ways, Win tried to win her back at the fabled Repulse Bay Hotel, decades before its demolition. Again, French’s gift for vivid description brings the narrative to life:

Then the road dipped down toward the southern shore of the island, dense green forest giving way to the curvature of Deep Water Bay and the sparkling South China Sea. The taxi followed the coastal Island Road round to Repulse Bay, a curving half-moon inlet of sandy beach that sloped down to aquamarine waters. The Repulse Bay Hotel sat almost on the beach and was famed as one of the most romantic hotels in the Far East.

But this second honeymoon was short-lived. Win had not, in fact, curtailed his drinking. He went on so many drinking sprees that that Simpson had no idea where he’d gone most nights and began to wonder whether he would ever come home. Win was sent upriver to Shamian (Shameen) Island in Canton (Guangzhou) to protect US interests as violence broke out in the Canton Merchants’ Corps Uprising. It was not a likely destination for the wife of a US naval officer, yet French surmises—based on the limited evidence available a century later—that Simpson was engaged in intelligence work for the US government in China. Her only legitimate reason for being allowed to Canton at that time would have been to deliver United States classified documents from Hong Kong to Canton which could not have been trusted to arrive safely by other means. This would not be Simpson’s last time working as a courier in China. But it would mark the start of the breakdown of her marriage to Win.

In 1924 and 1925, the United States had a court in Shanghai to handle all matters related to US law. Since the US held a stake in Shanghai’s International Settlement, it could try its own citizens in Shanghai under US law in its own judicial system. Simpson hoped to obtain a divorce in Shanghai in the US court system there.

As French tells of Simpson’s travels to Shanghai and the many different people she interacted with there, he also dispels the rumours of the dossier. Simpson’s marriage was all but over and whatever relationships she conducted in Shanghai were done under the realisation that she was a single woman.

More than half the book takes place in Peking, and fans of French’s Midnight in Peking will especially appreciate this part of the story as it’s reminiscent of the work that brought French international recognition:

Wallis disembarked at Chienmen Station into a throng of people. Passengers foreign and Chinese, rich and poor, were instantly accosted by beggars and bootblacks, itinerant vendors of sweetmeats, candied fruits, and hot green tea. Country bumpkins, lost and bewildered, forced off their land and into the capital by marauding warlord troops, mingled wide-eyed with European and American sojourners on the Oriental grand touch fending off or trying to find station porters.

Simpson had a grand time in Peking, living in an enchanting hutong and engaging in a whirlwind love affair with Italian comandante Alberto de Zara. This was a decade before Italy joined forces with Germany and Japan to form the Axis powers. French does not ignore Simpson’s Nazi sympathies during the Second World War but notes that she did not display fascist tendencies during her year in China a decade earlier.

French recognises the limitations of writing about someone who has been shrouded in secrecy by the British royal family, but he does a marvellous job of immersing the reader in 1924 Hong Kong, 1925 Shanghai, and Peking. He also writes about Simpson with the empathy that a biographer should give his subject, flaws and all. Most of all, French brings a feminist lens to Simpson after being remembered for decades in misogynistic terms. Simpson would undoubtedly approve.

How to cite: Blumberg-Kason, Susan. “Remembering Wallis—Paul French’s Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties, and the Making of Wallis Simpson.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 27 Nov 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/11/27/wallis-simpson.

Susan Blumberg-Kason is the author of Good Chinese Wife: A Love Affair With China Gone Wrong. Her writing has also appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books‘ China Blog, Asian Jewish Life, and several Hong Kong anthologies. She received an MPhil in Government and Public Administration from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Blumberg-Kason now lives in Chicago and spends her free time volunteering with senior citizens in Chinatown. (Photo credit: Annette Patko) [Susan Blumberg-Kason and ChaJournal.]