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

living in Coronado and was photographed with, among others, John Barrymore and Charlie Chaplin. One of the major events during her time there was a ball at the Hotel del Coronado on 7 April 1920 in honour of the then Prince of Wales as he stopped off during a major tour en route to Australia on HMS Renown . For years the romantic story flourished that it was here that Wallis met the Prince for the first time.
    Win Spencer, by then Lieutenant Commander Spencer, was later quoted as saying of the evening of the ball: ‘Practically all navy officers stationed here were present with their wives. We all went down the receiving line. My former wife [Wallis] was with me most of the evening. Of course I’m not quite sure but she may have been introduced to him. As I recall she slipped away for a few minutes and may have b bed may heen received by the Prince …’
    The legend that Wallis and Edward first met in a hotel ballroom in San Diego not only grew but was embellished in subsequent years. Not surprisingly the hotel itself still today fosters the idea, displaying prominently a portrait of the Duke and Duchess as well as featuring a small alcove for parties called the Duchess’s private dining room. According to another story: ‘Mrs Spencer was wearing a red evening gown that night and stood out so much from the rest of the women that the Prince asked to be presented to her.’
    But the reality is more interesting. According to a short newspaper article of 31 March 1920 in the San Diego Union devoted to social activity in the community, Mrs Winfield Spencer left that afternoon for Los Angeles, ‘taking the Lark tonight for Monterey, where she will be the house guest for the weekend at the Del Monte Lodge of Mrs Jane Selby Hayne of San Francisco. Mrs Spencer goes north to attend the polo games.’ Two weeks later, in an issue of the same journal dated Sunday 18 April 1920, there appeared the following: ‘Mrs E. Winfield Spencer returned to Hotel del Coronado Tuesday evening [13 April 1920] after several weeks’ visit with Mrs Jane Selby Hayne at Del Monte.’
    Other articles in the San Francisco Chronicle for the two weeks in question confirm her presence with Mrs Selby Hayne and report that the two women ‘spent much time on the Del Monte Polo field practising with ball and mallet’. In other words, Wallis was not in Coronado at the time of the ball. Instead, she was staying with the prominent San Francisco socialite, skilled horsewoman, ardent polo aficionado and, perhaps most significantly, newly divorced Mrs Selby Hayne. Jane Selby Hayne had been visiting Coronado in March 1920, so quite possibly Wallis met her just a month previously and jumped at the chance to cement the new friendship. In her memoirs Wallis stated emphatically that she did not, ‘as popular story has it’, meet the Prince of Wales when he visited that April. But nor does she say why she did not, nor where she was. She writes evasively that when their marriage was breaking up in earnest many invitations came to them both, including one for ‘polo at Del Monte’. She does not elaborate. Yet had she been in Coronado she would hardly have refused an opportunity to meet the Prince. Most likely it did not suit her story to reveal that she was the one on the move in the young marriage, the one who had gone looking for fun elsewhere and missed the one big social event of her time at Coronado.
    Meanwhile the Prince wrote to his then girlfriend that the dinner dance at the Coronado Hotel was ‘most bloody awful … I’ve never hated a party as much as I did this evening’s … I’m near unto cwying [sic].’
    Wallis insists that her first husband’s drinking was aggravated by lack of promotion or by being passed over when he had the chance to serve in a combat zone. Maybe. But the jobs he was given were not insignificant ones and clearly required a man of forceful personality and talent. Just as likely, if Wallis went north alone and had an exciting