Wallis Simpson, the American divorcee who married Edward VIII plunging the British monarchy into turmoil when he abdicated in 1936, was the victim of an extraordinary disinformation campaign.
The plot was masterminded by a British spy, who characterized her as a libertine who learnt an exotic sex technique called “The Shanghai Grip” in a Chinese brothel.
A new book claims that a fabled briefing document full of salacious stories about Simpson known as the “China Dossier”—a copy of which has never been found but was allegedly passed around high society—was the work of an “incredibly powerful” intelligence officer based in Shanghai named Harry Steptoe.
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Supporters of Meghan Markle, another American divorcee who married into the royal family without entirely happy consequences for the institution, are likely to see parallels with establishment efforts to discredit Wallis. Although Meghan was outwardly welcomed into the family, Meghan herself complained that she was the victim of a “smear campaign” when she was accused of bullying by palace operatives, and her and Prince Harry have both alleged that the media have long colluded with the palace to sully their reputations.
Simpson lived in China in 1924 with her first husband, Earl Winfield Spencer Jr, whom she split from while living there. She subsequently spent several months in the country as a single woman.
A report in The Times of London says that the titillating tales in the dossier included claims that Wallis, when living in China, had been a porn model and had visited brothels to learn a sex technique supposedly called “the Shanghai grip.”
The maneuver, it was claimed, required a woman to clench her muscles in order to “make a matchstick feel like a cigar.”
The carefully planned sexist and racist slanders are described in the new book, Her Lotus Year, as “one of the most successful whispering campaigns of all time.”
That the stories are false has not affected their ability to endure; Helena Bonham Carter, playing the Queen Mother in the Oscar-winning 2010 film The King’s Speech, said of Wallis: “Apparently she has certain skills—acquired in an establishment in Shanghai.”
The secret of the dossier’s success, author Paul French says in his book, was that the stories of sexual excess were all existing rumors and scandals in Chinese society which were transposed onto Wallis by the intelligence operative.
The goal was to stop Edward plunging the nation into turmoil by marrying a divorcee: “They just wanted to scupper this relationship somehow,” French told The Times.
Take, for example the allegation that she posed for pornographic photos for the wealthy Italian hotelier Victor Sassoon. Sassoon in fact took naked pictures of the journalist Emily Hahn (and was not even in Shanghai at the same time as Simpson).
Another narrative about Simpson being a gambler and opium user was lifted from a play, the book claims.
