The Prince of Wales as a child with his mother, Queen Mary

Wallis and Ernest Simpson as guests of the Prince of Wales. Seated: the King of Greece

I spent three weeks of the honeymoon with Ernest Simpson in France, and we returned at the beginning of summer to London, staying in a small hotel until we could find a residence. I found a furnished house with the help of Maud, Ernest's sister. Like all English houses it was crammed with furnishings, the necessary and the unnecessary alike — but I began to love our new home as time went by. I had a servant, a cook, a chauffeur, and a lady's maid; that was luxury, to be sure — but who was expected to come to this house?

I knew no one in London except Ernest's sister, and she was infinitely kind to me and understanding of my state of mind; for this reason she let no occasion or dinner given at her home pass without inviting me to attend — her aim being to introduce me to the greatest possible number of her friends. Yet none of this eased my feeling that I was a foreign American who had come to force herself upon a London society she did not expect to understand or to be understood by. How many times I ran into difficulties in conversation because of my American accent — and I will not mention the stares of the shopkeepers, and their astonishment when I asked for some article that was known to them by another name. And the difficulty of language faded away entirely beside the resounding titles, which worked like magic upon the British, while they were strange, and remote from an

American girl's understanding. I still remember the advice one of Maud's friends gave me: she said it was necessary that I mention a few grand titles in my talk in front of my maid, so as to win her respect. Curiosity led me to study London society, and I found no better means than reading the newspapers; the corner that spoke of the parties and the events at the royal palace caught my eye in particular, and I was arrested by the titles that the editor set before the names of

the members of the royal family. It astounded me to see an entire nation following the comings and goings of a single family; even Ernest himself, who had lived years in the United States, showed intense interest in