Bessie Wallis Warfield
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==Bessie Wallis Warfield== | ==Bessie Wallis Warfield== | ||
| − | Bessie Wallis Warfield was born on 19 June 1896 in Square Cottage, Monterey Inn, Blue Ridge Summit, Franklin County, [[Pennsylvania]], as the daughter of [[#Teackle Wallis Warfield|Teackle Wallis Warfield]] and [[#Alice M Montague|Alice M. Montague]]. They were at that resort due to a futile attempt to cure Teackle's tuberculosis. Teackle's health had been precarious for some time and he died when Bessie was about five months old. | + | Bessie Wallis Warfield was born on 19 June 1896 in Square Cottage, Monterey Inn, Blue Ridge Summit, Franklin County, [[Pennsylvania]], as the daughter of [[#Teackle Wallis Warfield|Teackle Wallis Warfield]] and [[#Alice M Montague|Alice M. Montague]]. They were at that resort due to a futile attempt to cure Teackle's tuberculosis. Teackle's health had been precarious for some time and he died that November, when Bessie was about five months old. Teackle was not a great commercial success in his career and left Alice and Bessie with little to support them. |
| − | As far as | + | At first, Alice and Bessie moved in with Teackle's mother in Baltimore, [[Maryland]] but the two woman could not agree. Bessie in her autobiography says that it was either that Solomon Warfield, a bachelor uncle, also living there, fell in love with Alice in those close quarters, or that Alice's mother-in-law just didn't like Alice dating so soon after Teackle's death. The widowed Mrs Warfield still wore black more than a decade after her husband's death and evidently thought that was the proper course for Alice to follow. |
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| + | So Alice and Bessie moved again, to a hotel for some months, but then again into the house of her aunt. Alice however wanted a place of her own, and so they then took an apartment in a building with several other tenants. The biography at Answers.com states: "In the end the two women were supported by Teackle's wealthy brother Solomon Warfield." This however is not exactly true. Women of Alice's time and standing were very restricted in what sort of careers they could pursue. Alice did some small at-home sewing and took a hand at cooking for some of the other tenants in the apartment building where she lived, but the money deposited by Solomon, monthly into her bank account at his bank, is what kept most of the bills paid. | ||
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| + | Some biographers would have you believe that Alice "ran a boarding house". Alice however did not own the building. She merely found out that many tenants ate out, and offered to cook for them, in exchange for money. She was a great cook, but not great at minding the bills, and ended up spending more than she was taking in. So that ended her brief career as a cook. She never "ran a boarding house". | ||
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| + | As far as Wallis name, "she was christened Bessie but when she grew up, she dropped the Bessie and called herself Wallis" (''The Amiable Baltimorians'') In doing this, she was following a family tradition, as her father did not like his name Teackle, and always went by T. | ||
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| + | Bessie Wallis was named Bessie for Alice's favorite older sister, and Wallis for her husband's middle name. She states that her name was all run together, her grandmother calling her "Bessiewallis" as if it were one name. | ||
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