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

when she visited Shanghai; there are a number of discrepancies and ellipses in her account of her year in China.
    Wallis wasted little time in contacting the Englishman to whom she had been given an introduction. ‘His name does not matter. I came to know him as “Robbie”,’ she wrote, insisting rather bizarrely that she got in touch only at the urging of a woman she did not know in the next-door hotel room. She describes him as young, handsome, beautifully dressed with an attractive voice. For as soon as she sent him an introductory note he responded, first with a basket of exotic fruit and then with a telephone call inviting her to join him for a cocktail in the bar later that afternoon. Wallis, wearing a single red camellia, was clearly an attractive prospect as the drink turned into dinner, which proved ‘even more pleasant’.
    Who was this man and why was Wallis so coy about naming him? Others have named him as Harold Robinson, a British diplomat, but there was no British diplomat of that name in the city. He was probably Harold Graham Fector Robinson, a British architect born in Hampstead in north London who went (or was sent) to Shanghai as a young man, returning to the UK briefly around 1910 to qualify for election as an associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). According to Kelly’s Street Directory for 1924 Shanghai, Harold Robinson had a residence at 27 Great Western Road, a good address in the west end of town, close to the Kadoorie Marble Hall mansion. There is neither wife nor children listed for that address. As Wallis remarked, Robbie lived in a large house with his (male) business partner, ‘where they entertained the more amusing members of the foreign colony then predominantly British’. Robbie knew everyone in Shanghai, and he swiftly drew Wallis into the sort of world she thrived on – garden parties and race meetings at the Shanghai Race Club, which was at the centre of all social life. In the 1930s, when the clubhouse was rebuilt, he was the architect responsible for the rebuilding the 66-acre racecourse, where polo and bowling also took place. Yet Wallis described continuing the warm friendship with him as ‘purposeless’, even though sem"ven thohe clearly relished his company.
    Robbie also escorted Wallis to dinners at the Majestic Hotel on Bubbling Well Road where:

    in a bower of flowers one danced in a sunken courtyard by the light of coloured lanterns. It was here in the company of Robbie that I first heard Vincent Youmans’ Tea for Two and the combination of that melody, the moonlight, the perfume of jasmine, not to mention the Shangri-la illusion of the courtyard, made me feel that I had really entered the Celestial Kingdom. No doubt about it, life in Shanghai in 1924 was good, very good and in fact almost too good for a woman under a dangerous illusion of quasi-independence.
     

    Wallis, like any woman of her class, could not be expected to know about the desperate conditions of poor factory workers or rickshaw pullers sleeping in alleyways or sampans. But she was clearly oblivious to the deep political unrest and frequent dangerous skirmishes in the city. The Shanghai Wallis is referring to in 1924 was one of dinner parties and tea dances – although according to one commentator more whisky than tea was often drunk at both – as well as boutiques selling fine silks, jade and choice pieces of chinoiserie. Several luxury hotels employed top American jazz bands to entertain the hundreds of couples who twirled around the magnificent sprung floors. But her account is interesting because, although she refers to being in the city in 1924, she obviously returned at least once more the following year as there exists a Shanghai Race Club complimentary member’s badge in the name of Mrs Spencer for the spring 1925 meeting.
    Robbie tried to help her with a divorce by introducing her to a lawyer in Shanghai, but this attempt too was abandoned once she discovered the