With her sharp understanding of appearances, she always knew the importance of a name.

She wanted to pit her wits not against other women but against men in a man's world. She was funny, clever, smart - in both the English and American uses of the term. She wanted to be something out of the ordinary for a woman. But she soon jettisoned 'Bessie', describing it as a name fit only for cows.'Wallis', however, was a man's name for a woman who could hold her own with men. His statue stands today at one end of Mount Vernon Square, the city's main plaza, overshadowed though it is by the imposing 178-foot-high monument of George Washington in the centre, the first erected in the first President's honour. Her own father, too, bore this man's name. The latter had been imprisoned for a time during the Civil War, along with Wallis's grandfather, for supporting a call for secession from the Union, but was later appointed provost at the University of Maryland. The name her parents chose for her was 'Bessiewallis', to honour both her mother's beloved sister Bessie and her grandfather's illustrious friend Severn Teackle Wallis, an author and legislator and, in Baltimore, an important man. 'Hi, I'm Wallis,' she would say when she entered a room.

Although her surname changed many times, this name was one of the few constants in her life. Having chosen her own name she had to work hard to live up to it, to create a strong relationship with it. She was displaying a contempt for tradition and the ordinary which would be so crucial to her destiny. In taking such a name she was constructing an identity, giving herself from a young age freedom that women of her era could not take for granted. It was a credo she lived by.įrom the start this woman fashioned herself as something strong, intriguing, distinctive. 'Wallis' is saying not only this is who I am but you will know no one else like me. Wallis, the androgynous and unusual name she insisted on for herself, is a bold statement of identity. Choosing your own name is the supreme act of self-creation.

That Woman by Anne Sebba