TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/30s/30sking

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                                                                                The Unmaking of King Edward VIII


  [The grisly achievements of the totalitarians went
practically unnoticed by most of the world for the better part
of the decade. The event that probably galvanized more radio
listeners and glossy magazine readers than any other was the sad
tale of Edward VIII, England's handsome, dashing King, and his
love for American double divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson.]


(October 26, 1936)

  Sir Ronald Lindsay, the moose-tall Ambassador at Washington
of His Britannic Majesty, might have taken exception to the
Washington Post's assertion that King Edward "plans to marry"
Mrs. Ernest Simpson. Or Sir Ronald might have objected to the
United Press story carried from coast to coast by the
Scripps-Howard chain under headlines the entire width of the
page:

                           "CHURCH HEADS SNUB
              KING EDWARD"                          "2 PRELATES
SHUN PARTY                               ATTENDED BY
                     MRS. SIMPSON"

  Undenied by any British source, the story of the King and
Mrs. Simpson last week was blunt and simple. Under English law
a man who makes a trip in company with another man's wife, the
two stopping at the same hotels, has in fact given the husband
opportunity to sue the wife for divorce on the ground of
adultery. The King has just made an extended yachting trip in
company with Mrs. Simpson, and notably in Vienna they stopped
at the same hotel. But Mr. Simpson, as a loyal British subject
could not institute proceedings for divorce in which His Majesty
might appear as corespondent. Last week Mr. Simpson did just
about what any disgruntled English husband does who wishes to
spare his wife's name.

  The usual procedure is for the husband to register with a
hired correspondent at an English hotel, the staff of which are
familiar with their jobs. When the wife brings the suit for
divorce, hotelmen testify that the husband and the corespondent
spent the night together in the same room and were registered
on the blotter as man & wife. Needless to say, in such sordid
circumstances any actual commission of adultery is usually
omitted by the husband, whose mood is apt to be one of
bitterness at a divorce system which many British jurists and
prelates have denounced as "revolting" and "unfair." Last week
Mrs. Simpson filed such a divorce suit against Mr. Simpson in
the rural Ipswich Court of Assizes. Under English law, she must
appear in court and prove that she is herself of good character,
for in England, if it can be shown that husband and wife have
each committed adultery, then neither can obtain a divorce.

  The disclosures of last week came as a logical and orderly
sequence to events going back nearly 20 years. The present King,
just after the War, made a first trip to the U.S. of a most
exemplary character. On his second trip "he got in with the
wrong sort of society people on Long Island," as an intimate
member of H.R.H.'s entourage remarked at the time. Efforts to
extricate their eldest son from this fast and loose
international set were unremittingly pursued by King George and
Queen Mary, one of their methods being to send Edward of Wales
on the longest possible Empire tours. As predecessor of Mrs.
Simpson remembers how H.R.H. left her for one of these tours of
duty, sobbing bitterly, and she has the innumerable cablegrams
he sent her while abroad, many dealing with the daily doings of
the little dog she gave him to remember her by. Some $100,000
was fruitlessly spent at Queen Mary's order in doing over
Marlborough House in 1928 to make it a suitable home for the
Prince and a Princes of Wales.

  Nevertheless, Edward VIII has always scrupulously performed
his outward "public duties." He has been the "Empire Salesman."
He has led a charmed youth with the result that today at 42 he
still seems from a distance of 15 feet only about 22. And His
Majesty is undoubtedly most popular with millions of the British
Lower Classes. Today there is probably not a person of this
class who does not love King Edward,  in the sense that "the
Englishman is taught to love his King as a  friend." Meanwhile,
in Mayfair there is a small, swift, hard-drinking clique who are
the King's only real friends. Most of these people seem
"American" to the circles in which Queen Mary and Primary
Minister Stanley Baldwin respectively move -- and to these
worthies "American" is a revolting adjective. The worst feature
of an appalling situation in their eyes last week was not that
Mrs. Simpson has one divorce and is about to have another but
that Mrs. Simpson was in fact born in the fact born in the U.S.

  The King has the right dissolve Parliament and keep the
nation without a legislative body for three years. The King has
the right to sell the British Navy. The signature of the King
on may State documents indispensable to their validity. The
armed forces of the Crown are sworn to him in personal
allegiance. Therefore, if His Majesty, heedless of the
consequences, were resolved to make political trouble  he could
exert upon his Government, the Church and Parliament almost
irresistible pressure. He can, in any case, marry whom-ever he
likes.


  [For months the story was kept out of the British press, out
of deference to the Royal Family, especially the King's rigidly
proper mother, Queen Mary. Matters finally came to a climax
after Mrs. Simpson obtained her divorce.]

(December 7, 1936)

  Government departments in Whitehall seethed last week with
rumors of personal clashes between Prime Minister Stanley
Baldwin and King Edward in Buckingham Palace. A grave impression
was produced when an audience which scores of British officials
knew Mr. Baldwin had had with Edward VIII was unprecedentedly
omitted from mention in the royal Court Circular next morning.
British public life moves with such regularity in its accustomed
grooves that for the Prime Minister, suddenly by telegraph, to
summon members of his Cabinet to drop everything and rush to
meet him at No. 10 Downing Street is a sign that the Empire is
facing a national crisis comparable to threatened war and the
Prime Minister gave that sign last week. He followed it by
conferring with the Leader of the Opposition. Laborite Clement
Attlee.

  Last week Britain's statesmen made supreme efforts to keep
their secret, but United Press, after three days of careful
source-tapping and cross-checking cabled: "It is understood that
Mr. Baldwin's meeting with Mr. Attlee established a common front
of the Conservative and Labor parties on their attitude toward
the friendship between the King and Mrs. Simpson, and left no
doubt that the friendship had precipitated one of the most
serious constitutional crises of modern times."


(December 14, 1936)

  (In) the Private Study of King Edward at Buckingham Palace,
tiny Lord Beaverbrook, the most powerful London publisher and
onetime Canadian insurance salesman, perches with his broad grin
in the middle of an armchair. Over whiskeys & sodas from 6 p.m.
to 8 p.m. the King, restless and flushed with anger, tells Lord
Beaverbrook, hastily summoned from a proposed trip to Arizona,
of his resentment at Prime Minister Baldwin's summoning of the
Cabinet to interfere in His Majesty's proposed marriage to
twice-divorced Mrs. Simpson.

   As censorship breaks down and headlines scream, frantically
milling crowds, for the first time since the Armistice, buy
London papers so fast that presses whirling at top speed cannot
meet the demand. In the House of Commons lobbies, politicians
think the public reaction is hostile to the King and scamper for
the Baldwin bandwagon. "I was for the King when it was purely
a question whether he should be permitted to marry whomsoever
he should choose," says beetling-browed Labor Radical James
Maxton, "but when it is a dispute between him and Government,
I cast my lot with the Government. We want no Dictator!"

   Mr. Baldwin rushes in, soon rushes off hatless again to
consult the Cabinet, rushes back and confronts Edward VIII in
their angriest scene thus far. The Prime Minister applies to a
twice-divorced woman the fighting words "damaged goods." "Sir,"
ultimatums Mr. Baldwin, "there is no question that Parliament
and the Cabinet as well will be in complete agreement on
preferring your abdication to your marriage to Mrs. Simpson."
Edward VIII takes this as an attempt to depose him in the guise
of "abdication" and drives off after midnight to his snuggery.

  From 9:15 to 10:05 in Buckingham Palace the King and Mr.
Baldwin discuss his claim that the Dominions are solid against
Mrs. Simpson.

  The King: "I will brook no interference with my private
affairs."

   Mr. Baldwin: "Sleep on it, Sir."


(December 21, 1936)

   Dignity, like the Imperial mantle which is placed upon
England's King at his Coronation, clothed Edward VIII and his
every act last week after the decision of His Majesty to
abdicate and become not "Mr. Windsor" but Prince Edward, newly
created Duke of Windsor. Scarcely anyone failed to tune in on
Edward VIII as he took leave of his country to read within a few
hours the simple words with which His Royal Highness said
good-by to very nearly all except "the woman I love."

  Prince Edward was scrupulous not to betray his class, and to
do and say all he could to uphold the Kingdom and the Empire,
giving no opportunity to irresponsible groups of the masses to
harm Britain. Long after His Majesty's instrument of abdication
was signed, sealed, published and in course of certain enactment
by Parliament one of the greatest mass gatherings in British
history was still roaring outside of Buckingham Palace. "WE WANT
EDWARD!" He was not there.

  In his historic broadcast, Prince Edward did not defend
either himself or Mrs. Simpson. That would have been
undignified. The skeleton must not be jangled. Unmentioned
therefore by Prince Edward was the clash of wills between
himself and the church of England over whether the Archbishop
of Canterbury would refuse or consent to officiate at the
Coronation and consecration of a King who intended to marry a
woman such as Mrs. Simpson.

  The Archbishop's motive had to do with a feature of the
Coronation service scarcely noticed by laymen who suppose that
the whole point  of a coronation must be that somebody is
crowned. There have been British coronations for 1,000 years and
until comparatively recent generations the while emphasis was
on the "anointing" of the King, as  a newly created bishop is
anointed. -- thus making him a persona mixta or "person of mixed
nature," part layman, part priest. The unspeakable dilemma in
the case of Edward VIII in recent weeks has been: "Can  there
be consecrated, as a part-priest or part-Pope, one who we all
 know has done everything to face us with the fact that he is
resolved  to marry a lady with a past, even if we did our best
to keep him from  making this known to us?"

  Dignified Prince Edward, after dining for a last time with his
Queen Mother, new King George VI, the Duke of Gloucester and the
Duke of Kent, drove last week at great speed through night and
fog to Portsmouth, intending to embark on the Admiralty Yacht.
At the last moment this plan was changed: the name of the yacht
is the Enchantress. It was dignified to sail instead on the
British destroyer Fury, and "His  Grace, the Duke of Windsor"
-- as Prince Edward was created this week  by King George VI --
debarked at Boulogne into a private car and a new life of
wealth, ease and perhaps happiness.