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<text> <title> (1930s) The Unmaking Of King Edward VIII </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1930s Highlights </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> The Unmaking of King Edward VIII </hdr> <body> [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: <qt> <l>"CHURCH HEADS SNUB KING EDWARD"</l> <l>"2 PRELATES SHUN PARTY ATTENDED BY MRS. SIMPSON"</l> </qt> 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 correspondent. 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 correspondent 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 Boulogn wealth, ease and perhaps happiness. </body> </article> </text>