THE BAHAMAS: Abdication from Elba

London’s Colonial Office stiffly announced: His Royal Highness the Duke of Windsor has resigned, effective on April 30, as Governor and Commander in Chief of the Bahamas. The resignation, said the Government, need occasion no surprise: the Governor’s “normal tenure” of five years is almost up. The Bahamas have enjoyed a greater measure of prosperity since the Duke took office.

On Nassau’s palm-fringed Government House a barrage of phone calls and cables descended. For half a day the Duke of Windsor was not at home to any queries. Then he donned a dapper, grey check suit, pinned a red carnation in his lapel, and with his well-dressed Duchess at his side, gallantly went forth to meet the press and explain his second abdication.

There was not much to explain, really. On April 30, when he had asked to be relieved, his normal five-year tenure would still have three months to run. (The newsmen had heard the rumor that the Duke wanted to leave then because the Duchess could not stand the heat of the Bahamian summer. But the Duke said nothing about that.) Some distant day, said the Governor, he and the Duchess would like to return. “I have a deep affection for the Bahamas. . . .”

Even with the woman he loved, the onetime King-Emperor who had ruled over a domain on which the sun never sets could not be very happy ruling 29 islets, 661 cays and 2,387 sandspits. In public, however, he was always correct. Only in private did he say “This Elba!” and she echo “This St. Helena!”

It had been a long time. When they first came, there had been that embarrassing scene at the Emerald Beach Club when Nassau high society had formally welcomed the Duke and snubbed his Duchess. The colonials had to be more British than the British.

“Both the Duchess and I love to travel,” the Duke said, and added: “Nearly five years in Nassau is the longest time I have spent in one place since my adolescence, and the longest I hope to spend in any place in the future. . . . We have no immediate plan beyond going to New York and probably to my ranch in Canada.”

Said the Duchess: “With the world as it is, one could not make a decision now. But we shall definitely visit France. Our possessions are scattered all over France.* We must see what is left. . . .”

To one more question the Duke answered:

“My resignation does not mean a permanent severance from public life. After the war men with experience will be badly needed, and I’ll fit in anywhere that I can be helpful. … I have interests in Canada, America and Europe. … I shall go to England some day. . . .”

But the fact was, and he knew it, that in a world where there is little demand for men whose only training is as King-Emperor, he was technologically unemployable, an obsolete man. He might have liked to be Governor General of Canada, but there was scant chance of it—not so long as straitlaced Bachelor Mackenzie King was the Dominion’s Prime Minister. Australia had already received his brother Gloucester. And the British were not likely to make David’s Wally Vicereine of India. Perhaps France and conspicuous unemployment were inevitable.

*Mostly at their house in Paris and at La Crôe, their faintly colonial villa on the Riviera.