GREAT BRITAIN: Unprivate Lives

¶Citizens of Aberdeen, embittered because King Edward, instead of opening their new hospital, met Mrs. Simpson at their railway station on her visit to Scotland (TIME, Oct. 5), chalked Aberdeen streets with the John Knoxian exhortation: “Down with the American Harlot!”

¶In London, Mrs. Simpson and Mrs. Bingham, wife of the U. S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James, both attended for the first time the same function, a musicale at the Yugoslav Legation.

¶A private telephone line last week connected Mrs. Simpson’s town house with Buckingham Palace. Europeans recalled that Dowager Queen Marie of Rumania had a similar private wire from her palace to the home of Prince Barbu Stirbey until this was torn out by order of Her Majesty’s angered sonKing Carol.

¶King Edward, after laying his Armistice Day wreath on the Cenotaph inWhitehall last week, was greeted in the Royal Box at Albert Hall by veterans whoserenaded him with the song Who’s Your Lady Friend? His Majesty then drovedirectly to dine a deux with Mrs. Simpson at her home.

¶After dining with Mrs. Simpson and making merry with friends who drifted in afterward, His Majesty left after midnight by sleeping car to review at Portland the Home Fleet, just back from “threatening” Italy in the Mediterranean (TIME, Sept. 30, 1935). The Royal Yacht Victoria & Albert on which King George and Queen Mary always put to sea to review the fleet was slept in by King Edward, tied to the dock at Portland. Rousingly cheered, His Majesty cried genially, “The last time I was at Portland, I was a midshipman!”, proceeded to inspect the fleet from a fast admiral’s barge.

¶From Portland the King sped to his snuggery, Fort Belvedere, 30 miles outside London, and was joined by Mrs. Simpson for the weekend. A reporter crawling that night among the giant rhododendrons ascertained that jazz was blaring and every window of the snuggery ablaze, before he was picked out by the electric torch of a constable too wise to make an arrest which would have made headlines.

¶That chipper little Irish columnist, Edward Arthur Donald St. GeorgeHamilton Chichester, Marquess of Donegall continued silent in print aboutthe King & Mrs. Simpson but complained in private of the service he is gettingfrom a Milwaukee clipping bureau. It had already littered his house and office with 20,000 different clippings about the King & Mrs. Simpson last week when he canceled his order by cable. Next day the postman brought 6,000 more clippings and Lord Donegall deplored what his curiosity was going to cost him.

¶The Editor of the London Times, Mr. Geoffrey Dawson, screwed his courage up and up last week, not to the point of printing so much as a word about the King & Mrs. Simpson in the Times, but to the point of making a verbal intimation. Mr. Dawson was correct in assuming that this would be cabled to the U. S., whence it would speed to Buckingham Palace (where clippings by the bale were being sorted last week by Assistant Private Secretary Sir Godfrey Thomas) and be read by King Edward, perhaps with good effect. Said Times Editor Dawson: “The King is going to finish with Mrs. Simpson finally and gracefully.”

¶Other and even more weighty Britons than the editor of the Times joined cautiously last week in the strange game of saying things off the record which they knew would be rushed into print outside England but not inside. Thus the Home Secretary, Sir John Simon, one of the Empire’sgreatest legal minds, while refusing to address himself to the judicial aspects of a marriage of the King & Mrs. Simpson, intimated that already His Majesty’s conduct is fairly disgraceful.

Viscount Sankey, who in 1929-35 was the Lord Chancellor, intimated that he saw no judicial or constitutional obstacle to King Edward’s marrying Mrs. Simpson if His Majesty is so inclined. Intimated the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Rt. Hon. Captain Edward Algernon Fitzroy: “You can take it from me that the King is determined to and will marry Mrs. Simpson.”*

¶Mrs. Simpson entered this world at Monterey Inn, perched about a mile from Blue Ridge Summit in the mountains of Pennsylvania. Last week the wealthy, horse-breeding obstetrician who attended her mother, Dr. Lewis Mines Allen, former Professor of Obstetrics at University Hospital, Baltimore, said: “I remember the incident only vaguely, but I do recall Wallis as a little girl. She had long hair and was pretty and exceptionally magnetic in her personality.”

¶Twice-divorced Mrs. Simpson’s twice-divorced first husband, Commander Earl Winfield Spencer U. S. N., lay bedded last week in San Diego, Calif, after a hunting accident. Said he: “She is a most attractivewoman and has one of the strongest characters I have ever known any person to possess. She is a lovely person, intelligent, witty and good company. ‘Stimulating’ is the word which best describes her charm. Our marriage lasted eight years, and we parted twelve years ago. I think Wallis Simpson is a wonderful woman. In whatever future she may choose—into whatever places it may take her—I wish her my very best. She will always hold my respect and admiration.”

¶Of Mrs. Simpson’s historic first glimpse of the then Prince of Wales,at a Naval ball in Coronado on April 7, 1920, Commander Spencer recalled: “I remember the Prince was pointed out to us early in the evening, but neither Wallis nor I commented, except to murmur our surprise.”

¶Mrs. Simpson was chaperoned by her “Aunt Bessie,” Mrs. D. BuchananMerryman of Washington, D. C., during the first year of attentions paid to her by Edward of Wales (TIME, Sept. 24, 1934). Last week it appeared wise for the chaperonage of Mrs. Merryman to be resumed and grey-haired but gay Aunt Bessie rushed to England on the Queen Mary carrying the gun-metal bag she was given by H. R. H. during her previous chaperonage.

¶Current in Manhattan was a legend, impossible to check, that William Randolph Hearst was daily in personal touch with Mrs. Simpson and the King by transatlantic telephone. Hearstpapers, playing their publisher’s favorite story and reputed personal scoop with great enthusiasm and unwonted decorum, exclusively declared: “Queen Mary has approved the proposed marriage of King Edward VIII and Mrs. Wallis Simpson…. The Queen Mother has promised to help iron out the difficulties of State. . . . King Edward, convinced of his right to marry the woman of his choice, will endeavor to have his brother, the Duke of York, declared heir to the Throne.*. . . King Edward has no intention of upsetting all court precedent by proclaiming Mrs. Simpson Queen, but is determined that, as his wife, she will share his life in all except royal functions of State…. He intends to make Mrs. Simpson the Countess of Renfrew.”

¶Editor & Publisher, leading U. S. newspaper trade organ, disclosed last week that the story of the King & Mrs. Simpson has served to break much of the previous hold of British officialdom over foreign correspondents in the Kingdom. Once it would have been necessary to believe or affect to believe denials that the Archbishop of Canterbury had broached the subject of Mrs. Simpson to King Edward but today it has been found “necessary to handle the story on the basis that anything might happenand the only way to meet such developments is to follow every tip and attempt all known mediums to obtain news. This method resulted in the story about the Archbishops of Canterbury and York calling on the King. Three days of checking reports finally resulted in definite confirmation. . . .

“Reaching King Edward directly is impossible. His small group of assistants and secretaries say little. They are highly intelligent gentlemen trained for years in dealing with the press and presenting only the most favorable picture of the British Monarch. . . .

“Today no American reporter in London, except a few fortunate ones assigned exclusively to a financial run or sports, gets through the day without thinking about Mrs. Simpson and working on the story. . . . Reporting the Simpson story demands clear, deliberate thinking and the highest type of careful reporting because of the stringency of British libel laws. . . . The story never seems to end. It has been daily front page copy for weeks and will continue to be so for months, perhaps years.”

¶Since many veteran foreign correspondents years ago settled into easy habits of skimming local papers for their stories and swiveling around in their chairs occasionally to telephone official sources, editors were inclined to view the King & Mrs. Simpson story this week as likely to give the foreign field a renaissance of brainwork, legwork and much wider gathering of carefully checked facts. It was most belatedly established last week, for example, that the fur-lined coat in which King Edward followed the bier of his father from Sandringham was the late King George’s own fur-lined coat, and that His Majesty only put this on at the insistence of Mrs. Simpson.

“But I haven’t a fur coat here!” expostulated the new King at first.

Retorted Mrs. Simpson, “Well, your brothers have!” As His Majesty would not wear one of Their Royal Highness’ fur coats, Mrs. Simpson who knows his susceptibility to catching cold, tactfully and with strength of character overcame the King’s reluctance to put on the dead King’s coat.

¶Herr Professor Doktor Heinrich Neumann, the famed Vienna ear, nose & throat specialist to whom Mrs. Simpson has repeatedly taken “The Little Man,” as she often calls him, was announced last week to have quitAustria and accepted a post at Oxford University, permitting him to attend His Majesty whenever required—this notwithstanding the official denial of the British Legation in Vienna last summer that Dr. Neumann had found anything whatever the matter with the King’s ears.

*It was anticipated that all these Britons would enter denials for the record and Editor Dawson of the Times led with this dignified disclaimer: “I am not in a position to know anything about the matter and consequently could not have made and have not made any such statement.” Meanwhile the few thousand Britons who own radio sets able to pick up U. S. broadcasts about the King & Mrs. Simpson, bombarded Editor Dawson with letters demanding that the Times either present the facts or if U. S. journalism were in error, come to the defense ofthe King in its editorial columns. With such letters piling up in every London editor’s office this week, the entire British Press continued unanimously to ostrich.

*The Duke is already heir to the Throne, but what might be contemplated is anact of Parliament vesting the succession in York and his heirs to the exclusion of any child fathered by the King.