GREAT BRITAIN: The Crown: Aug. 3, 1936

¶ Queen Mary alone remained in full mourning for King George this week as other members of the Royal Family went into half mourning from which they will emerge Oct. 21. Officers of the fighting services and police last week removed their crape armbands.

¶ King Edward, first kissing the wholesome Duchess of York and the graceful Duchess of Kent, took his stand in a great durbar tent pitched on the close-cropped lawn of Buckingham Palace for the first presentations of ladies in the new reign. (Gentlemen were presented in March and June.)

Up to last week British kings have always appeared at such functions in resplendent uniform. Edward VIII wore a dark grey morning coat. Though rain soon began to patter, ladies whose expensive garden frocks were being ruined remained so obviously eager to drop their curtsies to His Majesty anyhow that he permitted them to continue until presentees began entering the durbar tent in sopping and sodden condition.

An order from King Edward then halted the curtsying, caused numerous young women who had not yet curtsied to burst into tears. An elderly lady, leading the rush to cover from the rain, tripped outside Buckingham Palace, sprawled flat, soiled her white gown. A gentleman arriving late stepped out of his limousine at the precise moment when a Buckingham Palace gardener turned on a hose which happened to be pointed at the gentleman, soused him.

Next day the second presentation brought ladies carrying slickers and umbrellas over their arms although dressed in the latest Paris creations. The Lord Chamberlain anxiously scanned the skies, as did King Edward. At last they took the risk of a second downpour and won. No U. S. ladies were presented except those in the diplomatic circle. Among young British curtsy-droppers whose mothers were U. S. born was Miss Virginia Brand. Her mother is the former Phyllis Langhorne of Virginia, a sister of Lady Astor.

¶ The Royal Household was appropriately shaken up by dismissals and appointments which had the effect last week of reducing the age of those in attendance upon His Majesty by about 20 years. King Edward is himself 28 years younger than was King George at death (TIME. Jan. 27).

¶ Startling innovations by Edward VIII last week were appointment to the Royal Household of an osteopath and an aviator. Officially styled “Manipulative Surgeon to His Majesty,” muscular and dynamic Sir Morton Smart has been for 16 years his royal master’s chief rubdown man, recently boasted to a Parliamentarycommission that nine jockeys who rode in the last Grand National Steeplechase are his patients, including the winner. Cracked Orthopedic Surgeon Arthur Sydney Blundell Bankart of the British MedicalAssociation last week: “Osteopathy is brute force—an ignorant American stunt!”*

The young man who taught King Edward to fly and usually pilots his plane, Flight Lieutenant Edward Hedley Fielden, became history’s first “Captain of the King’s Flight.”

¶ Into court before the King’s Bench Division were haled last week some of Britain’s greatest dailies, including Viscount Rothermere’s Evening News and Baron Beaverbrook’s Daily Express. Reason: the censors who snip out offending paragraphs before newsorgans can be offered for sale on British stands had failed to snip out accounts of the Constitution Hill incident in which a revolver hurtled from the hand of Jerome Bannigan and fell beneath the hoofs of King Edward’s horse†(TIME, July 27).

As newsreels of this incident had also not been snipped, into court also was haled Gaumont-British News Films, facing heavy penalties in the most vivid demonstration in years that Britain enjoys neither freedom of the press nor freedom of the films. The New York Times hazarded the bold guess that the British Director of Public Prosecutions, although he claimed to be trying to scotch articles and films prejudicial to the trial of the accused, may have acted because “the offending stories were of a sort calculated to win public sympathy for McMahon” from whose hand the pistol sped.

¶ King-Emperor Edward maintained his refusal to receive Emperor Haile Selassie in audience, but on the 45-year-old Ethiopian’s birthday last week 42-year-old Edward VIII sent congratulations.

¶ For the first time since his accession, Edward VIII left Britain this week to inaugurate the $1,000,000 War memorial to 60,000 Canadian War dead at Vimy Ridge. The King crossed the Channel on the Admiralty yacht Enchantress escorted by a Canadian and a French destroyer. With utmost solemnity 20,000 persons witnessed the ceremony, heard an exchange of friendly and feeling speeches by King Edward and President Lebrun of France.

The 240 acres on which Canada’s War memorial stands have been deeded by France to the Canadian Government. Said King Edward: “Though the mortal remains of Canada’s sons be far from home, here where we now stand their immortal memory is hallowed upon soil that is as surely Canada’s as any within her nine provinces.”

King Edward later told President Lebrun that the Spanish crisis and the recent attempt at assassination (see above) had caused him to cancel all plans for his widely heralded vacation at the Riviera villa of old-time U. S. Actress Maxine Elliott.

* For news of U. S. osteopathy, see p. 30.

† Herbalist Jerome Bannigan (alias George Andrew McMahon) was arraigned as “McMahon” last week under the Treason Act of 1842, enacted after shots had been fired in the general direction of Queen Victoria. He faces seven years’ imprisonment if convicted of having “willfully presented near to the person of the King a firearm “with intent” to break the public peace.

“At the arraignment, the herbalist claimed he had only been trying to shoot himself, and the official London police account recorded that he was heard shouting when overpowered, “I wanted to shoot myself in front of the King.” It appeared from the herbalist’s papers that whatever he meant to do was intended as a protest against the Home Secretary, Sir John Simon, who in the House of Commons last week was called a “liar” by four M.P.’s (see p. 16).