Edvardus Rex

Blasphemously in Baltimore, the home city of Mrs. Simpson, Editor H. L.

Mencken last week declared that "the greatest story since the Resurrection" is the now living drama of Edward VIII. It cannot be staged in Britain as a play, although George Bernard Shaw hastily wrote last week for William Randolph Hearst a strongly pro-Mrs. Simpson and pro-Edward VIII playlet in which he flung at Prime Minister Baldwin the ultimate Irish insult of tagging him "Prime Minister Goldwyn." But the drama the world wanted to see, Edvardus Rex, was acting and writing itself hour by hour as the amazing facts erupted. They formed not a stately royal play such as Laurence Housman's Victoria Regina* but a breathless cinema of swift pace and jazz tempo.

The Duke of York, heir to the Throne and hitherto always dignified to the point of insipidity, was so quickened and excited last week about whether he might at any moment become King and Emperor that, after a conference with his mother, Queen Mary, breathless York alighted at his home and rushed inside to tell his Duchess the latest with the long-legged bounce of a bolting jack rabbit, too fast for anything but the camera to catch (see cut). The accustomed massive aplomb of the Rt. Hon. Stanley Baldwin was accelerated until the Prime Minister became one day last week a palpitating and perspiring fat man dashing between No. 10 Downing St. and Buckingham Palace in an atmosphere so agitated that he even forgot his hat.

Queen Mary alone played her role not in jazz time but with the stateliness of Wagnerian opera. For Her Majesty and all she stood for it might be Goetterdaemmerung ("Twilight of the Gods"), but she was far from "broken and weeping" as some dispatches reported. Just as they were being printed the Queen drove out in her regal Daimler. The chauffeur bowled along at moderate pace through a middle-class section of London and presently Queen Mary inspected through her lorgnette the still smoking ruins of the $10,000,000 Crystal Palace on which Queen Victoria and Prince Consort Albert lavished so much care when preparing the Great Exhibition of 1851.

The conflagration of the Crystal Palace last week sent towering 500 feet in air a column of flame seen by rustics in eight counties round about and was called the biggest London blaze since the historic "Great Fire" of 1666. One of 90 fire engines which struggled vainly to save the Exhibition Hall accidentally soused His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, the youngest son of Queen Mary, who was nicknamed by playfellows at school as "The Scent Bottle." In last week's unreeling of an Empire crisis, sleek, scented Kent was most of the time an orchidaceous extra waiting on the lot while British bigwigs performed the stellar roles in Edvardus Rex. Scenes from this cinema of official facts and carefully checked dispatches:

Scene: The Private Study of King Edward at Buckingham Palace: Tiny Lord Beaverbrook, the most powerful London publisher and a 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 (TIME, Dec. 7). A break obviously is near in the news censorship self-imposed by the British Newspaper Proprietors' Association. Vehemently, Edward VIII urges his right to marry Mrs. Simpson upon Publisher Beaverbrook whose fingers remain, for the moment, crossed, though later his Daily Express goes cautiously pro-King & Mrs. Simpson.

The Conference Hall of the Diocesan Clergy at Bradford in the North of England: The obese, cheery Bishop of Bradford who likes to eat with his servants, play golf and work crossword puzzles, castigates King Edward in words applicable either to His Majesty's keeping company with Mrs. Simpson or to the Sovereign's skimpy attendance at Church. "In his public capacity at his Coronation he stands for the English people's idea of Kingship!" booms the Bishop. "[The King] needs the grace of God. . . . We hope he is aware of his need! Some of us wish he gave more positive signs of such awareness." (In sending this out British Press associations suggest that editors tone it down by omissions. Next day the Bishop says he wrote his whole speech six weeks before he made it and only after writing it heard for the first time in his life of Mrs. Simpson.)

Press Room of the Yorkshire Post: Ink-stained minions, as they put on the cylinders an edition citing the Bishop's words and further castigating King Edward, believe that Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden's wife's relatives who own the Yorkshire Post have done this at the instigation of the Prime Minister. They hear that Viscount Halifax, an eminent Churchman whom Mr. Baldwin sent to India as Viceroy some years ago, either knew in advance what the Bishop was going to say or actually put him up to it. Behind Politician Baldwin the proverbially canny Yorkshiremen discern his famed churchy wife, Lucy. They know that the Prime Minister was furious three weeks ago-- when Edward VIII told the jobless of South Wales that more must be done for them than the Cabinet thinks the country can afford. They are willing to bet that Mrs. Baldwin will never forgive the king for inviting her to a dinner at which she had to sit down with "that woman" Mrs. Simpson. As presses begin to clatter, the provincial Yorkshire Post historically spits out the gag which has kept 99% of His Majesty's subjects in England and India from ever hearing of Mrs. Simpson, much less hearing that the King is resolved to marry her. The Yorkshire Post does not actually mention Mrs. Simpson by name but opens the censorship breach sufficiently for the London Times to "thunder" at the King next morning (still without naming Mrs. Simpson) and for the London News Chronicle, largely owned by the Cadbury's chocolate family, to be the first paper in the Kingdom to name the King's intended wife.

London: 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 the Government, I cast my lot with the Government.

We want no Dictator!''* King Edward, motoring in from his suburban snuggery (where Mrs. Simpson and her chaperon Aunt Bessie have been with him several nights each week), blows off steam at Buckingham Palace by rejecting a new set of designs for British Army uniforms. He chats about Polar conditions with Explorer Lincoln Ellsworth, who afterwards calls His Majesty "cheerful" and denies they talked about selling the King's money-losing Canadian ranch. Edward VIII does the duty of dubbing an Indian politician knight (name: Ramaswami Srinivasa Sarma), and is icily angry when perspiring 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.

The Royal Snuggery, Fort Belvedere, 30 miles from London: With the King and Mrs. Simpson confer three men trusted by His Majesty as old friends and faithful servitors, whose characters can be accurately read in their faces (see cut, p. 22): Major Ulick Alexander, Keeper of the Privy Purse; Sir Godfrey Thomas, Assistant Private Secretary; and Lieut.

Colonel Hon. Piers Legh, Equerry. In the House of Commons meanwhile the Leader of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition, Laborite Clement Attlee, is said to have given his word to Mr. Baldwin that if His Majesty's Government, in forcing their "ultimatum," as it is now called, upon the King, should resign, Mr. Attlee would refuse a command from the Sovereign that he become Prime Minister. This is telephoned to the snuggery. Over cocktails the strategy of the King and Mrs. Simpson is planned.

Marlborough House: Same day the Duke & Duchess of York call upon Queen Mary at 10 a. m. and the Duke afterwards exclaims "the worst has happened!" The King, after spending in his snuggery with Mrs. Simpson what is to be their last day together for some time, drives in to call on his mother at 6:30 p. m., then slips over to Buckingham Palace and confers with the Duke of York. Simultaneously Mr. Baldwin confers in the Houses of Parliament with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

At 8:50 the Duke & Duchess of York sit down to dinner with Queen Mary in Marlborough House. From 9:15 to 10:05 m 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."

At 10:30 Edward goes to Marlborough House, leaving at 11:24 p.m. while the Duke & Duchess stay until 12:15 a. m. As they leave the Duke is rumored certain to be King Albert I or King George VI (depending on which name he prefers to use) within a few hours or days, and at 1:31 a. m. King Edward VIII shoots out of Buckingham Palace, driving at terrific speed to his snuggery. Lights out at 2:13 a. m. The daily Court Circular, which is supposed to chronicle all important movements of members of the Royal Family, omits all of the above, fails to appear. The House of Commons: There are cheers for Stanley ("Old Sealed Lips") Baldwin and louder cheers for his political foe Winston Churchill, who has got 60 M. P.'s to sign with him a round robin telling the King that if he accepts Mr. Baldwin's resignation Mr. Churchill is ready to obey a command to become Prime Minister and his King's Men will support him.

After thrice protesting that his lips are sealed, Mr. Baldwin suddenly changes his mind and rushes into the House of Commons, tripping over the extended feet of Mr. Eden, to unseal his lips in a tacit admission that the King does not demand that Mrs. Simpson be his Queen but only insists upon contracting a morganatic marriage and giving her one of his lesser titles such as Countess of Chester. "The only possible way," Mr. Baldwin tells the House of Commons, "would be by legislation dealing with a particular case. His Majesty's Government are NOT prepared to introduce such legislation! Moreover, the matters to be dealt with are a common concern to the Commonwealth [Dominions, India, etc.] as a whole, and such a change could not be effective without the assent of all the Dominions. I am satisfied from inquiries I have made that this assent would NOT be forthcoming!"

Instantly the Speaker touches a button, adjourns the Commons session before Mr. Churchill can speak. He snaps a bitterly sarcastic complaint at the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancashire. Sir John Davidson, who snarls back: "It is remarkable how much you as a private member seem to know about the wishes of the King!"

London: Throngs demonstrate against Stanley Baldwin for the first time since the General Strike. In front of his official residence, No. 10 Downing St., they chant: "The King is right, Baldwin is wrong!" They march on to sing: For He's a Jolly Good Fellow! in front of empty Buckingham Palace. They swing around into Piccadilly and at No. 145 bawl loud enough for the Duke & Duchess of York to hear: "Stand by him! We want King Edward! Perish the politicians!"

Newhaven: Just as the cheap and therefore inconspicuous night boat from this port to France is about to sail, Mrs. Simpson arrives in the Buick the King gave her, accompanied by his bodyguard, a secretary and chauffeur. In a private cabin she tosses for four hours on a medium rough crossing. French police shoot her baggage through the customs unopened. The Buick roars away and at 3:30 a. m. it brings Mrs. Simpson to Rouen for the night. She telephones King Edward who has just had another night session with Mr. Baldwin, this time at the snuggery, from which the Prime Minister departs calmly puffing at his famed pipe.

A French actress who recognizes Mrs. Simpson and tries to Kodak her gets a blow from the British bodyguard knocking her camera from her hand, her hat from her head. The Buick speeds in a westward zigzag around Paris, trying to throw newshawks off the chase. When Mrs. Simpson reaches Blois for the night the United Press correspondent blocks her Buick in the garage with his car, which he locks, and feels safe in dozing off in bed. But the Buick and Mrs. Simpson extricate themselves, speed on. She buys a French newspaper with the headline "King's abdication seems certain!", stops and telephones to Edward VIII. Says the sympathetic French innkeeper's wife as Mrs. Simpson disappears down the road, "She seemed, oh, so much more composed, after she had telephoned the Palace." French reporters discover that Mrs. Simpson's terrier is named "Folly." They get Mrs. Simpson's chauffeur to say that she has framed on her mantel in London the Chicago Tribune's famed Cinderella Simpson cartoon: in a shoe store Empire Salesman Edward VIII with the Imperial State Crown on his head kneels and offers a diamond-studded slipper to customer Mrs. Simpson whose smile is somewhat condescending (TIME, Nov. 2).

London: Crowds now are crying: "Do we want the King? YES! Do we want Baldwin? NOOooo! Flog Baldwin! GOD SAVE THE KING!" Banners with similar slogans are lifted high outside the iron gates of Buckingham Palace. Tory organs begin to call the demonstrations "suspiciously professional," perhaps the work of Communists, for several British Reds have come out for the King and Mrs. Simpson. So has the No. 1 British Fascist, Sir Oswald Mosley, shouting from a husting, "How would you like a Cabinet of old busybodies to pick your girl?" In Whitehall, Mr. Winston Churchill and his followers are now openly called "The King's Men," in Britain a most ominous title dating back to bloody affrays between Crown and Commons. Wolfishly James Maxton says that the British ruling class are being dealt a perhaps mortal blow.

Mr. Churchill bides his time, but Colonel Josiah Wedgwood, a fiery Labor M. P. related to Wedgwood China and a Constitutional authority of repute, has already drafted a motion in effect telling the King to marry whom he likes and defy Baldwin.

"Why on earth should not the King marry an American if he wants?" roars Colonel Wedgwood. "This crisis to my mind is an insult to the United States! What is it that makes an American inferior to a German?"--i. e., the Prince Consort Albert or Queen Mary, whose girlhood title was Princess of Teck in Germany, though Her Majesty was born in England. "Personally I believe the Cabinet is wrong about the Dominions," continues Colonel Wedgwood, "I believe the Dominions are behind the King, just as are the mass of people in this country!" Says beefy Lord Castlerosse, the inseparable companion of tiny Lord Beaverbrook: "The King M has an inferiority complex. . . . Mrs. Simpson has built up her man. . . . She said to the King:'My boy, you're not the fool you think you are.

You're a grand fellow!' As a result the King has thrown out his chest. . . . The attraction between them is NOT sex. . . .

That's the story." Canberra, the Capital of Australia: Devout Catholic Prime Minister Joseph Aloysius Lyons convenes an emergency session of the Australian Parliament for this week and keeps in continuous touch with Stanley Baldwin by short-wave radio.

The British Sabbath: Anglican clergymen are gagged by the Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of All England who forbids them to sermonize on the King & Mrs. Simpson and prays publicly that God may "rule over" (i. e. overrule) the judgment of His Majesty. The Primate is not actually jeered (as the Cabinet are) on leaving Downing Street after a conference with the Prime Minister but a woman darts forward to thrust at the Archbishop's limousine a placard: "ABDICATION MEANS REVOLUTION!" Cinema houses take an official hint, and newsreels of the King & Mrs. Simpson hand-in-handing are suppressed. The official B.B.C. radio station tells prominent King's Men who offer to broadcast that "no time is available," but such commentators as Mr. Vernon Bartlett go unmistakably pro-Baldwin in references to the Sovereign who, for the first time in British history, finds on the air such statements as that he is "erratic." It is represented to His Majesty that the Baldwin Cabinet do not think he has the constitutional right to broadcast anything they have not previously approved.

London's sidewalk artists reap a harvest of Sunday coppers by drawing Mrs. Simpson in colored crayon. Meanwhile King Edward at his snuggery declines to receive his friend and recent guest in Scotland, the Hon. Esmond Cecil Harmsworth, son of the No. 2 British Press Tycoon Viscount Rothermere. In his great, mass-conscious penny-press thunders Rothermere: "I have just returned from a trip around the world. . . . Everywhere unstinted praise and admiration of our King! . . . You cannot smuggle the greatest living Englishman off the throne of England during the weekend."

The Hon. Esmond Cecil Harmsworth is understood to have tried to see His Majesty as a spokesman for the "King's Men," now grown to 90 M.P.'s and their leader Mr. Winston Churchill who keynotes: "If an abdication were to be hastily extorted, the outrage so committed would cast its shadow forward across many chapters of the future history of the British Empire!'' Mr. Baldwin is again with the King at the snuggery from 6:15 to 7:30. Says Viscount Craigavon, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, in mortal terror lest the Irish Free State make whatever solution is reached an excuse for secession: "Trust Mr. Baldwin."

The Rumanian Royal Palace at Bucharest: Dowager Queen Marie: "I know what the Empire means, for remember, I was an Englishwoman. . . . The King will do the right thing, for he is an Englishman!"

The Villa at Cannes of Manhattan Social Registries Mr. & Mrs. Herman Livingston Rogers: At 11:45 p. m. Mrs.Simpson, having driven straight through in 20&3189; hours from Blois with only briefest stops, arrives to find haven with these old friends whom she first knew in China. In her bedroom a private telephone line and special hookup for instant connection through to England has been installed. Mrs. Simpson calls Fort Belvedere. At Cannes the first statement made for her is handed to reporters at the Hotel Majestic by Peregrine Francis Adelbert Cust, 6th Baron Brownlow, close friend of Edward VIII: "The following is an official statement. . . . Mrs. Simpson, throughout the last few weeks, invariably has wished to avoid any action which would hurt or damage His Majesty or the Throne. . . . She is willing, if such action would solve the problem, to withdraw forthwith from the situation." In the London circle of Mrs. Lucy Baldwin this statement is called "impudent and melodramatic."

The House of Commons: Swayed by Sunday's jeers, the Cabinet on Monday are in full retreat from their original position of attempting to rush His Majesty off the British Throne. The Prime Minister makes an astonishing statement that his previous announcement of the Cabinet's absolute refusal to assist in arranging a morganatic marriage had no reference to the King's ever having been officially advised by the Cabinet to do or refrain from doing anything. "All my conversations with His Majesty," says Mr. Baldwin, "have been strictly personal and informal. . . . These matters were not raised first by the Government but by His Majesty himself in a conversation with me some weeks ago when he first informed me of his intention to marry Mrs. Simpson whenever she should be free. . . . Deep and respectful sympathy with His Majesty at this time." As the Rt. Hon. Stanley Baldwin is now obviously in that pivotal position he assumes when he may or may not decide to switch the policy of His Majesty's Government completely around, as in the case of Italy & Ethiopia (TIME. Dec. 30), the House senses that "Old Sealed Lips" may again extricate himself penitent but unscathed. When Mr. Churchill tries to make himself heard, the House unexpectedly shows itself hostile to him for the first time in the crisis and he is virtually howled down.

When King's Man No. 2 Wedgwood tries to get assurance from Prime Minister Baldwin that there will not be unexpectedly sprung upon the House some form of "abdication" he gets no further than that word, then is drowned out with cries of "Order, Order!"

The Snuggery: His Majesty, talking frequently by telephone with Mrs. Simpson, has won the first objective, that of smashing what has been in fact if not officially a ruthless censorship and gagging of the British Press in efforts to prevent King Edward's subjects from knowing of his resolve to marry Mrs. Simpson and prevent them from making their verdict known to him.

Among actual King's men of long standing--not politicians suddenly turned "King's Men," but the urbane Gentlemen of the Royal Household--a measure of tranquillity has existed all through last week's constitutional crisis. While recognizing that the tremendous forces unleashed may get beyond control and suddenly alter the succession to the Throne, they recall the flair of King George for arriving at astonishingly simple common-sense solutions of royal complications.

Says one of these Gentlemen in substance: "Is it even necessary that there be a Coronation?* If there is none, the Archbishop of Canterbury's conjectured refusal on moral ground to officiate at the Coronation of one known to contemplate marriage with a twice-divorced woman evaporates.

What then is left which can be called a constitutional crisis? Mrs. Simpson is still the wife of Mr. Simpson. Who knows whether her decree of divorce will be made final next April or successfully contested? The right of the King to marry any woman, high or low, who is free and a Protestant, has not been challenged by the Cabinet. On the contrary, the Prime Minister has strongly confirmed it by implication in the House of Commons. Why is it 'impossible' that the desire of the King, who does not ask that Mrs. Simpson become queen but only his morganatic wife, should be granted by parliamentary vote or at least submitted to such a vote?'' Fleet Street: This week London presses roar with the flat prediction of Viscount Rothermere that morganatic marriage of the Sovereign will be made possible by the Mother of Parliaments and if necessary also by the daughter Parliaments of the Dominions. Yet London editors go sleepless, reporters exhaust themselves and the Cabinet is reported split three ways within itself as King Edward at his snuggery maintains a highly mobile position, ready for instant action. Not only articles of abdication but an entire sheaf of other solutions, drafted in legal form by the King's personal Attorney General Walter Turner Monckton, lie ready to the royal hand. The Captain of the King's Flight, famed "Mouse" Fielden, is under orders to keep His Majesty's private plane tuned day & night, ready for instant takeoff. The pitch of the crisis remains screwed up to a dry screech. His Majesty King Edward VIII refuses to receive even his royal brothers, the Dukes of York, Gloucester and Kent.

*Never publicly performed in England because the censor, the Lord Chamberlain, bans any play in which any member of the Royal Family who is living or insufficiently long dead appears. Last week Edward VIII decided that Queen Victoria is now sufficiently long dead (35 years), decreed that after June 10, 1937 plays in which his great-grandmother figures may be publicly produced in Britain.

/-Elizabeth, Duchess of York and Albert, Duke of York prepared months ago this Christmas Card apropos the Sovereign. At a moment when everyone is coupling King Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson, this couples King Edward III and Lady Salisbury. She has dropped her garter, courtiers are tittering, and the chivalrous King is about to master the situation by putting on the thing himself and making the Order of the Garter the most exalted form of British knighthood.

* If I Were a Dictator is a book by Citizen Maxton published last year.

*No British legal authority affirmed up to this week that it was necessary, several opined that it was not, and there was no question whatever that at the very least His Majesty can postpone this largely religious piece of pageantry.

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