The Dolly Princess

The royal family had done everything they could. The slight, handsome suitor had been sent off to another country. The pretty Princess had been admonished on the responsibilities of her position and her duty to the throne. The Archbishop of Canterbury had warned her that the church could not marry her to a divorced man; the Prime Minister had exhorted her to remember the sad story of her Uncle Edward. As a last resort, they had packed her off for a tour of the sunny Caribbean, urging her to have fun and think it over.

It was no use. The minute Princess Margaret got back from her tour, she made a beeline for one of the "green line" phones (which are equipped with "scramblers" to prevent interception) and called Group Captain Peter Townsend R.A.F. at the British embassy in Brussels. The romance still bloomed; she still wanted to marry him.

In Exile. Last week there was a clear sign that the Queen, Primate and Premier had bowed to the inevitable and admitted defeat. For 19 months, 40-year-old Captain Townsend, fighter-pilot hero of the Battle of Britain, had been quietly doing his duties as air attache in Brussels, refusing social engagements in favor of racing horses as a gentleman jockey, and scrupulously denying himself to newsmen. But now, with the air of a man suddenly released from an invisible leash, Airman Townsend began giving interviews, dropping pointed hints and adopting the manner of a man who could say much more if his lips were not sealed. "The word cannot come from me. You will appreciate it must come from other people," he told one newsman. To another he said: "I came here because the situation was impossible for both of us--particularly for her." A correspondent for the Sydney Sun-Herald reported that Townsend told him: "If a situation should demand my exile and that of a certain lady, we should, of course, accept it." (Townsend promptly denied he had said anything about exile; investigating, the Sun-Herald agreed Townsend had been misquoted, fired the reporter.)

To make sure that nobody missed his message Townsend took to hailing newsmen from his Renault Fregate on his way to the stables for his morning ride. "I say, chaps, are you trying to get hold of me?" One reporter finally suggested he could stop all this simply by issuing a denial of the romance rumor. Said Townsend, affable and imperturbable: "I know."

The Choice. As Townsend (and the royal family) must have known, perhaps planned, the penny press in London promptly blazed with headlines and speculation. Should a member of the royal family, models for British family life, marry a divorced man? As "Defender of the Faith." and official head of the Established Church, Queen Elizabeth cannot consent officially to such a marriage, even though Townsend was the innocent party in the divorce. But in August Margaret will be 25. Under the Royal Marriage Act, she may then marry without the sovereign's consent, provided she gives the Privy Council a year's notice. To avoid a possible parliamentary veto, Margaret would presumably have to renounce all rights of succession for herself and her heirs (she is third in line after her nephew Prince Charles and her niece Princess Anne), plus her title, her annual $17,000 stipend and her right to be received officially at Buckingham Palace. But without special legislation she could not marry for one year in any case.

While dignified papers like the Times of London and the government-supervised BBC made no mention of what was on everybody's lips, tabloid and pub broke into passionate debate. The Daily Sketch cooed over "our little dolly Princess" and editorialized "Every woman will feel deeply for the Princess as she confronts her decision, for whichever way it goes it must be painful." The first reaction in London seemed to be to let her marry whom she wanted to, but the deeply conservative countryside was yet to be heard from.

Family Council. With a careful ear cocked for the tone of public reaction, Margaret's elders conferred busily in family council. The Archbishop of Canterbury talked for three hours over lunch with the Queen and Prince Philip, before Philip went off to fleet maneuvers in the Mediterranean. The Queen had always hoped that she could give her consent to the marriage. But the late Dr. Cosmo Gordon Lang, who was Archbishop of Canterbury at the time of the 1936 crisis, had insisted that the Church could not approve King Edward's proposed marriage, and the present Archbishop is equally adamant. So was Sir Winston Churchill, who had sturdily defended Edward's wish to marry Mrs. Simpson. Churchill had seen Edward's unhappiness in semi-exile, and he did not want to see Margaret go through the same experience.

The conferees agreed that the hour was late. Though Townsend had been banished to Brussels, Margaret could and did talk to him regularly over the "green lines." Last summer Townsend had even flown back to England to see her, traveling under the name of "Mr. Carter." Margaret's schoolgirl admiration for the dashing fighter pilot, begun when she was only 14 and he was serving as equerry to her father, King George VI, had matured into something more durable than the joint determination of Primate and Prime Minister. Since there seemed no help for it, the conferees began making plans to allow the marriage to go off with as little difficulty as possible.

Through all the hullabaloo, Princess Margaret went twice to the theater with friends, attended a ceremonial luncheon given in honor of her return by the Lord Mayor of London, where she chatted amiably with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and got a rousing cheer from a waiting crowd. At week's end she retired for a rest to the royal lodge at Windsor with her mother, Queen Mother Elizabeth, who has looked kindly on the romance from the start.

Margaret was reportedly less concerned about the refusal of a Church of England marriage--they can presumably be married, after Aug. 21, 1956, in a civil ceremony, if worst comes to worst--than about the possibility that she and Townsend should be ineligible to receive Communion in the Anglican Church after their marriage. But in recent years, the Church of England has commonly readmitted divorced persons to Communion after a decent interval.

No one could be sure, and yards of newsprint would be splattered with speculation, until the decision was announced. But as of this week, the guess was that resolute Princess Margaret would end up as the wife of Peter Townsend.

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