The King Who Was

Blond, handsome and worldly, Edward VIII would have been a resplendent king in any age. In the darkling world of Depression England, he came to the British throne on Jan. 20, 1936 trailing a special kind of glory. World War I and service in France had given the winsome Edward a rare chance as Prince of Wales to mingle with all manner of his future subjects -- and they with him. After the war, he traveled the world on a series of triumphal grand tours from Africa to India to the U.S. and New Zealand -- representing his father, who ruled the mightiest empire ever assembled.

An expert horseman and huntsman, Edward learned to fly, to surf--and to swing, which in those days was called belonging to the "gay" set. In the whirling world of the '20s, whatever the prince wore became instant fashion: he popularized plus fours, decorative woolen sweaters, midnight blue tailcoats, tartan jackets and oversized knots in neckties. Aged 41 when he became king, he had long been the most eligible British bachelor since King Arthur. A near-worshiping public chanted the popular song: "I know a girl who knows a girl who danced with the Prince of Wales." But as all the world now knows, five years before Edward became king, he had danced with a divorced American woman, Bessie Wallis Warfield Spencer Simpson, and lost his heart. Only 326 days after he ascended the throne, Edward VIII gave it up for "the woman I love," married her and remanded himself and his bride to exiled history as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

A Club Bungalow. This week the duke and duchess attend the royal premiere in the U.S. of A King's Story, a documentary film of Edward's life culminating in the abdication crisis that shook an empire. It is a sentimental film, but it could hardly be otherwise, dealing as it does with the most romantic gesture of the 20th century. Next week the duke and his duchess will celebrate the 30th anniversary of their marriage, by every evidence still as devoted to each other as on the June day when they were wed in a friend's chateau in France. Queen Elizabeth has invited them to Marlborough House next month to attend the unveiling of a plaque dedicated to Edward's mother, Queen Mary --the first official recognition ever extended the duchess by Buckingham Palace. Ironically, Queen Mary was unforgiving all her life of the woman she described as "an adventuress"--and never met.

As exiles over the years the Windsors have created a life for themselves that anyone not to a castle born might well envy. In effect, they have mastered the art of doing nothing--and doing it very well. Like the birds of the air, they undertake a seasonal migration over a most unrelenting course. In Paris, their primary base, they rent from the city a handsome villa on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, where Charles de Gaulle lived as Premier just after World War II. Now it is filled with the superb and costly bibelots that the duke inherited from his ancestors. For weekends and warm weather, the Windsors have rebuilt as a country house an old mill in the valley of the Chevreuse near Paris. There the duke is most at home, working alongside three professional gardeners among his flowers or walking his pugs in the countryside. In February or March, the Windsors sail for New York, where they rent an apartment in the Waldorf Towers. Part of their U.S. sojourn is spent in lending their immense prestige to charity balls and functions in New York, part in Florida in the homes of old friends who have often given the balls.

In late spring, it is back to Paris briefly, then down to a rented villa on the Riviera or, of recent years, to a bungalow at Marbella on the Spanish Costa del Sol. Autumn used to be reserved for hunting weekends, but since an eye operation in 1965, the duke no longer shoots. The duke and duchess give and go to small dinner parties with such friends as the Eugene de Rothschilds, sometimes attend the theater or ballet on gala occasions. Each December they slip into London, where they stay at Claridge's, for Christmas shopping, returning to Paris for the Christmas party of their household staff.

A Deplorable Event. The Windsor staff has the job of maintaining the duke's life in nearly the manner to which he was accustomed from birth. On the subject of service, the duke likes to quote his father's maxim that getting things done on a royal standard requires a man and a half for every job. For the Windsors' movable household, that means some 20 people, from the duchess' secretary down to an electrician-mechanic. "I call the duchess the cruise director," the duke explained last week to TIME Correspondent Bonnie Angelo. "She runs everything. The house is the ship." The duke's role on their perpetual cruise ship? "He's the content traveler," said the duchess, to which the duke replied: "I'm also the exchequer, the purser." As purser, the duke spends each morning discussing their financial affairs with his agents and reading the stock-market tables himself. Afternoons, on a seasonable day, the duke heads for the golf course (he once shot in the 80s); he whimsically says that he really wishes he had been born a golf pro.

The Windsors belong to the jet set's predecessor, the international set, where only old money need apply and natural grounding in elegant living is de rigueur. Within its gracious confines, the duke and duchess are automatically the guests of honor at any party they attend, as though he were still king. It is a circle of friends that dates back to the '20s, and each year its number is shrunk by death. Churchill and Lord Beaverbrook are gone, and so are Viscount Monckton, who negotiated the terms of Edward's abdication, and New York Central Board Chairman Robert Young, the invariable Florida host of the duke and duchess.

Though Windsor asserts that he has "never, ever once" regretted giving up all for love, it rankles him that his royal successors and British governments have not made more use of him in exile. His lone service to the crown was as Governor-General of the Bahamas during World War II. Afterward, he privately applied for a job as roving ambassador to the U.S., whose ways he clearly finds congenial. He once remarked that he envied his old friend Winston Churchill for his half-quotient of American blood. He is now working on a biography of George III, who reigned during the American Revolution --a "deplorable event" that, the duke says, the book is really about.

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