1936

An interesting article that reported on the the successful filing of Mrs. Simpson’s second divorce (a photo of the document is attached) with a few words mentioned regarding the stigma of divorce within court circles and how ruthlessly she was treated by the American press corps:

Nobody mentioned the King. For that matter, no British newspaper mentioned that Mrs. Simpson was his friend.
But minutes before the Baltimore belle slipped out of Ipswich Assizes with her second divorce in her pocket, a million conversations were being launched around the world with the phrase:

‘Now that she’s free-‘

Once the cat was out of the bag and the whole world had learned of the whirlwind romance between the King of England and the twice-divorced American social-climber Wallis Simpson (1896 – 1986), one of the favorite social pastimes soon involved musing aloud as to whether British laws would permit him to marry such a woman. Constitutionally, the King cannot marry a Roman Catholic, which she was (although this journalist erroneously stated that she wasn’t); recognizing he couldn’t get around this law, he abdicated.

This article can be printed.

Attached is a 1936 article that addressed the issue of self-imposed censorship that the British press corps practiced during much of the Wallis Simpson scandal:

Innuendo about King Edward’s friend Mrs. Wallis Simpson, previously barred from London newspapers, crept in last week and even colored the august columns of the London Times.

With the news that he was now dependent on checks from his family
the newly minted Duke of Windsor had to learn to cut coupons and bargain:

In the Vienna hotel where he gets a private haircut, he protested that $1.26 seemed a little steep for the brief use of an empty hotel room. The manager sliced the fee in half.

With an odd sense of foreboding, the very young Edward VIII wrote these words at the age of nine:

…And here he was, at the end of twenty months, a king out of a berth…sent away from his kingdom almost without a single protest from those who he had tried to aid.

I find great pleasure in my talks with the woman who first aroused me to a sense of my kingly duties.

She jokingly refers to herself as the instigator of my downfall.

The primary topic of the article pertains to some hot water that the Duke was stewing in at the time for having attended Catholic services; even as the ‘Former Defender of the Faith’, this was seen as very bad form.

Attached is an article from the pages of a 1936 issue of THE LITERARY DIGEST that reported on the concerns of British Prime Minister Baldwin in regards to the scandalous love affair between King Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson:

Tradition vs. Love, Tory vs. Commoner, Baldwin vs. Nature

Here are a few editorial opinions concerning the bygone activities of one Dave Windsor authored by the assorted ink-stained wretches dwelling in both England and the United States.

Many felt with George Bernard Shaw that Edward quit, ‘simply and solely because he hates his job and has had enough of it.’

‘What’s the good of being Prince if I can’t do as I like?’ he protested as a youngster after riding his bicycle across his fathers geranium bed. Innumerable incidents supported the popular impression that as Prince of Wales he had not looked forward to kingship with pleasure. Once in a Paris club, he was asked by an American:
‘How shall I behave here?’
‘Like a human-being.’ The answer roused his quick smile, – but just then a Britisher came up, bowed from the waist.
‘How can I?’ Edward sighed.

At the end of the day, history will remember him simply as one of the most henpecked husband to ever walk the earth.