"Duchess of Windsor"

Assuming that Mrs. Simpson becomes the wife of the man who last week called her before all the world "the woman I love," must she then be Her Royal Highness, the Duchess of Windsor?

It was ascertained last week that heavy insurance on jewels was taken out by Mrs. Simpson before she bolted from Britain to France (TIME, Dec. 14), and in Mayfair dowagers in recent months have said they recognized on Mrs. Simpson the same royal jewelry which lavish King Edward VII bought for his beauteous Queen Alexandra and which she bequeathed to her favorite grandson Edward VIII with the admonition (which probably has no force in law): "For your future queen, David dear."

Mrs. Simpson unquestionably knows many of the British Empire's most vital State secrets. The abdication of King Edward could not have satisfied that great lawyer, Home Secretary Sir John Simon, had not His Majesty's Government been today in possession of the most binding engagements signed by Mrs. Simpson not to divulge these secrets. It was also necessary, for the highest reasons of State and also for other reasons, to establish in an official manner whether or not last week Mrs. Simpson was with child, as suggested by the Paris newspaper L'Oeuvre.

At Croydon Airport, on a night so clogged by fog that most commercial aircraft had been grounded, and with the weather turning so cold that wing ice was a peril, the risk of taking off for France was resolutely taken by Theodore Goddard, head of the law firm which obtained Mrs. Simpson's decree nisi (TIME, Nov. 2), and chunky Dr. William Douglas Kirkwood, a pre-eminent London gynecologist.

In Cannes, with that gallantry which newshawks show at the most unexpected moments, the Press relaxed the bloodhound tactics by which they trailed Mrs. Simpson across France. They had "no idea whatever" where either Mrs. Simpson or Dr. Kirkwood were Wednesday afternoon.

Afterward, Lawyer Goddard & Dr. Kirkwood made no desperate air dash back to London but comfortably entrained at Marseilles, and Mr. Goddard. when he reached London, went directly to Mr. Baldwin at No. 10 Downing Street. Assuming, and everyone in Fleet Street did assume, that Dr. Kirkwood's report established the non-pregnancy of Mrs. Simpson, many benefits might flow from this. Among others, Lawyer Goddard, according to the British divorce law, could ask the Court to make Mrs. Simpson's decree nisi absolute not in the usual six months (on April 27), but in three months (Jan. 27). The law provides "six months" in order to make unnecessary a medical examination. In case the wife prefers to have her non-pregnancy established earlier by such an authority as Dr. Kirkwood, however, the Court has the right to act upon his findings on a three-month basis or even, where "grave necessity" can be shown, immediately.

Thus this week the woman Prince Edward loves might already be no longer the wife of Mr. Simpson and might become unexpectedly the Duchess of Windsor. On the other hand, in England, the office of the King's Proctor, who has the duty of asking the Attorney General, in doubtful cases, to bring an action and prevent the granting of a divorce in which the "innocent party" (Mrs. Simpson) can be shown to be also adulterous, was much embarrassed last week. Not only had one of the richest women in Britain instructed her lawyers to badger the King's Proctor, but a discharged servant of Edward VIII was said to be not only willing but anxious to have "revenge" upon his former employer by testifying as to whether or not Mrs. Simpson had always been chaperoned when sleeping under the royal roof. In these ghastly circumstances, Britons could only hope that Baldwin the Magnificent (see p. 17) had, with sealed lips all round, already obtained the final divorce of Mrs. Simpson as well as her formal, signed and sealed undertakings to remain mum.

Talkative all week was the Lord-in-Waiting whom King Edward fortnight ago sent to stand watch over Mrs. Simpson in Cannes, Lord Brownlow. Last week correspondents rather got to like his way of saying "Upon my word of honor, you may take it, Gentlemen" but when they pieced together such facts as there were, these would seldom or never fit what the Lord-in-Waiting had said. Brownlow's greatest feat was to go for a long ride with Mrs. Simpson, closely followed by correspondents, and alight to vow on his sacred honor as an English Lord-in-Waiting that "not a single word" had passed the lips of Mrs. Simpson. She had been seen moving them at Lord Brownlow brightly.

In a word Mrs. Simpson had much less reason to be unhappy than it was dignified to suppose. Most of the stories about her "weeping" at Cannes were just so much Lord-in-Waiting. In her London circle she has the reputation of holding Edward VIII by her wisecracking, hard gaiety in the most adverse or intimate situations. He has carried fairly heavy pieces of her luggage in railway stations. She has called him "Boysy" to his face in brilliant London ballrooms, spoken of him to their British hostess as "the little man" when he was King and Emperor, kept him waiting two hours in her car outside her dressmaker's. When relatives of hers from the U. S. have been in town, she has taken His Majesty around to their London hotel bedrooms and he has shaken and served the cocktails. That realistic Mrs. Simpson ever thought she could be Queen of England without a tremendous struggle is unlikely, and there is no reason to think she ever believed her "Boysy" would fight rather than run away to have more or less fun the rest of their lives. Englishmen bore her, English women him. Her Maryland relatives last week were reported heartbroken, had been sure they would have best seats at the Coronation.

Dowager Queen Marie of Rumania's favorite daughter Princess Ileana, wife of a Habsburg archduke with a castle less than 25 miles from that in which "Boysy" is staying (see p. 15), this week invited Mrs. Simpson to visit her in Austria. The last Scotland Yard detectives assigned to Mrs. Simpson had just cleared out of Cannes. With bagfuls of threatening letters arriving by each post Mrs. Simpson urgently asked that her five French Government Secret Service guards be not withdrawn. They gallantly reassured her that they were staying, and, as the Lord-in-Waiting had left, it was said directly for Mrs. Simpson that she might accept the Archduchess Ileana's invitation, providing Mrs. Simpson's famed Aunt Bessie can accompany her as chaperon. One of the Lord-in-Waiting's last statements on his word of honor was, "Gentlemen, it is really true that Mrs. Simpson does not know where her aunt is at the moment."

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