Good Old Duke

On the awful night of August 31, the eve of war, when diplomats were making frantic 59th-minute appeals, a wealthy Londoner telephoned his brother in the South of France. Would the brother and his wife like to use the Londoner's private plane to get home? No, thanks, came the answer. For the brother's wife, Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, dislikes airplanes even if they belong to the King of England.

And so it was by land and sea--by car and destroyer Kelly--that Britain's former darling, the wearer of fancy collars and a lifted eyebrow, onetime King, hero of thwarted lovers, Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor, went home, taking with him his still unroyal, still beloved Duchess. Once the news would have been the biggest in all Britain; last week it was just another parenthesis in the sad story of war. The Kelly was scheduled to dock at Portsmouth at 6:30 one evening. At 6:45 the blundering Ministry of Information announced that the Duke had landed. But not until 9, more than two hours after the news hit the wires, did the Duke set foot on the red carpet which covered the very jetty from which he had left England exactly two years, nine months before.

First to greet them was Admiral Sir William James, commander in chief of the Portsmouth naval base. Second and third were the Duke's trusted friend and former equerry, Major Edward Dudley Metcalfe, and Sir Walter Monckton. The Duke & Duchess had planned to drive straight to Major Metcalfe's country place, but delay and blackout made them decide to spend the night in Portsmouth with Sir William. That evening, among war bulletins, British Broadcasting Corp. spent exactly ten of its preciously pronounced words on the arrival.

Next morning the couple drove (Duchess at the wheel) to Major Metcalfe's grey stone house in Ashdown Forest, about 40 miles south of London. In the car were two paperbound books: Winston Churchill's Step by Step, Dr. Ivan Lajos' Nazis Can't Win. Beaming like newlyweds, they received newspapermen. The Duchess was bright ("looked even better than when she left") in a gold dress, a gold and black checked coat, the Duke proper ("looked several years younger") in gray double-breasted flannels and a maroon-and-white tie.

They were obviously happy to be back. "These are newsreel men," the Duke told the grinning Duchess. "Sometimes they make us look awful."

After a night in Major Metcalfe's best bedroom--rose-walled, with a large, fur-spread double bed, fragrant with lilies and pink roses--the Duke drove up to town with Sir Walter Monckton, called at Scotland Yard to talk over police escorts, then went to Buckingham Palace to see his younger brother, the ungainly lad George VI, who had made such a sober success of Prince Edward's former job that rivalry in the public eye was now not even thought about. They talked an hour, presumably of the job the Duke would take in wartime. During the last war he ran safe errands, visited the wounded, studied the Suez situation until, distracted, he fretted: "They seem to want to wrap me up in cotton wool and get me a nursemaid." He wanted no coddling this time, got none. It was agreed that he should resign his titular post as Field Marshal, take the lower rank of major general and go to France for active service. Another matter the brothers apparently settled: the Duchess could get along without that H.R.H.

Next day the Duke settled into a routine of homecomer's chores: saw his Brook Street tailor, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain ("purely informal"), War Secretary Leslie Hore-Belisha (about his job). Like any other citizen he wore a gas mask over his shoulder. All this while the Duchess rusticated, making plans to go back to France to turn her house into a hospital.

The Duke was glad to get home without a fuss. But even without cheering crowds, he knew where he stood in the hearts of his countrymen. The reporter who said, "It's nice to see you back, sir," meant it. So did the woman who, happening to recognize Edward of Windsor when he came out from his first visit to Buckingham Palace, cried out: "Good old Duke."

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