Nothing to Be Ashamed Of

For years, divorce in Britain was considered not only in poor taste but political suicide. Adultery was the only legal ground, and novelists made almost a standard episode out of the husband's shamefaced trip to the seaside resort of Brighton accompanied by a hired "corespondent." There was the train trip down trailed by two hired detectives who carefully avoided speaking to him; the registration in the cold hotel as "Mr. and Mrs."; the embarrassed moments in the double bed beside the girl in a nightgown, he reading a newspaper, she munching sweets as they waited for the housemaid to bring breakfast and witness the incriminating scene. At least three breakfasts on three mornings were considered essential. Until 1857, only Parliament could grant a divorce, and did so at about the rate of two a year. In 1937 Humorist-Novelist A. P. Herbert got through a divorce bill which extended the grounds for divorce to include desertion and cruelty. There was a brief, un-English peak after the war when second thoughts on impulsive war marriages swelled the divorce rate to 60,000 a year. Since then, the rate has dropped to a steady and conservative 7% of marriages (v. 25% in the U.S.). Social attitudes, and the teachings of the Established Church, still make for disapproval of divorce, and contributed to Princess Margaret's decision to reject marriage with Group Captain Peter Townsend, not so much because he was a commoner or nearly twice her age, but because he was divorced.

In politics, the odium of divorce is diminishing rapidly. Anthony Eden was the first British Prime Minister to be a divorceod man and seemed not to have been hurt by the fact. He included in his Cabinet three other divorced men: Sir Walter Monckton, Secretary for Scotland James Stuart, and President of the Board of Trade Peter Thorneycroft. When Harold Macmillan succeeded Eden, he appointed another divorced man to the Cabinet, Minister of Education Lord Hailsham. Minister of Defense Duncan Sandys recently separated legally from Winston Churchill's eldest daughter Diana.

Last week Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd announced that he was filing suit for divorce from his young (29) wife alleging adultery with one Martin Lubbock and bringing the Cabinet divorce rate to three times the national average. The story got front-page play, but no voice was raised to suggest that divorce would blight what is left of Lloyd's political career, which, observed Daily Express Columnist George Gale, "will blossom or perish according to his abilities and not according to his private life. Private disaster is at last private."

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