The Literary Digest

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.

In 1935 Edward VIII, while still a prince, wished to launch a national thank-you offering to the younger generation:

‘The Prince’, said The News Chronicle of London, ‘has put his finger on the weakest point in our present social structure. The State shows at least some concern for infancy and childhood, for the blind and defective, for the widow and the aged. The task of helping youth at the most critical age has been abandoned almost entirely to voluntary agencies, and the Prince wisely does not seek to supersede, but to reinforce and extend them.’

Written a year and a half prior to his abdication, it was written to serve as a profile of the royal and it lays out for the reader the man’s personal preferences as well as his training.

Often reluctant to accept conservative advice, the Prince is aggravated when would-be mentors say something he wants to do ‘really shouldn’t be done, you know’. Thus, long before the problem of kingship are his in fact, the Prince has turned serious.

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.

Over the weekend Mrs Simpson received a letter that could not be dismissed with a shrug. It was from the Scotland Yard detail that guarded her at Cannes during the first weeks of exile, and it strongly advised her to heed the threats and stay out of England.

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.

Eleven months after the abdication, mixed feelings prevailed as to which king was preferred, George VI or the exited brother, Edward VIII:

King Edward was of my generation. I do not know how your parents feel about him, but I think I am right in saying that those of my generation feel that King Edward has let us down! Now let us stand and pray silently for two minutes for King George and Mr. Baldwin.

During the years the Duke of Windsor has been slandered up hill and down dale by all sorts of cliques and all manner of men; he has been called a cad, a shirker, a traitor, a Nazi, a snob a half-wit. Yet all his detractors can agree on one well-deserved sobriquet: dandy. No matter how you slice it, the man was well-turned out; and while he was busy tending to those matters that would render him deserving of such insults, he always did it as a fop, a beau, a buck or a swell. For as deep as his flaws may have been, he well understood tailoring and fabrics, stripes and plaids, cuffs and collars. His fashion admirers are born anew with each generation and he, more than any other man in the past century, created the definition of the well-dressed man. The following article pertains to his youthful air and fashion innovations.

Click here to see the Summer suits
other men wore during the Summer of 1932.

This is a very juicy, action-packed article written in the immediate aftermath of the abdication of Edward VIII.
The journalist detailed how the whole affair evolved at 10 Downing Street and in the parliament; the reaction across the empire. The writer also endeavored to introduce the readers to the two unknown heirs: George VI (1895 – 1952) and Elizabeth II (b. 1926).

Thus the ruler of the world’s greatest empire joined the shabby band of ex-kings – the wood-chopper of Doorn, Germany’s forgotten All Highest; Alfonso of Spain, who roams the Continent looking for pleasure; Ferdinand of Bulgaria, an old man doddering over his stamps; Prajadhipok of Siam, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, Abdel Medjik of Turkey, and Amaah of Afghanistan.

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

Ten days after a would-be assassin had leveled a gun at him in London, King Edward VIII was scheduled to return to the Western Front, where, as a gangling boyish staff captain, he narrowly missed death from a shell that wrecked his car and killed his chauffeur.

Few in Britain knew, at the time, of his repeated pleas to be allowed to forget his rank, lead the men over the top and, if fate so willed it, die for king and country.