Edward VIII

Edward as Prince of Wales, in Ontario, 1919

On December 11, 1936, Edward VIII publicly abdicated the throne of England and turned from his role as King of United Kingdom and its dominions and Emperor of India for love of the American divorcee Wallis Simpson.

The romantic relationship succeeded in capturing the imagination of America as it struggled to survive the Great Depression. So much so, in fact, that in 1936, America's weekly news magazine, TIME, chose Wallis Simpson to be the first female awarded TIME's "Person of the Year."  Edward VIII's relationship with Wallis defied both the wishes of his family and the British government. It soon became clear that Edward could have Wallis or the throne; but he could not have both. Presented with this choice, Edward, under what many felt to be the bewitchment of Wallis' stronger personality, opted for love and left the throne to his younger and quite unprepared brother, George VI (or "Bertie").

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor continued to make waves internationally in the days following their marriage in June of 1937. Relations between the Duchess and the royal family did not improve. Indeed, one could argue that they worsened. The royal family refused to allow the Duchess to assume a royal style.

Living in France, the Duke and Duchess made little effort to avoid accusations of pro-Nazi sympathies. The Duke gave dubious public statements, which left his sympathies up for interpretation. The Duchess was chummy with Diana Mitford, a well-known Nazi sympathizer. With the outbreak of war, PM Winston Churchill threatened the Duke with court-martial in order to persuade him to accept the wartime governorship of the Bahamas, a British colony.

Although the Duke succeeded in doing some good during his governorship, it is difficult to view the Windsors' time in the Bahamas without some distaste. The Duke and Duchess' prejudices were too often vocalized, and the governorship of the Bahamas often showcased the Duke and Duchess' racism. Nevertheless, the British government did succeed in limiting the Duke's damage to the British war effort by preventing him the means or opportunity to act on any pro-fascist sympathies. In his memoir, the Duke defended himself, emphasizing that his admiration for the Germans stopped short of sympathy for fascism.

The Duke in his library as pictured in The Windsor Style by Suzy Menkes

When the war ended, the Duke and Duchess returned to France where they lived a retiring life as celebrities. Their social calendar typified that of cafe society--they entertained in their gorgeous houses and the Duke published small works. To this day, the Windsor's personal sense of style is widely, and rightly, celebrated.

The Duke & Duchess of Windsor, 1964, via The Windsor Style

 

The Duke of Windsor via The Windsor Style

Queen Elizabeth I

'The Ermine Portrait' of Elizabeth I, c1585, by Nicholas Hilliard

On November 17, 1558, Elizabeth I acceded to the English throne. Edmund Spenser famously wrote of Elizabeth in The Faerie Queene. In his work, he names the queen Gloriana.

Sunne of the world, great glory of the sky,

That all the earth doest lighten with thy rayes,

Great Gloriana, greatest majesty!

When Elizabeth I heard the news of her accession that November, she allegedly quoted the twenty-third line of Psalm 118 in Latin: A Dominum factum est illud, et est mirabile in oculis notris. ("It is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.")

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

P.G. Wodehouse via The Guardian

Today is P.G. Wodehouse's birthday. The humorist produced 96 books with such ease that he is stilled shunned by some "serious" scholars.  The prose, by his own admission, was "light," its humor, ready. Although his novels were rooted in the Anglo culture, customs, and psyche, P.G. Wodehouse spent the majority of his life in America. "I have always been awfully fond of America. It always seemed like my own country. I don’t know why. I’d much sooner live here than in England, I think. I can’t think of any place in England I prefer to this." Below is an excerpt from Gerald Clarke's interview with the writer as published in The Paris Review's Winter 1975 issue: 

INTERVIEWER: What have you been reading most recently?

WODEHOUSE: I’ve been reading the old books, books that I’ve read before. The first time you read a book, you don’t read it at all carefully; you just read it for the story. You have to keep rereading. Every year or so I read Shakespeare straight through. But then I go to the latest by Agatha Christie or Rex Stout. I read every book of theirs. I do like a book with an elaborate plot. But I haven’t any definite plan of reading. I read almost everything, and I like anything that’s good. I’ve just reread a book of A. A. Milne’s called Two People, which I had read several times before. His novel is simply a novel of character. It’s not the sort of thing I can write myself, but as a reader I enjoy it thoroughly.

INTERVIEWER: Do you read any contemporary novels?

WODEHOUSE: I’ve read some of Norman Mailer.

INTERVIEWER: Do you like his writing?

WODEHOUSE: I don’t like his novels very much, but he writes very interesting nonfiction stuff. I liked Advertisements for Myself very much.

INTERVIEWER: How about the Beats? Someone like Jack Kerouac, for instance, who died a few years ago?

WODEHOUSE: Jack Kerouac died! Did he?

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

WODEHOUSE: Oh . . . Gosh, they do die off, don’t they?

INTERVIEWER: Do you ever go back and reread your own books?

WODEHOUSE: Oh, yes.

INTERVIEWER: Are you ever surprised by them?

WODEHOUSE: I’m rather surprised that they’re so good.

INTERVIEWER: Of all the books you’ve written, do you have any favorites?

WODEHOUSE: Oh, I’m very fond of a book called Quick Service and another called Sam in the Suburbs, a very old one. But I really like them all. There are very few exceptions.

INTERVIEWER: Have you ever been envious of another writer?

WODEHOUSE: No, never. I’m really such a voracious reader that I’m only too grateful to get some stuff I can read.

INTERVIEWER: Have any other writers ever been envious of you?

WODEHOUSE: Well, I always thought A. A. Milne was rather. We were supposed to be quite good friends, but, you know, in a sort of way I think he was a pretty jealous chap. I think he was probably jealous of all other writers. But I loved his stuff. That’s one thing I’m very grateful for: I don’t have to like an awful person to like his stuff. I like Somerset Maugham’s stuff tremendously, for example, but I should think he was unhappy all the time, wouldn’t you? He was an unpleasant man.

INTERVIEWER: Was he unpleasant to you?

WODEHOUSE: No. He was all right to me. We got along on just sort of “how do you do” terms. I remember walking back from a cricket match at Lords in London, and Maugham came along on the other side. He looked at me and I looked at him, and we were thinking the same thing: Oh, my God, shall we have to stop and talk? Fortunately, we didn’t.

Mary of Peck: Queen of Order & Chaos

Mary of Teck, Queen Consort of King George V (1867-1953)

"The [Second World War] presented [the last great] Master [of Fox-hounds] with another, most unusual problem. His wife, Mary Beaufort, was the niece of Queen Mary, who descended on him with an entourage of fifty servants, having chosen his stately home, Badminton, as a suitable place to sit out the war and avoid the dangers of the London air-raids. After the royal invasion had taken place, the Duke and Duchess were left with only two bedrooms at their disposal.

The royal biographer, James Pope Hennessy, described Queen Mary as being 'fundamentally very, very German; the two things she liked most were destruction and order.' The destructive side of her nature was to affect the lives of the Duke and Duchess of Beaufort, for they soon discovered that they were unable to go out for a day's hunting without receiving an unpleasant shock on their return. Queen Mary had a passion for felling trees, and when they came home tired and muddied it was to find to their distress that yet another beautiful tree on the Badminton estate had been axed at the Queen's command.

James Pope Hennessy describes one episode, which conjures up the problems that confronted Master [of Fox-Hounds] during the wartime sojourn of his royal relative.

On leaving for hunting one day, the Duchess said, 'Now Aunt Mary, remember that the shrubs outside the stable wall are not to be touched.' The next day Queen Mary led her round to the stables and every shrub was gone, revealing a naked wall which then had to be cemented and painted. Before the Duchess could say anything, Queen Mary, like a naughty child, said quickly, 'I'm glad you like my yesterday's work.'

The Germanic, order-loving side of the Queen also caused inconvenience for the Duke and Duchess. While they were out hunting, the Queen liked to collect all the agricultural implements that she found in the fields on the Badminton estate. She would arrange to have the farm equipment brought back to the stable-yard, not realising that it had been left out in the fields for sound agricultural reasons.

When impeccably run hunting stables were reduced to something closely resembling a junk yard by the daily whims of the Queen, a terrible burden was thrown on the gallant and ancient grooms who were battling to preserve pre-war hunting standards during a difficult period when all the younger men had been recruited into the armed forces."

-In the Pink by Caroline Blackwood