FRANCE: Duchess of Windsor

• Share

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.