GREAT BRITAIN: The Choice

See Cover The excitement, the strain, the uncertainty in Britain had reached such a pitch that it could not long continue. In a nation which sets such store by seemliness, the situation was too unseemly to last. What had begun as a simple and sentimental story of a Princess in love had now become a crisis that deeply involved institutions close to the heart of every Briton: the Crown and the Established Church.

In the beginning, almost everyone had seemed to be on the side of romance.

Young Margaret, for years the kingdom's royal darling, should be allowed to marry the man she loves, people said. It did not seem to matter that her choice, the airman who had been her father's equerry, was a commoner; it mattered only a little that at 41 he was 16 years older than she; it would matter only to some that he was a divorced man.

The Gathering Weight. That was how it began, for the news had seeped slowly upwards from the least respectable and least responsible papers. With no other way of knowing what was going on, the people who habitually read only the Times and listen to the BBC would not even have guessed at the romance until three weeks ago. Now the great weight of sedate judgment was making itself felt: the views of the Archbishop of Canterbury, of such powerful leaders of Conservative thought as the Marquess of Salisbury, and of the cautious, conservative and pious segment of nonconformist believers throughout the land. In the wake of this slow gathering of substantial opinion, many a lighter-hearted Briton was forced to forget the sentiment and take stock of the significance of Margaret's apparently firm intention to marry outside her church and outside the stern limitations of her inheritance.

At first it had seemed so easy: let Margaret simply renounce her rights to the succession, and then she would be free. Her sister the Queen could settle a million or two pounds on her, say from the large estate left by Queen Mary. All Margaret would be out would be an unlikely chance to be Queen herself.*

It was now plainly not that simple. No act of Margaret and no act of the British Parliament could sever her entirely from the fact of her birth. Margaret of Windsor is a Princess of Great Britain, her sister is the head of the Established Church, a church which frowns on remarriage of divorced persons and denies its sacraments to those who flout that proscription.

While the debate went on, many Britons, even among those who affect not to care a fig whether the young Princess marries her airman or not, found themselves caught up in it: they professed themselves sated with it, but they could not escape it. Like polite weekend guests unwillingly trapped in a family quarrel, they could not choose but hear. As the week wore on, the young Princess fulfilled her royal functions, well-armed in the impassive mask of dignity that is royalty's required uniform. In tiara and strapless pink and white gown, she helped her sister the Queen entertain the visiting President of Portugal by sitting through a performance of Smetana's The Bartered Bride, while a soprano sang to a forbidden lover, "Nothing in the world will ever part us." She snatched moments alone with Peter Townsend, whenever she could, at the homes of friends brave enough to risk disapproval by giving them shelter.