"Stag at Bay"

One of Mr. Pickwick's most painful encounters with the rigor of British Justice was located by Charles Dickens at the Ipswich Assizes, but last week it was seen in Ipswich how considerate Justice and the police could be of a wife in search of her second divorce.

Mrs. Simpson arrived in a black Canadian Buick sedan which entered Ipswich with such rapidity as to have left behind down the road a cameraman's car doing 65 m.p.h. Her chauffeur was the King's own, and Ipswich police, manifesting no desire to write him a ticket for speeding, scrambled to throw open the courthouse gates for the Buick to dash in. With their truncheons they smashed two press cameras. Previously all newsreel crews had been sent completely out of Ipswich.

For the first time in several hundred years, local Ipswich members of the bar were denied free access to the courtroom and the Mayor, who is himself an Ipswich magistrate, was admitted only after arguing with his own police. In English divorce proceedings the wife, when examined by the Court, must stand in the witness box, which has no chair. Last week matters had been so arranged that all courtroom gallery seats faced by Mrs. Simpson from the box were vacant. Tickets were issued only for a few seats to which her back was turned.

The Judge was Sir John Hawke, former Attorney General to the Prince of Wales. Appearing somewhat confused, he first asked, "How did this case come here?" Up rushed a clerk to whisper vigorously through Sir John's wig, and Mr. Justice Hawke was then heard to say, "Yes, yes, I see. I have been told, uh."

Mrs. Simpson was a picture of "queenly composure" to Hearst Correspondent Thomas Watson. The New York Herald Tribune's Jack Beall emphasized her "spasms of coughing." The New York Times's, W. F. Leysmith cabled: "Frequently her tongue moved rapidly in nervous movements from cheek to cheek. She looked to one seeing her for the first time like a middle-aged woman of the upper classes. She has a wen on the right side of her chin. She told a most ordinary story."*

Nearly all of Mrs. Simpson's story came out in the leading questions of her fashionable London counsel, Norman Birkett. To 19 of his 31. soothing and descriptive queries, she had only to answer, "Yes." She also answered, "It did," "No," and "Yes I did." Broadly speaking, the case against Mr. Simpson who, like any husband anxious to spare his wife's name, had committed the technical adultery necessary for a divorce in England, was summed up in the following letter signed by Mrs. Simpson which was introduced last week in evidence:

"Dear Ernest:

"I have just learned that while you have been away, instead of being on business as you led me to believe, you have been staying at a hotel at Bray with a lady.

"I am sure you realize that is conduct which I cannot possibly overlook and I must insist you do not continue to live here with me.

"This only confirms suspicions which I have had for a long time. I am therefore instructing my solicitors to take proceedings for divorce.

WALLIS"

The usual cut & dried evidence from employes of the swank Hotel de Paris at Bray on the Thames near Maidenhead was then mechanicaly recited by members of its staff. They said they had brought morning tea to Mr. Simpson and a woman who was not Mrs. Simpson but was with him in a double bed. There must be no provable collusion in an English divorce case and judges usually demand to hear in court the name of the "other woman" or corespondent. This had not been mentioned when Mrs. Simpson's lawyer asked the Court to grant the decree nisi of divorce,* and a fateful pause ensued. Mr. Justice Hawke was sitting hunched over his desk dangling his handkerchief before his nose, and he spoke through it almost indistinguishably to Norman Birkett, K.C. with a characteristic mannerism: "Well, I suppose I must come to the conclusion there was adultery in this case."--i.e., that it was not a collusive put-up job.

Mr. Birkett: "I assume what Your Lordship has in mind."

Mr. Justice Hawke: "How do you know what's in my mind? What is it I have in my mind, Mr. Birkett?"

Birkett: "I think, with great deference, that Your Lordship may have in mind what is known as 'ordinary hotel evidence' where the name of the lady is not disclosed. With respect, I thought that might have been in your Lordship's mind."

Justice: "That is what it must have been, Mr. Birkett. I am glad for your help."

Birkett: "The lady's name, My Lord, was mentioned in the petition,/- so now I ask for a decree nisi with costs against the Respondent" [Mr. Simpson].

Justice: "Yes. Costs against the Respondent, I am afraid. I suppose I must in these unusual circumstances. So you may have it, with costs."

Birkett: "Decree nisi with costs?"

Justice: "Yes, I suppose so!"

All this had taken only 19 minutes, and as large and imposing Mr. Birkett, K.C. walked out of court with petite Mrs. Simpson on his arm, Ipswich police slammed and locked the doors after them, holding everyone else in court for five minutes to prevent the King's lady from being followed. Shut out were participants in the next case, but Mr. Justice Hawke let the police have their way, accepting the explanation of a counsel, "There is some trouble, My Lord."

Outside the King's chauffeur put on such speed that only a most desperate chase could have caught Mrs. Simpson, but after her Buick flashed out of Ipswich, police swung one of their cars squarely across the road and blocked traffic for ten minutes. Eminent London counsel in Ipswich for the Assizes who had previously called stories about the King and Mrs. Simpson "vulgar American tosh," ended by admitting to U. S. correspondents in Ipswich that in their entire experience at the British Bar they had never witnessed such proceedings, concluded that Ipswich authorities were acting to please Edward VIII.

Mrs. Simpson on the Telephone. Just before midnight, United Press Correspondent Harry Percy took the wild chance that he might be able to interview Mrs. Simpson by simply calling her new London residence, No. 16 Cumberland Terrace. She herself chanced to answer and was soon chatting in a nervous voice which gradually became easy as soothing Mr. Percy assured her that she could trust him and his employers and that U. S. editors want to print not rumors but facts. "It is terrible the things they have said about me!" Mrs. Simpson at first wailed. "No, I certainly won't go back to the United States! (with a bitter laugh) I could never show my face there! I have no plans at all. I'm not important. I feel humiliated." After brightening up, Mrs. Simpson said that if Mr. Percy would send her clippings of what he wrote she would see about perhaps according him an interview later.

The decree nisi cannot be made a decree absolute for six months, and thus until April 27, 1937, Mrs. Simpson is technically under the surveillance of an official known as the King's Proctor. A very few detectives are at his disposal, and that they would ever be "put on" this case is almost inconceivable, but if Mrs. Simpson during the next six months were discovered in compromising circumstances with any man she might be hauled into court again, and, if the decision went against her, she would be forever unable to divorce Mr. Simpson in England.

King Edward, from the day news leaked out that Mrs. Simpson was suing for divorce, had up to this week given no more official mixed parties but only a stag party at Sandringham from which he himself suddenly drove off to an undisclosed place. Last week, as mourning for King George had just come to an end, Edward VIII sent out invitations for the first dinner to be given by him as King at Buckingham Palace. He might have again included Mrs. Simpson and placed her name again in the Court Circular for all to see. Instead His Majesty invited no female guests but a great galaxy of British males and males of the diplomatic corps.

Inevitably this stag dinner caused Mayfair to surmise that Edward VIII might be showing Mrs. Stanley Baldwin and other prominent British females reputedly hostile to Mrs. Simpson where they got off, and wits described the bachelor King as "The Stag At Bay." Official London anxiously wondered if His Majesty could possibly have in mind resisting pressure against his reputed wish to marry Mrs. Simpson by the novel move of, in effect, barring British female socialites from his Court for six months.

At No. 16 Cumberland Terrace the blinds of Mrs. Simpson's new home were kept tightly drawn, the front door was not used, the front stoop was covered with whiting on which footprints would show, and the black Buick whisked in and out of the backdoor garage as though Mrs. Simpson were living a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim. The tonneau windows of her car, still driven by the King's chauffeur, had been fitted with glass of such deep blue as to make the occupant or occupants almost invisible. King Edward continued not sleeping in Buckingham Palace, and with Scotland Yard making things hot for journalists who tried to keep tabs on either Cumberland Terrace or the King's suburban snuggery 30 miles from London, the royal romance went into a discreet deep-blue eclipse.

It was noticed that Mr. Simpson chose July 21, the eighth anniversary of his marriage, as the occasion on which to bed with Miss "Buttercup" Kennedy. It was also noticed that Mrs. Simpson, according to the evidence her lawyers introduced, suspected her husband of infidelity and was having Mr. Simpson followed by detectives at the time when Mr. & Mrs. Simpson dined with Mr. & Mrs. Stanley Baldwin and Colonel & Mrs. Charles Augustus Lindbergh, as the guests of King Edward at St. James's Palace (TIME, June 8). If there had not long ago been established in Buckingham Palace, both above stairs and below, competent U. S. news contacts, it would not have become known this week that 36 hours after Mrs. Simpson got her decree she was supping gaily in the Palace with the King and a very few friends. After the party. His Majesty squired Mrs. Simpson to Cumberland Terrace.

British shopkeepers who are privileged to style themselves "purveyors by Appointment to His Majesty the King" clubbed together and presented to the late King George a $250,000 model house in Surrey. The United Press learned this week that King Edward has offered this house, which has never been occupied, to Mrs. Simpson in case she would like to use it as her country place. Dignitaries received by His Majesty last week spread in restricted Mayfair circles an impression that the King, after he is crowned in May 1937, will set out on a tour of the Empire extending clear around the calendar to spring of 1938. This would include a Coronation Durbar at New Delhi in the winter of 1937-38, and this week officials in Whitehall were appalled by the prospect that Mrs. Simpson is apparently to accompany the King, married or unmarried.

*For further press attitudes on the Simpson Case, see p. 53. *Nisi: "unless." Meaning: the divorce is granted unless, within a probationary period, something turns up to prove the plaintiff unworthy of divorce. /-Name: Miss "Buttercup" Kennedy.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.