Edward and England

A Reply to "J.N.S."

King Arthur is dead and all his knights; nor any longer does Achilles perform deeds beyond the power of humankind. The Heroic Age is gone from the face of the earth but not from the minds of men. Kings and Princes they have and soldiers dressed in uniforms of the Middle Ages. And when the bands play and the infantry marches past and the cavalry on their chargers, and when the King comes too, on horseback, or in a gilded coach, surrounded by the members of his house and all this is against a background of the immemorial elms of England, and on the ground where kings have ridden and commons walked since England was first a kingdom, and all around are castles and fortresses that have seen much of the pageant of English history, then, in truth, England's past comes to life again and the men who live beneath these scarlet liveries become for a moment mediaeval knights, and there springs before men's minds all the imagined splendours of feudal times and of knightly contests for honour and fair ladies.

And when all is over London returns to normality. For many life is dull because of their mental limitations, for millions more because poverty compels them to live among endless miles of grey tenements and work long hours among noise and grime. And when they return home in the evenings they seek to desert their world. Perhaps they choose the pictures and see the Duchess of Kent visiting an orphanage, or maybe they will take up the newspaper and read of some trivial action by the king, and reviving the atmosphere that surrounds him, build up some hero, whose contemplation satisfies for the moment their desire for escape.

Yes, J.N.S., I believe Mrs. Simpson was the cause of the abdication. To touch this legend of the House of Windsor with reality would be to destroy it. The atmosphere of the divorce court, besides the un-aristocratic origin of Mrs. Simpson would make it impossible to weave a legend round the life of the kin,;, and in the strength of that legend has lain the strength of the monarchy. And what was the alternative to allowing the marriage? To put on the throne a man who was unlikely to do anything to destroy any legend we built up about him and 'matchlessly blessed' with a wife and children. Once again we can build up our stories, and how many can be told of any children that will bring laughter or tears to a willing audience.

The passion for building a royal hero, without any real evidence of heroic qualities, Edward alone with-stood, and so he did not stand for long. Even J.N.S. himself seems not to be entirely free from this passion, though being more enlightene than the majority, he makes his hero both a "smiling Prince" and a "No. 1 Salesman."

—J.W.D.