Yesterday I revisited the lovely film "Mrs. Brown" with Judi Dench playing the roll of the widowed Queen Victoria and her "friendship", if you will, with John Brown a rugged, hard drinking Scotsman who had been the gillie (game keeper) at Balmoral Castle when the queen's husband had been alive and in residence there. I visited Professor Google to get more info. Victoria holds the Guinness Book of Records as the longest reigning monarch in the history of the country. (long reigns are something we could do with here in drought stricken California...). The other record she holds is for being the owner of the most corsets with whale bone stays. Fortunately for the cetaceans, whale bone strutted corsets went out of style. Now we hold in our collective tummies with "Spanks". The woman who thought up Spanks is now a billionaire as America's battle of the bulge continues to fail.
Queen Vicky
King Edward
Mrs. Wallis Simpson
One person who would never have needed Spanks or corsets was Queen Victoria's great grandson David, better known as Edward, Prince of Wales, the man who abdicated the English throne to be with his great love Wallis Simpson. Edward stayed trim by chasing married women around. This I found out when I started watching a BBC mini-series from 1978 called "Edward and Mrs. Simpson" in this morning's 6 AM Cinema. During the prologue screen credits, a voice (I strongly suspect Julie Andrews) is heard singing: "Glory, glory hallelujah I'm the luckiest of females, for I danced with a man who danced with a girl who danced with the Prince of Wales." I believe this little ditty was probably written to tweak Edward's nose about his proclivity for pursuing dalliances with married women. Judging from what I saw, there were several before Wallis came along. Each of them appeared all too willing to throw her husband under the bus in order to canoodle with Eddie; society wags be damned.
Looking at the above picture of Edward, he does seem to have the thousand yard stare of a man hopelessly in love. Right from the beginning of the series you see that poor (not in a pecuniary sense, mind you) Edward is not made of kingly fiber. Basically he's a scamp. Long past the time in life when the Prince of Wales should have started a family, he is conducting serial monogamy with these married women, much to the distress of his mother and his very ill father, the current King. Edward appears to be a man who cares much more for the sybaritic pleasures than affairs of state. He is constantly ducking his public duties which consist mostly of meaningless ceremonies and functions. However, the populace expects to see his picture in the daily papers gamely discharging his civic duty. In one scene Edward is at his "fort" as they call it, which is his private residence and retreat from public life. He's alone in his ground floor study when he hears male footsteps approaching. He quickly rises, opens the nearest window and jumps out.
As scamps go, Edward is most charming. He likes to kid around and doesn't mind making a fool of himself. Mindful of his Scottish ancestry he likes to "pipe" his dinner guests into the dining room playing bagpipes, dressed in full Scottish kilt ensemble. (without the comma after 'bagpipes', it would seem that the bagpipes were wearing a kilt--which is why punctuation is so important...)
Later on in the series, he serenades a party crowd playing the ukulele. He likes to stand on his head for extended periods of time. We see him playing golf; shooting skeet from the deck of his motor yacht; diving off that same deck to go for long swims in the Mediterranean and the Adriatic seas; driving golf balls into the sea from the deck; frisbee tossing LP's (Well, dear, you mustn't worry. The new records are unbreakable!) at a backyard picnic with his drinking buddy to see who can smash the Wedgwood china first. And he insists on keeping up with all the latest dances. Along with the usual grouse shooting and salmon fishing, he is also a big game hunter.
Early in the first episode, he invites the married woman prior to Mrs. Simpson to go on holiday with him to East Africa. Back in the day, of course, the English empire included great swaths of Africa. Edward had a legitimate reason to visit part of the greater commonwealth. However, he wasn't there to motorcade his way slowly through the sweltering throngs of adoring Kenyans. He was there on safari to hunt big game. The opening scene in Africa shows a herd of elephants. Edward, ever the intrepid traveler, gets too close with his camera and the lead bull elephant, a magnificent tusker, charges. The royal hunting party scatters with a collective shriek. In the next scene we see Prince Edward shinnying up a tree. Soon, we see Edward, having regained his dignity, leading the hunting party. They come upon the same herd of elephants and Edward takes his elephant rifle from his gun bearer and kills the lead elephant with one shot. For those of us who are more fond of elephants than princes, it was a disturbing scene. The next scene shows the mistress admiring a giraffe feeding among the tree tops. Edward grabs his rifle from the gun bearer and gives it to her. "C'mon, love! There's a sporting lass!" exhorts the Prince. She hesitantly takes aim with Edward's guidance and encouragement. BLAM! One less beautiful, elegant and graceful giraffe to terrorize the neighborhood.
In a sad bit of irony, had his great grandmother, Victoria, still been alive, that's probably the one bit of Edward's behavior she would have approved of; shooting big game in colonial British East Africa. No wonder the natives threw the blighters out. Tomorrow: Episode 4: "The Divorce". I expect more hijinks to ensue.
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