ROYAL ROMANCE ENDED

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28270, 7 May 1957, Page 2

ROYAL ROMANCE ENDED

Princess Not To Wed Commoner (N.Z. Press Association Copyright) STOCKHOLM, May 5. Count Carl-Reinhold von Essen. Master of the Royad Household, said today that Mr Robin DouglasHome had asked for the hand in marriage of Princess Margaretha of Sweden. His suit had been refused. Princess Margaretha, aged 22, is King Gustav’s granddaughter. Mr Douglas-Home, aged 25. a London advertising agent, is the nephew of the Earl of Home, leader of the Conservatives in the House of Lords. Count Carl-Reinhold yon Essen, in a press statement, said that the whole matter had ended six weeks ago. “The King did not write a letter of his own to Princess Margaretha as a result of the letter of proposal, but the King's will was expressed in Princess Sibylla’s letter of reply. (Princess Sibylla is Princess Margaretha’s mother.) “This reply was very polite but definite. The proposal was from the Swedish viewpoint to be considered as impossible.” Count von Essen travelled to' Stockholm from his country estate to draft the press statement after he bad been informed that a London newspaper had reported a romance between the Swedish Princess and Mr Douglas-Home. “Princess Margaretha—Sweden’s Princess Margaret—is a venturesome, strong-willed youngster, making the most of her family’s hard-won democratisation, who cherishes nothing more than her independence,” the London “Daily Mail” said. After learning to make her own clothes in Sweden, travelling incognito to a Norwegian skicamp as “Miss Mimi,” and going to a finishing school in France, she went to England for the second time to polish up her English. Her romance began when she danced with a slim young man with fair, wavy hair, Robin Doug-las-Home. By day he was an advertising agent, by night he played the piano to cocktail crowds at the Berkeley Hotel. Princess Margaretha first went to England in 1952 when, at the age of 17, she studied English at a school in Beaconsfield. She returned to London in. September. 1956, and took up a voluntary job in the occupational therapy department of Middlesex Hospital. She stayed in Hampstead with a businessman and his Swedishborn wife.

King’s Action A later communique issued by the Lord High Chamberlain, Marshal Birger Ekeberg, from Sofiero, King Gustav Adolf’s south Swedish country estate, said: “The King has not imposed any ban on such a marriage. On the other hand he did, at the time, advise Princess Margaretha to considei such a serious decision very carefUMr Robin Douglas - Home’s father, Major H. M. DouglasHome, said today: “It very silly to make such a fuss of it ail. It was just a boyish romance.