RECALLS HIS BOYHOOD

Chronicle (Levin), 6 December 1947, Page 5

RECALLS HIS BOYHOOD

(N.Z.P.A.-

-Renteh

Buke Of Windsof WriteS For Magazine

Go&yrighi)

NEW YORE, Uec. 4.- ^ In the first of three articles in the Life magazine, the Duke of Windsor describes his bovhood,- revealing h headstrong, shy and somewhat rebel--lious boy, Thti Dukfe wfitfeft tHat his father, who was tlie Sterner of his parents, thought him "dumb." To his father "Lloyd George and even Winston Churchill and I were dangerous, almoSt Siibversive eharacters. " lle exjflains that he was ahvays called David and tbat-he was taught ro call his inother and. father manui and papa in the Simple English wav. " The Duke quotes a riOtatioh from his father' s diary at 10 a.m. oii JuUO 23, 1894: "A sweet iittle h&y was hdfn and weighed 81h." "Ihe' Duke hdds: "Soniehow I imagiue that this was the last time my father ever applied to me that precise adjective." The Duke says his bovhood was Strict because his Navv-trained father was strict. "I have often thought that my father liked children only in the abstract." Jle tells how he was scoldert l'or being late, dirty, for making a noise on some solemn occasion, and tor w riggiing and sc ratching in church. liis mother taught- him to crochet comforters — a diversion to which he returned when in bed after a riding aecident and again when, as a majorgeneral in the First World War, he made long niotor tours in France. When 12^ he went to a naval school and "the privacy of my Royal existence was rolled "up like a curtain. " His fellow sTndents poured a b'ottle of red iitk over his head and slammed a window down 011 his neck as a reminder that his ancester, King Cliarles 1, had been belieadcd. Of his brother, the present King, ne says: "1 am sure it will in no wav detract from tlie prestige of my Kingiy brother when I say that, when we were young, I eould always ' manage him. That is, after all, the established prerogative of an older brother. " Bottorh In His Class. Tlie Duke wrote regarding his own education — geared primarily for a career in the navy — that he was aliergic to mathematics and that his laek of progress waS a souree of worrv to his mother. "Yet quite apart from the question of whether I possessed the intellectual equipment to make a good student, the circumstances of my birth combined with the c-onstitutional constraints of a monarchial democracy to (lilute and slow down my preparation for the modern world. For one thing 1 never knew the spur of competition..uiitil I was nearly thirteen and had gone to a naval school. While this no doubt made my childhood more pleasant, I those formative years were devoid ot ' the sudden e-reative bursts and ringing interest that are normallv inspired by ihe competitive association of young boys. Then the fact that I was (les--tined from birtli for the navy, tendecl to throvv an iron ring around niy education." The Duke showed his own position in his naval academy class at Osborne to have been very poor — he ranked 59th in his class out of 59 students- in engineering — and reflected: "No doubt my being a Prince and in direct line to the throne, saved me where other boys without these connections, might have been dismissed. But I like to think that it was on my own merits that I j survived, to progress to Dartmouth for the last two years of my naval training ashore." Of the general outlook on his family 's political life, the Duke said: "Under Ihe principle of British politics that a inonarch should reign but not govern, we, as a famTly, were condemned in tne midst of an intensely political environment to be not merely neutral but, 11 possible,- apolitical. " The Duke's feeling for his father was one of respect and alfection, for his mother the deepest love, for Edward HeventlC the greatest admiration, for Queen Victoria awe. He, said his inother had a precise encylopaedic memorlv. "Altliough "she baclced up my father in all. matters of discipline, sne ncvor f'ailcd to take our side when, in her judgment, he was being harsh witn / us. ' ' The artiele, which is headed "A Royal Boyho^," is accompanied bv manv photographs of the Royftl family. ff - -