THE QUEEN

Hokitika Guardian, 19 October 1929, Page 6

THE QUEEN

HOW SHE KEIL., IN TOUCH WITH WOMEN’S WORK. INTERESTS' THAT HER. MAJESTY ' SHARES WITH HER LADIES-IN-WAITING. « When the Queen inspects any new kind of women’s work it is her habit to call the attentioii of the lady-in-waiting who accompanies her to anything that particularly attracts her. Together they make a note of it, as it were. It is a very womanly trait to want to share admiration with someone else, but it means more than that in the case of her Majesty. Her ladies-in-waiting might he called her women’s work organisation, for- through each one of them she has intimate touch with different bfanlices of women’s work. Every few weeks they give place to one another in attendance on the Queen, and each brings her own interest in women’s work to her Majesty.

A PERSONAL GIFT

Lady Bertha Dawkins alone is on 30 committees, all dealing with women’s activities. She was a Charity Organisation visitor for some, time, and often the Queen has come to know o, some individual trouble through these visits.

There was a poor old man in Bermondsey who used to he delighted with a hamper of good things from the Queen every Christmas, arid when he died it still arrived for his widow. All over 'the country these hampers go at Christmas, .and they are all individual gifts—tokens- of the Queen’s. personal feeling for “old friends.” Her majesty knows all about the training of girls for different employments, and she is very anxious that it should go on. During the war, her Majesty came into closest touch with women’s work in her own workrooms for unemployed women, and her interest now is that of experience.

ROYAL INTEREST IN COMMERCIAL TRAINING. The Queen has listened while a lesson in commercial geography was given to girl clerks and looked over their shorthand dictation books; she has watched girls cooking workers’ meals and ironing linen during their domestic training. Wiun Miss Margaret Bondiield she has examined old clothes which had.been made anew by women whom the present Labour Minister had trained in the work; she has followed the starting of a new industry for girls in canning fruit and drying vegetables.

The first “land girls” were the Queen’s girls who trained in Hertfordshire; the Queen had a hand in claiming the making of dolls and soft toys as women!s industries; there are sick-rooms helps who- owe "their first Deases to the Queen’s training; there are happy women in Australia who were sent there through the Queen’s interest. ,1-,, <

Few other women in England have such a wide knowledge of women’s work as her Majesty. And her lad-ies-in-waiting have a part in keeping her up to date.

at the rehearsal club. Lady Bertha Dawkins tells the Queen all about the new employments that have been found for girls by the Society for Promoting the Training of Women—that of rabbit-farming for fur and that of working as kennelmaids. It was a lady-in-waiting who took the Queen one afternoon to the Rehearsal Club, where her Majesty met and talked with girls from the stage. She had become specially interested in them through Lady Bertha, who is chairman of their .club. And after the visit the Queen herself sent gifts to the girls, as if to remind them that she knew them\ personally now also. One lias wondered sometimes how the Queen comes to hear of the amazing variety of people she visits, forgetting that around her is a -band of very hard-working women whose interests her Maiesy shares because they are those of her peopiie. Mary Lady Minto and the Dowager Lady Airlie have occupied themselves greatly with nurses, and so the Queen has experts always within reach on this branch of women’s work. ;

SCOTTISH DANCES AT SANDRINGHAM. From Lady Amphill she learns of the folk-dance movement for, her Majesty enters into her people’s leisure as well as into their work. She asked PipeMajor Forsyth, the King’s Piper, to go to classes held by the Scottish Folk Dance Society in London, so that lie might teach the children of Sandringham. They had been learning the English folk dances, and the Queen ' wanted them to learn the old Scottish dances too, such as “Strip the Willow,” “Meg Merrilees,” and “Flowers of Edinburgh.” Her Majesty can dance them all herself. FURNISHING THE DOLL’S HOUSE. With her ladies-in-waiting the Queen enjoyed being in daily touch with her people all over the world while the Queen’s dolls’ house was being furnished. The Queen does not accept presents as a rule, but in the case of these miniature objects, in which she is very much interested, an exception was made, and almost every day something new arrived. The palace is always a centre of women’s work, and, incidentally, this is perfectly organised. The Queen and

her ladies-in-waiting are presidents of the London Needlework Guild, although her Majesty prefers to crochet as her share of the work. She used i make children’s petticoats, but since children no longer wear petticoats, she has crocheted quilts.

FOR PRINCESS ELIZABETH. The Hon Jean Bruce, her Majesty’s Maid of Honour, looks after the distribution of the Queen’s orders to women to whom she wants to give work in connection with the London Needlework Guild. Her Majesty gives orders to the Working Ladies’ Guild for the making of cushions, or frocks for her grand-daughter, Princess Elizabeth, or her great-niece, little Lady Mary 'Cambridge. Sfrmetim.es there are orders for the invalids of the Girls’ Friendly Society, who love to work for the Queen, or to make frocks for her little grand-daugliter. —Peggy Scott.