THE ROYAL FAMILY LIFE

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 331, 12 January 1937, Page 2

THE ROYAL FAMILY LIFE

QUIET DOMESTICITY OF KING AND QUEEN WITH FEW

OUTSIDE FRIENDS.

PRINCESSES STAY WITH QUEEN MOTHER

Th© new King is not like the majority of people these days, a man of easy interests and many distractions, states an English journal. He and his family live a very quiet domestic life. As the Duke and Duchess of York, he and the new Queen occasionally went to stay with on e or other of their great friends — Mrs Ronald Greville, whose house at Polesden Lacey they had for Jheir honeymoon; or Mr and Lady Doris Vyner, whose Yorkshire home is like, Polesden Lacey, historic in itself and in its rare and lovely furnishing*

Apart from these, and from occasional shooting parties, such as those of Lord and Lady Pembroke’s. Their Majesties’ visits are entirely among their own families. In London the King and Queen prefer their own home to any diversions that the general social life can offer them. It is exceedingly seldom that they go out either to private or to restaurant parties; although they dine and lunch fairly frequently with Lord and Lady Plunket, Lady Annaly. or the Allendales, who are their neighbours. All these people are their close friends.

Mrs Ronnie Greville is very well known as a hostess. Her diplomatic and political entertaining, both in the country and at her home in Charles Street, is famous in many countries besides our own, and has given us. indeed, a distinction because that quiet brilliance is something gone from most of the world to-day. She is less well known as a traveller, an.d few people realise quite how her joumeyings are undertaken. Most women would, when th e wish to explore was strong in them, find friends to accompany them and make a comfortable adventure of it. Mrs Greville likes to go alone. She is independent and has great selfreliance. Most of her long journeys have been unaccompanied; she will go off and be away for months, quite alone, finding her own way about whatever the country she has a mind to see; whether it be Persia, as it was one time, or China, as it was another.

Mrs Greville gives shooting parties at Polesden Lacey, and every Christmas has a big party there. The Brazilian Ambassador and his wife and Sir Au&ten and Lady lain are regularly her guests for Christmas.

The new Queen’s friends all have this quality of independence and all are intelligent women. Lady Annaly for example, has an exceptionally good brain and what is known, with an uncomplimentary but traditional reference to womankind, as a man’s mind. She is clear-sighted, has a cool, detached judgment, and can see both sides of a question. Lady Annaly's wide-set, frank blue eyes give a clue to this part of her character, and a kind of easy energy about her walk and movements suggests that she has a liking also for what is known as an. outdoor life. She is a first-rate golfer and tennis player, and although she has no country house of her own she often takes one near Sandwich. Going to restaurants, Lady Annaly probably would not be recognised by a great many people who spend their days about London and think that they know their social world very well. Any evening between half-past five and seven, however, if you were to go to Lady Annaly’s house in Hyde Park gardens, you would find a small company of distinguished

people who make a habit of accepting the offer of open house that at this time of day brings her friends to her. She is herself a very good talker, and her popularity’ is especially among those people who arc best described by an old-fashioned word “cultured.”

Two other great friends of the new King and Queen are Sir Philip Sassoon and his cousin, Mrs Gubbay. Sir Philip has many times entertained them. Mrs Gubbay is a close personal friend of the Queen, and has interested her a great deal in the two subjects in which she herself is an enthusiast —old furniture and old silver.

The house in Piccadilly was furnished with Mrs Guibbay’s help both in finding lovely things and in arranging them. Comfort rules here, and there is nothing of the starkness of modernity about it. The drawingroom, full of priceless treasures though it is, has a homely air. Flowers are massed in big vases on various tables. On the walls hang three life-size portraits—one of the Royal hostess herself, and th© others of her two little daughters.

The two little Princesses do not accompany their father and mother on country-house visits, but go to j stay either with Queen Mary or at Glamis with their other .grandparents. When they are in Scotland they sometimes give children’s parties to which their friends within motoring distance are invited, for example, Lady Maude Carnegie’s little son, Jamie, and any youthful guests he may have staying with him. People who speak lightly about the restrictions imposed upon Royalty in private life do not always realise th© extent to which those restrictions have to be carried, even among very young people. On such occasions as nursery parties at Glamis, the children may all forget a little, when (they are really in the thick of the afternoon’s fun, the ceremonial that surrounds their hostesses. But when the party goes into tea or moves from one room to another, it has to be brought quickly to mind again. A little procession makes i|tself up in strict order of precedence. This may not in itself seem a very large or important matter, but it has a deep effect on the mind of a child.