ROYAL WOOING.

Taranaki Daily News, 25 February 1922, Page 6

ROYAL WOOING.

BKHU COURT ETIQUETTE, ■’ r , - - •''& HOW LORD LASCELLES PROPOSED. The war killed a certain amount of etiquette and ecremony at the British Court. In the matter of the love affairs of ladies of the English reigning house, much ceremony has still to be observed. Briefly here is how the courtship of the Princess Mary by Lord Lascelles was conducted: They never met alone. It is On £-°2 r ‘^ id ru i«s of Court etiquette that the daughter of the sovereign must never be alone in the presence of any man with the exception of immediate male relations.

Always when the Princess met Lord Lascelles she was attended either by her Lady-in-Waiting, Lady Joan Mulholland, or some members or a member of her own family or by a Lady of Queen Mary’s household.

Of course, before the courtship began at all Lord Lascelles had to obtain the consent of the King and Queen to wip the hand and heart of their only daughter. When their Majesties consented to Lord Lascelles doing so it did not necessarily mean that Princess Mary would agree fo marry ihe Viscount: up to that time her Royal Highness had met him about half a dozen times and had only the most distant acquaintance with him. She had never spoken to him for more than five minutes at their meetings in the hunting field and ballroom. She had never danced with him.

But Lord Lascelles could not propose to the Princess until it had been conveyed to him by a member of the Princess’ family that' tf he did propose the Princess would be likely to regard his proposal favorably. INVITE TO SANDRINGHAM.

The information was conveyed to Lord Lascelles by the Duke of York at a dinner at the Marlborough Club. The next day Lord Lascelles went to Sandringham by invitation of the King, and during a stroll in the woods, as has been officially announced, he proposed to the Princess. When he did so walking behind her Royal Highness were two ladies of Queen Mary’s court. The four then returned to Sandringham House for afternoon tea. There were present the King and Queen, who received from the Princess the information that she had promised to marry the man standing beside her. It was then that Lord Lascellles gave the Princess his first embrace, kissing her on both cheeks. The next day the whole family at Sandringham returned to Buckingham Palace, and the announcement of the betrothal was sent out to the Press that night. During the engagement of the Princess, etiquette will forbid her to be alone for a moment with Lord Lascelles, although she sees him practically every day. When Lora Lascelles calls at the Palace he is shown into the Queen’s where he is received by the King and Queen or some members of the Royal family and members of the household. Princess Mary enters shortly after his arrival and he greets her by first taking her hand in his hand, kissing it, then kissing her on both cheens. KING TO CONTROL WEDDING ARRANGEM ENTS. Had the Princess married into a reigning European family, the wedding would have had to be arranged in accordance with the wedding ceremony prevailing at the court of the future husband. But as things are, the King will have entire control of all the wedding arrangements. Lord Lascelles of course will be and is being consulted with regard to them, but he is quite content to leave the whole of the arrangements in the hands of the Lord Chamberlain, which will save the Viscount a good deal of trouble and worry.

In normal times a week after the announcement of a royal betrothal the wedding presents begin to arrive in large numbers. The Princess Mary so far has received four wedding gifts and Lord Lascelles three, and none of them is particularly costly or valuable. Inquiries among the West End shopkeepers revealed the fact that the flood of orders they expected to get for wedding gifts directly the announcement of the royal betrothal was made had not arrived. COSTLY GIFTS.

A leading jeweller and goldsmith has received orders tor gifts for the Princess to the value of £3OOO. They inc’ude orders from three of the richest men in England—Sir Phillip Sassoon, Lord Rothschild and ix>rd Iveagh, all intimate friends of the Royal Family. The jeweller anticipated that the orders for wedding presents from those three individuals alone would amount to at least £5OOO, and that by this time he would orders for wedding gifts for the Princess and Lord luascelles amounting to £20,000. It is the intention of the King and Queen to exhibit all the wedding gifts at St. James’ Palace for a week and to charge a small sum, the proceeds to be devoted to charity. But unless the presents begin to arrive in greater numbers and more rapidly, the idea of exhibiting them before the wedding will have to be abandoned. Men who in pre-war days would have thought nothing of spending £2OOO on a wedding gift for the only daughte.' of the reigning house now think twice before they will spend £2OO on one. That the Princess will receive ,a number of costly presents goes without saying, but the hardships which ail classes are now suffering are reflected in the quantity and quality of the wedding gifts coming to Princess Mary and Lord Lascelles. MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT. The details of the marriage sett’oment by Lord Lascelles have all been approved by the King, and the document is now being engrossed. It will be one of the most voluminous deeds of its kind on record, and will cover 70 folios of quarto parchment. It will take six weeks to engross. The main financial clause in it is to provide for a settlement by Lord Lascelles of £250.000 on the Princess. The money will be held in trust by three trustees, of whom the Prince of Wales is one. The interest on the money will become pavable to the Princess person ally from the date of the marriage, and in‘the event of Lord Lascelles dying before the Princess the sum of £250,000 passes to her and the trust comes to an . X In the event of the Princess pre-de-ceasing her future husband, and if there are no children of the marriage, tb« £250 000 would go back to the Lascelles family; Ix>rd Lascelles’ father, the Y-arl uadw th. deed of settle-

ment, undertakes to create a charge on his property’ of £25,000 for each child of the marriage born before his death. After his death the obligation to create these charges on the property for the benefit of the children of the marriage devolves on Lord Lascelles. Forty pages of the settlement deed deal wfih the eventuality of Lord Lascelles dying before his father. REMARKABLE PROVISOS. Ten pages of the document will be occupied with some remarkable and unusual provisos. For example, there is a clause guarding the Princess from any loss under the settlement, if (for no fault on her side) she.finds it impossible, to five with her husband and she finds it necessary either to return to live with her parents or with some other relations. The deed will be signed by Lord Lascelles, his father, and the King, and it will be registered as a legal docu ? ment under a special proviso dealing with tfie marriage settlements of members of the Royal f amily. PRINCESS MARY’S NEW HOME.

There are few, if any, manors in England which have a more romantic and distinguished history than that of Harewood, future home of Princess Mary, who will, however, it is understood, spend the early years of her married life at Goldsborough Hall, Knaresborough (says an. English exchange). Ever since the Conqueror gave the rich Harewood lands, with the neighboring fee of Skipton-in-Craven, to Robert de Romelli, one of his soldiers, the manor has had a sequence of lords as illustrious as any in England. Robert’s only daughter' found a husband in William de Meschines, the Conqueror’s great-grand-nephew’, thus forging the first of many links between Harewood and the Throne. Harewood Cast’le, which had seen six centuries of splendid life, had become a dismantled ruin when, in 1738, the manor passed by purchase into the hands of Henry Lascelles, ancestor of the present earl; and it was not until twenty years later that the walls of Harewood House began to rise. Although no link of descent connects the Lascelles with the long line of earlier lords, they have worthily continued Harewood’s ‘splendid traditions for nearly two centuries. They have added to the long and distinguished list of Harewood’s ladies two daughters of marquises (Bath and Clanricardie), and the daughter of the third Earl of Bradford; and they have dispensed a regal hospitality from the days, a century and more ago, when the Grand Duke Nicholas was their guest, 'to the recent visit of Queen Mary and Princess Mary, who will be Harewood’s first Royal lady.