HOW THE QUEEN DINES.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1515, 20 November 1886, Page 3

HOW THE QUEEN DINES.

Any .of her Majesty’s subjects who may desire to know the ceremonial of Queen Victoria’s dinner-table can bear all about it from a French journalist. All the details are interesting, and some of them surprising. Exactly fifteen minutes before the dinnerhour the gaeste are ranged in a semi-circle, the band playe. “The Boaet Beef of Old England,” and to this appropriate and characteristic music the Queen enters the ftresenoe-room j she shakes hands with the adiei and salutes the gentlemen. Then ihe panes to the dining-room, taking precedence of all her guests. As she looks down the table she finds her own family (so many of them as there are) all ranged on her left and the guests of the day seated on her right band. At this meal the Queen always wears gloves, unless it should be a State meal. On two points the rales of the Court etiquette are very strict. No one is allowed to address a remark to her Majesty directly. If a guest thinke he has something which may interest the Royal hoetese he mentions it to a fellow guest, The latter discusses it, and so, filtered and at second-hand, it reaches the Queen. There is no rule, however, which prevents the Queen of England from asking any question she likes of any guest at the table. One other regulatioa bears peremptorily on the invited. Instantly the Queen has finished with a course every guest at table must also end. Curiously enough this French chronicler gives no details of what happsns when the Lord Mayor dines at Windsor,