SCENES AT PALACE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 57, Issue 236, 17 July 1937, Page 8

SCENES AT PALACE.

ROYAL GARDEN PARTY.

LONDON, June 28,

One very charming touch appears in the newspaper accounts of the ltoyal Garden Party at Buckingham Palace yesterday, but one commentator indulges in unfavourable comment. He criticises the behaviour and dress of the guests. It is related how, when, the two Princesses we're following the Queen, the younger, Princess Margaret Rose, said ■to her sister, Princess Elizabeth: “When do you think we shall have the strawberries?” A writer in the “Daily Sketch” describes bis happiest impression as being the informality of the welcome from the King and Queen, and refers to the beautiful dresses, of which, he says, 90 per cent, were long-skirted, the hats being enormously 'big or reduced to a knot of flowers on the forehead. On the other hand, Air Guy Ramsey strikes a discordant note in the “NewsChronicle.” He says: “Strolling across the lawns, one rarely heard an English voice, but heard Canadian, racy and faintly nasal, strong .Australian vowels, clipped South African speech, and light New Zealand voices.

“Top hats were badly ironed, or after being caught in the crushes had tlie naps reversed. The bulk of the men seemed not to know what to do with their hats. The unwritten lule against smoking was conspicuously dishonoured. Alost women seemed to have come from an afternoon’s shopping, and their manners were little better than their clothes.

‘ ‘Apart from the inevitable rushes toward the King and Queen, which may legitimately be ascribed to loyalty, the crowd, whenever the King and Queen paused, made the task of the gciitle-men-in-waiting heavy. For minutes at a time it was impossible to move.” Other newspapers describe the party as quieter than last year’s. Mr Hannen Swaffer, writing in the “Daily Herald,” says it was much more sedate tha.ii the last party, when, with King Edward VIII. as host, the Canadian pilgrims to Vimy 'Ridge asked for autographs, sat on the grass, smoked everywhere, and wrote postcards in a drawing-room. This party was much more seemly. People broke only one rule, they stood on garden, seats to look at the Royal party.