KING REFUSES ASSENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 85, 11 April 1931, Page 11 (Supplement)

KING REFUSES ASSENT.

UNCONVENTIONAL SWEDISH PRINCE. TO MARRY COMMONER'S DAUGHTER. TALKS OF FUTURE PLANS. ■ i . (From Our Special Correspondent.) STOCKHOLM, February 15. Prince Lennart of Sweden, whose recent engagement to Miss Karin Nissvandt attracted world-wide attention, when the Prince's grandfather, King Gustaf, refused to assent to the Prince's engagement and marriage to the daughter of a commoner, granted me this afternoon the first interview he has given to the Press. Because of the refusal of the King to assent to the betrothal, the wedding ceremony of Miss Nissva'ndt and Prince Lennart probably will be celebrated abroad, as a marriage in Sweden of a Prince of the Royal House without the formal consent of the sovereign would be illegal. The young Prince, who is iaot yet. 22, received me in his rooms at the Royal Palace in the midst of a plethora of flowers, sent liini by friends, on the announcement of his engagement. "These are nothing," he said, glancing around at the flowers, "to what you would see in my fiancee's home—heaps and heaps of them are there. Bat she is ill with influenza, and that worries me a bit.- otherwise I am very happy, and neither of us has taken the recent trouble so much to heart as perhaps you would think. "For one thing," the Prince continued, "we both are blessed with a sense of humour, and have been able to see the funny side of all this bother and sensation-mongering.'' Still Good FViends. The Prince, who walks by himself, is tall, lean, and dark, and has a fine-cut thin face, with a small, dark dash of moustache, and wide-awake humorous eyes behind large glasses. "No." the Prince went on, "I am not worried. I am going to become a private citizen, and I have always lived like and felt like one. I live here in the palace because that is most convenient. but I might just as well live in my apartment in town. My father, Prince Wilhelm, has always lived as a private man and author. My attitude is precisely the same. I suppose you can be a democrat although you are born a Prince. "But there is one thing about this affair that has annoyed me, and that I ask you to correct. An impression has got abroad —perhaps naturally, because things have not been explained—that my step is to be taken as a personal break with the Royal Family. That is quite wrong. The King and I have always been good friends, and are not any worse after what has now occurred. You will understand I can't say anything about the reasons tliat moved the King to take the position he did. All I can say is I respect them.

"I went with the King to the opera tihe night before last, and I noticed that this caused some surprise, which is quite absurd, for our mutual feelings have not been disturbed. Not Mr. Wilhelmsson. The Prince paused a moment for reflection, and then went on at length: "The constitutional issue seems to be quite intricate, and I hear the wise and learned are still in dispute over various points. I, of course, can have no opinion on those questions, but I think you can say I am not to be Mr. Lennart" Wilhelmsson, as some wanted to christen me. "What am I going to do now? Well, first of all.l am going oil with my agricultural training. We intend, after our marriage, to : settle in Mainau Castle, an estate on' an island in Lake Con-' stance, and there. I hope, we will live -happily ever after. But as you know we. are not to be married for another year at least. "It has been stated that I would lose Mainau, too, through my marriage. That is 'not so. It was left to the late Queen by her brother, the Grand Duke of Baden, and was to pass on to my father, and then to me, and the understanding was that it was to be for my use for all time. Nothing can change that.:" ■ ' "There is not a lot of cultivable ground at-'Mainau, though there are large forests. Cattle breeding is the chief rcsouvce there. "You are wondering, however, how I came to be interested in agricultural matters. Well, I used to spend a great deal of time in the country at my father's place, Ste'nhamra, South Stockholm, and then —well, I suppose it was the thought of the girl. You see, I never really had a home. For the last three years I have not been in one place more than three months at a time. I had begun to feel very strongly the ■need for a home and a fixed point in my existence, and I knew I would have to seek it with Ivarin.

Nothing To Regret. "Then 1 was told about Mainau a few years ago, and so I came direct to my chief interest in that way. "Ye 3, it is quite true I have literary leanings. I have written a good deal in my spare time —mostly verse. I do not seem to be able to write prose, but thiit may come later, or it may not. I don't suppose you ought to force that. .- "Anyhow, at the moment I don't seem to have time for either prose or verse, for my telephone rings ceaselessly and my mail has swollen fantastically —particularly from Germany. 1 receive a vast amount of letters, some of them of the queerest kind, and then there is the Press, with telephone calls from all over Europe, particularly from London. "But I have 'not had time for a face to face talk with anyone like this before, and that may be why so many wild rumours have got about. Of course, it was annoying that the whole thing should have been started like this by premature publication. We would have much preferred to make the matter public ourselves, in our own jjood time. "But now that it has -happened it can't be helped. In any case I have, nothing to regret and hope I never shall have. "I must say that my fiancee has been lees concerned over the whole row thai) I have been. She is as cool as a cucurhber in that respect and does not let herself be .worried ' i "You don't know.her? Well, it's a pity—she is a very nice girl. Her interests? They are about the same as mine, as you can" expect. She is not exactly the sporting type, but tshe is fond of riding and particularly of winter I

sports. She does not care a great deal for society. She likes to potter about the house, doing things and keeping matters straight. I suppose she is rather old-fashioxied that way and I suppose that is partly what I like in her. "I am not a sporting prince, but I ride a good deal and what I like most is going about in my car. I have a 160 h.p. machine that can do—well, I don't know, I have never done more than 100 miles per hour. "But I have my other hobbies. Here is my film camera which I use a good deal. Yes, an American one. And then I play various musical instruments. You see my xylophone in the corner—rather a large and fin© one, is it not? I stumbled on it by chance and I believe it is the only one of its kind in Sweden, but then I also play a saxophone, as well as the piano. "I have travelled a good deal, but not yet to America —as a matter of fact, not to any English-speaking country. Yet I speak and write English fluently, having once had an English nurse. German comes to me as readily, hut then I have been in Germany a great deal." "And where does Your Highness intend to go for the wedding?" The Prince smiled and said: *1 shall not let the Press know where I go."— ("Auckland Star" and N".AJNVA.)