A MAID IN MAYFAIR

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 108, 8 May 1937, Page 3 (Supplement)

A MAID IN MAYFAIR

Gossip horn London Town.

A TEAM OF GREYS FOR THE STATE COACH.

(From Our London Lady Corre.pondent.)

THK State coach, in which the King an.! Queen will drive to WestminsteT

Abbey on Coronation Day, has been retiinicl to the Royal Mews by the ruachbiiihlers, who have been overhaulin- it. The r.'ppcarance of the famous old coarli will be almost a novelty in the lii.yul procession, for it is nearly ti\i' years since it was last seen. It was n-uhilly used rormerly at the openin" of Parliament each November, but since then there has been a succession of causes for its non-appearance. Iu two instances it was the weather, and the illness of King George V. was another reason, whilst the Court being in mourning provided the reason another year. The State coach is 177 years old, and on Coronation Day will be drawn, for the first time in history, by a team of greys. The team has to be specially selected and trained, for unless they draw the coach with a steady strain on the trace, and the minimum of jerkiness, it sets up a sway of the coach, which causes distinct discomfort to the occupants. King George V. often felt the effect of this sway after his illness. King's Nephews.

As was expected, the Princess Royal's two 30ns are to have their share in the Coronation ceremony. They will be pages in their uncle's, the King's, procession, and the appropriate costumas are now being made for them. Viscount Lascelles, the elder of the two, is not so excited about the prospect' as

To the bridge player the enormous graphite-filled wooden rods, liberally coated with barbola work and big tassels, which bear the name of bridge pencils are clumsy both to hold and to write with. To find a convenient place for one 'while a hand is in progress is almost impossible. A useful idea for bridge, and for all card games needing pencils, is shown here. To make it, buy pencils -which have an eraser at one end. Near this eraser nick the wood with a penknife and attach a plaited thong or ribbon in gay colours. Let this be six or seven inches long, and -to the other end fasten a suede-covered dressmaker's weight. Gay pieces of suede can be glued on the suede-covered weight.

is his brother, Gerald, for he has reached the age when public appearances arc dreaded rather than sought after. The thing that pleases him, however, is that he will be allowed special leave from Eton for a couple of days—a privilege which the other boys in his house envy him greatly. He made an appearance of this kind once before, when he acted m page to Miss Joy Verney at the time of her marriage to Lord Harewood's nephew, the Hon. Gustavus HamiltonRussell.

Boat Race Day. One boat race is very like another, excepting to those unfortunates amongst us who remember seeing it as small school children half a century a*o Gone are the dancing girls on stilts, the tumblers, and the gentry who invited us to rind the lady," and only a few nigger minstrels remain. In their place there was a roar of aeroplanes overhead, one foolishly doing aerial acrobatics above the waiting multitudes on the towpath. There was tremendous enthusiasm over the Oxford victory, coming as it did after a long succession of lean years. They fully deserved their triumph, which their enthusiastic supporters celebrated with due exuberance at the West End in the evening. I have just been reading an Old Blue's account of Boat Race experiences. He narrates how, next morning, you settle down with a headache to read the headlines in the papers about "Hooliganism at the West End"! A Depressed Area. When I motored back to London after seeing the boat race a huge car drew up alongside us in the slow-moving stream of traffic. It was decorated, as for a wedding, with sky blue streamers. Inside was the Cambridge crew. I never saw such concentrated unhappiness and unmitigated gloom in a RollsRoyce car before. It was a veritable depressed area in the Upper Richmond Road. Yet it was a magnificent fight the Light Blues put up. I saw the race from the lawn of an old Queen Anne mansion abutting on the river a quarter of a mile from the winning post. As they passed you could see no daylight between the two boats, and Cambridge, in a tremendous spurt, were slowly creeping up. Yet Oxford looked all over the winners. They were pulling with magnificent power and rhythm, and even at the moment when their rivals shot their bolt there was no shortening or quickening of their stroke. Popular though the victory was, it was impossible not to admire the vanquished. At the finish Oxford still had a little bit in reserve. Cambridge had nothing.

Flying Duchess. The Duchess of Bedford has often given anxiety to her friends by her hazardous flights—hazardous, that is, for a woman of her advanced years. Blessed always with an iron nerve, ehe has undertaken many long-distance flights, including one to the Cape and back and one to India and hack. She has been fired on by Moors, has walked at night through lion-infested bush, has experienced a drop of several thousand feet before her engine resumed firing in the nick of time, was reported lost when crossing the Sahara, and has been caught in blinding snowstorms flying over the mountainous regions of Europe. Though always preferring to have a companion with her on her flights she thought nothing of looping the loop and performing other aerial acrobatics when competing in the women's events at Reading last summer. The explanation she has always given to her friends for a hobby so unusual in a woman who had passed the allotted span of three score years and ten is that it was the most fascinating and exhilarating pastime that modern science has yielded to the human race. Devoted Father. King Leopold of the Belgians went almost direct from his visit to London across to St. Moritz to take advantage of the last of the heavy snowfalls. But this was not his first visit this year to Switzerland. Unknown to any hut a few personal friends and his own household he was staying in a quiet little hotel up in the mountains during February, teaching his children to ski. He is a devoted father, and since the tragic loss of his wife, the beautiful Queen Astrid, the little family has grown even closer in its affectionate relationship. Queen Elisabeth, the children's grandmother, is with them constantly, too, and with the help of & nurse looked after them during their little Swiss holiday. While the King was in residence the hotel was closed to all other visitors, so real is the sympathy of the whole Swiss nation for the King whose wife died in their country.