Marchioness Who Seems Model Aristocrat

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30153, 10 June 1963, Page 2

Marchioness Who Seems Model Aristocrat

[By

SUSAN VAUGHAN]

At first glance, Stella, Dowager Marchioness of Reading, looks like the definitive English woman aristocrat. She is a handsome and rather awesome woman of 69 who will tell you that she is “keen on gardening, keen on needlework.”

However, after even a slight acquaintance with Lady Reading one realises that If all the English aristocracy were like her, they would be the liveliest and most invigorating group of people in the world. Certainly she is the only titled woman I know of who once worked as a dishwasher. She was born in Constantinople where her father had been sent by the British Foreign Office to help the Turks sort out their appalling money troubles. She spent

her childhood and much of her 'teens in Turkey. The memory of the country cannot be particularly pleasant for her. She was ill with spinal trouble and spent years in bed. However, her four brothers and four sisters brougnt the outside world to her. And she studied. Today, she still benefits from that early study. She is a good linguist, speaking French and German fluently, and getting along with Italian and Greek.

At 19, she came to England; she was rather shy and frightened of everyone. Her father lost his money in the war and she took a job in a solicitor’s office. Later, something better turned up: a job on the secretarial staff of the Viceroy of India, the first Marquess of Reading. Lord Reading had had a

rags-to-riches career, starting out as a hand in a sailing ship, studying law, becoming Lord Chief Justice, then an Ambassador, and now Viceroy, which at that time was one of the most splendid jobs in the world. Stella rose in the secretariat to become virtually his chief of staff. When his wife died in 1930, Stella became his political hostess. The next year, they were married Lord Reading was 71, Stella was 34.

Lord Reading went on to become Foreign Secretary. He

was a highly perceptive man. He once told hjs wife that the future of democracy might well depend on a true understanding of the Americans by the British. In 1935. when her husband died. Lady Reading went to the United States, assumed the name of Mrs Reed and proceeded to> get to know the American people. This was the time when she washed dishes. She also travelled by car across the country, stopping each night at cheap hotels.

Her incognito could not have been good enough, how-

ever. One day she was stopped by a policeman who said: "The President wants to see you.” President Roosevelt was very impressed by her mission So were the American people. She still enjoys a big reputation in America. On her return to England, Lady Reading was offered the job which has come to be her life’s work. This was to found and run the Women’s Voluntary Service. As a pioneer. State voluntary organisation whose purpose is to bring aid and comfort to the harassed, the frightened and the homesick, the W.V.S; has been copied throughout the world. The organisation has just been celebrating its twentyfifth anniversary, and this occasion is, as much as anything, a memento to the skilful leadership of Lady Reading.

She comes out with phrases like ‘‘the British character is the best in the world,” and says she is adding new ideas to “her bundle of sensibles.” As I say, she looks the definitive England woman aristocrat. If only she were! (All Rights Reserved.)