Dignified royal memoir

Press, 11 August 1979, Page 17

Dignified royal memoir

For My Grandchildren. By the Countess of Athlone. Evans, 1979. 294 pp. Index and illustrations. $21.95.

(Reviewed by Meriel Farnsworth)

The current interest in "the Royals” has no doubt prompted the publishers to reprint these reminiscences of Her Royal Highness, Princess Alice, which first appeared in 1966. However those readers seeking sensation will be disappointed: only the most innocuous family secrets are revealed. Princess Alice was born in 1883 the first child and only daughter of Prince Leopold, the youngest of Victoria's sons, and Helen of Waldeck, daughter of Prince George of Waldeck Prymont. (All but dedicated genealogists will probably find some of the earlier chapters tedious as the Princess follows with relish the convolutions of the Hanover family tree). Before the birth of Princess Alice’s brother Charles, her father died.

The widowed Duchess brought up her small family at Claremont, a home and a household which the Princess describes with loving detail. Frequently she was taken to visit her European relations. The wearisome protocol of these minor German courts must have been irksome for a lively child, but her upbringing precluded complaint. It was a grief to her and to her mother when her brother, then at Etc.., was forced to succeed to the Saxe Coburg title and had to depart to live permanently in Germany, and an even greater grief when war divided the family. In 1904 the Princess married Alexander of Teck, youngest brother Princess (later Queen) Mary, and bore him two children, May, to whose children the book, is addressed, and Rupert, who died in 1928. During the First World War when English

royalty renounced their German titles, she and her husband became the Earl and Countess of Athlone. From then on their careers follow predictable lines. In 1924 the Earl was appointed to the Governor-Generalship of South Africa. Shortly after this arrival Smuts lost a genera! election and Hertzog came into power, a situation which the Earl obviously handled with tact as he maintained cordial relations and was invited to extend his term of office. During the Second World War. too old far active service, he succeeded Lord Tweedsmuir as Governor-General of Canada. Again they proved a popular couple and did much to strengthen Imperial ties. The most entertaining chapters of the book deal with the Princess's travels in Thailand where she attended a coronation, in Africa, the Middle East, Canada, the Bahamas and Australia. She had a rich sense of the comic and managed to wring a great deal of enjoyment even from official journevs in spite of the relemless formality. What emerges from the royal trappings is a gracious lady, dignified but certainly not solemn, with a stoic sense of duty as befitted a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, a charming ingenuousness — “Mr and Mrs Truman were nice and friendly.” this after a positive eulogy on President Roosevelt — and a sense of adventure. During her long life Princess Alice saw tremendous changes in the social political and economic fabric of her country, some Of which she deplored — the absence of manners, the selfishness and lack of consideration and respect — but for the most part she accepted with a wide and often amused tolerance, tempered at times with a nostalgia for a more gracious past.