" LARKS " IN THE ABBEY

Cromwell Argus, Volume XLIII, Issue 2338, 3 February 1913, Page 7

" LARKS " IN THE ABBEY

The upbringing of the Royal family of England has been so wholesome and unaffected that the young princes and their sister are thoroughly normal youngsters. Their behaviour during the brilliant and pompous ceremony of the Coronation gave the needed touch of humour .and naturalness to the occasion. Mrs. Mary King Waddington writes that the younger brothers, absorbed' in watching the Prince of Wales, in his unaccustomed finery, making obeisance to the King, leaned so far out | over the ed s e of the Royal box that 1 they would have fallen to the floor of the abbey if their aunts had not firmly grasped them by their tightly stretched trousers. When the Princess Mary and the three boys passed their older brother on leaving the abbey, the Princess dropped him a pretty little courtesy, and his next two brothers, Albert and Henry, made very proper bows. The last one, instead of bowing, gave him a kick on the shins. Apparently this was resented as soon as they left the abbey, for some of our friends, who were standing on the pavement when the children, with no tutor or governess, passed in their carriage, said there was a free fight Koiii£ on, with kicks and cuffs, that the Princess Mary with one hand was trying to separate the combatants and with the other holding on her crown, and that the delighted crowd was calling out : "do it, young 'un ! Co it ! Give •it him !" —"Scri'bner's Magazine."