Tea at Buckingham Palace

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 69, 15 December 1931, Page 34 (Supplement)

Tea at Buckingham Palace

WITH THE ROYAL BABIES

v One Cake for a Little Princess

In the blue and cream boudoir of her Majesty the Queen in Buckingham Palace there Is a piece of furniture that is always an object of curiosity to visitors to the Palace. It is a very delightful little Louis Quatorze chair, but its distinctive feature lies In the fact that it is a perfect miniature of a real chair and is much too small for any grown-up to sit in. It is the special chair belonging to Princess Elizabeth, replacing the high baby-chair that used to stand there in the days when j;he Duchess of York was In Australia and her baby daughter was under the special care of her Majesty the Queen.

It was after Princess Elizabeth’s third birthday that she decided that She was now too grown-up to sit in what she called “baby-chair,” and her Majesty obtained this delightful miniature in an antique shop especially for her “grown-up” grand-daughter. It is one of the features of the present House of Windsor that in spite of the calls of public duty the private ties of family are not allowed to languish, and, indeed, it is probable that Princess Elizabeth sees more of her grandparents than most children. Nearly every week that the Court is in London little Princess Elizabeth goes .Over to Buckingham Palace to take tea With her grandmother, a meal at which the King is often present also. These tqas are looked upon by Princess Elizabeth as a great treat, and she has evolved a little ceremonial that always bakes place when she is there. When Elizabeth is at home her tea fe what would generally be called a •nursery tea," but at Buckingham Palace she insists that she shoqjd be treated as grown-up, and her tea is served on a little stool by the side of her chair. At first Elizabeth had one Invariable jiiea. 1 “Please, Granny, can I put my cup on my knee like Mummy does?” j But that method has not proved so successful as might have been expected, tod so the stool has been introduced!

There are, too, special cakes which are particularly favoured by Princess Elizabeth, little tarts with lemon cheese fascinatingly concealed within, and these always appear on the afternoon that she is at the Palace. At one time her Majesty was afraid lest her little grand-daughter should be so tempted by these delicacies that tea would become fin unsuitable meal for her, but it is now an invariable arrangement that Princess Elizabeth should have one cake and then one extra as a treat. It is rather delightful the way in which Princess Elizabeth asks for her second cake. Her Majesty had explained to her that polite little girls do not eat more than one specimen of each cake, and this advice made a great impression on the little Princess.

To-day when she wants another cake she always asks for It in a particular formula: “Granny,” she says, “please need I be polite this afternoon?” The Queen, who has not forgotten the days when she, too, had a large family of children to bring up, has also provided a number of toys which her little grand-daughter only plays with when she visits the Palace. Not very long ago her Majesty found a delightful series of clockwork toys made in the shape of various animals and Insects. When these are wound up they crawl across the floor, going through the usual motions of the animals that they are supposed to represent. There is, for instance, a large highly-

coloured ladybird that crawls across the floor with a great buzzing and moving to and fro of feelers, and (the greatest favourite of all) there is a large and fearsome bluebottle, very highly coloured, which flaps its wings and buzzes as it progresses with short jerks. For some unknown reason the little Princess Elizabeth has christened this toy Wilfred, and she is extremely fond of it, and during tea-time It always makes a hearty meal off lumps of sugar presented to It by its young' mistress.