TWO STYLES

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 72, 18 December 1937, Page 22

TWO STYLES

Victoria And George V.

Air. A. G. Freeman began his working life at the age of seven, delivering milk for a shilling a week. He was given work in his uncle’s optician’s shop. He could not afford the fare to his home at Shepherd’s Bash, so he made a scooter out of a piece of wood fitted with four cotton reels.

Mr. Freeman was a good workman. He was chosen to fit Queen Victoria with spectacles. When his firm, Messrs. C. W. Dixey and Son, opticians, recently celebrated its 160th birthday by giving a dinner and dance for the staff, Mr. Freeman told a “Sunday Express" representative :

"I was terribly nervous when I went to Windsor Castle. z “I was shown into a big room crowded with furniture and was told that when I left I would have to walk backward, all the time bowing to the Queen. “My worry was how to steer a straight course without knocking over furniture.'

"During the fitting the Queen did not speak, and I had to address her through her lady-in-waiting. “I did manage to get out of the room walking backward without colliding with any of the furniture. “When I was called to attend to King Edward VII the same routine had to be observed. "How very different wa s King George V! He greeted me by saying: ‘Look here, something has gone wrong with my glasses. Can you fix me up?”