HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN

Evening Star, Issue 20253, 14 August 1929, Page 13

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN

She “ mothers ” —which means that she thinks tor others. That she has a “ royal ” memory for faces was shown in a State procession in Tasmania when she recognised someone in the crowd. The “ someone ” had been a curate in East Sheen when the Queen was a girl at Richmond. ' Her thoughtfulness for others shows itself in all directions. She has a passion for old customs and old things because they are old. But she has no passion for the old thing that stands in the way of commonsense. In the Royal palaces, where the servant question has not the acuteness one finds elsewhere, Queen Mary lias never hesitated to introduce labour-saving devices or anything new that was sensible and advantageous. , ‘ Nobody who was not industrious could have accomplished what Queen Mary has done. The outside world knows little of the enormous accretions of furniture made to Royal palaces. Things accumulate._ In the latter years of Queen Victoria’s reign there were masses of things put away.” King Edward began the sorting 'out and clearing up process, but Queen Mary has carried it on and done it with her usual thoroughness. Thoroughness is one of the Queen s characteristics. Whatever her hands find to do she does well. Amongst this furniture, which lay in all sorts of places in the palaces, were naturally pieces of a varied nature. They came from all quarters ot the earth. They were treasures and were not to he handled with carelessness or a mere desire for tidiness. Queen Mary attacked these stores as she had. attacked other things—as a duty to he done to the host of_ her ability. Windsor Castle is a national monument. It houses treasures beyond monetary computation. The Queen, with her historic feeling, has realised all this. Things, however precious, can’t he put anyhow or anywhere there. But—and here is the gist of the matter —how does one know tho real value ot this clock from China, this carpet from Persia, this jade from India? And these things swarmed. bo Queen Mary took- advise and sought knowledge. ' It would have been quite a simple thing to hand the lot over to somebody who was supposed to know something about such things and tell (hem to'put them somewhere. Hut fhat wasn’t the Queen’s way.—Evelyn Craham, in ‘ Britannia and Eve.’