ROYAL HOUSEKEEPER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21396, 20 October 1934, Page 6 (Supplement)

ROYAL HOUSEKEEPER

QUEEN AS HOME-IVpCER INTEREST IN DOMESTIC DETAILS Few women in society practised housekeeping so young as did the Queen, stated the Hon. Mrs. Eraser Lascelles in a recent article. As a girl she often bore more than her fair share of family responsibilities —not officially of course, but because her orderly mind could not bear to see domestic matters go wrong. The Duchess of Tcck, the Queen's mother, was one of the most delightful women England has ever known. But she was so absorbed in other people s troubles that quite often she forgot her own home affairs. Often she would generously give to others to find she had given more than she could really afford. The young Princess May, living her happy, busy life • at the White Lodge, discovered as she advanced in her teens that affairs at home needed more control than they were getting. When she found that the household accounts wdre muddled she tore herself away from her books and set to work to put them right. She had an extraordinary love for her mother, but she registered the conviction that charity must be exercised with restraint, and that the woman who can best help others is the one who has her housekeeping books in good order. York Cottage, where the Queen first lived as a young wife, was a comparatively small and unpretentious house, so she was able to start her career as a housewife on a moderate scale. This was a distinct advantage to her. A mother is apt to be, perhaps unconsciously, critical of her daughter s housekeeping after that daughter has once started her own home. The Duchess of Fife was, however, honestly eulogistic about the Queen's home life. On December 1, 1893, she wrote when staying with her daughter at York Cottage, Sandringham, " This is the perfection of an ideal cottage; each room is charming in its way, and everything in perfect taste and most cosy and comfortable." The Queen is a perfect housewife because she is quite frankly interested in domestic details. When she visits a Home Exhibition, or a large shop, as she delights in doing, she becomes honestly enthusiastic over some new good line in kitchen cabinets, or anything in that nature that is going to benefit the woman who does the work. But she criticises as well as praises, and the woman whose duty it is to display these domestic appliances finds she has her work set to answer intelligently all the questions the Queen puts about her speciality.