LATE QUEEN ALEXANDRA.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19691, 19 January 1926, Page 7

LATE QUEEN ALEXANDRA.

THE TITLE SHE PREFERRED MUCH-CHERISHED BROOCHES. Mile Helene Vacarosco, who had the honour of being summoned to Balmoral many years ago, when Queen Alexandra was still Princess of Wales, and with whom her Majesty maintained a friendship until her recent death, has given to the Gaulois some charming anecdotes of the beloved lady whose loss France mourns equally with England. (>ne morning in Paris, soon after the death of Queen Victoria, Mile Vacaresco received a telegram with the single word “Venez,” and hurried off to London. The new Queen, who a few days before had still been Princess of Wales, received her in one of the smaller rooms at Marlborough House, which she was loth to leave for Buckingham Palace. “What changes!” her Majesty sighed. “My title of Princess of Wales—it was the symbol of all my younger days. They have always known me by that name, and I should love to be able to retain it all my life,” By “they,” Mile Vacaresco explains, her Majesty meant her subjects, of whom she was ever thinking, and from whom she almost, feared to be withdrawn. o>f the Queen’s coronation Mile. Vacarosco reveals an incident which has never 'been made known before. Beneath her coronation robes her Majesty insisted on wearing throughout the whole magnificent rites two insignificant little brooches, which lay next her heart. One of them, she explained, had been given her by her dead son, the Duke of Ularonce, the other a little unknown girl had thrown on her lap as her carriage passed. “It was probably the only article of jewellery the poor child possessed,” the Queen remarked, “and I treasure her gift because it is the emblem of the love all England has for me and of my own affection for her. That is why I shall carry these two brooches to Westminster Abbey under my coronation robes. r lhe Crown and the rest of the jewels will go back into their cases, but these two poor little treasures will always lie next to my heart.” Her Majesty, Mile Vacarosco states, charged her to mention this incident during herlifetime, and she has kept, her word.