Two-fold Christmas Celebration

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27272, 24 December 1949, Page 5

Two-fold Christmas Celebration

Christmas Day is the birthday of one of the least-known royal ladies, the Duchess of Gloucester, who will be 48 this year. Her characteristically Scottish type of looks—curly brown hair, blue eyes, clear complexion and rather short figure—have never been widely photographed, for she dislikes posing for cameras, though she is a keen amateur photographer herself.

Most of the Duchess’s activities, even the public ones, are carried out extremely quietly, and neither she nor her husband participate in London’s gay, well-publicised restaurant and night club life. After dark they prefer to be in their own home, the oldworld York House of St. James’s Palace, occasionally dining out with relatives or intimate friends or visiting a West End cinema completely incognito.

A particularly fine sportswoman, the Duchess is always happy out of doors. She rides, shoots, fishes, plays golf - and tennis, and likes to drive her car herself, being competent to carry out any mechanical repairs, too, if necessary. Before the war she spent several holidays in Africa big-game hunting, stalking with her cameras, too, and coming home to paint a number of pictures of the equatorial scene. These landscapes were afterwards shown at a famous West End art gallery, making the Duchess the first member of the Royal Family ever to hold a public exhibition of her work.

Even nowadays the Duchess still finds time to paint an occasional garden picture or flower piece, for she is an enthusiastic botanist and naturalist. When she is staying at her favourite home, rambling Barnwell Manor, in Northamptonshire, she regularly takes her two sons, eight-year-old Prince William and five-year-old Prince Richard, on rambles to study the local wild life. Several dogs invariably accompany them. The Duchess has remarked that a house would never seem like home to her unless there two or three dogs about, her own favourite pet being a pedigree Scottie.

Extremely fond of travel, the Duchess greatly enjoyed her sojourn in Australia during the Duke’s period of office there as Governor-General, even though the climate frequently caused her to suffer from a throat affection. It is highly probable that the Duke of Gloucester will again go overseas to represent the King in the future, and the Duchess will certainly accompany him on this mission also with genuine pleasure arid interest.