A Queen Tells Storis About Victoria’s Court

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18551, 10 November 1934, Page 9

A Queen Tells Storis About Victoria’s Court

INTIMATE stories of Queen Vielona •* —about having ehlorofonn wlioii her last baby was bom and how -die was “deliciously shocked” by the opera “Carmen” —arc told l>y Queen Mario of Rumania. She recounts her experiences up to her marriage in the first volume of “The Storv of My Life.” r . ! In her book she speaks of King George as the “most cherished chum’” of her young days. Princess Marie of Edinburgh, born at East we 11, near Ashford, in Kent, married Ferdinand' of Rumania when she was 16, and tit the age of 20, two children, she stayed in a cottage; at Osborne, Isle of Wight, lent to her by Queen Victoria, her grandmother, j One afternoon she went for a long drive with the Queen, who asked all sorts of questions about Rumania. | “Then,” says Queen Marie, “turning towards me she suddenly sprang this question upon me: “Did Ihev give you chloroform when your children were born?’ ” Doctor Insisted. When chloroform was first used it was denounced by some people as an invention of the devil and an interference with the divine order of things.. Queen Marie did not know what Queen Victoria thought of it. Was she against the use of chloroform?

“I felt the blood rush to my cheeks,” says Queen Marie; “felt my throat become dry.” Her English doctor had insisted on giving her a whiff of chloroform, and, she says, “the edge of my suffering had been taken from me by that blessed anaesthot ie. ’ ’ She braced herself for a scolding, and confessed. • “But,” she says, “what was my astonishment when I hoard a sweet, crystalline peal of laughter, and grandmamma with that almost apologetic shrug of the shoulders, declared: 'Quite right, my dear; 1 was only given chloroform with my ninth and last baby. It had, alas, not. been discovered before, and I assure you, mv child, I deeply deplore the fact that I had to bring eight children into the world without its precious aid!’” The first time Queen Victoria saw a performance of “Carmen” Queen Mario sat next to her, being the guest of honor. The performance was in Windsor Castle. Queen Marie knew “Carmen,” but Queen Victoria did' not. “We wore sitting,” she says, “very noar the stage, and I noticed that gran dm a 111 m a was not only following the music with boon interest, but also the plot of the play. “Somewhat bewildered by the passionate story, she kept asking me quest ions which were not. easy to answer owing to the loudness of the i music and the unequal height of our chairs. “Grandmamma was evidently enjoying it. She shrugged her shoulders from time to time, and there • was a half-smile on her lips. “The first net over, she turned to me for fuller explanations about the story. With a very young woman’s diffidence I tried to impart to my grandparent my knowledge of Carmen’s rather wild tale. “Grandmamma’s shy little smile broadened; this was the sort of story that did not often reach her ears.” It Was Exciting. Queen Marie recalls that in her second act Carmen with her smuggler associates, becomes wilder and wilder and more fascinating. * * Most of us,” she says, “had seen if before, but. to grandmamma if was an exciting revelation. “Loaning towards me, her eyes full of dawning comprehension, she nevertheless presses me for further explanations, which, with flaming cheeks, J give ns best I can. “Grandmamma raises her fan to her face, sue is delightfully, pleasurably scandalised, but she understands; leaning towards me, her fan still over her mouth,'she whispers: ‘But then, oh my dear child, I am afraid she’s really not very nice!’ ” Queen Mario continues: “Dear old grandniama! No, Carmen was certainly not very nice, her morals wore abominable, not at all in keeping with your irreproachable Court, but all the same, how you enjoyed the excitement of being so deliciously shocked!”

Nudism WED ISM is no new iliing. Nakedness, of course, may be said to date from the primal pair in Eden, when “they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” But. nudism, the deliberate practice 0! nakedness, was common in the ancieal civilisation of Greece and Rome. The Greeks of both sexes exercised' in the palaestra without cloihing, and ( nudity was especially common in athletic .Sparta. The Roman “solarium,” or sun-parlor, was an essential feature of every residence. All through the Middle Ages men and women bathed together in the nude, and of course the nude body was a familiar sight to all, since nightclothes for men, even amongst the aristocracy, did not come into vogue until the sixteenth century. In Norway, Sweden, Russia, and Finland, bathing in the mule iias been practised' for centuries. Nudism as a conscious cult began in Germany some 20 years ago, and reached a peak period of popularity during 19:10 to 19M2. H was approved by the Government, nudist colonies and chilis became common, whilst municipal parks- and baths were opened 'dr ‘ ‘ air-bathing. ’ ’ On Sundays 100,000 persons voukl lie seen naked at the Wannseo municipal “air-bath.” But Herr Hitler put Ills ban upon “Nude Culture,” or, [as it was later called, “Free Body , Culture. ” Public nudism is now no more in Germany, but the movement, has spread' to other European con tilt ries, including England, and to j America. It is approved as a health

cult by the French Government. In England nudism has made some hoa Iwny, despite Anglo-Saxon prudery and the deficiencies of the climate. The history of the nudist movement is given in a simple but interesting manner in “The Common .Sense of Nudism,” by Mr. George Rylov Scoft, F.Z.S., Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute. The book is well named, because the author treats Ids controversial subject very sensibly. Some .of his generalisations in regard to the evolution of clothing are assertions of opinion lather than proved anthropological facts, but his analysis of sex and' nudity is shrewd and sound. Here lie follows Montaigne’s dictum “Nudity per se ligis little or no power as an aphrodisiac.” Indeed, il 'is the very opposite, and Puritans should try to have nudity made compulsory by Act of Parliament, it' they really wish to displace the present morbid interest of Western civilisation in sex by an attitude of healthy indifference. It was Anatoie France who remarked that Christianity had increased tlie interest in woman by making her