Princess Marina

Southland Times, Issue 22478, 14 November 1934, Page 5

Princess Marina

Her Love of Literature. Now that Princess Marina has just left the land which is to be her future home, it is interesting to realize how very much English life has always appealed to her, says an English journalist. This was a discovery I made after visiting the home in which she lived with her parents, Prince and Princess Nicholas of Greece, in Paris. It is in the peaceful aristocratic Trocadero, a quarter quite close to the Bois de Boulogne. I was received most courteously by the Princess’ late concierge, Madame Guilleret, who took me into her boudoir, where I had striking evidence of the Princess’ preferences. Every day she used to read her favourite papers and magazines, which included several English ones. Near her chair was a table on which she obviously liked to keep her favourite authors. I noticed a great number of collections of poetry from Ronsard down to Vigny and Henry de Regnier, and a much marked copy of Heine’s works was prominent. Then, on a shelf to themselves, a collection, inchr ' Rudyard Kipling, Conrad, Galswoi Thomas Hardy, and a complete collection of Mary Webb’s writings. Mary Webb seems undoubtedly to be Princess Marina’s favourite author, and this is very interesting, for her writings, as has been so often said, reveal the very soul of British country life. On a book-rest there was a work by the well-known French critic de Lacretelle, left there as though the Princess had been reading it when she was disturbed. I turned over some of the pages and noticed that a number of them were devoted to a study of Mary Webb, and these were marked with pencilled notes. As an observant journalist I specially noted the paragraphs which had interested the Princess, and they were as follows:—

“Her work is closely woven. The impression of threads crossing and recrossing are composed of the sound of forests and fields, the cry of birds and the ocular impressions she receives of flowers and clouds. . . .She succeeds in

giving us a perfect impression of the English countryside.” Another marked paragraph says “her work reveals something not rare in English novels, but which we scarcely find any more in France, a feeling of permanency.” In a further passage, also marked by the Princess, M. Lacretelle discusses Mary Webb’s writing as a novelist: “Romance and intrigue,” he says, “what are they worth in the midst of all this lyric discussion? Some people may ask that But it is not lyric, it is rather an expression of the effervescence which animates the countryside, giving it life and legend audible like the crackling of frost in a field on a clear winter’s night.”

When I realized the interest with which Princess Marina had absorbed these works, the atmosphere of which is so typically English, I felt that she would not feel at all a stranger in the new country where she will be making her home.