When William IV was King

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 508, 10 November 1928, Page 27

When William IV was King

(Continued from Page 26) Palace and see little children resting their podgy fingers on the edge of ths glass case; to see them staring into those still, doll rooms with which a Princess played almost a hundred years ago. There are plenty of dolls in the cases, gay dolls, on musical boxes. There is a musical box with two dancers who are controlled by some mechanism within. They dance between two pagodas. And there are three more gay dolls on a mirror floor. When they are wound up, they dance too. A miniature loom stands In one of the cases; there is an Arab tent, a stuffed bird and a doll’s chair. It is in this room, where her toys are kept, that the Queen was awakened in the early morning of June 30, 1837, when the old Duchess come to tell her that she was Queen of England. It isn't a big room, 23ft long and 19ft wide, but It looks out on to the lovely gardens. Perhaps the loveliest sight in all these rooms of Kensington Palace is from Queen Caroline’s drawing-room, wile re you may look through the sombre goldbrown rooms and see the gardens through a window, and beyond them, the Round Pond, brilliant in summer, with children sailing their yachts. Through the window come the hot, sweet smells of summer. It was in this garden that the Princess uswi Play, as Leigh Hunt writes, “with a magnificent footman in scarlet . . . behind her, with the splendidest pair of calves in white stockings that we ever beheld." All the Queen’s dolls are in the London Museum—one hundred and thirty of them, mostly small and no longer than your finger. This parade of dolls is a little shabby now, for It ' s a hundred years since they were made and dressed, some by the Princess and some by Baroness Lebzen. They represent all kinds of historical People, great beauties and people as humble as Cinderella. Even if as a child the little Princess Victoria had no idea that she was likely to come to the throne, she showed a romantic interest and respect for kings and hueens, judging by her toys. An amusing story is told of her visit to her uncle, William IV., at Cumberland Lodge, in 1826. The King was anxious to please his little niece, and said: “Now Victoria, the band is in the next room and shall play any tune you please.” She smiled and said. “Oh, uncle, * should like God Save the King.""