A QUEEN'S HAVEN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10301, 4 November 1911, Page 4

A QUEEN'S HAVEN.

"Mrs .Bull.") Tho Queen is going to follow the custom of a groat many family folk who can afford and have a small house just out of town, sufficiently near for an hour's motor drivo at night, but sufficiently far to make it worth while going to for a sleep in the country air. Her Majesty lias been very busy lately going about locking at suitable houses, studying everything herself. Her idea is to settle upon a quite unambitious house, cheerful and sunny, with good grounds, but absolutely a. heme place without a touch of tho official and State character about it, in which she can be her own natural human self, and forget her queenhood. Probably most people'have forgotten that Queen Victoria had a country cottage at Key:, to which she used to drive down' when she longed for absolute quiet. That was in the early days of her happy married life. The cottage can be seen by anyone who visits Kew Gardens, at least from the outside, and stands at the end of tho long chestnut avenue in what is called the "wild part" of the grounds, in a perfect bower of trees and roses. It is really a cottage in tho sense that it is heavily thatched and beamed, and not larger than an ordinary farmhouse. Its grounds are now overrun with weeds and neglected, but when it held the happiost little mother in England, a plump, imperious littlo dame in white flounced muslin and lechorn hat, it must have been a homely paradise.