RULES BROKEN

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 201, 26 July 1937, Page 8

RULES BROKEN

ROYAL GARDEN PARTYCRITICISM OF GUESTS. One very charming touch appears in the newspaper accounts of the Royal Garden Party at Buckingham Palace on June 23, but one commentator indulges in unfavourable comment. He criticises the behaviour and dress of the guests. It is related how, when the two Princesses were following the Queen, the younger, Princess Margaret Rose, said to her sister, Princess Elizabeth: “When do you think we shall have tho strawberries?” A writer in the Daily Sketch describes liis happiest liiipression as being the informality of tho welcome from the King and Queen, and refers to the beautilul dresses, of which, ho says, 90 per cent, were long-skirted, the lints being enormously big or reduced to a knot of flowers on the forehead. , , _ _ On the other hand, Guy Ramsay strikes a discordant note in the NewsChroniele. He says: “Strolling across the Buckingham Palace la\yns, one rarelv heard an English voice, but beard Canadian, racy and faintly nasal, strong Australian vowels, clipped South African speech, light New Zealand voices. “Top hats were badly ironed, or after being caught in the crushes had naps reversed. The bulk of the men seemed not to know what to do with their hats. The unwritten rule against smoking was conspicuously dishonoured. Most women seemed to have come from an afternoon’s shopping, and their manners were little better than their clothes. “Apart from the inevitable rushes towards the King mid Queen, which may legitimately be ascribed to loyalty, the crowd, whenever the King and Queen paused, made the task of the gentlemen-in-wniting heavy. For minutes it was impossible to move." Other newspapers describe the party as quieter than last year’s. Hnnnen Swnffer, writing in the Daily Herald, says it was much more sedate than the last party, when, with King Edward VIII as host, the Canadian pilgrims to Vimy Kidgo asked for autographs, sat on the grass, smoked everywhere, and wrote postcards in a drawing room. This party was much more seemly. People broke only one rule, they stood on garden seats to look at the Royal party.