“DIPLOMACY WIDOWS.”

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 208, 3 August 1937, Page 12

“DIPLOMACY WIDOWS.”

WIVES OF CABINET MINISTERS. How the wives of members of the Cabinet are standing lip to the strain imposed upon their husbands by Imperial and international problems, and how they help their husbands behind the scenes, is occupying the attention of several English writers.

The Prime Minister (Mr Chamberlain) and Mrs Chamberlain have been seen walking before breakfast in St. James’s Park, where they feed the birds. Mrs Chamberlain bas been noticed taking a second walk with her husband after breakfast.

The Foreign Secretary (Mr Anthony Eden) and Mrs Eden were found in the fashionable Cafe de Paris, just off Leicester Square, where Mrs Eden was having supper supper with her husband on the balcony lounge, for the first time for weeks; but they were not dancing. Mrs Eden is said to be “a pretty peach-skinned diplomacy widow.” Alter a one-day honeymoon, she wen.t to help her husband in his electioneering. Slie relieves her diplomacy widowhood by dragging her husband occasionally from his desk to a brief spell of West End social life. The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir John Simon) and Lady Simon were found idling quietly in Berkeley Square, where some historic houses are in process of demolition. A special writer in the Daily Mail states that Mrs Chamberlain reads the morning paper to her husband, thus saving his tired eyes. She plays the piano extaordinally well, and finds telling quotations for him, “Bleak House” and “Great Expectations,” as tile titles of successive Budgets, came from her Dickens lore.

Lady Simon is described as having “the ■engrossing task of adoring her husband,” and it is stated that she is known as “the Woman Wilberforce,” because the campaign against slavery is her passionate interest. Lady Hoare, wife of the Home Secretary, is described as Sir Samuel Hoare’s consolation. “When he is ill,” it is said, “she packs him off to bed, and addresses his political meetings. She is a dignified and witty hostess, and an eminent skater (like her husband). Her tact is hown by her round dining-table, where all the guests are equal.” Mrs Ernest Brown, wife of the Minister for Labour, is said to be a 100 per cent, help-mate. “She discusses her husband’s official correspondence at breakfast, and when he has had a late night at the House of Commons, she gives him breakfast in bed.”