Drayton Manor

On the outskirts of sooty Birmingham is ivy-clad Drayton Manor, whereon a halo of fame has grown for more than a century. Drayton Manor, as all good Britishers know, was the home of Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850), than whom there was no more revered statesman in the 19th Century. His ancestors, sprung from Yorkshire yeoman stock, potent in a rising industrial era, Tory to the core, saw in him the future leader of the Tories. A scholar and a football player, he entered Parliament. A smart young man, he established the Irish constabulary and the London police.* But some say that he disappointed his ancestors. He was a Tory who could see two sides to every question. In a time of domestic crisis, he took the helm, taxed incomes, lowered the tariff, wiped out a treasury deficit, repealed the corn laws which were obnoxious to the masses. In short--"he lost a party, but won a nation." Soon he was thrown from his horse on Constitutional Hill and died in three days, mourned in manors and in slums According to his will, he was buried, not in Westminster Abbey, but in the church at Drayton. . . .

And when the 20th Century was young, the story of the mighty house of Peel came to the ears of Beatrice Gladys Lillie, born in Toronto, Canada, of an English mother and an Irish father. Perhaps that was why her heart beat high in 1919 when she, a musical comedy girl, met a tall, blonde gentleman by the name of Robert Peel--the great-grandson of the great Sir Robert. In 1920 she married him, became mistress of haloed Drayton Hall. Her fame spread through two continents as the frolicsome dancer of Chariot's Revue. But her husband, neither statesman nor footlight celebrity remained one of those Englishmen with 10,000 acres and nothing particular to do. A Peel must do something, so last week young Sir Robert announced the opening of a dance hall (roadhouse) near Drayton Manor, which he will manage with his wife's assistance. And last week, his wife, Beatrice, now the first comedienne of the English-singing stage, was playing in Chicago, presumably well-pleased that her husband had found a career.

*To this day, the Irish police are called "peelers" and the British police are called "bobbies" in honor of their founder. So greatly do Britishers respect their p_olice that citizens swelled with indignation last week when the Chief Commissioner of London Police charged "bobbies" with being discourteous and inefficient. One nice old lady accosted a "bobby," presented him with half a crown, said: "Now, don't you listen to what anybody says."