The Crown

P: In grey, stone-built Edinburgh last week the 70-year-old 7th Duke of Buccleuch wriggled his lean limbs into an archer's uniform of woodland green. So did all the Scottish aristocrats of the Royal Company of Archers, of whom the Duke is Captain-General. They filled their quivers with silver-barbed arrows, stepped into their limousines and rode to Holyrood Palace, there to guard King George and Queen Mary who had come up for Scotland's yearly "drawing room."

Thrifty Scots much prefer a drawing room to the expensive sort of "courts" Their Majesties hold in London. Wearing no court gear, proud Scotsmen arrived in stiff tartan kilts, squiring their soft-skirted women. Beside George V. who wore the Scots Greys' scarlet and gold, Queen Mary convexed majestically in a gown of silver and pastel pink lace upon which blazed the 106-carat Koh-i-nor. Scots gossips twittered that before King Edward set the present style for London courts. Queen Victoria used to hold drawing rooms "when her Mistress of the Robes was the present Duke of Buccleuch's mother."

Two days later the exclusive drawing room was followed by a Holyrood garden party for 1,000 guests. Down from the rugged hills of Aberdeen where she had been visiting her niece, Mrs. Charles Fellowes Gordon, came septuaginarian Mrs. James Roosevelt, who had tea with Their Majesties in Buckingham Palace last month, to hobnob with such garden party guests as Sir Harry Lauder and Mrs. Andrew Carnegie. Recognizing the President's mother, Queen Mary entrusted her to the Duchess of Atholl and the Duchess of Richmond. After the garden party Mrs. Roosevelt made a quick sightseeing tour of Edinburgh before speeding down to London. Said she: "I like the Scottish people--after all, my son had a Scottish nurse. She was a strongwilled, strong-minded woman. I have no doubt that her strong character influenced my son in his early years.

"Am I tired? No, indeed. ... I am enjoying myself too much to feel tired. Besides, I am not a very old woman--79, you know."

Meanwhile King George had launched one of his gentle garden party sallies. "Dear me," said His Majesty to Sir Iain Colquhoun, chief of the clan Colquhoun and 7th Baronet of his ancient line. "Dear me, you should have come in kilts barelegged, instead of in morning dress." (Chuckles.)

P: Why King George gave up golf Edward of Wales last week told London's Lucifer Golfing Society. "I asked him the other day," said H. R. H., "and all he would say was that golf made him so damned angry."

P: Australian hack artists were earning a welcome pittance in Melbourne last week painting mustaches on thousands of candy boxes adorned with a portrait of clean-shaven Prince George. The boxes were printed when H. R. H. agreed to visit the Commonwealth. Later King George was advised that Prince George should not undertake the "heavy strain" of visiting Australia. Next September his majesty will send instead the Duke of Gloucester, who has a mustache. "We are confident," said a spokesman for the Australian candy box men, "that few people will know the difference. The resemblance to each other of our handsome royal princes has saved us from what might otherwise have been a heavy loss."

P: Admirers of Edward of Wales who had hoped he would settle down after his 40th birthday (TIME, July 2) were pained last week by another boyish episode. Inspecting a factory at Coventry, he was shown a tricycle once ridden by his grandfather, Edward VII. Hopping on it with his ever youthful grin, Wales pedaled the tricycle some 60 yards.

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