The Crown

P: Traveling Second Class. Prince George and his fiancee Princess Marina of Greece, his second cousin, emerged from the Balkans last week with her parents, put up at separate Paris hotels. Said she: "We came second class to economize, now that we are to set up housekeeping." From the Exchequer $50,000 per year is paid to Prince George, rising automatically to $125,000 upon his marriage.

P: When crass news cameramen pushed Prince George aside the better to photograph blonde, blue-eyed Princess Marina and when someone shouted "Oh well, Prince, the bridegroom is always neglected!" he grinned with obvious pleasure at the novelty.

"I am delighted both to be a bridegroom-to-be and to be neglected," said H. R. H. "It is an experience I am glad to enjoy."

P: As no princess of a reigning house would be permitted to do, Marina talked gayly and glowingly of her George to Paris newsmen: "I knew people in love were happy but I never knew how happy they could be until now! If it didn't sound silly I would say the same thing that I suppose every engaged girl says--I am the happiest girl in the world."

P: The foremost British man-modiste, Captain Edward Henry Molyneux was commissioned to create Princess Marina's wedding dress, but she had fun in Paris buying much of her trousseau last week, heedless of the Empire watchword "Buy British."

Said the dressmaking Captain apprehensively, "The Princess wants to consult Queen Mary on every detail before we even make sketches. The wedding dress will be considered very carefully at Balmoral Castle."

To smooth the way for his fiancee at Balmoral Castle, Prince George left her in Paris and dashed alone to Their Majesties' Scottish seat, then back to London four days later to meet Princess Marina when she came over with her parents.

As he waited for the train to come in Prince George, in immaculate morning dress, fingered his top hat nervously for some 15 minutes, waved once or twice to the hundreds of British women who kept waving at him from behind police lines. As Princess Marina stepped out in a sleek, brick-red ensemble Prince George took her in his arms and kissed her on the cheek, received a kiss on his cheek in return.

"Glory be!" cried a delighted char, "she's prettier than the Duchess of York!" and this impression seemed to be general. Stepping into a big Daimler, George and Marina held hands on the short drive to St. James's Palace, waved their free hands at a surging populace which pelted flowers and roared "Welcome our Princess!" until excited Marina was seen to brush tears of joy from her eyes.

When a little girl gave chase to the royal limousine, panting after it with a fistful of flowers. Prince George told the chauffeur to pull up and the child with a breathless curtsy plumped her posies into Princess Marina's lap. At Prince George's apartments in St. James's Palace, the Princess and her parents spent an hour, then left with him for Balmoral Castle. As yet Marina had no engagement ring, since George had found nothing suitable in the Balkans where he wooed her (TIME. Sept. 10). Last week His Royal Highness ordered in London a superb Kashmir sapphire, supported by two oblong diamonds in a platinum setting. P: When Scottish journalists dryly observed that Prince George is in fact a commoner, the usual flurry ensued as Englishmen turned to their Encyclopedia Britannica and once more were titillated by this technicality: "The children of the Sovereign, other than his eldest son, though by courtesy 'princes' and 'princesses,' need a royal warrant to raise them de jure above the common herd; and even then, though they be dubbed 'Royal Highness' in their cradles, they remain 'commoners' till raised to the peerage."

At Balmoral Castle last week it was considered certain that King George will raise Commoner George to the peerage before he marries Princess Marina, probably making him Duke of Edinburgh.

P: Such fun was Edward of Wales having at Cannes last week with beauteous Mrs. Wallace Wakefield Simpson that he sent back to Marseilles an airplane he had ordered over to take him up to Paris.

"To the delight of hundreds of onlookers last night." cabled a British correspondent, "the Prince danced the rumba with an American woman identified as a Mrs. Simpson."

She became THE Mrs. Simpson last month at Biarritz where His Royal Highness welcomed her as she arrived, carried her suitcase out of the railway coach.

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