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In private he considered last week a request from the Duke of Windsor that a paragraph in the Court Circular be devoted in due time to announcing His Royal Highness' engagement to marry Mrs. Bessie-Wallis Warfield Simpson.
¶With Her Majesty beside him last week His Majesty drove a car briefly in Windsor, was promptly described as "the first King in British history to drive his Queen in an automobile." George V never drove Queen Mary: Edward VIII drove Mrs. Simpson. She remained last week in France with friends whose chef she last year got appointed chef of Buckingham Palace. He resigned last week, one jump ahead of dismissal by George VI. Meanwhile the letters patent creating the Dukedom of Windsor were passed under the Great Seal. They are so drawn that the Duchess of Windsor and her children have full princely rank and the style of Royal Highness. This week the Duke, after intimations that the Rothschilds would like him to pay some rent for their castle in Austria (TIME. March 29), moved out. Journeying to a former pension or boarding house on the shore of Lake St. Wolfgang, where Edward of Wales and Mrs. Simpson stayed happily for a time in 1935, the Duke took up residence. He was obsequiously conducted from car to boarding house by officials of the British diplomatic service, one of whom held an umbrella over His Royal Highness, for brilliant sunshine had changed to a driving blizzard.
¶Newest "Coronation novelties" on sale in London are cakes of bath soap bearing sculptured busts of King George & Queen Elizabeth in bas relief. Hairbrushes similarly adorned were offered, also a bathroom gadget holding side by side a bust of His Majesty and a toothbrush.
¶ The 500,000 schoolchildren of London learned last week that they will choose 40,000 of their number by vote to see the Coronation procession from great grandstands along the Thames Embankment. From towns near London 8,000 schoolchildren will be brought and as the grandstands will be uncovered appeals were launched last week for gifts of child-size raincoats to add to His Majesty's Government's revolving store. These number some 500 today, are loaned free to London children too poor to show up on such occasions in the raincoats all schoolchildren in the capital are always asked to wear at Royal functions.
Because the Princess Royal, Princess Mary, Countess of Harewood, was tripped up by her 10-foot train at the age of 14 and her coronet fell off at the door of Westminster Abbey in 1911, it was announced last week that Princess Elizabeth, 10-year-old heir to the Throne, will profit by this lesson of experience. Her Royal Highness will be supplied with a very short train not apt to trip her, a very light coronet not apt to slide off in any case, equipped with a strong elastic band.
*In the early 18th Century famed British Admiral Edward Vernon made it his whim to wear a cloak of heavy French grosgrain silk. The Admiral's tars called him "Old Grogram," an English corruption of grosgrain current for a century before. As a temperance measure Old Grogram introduced the rule that rum must never be served straight to enlisted men but mixed with water and this mixture was soon being called "Grogram . . . Grog . . . grog."