Jeffery John Archer, Earl Amherst was a soldier of the King during the World War, won himself the Military Cross. Later he became a dramatic critic on Manhattan's famed morning World, an intimate of all the Tonys on West 52nd Street and a bosom companion of Noel Coward. Last week the Earl of Amherst, 40, stood in a London tailor's shop wrapped in the mantle of crimson velvet and banded ermine in which he must make obeisance to his King.
"I look," said he, "like something out of a very old deck of foreign cards."
¶With only a fortnight to go before Coronation, Lord Amherst's Sovereign and his consort last week took a state voyage down the Thames from Westminster to Greenwich, famed for fried whitebait and the o° meridian. Queen Elizabeth wore fawn, King George the tight tail coat of an Admiral of the Fleet. Ocean liners, tramps and tugs were aflutter with bunting, and crowds stood six deep along the quay-sides. Eighteen years ago when King George V went down the Thames he rode in a gaudy gilded rowboat pulled by the blue-capped royal bargemen. George VI last week used a 300-h.p. green motor launch (later to serve as Admiral's barge for Admiral Sir Edward Evans, commander-in-chief at The Nore), his escort consisting of four of Britain's new secret torpedo motor boats. Such a vast wash did they create that dozens of spectators near Cleopatra's Needle on the Embankment were swept from their feet, nearly drowned.
Object of the excursion was to open the rearranged, remodeled National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, world's greatest collection of marine paintings, ship models, instruments and relics, greatly enlarged by munificent gifts from Sir James Caird, shipowner and meat importer, and from Queen Mary. King George last week was able to inspect the coat in which Nelson died; the first chronometer; Sir Francis Drake's astrolabe; two logbooks belonging to Captain James Cook.
¶Warped to its tremendous pier at Southampton last week was the Queen Mary, bearing the first contingent of U. S. visitors to the Coronation, prominent among them James Watson Gerard of the official U. S. delegation. The U. S. press, feeling knee breeches unmanly except for sliding bases or playing golf, was in a characteristic, hayseedy dither over whether Special Envoy Gerard would wear court dress. Mr. Gerard, Wartime Minister to Germany, opined that he would.
"If my host dined in pajamas, I would wear pajamas. On this occasion my host will wear court dress, and I will wear court dress."
Another flurry was caused by word from impressionable young reporters in Washington that General Pershing, military representative, would attend the Coronation in a gaudy $600 uniform of his own designing, consisting of an ostrich-plumed "fore & aft" hat, a frock coat embroidered with oak leaves, epaulets, brass buttons and a buff silk sash. Infuriated, General Pershing stomped up the gangway of the President Harding without ever explaining clearly to reporters that his Coronation costume was no flight of fancy but the regulation full-dress uniform of a General in the U. S. Army. Grinned Admiral Hugh Rodman, naval representative: "I think I'll wear pink undies."