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Back home in Buckingham Palace last week, Princess Margaret found her desk piled high with invitations. London's fourth society season since the war was just rounding into the straightaway and there was,a heady catalogue of entertainments in the offing: a huge ball for the twin daughters of Lady Alexandra and Major E. D. ("Fruity") Metcalfe, a rout at the Guards' Boat Club, the Cygnettes Ball and a round of parties encompassing Royal Ascot Week. It was a list to make a shopgirl's head spin. But for a princess it meant mostly that her holiday, such as it was, was over. With sister Elizabeth safely settled in matronhood, Margaret is the most eligible partygoer in Britain; it is her chore to play to the hilt the ingenue lead in an elaborate comedy of manners.
A Ripping Time. British society, like an ancient actress who has outlived her time, has fallen into neglect since the war. It has been hard for the old girl even to get her name in the cramped newspapers. But in socialist Britain, royalty's duty is the same as it has been: to set an example of good manners to every class. It is Princess Margaret's particular task to extend her hand to passee old Dame Society, and make it seem that everyone is having a ripping time at her parties. Newspapers write about a party that Margaret goes to; they report her every dance, her every glance, her every girlish gesture. Shopgirls and Mayfair matrons read the story and—for just a moment—austerity England seems to be merrie England once again.
"Look into my eyes," Princess Margaret ordered a startled dancing partner not long ago. "I am looking into them, Ma'am," he stammered. "Well," said Margaret, "you're looking into the most beautiful eyes in England. The Duchess of Kent has the most beautiful nose. The Duchess of Windsor has the most beautiful chin. And I have the most beautiful eyes. Surely," she added, with an impish gleam in her eye, as her flustered partner groped for a suitable answer, "you believe what you read in the papers."
Margaret herself plainly believes none of it. As a younger girl she may often have longed to call less cynical attention to her large, soft blue eyes and to kick up her heels in freer fashion. As a princess, she can only mock, strictly among friends, and make the best of it. "After all," as one flag-waver remarked while welcoming Margaret to Capri last month, "a king's daughter is still a king's daughter."
"Oh, Bother!" Princess Margaret was not born a king's daughter, but even the weather on the night of Aug. 21, 1930 seemed to conspire with a sentimental people to give her birth a special glamour. A howling wind whistled around her grandparents' home, gloomy old Castle Glamis (rhymes with palms), where Shakespeare's Macbeth had long since murdered sleep and Duncan. Lightning flashed and the rain beat down. The announcement of the first royal child to be born north of the Tweed since 1601 was greeted by an ear-splitting squeal of bagpipes.