GREAT BRITAIN: The Crown

(¶ Loyal and devoted Britons have been most anxious about George V ever since a bulletin declared that “the King is now able to apply his mind for short periods of time” (TIME, March 18). Last week however the Royal physicians issued a slightly more reassuring bulletin:

The King continues to make satisfactory progress in spite of tiresome rheumatism, around his right shoulder. His weight is increasing, his appetite returning, and his sleep is of better quality. The insistence on lengthy abstention from all but essential public duties and on a quiet life in the present suitable climate is being justified in the steady improvement in His Majesty’s bodily and mental vigor.

STANLEY HEWETT

DAWSON OF PENN

(¶ An essential public duty performed by His Majesty—the first to which he has tended since the crisis of his illness (TIME, Dec. 24)—was having his hand kissed by the Most Reverend Father in God, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang, Primate of All England, and also by the Most Reverend Father in God, the new Archbishop of York, William Temple, Primate of England, and Honorary Chaplain to His Majesty.

As the limousines of the Fathers in God purred into Bognor, Sussex, valets were busy assisting the King-Emperor into a frock coat and afterwards into an elevator. When the mechanism had descended George V stepped sprucely forth, but slowly, wearily, and advanced into the Great Drawing Room. The two Fathers knelt before him, each on a crimson cushion. Bright sunshine streamed through the long French windows, and beyond the sea plashed, murmured. Tanned by the sun, fortified by the briny air of Bognor, George V extended for the Primates to kiss a hand which did not tremble. Present was Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to see and certify that the Most Reverend Fathers in God of the Established Church of England did duly swear their oaths of allegiance to the Crown.

Primates and Prime Minister stayed to lunch with Queen Mary, but the King went back to bed.

(¶ Serious speculation as to how many banknotes the Empire ought to heap upon those who have saved the life of George V began in Parliamentary circles. Most M. P.’s seemed to think that £15,000 ($72,900) would be about right for Sir Stanley Hewett, who, as Surgeon Apothecary has given up his entire practice to remain day and night with His Majesty. Though Baron Dawson of Penn, the king’s Physician in Ordinary, has been less constantly in attendance, he is expected to receive at least £10,000 ($48,600). Technically both Sir Stanley and Lord Dawson have been paid in full, since each receives an annual fee of £500 ($2,430) for attending His Majesty.

Sir Hugh Rigby, who made an incision between two Royal ribs and drained a poison pus pocket, was slated last week to receive £5,000 ($24,300), while the eight other specialists called in were expected to get £1,000 ($4,860) each.

The four royal nurses—Purdie (English), Gordon (Scotch), Black (Irish) and Davies (Welsh)—were paid weekly from five to eight pounds apiece ($24-$38), and will receive from His Majesty personally “a substantial gift” according to an announcement last week at Buckingham Palace. About £3,000 ($14,580) was spent to install the special anti-fog machinery which purified the air in George V’s bed-room (TIME, Dec. 17), and was considered indispensable in saving his life. To set up a special pharmacy in the Palace and keep it staffed day and night with the most expert drug dispensers cost £3,000, and £9,500 more went for X-ray pictures. When the King-Emperor was moved to Bognor-on-Sea (TIME, March 4) the installation of a private telephone wire to Buckingham Palace cost £3,000, since the line is equipped with delicate scientific instruments cunningly devised to sound an alarm should the wire be tapped.

Thus without counting “extras and in-cidentals,” the King-Emperor’s pneumonia will likely cost his people over £50,000 or almost a quarter of a million dollars.

Comparatively cheap seems the typhoid fever of the King-Emperor when he was Prince of Wales when a cure was effected for not quite £2,000 ($9,720).

(¶ The King-Emperor approved the appointment of his second son, Prince Albert, Duke of York, to be Lord High Commissioner of the Church of Scotland, an office bestowed in 1924 by the then Labor Prime Minister, James Ramsay MacDonald, on one James Brown, a prac-ticing coal miner.