GREAT BRITAIN: Musk, Civet & Ambergris

Musk, Civet & Ambergris

Italian news correspondents in Britain hustled back to London from their week ends last week, hastily packed, started for home. On orders from Il Duce himself, all Italian correspondents were recalled from Britain, all British newspapers, with the exception of the pro-Fascist Daily Mail, Evening News and Sunday Observer, were barred from Italy, and a semi-official boycott of the entire British Coronation was clamped on the Italian press. Immediately after the order, not a word of British news appeared in Italian papers. Even Italian newsreels were snipped of all British scenes. Elaborate pictorial supplements were ripped out of their dummies. Mention of the Coronation itself was limited to brief paragraphs on inside pages, transcribed from official Stefani News Agency reports.

Read the communiqué:

“The order was issued as a result of the attitude assumed by practically the entire British press toward Italy and her armed forces.”

Observers in Rome easily understood this as retaliation for the way the British press gloated over Italy’s disastrous defeat at Brihuega in Spain two months ago (TIME, March 29 et seq.) and her even more ignominious rout at the hands of the Basque fishwives of Bermeo last fortnight. Deeper than this, Mussolini has burned for months over British insistence on having a representative of Haile Selassie’s Ethiopian Government at the Coronation.*

Thus cut off from news of the Coronation, Italian readers missed most of the following last-minute details:

¶ There was dancing in Westminster Abbey. Anxious police officials at the last minute marched a gang of thick-booted workmen into separate sections of the grandstands and told them to dance and stamp to test the structures’ strength.

¶ One-hundred water closets having been installed and tested under the ancient eye of the Archbishop of Canterbury (TIME, April 26), these last weeks were carefully subdivided into groups: PEERS, GENTLEMEN and MEN; PEERESSES, LADIES and WOMEN. The Duke of Norfolk’s office issued precise directions for their use: every two hours, Gentlemen Ushers of the Gold Rod would pass watchfully up & down the stands. Peers, gentlemen and men should attract the ushers’ attention by raising the hands (but not snapping the fingers) and would be escorted to their respective stations.

¶ At teatime in Buckingham Palace last week Princess Margaret Rose, 8, was invited in to have a buttered scone with her father, mother and Queen Mother Mary. Proudly she strutted up and down, swinging a cane, wearing her new coronet.

“Who are you supposed to be, dear?” asked Queen Elizabeth. “Are you Daddy or the Mad Hatter?”

“No, I’m Johnnie Walker,” said Princess Margaret Rose.

¶ Among the few ruling princes officially to attend the Coronations of Georges V & VI was the kinky-haired Sultan of Zanzibar, Seyyid Sir Khalifa bin Harub. All British bandmasters in London were given special editions of the Zanzibar national anthem last week, found that it sounded remarkably like Home Sweet Home. It has no words at all.

¶ The highly odorous oil for the anointing of George VI was prepared by the court druggists, Squire & Sons, Ltd., last week from a 17th Century formula. Ingredients: oil of orange flower, oil of roses, oil of cinnamon, musk, civet, ambergris, oil of jasmine, oil of sesame, flowers of benzoin.

¶ Day before the Coronation a special honors list was announced that made Viscounts of Liberal Sir Herbert Samuel and onetime Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Robert Home; Privy Councilors of the Duke of Kent and Governor-General Lord Tweedsmuir of Canada; created nearly 100 knights, among them Novelist Hugh Walpole, Etcher Muirhead Bone, Musician Arnold Bax. For his work in stage-managing the Coronation, the multi-titled, Catholic Duke of Norfolk received the blue ribbon of the Garter. Awarded medals of the Order of the British Empire were two of London’s striking busmen, Driver Arthur Butterfield and Conductor John Coalter.

¶ While 14 liners brought a last-minute rush of visitors from Canada and the U. S., Coronation fever steadily mounted. Ignoring the bus strike, crowds tramped for miles to admire and inspect street decorations; masts, gilt lions, streamers, balloons. General opinion gave the palm to Selfridge’s Department Store which spent a reputed $250,000 on drapes and papier-mache plaques. Astute Wisconsin-born Harry Gordon Selfridge chose this particular moment to announce that after 28 years in London he was applying for naturalization papers as a British subject. Poorer sections made decorations from previous celebrations do. One streamer that hung across a Bermondsey slum alley during King George V’s Jubilee: WE’RE LOUSY, BUT LOYAL was exchanged last week for a handsome new free banner of more Conservative sentiments.

¶ Traffic jams grew progressively thicker & longer. Even those two regal sisters-in-law, Queen Mother Mary and Queen Maud of Norway, got caught in one in the pouring rain trying to reach Buckingham Palace. Worried police finally commandeered a taxicab in which three girls were riding, beat a path along the wrong side of the street against the traffic. The excited girls, rain dripping from their hats, waved and yoo-hooed wildly from the back of the cab. “It was a sight,” wired an impressed newshawk, “such as never before has been seen, even in England.”

¶ The price of seats that slumped badly fortnight ago, rose as the great day approached, with about eight guineas ($40) the cheapest from which a fair view of the procession could be had. Hundreds of thousands got their only view of the procession on “Little Coronation Day” (Sunday) last full rehearsal, with all the mounted troops in line. All night long they jammed the stands while the rain made wet wash of the bunting above them, waiting for cold dawn to break and the clatter of horses to come down the street.

¶ Two people who were to see the procession in greatest comfort were H. R. H. the Duke of Connaught and Banker Jules Semon Bache of Manhattan. Last surviving child of Queen Victoria, the 87-year-old Duke has been having serious trouble with his legs for many months. Driven in an ambulance to his town house in Pall Mall, Britain’s senior Field Marshal let it be known that he would view the parade in which he should have played a most prominent part, comfortably propped up in his own bedroom window. Banker Bache, 76, who three weeks ago gave his Manhattan home and collection for a public art museum bought a sheaf of tickets for his children and grandchildren, then hired a front room in Westminster Hospital, over-looking the Abbey entrance and went to bed, with instructions to be wakened as the parade came by.

*Told by startled newshawks of Italy’s action last week, a spokesman at the British Foreign Office icily observed: ”Really now, the British Empire will be able to withstand the horrible impact.”