GREAT BRITAIN: Money & Peels

A polite tempest of gossip and denial that the great Earl of Birkenhead would resign as Secretary of State for India was finally stilled, last week, when he, burly, brilliant and socially lionized, despatched to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin a lengthy letter. Suave, it concluded: “The moment of parting is always sad. Your own personality has converted a Cabinet which assembled upon the crater of some bitter and recent memories into a band of brothers. I leave them and you with emotion and, if I may be allowed to say so, with affection.”—Birkenhead.

Reason: money—it being notorious that the pay of a Cabinet Minister* has proved too meager to support the extravagant whims* of Lord Birkenhead, who was. before he took Cabinet rank, “the highest feed barrister in England.”

Lord Peel. Appointed to succeed Lord Birkenhead at the India Office, last week, was Lord Peel.

People who know that famed Revue Comedienne Beatrice Lillie is also Lady Peel were struck by the coincidence. It was fun to imagine the often studiously vulgar Beatrice capering and kicking her heels high at India House. Of course she will never do so. For Lady (Beatrice Lillie) Peel is not the spouse of Lord Peel, but merely the wife of Sir Robert Peel, Baronet.

Sir Robert Peel is the only son of the eldest son of the eldest son of great Sir Robert Peel (died 1850). Lord Peel is the eldest son of the youngest son of the same potent progenitor. Lord Peel inherits the title of Viscount from his father, who received it upon his retirement as Speaker of the House of Commons.

When one speaks of “Lady Peel” one correctly refers to either: 1) Ella Viscountess Peel, prim; or 2) Beatrice Lillie, flippant. It was the latter Lady Peel, of course, who recently originated the jest of calling every U. S. citizen residing west of Manhattan a “Middlie Westie.”

Early in 1920 Beatrice Gladys Lillie wed Sir Robert and three days before Christmas gave birth to Robert, still her only child. His destiny is to head the Peel line and inherit 10,000 acres. Shortly his irrepressible mother will open in Manhattan as the star of Noel Coward’s This Year of Grace, London’s superhit revue of the season.

* £5,000: $24,300.

* Especially rare book collecting.