A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK T HE official entry of our future
Queen into public life has been announced with just the right amount of discreet publicity. The royal children spent their early years at a salutary distance from the Throne, and though Princess Elizabeth has from her birth stood in the direct line of succession, there were several possibilities between that and the position of heiress-apparent which she now holds. It is well that we should be reminded that, having reached the age of sixteen, she will now begin to assume public duties, and well that at a time like this there should have been no " writing-up " of the occasion. To most of her future subjects the young Princess is best known through her admirable broadcast to children in Canada. Her entry into public life will recall to most people who have read Greville that admirable diarist's description of the Princess Victoria's first hours as Queen—at the age, not indeed of sixteen, but of eighteen: "The King died at twenty minutes after two yesterday morning, and the young Queen met the Council at Kensington. Palace at ts. Never was anything like the first impression she produced or the chorus of admiration which is raised about her manner and behaviour, and certainly not without justice. She went through the whole ceremony, occasionally looking at Melbourne for instruction when she had any doubt what to do, which hardly ever occurred, and with perfect calmness and self-possession, but at the same time with a graceful modesty and propriety particularly interesting and ingratiating." Princess Victoria had till that day never slept a night out of her mother's bedroom. Princess Elizabeth is a Girl Guide. She has been admirably brought up by singularly sensible parents.
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