Change of a dress
Sir: Our ambassador in Venezuela, Giles Fitzherbert, with whom I am staying, has drawn my attention to my mother's letter (8 October) mentioning her visit with her mother, my grandmother, to Bucharest in 1921, when they both stayed with Queen Marie of Rumania.
I wonder whether it was on this occasion that my grandmother, travelling from, let us say, Prague, in a third class compart- ment full of peasants, goats and chickens, changed into full court dress as the train approached Bucharest, in order not to be late for the royal banquet.
It was, incidentally, my grandmother's father, Murray Finch Hatton, 12th Earl of Winchilsea and Nottingham, who sold Eastwell, near Maidstone, the home of the Finches, to the Duke of Edinburgh, father of Queen Marie and son of Queen Victor- ia, for the, for those days, not inconsider- able sum of £1 million.
John Chancellor
British Embassy, Caracas
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