Meanwhile there is compensation in the Royal visit to Paris next June. At the moment the French Government are discussing what palace they can house their Majesties in, for the ce is too small; and our officials ere debating what vessel the King ud Queen shall travel in, for the Victoria and Albert is too big, at least to get into Calais harbour. But she could go to Dunkirk, as the unhappy Tsar of Russia did in hi lit the Pole Star in 1901. And in is there are superb rooms at the ry of Foreign Affairs, includ-the famous Beauvais tapestry These, it is said, will probably be chosen.
Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret Rose are not to go. It might belése majesty to make the obvious comment, King Edward VII when Prince of Wales and the then Princess Royal, when he was thirteen went with his father and mother to Paris. When they had to return, he asked the Empress Eugenie to let him stay on with her, She doubted home. One less wouldn't signify.
While you are still eagerly drinking in these intimacies of royal life, I may mention that this summer in addition to four Courts there are to be two evening parties.at Buckingham Palace. This is partly to work off the long arrears of ladies who wish to be presented. But there is also a novel distinction: the courts are to be for the presentation of dé- butanites, the evening parties for the presentation of married women. Already discussion begins "about what to wear at the parties, which are not to be an occasion for feathers, And the Lord Chamberlain is quoted as saying. "Ordinary evening dress, provided the neck is not too low nor the skirt too high." But how, some ladies will object, can the neck be too low? And what about the back "Old London" Exhibition The exhibition of Old London (in aid of the Royal Northern Hospital) which is now on view in Sir Philip Sassoon's great house in Park Lane is in many ways a sad commentary on the London that we are making now. I suppose the apparent tranquillity and spaciousness of 17th and 18th century London are. a figment of the golden age which mankind is sways lamenting, aided by the sejective power of the painters, who ieft_ out most of the dirt: and all the smells. But there must have been magnificent vistas in the Old London, end grand houses, and above all room to see them, e are several pictures by the Venetian master Canaletto, who came here in 1746 to invest his funds and remained for two years painting. He poetized the Thames in London till it really looks more like Venice. It is musing to try to identify localities from the old pictures. analetto's rendering Of the gardens of Richmond House in Whitehall and the old Treasury Gate is unrecognizable: one cannot identify one building. Samuel Scott's. picture' of Whitehall is easier; here at least is Charles I statue d the Golden Cross Hotel where David Copperfield met Steerforth again, though Northumberland House is no more. Fish Street Hill by the same painter is most like what it is now, though the Monument appears to be without the gilded shaving-brush thing (is it meant to represent flames in memory of the Great Fire?) which now adorns the top.
Quantities of superb plate have been Jent by the Lord Mayor and City Companies, eloquent of the truth that no—craftsmen have ever worked better in silver than the English. This is where modern industrial art is seen at its worst. In furniture we are working through the era of "jazz, gimcrack and geometry," as- the "Manchester Guardian" wittily puts, and are producing new and very fine patterns. Much of the modern glass. site, particularly where s have concentrated on shapes designed to show off the beauty of the material devoid of surface decoration. But the attempts to find new shapes for silverware are really rather dreadful, stiff and ungainly. Perhaps this exhibition will bring back our silversmiths to that instinct for the nature of their m terial in which they were once preme.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.