London, Jan, 29, When the King and Queen come back, all is brisk and nothing slack; all is fat and nothing lean, when we have the King end Queen, They lend a tonic and variety to the dull round of high society. I really beg your pardon, But the month after Christmas is always rather flat, and when the Royal Standard floats again over Buckingham Palace, as it will next week on their Majesties' return from Sandringham, all London seems to move more smartly, As yet, however, most of the gay world are away, The popularity of the winter sports in Switzerland increases every year, The tourist agency shops in Cockspur Street decorate their windows with scenes of snow mountains, with working models of skiers and tobogganers skimming down them, Or if you prefer warmer climates and easier days, the shipping offices offer you tours all over the world, Meanwhile the sound of the house-painter is heard in the land. Every third or fourth house has a board on the area railways announcing "Decorations by Smearum and Patchit," and the gossip writers go into raptures over the new schemes of decoration invented by Lady This and the Hon, "Mrs, That, We are having the se vant's bedroom colour-washed too, between two spasms of domestic experiments, Yes, life in London is certainly brightening up all round, Thrills in the Court of Chancery Chancery lawsuits from the days of Jarndyce and Jarndyce are traditionally dull, prosy and unintelligible, But the case this week between Captain Cunningham-Reid, Cohservative M.P, for Marylebone and his wife has caused as much excitement as a first-class murder trial, Both people being very well known and the wife immensely wealthy, society women fought for entry to the court and fur coats and costly stoles were almost torn to bits in the struggle, Mrs, Cunningham-Reid and Lady Louis Mountbatten are daughters of Lord Mount Temple and inherited from their grandfather Sir Ernest Cassel no less than £6.000.000 between them. Mrs, Cunningham Reid's income was never less than £70,000 year, She married Captain Cun-bingham-Reld in 1927, being then a ward in chancery, and as she was not allowed by her grandfather's will to make a settlement on her husband or anticipate her income, she proposed during the honeymoon that a joint account should be opened for them and that he should draw from it whatever they could save, to form a settlement for him, Deeds were accordingly drawn up to this effect between the husband and wife and with two companies, Cunningham Securities and Tommil Holdings, which were formed apparently heard a City man say, "We don't call a man in the City rich till he has at least £30,000 a year," And for the income of £70,000 a year, a ring costing several thousands is a mere incident, The worst of such causes célèbres is that they whet the socialist appetite to "soak the rich" and it is invariably the humble poor of the middle-class who get worst soaked in the process,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.