“Do movie stars have to go through this in the same way?”
“Every day. They have mobs around them wherever they go.”
She babbled on like a brook, ignoring the icy looks her sister flashed her across the table. “We’ve never been to a motion-picture studio before, and I think it’s fascinating. I do hope we’ll be allowed to come again.” She helped herself to another strawberry. “And this tea—delicious! Do they have food like this in the studio every day?”
I explained as tactfully as possible that everyone had donated ration cards. “They did?” exclaimed the princess. “Well, I don’t care. It was wonderful, and I’m glad I ate everything.”
* * * * *
The day I’d arrived in London for my first trip stays fixed in my memory because every church bell in town was pealing. Like the ham actress I was then—and still am—I wondered if they were ringing for me. I wasn’t quite correct. It happened to be the day Queen Elizabeth was born. I thought about it when I went back to London again as a newspaperwoman covering her coronation. Seeing the standards emblazoned with “E.R.,” for Elizabeth Regina, that covered London, an American acquaintance of mine, a Democrat to the hilt, remarked appreciatively: “I didn’t realize they were so fond of Eleanor Roosevelt over here.”
At the Savoy that coronation evening I got a telephone call from Reuter’s. The New York Daily News was asking for a special story on my reactions to the gilt and glamour of London town. “Certainly,” said I. “Get your typewriter ready.”
“Don’t you want to think about it?”
“No, I don’t have to think. I just want to tell it as I saw it.” So I talked about the crowds who had slept in the streets, about the pomp and pageantry of the greatest show since P. T. Barnum. “It makes President Eisenhower’s inauguration,” I judged—and I’d been there—“seem like sending off your impoverished relations to the poorhouse.”
* * * * *