Queen Alexandra, who was then the Princess of Wales, had been visiting the Exhibition, and was leaving the building when a poor flower-girl, with a baby in her arms, approached her and, before anyone could intervene, held a small bunch of violets close to the Princess’s face, saying, “Buy a bunch of violets, please, lady.”
Instead of being annoyed, the Princess accepted the flowers with her usual sweet smile, handed the girl half-a-sovereign, and then entered her carriage and drove away.
The astonished girl kept looking at the coin in her hand, and was quite alarmed when she was told she had held her flowers under the nose of the Princess of Wales; but the remembrance of the Princess’s smile soon reassured her, and she went away happy.
In the early days of the war the late Duke of Norfolk, the Duchess, and their two children, the young Earl of Arundel and his sister, Lady Mary Howard, formed a quartette of most interested spectators, and were conducted over the place by the gentleman who had been appointed as War Lecturer to the Exhibition.
He devoted most of his attention to the young people, and relates how the Earl and his sister passed unobtrusively among the exhibits, gaily chatting all the way, no one but he recognising the ducal party.
The Earl was shown, and allowed to handle, a German rifle, then recently captured in Belgium, and he instantly pretended to load the weapon. Then, raising it to his shoulder, he took a level aim at the head of the Kaiser and clicked the trigger.
As the party were retiring, his Grace and the Duchess had a brief consultation, after which the Duke came back to thank the lecturer for the attention he had given his son and daughter.
There were sovereigns in those days, and his Grace offered one to the cicerone, who deferentially declined the gift, saying he had been amply rewarded by the pleasure of the young people’s company. “I told the Duchess you wouldn’t take it,” said the Duke, laughing.