As his names, Edward, Andrew, Patrick, and David, indicate, his grandparents and parents were anxious that the Prince should, from his birth, belong rather to the nation than to his family. It was seriously proposed that he should share the Queen's carriage on Diamond Jubilee Day, but the idea was given up when it was realised that the long slow drive through the streets of London would be a terrible ordeal for a three-year-old baby; thus, although little Prince Edward's Jubilee clothes were actually prepared, he only wore them at home, to the disappointment of his young mother, who would have liked her son to have gone down in history as having taken part in so great and noteworthy a pageant.
The Duke of York's second son, Prince Albert Frederick Arthur George, was born on the anniversary of the deaths of the Prince Consort and of Princess Alice, and so was three years old on the 14th of last December. Two years younger is Princess Victoria Alexandra Alice Mary, the youngest but not the least of Her Majesty's British great-grandchildren.
The child of Prince Adolphus of Teck—whose wife, it will be remembered, was Lady Margaret Grosvenor, a daughter of the Duke of Westminster—is Royal in the same sense as are the Ladies Alexandra and Maud Duff, and it is rather interesting to note that the three children all stand in the same intimate relationship to the future King of England, though even Prince Edward of York was not legally entitled to the name of "Royal Highness" until a special decree was passed in favour of all the children of the Duke of York.
A word on Royal children from the photographer's point of view.
Mr. Richard Speaight of Regent Street, who took all our photographs except those of the Duke of Albany and his sister Princess Alice of Albany, which were taken by Messrs. Gunn and Stuart of Richmond, speaks enthusiastically of them—and he is now quite a connoisseur of children.
He says he is always struck by the natural and careful way in which the children are brought up. The younger ones are always most obedient to their nurses, and they, on the other hand, are very jealous in guarding their Royal charges. They do not even allow them to sit to be photographed without hiding behind to hold them in case they should fall.
The photographs of the Duke of York's children were taken at Sandringham. They took great delight in the musical and clockwork toys which Mr. Speaight took with him; and when the operation was finished, Prince Edward, shaking hands with his photographer, thanked him for the trouble he had taken.
THE COVER FOR BINDING OUR FIRST VOLUME.
Order at once.
Here is a small facsimile of the charming cover which has been designed for binding the first volume of The Harmsworth Magazine, which is completed with the issue of this number.