Friday, November 4, 2011
Lady Alice names her attendants
November 4, 1935
The names of Lady Alice Montagu-Douglas-Scott's bridesmaids were released today, reports the Associated Press. Lady Alice will marry Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, tomorrow at Buckingham Palace.
One "little Princess who might some day bear the weight of the British Empire upon her shoulders," is at the top of the list of the eight bridesmaids. Nine-year-old Princess Elizabeth, and her younger sister, Princess Margaret Rose, 5, are two of the bridesmaids. The two princesses are the daughters of the Duke and Duchess of York and are third and fourth in line to the British throne, ranking ahead of the Duke of Gloucester.
The other bridesmaids are Lady Mary Cambridge, 11, a grandniece of Queen Mary; Lady Elizabeth Scott, 13, the daughter of the bride's brother, the Earl of Dalkeith; Miss Ann Hawkins,7, and Miss Claire Phipps, 14, each a daughter of Lady Alice's sisters. The final two bridesmaids are Lady Angela Scott, the bride's sister, and Miss Moyra Scott, a cousin.
Lady Alice and Lady Angela are "inseparable companions," and when they were children, they made a pact "that whoever married first should have the other as a bridesmaid."
Lady Alice's bouquet will include a sprig of myrtle from a tree in the Frogmore gardens at Windsor.
The Duke of Gloucester, third son of King George V and Queen Mary, and Lady Alice, were scheduled to marry at Westminster Abbey, but following the death of the bride's father, the Duke of Buccleuch, the wedding arrangements were scaled down, and now the marriage will take place at Buckingham Palace.
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6 comments:
Marlene,
I googled the Montagu-Douglas-Scotts and read they owned numerous estates in England and Scotland including Bowhill, Selkirk which had an internationally renowned art collection which included paintings by Canalleto, Guardi, Gainsborough, Reynolds and Van Dyke! The family was fabulously rich and I'm sure this strongly influenced Queen Mary's choice of Lady Alice as a suitable bride for her thick-headed son, Prince Henry!
Also, I was surprised to read in your entry about their son Prince William that he suffered from porphria.
Rex. Lady Alice wrote two volumes of memoirs, and there is also a rather dry bio of Henry. There is also a biography on Prince William, which was published after his death.
I visited Bowhill some years ago.
Marlene,
Princess Marina of Kent may have referred to The Duchess of York (later George vi's consort) and the Duke of Gloucester's wife Alice, as "those common Scottish girls" but I wonder if there were sour grapes on her part because of their families' wealth? The Greek royals were the poor relations among the wealthy royal families of Europe and Russia.
Marina was very conscious of her genealogy - and thought she was superior, as a princess of Greece, with a Romanov mother, to the daughters of a duke and an earl.
Marlene,
Can't recall the name of book I read about Lawrence Olivier and Vivienne Leigh recently. It describes Olivier's sexual ambiguity and said he had a relationship with Danny Kaye for a number of years. It also said that Kaye had an affair with Marina of Kent when she was a widow.
Christopher Warwick alluded to a relationship between Marina and Kaye in his biography of George Marina in 1988. A more recent bio of Marina by Sophia Watson mentions a friendship but said Warwick provided no evidence for an affair.
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