23-Lb. Surprise

Plenty of sound, solid flesh is what ample Queen Wilhelmina of The Netherlands thinks should be on Crown Princess Juliana. From this opinion many a prospective royal suitor of past years differed and so did the jolly Princess, who used to make wry jokes about the thickness of her calves (TIME, Aug. 12, 1935). Last week portly matrons of The Hague dithered as the Crown Princess returned from her three-month honeymoon radiant and 23 lb. lighter. She and slim, sporting Prince Consort "Benno." who knows his way around Europe's swank pleasure spots, were said on their honeymoon to have "frequently eaten heartily, as both are fond of food, and wanted to try the delicacies of different countries." So perhaps it was pace which slimmed Princess Juliana, whose latest pictures show her to be by no means her former dumpling self (see cut). She and Benno have zipped and roared around Europe in a $15,200 silver-finished Maybach-Zeppelin automobile. On their last night in Paris they got home to their hotel toward dawn, were off next day for The Netherlands in their Maybach without realizing what was in the rumble seat. As the great car shot across France, frantic telephone calls from Paris strove to intercept it and at the frontier barrier Her Royal Highness learned that her sleepy Dutch maid had bundled into the rumble $10,000 worth of gowns which had come to her "on approval" and which she had intended to leave behind to be sent back to the shops. Chuckling, the Crown Princess and Prince Consort rummaged through their luggage, left the stuff with the apologetic French frontier guards and tucked back into the rumble the Prince's little surprise for pompous Dutch courtiers, a box of exploding cigars.

They arrived in Rotterdam in time to see Her Majesty Queen Wilhelmina seize a hatchet of steel inlaid with gold, and sever with one blow the launching rope of the largest liner The Netherlands have built, the 33,000-ton Nieuw Amsterdam slated to maiden-voyage to Manhattan in the Spring of 1938.

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