Better Than Helen Hayes

At the Blair House dinner for Great Britain's Princess Elizabeth last week, President Harry Truman rose, looked down with a smile at his small, resplendent royal guest and voiced a thought which would probably not have occurred to any other head of state. "When I was a little boy," he said, "I read about a fairy princess." Then, with a gallant wave of his hand, he added, "And there she is."

Washington's citizenry, which had been brought up on an American diet of fairy princesses too, seemed to feel the same way about Elizabeth's 45-hour visit to the capital. The city viewed it as something like watching Helen Hayes play the young Victoria, but with a real President, real ambassadors, dozens of motorcycle cops and the Marine Band in the cast.

Meet the Press. From the, moment she stepped down the ramp from a Royal Canadian Air Force DC-4M at Washington's National Airport, it became apparent that newspaper pictures had never done justice to Elizabeth's delicate coloring or warm smile. She was both tinier and prettier than most who saw her had guessed. But it was quickly apparent, too, that she was a hardworking, quietly tense--and extremely enduring--young woman, engaged in a nervous and difficult task.

Within the hour after arriving, she had smiled repeatedly for cameramen (who took to crying, "Hi, Highness!" to attract her attention), reviewed an honor guard, and read a reply to the President's little speech of welcome. She rode up Constitution Avenue while crowds, estimated at half a million, many bearing Union Jacks, waved to her. She changed clothes hurriedly at Blair House, and drove off to meet a thousand men & women of the Washington press corps who had jammed into the Presidential Room of the Statler Hotel to give her the Eagle Eye and the Big Once Over.

It was, as British embassy officials had warned her, a critical point of her visit. When kindly old Paul Wooton of the New Orleans Times-Picayune announced coyly during a speech of welcome that her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, was "master of his own house," she gave Wooton what could only be described as a gelid and queenly stare. But she smiled as he finished, listened gracefully to four more speeches.

Then, at Wooton's side, she moved slowly around the crowd, pausing occasionally to shake hands and chat. When she finished, both Washington's male correspondents and overdressed newshens were hers. The Washington Times-Herald (now owned by Chicago's Britain-hating Colonel Bertie McCormick) did run a cartoon which showed the Princess and her husband riding a broomstick, and which was captioned "Trick or Treat." Further more, it reported that the Princess forgot at one point to pull the shades before changing her dress at Blair House. Except for this sniping, she enjoyed a fine press.

Wet Feet & Cough Mixture. Next morning, Elizabeth laid a wreath on the grave of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, drove to Mount Vernon to lay another on Washington's tomb, and tramped across the Mount Vernon lawns, getting her feet wet in the process. Before going to lunch, she received ambassadors from eight Common wealth countries. That afternoon, in a ballroom at the British embassy, she met 2,000 politicos, Supreme Court justices, diplomats, and members of Washington society. -- who not only basked momentarily in the royal presence, but passed on out to a huge, green-carpeted, gas-heated tent on the grounds to sample a royal plenitude of Scotch and fine champagne. The Princess, who wore a teal-blue dress, long black gloves and a black hat, shook hands steadily from 3:30 to 4, retired for five minutes for a cup of tea, returned, and shook hands again until after 5:30.

By this time the capital not only approved heartily of the Princess, but had gained an enthusiastic regard for her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh. The tall (6 ft. 2 in.), handsome Duke seemed to be having a wonderful time wherever he went. Women in sidewalk crowds squealed, "Oh, there he is," when he beamed and waved from automobiles. Politicos found him a man with an enviable campaign manner. And he won Washington's newsmen, too--at the Statler Hotel reception he watched one scribbling scribe for a moment, seized his scrawled notes and quipped: "I'm sure if you took this to a chemist, he'd give you a cough mixture." When the royal couple left the city on the third afternoon of their visit, many a Washingtonian heaved a genuine sigh of regret. At the same time, however, most were rather glad to hear that Elizabeth and her Duke were going to get two days at a snowbound lodge in the Laurentian Mountains, to rest up from Washington hospitality.

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