Princess Mary's Gift Book

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The sum remaining, after all the Fund's liabilities had been discharged, was eventually transferred to Queen Mary's Maternity Home, founded by the Queen for the benefit of the wives and infants of sailors, soldiers and airmen of the newly formed Royal Air Force. A Princess Mary Gift Fund Box was a treasured possession of many veteran soldiers of the First World War, even when the original contents – usually cigarettes and rolling tobacco – had long been used. The embossed brass box was air-tight, and made a useful container for money, tobacco, papers and photographs, so was often carried through subsequent service. Elsie’s father Arthur was a keen amateur photographer with his own darkroom and all the equipment required to develop the plate the girls had taken. The image, now a very famous one, shows Frances, head slightly tilted, gazing off just to the right of the photographer. In front of her several winged fairy figures dressed in diaphanous clothing are dancing. Frances looks as though she is trying hard not to laugh.

Charles Napier Hemy. R.A. (1841-1917). Illustration for bestselling novelist Hall Caine’s story, ‘Charlie the Cox’ I want you now to help me to send a Christmas present from the whole of the nation to every sailor afloat and every soldier at the front. I am sure that we should all be happier to feel that we had helped to send our little token of love and sympathy on Christmas morning, something that would be useful and of permanent value, and the making of which may be the means of providing employment in trades adversely affected by the war. Could there be anything more likely to hearten them in their struggle than a present received straight from home on Christmas Day?Fortunately, Princess Mary was just about grown-up enough to play her part in reinventing the Royal family as being both loyal and British. Princess Mary’s Gift Book brought the seventeen-year-old Princess right into public view and her portrait was painted for the frontispiece, by J. J. Shannon, R.A. one of the leading portrait painters in London. Conan-Doyle’s credulity in this and other matters still remains a mystery. He had been apparently fully taken in by the Piltdown Man fake, and since neither Piltdown Man nor the Cottingley fairies would be revealed as fakes until after his death, he presumably went on believing in the truth of them until the day he died. The Pildown Man, another famous fake! Princess Mary, the Princess Royal (1897-1965) was seventeen when World War I broke out in 1914. In normal circumstances, Mary would have been kept under wraps until she was eighteen and come out in Society, but, the outbreak of war changed everything. The House of Saxe-Coburg began to be accused of being far too German, and King George V and Queen Mary found themselves with an image problem.

Baroness Orczy, author of The Scarlet Pimpernel, contributed Out of the Jaws of Death: A Pimpernel Story, in which the intrepid hero, Sir Percy Blakeney, and five aristocratic English friends disguised as bloodthirsty French Revolutionaries, rescue an innocent French family from Madame Guillotine.

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Some had a considerable wait to receive their boxes, with difficulties distributing them, and with sourcing both the brass and the contents during the ongoing war. Supplies of 45 tons of brass strip, destined to make more boxes, was lost in May 1915 when RMS Lusitania was sunk off Ireland on passage from the USA. According to Wikipedia, in later life Lady Sybil Grant became an eccentric, spending much of her time in a caravan or up a tree, communicating with her butler through a megaphone. In 1922, Princess Mary, later the Princess Royal, married the 6 th Earl of Harewood. Throughout her life, she supported a number of charities, particularly to do with nursing (she herself had trained as a nurse during World War I) and the new Girl Guide movement. She became, like her mother, a formidable woman who chose her charities carefully and got a lot done. The Princess, under the aegis of her formidable mother, Queen Mary, wrote a personal introduction to Princess Mary’s Gift Book: all profits from the sale of the book would go to Queen Mary’s ‘Work for Women Fund’ which was set up to assist working women who found themselves in financial difficulties because of the war. For example, women working in the textile and clothing industries lost their jobs after their export markets closed. Queen Mary brought their case to the War Emergency Workers’ National Committee, which resulted in contracts for women textile workers to supply clothing and other items for the Army Supply Department.