Friday, January 27, 2012

Princess Pat loves Americans


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January 27, 1912

Princess Patricia of Connaught loves New York, according to an exclusive dispatch to the Los Angeles Times.  The princess spent four days in New York City with her parents, the Duke and Duchess of Connaught.  There are so many things that she liked: "the Metropolitan Tower and the art galleries," as well as the opera house and "the fascinating glimpse of lower Broadway." 

The princess has made friends, and revels in the new "American girls' dance."

For four days, the charming and very pretty "fair-haired English girl" has had a "glorious American good time.   Some of King George's subjects "hold to a strange, old, whimsical idea that New York is an 'inartistic' city and America a land of 'crudity,'" but this is a view not held by Princess Patricia of Connaught.

She is interested in the American girls' lives because she has found that American girls have for the most part been brought up less simply than she herself."

A Princess's education is not "hedged about with formality nor cushioned in luxury."  Princess Patricia has known "much of magnificence," yet "her own life has been, for the biggest part of each of her twenty-four years a simple thing."  She was brought up simply, but with a "certain sternness.   She also has a "freshness of enjoyment that many an American girl lacks. 

Her education has been such "as to fit her for any station from artist's wife to Queen."

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