Black on White

Prince George,

The Duke of Kent,

London.

Dear George:

Just a line of congratulations to add to the many you must be receiving these days on your marriage to Marina, Between ourselves we can admit that the girl made a pretty good match, but if she makes you a good, economical wife she’ll be worth it in these hard times. And Greeks are supposed to be fair cooks, too.

Well, the way the American papers played up the ceremony and the way our radios carried it and everything will show you that our hearts are attuned to royal romance. Your wedding just happened to fall on our Thanksgiving Day. For a good many millions of Americans, in fact, it was the only thing they had to be thankful for. They could look at the rest of us eating our turkey with the pleasant feeling that they have finally gotten you off their hands (if you don’t mind my being frank). And now they have only your older brother Eddie, the Prince of Wales, to worry over.

You’d be surprised, too, how worried we are here about Eddie. Every rumor of an engagement, any dispute about why he’s still a bachelor, sets American pulses beating. Most American fathers and mothers know more about Eddie, and care more, too, than they do about their own sons. An article by or about the Prince of Wales doubles the circulation of any publication here. (Maybe I’ll reprint this friendly note in my column for that reason).

A lot of my highbrow friends, George, are always squawking that Americans don’t pay enough attention to foreign affairs. It took your wedding to show them up and now maybe they’ll stop bellyaching.

Attention? Why, you ran a close third for days behind Dutch Schultz and Baby-Face Nelson, and that’s saying several mouthfuls. You got columns and columns, not only from the regular staff reporters over there, but from Duke This and Dutchess That right in your own set.

You must admit that’s getting the dope out of the horse’s mouth all right.

Maybe the news printed by our papers was a little too mushy for your taste. You know what I mean—not quite refined like, and a bit movie fan magazine in style. There was just a little too much Glamor (or Glamour as you would pronounce it) and Romance and Thrill. If only there’d been a good-sized bathtub I’d swear Cecil B. DeMille was managing the affair. I mean that we couldn’t see the wedding for the adjectives.

I know how annoyed you and dear Marina must have been by all the rubbernecking. No doubt you would have liked to go off to the suburbs, wake up a country clergyman and launch into your #oneymoon. But that’s part of the price of being famous.

I felt the same way when I was married. We, too, didn’t want any fuss and feathers. So nobody knew about it but ourselves and two witnesses and the City Hall clerk. ### even our parents. But the ### is not to be robbed of its ### Our secret was ferreted ### out three months later