Marthe Bibesco merits a couple of pages from Queen Marie, who was once a very close friend. The piece is a great tribute to her beauty and wit, but it concludes that "her ambition took another direction, the same things were not equally important to us both". A written note below confirms that "she gave the sensitive, scholarly King Ferdinand the only happiness he knew during his repressed life. She liked the post of maitresse en titre to the shy handsome king". A small cutting from the Daily Telegraph dated November 30th, 1973, confirms that Bibesco died, aged 85, in Paris.

Marie was at one time great friends with the Hereditary Princess of Saxe-Meiningen, eldest daughter of the Empress Frederick, known as 'Charly' by her cousins. There is a note added below quoting Harold Nicolson, biographer of George V, asking Queen Mary who it was who was frequently referred to as "the Brat" in her early diaries. After some moments in thought, the Queen Mother said that she was that same Charly.

The frontispiece to the first volume of Marie's book is the famous Millais portrait of her when she was seven, now at Windsor. A comment on this is quoted from The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais: "In composing the picture Millais thought it would be well to show the multitude that, though of high degree, the little Princess was by no means brought up to lead an idle and useless life, but was taught to work for others, if not for herself: so he designedly presented her holding her knitting in her hands. The picture, however, though Her Majesty was graciously pleased to approve of it, was not altogether to his mind. He strove hard to get the effect he wanted, but the divine afflatus, that alone can give life to works of this sort, failed him , as upon occasion it was wont to do. The result was an excellent likeness, but nothing more."

In the second volume, Marie skirts round the marital problems of Ducky, her sister Victoria Melita, but Miss Gray adds a quotation from Meriel Buchanan's Queen Victoria's Relations: "In time these rumours reached the ears of Queen Victoria. Greatly disturbed, she sent for my father [the ambassador to Russia], asking him so many searching questions about the relations of her grandchildren that he became embarrassed and perplexed and at last stated that certain things had been told him in confidence ……. The Queen, who was not accustomed to being opposed, was silent for a minute and my father wondered anxiously whether be had hopelessly displeased her. At last she gave a little shrug of the shoulders, so characteristic of her. 'I quite understand,' she said gently, and then with a sudden mist of tears in her eyes, 'I arranged that marriage, I will never try and marry anyone again.' ……. With [her] death, the marriage between her two grandchildren came to an end. For now there was no longer any fear of hurting or displeasing 'Grandmama Queen', the Grand Duchess decided to gain her freedom."

Elsewhere, Margit Fjellman quotes the Margravine Theodora of Baden as saying she believed shyness was inherent in Royalty: "I think I have only once in my life met a royal lady without a trace of shyness and that was Queen Marie of Romania. But she was also the most beautiful woman I have ever met."

Tipped into this volume is a carbon copy of a letter from Miss Gray to Terence Elsberry, congratulating him on his book about Queen Marie. She points out that he, in common with Lady Longford in Victoria R.I., attributes Marie's brother's death to tuberculosis. Yet Victor Mallet, in Life with Queen Victoria, produces fairly convincing evidence that he died from paralysis of the larynx caused by the state of the brain, which in turn was caused by the terribly fast life he had been leading in the First Prussian Corps. This diagnosis appears to be confirmed in letters written by the Empress Frederick to Sophie, who said that "I loved that boy, there was something irresistibly taking about him."

In another note, Charles Graves reports that "Ex-Queen Elizabeth of Greece, sister of ex-King Carol of Romania, was a permanent resident of Cannes. In her opinion all royalty had incredibly vulgar minds with an inclination to chamber-pot humour. She blamed this weakness on the race of English nannies who for the past century had ruled the royal nurseries of Europe."

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