"By Royal Warrant"

Suppose you are a chimney sweep named G. J. Kite. You wait and wait for the chimneys of Windsor Castle to need sweeping. You cannot offer to sweep them. Finally you are asked, and up the chimney you go. Emerging sooty but elated you wash up, present yourself at the Lord Chamberlain's office and state the facts. If the Lord Chamberlain pleases he may appoint you, as he has appointed G. J. Kite, "By Royal Warrant Chimney Sweeper to His Majesty the King."

This is all very well until what lawyers call "the demise of the Crown." As the old King dies your royal warrant expires and the new King may or may not let you sweep his chimneys. Thus purveyors to the Crown are always more or less on edge. Last week they felt they ought to do something about the royal jubilee next spring, did something curious.

Thirty-six-year-old C. Bersford Marshall is an architect with a reputation for doing swank Mayfair apartments in the modern taste. In his meteoric career Architect Marshall has designed only four houses. Last week the Royal Warrant Holders' Association commissioned him to do his fifth house as a jubilee present for King George. Reminded that His Majesty is in possession of a score of palaces and castles plus houses galore, the Royal Warrant Holders' somewhat foggy spokesman conjectured that George V will probably give the house, located at Burhill in Surrey, to "some subject who has performed a conspicuous service to the Empire, or to the widow of such a person."

Among royal warrant holders are John Lusty (turtle soup), Ashton & Mitchell, Ltd. (theatre tickets), Mary A. Bennett (stable brooms), R. G. Lawrie, Ltd. (bagpipes) and Merryweather & Sons, Ltd. (fire engines). Cars His Majesty buys from The Daimler Co., Ltd., rents additional cars from Daimler Hire, Ltd., sells old equipages to The Car Mart, Ltd.--all three motor firms holding royal warrants. Less candid are Their Majesties' little extravagances and their sale of whatnots. Thus Her Majesty probably spends more pounds buying Imperial Russian enamel and ikons from Wartski & Co. on Regent Street than on any other self-indulgence. But the fawning Messrs. Wartski hold no royal warrant, even though they have also sold intimate things for King George, such as the chronometer of the royal yacht. Not to be confused with the Regent Street Wartskis are Wartski & Sons, Ltd. in Bishopsgate, Waterproofers By Royal Warrant.

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