King's Mistress

Not since the Wallis Warfield affair had elite London drawing rooms echoed to such a coo of deliciously subdued conversation. "My dear--not the King of the Greeks!" "And just after he had won the plebiscite!" "How awful for the Foreign Office!" "And for the poor dear Hellenes!" "Hasn't he grown children, or something?"

Facts seemed to bear out the rumors: King George II of Greece has an English mistress and he insists on taking her home to Athens with him. He has insisted that he will not go without her, and some of his friends think that he would rather give up his throne than leave her permanently.

The matter has been discussed unofficially with individuals at the Foreign Office. They have been asked, purely in a personal way, if she could not be given some British official status in order to arrange for a passport and passage. The answer has been: no, it just won't do. So King George is thinking of making her lady-in-waiting to his sister, Princess Catherine, who is now in London and expects to return with her brother or follow soon after he goes to Athens. Friends close to the royal suite think that this will be done.

Elementary Greek. The King's mistress, a middle-aging brunette and a beauty in a quiet way, is described by people who know her as modest, attractive and pleasant. She dresses in quiet good taste, lives "somewhere in the country," where King George visits her. She has a teen-age daughter. Mother and daughter are now studying elementary Greek.

She is also reported to have been in Athens and Cairo at various times with King George, notably when he was more or less "confined" in Egypt early in World War II. Later, she is rumored to have done some kind of war factory work in Britain.

In London, King George has lived at Claridge's Hotel, all but immured in his suite, where he sees nobody except his very small staff, a very few friends, and, currently, his sister Catherine. His mistress has never been known to visit him there. He goes off quietly to see her. On the Sunday of the recent plebiscite (TIME, Sept. 9), he dropped out of sight completely. The explanation was that he was "in the country with friends." The general supposition that he was in the country with his friend is borne out by the vigor with which his staff rejected all inquiries concerning his whereabouts at the time.

The lady is retiring by nature, but she is not ostracized. She does not move in anything that could be called "court circles," but several of her friends, with & without titles, do. Though she has not appeared in recent years in London's high society, she is accepted in it.

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