The Sweetest Story . . .

Among all the veteran newsmen, big byliners and trained seals who covered the royal wedding, there was one notable cub. For Rebecca West, 55, famed as a novelist, critic and deep student of homo politicus (TIME, Dec. 8), it was her first assignment in spot news reporting. Editor Herbert Gunn of London's Evening Standard had given her his paper's only pass to Westminster Abbey.

She proved his judgment and her own competence. She saw the ceremony, hurried back to Fleet Street in a Standard car. Cool and unhurried as a good rewrite-man, she filled short sheets of copy paper in longhand which were snatched away for typing and setting. In a few sentences, she caught the mood of a memorable day: "It might seem folly to have a royal wedding in winter, but it was wise enough. The people are tired of sadness, they need a party; they are tired of hate, they need to think of love; they are tired of evil, they need to think of goodness." With shrewd economy she appraised the guests: "shabby top hats, shabby fur coats, fine and disciplined faces . . . the people that open bazaars," the bride, "white as marble," the groom, "like many a bridegroom before him, greenish white in complexion . . . almost podgy with solemnity." She thrilled to the fanfare of trumpets that heralded the bride: "like a shower of shooting stars on a winter sky expressed in sound."

Cub West's "mood piece" was probably the best by any of the 103 reporters in the Abbey; the New York, Times's Veteran Drew Middleton's was perhaps the best from the streets outside, where scores of newsmen covered the processional route. Buffeted by the surging crowds along the Mall, Middleton was lifted up by their surging spirit, as "a river of scarlet and gold and steel flowed through the shabby, cheerful masses of Britain. . . . For a brief moment the pace of the strident, terrible 20th Century was slowed to the trot of cavalry horses. . . ."

Take All of Me. The pinched London dailies gave their all (four to eight pages) to the story. The U.S. press gave more space (having more to give) but less than its all. The New York Times ran the story for 23 columns. The Moscow press, of course, printed not a word. London's Daily Worker gave the story a scant twelve lines on Page One; its New York cousin sneered in big black type: 18 COUPLES WED-QUIETLY AT CITY HALL.

As if millions of words of straight copy --some excellent, some merely ridiculous --were not enough, the press engaged in a few didoes. The Washington Post flew Mrs. Lois Guerrieri, who sent the bride a green taffeta dress and thereby got an invitation to a tea party, to London as its special correspondent. (But it was the New York Herald Tribune's Don Cook who "doctored" her stories. She got homesick, flew home the day before the wedding.) One wire serviceman (U.P.'s Robert Muesel) filed a 2,400-word "past tense" account of the wedding in advance, padded out from the program. Then he sat in the Abbey checking his story and saved valuable time by merely radioing a release to New York.

London's enterprising Daily Mirror had reporters explore the Mountbatten honeymoon house at Broadlands before it was barred to the press. Thus the Mirror, by dint of a little imagination, was able to take its readers across the threshold and right up to lights-out at 11 p.m.

The "woman's angle" was covered with grim intensity. Because Hollywood's Cobina Wright Sr. was an old pal of the groom, Cobina got an invitation to the wedding--the only one on his list to a private U.S. citizen. She coolly capitalized on it by signing up with Hearst's International News Service. I.N.S. hardly got its money's worth. At a Palace reception, she was so overwhelmed by all that jewelry "that I can scarcely remember so much as the color or cut of a single gown I saw."

Something Borrowed. Blonde, sassy Julia McCarthy, "Nancy Randolph" to readers of the New York Daily News, did not let her subway public down. Borrowing luscious details from the London Mirror account, she told how the happy newly weds headed for their bedroom (pink sheets) at Broadlands and how at a stair landing, "Philip looked down and put his arm around his bride's slender waist. She smiled shyly at her tall sailor husband as they continued on upstairs." For an added measure of tabloid taste, she guessed that the couple may have played some records that the Marquess of Milford Haven had given Philip, such as Cuddle Up a Little Closer or Bess, You Is My Woman Now. (Julia guessed wrong; the Marquess gave no records.)

In its excitement, the press dropped a few aitches. It was not sure whether Elizabeth took one dog or two on the honeymoon, whether the pet was a Welsh Corgi named Crackers, or Susan, or (according to one slip) just a dog named Corgi.

At week's end, some newsmen had faint twinges of hangover conscience; had the story really been worth all that? But most reporters had agreed with the editorial blessing of the New York Times: "We regard it as a fine thing when young people in love get married. . . . There is only one story today and the wedding is it."

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