H.R.H. Fifi

Celebrating their new status as householders (they just moved into their very own Clarence House), Britain's matronly Princess Elizabeth and her husband the Duke of Edinburgh went to a fancy dress party last week costumed as a butler and chambermaid. Their host, Ambassador Douglas, was rigged out as a farmer. His wife hid her gentle features behind a horse's mask to appear as The Old Grey Mare. Their daughter, honey-haired Sharman, came as A Portrait of a Lady; she carried around a huge picture frame, finally abandoned it in a corner.

The sensation of the evening was Elizabeth's mischievous sister Margaret. She started off as Madame Butterfly, changed costumes to become "Mademoiselle Fifi," the belle of the boulevards. "It's a good thing," said one of the guests later, "that Queen Victoria wasn't there."

Victoria certainly would not have approved of her ebullient great-great-granddaughter's high kicks--but then Margaret has always shown herself to be more a child of Victoria's son Edward VII, an habitue of Maxim's in the days when Offenbach's music set the pace for Parisian gaiety. As Mademoiselle Fifi, Princess Margaret and seven of her friends turned the embassy party into a show that would have delighted Edward's eye if not his sense of royal decorum.

After diligent rehearsal under the supervision of U.S. Comedian Danny Kaye, a royal family favorite, the eight young Mayfair belles staged a spirited cancan* complete with panty-revealing finale. The Douglas' 250-odd guests roared with approval and demanded an encore. Two days later the Daily Express headlined: PRINCESS MARGARET DOES THE CANCAN. British tongues clucked disapproval.

*The cancan or chahut," says Curt Sachs' World History of the Dance, "is the enfant terrible of ... choral dances. Leg thrust and leap are its most characteristic features; the best dancer is the one who can knock the spectator's hat off his head with her foot."

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