We read in the prior post it was the Queen who put Bert at ease during his Royal performance at Stafford House in 1909 by tapping her shoe as Bert started drawing. Two years later Bert recounts the event with a journalist from the Melbourne Society newspaper ‘Table Talk’.

Bert claimed he had met the King when he was Prince Albert (Bertie). I’m not sure he could have. Queen Victoria died in January 1911 which scuttled Bertie’s trip to Australia for Federation. Bert may have met Prince George, Duke of Cornwell (the king’s son) who came in place of Bertie, as Bert was sent to Sydney to cover the celebrations and was in Melbourne in May 1901 at the opening of the new Federal Parliament.

The expression in the last paragraph of this 1911 article on Bert threw me when I first read it. ‘Seizing the psychological moment’, is a great description of Bert’s attitude to life and career and for 1911 term it must have been relatively new!! Freud and co. were just getting started at the turn of the twentieth century.