The News And Views

WASHINGTON LETTER.

WASHINGTON - (AP)

An ardent collector of antiques, Mrs. Gilbert Grosvenor has the distinct advantages of being married to a professional globe-trotter and of having famous ancestors from whom she has inherited things.

Wife of the president of the National Geographic Society, Mrs. Grosvenor has accompanied her husband in travels over the past half century that have taken them across every continent except Antarctica. They have logged an average of more than 10,000 miles a year.

Mrs. Grosvenor's collection of rarities includes articles of historic interest, not only from foreign lands but this country as well. They fill the three Grosvenor mansions - "Wild Acres," their 100-acre farm near Washington; "Rumeli Hisar," at Coconut Grove, Fla., and "Beinn Bhreagh," at Baddeck, Nova Scotia.

There is china and cut glass that belonged to Peter the Great, china that belonged to Napoleon III, a chair owned by the Revolutionary figure, Gen. Artemas Ward and a Chippendale chair that belonged to John McCurdy, host of Lafayette.

Head of one of the largest scientific and educational organizations in the world, Mr. Grosvenor married Elsie May Bell, eldest daughter of Alexander Graham Bell, in London in 1900, three years before he began editing the society's famous monthly magazine. Born in Constantinople, now Istanbul, Mr. Grosvenor is the son of an Amherst professor. His mother was descended from two victims of the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692. He himself is a second cousin of the late President William Howard Taft.

Mrs. Grosvenor designed the National Geographic Society's flag, which has been carried to both poles and to the highest altitude and lowest ocean depth reached by man.

She loves traveling, but she also loves her club work, she said. She is active in the D.A.R., the Colonial Dames, Daughters of Colonial Wars, Daughters of the Barons of Runnymede and numerous local clubs. She likes sailing on the Grosvenor's 56-foot yawl, named "Elsie" after her and helped her husband found the Cruising Club of America, which runs the Bermuda Yacht races.

The Grosvenors have six children and more than a dozen grandchildren. Some of these will occupy the Florida residence the rest of the season, for the elder Grosvenors are off again. Traveling by air and motor, they will safari through Africa from Capetown to Cairo.