AT HOME AND ABROAD.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 141, 16 June 1928, Page 18

AT HOME AND ABROAD.

Dame Ellen Terry has a wonderful personality (says an English paper). It was a great disappointment that she had lost her voice through bronchitis on her birthday, so could not broadcast, but her lovely little speech was read for her by her daughter, Miss Edith Craig. All who belong to the stage could have wept when they heard that voice, so like her mother's. Dame Ellen's memory for faces is not always good, but Once she has placcd people she talks to them in the most wonderful way, and it makes one hold one's breath to bear her speak about the things she knows and feels most strongly upon. Dame Ellen's cottage, at Tenterden, is what the agents call "a fine example of half-timber work," with crooked floors and ceilings, with a strawberry garden, and a rose garden.

The new Lord Oxford iB very much like his father, the great Balliol scholar, Raymond Asquith, who was so cruelly killed In the war—cruelly because, as Lord Oxford's three other sons had already joined, his brains would have been of inestimable value at home. He had a beautiful and humorous face and auburn hair. He married the daughter of Lady Horner, whose brother Edward was killed shortly after her husband. Mrs. Raymond Asquith (who will probably not receive any other title) wore the veil at her wedding that Mary Stewart was beheaded in. It is made of thick net, and has a Latin inscription exquisitely embroidered round its edge. It belongs to the late Sir John Horner's family.

Speaking of the talented Sitwells, a London paper says-. "The Sitwells are not really such highbrows as the world supposes. True, they are anti the established conventions, like medicines, respect for old age, family life, water colours, hunting, shooting, fishing, golf and English watering-places! But their anti-ness is only against the worst of these things and surely we all dislike incompetent doctors, querulous and selfish old age, insipid water colours—and the complete and utter absorption in sj>ort that some English people pretend. Miss Edith Sitwell, who is handsome, kind, amusing, and most easy to talk to, is supposed to be the best of the three as a poet, but it would require an expert on modern poetry to judge between them. Osbert is no doubt a fine novelist, and story-teller, not highbrow in the least."

To give a really good original flavour to your cocktail party you must now serve them in different colours to m;»tch either the temperaments or clothes of your friends (says a London paper). Plain orange juice with a dash of gin and absinthe gives a beautiful yellow cocktail; green Chartreuse, Vermouth and a dash of bitters tastes queer, but is a lovely green colour; and there is a new sweet cocktail made of chocolate and brandy which has been named after Hutchinson, the Jamaican pianist and singer. But despite the vogue for cocktails, numbers of people drink nothing but water for weeks at a time. At a luncheon given by the Marchese and Marchesa Malacridi, it was noticed that while their guests were given Burgundy and port, they themselves drank water, camouflaging the fact by using a frosted jug and coloured glasses.