A MAID IN MAYFAIR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 137, 11 June 1932, Page 4 (Supplement)

A MAID IN MAYFAIR.

WOMEN HISTORIANS.

GIRLS MARRYING YOUNG.

(From Our London Lady Correspondent.)

At? meticulously detailed exponents of fascinating local history and biography, at least three of our women M.P.'e find themselves in their natural literary element. Tho compiling of these picturesque .and informative chronicles of places and people is the pet hobby of Miss Mary Pickford, Miss Picton-Turber-vill and the Ducliese of AtholL The Duuhcsa has written quite a. considerable tome on tho history of Perthshire, while Miss Pieton-Turbcrvill is Glamorganshire's topographical and historical expert. Miss Pickford's happy huntingground is the Derbyshire hill country, her country home being at King's Sterndale, Buxton, and while she is a veritable encyclopedia of local history and legends she is concentrating at (the moment on her forthcoming book of biographies of famous Derbyshire men. UNCROWDED PROFESSION. Four women were recently successful in the examination of the Chartered Surveyors' Institution, and it is interesting to record that this new addition makes the institution's total feminine membership no more than a dozen or so. Miss Bertha Dickinson, a successful Dublin candidate, is the first woman member in the whole, of Ireland. Surveying offers a big field of opportunity for those with the right bent, and with so many other vocations heart-breakingly overcrowded, should attract a, considerable quota of feminine ambition. Some of the women who have taken up this interesting line are doing well in private practice. Others have been engaged on fascinating and noteworthy work in connection with municipal housing schemes, the development of building estates and Government offices.

NOT LIKE HER BOOK. I hear that Madame Sokolnikoff, the Soviet Ambassador's attractive wife, is expected to keep up the popular idea of Soviet "redness" by the book she is having published next month, which deals with the women of the French Revolution. With her bunch of little ringlets on either side of a claseic-featured face, her grave eyes and graceful movements, the lady certainly does not look like the author of a book described as "ferocious." She lives very simply at Harrington House in Kensington Palace Gardens, where the Embassy i 3 housed, and where Lady Massereene, two or three years ago, gave such notable parties. Tho most striking feature of tho house is its collection of rather startling modern Russian pictures. Madame Sokolnikoff has usually epent her holidays in France, that country being to her, as to most cultured Russians, a kind of spiritual home.

PICTURE CLUB,

A novel club hae been started in the Camden Hill literary set, which is so ably led by Miss Margaret Kennedy. This is a "picture library/ , from which subscribers can borrow reproductions of well-known pictures, hang them on the walls for a few daye or a few weeks, and then exchange them for others. The "stock" of pictures is catholic, and ranges from reproductions of old masters —Italian, English and Dutch—to modern paintings by French impressionists. The idea of the club ie that no picture should be "lived with," but should be replaced as eoon as one has enjoyed it fully. Different moods, moreover, say the members, want different pictures, a theory that must involve a- lot of running" about for the wife of a really temperamental man.

YOUNG BRIDES. It Is very interesting to find that not only are girls being launched into society at a much earlier age, but they are also marrying—or at least becoming engaged —almost in their first season. The number of very young brides who have walked down the aisle of St. Margaret's, Westminster, or some pretty village church, in the last 12 months have been quite remarkable, and of the many marriages to take place in the next few weeks a very small percentage are of girls much over twenty. Lord Harewood'e cousin, who was married last week to Mr. Dennis Stucley, came out only last year. The late Captain Oswald's daughter, whoso wedding takes place at the Guards' Chapel in a few days, was a debutante of last year also, and Lord Jersey's bride, Miss Patricia Richards, will only be 18 when she is presented during the summer "on her marriage."

PRINCESS ROYAL'S HOME. The Princess Royal is not enjoying the task of dismantling Chesterfield House in order that her new home, 32, Green Street, may be furnished pleasantly and appropriately. She was fond of the magnificent rooms and their exquisite appointments, and although she sees all the possibilities of the new home it is a wrench, naturally, to anyone so devoted to home-making to have to pull to pieces the scheme of things built up so carefully and lovingly. From all one hears Lord Harcwood would have been content to do without a town house altogether for a few years, but the Princess begged to be allowed to have a place of her own in London, and it was the Queen who chase the Green Street property for her. It seems a little strange, when the Princess apparently shrinks so from entertaining, that a London house should mean so much to her, but in addition to her hunting friends in Yorkshire she has a big eircle in town with whom she has kept in touch ever since her marriage, and whom she likes to entertain quietly when she comes to London.,

ALFONSO IN EGYPT. The ex-King Alfonso, when in Egypt, showed himself as anxious as when he was in Switzerland to strip himself of all the trappings of royalty. He insisted that no special arrangements should be made for him, and though he dined with the Grenadier Guards, it was in his capacity as a Field-Marshal to the British Army and not as ex-King of Spain. He joined H.K.H. Princesse Sixte de Bourbon de Parme and the Contesee de Jumilhac at Luxor, and then the whole party left for Assouan on the- ordinary Cook's steamer. At Assouan the ex-King should witness a sight which never fails to excite a thrill to visitors. For at Assouan at this time of the year you never fail to see thousands of . storks migrating from the Sudan to cooler- climes.