A MAID IN MAYFAIR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 76, 30 March 1935, Page 3 (Supplement)

A MAID IN MAYFAIR.

GOSSIP FROM LONDON. JUBILEE CELEBRATIONS. '(From Our London Lady Correspondent.) Everyone $eems to be expecting an enormous influx of people into London f or the Silver Jubilee celebrations. Already the hotels are booking up rapidly,, and people with flats are being offered extravagant prices for a let of two or three -weeks if they will consent to "ive up their accommodation for this perfod in the spring. The caterers, the theatres, and all other places of entertainment arc also expecting record bookings. It i 3 surprising, too, the number o f°Americans who are making arrangements to come over. Our friends across the water have always taken an affectionate interest in the doings of our Royal Family, and a friend who was over in the States during the King's illness was telling mo recently that the anxiety expressed oyer there could not have been greater if the King's sovereignty had extended to the United States itself. •

OFFICIAL HOSTESSES. There is to be nothing haphazard about the official entertaining in connection with the Silver Jubilee. Already leading London hostesses are getting together, and forming committees, so that arrangements may be *made well in advance, and there may be no vexatious clashing of dates when the time comes. Mrs. Baldwin, Lady Londonderry, Lady Reading and a few others will be what are known as official hostesses for the Government, and not the least pleasant part of their task will be to ensure a good time for women guests from the Dominions and abroad. Apart from State receptions and balls, there will probably be more than one garden party at Buckingham Palace. Since Devonshire House ceased to be one of the palatial homes of the West End, there are few great houses in Mayfair or Belgravia with gardens and lawns adequate for functions of this kind. But at the Astors' place up the river oversea guests are pretty certain to have an opportunity of viewing the farfamed beauties of the Clevedon Reach. RE-UNION IN AMERICA. Members of the smart set are appariently not satisfied even witli the host cf gaieties promised them during the silver jubilee season. Thirsting for other entertainment before the English programme begins, they arc going off in little groups to Palm Beach to get in a few weeks of social life thereby way of preliminary to Royal Courts and other important jubilee functions. The Duke and Duchess of Marlborough have already arrived "over there," and are sharing their entertaining with the duke's mother, Madame Balsan, who was one of the Vanderbilts. Lady Warwick is also staying at Palm Beach with friends, and Lord and Lady Brownlow, who arc among tho most sought after hosts and hostesses in the younger set, are leaving to-day. Lord and Lady Granard's elder daughter is spending the second part of her honeymoon there, and another recent bride, who has just arrived for a wedding holiday, is King Alfonso's daughter, the Princess Beatriz of Spain. ALBURY PARK. One wonders whether the Duchess of Northumberland will have any better luck with the letting of Albury Park, one of the family places, near Guildford, than the Princess Royal and Lord Harewood have had about Goldsborough, the Yorkshire dower house to the Harewood estate. Very few people will undertake nowadays the responsibility of the upkeep of large mansions set m parks and beautiful grounds. Not only are there hich rents and insurances to be paid, hut little armies of servants have to be employed both indoors and out, and, it entertaining is done, bills for renovations and damage frequently mount up to very large sums. Goldsborough, which was almost rebuilt when the Princess Royal was married, and is beautifu y ~ ated and appointed, has been standing empty for two or three years, in spite of the fact that it is in the heart of hunting country and convemen several of the most poplar Yorkshire narks Albury Park is sufficiently near VUko it « id«l I ?U» lor the right kind of tenant, and, as the Duchess of Northumberland has Syon House as well as her London house m Kensington, she would probably let for a long term of years.

WOMEN INVENTORS. One hundred and thirty-four in .Y e " tors-twelve of them ™m e n-had their gadgets on show at Bntis Fair at Olympia. There are rubber pads to counteract tlie distressing conp of housemaid's knee, and a most ingenious kettle-cum-saucepan apparatus, in which the kettle is boiled by the steam from the saucepan. Then there is window fastener especially designed to let in fresh air but keep out burglars. A novel gadget, which is certain ot immediate popularity, is a mustard squirter which avoids the laborious process of spreading mustard on sandwiches with a knife. Then there is a fire screen with a cut-out centre to catch the draught for a dying fire. One would think that every possible source of variety had already been tapped in the production of ladies' handbags, but in the fancy leatherware section of the fair there are bags of still greater novelty of design. Ladies who have suffered from the general suffocation created in the house, when a male member tries out a new pipe, will be interested in a robot device which smokes new pipes for the owner until they arc properly broken in. G.B.S. AND ELLEN TERRY. The last issue of the British Museum official journal contains some interesting particulars of how the letters written by Miss Ellen Terry to George Bernard Shaw came to be preserved and handed over as a gift to the nation. According to .Mr. Shaw's own statement, the letters owe tlieir preservation primarily to their unique handwriting —so unique that no one could have had the heart to destroy them. But apart from the beauty of the handwriting. G.B.S. could not withstand the "frankness and impetuosity with which she flung her thoughts and feelings on paper." Incidentally, fi.K.S. tells us that lie holds with Charles Dickens that, most correspondence is "pregnant with incalculable ni'schief." A cling on Dickens' advice, therefore, lie has destroyed all tin' loiters I hat have conic to him "except when there was sonic quite unsentimental reasorr for pr serving the c."