OVERSEAS NOTES

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 64, 9 December 1930, Page 5

OVERSEAS NOTES

The post-war generation may not know Lucas Alalet and Beatrice Harraden, the two women novelists who figure in the civil • pension' list, but they were Victorian best sellers in their day. Lucas Alalet, a daughter of Charles Kingsley, married a rector of Clovelly, and her real name is Airs. St. Leger Harrison. Alodern flappers •would find it hard to realise that her “History of Sir Richard Calmady” was the cause of rather a Victorian sensation. Aliss Harraden’s best-known book is “Ships That Pass in the Night,” which had un immense vogue 30 or 40. years ago. She did great work during the war in charge of a soldiers’ library near King’s Cross. London is to have three new dances this winter, the Aloochi, the Alidway Rhythm, and the American Quickstep, and, judging by the warm reception they received from the critical audience at the Empress Rooms, Royal Palace Hotel, Kensington, S.W., recently this season’s ballroom programme will laek nothing in the variety of tunes (states the “Daily Mail.”) ' Two of South Africa’s pioneer women taxi-drivers, Aliss L. Belcher and Aliss E. C. Budgcll, are the first women to accomplish the SOOO-mile journey from Capetown to Cairo. They were treated most courteously by natives, but after leaving Khartoum were lost for three days in the desert without sufficient water. Fortunately they had no mechanical trouble with the car, although on one occasion it caught fire. The engine, however, remained undamaged. Beads and necklaces are having a rest. There are quite as many in the shops, but smart women are not buying them just now. Perhaps they are spending all their money on diamond clips and diamond and pearl corsage brooches, which are certainly the favourite jewels for hats, blouses, and evening frocks. • No other ornament looks so well with black and white clothes.

Blue ollies, blue waters, and the sands for

me! A cosy bnngalet beside the sea. The creaming breakers on a rising tide, Lifting white crests where snowy seagulls

glide. Blue skies, calm twilight, and the Evening

Star, , With some lone sail careering o er the bar. A sheltered nook snug comfort to assure, And, always! Woods’ .Great Peppermint ©urn.—Atl’tai