Black and White Party: Woman Air Chief: Jewels as Fingernails

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 183, 1 May 1936, Page 5

Black and White Party: Woman Air Chief: Jewels as Fingernails

(By

Fenella.)

•‘Dominion” Special Service.—By Air Mail.

London, April 4. A “black-and-white” party—the largest private dinner party London has known for many months—has been given this week in honour of Lord Linlithgow, the Viceroy-Designate of India, and Lady Linlithgow, by the Hon. Rupert and Mrs. Beckett. There were more than 150 guests at dinner—and nearly every woman was dressed in black, black-and-white, or all white. The party was so large that it was held at the Savoy Hotel instead of at Mrs. Beckett’s beautiful town house. The Prime Minister and Mrs. Baldwin. Viscount and Viscountess Halifax, and Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Eden were among the guests. They sat at four great tables on which the only touch of colour was bowls of scarlet tulips. Round the walls were masses of white lilac and lilies. Most of the older women wore black, relieved by white flowers on shoulder or corsage. Lady Linlithgow herself wore a black chiffon dress with many frills. Her daughters, Lady Anne and and Lady Joan Hope, wore white and mauve respectively. Lady Anne, who wore the white dress, had soft chiffon frills as trimming. Black taffeta, fashion’s new favourite, was worn by Lady Diana and Lady Elizabeth Percy, daughters of the Duchess of Northumberland. . , " . No Jewels. Many of the women wore no jewels. Pearls are the only jewel permitted during the Court mourning period—and not many women have long ropes of pearls these days. A fresh flower fashion has replaced jewels. Elaborate shoulder sprays and hair flowers (to replace earrings) are the favourite styles. This farewell party, large though it was, was only one of the many which have been given in honour of Lord and Lady Linlithgow in recent weeks. In between, Lady Linlithgow has been snatching time for fittings at her dressmaker’s. She is taking some beautiful evening and day gowns out to India. Soft grey, black and mauve are among the colours, I understand. Record For A.B.C.D. Women. The only woman in the world to hold the coveted A.B.C. and D. licenses for aircraft engineering—Miss Dorothy Spicer—hag achieved yet another distinction. She has been appointed chief engineer of the British Empire Air Displays, a company which is to tour Great Britain this summer with twelve light aeroplanes. Miss Spicer will be in sole charge of these machines. It is the first time a woman has ever been appointed chief engineer to an aviation company. Miss Spicer will also be a pilot in the displays. She has had wide experience of this work. Although she is still ih her twenties, she claims the world’s passenger flying record for women, for she has taken up 1 more than 20,000 passengers. For: several years past, Miss Spicer ■ has. been running an air-taxi .service (the..first to lie founded by women) , with Miss Pauline Gower, daughter of , Sit Robert Gower, M.P. She has found , great scope for her abilities in this di- . rectlon for she is qualified to certify j machines as airworthy, to construct i aeroplanes and to build aeroplane en- < giues. . Joker Fools Spinsters. Seven spinsters, more than 200 men ' and a London mayor have been fooled i by a particularly cruel practical joke. < The mayor received a leter from a 1 girl who claimed to be qualified in home < nursing and cooking, a lover of children, a humorist and good-looking. The I mayor gave publicity to the letter and 1 promised to pass on any replies to the girl, whose name he kept secret. I The letter stated: “I have attained

the age of 24, and I feel I should like ! to enter into matrimony. I have no i immediate opportunity of meeting a i young man, and thought you might be ■ kind enough to assist me in this matter. ■ My qualifications are: Home nursing . (certificate), cooking (certificate), girl guide, can ride a bicycle, very humor- ; ous, lover of children, have good api pearancc.” During the next few days, the mayor received hundreds of letters from men i seeking “perfect brides” and also ap- : peals for husbands from six more spinsters. But all the men have been unlucky, for the original letter is now proved to have been a practical joke • about which the girl whose name was ■ given knew nothing. Marriage Changed His Death. After, rehearsing his funeral once a year for three years, Mr. A. W. Spry, a 72-year-old retired blacksmith of Crownhill, Devon, has changed his mind about death —he has married again. That is Mie reason 1 On his 69 th birthday, Mr. Spry arranged for his niece, three girl cousins and two other girls to act as bearers at his funeral. He entertained the girls to a “funeral” party and presented them with specially-made black-and-white funeral dresses. He also ordered a coffin and prepared his grave. But death did not come, so every year after on his birthday all six girls were entertained again. But now Mr. Spry has remarried—and Mrs. Spry has different views on how a birthday should be spent. "I have altered my will and my plans as a result,” Mr. Spry has announced. “My wife is quite young. She is only CO, and as we are travelling about seeing life she does not want to Chink of death.” J Lives With a Broken Neck. A woman who broke her neck by falling downstairs is now well on the way to recovery at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton. She is Mrs. Ida Stevenson, aged CO. Three months ago she tripped over a cat and plunged down the stairs of her home. She managed to crawl to a house nearby, but when doctors discovered her neck was broken they held out very little hope of her recovery. Then Mr. 11. Nethersole, senior honorary surgeon at the County Hospital, took her case in hand. He set the neck and encased Mrs. Stevenson in plaster of paris from head to waist.. 'This plaster prison has now nearly finished its work. Mrs. Stevenson’s neck is said to be getting stronger every day, and in a few weeks she will bo able to leave hospital. A recovery from a broken neck at her age—6o— is considered remarkable. Child Artists Show London. The Children's “Royal Academy”— at which the youngest exhibitor is I three years old and the eldest is still ] , at school —is now giving London a peep of what, modern life looks like to a child. It is being held at the Guildhall. - - ; Cruel and very revealing are some ' of the sketches, guaranteed to, be done , entirely xyithout help. Elspeth Macln- | tosh, aged five, gives three pencil , sketches: “Furious” (a woman with angry lines on her forehead, an open 1 mouth and claw-like hands) ; “Frightened” (a woman with round eyes and a huge, wide-open mouth), and ( “Pleased” (a woman with an immense , row of ugly teeth). Unemployment—a drooping man be- ' fore a tumble-down cottage—is the contribution of a 14-year-old boy. He 1 manages to portray utter poverty and 1 dejection in a few' lines. 1 Then there is an amusing collec- 1 tiou of problem pictures, including five- 1 year-old Ann Dowd's picture, “The Dog 1 With a Broken Leg.” I looked hard. 1 but I could only find two legs—both : of them sound. But that is how it <

looked to Ann, I was told. Drawings and paintings for this exhibition may be sent in from all parts of the world, provided special forms of entrance are obtained from London or from local art centres.

1 Last year, for example, there was . a remarkable illustrated letter from . a Japanese girl. She had exhibited pictures for several years running and . had then grown too old, I was told . to-day. In gratitude for all she bad learned through her association with , the Guildhall exhibition, she sent a graceful letter of thanks which she ‘ had ornamented with paintings of flowers. “Hand the World Over.” “Hand the world over to women,” is the plea of Miss Dorothy Evans, president of the British Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries. “When we see the utter inability of the rules of various nations to understand each other’s point of view .we cannot but feel that it is high time these rules handed over their authority to the women of the various lands,” she declared this week while addressing a conference of her association which was held in London. “■Woman,” she vowed, “would quickly see to it that the world was organised to tlie best advantage and that science was utilised in the interests of mankind rather than, as at present, for the complete annihilation of the human race.” Nine Million—And No Vote. Had she been a Frenchwoman, Miss Dorothy Evans would have had an even greater complaint with the present form of government. Nearly 9,000,000 women in France ] earn their own living—and not one of them will have a vote in the forthcoming French general elections (to be held on'April 26 and on May 3). In the “Revue de Paris,” showing the “callings” of Frenchwomen, the following figures are quoted: Nearly 3,000,000 are at the bead of industrial enterprises; some 2,000,000 have their own farms; 198,000 earn their living from industry; 250,000 from commerce, 15,000 are doctors, barristers, or carry on like professions; more than 2,500,000 are employees, civil servants, or factory hands; and over 1,000,000 are engaged in professions such as nursing and private teachings. ■When M. Pierre Laval, the former Prime Minister and Minister for eigii Affairs, changed almost every law' in France with his series of new decrees laws, none caused so much flutter among women as one designed to prevent a young woman from ever becoming an ambassador. The woman. Mlle. Borel, attached to the Quai d’Orsay, had passed a number of diplomatic examinations with honours and was steadily working her way to the front. Thep the special law was put on the Statute Book. Under it Mlle. Borel receives salary rises equivalent to the positions she would occupy if she were a man, but which, as she is a woman, she is forbidden to hold. It is possible, however, that she may one day' be receiving the pay of an ambassador while still remaining just an “unknown” member of the French diplomatic corps. Jewels For Every Finger. Fingernails made of jewels is the craze which is beginning to catch on here for evening. Only the very rich can afford real jewels, of course; others wear glass imitations. If expensive the nails (which are clipped on to the ordinary fingernails) arc made of platinum set with exquisitely cut little emeralds, rubies and sometimes diamonds. The cheaper style nails are made of celluloid covered witli little pieces of tinted glass. The fashion is a development of the nail varnish craze.