Letter From London

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 249, 17 July 1937, Page 4 (Supplement)

Letter From London

Wimbledon’s Glamour Girls ; Blind

Girl’s Cambridge Triumph

‘‘Dominion” Special Service.—By Air Mall (By Fenella.) London. June 25. yyiMBLEDON’S teinlis Queens Have ’ this year as much glamour ami fashion sense as Hollywood film stars. One of them, in fact, Miss Alice .Marble, the American champion, has had many offers to forsake tennis for a Him career. When not competing in tournaments she lives in Hollywood, where the stars copy her tennis clothes. .She is about sft. lOin. tall and wears abbreviated pleatless shorts, with an opennecked, short-sleeved white jumper for match games. Her eyebrows slant upward at a Marlene Dietrich angle, and her fair hair is immaculately waved. At the International (Lawn Tennis) Club of Great Britain’s afternoon reception for the tennis stars at the Roehampton Club, Miss Marble set a new hat fashion. She wore a turban-style sun hat with a pleated “tail” that hung down the back to protect the nape of

her neck. In the front of the hat the material was ruched to resemble a cluster of flowers.

Miss Helen Jacobs (U.S.A.), last year’s Wimbledon champion, is equally original in her dress. At the dinner given by the International Club following the reception, she wore a black dress with a square neck and a white pique jacket very much like a man’s mess jacket, with the exception of the sleeves, which were puffed at the shoulders and draped into a tight band about two inches above the elbow. The black and ■white made an arresting background for her clear-cut features and perfect skin. Her hair was brushed back from her forehead, quite plain, but beautifully groomed.

Left-handed Miss Kay Stammers (Great Britain) is another of the stars who have attracted the admiration of film producers. During her visit to America some months ago she was asked several times to sign a Hollywood contract. Early this year she was ill for six weeks following a motor accident, but now her form is rapidly returning to its normal brilliance.

At the Interimtioimt dinner she also wore black—a chiffon evening dress with a V-neck mid slender black shoul-der-straps. Looped twice round her throat was a necklace of pearls. Pinned on the front of her dress was a diamond pendant-brooch. Senorita Anita Lizana (Chile), daughter of a well-known Chilean tennis coach, and favourite of all those who have seen her cheery smile when accepting defeat in a match, was wearing a white Victorian dress at the dinner. The neckline was fairly high at the front and at the back. At the sides it came low over her shoulders. Her little sleeves were puffed and her skirt was full like a crinoline.

Miss Dorothy Round (Great Britain) designs sports clothes for a famous London shop. She loves simple clothes, and at the dinner she wore a sleeveless evening gown, fairly high at the neck in front and low at the back. Near her at the table sat Miss Jedrzejowska (Poland), who has just won, for the second time, the women's title in the London championships—one of Wimbledon’s preliminaries. She wore over her dinner dress a short coatee of stiffened satin with huge, full sleeves. Blind Student's Triumph. A 20-year-old blind girl, Miss Ruth Mary Hitchcock, has achieved remarkable success in the Cambridge Tripos examination results. Alone of all the women candidates she has been placed in the first class of purr one of the theological tripos. She shares with three men the highest possible honours in the examination. Miss Hitchcock is a ■student at Newnhiim College, the great Cambridge I 'Diversity college for women, in November, 11)34, she tool; (lie open sehol-

arship examination for Girton and Newnham and was offered a place at both colleges. She chose Newnham, ami entered for the theology course, seldom taken by women. When she finishes at Cambridge, Miss Hitchcock hopes to become a missionary or a religious teacher. .She is a fluent linguist, and besides French she has learned German, Latin, Hebrew, and Greek.

An illness nt the age of 11 mouths left her blind, and she received all her early learning at. the Ghorley Wood uses a specially-built Braille typewriter. During the Cambridge examinations she sat in a room apart from the College for the Blind. For writing, she other students. Her papers were afterward decoded from the Braille. For the Greek and Latin papers Miss Hitchcock used a special code which she had formulated herself and which had been accepted by the university authorities. At the Chorley Wood College Miss Hitchcock, like the other pupils, was

taught to ignore her blindness. At first pupils at this school —the only public school for blind girls in the world—do not realise they are not exactly like other children in every way. As they reach the more advanced classes, the children are told of other "sighted” schools where children “see” as well as touch. They are thus gradually prepared for the shock of realising that their- world of darkness is not shared by other children.

Nearly all the pupils at the college have been blind from birth or from a very early age. They are taught handicrafts as well as Braille reading, writing and foreign languages. The radio and gramophone records form an invaluable part of their “textbooks.” Grade Sings at Prisojis.

Miss Gracie Fields, the great Lancashire actress, has been playing to “full houses” this week-end in a new style of theatre —a prison. A couple of weeks ago, she was given ■ the freedom of her native town, Rochdale, for her generous heart and great gifts to charily. Hearing that she was the favourite actress of the men in Pentonyille prison, London, the governor wrote and asked her if she would be kind enough to give them a cheerful Sunday afternoon concert. So Gracie went. For more than two hours she sang English. Scottish, Irish and Welsh songs, encouraging the prisoners to join in every chorus. The applause was terrific, and toward the end Gracie got a surprise. In unison, all the men began to chant: "We want. ’My Blue Heaven’’’ (her first gramophone record). Wlien she had finished this song, the applause was so deafening that before long Miss Fields may give another concert at the prison.