LADY ASTOR IN NEW YORK

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 129, 3 June 1922, Page 14

LADY ASTOR IN NEW YORK

S GREAT WELCOME

An interesting description of the visit of Lady Astor to New York is given by an exchange as follows: '

Viscountess Astor was warmly welcomed in New York last night by a fashionable audience in the Town Hall as the "greatest woman in polities," and leader in England of woman's struggle for emancipation. Following her lecture on woman's proper place in Government and business affairs, the "Viscountess of the House of Commons" received: an ovation, the sincerity of which could not be doubted.' Men and women streamed- down' the aisles to the stage, and Lady Astor, on her knees, excited and exuberant, leaned forward over the footlights, received noisy congratulations, and shook the hands that were lifted up to her. Lady Astor, hailed as a "daughter of Virginia" by her former fellow-countrymen, declared that she was glad to get back home, and,delighted her audience by < easily and naturally reverting to her native vernacular during the informal reception; "I guess I've said a mouthful," Lady ■ Astor laughingly remarked, after she had expressed a. wish that Miss Mary Hay, chairman of the League of Women Voters, had been elected Mayor of New York instead of the present male incumbent. In an > effort to give expression to her. feelings/ Viscountess Astor gleefully' declared that she felt like .Mary Pickfoi'd, 'Charlie - Chaplin and Susan Anthony all'rolie'd into one. As the men and women filed past her on the . stage she archly refused to shake hands until her admirers had promised to join the League of Women Voters. "It was like a grand opera farewell," writes one American reporter, "full of emotional'ecstacy, and the central figure in it all,' in a short grey satin frock, with pink spots of colour in her cheeks, responded to the excitement like a child."

On the platform with Lady Astor were her husband and his American cousin, Mr Vincent Astor, Mr John Davis, former American Ambassador to England, and many other prominent men and women. "My husband was responsible for starting me on my downward career from home to the House of Commons," Lady Astor said in her lecture, "and you must thajik that strange and remarkable man for any help I have been able to render to the cause of women.*' ' Judging from today's newspaper reports, Lady Astor will enjoy as great a success here as Mrs Asquith. "She has a beautiful delivery, full of lights and shades, like her personality," says one critic; "her English is clear and- simple, and a woman so sure of herself as she is escapes! all consciousness! and holds her hearer? as in a spell." Lady Astor received an equally enthusiastic welcome when she landed at New York in the morning from the steamer Olympic. "I won't discuss Mrs. Asquith," she said to the reporters, "except to say that she is no more typical of the average English woman than she is typical of the average American woman.. I might say she is unique, and not be far wrong."