LADY ASTOR

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 11, 14 January 1933, Page 6

LADY ASTOR

VISIT TO AMERICA

PERSONALITY OF THE HOUR

. (From "The Post's" Representative.) NEW YORK, 21st December. Lady Astor— '' the Virginia-born Nancy Langhorne," as American papers delight to recall her—has revisited her homeland, and has held the spotlight, to the exclusion of all other women, and of moat men, while she was here. Characteristically, she plunged into the vortex of the discussion on war debts, telling • Americans they were taking a wrong "slant" on the question, that Britishers were not "squealing," as they imagined they were, and other home truths which, while being eagerly swallowed, as coming from one of Uncle Sam's nieces, were not being relished at Home. So impressed were her former people with her curtain lecture that one of her friends persuaded the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Eepresentatives to summon her before them, to aid their consideration of the war debts problem. The move was quietly but effectively quashed in high places. The Whit* House, no less than Whitehall, would' not be prepared to look on Lady

Astor's testimony as representing British official opinion, but the vast majority of the people of the United States would so regard it, out of a sense of loyalty to a favoured daughter of the nation. -

AMONG THE WOMEN.

Having done with the men, Lady Astor conferred with her own sex,: and was on safer ground. The wives of three former Presidents, Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, Mrs. Taft, and Mrs. Hoover, went with her to a morning musicale at the time she was due to appear before the Congress Committee. Then Lady Astor sped-to the Capitol, where she was entertained at lunch "by the women of Congress. The wife of the Vice-President, Mrs. Garner, .who has hitherto avoided' all social functions, was there. William Bryan Jennings' daughter, Mrs. Euth Bryan Owen, who, like Lady" Astor, married an Englishman, renewed friendships formed in the London season. The only woman in the Senate, Senator Hattie. Caraway, came over from a Democratic conference. All the ladies of the House of Eepresentatives' were present —Florence Kahu of California, Edith Nourso Eogers of Massachusetts, Mary Norton of New Jersey, Efiiegene Wingo of Arkansas, Buth Baker Pratt of New York, Willa Eslick of Tennessee, and Eepresentative-eleet Virginia J.enckers of Indiana. .■",.-. Over tall glasses of lemonade, afloat with cherries, Lady Astor's laugh rang out, in animated, conversation, dropping her g's all over the place, expressively gesturing, exclaiming . "What in thunder!" The vivacious Virginian, before another gathering of her sex, told how American women were becoming -too cosmetic-conscious, and pleaded for more modesty in dress. Why -did women dress like females, she asked. Competition, to attract menj ..someone ventured, in reply. "Thank you," she went on, profiting by the interjection, to warn women that, in the Victorian era, men respected them far more than they did now, and none.but themselves were to blame.