WILL POMPADOUR PARADE THE PARK?

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 2311, 2 December 1925, Page 7

WILL POMPADOUR PARADE THE PARK?

FASHION ATAVISM THREATENS LONDON Sandwich Sampling for Highbrow Gourmets NOVEL HARVEST FESTIVALS IN CITY [From Our Own Correspondent,] LONDON November 1. There is to be a novel kind of Harvest festival at one of the old London churches next Sunday when St. DunBtan's In the East, which stands in the area of the Billingsgate Fish Market will be “flsb.ily” decorated by nets and samples of fish placed down the central isle. The present St. Dunstan’s boasts a Wren tower almost identical with the famous tower of St Nicholas at Newcastle-yOn-Tyne, which eminent architects have offered to take to pieces stone by stone and afterwards restore it if they might learn the secret of its construction. Another festival next Sunday will be that of the London costers, who will betake themselves to one of the Ber. mondsey churches with their barrows and their apropriate offerings of thanksgiving. Frances Balfour’s Memoirs. Lady Frances Balfour is writing her memoirs. An energetic woman Lady Frances is staying with her brother-in-law, the Earl of Balfour, at Whittinghame, and humorously states that she has got the permission of her family to write her reminisecses, provided they are not obliged to read them! Which sounds very characteristic of Arthur James Balfour! Arrest do Luxe One of the great and unsolved problems of the London mounted policeman is what he does with his horse If he has to get off it. Yesterday I saw the amusing sight of two mounted policemen arresting a little, plderly but active man. He was not the kind that “comes quietly'’, but offered considerable resistance, and for a couple of minutes there was a wild scramble of spurred boots on the pavement. Tne policement then secured their man, and started to march him off, hoping the horses would follow. One of them came on the pavement and walked with dignity behind; the other had larger ideas. Finally, a gentleman in a top hat came to the rescue and the culprit was eventually marched off by two bo.spurred constables, and two horses led by a city gentleman in a tall hat. Famous Wedding Gift. After a space of 150 years one of the most interesting of royal wedding gifts has been returned here, to its country of origin. I came across It in an art dealer’s shop in St. James’s street, where it is displayed. It Is the magnificent Chelsea porcelain table service which was presented by George 111. and Queen Charlotte to the Duke Adolphus Frederick of Mecklenberg-Strelitz on the occasion of his wedding. Horace Walpole mentions the famous set when writing to a friend in 1763 when he said: “I saw yesterday' the magnificent service of Chelsea china which the King ind Queen are sending to the Duke Mecklenberg. There are dishes and plates without number and epergne candlesticks, salt-cellars, sauceboats, etc. It is complete and cost £1,500.” It would require several times the original cost to be the owner of the service to-day, for it forms one of the choicest and finest example of Chelsea porcelain In existence. Queen Mary, I hear, is making a visit to St. James’s street to see the collection. Powder and Patches. We ha% r c been threatened with a return of the crinoline and other enormities, and nothing has come of it. Now a fashion expert, who looks far ahead and takes a broad view of fashion tendencies, thrills me with the prediction that we may soon see a reversion to the era of powder and patches. And why not? It is all a matter of evolution and reaction. Tha powder is with us already. The patches may soon come. And for the powdered wigs they would assuredly afford admirable "cover” for be-bob-bed and be-shlngled heads what time our women-folk grew their “crowns of glory” once more. We may yet have Pompadour motoring down Bond street in powder and patches, with a monocle in her eye and a cigarette between her llp-stlcked Ups! It will look all right in Bond street, but a little incongruous perhaps on the golf links or the hockey field. Another Lady Macbeth. There is something about Shakespear’s Lady Macbeth that lures all serious actresses as urgently as Hamlet fascinates the actors. And now Miss Sybil Thorndike is to essay the role on a West End stags, thus chal-J lenging comparisons with a long line of brilliant stage personalities dating back from Miss Ellen Terry. This still comparatively young actress, from •i touring company and the Old Yic. leapt into sudden West End fame with Euripides’ Medea, only partly confirmed the mastery of her art In Grand Guignol, achieved a real triumph In Mr Shaw’s St. Joan, and now comes Lady Macbeth! Possibly she may create something as impressive as Miss Ellen Terry’s conception, shrewdly coached by Sir Henry Irving, but somehow one doubts her breadth of vitality. In "intellectual” Shavian roles she is at her finest. Yet I think Miss, Ellen Terry could have played them better, while also compassing Shakespear’s “Juliet"- a role Miss Thorndike has no flair for. Highbrow Sandwiches. Armenian, Russian., and Ja£»an-eae

restaurants have all had their day with Bohemian London, taken up for a few months as “th e place to go,” and then practically deserted. It is now the turn of the sandwich bar, and all the well-known highbrows in town are to be found patronising a little place in. the West End, 'where la choice of some sixty different sandwiches is offered. It is run by a well-known theatrical producer and writer, who serves behind the bar himself, and the walls are panelled with drawings specially executed for him by famous patrons. Orpen, Barribal, Studdy, Bairnsfather, and Augustus John have all contributed. Other panels ar e filled with distinguished signatures, and I was amused to learn from the proprietors how difficult it is to prevent the undistinguished from signing. When a “Prominent Person” comes In, it is an art in Itself to secure hia signature, without also getting the signature of the undistinguished friends with him. That is modem Bohemianism. Seal With a Moral. To-day there is grief and a subdued aura of crape bands in many erstwhile happy London nui’Series. Sammy, the lively little dove-grey seal, who cam e flapping so blithely up the Thames only a week ago, and took up riverside residence at Richmond, charming everybody by his ornamental diving and infectious joie de vlvre, is dead. And what a moral attaches to his young demise! Sammy has succumbed to youthful indiscretion in devouring too many freshwater fish. His appetite bereft of parental supervision, has slain him. He must not “float upon his watery bier unwept nor welter to the parching winds without the mead of some melodious tear!” He brought a real breath of the Polar Seas into fog-bound London —gav e an Arctic romance to muddy Thames. And he is, even In premature decease, a noble warning to small boys and girls against the frightful perils of overdoing the buttered crumpets and strawberry jam. Poor Sammy!