LETTER FROM LONDON

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3289, 8 March 1926, Page 14

LETTER FROM LONDON

LONDON, Jan. 14. THE DUCHESS OF YORK. Because the Duchess of York has been taking a much-needed rest during the period of Court mourning. and ; Londoners have been unable to see her at society functions, her new house in Curzon Street has been watched by the curious, nearly every day, in the hope that they might --oe her go in or out. As a matter of fact, they have got remarkably little satisfaction out of their vigil, for the Duchess has hardly been out at all since she returned from spending Christmas with the King and Queen at Sand-j rir.gham, and she has been spending her time putting little personal touches to the arrangements of her now Mayfair home. The Duke and Duchess moved into Curzon blouse ati a very busy time in the social season, and their furniture and personal belongings from White Lodge at Richmond—which had been their London house since their marriage—had, lit-j orally, just to bo “put in’’ and ar-| ranged as best they might be by the household staff. There were many wedding gifts among the furniture and bric-a-brac, and quite naturally the Duchess of York has been waiting for : an opportunity to place these in heri own private rooms and in the niches she herself has selected for them. The, Queen had a good deal to say in the, arrangement of White Lodge when, the Duke and Duchess of York were; originally granted the use of it. Her personal association with it naturally increased her interest in the home of the first of her sons to marry, and her) taste was responsible .or the dignified decoration of the, reception rooms. At, Curzon House, the “little Duchess | has been allowed to have her own sweet way. and it is interesting to find! that things from her girlhood hsme in Scotland, Glamlr Castle, have been placed in the rooms which she uses most. Parliamentary “Lives.” Parliamentary mortality is heavy in' the political rather than the personal sense. A friend of a statistical turn of mind has discovered that the number of members of the House of Commons who will complete twenty years' continuous service a month hence ia something under 30, out of a total of 015, and only seven or eigth have a; longer record. Sir James Agg-Gard-| ner's connection with Westminster goes back as far as 1874, but he has had several temporary separations from his Cheltenham constituents.! Next to Mr. T. P. O’Connor, the “Father of the House,” seniority is held by Mr. Lloyd George, who en-j tered in 1890; after him is Sir Aus I ten Chamberlain, who came in 1892. 1 Lord Hugh Cecil, and Mr. Churchill both date from before the famous water-shed of 1906. but they too have had their absences. The House of. Commons of that year has now a lar-j ger representation in the House ofj Lords tnan in the elected Chamber —i in fact, apart from those who Have in-| herited peerages, between 50 and 60 of them are to be found in the Second Chamber. Ex-Kaiser on the Movies. It is perhaps not without significfnce that the ex-Kaiser William of Germany has, obviously with his own consent and connivance, at length made his debut as a film star. Lon-j don cinema patrons have had the opportunity of seeing, on the screen, how the All Highest spends some, at, least, of his abundant leisure. The film shows the ex-Kaiser walking in the snow in the quaint old-worldl streets of Doom, where he has spent! seven years of exile. Though the years have aged him considerably, he isj still an active man, and his walk is almost as briskly alert as ever. Hisl hair and beard are while, but his eyes l retain their old dark sparkle, and, though his figure appears to have slightly shrivelled, the former War Lord has not quite lost his military carriage. There is no trace of anything like Napoleon’s St. Helena morose dejection and settled melancholy. On the contrary, the ex-Kaiser looks, on th film at all events, almost buoyantly cheerful. The Young Idea. It would do good to the headmasters and other teachers who are holding their annual professional conferences if they could hear the comments of some of their pupils. I gather that among the public schoolboys and university students of the present day the "hearty,” athletic, muscular-Christian type is out of favour. They like the teacher who can play a decent game of football, cric. ket, or hockey, but not the one who regards these as the main object of life. Nor have they much use for the rdere scholar. They prefer one! who is something of a man of the world, who is in touch with the latest developments in literature, the drama, music, and politics. Merc respect for the conventions they despise. They would rather have a man with a tinge of Socialism than another who echoes the tenets of an inherited creed, political or even religious. One headmaster of my acquaintance found his staff horrified because his latest recruit was a “Bolshie.” “Never mind,” was his comment; "he is no doubt wrong, but our great weakness in the public schools is that we are too much apt to! think the same thing, which generally I means not thinking at all, and if the| new man shakes us up a bit, so much the better.” The teacher to whom he! alluded turned out to be not so much' of a revolutionary after all, and his influence, as well as his professional skill, are proving of the utmost value. A River Lament. Seme of the up-river resorts are protesting vehemently against the publicity (hey have sustained by the recent floods. Press photographers descend upon them with all their paraphernalia and proceed to “snap” all the worst and most picturesque flooding incidents they can discover. A river bungalow "adrift on the ocean wave” is seized upon with avidity, and we have even had pictures of a sailing boat oddly mixed, up with the mo-

tor traffic ploughing its way through the waters on the Maindenhead road. The impression produced on the public mind is that half the Thames Valley is more or less under water. It is easy to understand that all this is not quite “good business” for the riverside resorts concerned. The old joke about “the river at the bottom of the garden” being synonymous witli “the garden at the bottom of the river” is being revived. It is bad enough for the land speculator and j iiou.se agent when they see the land they advertise as “desirable” and as "ripe for building’ ’submerged under the swirling waters of the Thames. But it, must lie heartbreaking when the almost submerged notice boards announcing these amenities find their way into the Illustrated papers with, peradventurc, a stray gull perched on the top. Strawberries at Christmas. Covent Garden likes to think that, in season or out of season, there is nothing it cannot provide in the way of fruit, flowers, or vegetables. If you want green peas or ripe strawberies at Christmas, they can be got —at a price. The resources of the great market have been immensely strengthened by the great mercantile aeroplanes, carrying many tons of produce, which now bring the harvests of Africa, of Spain, and of the Riviera to the very .doors of London. One result of tha» celerity with which market garden produce is now brought even from distant climes, is that amazing changes in prices are sometimes recorded. A friend of mine ate a dish of asparagus on New Year’s Eve. It cost him £2. Passing a West End shop last Thursday, I saw bunches of asparagus marked at 10s 6d per bunch. At exactly the same shop on Friday a new supply of lar ger and better asparagus had just been brought In. and the price had been marked down to 5s a bunch —a drop of over 100 per cent, in value in less than 24 hours. “Scotch Mist.” I hear that Sir Patrick Hastings is taking an active interest in the rehearsals of his play, "Scotch Mist," which is to be produced at the St. Martin’s Theatre little m«.re than a fortnight hence. His first intention was that the play should be produced anonymously, but he was prevailed upon to let his name be attached to it. I gather that the subject is far removed as possible from the political and legal atmosphere in which the author spends his days and nights. 1 The setting is an old Scottish castle, and I shall look forward with interest to see whether the late Attorney-Gen-eral has escaped the pitfalls of the Scottish doric for Southerners like himself. Mr. Godfrey Tearle is to play the “strong, silent Scotsman,” and Miss Tallulah Bankhead is to be the heroine. Sir Patrick is already the author of a melodrama. The marvel to his friends is how he finds the time for those excursions in playwriting. Sargent’s Life Work, Mr. John S. Sargent’s old Royal Academy colleagues have assembled in Burlington House a truly notable collection of his art by way of a memorial exhibition. The works shown include those of his earner days, wu some quite impressive youthful examples, as well as those of his brilliant maturity, and cover adequately the complete evolution of his artistic career. They number, ail told, over six hundred paintings, drawings, and designs, landscape as well as portrait, water colour as well as oils, and many fascinating charcoal drawings and first studies for famous pictures. It must be the biggest one-man exhibition ever attempted, and it fills all the Burlington House galleries. Whatever modern art criticism’s somewhat conflicting and turbulent verdict of the moment may be on Sargent’s place in the great dynasty of painters, it is a remarkable tribute to hia genius that no intelligent student Jould .even for a moment in any of the long galleries filled with his life work, feel bored or satiated. Sargent’s gift of form and colour, his dazzling technique, and his psychological insight amounting almost to divination, sustain without reproach the supreme test. And though he may be more or less successful in expressing his genius in different canvasses, never in the whole gamut will the visitor encounter slovenly or slipshod artistry. The genius oi infinite pains is always there, and never the least trace of that uconscionable insolence with which some latter-day masters tire of their own incomplete impressionistic masterpieces.

Mr. Sargent was born in Mid-Vic-torian 1856. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1882, again two years later, and, until his death last year, only three times was his work missing from the great summer an show. In 1887 the Royal Academy purchased his famous picture, “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Hose,” included in the present exhibition, and as freshly joyous now as .marly forty years ago in its serene gaiety of colour, its fascinating grace of form, and its delightful sense of outdoor atmosphere. Elected an associate in 1895, he took part reguarly until 1915 in teaching at the R.A. schools. He became a full Academician in 1897, but his Diploma work, then duly deposited, was replaced three years later by “An Interior in Venice,” also to be seen at the present exhibition. He took his regular two-year turn on the Academy Council, and shareo actively in the onerous and thankless task of the Royal Academy Hanging Committee. A great many well-known peole have contributed their Sargents to the present exhibition, and the artist’s sisters have sent amongst other works, a, bronze sculpture, "The Redemption,” which the Royal Academy will erect as a to him in St. Paul's crypt. Incidentally, the .catalogue has a striking photographic study of the master, taken in Boston in 1903 by Mrs. Montgomery Soars. What struck mo, passing critically through the galleries on the press view day, was the versatility of Sargent's art He was just as artful, i one may restore to a decadent word its noble birthright, when painting vivid Italian or Alpine or Eastern landscapes at' when delineating the. characters as well as the faces and figures of illustrious personages or

beautiful society la ties. His pictures of architectural inferiors are as fascinating and shilled as his out-of-door sunshine-gloried glimpses. And how incomparably his genius immortalises some of the most interestng people whose names filled the mouths of two generations of men! To walk through Burlington House now, while this Sargent Memorial Exhibition is there, is to meet again, in the living breathing flesh, infused with the real identical spirit, worthies who have passed from mortal ken these many years. I remember Joseph Chamberlain intimately and clearly. I.'ere he stands before me again, incarnate with the genius of Sargent’s brush, as he was in 1576. There are many biographies of "Joe” Chamuerlain. Not one of them tolls us, or posterity, quite so much about him as Sargent’s living realistic canvas. Modern critics may assail the art of such portraiture, but it serves its true purpose perfectly. The artist’s brush vanquishes death. They are all here— Russell of Killoween, Henry James, Marquess Curzon, Mrs. Leopold Hirsch, Lord Roberts, Coventry Patmore, Hugh Lane, Lady Fauden-Phii lips, Lady Beresford —famous departed Victorians resurrected by a dead Victorian. It is almost uncanny how infallibly the canvas holds the very soul of the sitters.

I have omitted perhaps the finest •character portrait Sargent ever painted. It is here. The late Lord Wemyss, with his white hair and whiskers and air of the old patrician, to the life. Among the finest portraits of beautiful women must be placed Sargent’s two pictures of Lady Rocksavage, and his study of Lady Helen Vincent —one a dark and tragic brunette of exotic melancholy, and the other a fair and happy blonde of English serenity. I prefer the slight pencil sketch of Mrs. Georg 0 Batten singing to the full complete painting, but *a professor of voice-production would quarrel with both. One great canvas is Sargent’s fascinating portrait, showing like several other work% about the same date a distinct Whistler influence, of one of the little Stanley girls, in red attire, who is now a grown and married woman. His rough portrait drawings show the same marvellous fidelity and infallibility. Sir H. Beerbohm Tree is alive again—in a head shown next to the last portrait sketch Sargent ever did. That sketch is a fine one too — of the present Viscountess Lascelles, His war studies are in the exhibition, including that harrowing frieze, "Gassed.” It is a great painting in its own genre. It tells its true story, it conveys all the mortal horror and agony, and yet- it retains its rhythmic harmony of line- And yet, if I had my free choice of all these Sargents, I fee! that, passing, many a splendid landscape and scores of superb portraits of handsome desirable ladies, I might finally succumb to a little footsquare canvas, “Villa Torlonia.” It has the very air and drama of Old Rome, in its quiet fountain and trees and the marble perimenter. Some say Sargent’s fame is on the wane. I left Burlington House convinced in my soul that ho is a “Futurist” in a sense few of the latter-day Cubeists will ever be.