A LETTER FROM LONDON

Northern Advocate, 11 July 1925, Page 4

A LETTER FROM LONDON

NEWS AND NOTES: (Special to "Northern Advocate.") LONDON, May 21. MONEY HE COULDN'T SPEND. It can only be a few weeks before the world is told just how much money Lord Leverhulme managed to acquire during his amazing career. Additional interest attaches, therefore, to a story he told me only some few months ago. He declared that his vast enterprises were Teally an "accident." When still quite a young man he found that his income in one year was £20,000, and in the next £30,000, and in the third £50,000, and he had not the faintest idea how to spend it. "I used to lie awake at night," he said, "and worry what I was to do with all this money that I had no time to spend. In the end I decided to put it back into my busness." If Lord Leverhulme had known how to spend his income in those days there might never have been the huge soap trust. CALL TO BACHELORS. For obvious reasons its name must be suppressed, but there is a certain famous club in London that is casting about for an extension of its existing premises. The owner of the adjoining mansion, a multi-millionaire, was diplomatically approached. Would he sell? He was most anxious to oblige but pointed out that amongst other amenities his town house possessed one of the finest ballrooms in Mayfair, and until he had married off his two charming debutante daughters he could not possibly contemplate the loss of the ballroom. The club now takes quite a sporting interest in the matrimonial chances of the two young ladies in question, and all its bachelor members are being asked "what about it?" ALFRED LESTER, London playgoers were genuinely shocked when they heard of the death of Alfred Lester. He was indeed a man of most excellent wit, and the English stage is substantially poorer hy his death. Born in Nottingham in 1574 he was only just over 50, and when he temporarily gave up his part in "The Punch Bowl" to travel south in search of health no one dreamt that his mirthlessly mirthful humour would be seen no more on the stage. For Alfred Lester assumed always the wistful disconsolate pose of the scene shifter who aspires to play Hamlet —the first role in which he attracted the attention of Alfred Butt. A man of simple tastes, even his great generosity to less fortunate members of his profession did not

prevent him from amassing a great fortune. In private life he was modest and retiring and remarked for his passionate fondness for animals, and especially for his old terrier, Lady. THEIR SEDAN. Are the ingenious generalissimos of the Paris and London feminine fashions shaping towards their strategic Sedan? It is expertly suggested that they are, and that humiliating defeat and vanquishment await these' haughty autocrats this summer! Everybody knows that fashion has decreed a revolution in women's hats. Away must go the tight-fitting little brimless bowlers, making way for a grand return of the sweeping cavalier hat, wide-brimmed and feather-flaunted, of the Gainsborough speech. It is whispered that the ladies, even the ultrasmart docile devotees of the latest fashion "cri," refuse to toe the line. They would—but they can't. Paris has forgotten the shingle, which is impossible under a wide-brimmed rliapeau, and not even the Modern Eve can grow luxurious locks in a

single night! Between tho Scylla of rejecting La Mode, and the Charybdis of wearing a wig, our ladies are choosing Scylla every time. ' HIDDEN TREASURE. Three hundred and thirty-two years after his death in the notorious tavern brawl, the truth about Kit Marlowe's end has been suddenly unearthed by an American scholar. This research student accidentally discovered it where it has lain all these years — in the Chancery Lane Records Office! Now we have it finally and officially etsablished that Kit Marlowe, the roystering dramatic genius whose fame still faintly challenges Shakespeare's mature laurels, was supping at a house in. Deptford . kept by an attractive widow, that his boon companions were gentlemen of his own degree, and that, having supped not wisely but too well, a dispute arose over the bill, or its settlement. In this enebriated brawl a dagger was drawn, one gentleman stabbed slightly in the back for a joke, and the victim, wresting the weapon from the assailant's hand, killed one of England's brightest Jiterary geniuses with one stab over the eye.

VIOLA TREE'S PLAY. Miss Viola Tree's journalism is ever so. much, brighter than her play-writ-ing. In "The Swallow," her new play at the Everyman, she presents us with a menage of boxes, whoso cardinal defect is badly accentuated by a tiresome devotion to golf, For s6me reason —perhaps the imperfect artistic sympathy with an es3en,tially stolid Caledonian game-—stage, golfers are always plus-four boxes. However, Miss Viola Tree's heroine, the usual unsuitably mated lady, yuns away wifh one of Mussolini's disciples, and ; is asked to share her unlawful Venetian home ; with .another mistress. Happily the fickle Fascist lover stops a revolver bullet in a street argument, and tlio fair lady flies back to England, home, and golf! It struck me that one swallow does not make a summary. Most ladies are still not like that!

ON THE STAGE. "Just a King," Mr Cyril Har- j court's new Lyric play, is quite a new line in spring goods. It stages the dramatic conflict between a gifted, though temperamental, monarch and a villain-of-the deepest-dye revolutionary. We travel about ainaz- ! ingly, starting in Purgatrania, and landing up in London, where the monarch is a star turn in Fleet Street, and the villain still pursues him. What took my fancy mo".t of all, how-

ever, was Miss O'Farrell's acting, antl dressing, of the lady journalist in the case. If only our Fleet Street proprietors would recruit lady journalists, like Miss O'Farrell, how much pleasanter would be the humdrum Fleet Street life!. The monarch-journalist marries the lady—and quite right too! It was cruel luck having to turn out of tho Lyric into real-life Fleet Street with real-life lady journalists.' MUSIC HATH CHARMS. Sir John Simon is credited with two great ambitions in life—one to become a scratch golfer, and the -other to learn the piano. He pursues both hobbies with boundless enthusiasm. So far as golf is concerned, his progress is slow, and he fintks the road he has to travel extremely sandy. Music, toe, is.a coy mistress to woo when you are past middle-age. There is a wicked story going abougoiug about Sir John's

intimate friends tliat he recently droA'e all the guests away from a cert;;in hotel by playing "God Save the King" and "TwinMe r Twinkle. Little -Star" on the communal piano. He played with great precision—but with one finger. THE CIGARETTE FIEND. Sir William Orpen, whose picture "Man Versus Beast" is proving tho "picture of the year" t the Royal Academy, is an inveterate smoker. Heworks with great rapidity and concentration, consuming cigarette after cigarette with appalling regularity until he finishes. A year or so ago he was ordered by the doctors to give up smoking, and he then found, on investigation, that he was smoking at the rate of 60 cigarettes a day. He gave it up for a time, but the call of My Lady Nicotine was too strong. However, hoshows a little inoro moderation now. (All Eights Reserved.)