SOCIAL NEWS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19699, 27 July 1927, Page 7

SOCIAL NEWS.

Mrs. J. B. Henry has returned from a visit to Masterton. Miss Lockhart is leaving on Sunday night on a visit to Napier. Miss Elva Cook has returned to Masterton from a visit to Auckland. Mr. Justice Stringer and Mrs. Stringer have taken up their residence at C'ourtville. Miss Joyce Seth-Smitli, of Christchurch, is staying with relatives at Takapuna. Mr. and Mrs. Botham, of Manawaru, are on an extended motor tour in Taranaki. Mrs. T. Campbell Thomson has returned to Auckland from a visit to Masterton. Miss M. Ferguson has returned from a visit to Hawke's Bay, where she was the guest of Mrs. Harold Russell. Mrs. J. White and .Miss White, of Dunedin, who have been staying at Braeburn, have left for the South. Mrs. Thomas Brown, who has beon staying at Braeburn, is now visiting relatives in Auckland before leaving for Rotorua. Miss Jean Fergusson, daughter of Admiral Sir James Fergusson and Lady Fergusson, has arrived from Wellington and is staying with Mrs. A. M. Ferguson, Victoria Avenue. Tho Queen's gift of a parasol to Lady Diana Duncombo, as a wedding present, is an interesting hint of Her Majesty's devotion to a parasol or umbrella, usually with a preference for something more practical than the stumpy kind. It is supposed to bo a joke with her children that she will never be separated from her umbrella in winter or parasol in spring.

Just over 200 years ago Queen Anne instituted Ascot, and in the first race there ran Mustard, Pepper and Salt, their jockeys, heavy men, wearing the stiffest taffeta clothing instead of "silks," and the horses being girthed up to the tightest to make them run the faster. Moreover, their appetisers for the race for two or three days previous was a jorum of fresh-laid eggs and soaked bread.

The Countess of Westmorland, who recently gave birth to her second son, is one of the prettiest women in London, with a vague, wistful Early Victorian beauty. She was the youngest daughter of the late Lord Ribblesdale, and is much like her handsome father. Lord Westmorland is her third husband: her first was killed shortly after the outbreak of war after a few months of marriage, and her second died after a motor accident, also only a few months after being married.

The July meeting of the Greenhithe Women's Institute was held last week, when a lecture on "The History of Music" was given by Mrs. Irwin, president of the institute. The speaker dealt ably with her subject'from the origin of music up to the time of the great composers, their life and works. Gramophone records of Bach, Handel, Wagner, Beethoven and others illustrated the lecture at various intervals. Afternoon tea and business discussion terminated a most instructive and £n joy able afternoon.

Miss Isabel Wilford, of Wellington, who, with Madge Aubrey, was understudy to Tulullah Bankhead in " The Gold Diggers " at the Lyric, London, has received the appointment of sole understudy to Tulullah Bankhead in "The Garden' of Eden," also being produced by Clayton and Waller at the Lyric. " The Garden of E4en," which has made an instantaneous success in London, is not the Biblical story, but is the garden of the Eden Hotel at Monte Carlo. Isabel Wilford, besides acting as sole understudy to Tulullah Bankhead in the principal part, also plays the part of Laine in the production, in which part she herself, of course, has an understudy.