LILY LANGTRY'S "REIGN."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20218, 1 April 1929, Page 12

LILY LANGTRY'S "REIGN."

HER TOWN IN TEXAS. WOES OF AN ARCHITECT. [FROM OCR OWN CORRESPONDENT.] NEW YORK, March 6. America is regaling itself with stories of Lily Langtry. The news of her death at Monto Carlo recalls that most interesting incident of her travels, from which a little settlement of 150 souls in Texas bears her name.

In the early eighties, when one of the most famous of the South's characters, Judge Beau, was ''the law west of the pecos," Lily Langtry visited the then unnamed town. Between trains she alighted lor exercise and visited the Judge's poker table. When the game was over, Judge Beau cashed several thousands of dollars' worth of chips for the famous actress. Captivated by her beauty, ho named tho settlement '"'Langtry" in her honour.

Recently, just before his death, James E. Mitchell, an English architect, told of his difficulties in trying to translate tho passing whims of the Jersey Lily into wood and brick. Two mansions in Fifth Avenue were altered to her specification. "The interior was to be entirely finished in highly polished black walnut," said Mitchell. "It all had to be imported from a certain English forest. It took us more than a year, and, when we finished that beautiful walnut job, I was t'he proudest man in Now York. Mrs. Langtry looked it over and hardly noticed it. 'The very latest thing in interior decoration is harci-finished white enamel,' she said. 'I want all this covered with white enamel. You'll have to send to En eland for it.'

It nearly broke my heart when my men sot to work covering up tho walnut with this hard white finish. I don't know where she got the idea, but at that time women were copying her hats and gowns and imitating her speech, and before long all the moguls in New York were smearing their houses with enamel."