Some Witty Hostesses

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23275, 18 February 1939, Page 17 (Supplement)

Some Witty Hostesses

AMERICA is noted for its witty rK hostesses. I have met a few, but hardly expect to meet one as amusingly outspoken as Mrs. Mamie, Stuyvesant Fish, whom Elizabeth, Lady Decies knew intimately in Newport, and portrays brilliantly in a volume of vastly entertaining memoirs of United States society and English Court life., "Since there, was no malice in what Mrs. Fish said.4 she was like a bit of fresh air in any group,"' Lady/ Decies. declares, i / On one occasion, an embarrassed guest who ,had to leave a musicale of hers before it was over, explained: "I promised my sister that I would call for her—" "Don't apologise," broke in Mamie, "'and remember, no guest ever left too Boon for me!" Siie did not pretend to care for musi-c-ales herself. "I'm never sure that I have fixed my face right," she would Ba.v, "for : sometimes when it is just expressing appreciation of a cradle song, I find I'm glistening to the 'Cry of the Valkyries'; or when I've fixed it for the 'Two Grenadiers' they sing .the duet from 'Romeo and Juliet.' " When someone asked her what instrument she played, she replied, seriously: "A comb." For the Throat

One evening she had a fit of coughing, 'which "worried Mr. lish, who was standing beside her. "Can I get you something for your throat, my dear?" he asked. "Yes, you can," she answered. "That diamond and pearl necklace that 1 6 saw to-day at Tiffany's." And she got it! A friend, Jimmie Cutting, -who rented a farm near her in the summer, was not given to inviting anyone out thefre to see him. Lady Decies thinks that' Mamie must have told him point blank that everyone wondered why lie •was so inhospitable, for she never hesitated to tell him what she thought. Once •when lie said he was going to spend two weeks at So-and-So's house, for instance, she retorted: ''And that is all that you will spend." After Mrs. William Astor's death, her son knocked two adjoining houses into one, and Lady Decies and Mrs. Fish went to sec the imposing new hall which was now, Mr. Astor ' announced proudly, a "patio" with arcades on three 'sides of it. Not Yet

The floor was of tiles from Segovia; in the centre was a large fountain. With prido he waited for them to express „their admiration. "Beautiful!" said Mamie. "Just the sort of watering-trough you might put :up for a favourite horse!" Mr. Fish, Lad.v Decies points out, was not behind his wife in the matter of repartee. Someone, referring to a friend whose family increased every year, asked him': "Have you seen Mrs. K.'s last baby?" "No. 1 haven't," he replied; "1 don't expect to live that long." Lady Decies, in this scintillating book, tells many other amusing stories of American society. Sho was at a ball where a man entered dressed as Henry IV. (Henri Quatre), accompanied by

Amusing Sidelights on Society

his wife in a Norman peasant costume. They More amazed to hear themselves announced as: "Mr, Henry Carter and an enormous Pheasant." She was in Mrs. Astor's box at the opera when a widower, who sometimes feared that his popularity with rich marriageable widows might wane, fell asleep at the back and wakened with a start. On a Diet "Was I asleep?" ho asked, anxiously. "You certainly were," she told him. "Was I snoring?" "You were not." His face beamed. "Spread that around among the widows, won't you?" he said. She recalls that at a certain European spa her friend, Mrs. Herman Oelriehs, wanted the same room for her hoy's tutor that she had had the year before. "Impossible, Madam." said the hotel clerk, "the Prince of X. has his tailor in it.". "His tailor?" "Yes, Madam, to take in his clothes during the 'cure' —as he gets thinner." Another outspoken hostess was Mrs. Oliver Belmont. A guest of" hers, Lady Hecies relates, smoked in hod, and when the housekeeper told her that the sheets had several big holes in them, she said: "Have them washed and then just draw the holes together with the coarsest darning cotton you can find. When .he comes again, see that he gets them on his hod." The next time he came ho told his hostess: "You have such wonderful linen, Mrs. Belmont, that I think I ought to tell you that it is not being taken care of as it should be. You reallv ought to see the sheets on my bed!" Getting Rid of Her "Ah, yes, those sheets!" she replied. "You're* quite right. Those arc the sheets you burned holes in with your cigarettes. I had them darned specially for your persona] use." A woman guest who came to stay two weeks so annoyed her that at the end of the first she.exclaimed: "If'that -woman does not leave 1 shall go mad!" _ When the guest went into her room that jifternoon she found a corner of the ceiling soaking wet and water dripping from it over the floor; buckets of water were standing about; the rug was up. the furniture moved back. "That leak again!" Mrs. Belmont lamented, "and the plumber not even in town —gone to San Raphael for a funeral and won't be back for three days! We can't do a thing until lie comes back!" The guest, much worried, looked about for her belongings. Mother Explains "Your things? I have had them : taken to the hotel where I engaged a room for you, I could not-yl simply could not. Jet you stay in this room." Then turning to tlio man who was frenziedl.v mopping and pushing things about; "For goodness' sake, Jean, get another pail!" And the woman never guessed that for two hours, during her absence, he had been up the ladder sopping the ceiling with a sponge, spilled water on the floor, and brought in other buckets to add to the effect. ... A relative of Ladv Deeies who had .been left a widower with two children wrote that he had married a second time "to provide a nurse for the children." Several years later, when his family , had increased each year, Airs. i)rexel. Lady Dceios' mother, remarked: "He has not only provided the children with a nurse; be has generously provided the nurse with children." "Turn of the World." by Elizabeth, Lady Dcries: Elizabeth Wiiarton Drexel. (Lippincotl.)