A COUNTRY WALK

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22708, 22 October 1935, Page 17

A COUNTRY WALK

PEN PICTURE OF LADY ALICE SCOTT. Not very long ago I tramped two miles in the country, through the soft summer rain, with Lady Alice Scott (says a writer in the Daily Alail). Mud was on our shoes, and raindrops trickled insidiously down the necks of our waterproofs. It was thus that I first met that very charming person who is “ the woman of the and who is to-day happy in her engagement to the King’s soldier son, the Duke of Gloucester. We were fellow-guests at “Wappingtliorue,” the beautiful Sussex home of the Hon. Arthur Howard, Lord Strathcona’s eon, and his charming wife, who is a daughter of the Prime Alinister. I had been down to the station to meet Lady Alice. She is slim, petite, fair-haired, and of quiet beauty. A great sportswoman —but obviously of considerable intellectual gifts. During our walk in the rain I learnt more about her. She told me of her great love for Kenya, with its hot colour and vivid life, where she has more than once been the guest of her uncle, Lord Francis Scott.

Lady Alice told me of her great interest in painting. She had spent most of her time in Africa sketching, and was quick to draw the contrast between the equatorial scene she had recently left and the soft English landscape, the quiet tones of farmstead, village, and cornfield. During that pleasant week-end we always played games after dinner. The old* house of “ Wappingthorne,” once a Sussex manor farm, has been converted into one enormous room, with vaulted ceiling of natural oak. Alodern wings have been built on.

All the men of the party had been in the army; two in the Guards and one in a crack cavalry regiment. A big log fire roared up the chimney as we marched solemnly round the room, fireirons on our shoulders, to the strains of “All the King’s Horses.” The women, Lady Alice particularly, looked a picture of all that is best of young Britain, their evening frocks lit up by the leaping flames. And then we played “murder,” in the dark, that hair-raising game when someone unknown is a murderer, and it may be anyone. Lady Alice, I remember, executed a neat and artistic “crime”on a heavy six-foot man.

You can imagine the scene. The great loom dim in the shadows, the shut away by a screen; a dozen people’' groping about in the dark; a scuffle, a rustle, the creak of a board, an exclamation as someone harks his shin. And then a horribly realistic scream as the “ murderer ” does his fell work. A cry for lights, and the “ detective ” comes in to try to solve the crime. The “ murderer ” is allowed to lie, while all the others must tell the truth. Lady Alice, when she was the "criminal,” defended herself with unaccustomed ease and skill. ■ Lady Alice is a great lover or the country and fits perfectly into the atmosphere of a mellow country house, spreading lawns, and the great oaks and elms of England. Not that she is not often to be seen in London. Both she and the Duke of Gloucester are keen and accomplished dancers, and Lady Alice has appeared successfully in cabaret shows which she has herself organised.

Considering that she has never had a painting lesson, Lady Alice has had remarkable success at the hobby to which she is devoted. The quality of her work and her unmistakable natural talent were well shown at an exhibition of her sketches recently at a Bond street gallery.

She shares with the Duke of Gloucester a keen interest in the big game that roam the uplands of Kenya in untold thousands. But Lady Alice told me she prefers to pursue them with a camera rather than a rifle.

Hunting people are hoping that she and her fiance will often be seen out together in the Shires this season, as both are accomplished performers to hounds.