LADIES’ GOSSIP.

Otago Witness, Issue 3348, 15 May 1918, Page 51

LADIES’ GOSSIP.

Don’t think trouble. It may become a habit. Be brave and utter a cheerful word in place of the complaining tone. Keeping silent in an atmosphere of discord attracts to you peace and serenity instead of pain and sorrow. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” No greater truth was ever uttered. As soon as a person stops thinking trouble and begins thinking joy, then joy will materialise. Not since Mrs Harley died for the great cause of humanity has the death of any woman war worker occasioned deeper ' grief than that of Dr Elsie Inglis. What the calm little Scots doctor did and what she endured since her first start for Serbia will never be fully known : the sum total of it is too large, but women can remember, at least, that she was one of the pioneers who brought an English Government to a realisation of the place that women doctors can fill in a world full of suffering. And it is unlikely that the Serbians, who have good memories, will forget Dr Elsie Inglis. She died for them just as truly as though she had fallen on the battlefield instead of collapse from overwork and privation at Newcastle on her way home. The death of Lady Wentworth six months after her succession to the barony brings the 1917 death-roll of peeresses in their own right up to four. The others were Lady Zouche. Lady Berners, and the niece who preceded Lady Anne Blunt as Lady Wentworth. A gracious and charming personality has passed from mortal ken in . the person of Anne Lady Wentworth, who was Byron’s granddaughter, the child of his daughter Ada, and it was fitting that she should have married a poet and that her only daughter, the new Baroness, should have married a descendant of Bulwer Lytton and “Owen Meredith.” At one time Mr Wilfrid and Lady Anne Blunt entertained much and delightfully, and their wonderful stud of Arab horses at Orabbet had a fame that reached beyond their own country. More and more, however, did they draw to their other home, Skeykh ObeycJ, near Cairo, and it was there Lady Wentworth died. Her daughter, Judith Anne Dorothea, was married in 1899 to Lord Lytton’s only brother, Mr Neville Lytton, and has a son 17 years old and two daughters. She is the sixth lady to hold the peerage. When the King visited Messrs Gwynne’s aircraft factory at Chiswick ho found among the workers in overalls a friend whom he had met often in very different guise. Lady Victoria Cavendish Bentinck, and he complimented her with smiling cordiality. Had it not been for his coming it is probable that most people would have remained unaware of the fact that the only daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Portland has been a factory hand for months, since she is among those who shrink from self-advertisement. She puts in absolutely the same'hours as the other women,_ has her meals in the canteen, and is liked and respected as a capable’ worker who takes no advantage of her social rank. Lady Victoria, a darkeyed girl with an expression of vivid intelligence, had the honour of being sponsored in person by her namesake. Queen Victoria, and she “came out” at the most wonderful ball ever held in the underground galleries at Welbeck Abbey. The King and Queen of Spain were guests

for the occasion, and took part in the Roval quadrille, in which Lady Victoria and Miss Ivy Gordon-Lennox (now her sister-in-law, Lady Titchfield) were the only unmarried ladies who danced.