A LETTER FROM HOME.

Otago Witness, Issue 3854, 24 January 1928, Page 67

A LETTER FROM HOME.

By Sheila Scobie Macdonald.

(Special for the Otago Witmess.) November 29. Two rather interesting things happened to me in London this week, and they both happened on Thursday. Incidentally, it was Lady Mary Thynne’s wedding day, and as she is reputed to be the most beautiful young woman in England, and was marrying the young head of the great Wilson family, Lord Nunburnholme, it can be imagined that the open space at Westminster where St. Margaret’s stands was more than a little crowded round about 2.30 p.m. I wasn’t bothering my head about Lady Mary Thyime just then. I was much more interested in wondering why I hadn’t brought an umbrella with me, and just why one wasn’t allowed to stand inside a full bus excepting during rush hours, and why when rain threatened should all the buses with covered tops appear to be careering madly in the wrong direction. So there I sat rumbling down Victoria street on my uncovered bus top, with a rain cloud threatening to burst every moment, and my best winter hat unprotected. My bus rumbled to Westminster, and there came to a standstill. I leant over the side and gazed on the cause of the holdup. Women were everywhere, some running, some walking, most of them pushing and craning forward like so many sheep in the yards at shearing time. A car was being slowly driven through the packed throng, and policemen in squads were clearing a way for it. Inside the car was the bride of the day. The bridegroom was there too, but he was leaning well back, trying to look as though he had happened to get there by mistake. The bride was not in the least abashed. She smiled and looked out of the window and raised her bouquet. The conductor of my bus had a thread of romance in his make-up, so he allowed me to come down the steps and stand beside him on his little platform. And as Lady Nunburnholme passed me within perhaps a couple of feet, I smiled and she smiled back, though I am afraid she is hardly likely to remember that fact. She is very lovely, tall and pale and fair, with features almost too perfect to be natural, but she lacks vivacity, or at least she did on her wedding day. Her bouquet was of white lilies, and she looked like a lily herself. What an affair these society weddings are—staged like an opera, with every detail thought out and perfect. They are almost always re- - {hearsed beforehand’ rehearsed, too, in the church itself. I waited until the crowd had passed, and then went into St. Margaret’s just to look at the decorations. Marvellous they were, Madonna lilies, hundreds of them banked in great masses everywhere. While I was there women workers came forward and began to remove them. I asked one of them what became of them all. “I dunno and I, don’t care,” was her response. “ They’ve all got to come down, that’s all I know. ’ I should like to have known the cost of those lovely flowers, and just what happened to them. Were they sent round to other churches, or to the hospitals, or were they merely hired for the occasion? I shall have to find out. * * *

Returning to Victoria station that same evening a very strange +hing happened. I was walking along talking to a friend, when suddenly every single street and shop light went out. It was terrible. Inky blackness in a London street on a winter’s night! People began creeping out of the shops, feeling their way with their hands. The lights from passing buses and cars made the whole scene even more ghostly. They all had to go dead slow. It Avas like sitting in the dark at a cinema and watching a picture. Street beggars with a ' stock of matches did a wonderful trade, and seedy individuals carefully nursing a guttering candle, besought to be allowed to guide one home—for a consideration. Flares and torches sprang apparently from out of the gutter. The scene was quite mediaeval while it lasted, which was for about 15 minutes. The great Army and Navy Stores were lit by candles, and an important individual holding an oil lamp aloft, took command of the situation. I haven’t heard of a single article having been stolen either, but whether such abstinence was due to honesty, or panic, I don’t know.

I went to the Food and Cookery Exhibition at Holland Park Hall last'week, and like a woman who sat beside me in the tube on the return journey, I decided that it was the most depressing thing I had ever been to in my life. I went there quite jauntily, feeling that I knew quite a good deal about cooking, and although I was quite keen to get a few tips, I had a distinct undercurrent of feeling that it really wasn’t necessary. I came away feeling a worm. The different ways of cooking the humble potato alone filled me with awe, not to mention confusion. The infinite care and trouble taken by the cooks in the preparation of their dishes added to it. As my neighbour in the tube said sadly, “ It’s no use, we Englishwomen lack the cooking flair. We make the things, but we can’t and won’t spend the time on detailed preparation, and finishing touches.” I think she was right. In any French household—the very poorest, even—-no matter what else goes wrong, the preparation of meals is a serious, never hurried, performance of the greatest solemnity. No French housewife, on getting up one morning to find a note pinned on the kitchen table saying that the damsel whose job it was to scrub that same table had flitted in the night,

would dream of announcing as invariably does her English contemporary, that everyone must go out for lunch,'as no cooking will be done in that house that day. I think that speech has been made at some time or other by most of us. When a domestic crisis occurs- in England, the first thing that goes by the board is the cooking. No‘t so in France. The house may be left to look after itself —but the kitchen, no. The French chefs who came over to judge the exhibits were quite kind. They said that English cooking generally had improved greatly in i ecent years, but that as a nation we lacked the delicacy of palate necessary to understand the art of cooking. Since I went to that exhibition and saw into what toil and moil the right kind of palate can lead a poor female thing, I rejoice that mine is as it is, and that all the palates I have to cater for are equally unsatisfactory.

Noel Coward, the 27-year-old playwright, who has made such a name for himself by writing some of the cleverest and nastiest plays I have ever seen, has had tw’o plays hopelessly turned down in London within a month. The first, called “ Home Chat,” was a lifeless, smart, “ talky ” affair, which in a foolishly-bombastic moment the author stated he had “ dashed off in a fortnight.” Now people who pay heavy prices for a seat at the theatre don’t like to be offered a “ dashed-off-in-a-fort-right ” piece, especially when there is a general sort of feeling that Noel Coward has got just a little bit beyond himself. When “ Sirocco ” was produced last night there was an outburst of hoots and boos from the pit and gallery—yea, even from the stalls. The poor young actress, Frances Doble, who has only recently come into the limelight, burst into tears at the end of the play, which the critics describe as being dull and silly to a degree. Even Frances Coble’s fine acting and Ivor Novello’s perfect profile couldn’t pull it together. Noel Coward, with great aplomb, pretended that the uproar was meant for applause, and leading Miss Doble forward, he bent ever so gallantly on one knee and kissed her hand. But Miss Doble went on sobbing, so in the end the curtain came down, and actors and actresses and author and audience all went home, and thought: “Well, what about it?” The management at Daly’s must be aghast, for the cost of play production is high these days, and a Noel Coward play has hitherto been regarded as something in the nature of a gold mine. Daly’s is a large theatre, as the average London theatre goes, so the loss will probably be very heavy. Some of the theatres have such extraordinary clauses in their leases, clauses handed down from a past generation, and having no meaning in our world of 1927. At the Haymarket, for instance, the lessee is forbidden to carry on any “ noisesome, noisy, or offensive trade or business—to wit, coach building, coffee-stall keeping, the selling of old iron, chimney sweeping, or tripe boiling.” The lessee of the Garrick may not keep a cow on the premises, or make tallow candles, or sell fried fish there.

Don’t such prohibitions sound odd these days, and make one realise what an enormous difference in life the last hundred years have brought us?