A LETTER FROM HOME.

Otago Witness, Issue 3860, 6 March 1928, Page 67

A LETTER FROM HOME.

'■ By Sheila Scoeie Macdonald.

(Special fob the Otago Witness.) January 10. I have never before seen anything like the crowds of people who streamed through the gates of Burlington House this week for the first public view of the late Lord Iveagh’s pictures, now the property of the nation. People who knew all there was to know about art and artists—thousands more who didn’t, but either from curiosity or because it was the correct thing to do, or from a hundred and one other motives, men and women of the fashionable world, business men, dressmakers—even typists—all were there. The dressmakers, note books in hand, were there for hints on dress pure and simple—dress and that much more elusive “ line ” we hear so much about these days. They passed by the portraits of the six recently deceased great artists of the Victorian and Edwardian era with a shudder. Even men stood before some of the latter and discussed the extraordinary feminine garb of even 25 years ago in low, Amused undertones. What sights we all looked, especially as regards our hair! Some of the coiffures were quite marvellous—the hair being combed back high over immense pads, completely disguising all contour of even the most elegant of heads, and as often as not f being further overloaded with great bows of heavy velvet ribbons, or, even worse, with diamond stars or weird pearl ornaments literally perched on top of the whole tortured mass. The portraits of dead and gone beauties of the past age were quite another story, and I specially loved Romney’s “ Spinstress ” —a portrait of the famous Lady Hamilton. What a beautiful creature she was! Her lover, Greville, ordered the portrait to be painted, and when it was finished, having tired of the sitter, refused to pay for it. It is said that Lord Iveagh particularly loved his Romney’s, but even he, picture lover as he was, never saw his collection housed under one roof. They were scattered about his different establishments both in this country and in Ireland, and were shown only to the few and highly favoured. Next to the “ Spinstress ” Rembrandt’s portrait of himself as an old man attracted me, by reason mostly of its utter pathos, and its heartbreaking vividness of the complete loneliness of sorrowstricken old age. He looks out at one with such dimmed, mysterious eves, in which regret and longing and, at the same time, sad acceptance struggle for utterance. So After the portraits, I liked Turner’s “Lee Shore in Squally Weather.” It is a wonderful picture of movement, of the fierce straining struggle of man against the fury of the elements. It is thrilling to a degree, and as one looks on it, quite unconsciously, one feels one’s own body straining in sympathy in the desperate struggle against the seething waters and the violence of cruel wind. In the modern room it was rather amusing to see one or two of the sitters depicted as children by one artist and as adults by another. Lady Diana Manners, for instance, was painted as a small, fair-haired, exquisitely-complex-ioned, slim little girl by Shannon, and later as a grown girl by M’Evoy. She is a lovely creature, but the dress she wears so charmingly strikes an unsatisfactory note one never feels with the earlier school. It is rather odd to reflect that in another quarter of a century another generation will probably gape and jeer at the wisps of bathing-suit-like garments in which our modern beauties are painted. All the same, I hardly think that the most scathing denunciator of present-day dress could ever wish much-reviled woman to return to the voluminous trailing garments of those eighteenth century ladies of fashion who figured in the famous “routs” at Vauxhall, or whispered to one another lurid details of Nelson’s affair with Lady Hamilton, then at the zenith of her fame and beauty. Poor lovely Emma—now what chance had she to be good when she was so poor, so tempted, and so exquisitely beautiful? * * *

I am going up to town to-morrow to see, not the laying to rest of Thomas Hardy’s ashes in Westminster Abbey, but the passing of the procession bearing them there.- It is quite impossible to secure a ticket to the Abbey itself, as space in the Poet's Corner where he is to be laid is very restricted, but I shall be one of the tens of thousands who will assemble to see him pass. Five years ago I went from Bournemouth on a day’s charabanc tour through Wiltshire, Dorset, and Somerset, and we stopped for tea and a look at the cottage where the great poet and novelist was born. It was a picturesque though poor little ■white cottage, with a straight _agged -path leading up to it from a little wicket gate, and a thatched roof, dark and bent with age, small latticed windows, and a large rose tree by the door. Later on we were pointed out his present-day house, and some of the more curious of our party peered over the high brick wall surrounding the garden in the hopes of'eatehing a glimpse of the great man. I was more impressed with the “ Tess ” country—the village where the D’Urbervilles were long years ago lords of the manor, and also that stony, bare, wild Wilts and Somerset corner whwc Tess laboured before the last sad lap in her

life’s journey. Like everyone else who has really only regarded Hardy as a novelist, I have got a copy of “ The Dynasts,” and am, I am sorry to say, sc far only struggling '“with it, and scarcely yet enjoying the struggle. But we are told that “The Dynasts” will live, as Shakespeare’s plays live, and, this being so, it is strange how very many people there are who not only haven’t read it, but don’t even know it was writteu.

That the genius is not always recognised as such in his own neighbourhood was amusingly illustrated by the tale of a Cockney barber in Dorchester, who, on being asked recently were the great writer lived, scratched his head in some perplexity and said, “ I know ’oo you mean. It’s the little gent in baggy trases ’oo writes books, but I didn’t know as ’e lived ’ere abarhts.”

I saw both the dramatised version of “ Tess ” and " The Mayor of Castlebridge ” only as late as last year, but in neither case did the play come up to the standard of the book, or anyway I thought not. Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies made a lovely, pathetic Tess, but she was too refined—too much of the lady—and that somehow made the tragic heroine appear insincere and lacking in emotional appeal. At the sam e time a cast of local rustics performed the play in Dorchester, and according to the critics, although absolutely lacking stage training and polish, succeeded in producing the inward spirit of the story to an extraordinary extent.

Early last week when I was in town curiosity took me to the Embankment at Westminster, where armies of men were trying to clean up the thick layers of mud and slime deposited by the 'flooding of the river two days earlier. The wall of hastily-rushed-up sand bags was still there, and the whole street resembled a bad-smelling, filthy, muddy foreshore. The steps down to basements, and the windows and walls of all the lower-than-street-level rooms were covered in a black slimy deposit, slippery with oil and smelling strongly of creosote—not to mention much worse odours. On the south side of the river bedding and furniture, all slimed, oiled, and muddied, were drying in long hopeless rows, while their miserable owners mounted guard and discoursed of their troubles to the helpful and curious. No one, without a view of the damage, could possibly realise the extent of the disaster which has rendered thousands homeless.

Tn consequence of the disaster there has been an outcry against basement buildings, or at any rate against their being occupied ag living rooms Even in my little town, where surely there should be no reason for violent space economy, rows and rows of pre-war houses sport that utter abomination—the basement. The kitchen is below street level, and the brick wall only a few feet beyond the window is invariablv painted white in the hopes that a modicum of light may be reflected into the dinginess behind. After the melancholy survey of the flood ruin we felt we wanted cheering up, and for that Purpose wended our way to the New Gallery Kinema in Regent street, where for two long hours we sat and unashamedly sobbed over “ Sorrel and Son.” The book, of course, has had a tremendous vogue, and I jmjoyed it muchlv when I read it, but r cannot remember having been as wrought up as

I was over the film. It is an American film, although to get the right atmosphere, a company of playei*s came over last summer to rehearse scenes in a typical English country village. I must say that I stopped crying to break into a peal of laughter over the sight of Stephen Sorrel walking down a village street at mid-day wearing a silk -belltopper. In America it appears that the belltopper is still regarded as the outward ai d visible sign of its wearer’s claim to being an English gentleman, whereas really except for ceremonial occasions it is practically never seen here. The Westminster School boys in shiny silk hats and tails always attract attention in the streets nowadays chieflv on account of their pretentious, absurd, and out-of-date headgear, and the Eton boy still clings proudly to his. At one time the “glad-rag” unifoim of every preparatory school was the once fashionable shiny hat and hated Etons—now it is a univer” 1 grey of sensible flannel and pull-on hats o. caps. But in America an English gentleman —especially in filmland—is distinguished by a certa’n headgear, and the charming Stephen Sorrel has been obliged to conform. However, it was really good to laugh in the midst of so much tragedy. But it is a good film—one of the best I have seen—infinitely better than the much-discussed “King of Kings,” which made no appeal to me at all, and is, I hear, giving offence to as many people as, on the other band, it brings spiritual help and -’-mure to others.