A LETTER FROM HOME.

Otago Witness, Issue 3912, 5 March 1929, Page 63

A LETTER FROM HOME.

By

A Wanderer.

(Speciai. for the Otago Witness.) Vanity Street.

LONDON, January 10. Stephanie has sketched fop us a frock which I most distinctly do not recommend tlift small woman to patronise, but for a daughter of the gods, divinely tall ” it is a very delightful creation and strikes an original note. The model is in green crepe de chine with darker tones of the same colour where indicated. The reason why it would not suit the diminutive woman- is obvious—she cannot afford to be “ divided ” in the middle; foreshortened, as it were. “ Straight lines for the short ” should be the slogan, generally speaking. If you are having this frock made, up, don’t forget the touches of embroidery on the darker part—gold in the case of green material t while for other colours you will think of contrasting effects.

Our other picture is a smart doublebreasted sports coat, suitable for the forthcoming season in this part of the world, when the mists have rolled away. A charming combination is cigar-brown serge, worn with a skirt of beige kasha and a beige and green foulard scarf. I have already told you how popular scarves j going to be in the spring for wear with tailor-mades, and even now very few women omit them under their heavv wraps. They supply that “ touch of colour ” so beloved of fashion and fiction writers I

I have been amazed at the growing popularity of socks in the streets. Until this year they have been confined to tennis courts, but now one sees them worn by any amount of smart women who feel the cold round their ankles. They may be warm, but I' personally shall never regard them as elegant. The January sales are on us, and already, one encounters in the shops, and on the pavements outside shop windows, women with the glazed stare of acquisitiveness in their eyes ; women who normally would beg one’s pardon most hambly if they stepped on one’s feet, but who now would pass cheerfully over one’s dead body, or gouge out one’s eyes with a stumpy umbrella without flickering, in order to get something which has been “ marked down ” from ten shillings and elevenpence to ten shillings and sixpence. Alas, that fivepence should wreak such psychological havoc! At these times I

do not care to contemplate a certain section of my own sex at close quarters!

Try This.

Would you like a nice, honest-to-good-ness tennis cake? Then here it is. Line a square tin with paper, greasing both tin and paper. Then cream together six ounces of butter and an equal quantity of sugar, after which you beat in four eggs, one at a time.. Six ounces of raisins should be prepared and chopped coarsely, and these are added to the mixture, together with eight ounces each of currants and sultanas. Chop four ounces of mixed peel and blanch two ounces of almonds, and put these in the bowl with the rest ; ana lastly add ten ounces of flour, half a teaspoonful of baking powder, and a pinch of salt. This must all be stirred very gently, after which you turn it into the prepared tin and bake for two and a half hours in a moderately hot oven. This is just the cake, on high-days and holidays, to which to add a layer of almond paste and a coating of white glace icing. Probably hewever, so near Christmas, when most of us have had a surfeit of “ sumpshous ” cake, yoa wilt prefer to omit the “ extras. ”.

Being reminded of party fare, I must just draw your attention to orange fluff. It is just the thing to serve for people who do not in the ordinary way “ care for sweets ”, as they say. Cream ths yolks of two eggs and two tablespoonsful of white sugar in a bowl. Add the grated rind of half an orange and half a lemon. Melt half an ounce of gelatine in two tablespoonsful of water and add the juice of of two oranges and half a lemon. Strain into the custard mixture and beat well. Lastly add the whites of the two eggs, beaten to a snow, very gently, just before the mixture begins to set. Pile in custard glasses and serve with wafer biscuits. If this is not popular, then your people are very difficult to please, and I shouldn’t try any more!

By the way, did you know that heaps of people are taking the orange cure? This consists of living practically—almost completely, I believe, in extreme cases—on oranges for two or three weeks together. I have never seen the result of a complete devotion to the fruit in question but I am told that the devotee becomes wonderous beautiful after a short while—physically fit and mentally alert. Personally I have always eaten a qnantitv of oranges, but as I have mingled these with pork chops and the like, I cannot be said to be a criterion. At the last public dinner I attended for my sins—l know of nothing worse than public dinners—with alternate layers of food, speakers, and songs-at-thc-piano—do you? Well, as I was saying, at the last public dinner, the wife of a deceased newspaper proprietor cut in half and consumed with a spoon no less than four oranges. Of course she only took the juice. She was very fat, but had a beautiful complexion. Obviously she was on the orange stunt ; but 'me innate social sense prevented me from asking her if she had lost weight recentlv !

Is That So?

Miss Mary Clare is the subject of our artist’s activities this week. She is one of our most popular actresses, both on the stage and off, and she made her first big " hit ” as the only woman—and a coloured ” one at that—in the successful drama, ” White Cargo ”, produced a

year or so ago. Since then her admirers remember her with pleasure as the expansive last love and help-meet of the casual Sanger in “ The Constant Nymph” ; as giving a very fine performance in the dramatisation of Miss Rebecca West’s novel, ‘‘The Return of the Soldier ” ; and now she rejoices the hearts of Dickenslovers as Mrs Bardell in the Christmas production of ” Pickwick ” at the Haymarket Theatre. Most Dickensians have entered the Haymarket with considerable trepidation, fearing to have their idols shattered even temporarily ; but the fact is that Mr Basil Dean has handled the production so deftly that there is something for everybody. All of us who love Dickens—and those who do not had better “skip” me for a minute!—have unshakeable conceptions about certain of his characters. I have my own Jingle, speaking hastily, huskily, his monosyllables tumbling out one on top of the other in his anxiety to convince people and get away before they have time to think things out. Consequently a Jingle who spoke his single words at measured intervals did not capture my imagination, neither did a Sam Weller without a touch of the ironic and sardonic—an intangible touch—beneath his humour. But for the rest, I wallowed in Dingly Dell. The Street of Adventure.

This week I can whole-heartedly recommend you to read “ Rich Girl, Poor Girl ”, a tale of American life by Margaret Culkin Banning. If you are particularly interested in the domestic balance—or lack thereof—when the wife has money and the husband has not, you will enjoy following the ups and downs of the young couple with whose history this story deals. There is a ” gate-crashing ” incident when the “ heroine ” tries to force her way into the house of one of the sacred ” Four Hundred This is how it pans out: