A LETTER FROM HOME.

Otago Witness, Issue 4039, 11 August 1931, Page 58

A LETTER FROM HOME.

By

Sheila Macdonald.

(Special for the Otago Witness.)

With the shouting and tumult, of the Derby past, visions of easy fortunes vanished like smoke, and only a belated prosecution of some embryo criminal to remind us that, having defied the law, we deserved not to win, we have settled down again to the stolid jog trot of every day life again. Even the lucky winners have ceased to be interviewed and photographed and tell us what they mean to do with their new and thrice-

blessed fortunes. It may be deplorable, but despite the stern views of Ramsay MacDonald and Co., I decline to believe that there is any real harm in a gamble such as the Irish sweep. I know that the dreams I dreamt were wonderful while they lasted, and when they proved to be only dreams—well, what then? They did no harm to anyone, and they amused me. Building castles in the air, even for a few days, is fun, and not many people are unbalanced enough to do more than shrug their shoulders philosophically when they fail to see their names posted amongst the winners. Such, anyway, are my sentiments, and I think most of my fellow-losers agree with me.

The trooping of the colour on the Horse Guards’ Parade, which should have taken place on the 3rd, had to be postponed until the 6 th, because the King, like everyone else, wanted to go to the Derby. Saturday was a glorious day, and two hours before the ceremony was due to begin every approach to the parade ground was black with spectators. The first troops to appear were the gorgeously apparelled Household Cavalry, a glittering cavalcade with horses as proud and dashing as their riders. They formed up to the crashing of their band, and then the Life Guards marched in with massed bands and drums and pipes playing. With the sun blazing down, it was' a glittering pageant of colour. Every window was crowded with onlookers. Flags decked the Government offices. When the word went round that the Queen had arrived, every eye was turned on the Home Office balcony. The Duchess of York, Princess Elizabeth, and Prince George were with the Queen. Princess Elizabeth sat on the Queen’s knee, and was very lavish with her bows of gracious acknowledgment when a storm of cheers and clappings seemed to her to demand it. Then, amidst an impressive silence, the King's colour of the 2nd Coldstream Guards was carried solemnly out, posted with great formality in the centre of the parade ground, and the Guards, with their officers immobile as wax figures, holding their swords like torches in front of them, moved into line with a machine-like clicking of accoutrements and came to a halt —motionless. Quick on that came the sound of cheering rising to a veritable roar as the King came down the Mall and, swerving to the right, rode on to the parade ground His three sons rode with him, and be hind them were Prince Arthur of Con naught. Lord Harewood, and the Earl of Athlone. As they passed the balcony where the Queen sat, the King saluted, and Princess Elizabeth, leaning well forward on the Queen’s knee, waved two bare fat arms in acknowledgment. Behind the King's kinsmen came an escort of famous soldiers with their breasts one glittering mass of medals, and behind that again the military attaches of the foreign Powers. Even Peru and Finland were represented, though the palm for gorgeous trappings went to the King’s special Indian orderly ’officers, who were a dazzling sight and as impassive and remote of expression as bronze gods. Slow march, quick inarch, slow troop, quick troop. The King takes the salute while the onlookers stand to rigid attention. Slowly the long rows of men filed past, while the bands crashed out “ The British Grenadiers ” and “ The Grenadiers’ March.’’ It was a great show. Even I who had watched no less than nine of the rehearsals could have gone ou watching for hours. The pomp and ceremonial of it all sweeps one off one’s feet in a way that, looked back on, seems absurd, but which at the time seems part and parcel of the show. As the Household Cavalry inarched back to barracks, their famous mounted drummer came in for an outspoken chorus of approval. He looked exactly as if he had just ridden off the Field of the Cloth of Gold or some other mediaeval battlefield. “ Isn’t he just too cute for words?’’ “I’d sure like to can him and take him to show to the folks back home,” said one American, whose enthusiasm throughout the proceedings had found vent in a sequence of “ Did you ever see the like! There’s no one back home would believe it unless they saw it with their own eyes,” and so forth ad lib.

The crowd commenced to disperse when the cavalry rode off, but I waited for what, to my mind, is the finest sight of all—that of the King, at the head of his special Guards and followed by the other Guards in columns of divisions, riding slowly out of sight up the Mall, between the green of St. James's Park and Green Park, to Buckingham Palace. I waited even longer than that, so long, indeed, that the parade ground was practically empty, and only one or two lingerers remained to walk across with me to the statue of that great soldier. Kitchener of Khartoum, at whose bronze feet were offerings of fresh flowers with words of love and remembrance and the date of his passing— June 5, 1916.

I went to see that much-talked-of new dancer, La Argentina, last week, or, rather, I was taken to see her by someone who can open locked doors in the theatrical world. It was impossible after the first night of her appearance here to have secured a seat for La Argentina by ordinary methods or by ordinary folk. C. B. Cochran brought her over as a speculation—and a lucky one for him as it turned out. No one in this country had ever heard of her before. Now no price is too high for a sight of her. She is slim and young, of

course, with great dark flashing eyes and a temperament to match. Every movement of her lithe young body is not only grace personified, but is the very essence of joyousness. As she dances she plays her castanets. I write “ plays,” because that is the only word that can describe the exquisitely musical sound she brings out of them. I have a vivid recollection of myself in the days of my youth being instructed in a so-called Spanish dance with castanets all complete and being rather pleased with myself. What a crime to have perpetrated even under compulsion! I don't think La Argentina ever has or ever will be equalled, not only in the supple grace of her dancing, but in the fire and abandon she brings to it, the passionate rhythmic music of those marvellously manipulated castanets — the whole emotional appeal of her. Men and women alike showered flowers on her. The stage was heaped with them. One bouquet of orchids alone must have cost quite a hundred pounds. The stage was piled with flowers. Some one cognisant of an old Spanish custom threw his Trilby at the dancer’s feet. She smiled special acknowledgment, and a storm of shouts rang out, “ Viva La Argentina! Viva! Viva! ” And I don’t think the “ Viva’s ” caine from prim Spanish throats either. In some ways she reminded me of Isidora Duncan as I remember her in Dresden more than twenty-five years ago dancing barefoot to the lilt of the “ Blue Danube Waltz,” when stolid beer-drinking Germans, rising to their feet, let themselves ’go in a veritable crescendo of appreciation. La Argentina, dancing to the strains of Liszt’s “ Second Hungarian Rhapsody,” had the same perfection of music and grace and rhythm. C. B. Cochran is a marvel in discovering talent and giving it a chance. More

marvellous still, he has not only the sure instinct for what will “go,” but when he does stage a failure he has the courage to admit it cheerfully, cut his,losses, and try again with a cheerful optimism that in nine cases out of ten is justified. He is one of the very few stage managers who, having made a fortune, goes on adding to it. All the others seem to match a good year with a had, plus much pessimism about the future of the stage, whereas “C. B.” climbs from success to success. “ Evergreen ” plays to a full house every single night. “ Bitter Sweet ” is still running after something like two years. Then Mrs Cochran went into management on her own account two years ago—a first venture, too—with that essentially woman’s play “Nine to Six,” and must have made a very tidy little sum over it, too.

I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington the other day to see the celebrated Thomas ii Becket cup, which has been in the possession of the Dukes of Norfolk ever since Catherine of Aragon gave it to an ancestor in the year —; but there my memory fails me. It was put up at Christie’s last month, was bought by Lord Wakefield for £ll,OOO to save its going to America, and presented to the nation. Someone who was present at the sale told mejthat the young Duke of Norfolk stood beside the auctioneer's rostrum, watching the family treasure passing into other hands, with a look of misery on his face that touched everyone's heart. The cup is quite small, about a foot high. The cup itself is an ivory bowl set on a silver gilt stand and surmounted by a silver gilt cover studded with costly pearls and garnets. Why garnets I do not know, but they certainly are not rubies. It was used on all formal occasions by Thomas a Becket. The Dukes of Norfolk got possession of a good many other things belonging to the famous archbishop, and I believe most of them are shown to visitors on the days when Arundel is open to the public. But with anyone in whom the feudal spirit is as tenacious as it is in the Howard family’ to part with such a treasure as the a Becket cup must be bitter indeed. Even to look up at the turreted grandeur of Arundel Castle from the train is to be carried back into the glamour of other days. A year or so back, when in Worcestershire. I spent a day roaming about Warwick Castle and knew the same thrill. Warwick Castle is much the same to-day as when -the King-maker strode its. battlements and looked down over the moat to his town of Warwick or commanded that the drawbridge be let down to allow his sovereign to enter. But a stranger now pays rent to ’an impoverished owner for the privilege of bestriding those same battlements, and tourists pay their shillings at a turnstile where once the drawbridge was. I would that it were otherwise, and that a certain treasure had not left Arundel.