Women’s Ways

Southland Times, Issue 22215, 6 January 1934, Page 15

Women’s Ways

LADY AND MISS WILFORD.

FAREWELL RECEPTION.

(From a London Correspondent.)

On November 28, the New Zealand Women’s Association held an At Home at Grosvenor House, Park Lane, London, in honour of Lady Wilford and Miss Isobel Wilford prior to their departure to South America. It was one of the largest parties that has taken place since the association was formed at the excellent suggestion of Lady Wilford shortly after her arrival in London as wife of the New Zealand High Commissioner. There must have been quite 200 women present, as some members brought their friends. Miss Wilford, naturally, was very much in request as New Zealanders will not see her again for some time. She hopes, however, to be in England in 1935, when Mr Penrose Fitzgerald, to whom she is about to be married, will be on leave from Lima. She .has had a busy time making preparations for her journey, and, though naturally a little tired, she was looking very well and was very charming. She and her mother are leaving on December 13, two days earlier than anticipated, in order to ensure steamship connection. On the eve of her marriage, Miss Wilford was greatly gratified to receive the offer cf no fewer than three good engagements for the stage in coining new plays. One was for an early Nev/ York production. It is very evident, therefore, that she has not been forgotten in the profession which she chose to make her own, and in which she has been successful and very happy. Many interesting people were at the At Home. Some were recent arrivals. Others' were on the eve of departure for home.

One of the most recently arrived was Miss E. H. A. Loe (Havelock North), the first New Zealand holder of a British Drama League Scholarship. She is settling down to her work in London, at the Central School, Albert Hall, and she was a guest at a recent dinner of the British Drama League, when she was presented to some people emiment professionally. Mrs M. E. Tripe (Wellington) was the recipient of many congratulations on her portrait of Miss P. Leighton, which is so well hung at the present exhibition of the Society of Portrait Painters in Piccadilly. New Zealanders on the eve of departure for home included Lady Herdman and Miss Herdman, who leave by the Mataroa this week, Miss A. E. Jerome Spencer (Napier), Miss L. Large (Napier). All have had a very interesting time in England, and take back many happy recollections of their tour. Miss Large is going via Suez by the Ormonde next week.

The party passed off most pleasantly. The rooms were attractively decorated, and everyone seemed to be thoroughly happy. Among those present were Mrs Herbert Rawson, Mrs G. Beetham, Mrs Montague Laing, Lady Hardwick, the Hon. Mrs Algernon Borthwick, Mrs F. H. Moore (Sheila Macdonald), and Dr. Mary Blair. BACK FROM HOLLYWOOD. Miss Joyce Nielsen, who has just arrived in Auckland from Hollywood, will visit Rotorua with her mother, Mrs C. W. Nielsen, Wellington, before returning south. While in America she represented Nev/ Zealand in a Paramount picture which included the winners from fifteen countries. Miss Nielsen had some time to study Hollywood and the studios, as she arrived there before the other winners, but when work on the picture commenced she had very little spare time (says a Wellington papqr). “The life in Hollywood,” said Miss Neilsen, “is very much the same as in any. other American town. The impression of people over-

seas that it is inhabited exclusively by wealthy people who spend their time enjoying themselves is entirely wrong. There are many poor people in Hollywood, who have gone there in the hope of getting an engagement on a picture, and there is certainly more hard work done there than in a lot of other towns. Most of the actors and actresses work long hours. For the last week of our picture we were working over 12 hours a day, and acting is a great strain. Only those few at the top of the tree who make three or four pictures a year have any time for leisure. The man who was chosen for New Zealand, Mr Colin Tapley, was very popular among the film people in Hollywood.” Miss Neilsen said that he had been offered a further contract by Paramount, and he should do very well as he had a flail for screen acting. Referring to the Search for Beauty picture, Miss Neilsen said that Buster Crabbe was the leading man, with Ida Lupino playing opposite him. The story was full of interest and excitement. Crabbe, as the director of a health institute, gathered together a young man and woman from each of 15 countries in the British Empire and America to demonstrate the various types of physical perfection. Their adventures at the institute and elsewhere provided the theme of the plot. Paramount were so pleased with the finished picture that they intended to release “The Search for Beauty” as one of their most important pictures foi 1934. It was hoped to screen it in New Zealand within the next few months.

MAN OR 1000 HEN EGGS.

The following article will interest you. I read it in an Australian paper the other day and feel I must pass it on for you to read. “The material combination of ar human was long ago investigated. The results are of little interest to the ordinary person, not knowing what all the figures mean. They astonish, however, if comparisons are male. A man of the average size equals in his chemical combination 1000 hen eggs. In carbon he has about 201bs, which in graphite would be ample for 66 gross or 9504 pencils. Nitrogen and other gases in a human body would be ample to fill a balloon able to raise a man. Seven strong horse shoe nails could be made out of the iron contained in the red globuluses in the human blood. The phosphor would be ample to kill 550 men by its poison and more than 800,000 match heads could be made out of it. Over 23 teaspoons full of cooking salt are in a body. There is enough fat to make 65 candles. Though there are 200 bones in a body the percentage of water amounts to 54 per cent, of the total weight. A fully-grown person breathes 19 to 21 times per minute, an infant 40 to 45 times. During 24 hours, 181 b of carbonic acid pass your lungs. Your heart beats per hour 5000 times, 120,000 times per day and 43,830, - 600 times in a year. A person 50 years old had over two milliard times a heartbeat. Compared with a watch ticking for 50 years the same would have finished seven and a half milliards of strokes. If one compares that the metal is much tougher the heart performance seems to be much higher. The average man is reaching an age of 72 years, and is spending his time as follows: —He sleeps 23 years and 9 months, he works 19 years 10 months, for recreation are used 10 years; it takes 6 years and 5 months for eating and drinking; 4 years and six months are used for travelling. He uses 4 years and six months with illness, and 2i years in dressing and undressing. The red blood globuluses of a grown person, if placed next to each other like money, would cover over 250,000 miles or a distance more than five times the equator. It would take 8000 years continuous work to count the red blood globuluses, if in each hour only 100 would be counted. If the blood globuluses of two men could be used as building material, a bridge to the moon could be built. A fast train of 90 miles per houi’ would need 100 days to cover the distance if the blood globuluses would be placed next to each other. Placed next to each other the red blood globuluses would cover over 1500 square yards and the white blood globuluses about ten.”

FROM PARIS TO AUSTRALIA. Hats of expanding velvet and hats of glove suede are amongst the attractive novelties that Miss Jocelyn Gaden brought back with her from Paris recently. Miss Gaden spent some four months abroad, a holiday trip combined with business, for she went to Europe primarily to glimpse the very newest and the very smartest fashions in hats for her Sydney shop. “London has nothing to teach us in millinery matters,” she declared, “but Paris! In Paris hats are superb, the very epitome of smartness and chic.” Miss Gaden was fortunate enough to meet “Agnes,” the most famous of all Parisian milliners—“a charming woman, vivacious, petite, with black wavy hair that she touches up with a softening mauve .where it is greying round the temples”—was her description of her—and she culled much useful information on styles and trimmings in Agnes’s exclusive salon.

Instead of that forward, down-over-the-left-eye tilt, it is a pushed-back line that we shall be seeking this next season, according to Miss Gaden. “Some of the smartest hats are worn pulled to the back of the head,” she said, “while many are turned abruptly up off the face. Cut-out crowns, to show a glimpse of the hair, are still fashionable, but all the new shapes are tiny—little brimless toque effects. And here she pulled a tiny scrap of black material out of her bag—a minute cap hardly bigger than a baby’s bonnet. “One of the new hats of expanding velvet,” she explained as she pulled it on. This new velvet, which is purchased by the yard in narrow widths, was invented by Agnes; it is shirred with elastic so that it stretches to three and four times its size. Glove suede, deliciously soft and light as thistledown, fashioned another delightful model that Miss Gaden had brought from Paris; a quaint jelly-bag shape, with a cone-like crown that is folded and tucked down on the head to a becoming line. Incidentally she found all trimmings set right on the top of the crown.

Black, and black only, is the choice of the smart Parisian, and Miss Gaden told how on one occasion when she went to the fashionable five-o’clock tea at the Ritz, she was horrified to find herself the only woman in the room who was not in black. “It was shortly after the President had been assassinated, and at first I thought everyone was in mourning; then I felt like a Hamilton Bateman drawing of ‘The Woman Who Wore Beige.’”

BERNHARDTS LUGGAGE. Sarah Bernhardt took with her on her visit to the United States 45 trunks containing no fewer than 100 gowns. That seems a wardrobe of extraordinary wastefulness and luxury. Yet it would have seemed only a meagre and shabby outfit to the great Roman ladies of the frist century of our era. We are told, on trustworthy authority, that the dresses alone of Lollia Paulina, the rival of Agrippina were valued at £333,000. Pliny relates that he saw her at a plain citizen’s bridal supper literally covered by pearls and emeralds, worth in our money £320,000. Another lavish beauty of nearly the same epoch, Lollia Sabina, never travelled without a train of 500 she-asses. so that she might not miss her morning bath of asses’ milk! By the side of their roman prototypes the most extravagant women of our day seem thrifty.