A MAID IN MAYFAIR

Taranaki Daily News, 10 June 1931, Page 15

A MAID IN MAYFAIR

GOSSIP FROM LONDON TOWN.

FRIEND OF ROYALTY. (From Our Lady Correspondent.) London, April 9.. {People are searching their memories all the charming little incidents they knew about' Lord : 'Stamfordham. Everybody was agreed on one point. The. Royal Household has never known a kinder 'and more tactful member, and that from his earliest association with it he . has always been helpful and charming to the humblest as well as to the most important of those he met. His great affection for both the ’ King and the Queen came out very markedly when the King lay ill at the Palace. It was noticeable then that Her Majesty relied on Lord Stamfordham before everybody else in hours of stress and strain. Through the anxious weeks, when the scales dipped first .this way and then that, and there' was intense worry as to how things were going, it was Lord Stamfordham who mever lost hope, never believed anything but that the King would eventually recover and regain his old strength and vigour. How he was justified in his belief has been amply proved. At the time it was his optimism which helped the Queen through.

QUEEN’S NEW CAR. The Queen has a great love of green, and she has chosen a soft and attractive sha.de of it-for the new motor-car which is being built for her. . The car she is using is green also, and what is known as the Queen’s saloon on the Royal train is beautifully upholstered in jade velvet and silk tapestry. Yet the Queen herself ■ never wears green. People who have, seen her in public for many years have never really seen her in a green gown or hat.. Her range of colours is chiefly, lavender, and mauve, although occasionally,- for Ascot or the Royal Garden Party, she chooses rose shades, a warm .tone of pale blue, or pink. Princess Mary, on the other hand, is hardly evcr : without a green frock in her wardrobe, while in the last year or two the Duchess of York has worn green: herself, and has chosen the colour quite '■ a lot for little Princess Elizabeth.

DUCHESS DINES OUT. ■ One of the nicest things about the Duchess of York is the way that she has endeavoured, all through -her married life to keep up friendships with people she; knew in- Scotland, as well as in. this'Country, while -she was Lady Elizabeth Bowes Lyon. Many of these old friends are’invited to 145, Piccadilly, from time to time, but the duchess is always delighted to go- and visit them at their own homes when they ask her, and she has been known to make special efforts to - fit in a private function of this kind with her very full programme of public duties'. One night this week, while the duke was at the Albert Hall watching a boxing tournament, the duchess slipped quietly away in her car to join a little party of four at a smart restaurant in Jermyn Street. She and her lady-in-waiting made the party up to six, and they had a very happy time oyer a leisurely meal. Afterwards, seats at a cinema near-by were phoned for, and they all went on to watch a very popular film. The duchess looked charming in a black and silver frock. WOMEN UNDERGRADUATES. < I wonder what Mr. Collinson Owen will think of the latest movement; amongst the women undergraduates at Oxford. Like a good many other people, he still thinks the House of Commons is no place. for women. He has been saying that their presence there diminishes that assembly and he holds up his hands in masculine horror when women butt in with opinions on army estimates. This, however; is not the opinion of England’s young womenhood at Oxford, for I hear that marked success has attended the creation of the new women’s society. It has been formed on the lines of the famous men’s union, which has given so many brilliant debaters to the House of Commons.- Even Mr. Collinson Owen will hardly decry this new movement. After all, if women are to take their place in the legislative assembly at Westminster, the better they equip themselves for the work the better for everyone concerned.

THE. WRITING ON THE WALL. The French pleasure resorts have at last taken notice of the hand-writing on the wall. Last year a minor sensation was caused when one of the great de luxe ’hotels wpnt into liquidation. It made its appeal to the millionaire’s purse, and millionaires nowadays, if they are not on the verge of bankruptcy, are no longer inclined to squander their wealth unnecessarily. American as well as British visitors were being frightened away not only from the Riviera, but from places like Le Touquet, by the exorbitant charges at some

hotels. This season the “en pension” terms have been reduced by nearly 35 per.cent. Even so, the Riviera season has not been a very flourishing one, and more and more the hotels along the Cote d’Azur are forced to realise that their future lies, not in appealing to a small and diminishing clique of very wealthy people, but in developing an all-the-year-round season at moderate prices, which will bring these resorts well within the reach of the average middle-class purse. CHICKEN DAMAGE.

A eolicitor who practises in a large country town tells me he is engaged on an amusing action between two neighbours, which may decide a question that is often debated in these days, when so many people keep hens. It seems that a battalion of hens owned by Mrs. A. had been making periodical raids on the garden oi Mrs. B. and had been wonderfully efficient in the way they had dug up all Mrs. B’s most cherished bulbs and plants. Wire netting would not keep them out, as they

I were young ana active hens strong on the wing. Mrs. B. thereupon imported an. Aberdeen, whose chieken-killing propensities had earned him notoriety, and the Aberdeen had a perfect field day. Mrs. A. is now suing Mrs. B. for the value of eight hens, and Mrs. B. is counterclaiming for the damage io her plants. BEGINNING EARLY. . During almost her whole lifetime Katherine Tynan, who has just passed ■away, had an appreciative public for her poems and stories, for she was quite a small girl when her first verses were accepted. She loved to tell how. her childish desire to have the cheque they brought her framed was supported by her father, in disagreement with the useful purpose for which her mother Intended it. The same sympathetic father, a few years later, delighted to welcome- his “Katie” and her young ■friends to his hospitable Wexford farmhouse on Sunday afternoons, destined to remain among the happiest memories of Dora Sigerson, “Willie” Yeats, and others of the brilliant group for which Dr; Sigerson’s fine old Dublin house was a centre, and among whom Katherine Tynan ’ was a dominating personality. Her-portrait of that period looks down from the wall of Dublin’s Harcourt Street gallery—with eager parted. lips and shortsighted eyes questioning life behind their glasses. GRANDMA.

At a rather swagger tea-party I met a delightfully vivacious grand dame, to whom I was introduced, in the modern cheerio manner by her equally vivacious grand-daughter. The old lady fascinated me. She was still handsome, though quite white-haired, and she used a bright carmine lipstick with uwinklingeyed candour. She ate numerous choco-

late cakes and talked sophisticated sport. Her latest hobby, she told me, was glove-fighting. She has developed a passion for the game, and is even no\y -looking forward eagerly to the forthcoming charity boxing At Home to be held in Mayfair drawing-rooms. She thinks the post-war flapper a vast improvement on her Victorian predecessor, but has no use for votes or women police. She drives her own car, plays cunning contract bridge, and is keen on taking up flying.

A CAIRO LANDMARK. Visitors to Egypt will miss a familiar landmark when they go to Cairo next year. What is known locally as the (Bridge of Sighs has come under sentence of demolition. Like Waterloo Bridge it has succumbed to the influence of time and is no longer safe for modern conditions of traffic. The bridge perhaps is a less favourite resort during the cool .of the Cairo season than during the hot summer spell, when crowds of people always stroll up .and down the, narrow pavements enjoying

the cool breezes that sweep up from the iriver. Almost any night during their terms of office Lord Allenby and Lord Lloyd might be seen taking an evening constitutional on the bridge. And it was as famous as Hyde Park itself foithe number of “Nannies” and small children making their way from the stifling heat of the capital to seek the green foliage and' shady walks of the gardens on the Gezira. The four lions which adorned the bridge were almost as much a landmark as the Laudseer lions in Trafalgar Square. Everyone hopes that steps will be taken to bring them into the scheme of things when a new bridge is built. “A LADY OF TITLE.”

There are more announcements than usual this year of women of birth and position w'ho are anxious to chaperone young girls who are coming out, and present them at Court. Women who belong to quite nice families, but are pot in what is regarded as the social swim, know quite well that their daughters will have a much better time in society if they can make their debut under the wing of “a lady of title,” who knows hosts of people who entertain, and who has herself been to Court on probably a good many occasions. Invitations, casually as they are given these days, do not reach girls who are new to London. They may be quite important personages in their own country homes, but they do not get the entre to everything iu town unless they know someone who can introduce them. For that reason women who will undertake, for a fee, to launch girls on society are eagerly sought after when the London season is beginning to get into its stride. PIGEON A LA MAISON. I like the sequel to the restaurant scene in “Good Losers.” When this new play by Michael Arlen and Walter Hackett was first produced, everyone laughed knowingly and whispered the name of the restaurant proprietor in London who was the victim of the daring little parody. The head waiter whispers to him that the pigeons have “gone off” and asks if they are to be thrown away. “Nothing is thrown away in my restaurant,” declares the maitre d’hotcl proudly, and gives instructions for the pigeons to be served “Pigeon a la Maison.” Playful innuendos of this kind might be levelled perhaps against many well-known foreign restaurants in a certain quarter of London. But the gourmets insisted that one particular maitre d’hotel was the victim of Michael Arlen’s wit. So far from resenting the ' suggestion, mine host in question regards the whole thing as a very excellent jest, and has invited both authors to visit his restaurant at any time they please. THE KEYNES MENAGE.

What astonishes me most about Mr. Maynard Keynes, the brilliant mathematician, is not that he has modified his former Cobdepism to the extent of advocating a revenue tariff for existing ills, but that so profound an economist should have had the. good fortune to marry beautiful Lydia Lopokova, the famous Russian dancer. Somehow one did not readily associate higher economics with such a romantic “aside” as that. But it seems to have worked out as smoothly as one of Mr. Keynes’ mathematical problems. Mrs. Keynes was incomparable as a dancer, but die is algo a lady of great literary intelligence. Quite recently she took the

! part of the lady in Milton’s masque “Comus,” and showed a superb appreci- , ation of its import. I cannot think of any English dancer who would be likei ly to figure handsomely, say, in a read- • ing of Dante’s “Inferno” in the original. ; “HUSH-HUSH” HOUSE. Although the “Hush-hush” house at this year’s Ideal Home exhibition is not the most attractive, it was undoubtedly the one which had the greatest interest for visitors when the exhibition opened this week. It is doubtful whether house-proud women would care to ■adopt it in its entirety, but those who .went from room to room to inspect it were eagerly alert for individual ideas that would make for quiet, and more than one man tapped the special soundproof walls and floors as though in ’envy. Once inside the front door of the little building, all' the traffic of the exhibition—hammering, music, voices, and £0 forth—were shut off as though •the place was enveloped in a blanket. 'So clever is the construction, the closing of a door between two rooms prevents the wireless or the noisiest gramophone being heard except within the four walls where they are being played. The. is full of fresh attractiveness,- which' hundreds of women were enjoying all day.

THE BERESFORD WEDDING. The marriage of Lord Decies’ elder daughter, the pretty Mies Eileen Beresford, is to take place in London towards the end of this month. She became engaged to Mr. Robert O’Brien, Colonel and Mrs. T. H. O’Brien’s only son, only a few weeks before the sudden death of her mother, a charming American hostess, who had been looking forward to entertaining for both her girls during the forthcoming London season. As the engagement was originally intended to b'e a very short one Lord Decies has given, his consent to the wedding taking place on the date arranged, but the ceremony will, of course, be a very quiet one and there will be no reception. The Grosvenor Chapel in South Audley Street—not very far from Princess Mary’s London home, Chesterfield House—has been chosen for it, and the wedding will be at noon, so that the bride and bridegroom may leave iipmediately after a family luncheon party for their honeymoon. The Grosvenor Chapel is very small and is rarely used for weddings nowadays.

THE NEW ITALIAN EMBASSY. It is rather sad that Lord and Lady Fitzwilliam are giving up their beautiful town house in Grosvenor Square. 'But they do not entertain i London now, except on quite a small scale for their youngest daughter, Lady Helena Fitzwilliam, who much prefers hunting and country life' in Ireland to the smartest parties and dances. No plans have been made yet for the future, but Lady Fitzwilliam has just returned to London from a cruise and will probably look for some smaller pied-a-terre when she has finished supervising the dismantling of 4, Grosvenor Square. The Italian Ambassador is, naturally, very delighted that the house will become, very shortly, the Italian Embassy. It is so eminently suitable for entertaining of the kind which he and Donna Diana Bordonaro want to do, and for which their present house, on the other side of (Grosvenor -Square, is not nearly so convenient. The staircase and reception rooms are very imposing, as those who were present at the coming-out dances of the daughters of the house, and at the wedding receptions of three of them, will remember. THE BROKEN MASHIE. Everybody was surprised at the recent women’s foursomes when Miss Joyce Wcthered suffered defeat, not through the shortcomings of her partner, but through several glaring mistakes on her own part. The explanation seems to be that this greatest of all women golfers—the greatest golfer | in the world according to Bobby Jones—lias hud the misfortune to break her I favourite mashie. What this means to a golfer of her calibre can scarcely be appreciated by the average “rabbit.” It is like depriving a great violinist of his cherished Strad. Miss Wethered has tried all manner of devices to get her--club fitted with a new shaft which will restore its old touch, but neither steel nor hickory has availed. She does not intend to play in the women’s championship this year, having had past experience of being mobbed by too enthusiastic admirers. 'She declares that she will never face it again. Nowadays, she devotes much of her time to fishing and to lawn-tennis.