A MAID IN MAYFAIR

Taranaki Daily News, 14 April 1932, Page 14

A MAID IN MAYFAIR

GOSSIP FROM LONDON TOWN.

SPLENDID LEAGUE. (From Our Lady Correspondent.) For the purpose of promoting international and Dominion tours, the Ladies’ Golf Union has now accumulated a nice little nest egg of between £2OOO and £3OOO. The amount was substantially increased by the generous action of the Portmarnock Club in handing over all the profits derived from the open championship meeting at Dublin last year. Having accumulated the funds necessary for the purpose, the Ladies’ Golf Union is not only promoting international matches against France and the United States, but is planning Dominion tours, which ultimately will embrace Canada and Australia, in addition to South Africa. The attitude of the L.G.U. in devoting itself thus to promoting the interests of the game is in striking contrast with the attitude adopted by the Lawn Tennis

i Association, which has many thousands of pounds locked up in its coffers, yet ■ shows a curious reluctance to spend its L money in the interests of the sport. ■ WOMEN CUEISTS. When so many male citadels have . fallen to feminist attack, it is strange that women have not yet invaded the billiard room in force. The game has lost its Victorian disrepute. Very few women play the game, and women’s billiards is a joke so far as championships go. Only three women’s clubs in London boast a table. Perhaps the modern flat habit discourages a game for which large rooms are needed. Yet there are s gns of women taking up billiards seriously. Lindrum and the other famous wizards fascinate feminine onlookers by their delicate finesse, and more women than ever before are tak-

ing lessons. In a few years’ time women will be as much at home in billiard rooms as men, and women’s billiard championships as little laughtermaking as their golf championships. HORSES IN CLOVER. The news that the beloved pony of Dame Ellen. Terry is assured of ending its days in the peaceful content of a paddock in the hop country will be good hearing for those who know how deeply the famous actress was attached to her pet. In the closing days of her life Ellen was always either amongst the flowers in her old-world garden, or else driving about behind her pony in the country lanes. And in the little country cart there was always a supply of sugar far the pony. It is a far cry from Ellen Terry to the great Napoleon, but the famous white charger which he rode in the retreat from Moscow similarly ended its days in a quiet paddock in Hertfordshire. OLE WIVES’ TALES. It tickles me immensely that the very latest specific recommended for influenza, both as a preventive and a cure, by West End specialists is hot lemon, with a dash of honey in it. Most ’flu winters I get the all-pervading germs in the vanguard of the epidemic. This year, so far, I have escaped even the inevitable cold in the head. This jolly immunity I attribute, as the patent medicine advertisements say, to dosing

myself nightly with hot lemon and honey. But it was not any Harley Street specialist who prescribed for me. Long before the doctors began to push it, I was taking the treatment on the advice of my charwoman’s grandmamma. There is something awe-inspiring in the march of therapeutic science. Harley Street ■" will be prescribing rubbing the nose with a tallow candle for colds soon. BEAUX BELLS. Savile Row is specially interested in the new revue “Bow Bells,” not because of anything unusual in the plot, the music, or the spectacle, but simply because some of the chorus are wearing thirty-guinea dress suits. Usually in revue as well as musical comedy managers concentrate, so far as clothes go, on the fair ladies. But in “Bow Bells” the male performers have been dressed just as meticulously and gorgeously as the women. Yet it might be argued that really costly dress suits for actors, except, of course, when some star is playing an evening-dress part in a big play, are a sheer waste of money and labour. It is doubtful whether, even from the front of the stalls, anyone but a Savile Row expert could tell a thirty from a ten-guinea suit. But there is one West End show in which the management has spent 22 guineas on the costume of a lady who is precisely three minutes on the stage. < C 3 ROMANCES. The 8.8. C. may be actuated by the most exemplary motives in inviting its married listeners to answer intimate questions concerning their private lives; but I cannot help thinking that it is setting out in search of trouble for itself. Wherein the corporation will benefit by any discoveries it may make about the changed domestic conditions of its subscribers is difficult to understand, but it is easy to imagine that it may get seriously led astray by the data that will be submitted. By thenature of things, the 8.8.C.’s questionnaire cannot be surrounded with the penalties and threats which make a census return such a formidable document. Many married couples who receive them consequently may well be tempted to embellish their answers with thpse imaginative romantic details which the prosaic current of their lives has never brought to them. The London School of Economics, which is to tabulate the information, will have a joyous task.

London Police. 1 Dr. Agnes Bennett, in speaking at the meeting of the Wellington branch of the National Council of Women, gave an amusing account of the care the London police take of people in that great city. She found that they were “mines of information” on all subjects of directions, and other matters, but she discovered that their care was not confined to that sort of thing. The doctor wanted to find a place in South London, and had no idea how to get there, so she asked a policeman, who gave her the name of the bus to take. However, it seemed not to be quite the right one, and when she asked the conductor for direction, he seemed surprised and said he did not go there and questioned her further, but she could not tell him exactly all he wanted to know, so she asked just for a two-penny fare, which did not seem at all satisfactory to him! He wanted to know exactly where she wanted to go, and as she merely wanted to get to South London in order to “view the land” in regard to motoring there later, she did not satisfy him. Presently a quiet man came and sat beside her, and entered into conversation with her. She •found, to her not-altogether pleased surprise that this was a policeman, and he evidently had been told by the conductor of the bus that there was a lady who did not seem to know where she wanted to go, and he came to took her gently but firmly in hand and saw to It that she was placed on the right bus to get to South London! The doctor felt that there are occasions when too much attention is as bad as too little! An Interesting Girl.

Miss Gladys Owen, 0.8. E., daughter of Mr. Justice Langer Owen, has announced her engagement to Mr. John Moore, architect and artist, of Sydney, states a Sydney paper. Miss Owen is also an artist, and her war work with the Red Cross Society gained her the 0.8. E. She has lately been actively engaged in the unemployed housing problem, and also toured the country districts with Mrs. C. L. Abbott, to inquire into economic conditions among farmers. Miss Owen became co-honorary secretary with Miss Marjorie Mort of the New South Wales Division of the Red Cross Society at its inception, and held the post for many years. She was the first woman to speak publicly in Martin place. It was during the conscription campaign, and her oratory gained many recruits. Later she left for England to continue her interrupted

i art studies and travelled extensively on the Continent. Electioneering has been one of Miss Owen’s interest?, and she spoke at several meetings in the recent Federation Election campaign