A MAID IN MAYFAIR

Taranaki Daily News, 11 August 1932, Page 14

A MAID IN MAYFAIR

GOSSIP FROM LONDON TOWN. FRINGE OF WALES BIRTHDAY (From Our Lady Correspondent.) London, June 23. The Prince of Wales’ 38th birthday found him in-the midst of the busiest week of the London season. If he had been offered the birthday present he mpst desired, I suspect he would have asked merely to have been given to-day entirely to himself and off duty, whether public or social. Those who knew him as a rather callow young Guards subaltern in France, during the war, and have met him recently, realise that he has amazingly matured in the interim. Yet it is almost impossible to reconcile oneself to the fact.that he is now within two years of forty, and therefore by *ll the tokens a middle-aged man. It is often said the Prince resembles King Edward, a superstition that perhaps explains the Prince’s determined slimming regime. With all-respect to his grandfather’s memory, I should say the Prince i» much less'centred in sport, and more keenly intrigued by affairs and people. ■THE KING AND BALMORAL. I am able' to dispose of the rumour that the King and Queen had abandoned the idea of going to the Deegide this year. Preparations - are already being made for the forthcoming visit. According to present arrangements the King and Queen will arrive at Balmoral towards the end of August and will remain there until the beginning of October. The length of the stay depends mainly on the state of the weather. The King has let it be known further that he hopes to attend the Braemar meeting on or about September 6. The grouse prospects in the North are reported to be good and the King hopes to be out with the guns a good deal when he reaches Deeside. - SEEKING A REST. The quiet time the Duchess of York Is having down at Sandwich With her children while all the rest of society is waking merry as Ascot is due,-1 am told, to the state of her health. She has never been very strong, and the many public and other engagements she has carried out since the season opened have tired her unduly. She -has decided, therefore, to rest as much as she can ' during the remaining weeks that she will be in the south. Afterwards she plans a visit to Glamis Castle, ( where the air always suits her, and where she revels in the free open air lifer she is able to enjoy amongst her girlhood Sandwich was selected for her seaside holiday on account of the proximity of the links where the Duke of York, who is as keen on the game as the Prince of Wales, is able to golf, either at Prince’s Royal St. 'George’s. /- ROYALTIES AT SANDWICH. , Little Princess Elizabeth, is said to be : revelling in her' seaside holiday at Sandwich. The pebbly beach is not well - suited for paddling or bathing, but there is a magnificent road along the front, on which the little Princess is allowed to ride up and down on the bicycle given her on her last birthday. The road is a private one, and as there are no police or other restrictions, motors at 'the' week-end render it rather unsafe for children. But during the week it is almost deserted and Princess Elizabeth has it practically to herself. The Duke of York continues to play a good deal of golf on the Prince’s links. Curiously enough, he is a right-handed player where golf is concerned, though lefthanded when he plays lawn tennis. VISITORS INCOGNITO. During their recent visit to London the King and Queen of the Belgians Went about quite unrecognised and unaccompanied, and shopped,’ supped, or went theatres or cinemas just like any jolly suburban couple. Some London papers have boasted about this, and declared that nowhere else could royalty enjoy a similar immunity and freedom. A Dutch journalist tells me this/is quite a mistaken notion. King Albert and his smartly dressed consort regularly go Swiss sporting, just like ordinary mortals, and suffer no annoyance from public curiosity. He assured me that, on at least one occasion, the King of the Belgians has taken the Queen on a motor-cycle tour on the Continent without even being once recognised. The fact is, of course, that few people suspect a King of being at the handlebars of a motor-cycle or a Queen on the ■pillion seat. MRS. ANDREW CARNEGIE Mrs. Andrew Carnegie’s visit to Skibo Castle, Sutherlandshire, after an absence of two years is not surprising, for it was there that she and her husband spent some of their happiest days. He bought the place a few years after their marriage in 1887, and spent a large sum in modernising and enlarging what had formerly been a picturesque but not particularly comfortable mansionhouse of the familiar Scottish baronial type. Though he was of Lowland birth and pedigree he delighted in reviving Highland customs, such as having a piper to play in front of the castle to awaken the numerous guests whom he loved to entertain. Mrs. Carnegie took -* lively interest in her husband’s philanthropic schemes, and on her way North she paid a visit to his native town of Dunfermline, for whose amenity the trust • he founded has done so mucii. Mrs. Carnegie is American by birth, but Hke so many of her country-women, »he fell in love with Scotland as soon as she saw it, and in particular she found the remote loveliness of Skibo a delightful contrast to the bustle of Pittsburgh and New York. SWEDISH BETROTHAL. Princess Sibylle, tho betrothed of Prince Gustaf Adolf, will . readily accommodate herself to Swedish conditions when she takes up her residence in Stockholm. Curiously enough for ene of the house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, underwent ygry- SUSfe- the same.

course of domestic training as her future sister-in-law, Princess Ingrid. Both were:encouraged to go in for sports and games —a great feature of life in Sweden. Both are fearless- riders, keen at gardening, and know all there is to learn about cooking, sewing, laundry work ■ and other domestic arts. But there are one or two things that Princess Sibylle will still have to learn if she is to take her full place amongst the sportloving girls of Stockholm. She will have to become expert at ski-ing—one of the national sports—she will have to swim and paddle a canoe, and she will have to [learn that most fascinating of all pastimes, the art of sailing on ice. ASCOT. There are many recegoers who much prefer either Epsom or Goodwood to i Ascot. I confess I am one of them. ! As,cot is the society race meeting, of 'course, bu + it lacks the gargantuan festivity of the Derby and the pleasant picnic aura of Goodwood. It is, moreover, far easier to pick a winner or two at Epsom or Goodwood than at Ascot, which is traditionally the bookmakers’ paradise. Ascot, from the scenic point of view, is too formal and elaborate. Even pretty women never seem to look quite so pretty in their too ornate Ascot frocks as in the simpler ones they wear at the Derby or Goodwood, and I shall never bring myself to believe that a topper, whether grey or black, and correct Savile Row morning dress is the right apparel for men in the open country and more than thirty miles from Piccadilly. Ascot was looking beautifully fresh and green last week, however, and it was rather nice to get away to the far side of the course, where there was no crowd, and-, watch the horses flash past while reclining at ease under the tree?.

FREAKISH FASHIONS. Not for a long time has there been such a brilliant opening of Ascot week. The sun shone with mid-summer glory and some people, mindful of the drenching they- got on the ooccasion of their last ■ visit to Ascot, brought cloaks and umbrellas with them, The enclosures for the most part looked like one great fashion parade. All nature seemed to have conspired to make the occasion a perfect success. The grass has never looked so green, and, since everything this year is a little backward, the rhododendrons were in full bloom. People were saying that • the fashions were freakish. But if they were freakish they were very. beautiful. The hats ranged from huge eartwheel-like sombreros to the tiny boatees stuck at a rakish angle at the side of their fair wearers heads, for all the world like the diminutive affairs sometimes worn by music-hall comedians. GETTING RECKLESS? I was talking to-day to a Well-known bookmaker who for some season or other is always greatly patronised by women at Ascot. They generally get a male escort to take the money along to him, but women are his best customers, and, and his business is so extensive that he employs a small army of assistants. This man was telling me that, from his point of view, this-year's Ascot has been a record one, both in number and in amounts. The bets he has handled have exceeded anything he has ever experienced before. He has a curious theory to account for it. People, he says, are so hard up that they are getting reckless. They risk far more than they can afford in the hope of bringing off a “scoop.” GONE! Even if these lean years are followed by fat ones of bursting prosperity, I doubt whether Ascot Sunday will ever revive its ancient glories. Time was, even since the war, when Hyde Park after church on Ascot Sunday, and Boulter’s lock after lunch, presented the most brilliant fashion spectacle in the world. But society no longer parades in Hyde Park, which has been hopelessly vulgarised by the Lido, and Mayfair no more goes boating up the river, which has yielded the elfin secret of its backwaters to raucous petrol launches. Any Ascot Sunday ten or twelve years ago, between the Achilles statue and the Marble Arch, you met half Debrett and most of the Cabinet, and the Park was gay with incredible beauty and fashion. Now it is about as fashionable as Margate on August Bank Holiday. WAITING!

But tradition dies hard. This Ascot Sunday all the seats in Hyde Park, along the avenue where the former church parade took place, were occupied by a mob of very middle-class suburbanites, pathetically waiting for the Ascot crowd that never appeared. It has been the same for the past six or seven years. Yet the suburban fashion-gazers still keep the rendezvous, though all they ever see now is an occasional grey Ascot topper, worn by some old gentleman who either strolls through the Park from sheer force of habit, or, perhaps one of the exiles driven back to London by the pl 11 nip in the pound. J saw one old

Army colonel, with a Pendennis moustache, gazing in bewilderment at the cheap flannels and reach-me-downs of the Hyde Park crowd. A RESERVATION. I listened to-day in an old-world London garden where the violas were I nodding like wise matrons to the tender rose buds and an aged gardener was engaged on an intensive slug shikarri to 1 the talk of assembled ladies. It was, in ■ fact, a suburban garden party, and the I tone was distinctly high-brow. Two intellectuals were earnestly discussing another lady, known to both but not present. They ran over her points, physical and social, and debated her attitude to life. Finally one of the two feminine dissecters remarked that the subject of this discursive autopsy had i always insisted on the harsh gradations [of life as part of the natural law. “But I thought she was a Socialist,” comment--led the other. “Only in theory,” was the earnest response. IN THE CIRCUS. A young and beautiful West End actress has just won a sporting bet. She undertook (the challenger being a well-known actor) to take up her pitch in Piccadilly Circus, garbed and equipped as a flower girl, and spend a stipulated number* of hours trying to sell flowers to the passing crowd without giving the show away. Apparently she accomplished her undertaking perfectly; but it must have been a difficult role for even an experienced actress to play, because the stage lady in question, is really handsome, and, not to put too fine la point on it, the Piccadilly flower girls, • most of whom ■ are ample women of mature years, are not quite in the Judgment of Paris line. When the ordeal was over the regular flower girls saw a sports car draw up, and their quondam competitor step blithely in with her flower basket. EVE LN' THE OPEN. Since the heat wave struck London Mr. Lansbury’s Hyde Park Lido has been working overtime. The whole expanse of Serpentine beach is one blistering I vista of sun-bathing humanity. Cuticle tints vary from odd white to salmon pink and nut brown, according to the length of time the exhibitors have been at it. Women predominate in the panorama, and motorists in the car park on the other side of the Serpentine study form through opera classes. But the latest Hyde Park manifestation of Eve in the open is the sculling girl who hires a sliding-seater. I saw one robust lady, clad in the shortest and loosest of bright ! green rowing shorts and a white semisinglet with bare arms, who aroused tremendous attention. Not to thwart the admiring crowd, she kept close by the bank. A CHINESE WEDDING. London witnessed something of a novelty in weddings last week-end —a Chinese wedding in an English church. The bride, who woulfl be esteemed pretty even judged by Western standards, was Miss Rebecca To. She was married to Mr. Shiu Hong Ma, whose father is famous all through China as owner of I one of the greatest emporiums of the East. Both the bride and bridegroom have embraced the Christian faith, and they were married at St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, the church with which Dick Sheppard was identified for so many years, and where, incidentally, the remains of Sweet Nell of Old Drury lie jnterned. - A wedding reception was held afterwards at the Dorchester Hotel.

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