A MAID IN MAYFAIR

Taranaki Daily News, 16 February 1933, Page 14

A MAID IN MAYFAIR

GOSSIP FROM LONDON TOWN. GETTING MIDDLE-AGED. (From Our Lady Correspondent.) December 22, 1932. The Duke of York has had the unenviable experience of spending his birthday in bed with a nasty -cold. It seems almost unbelievable to survivors of the Edwardian period, that the King’s second son should now be 37; but that is the fact, and Princess Elizabeth and her small sister are there in evidence that .those whom we not long ago called •’the. young Princes” are nearly middleaged. The Prince of Wales is just about a year older than the Duke of York, and even the Princess Royal is now 35. The. Duke of Gloucester is three years younger than his sister, and Prince George, who is just 30, is now the baby of the Royal Family- Most people, meeting the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, and the Duke of Gloucester together might be in some doubt which ' of the three is the senior. But Prince George is unmistakably the youngster, and does not look even his age. AMY’S HOMECOMING. All London, and a very large part of Yorkshire, appeared to be trying to squeeze into Grosvenor House to shake hands with “Our Amy.” It is certainly one good thing about the present generation that it honours its heroes and heroines at the moment of their achievement, ■nd does not wait until it has to build the marble monuments. Possibly • the oldfashioned way of judging deeds -of prowess from the vantage point of a considerable passage of time shows the things in a more accurate perspective. For sheer pluck and daring, however, Mrs. Mollison’s record will bear comparison with those of the classic heroines of history. In all probability she received a bigger and warmer welcome than had she made the return trip from the Cape in the time she set herself. Her courageou's struggle against adverse weather circumstances captured popular imagination far more than would have done one more high-speed record. ’ASTERN PRINCESS. London is really interested in its latest foreign visitor. This is a very charming little lady from the Far East, in fact, a real flapper princess from China. She is the ex-Emperor of China’s sister, and is paying her first visit to this country. Her brother, by the way, though he has lost his original throne, is now Regent of the new and much-disputed State, of Manchukuo. The princess is only 20 years of age, but is already married, and her young husband, also 20 years old, ; is accompanying her on her tour. During their stay in London they are the guests of Sir Reginald Johnston, who is Professor of Chinese at the School of Oriental Studies. Cheng-Tui-Al, the princess’s husband, has a little English at Mg command, but the princess herself speaks not one word of our language. Before she leaves London, however, she

expects to be able to converse In it for general. purposes. “ITS DAMNABLE.” An unrecorded incident in connection with a recent tour of the Prince of Wales in one of the industrial areas was told me yesterday. As usual he refused to be “personally conducted,” and went haphazard to any slum dwelling he noticed. After one of these visits, he came do.wn the rickety stairs into the yard outside with a face drawn and working with deep feeling. Standing in the dirty yard outside was an old petrol tin. Turning on it with a passionate gesture, the Prince kicked it violently across the yard. “It’s damnable!” he said. MEN IN BLUE.. One who was there tells me the Prince of Wales was in good form when he paid his surprise visit to the invalid soldiers from Roehampton and the Star and Garter,. The occasion was a Christmas feast for the men at Wimbledon, and the Prince sauntered in just when the men were finishing their meal. With a penknife he opened the huge drum that held the Christmas presents. When he was asked to keep the penknife as a memento he laughingly handed over a halfpenny to the donor “just to ward off bad luck.” Handing round the prizes he insisted on going down into the body of the hall where the men sat, so that ambulance men should not have to assist them from their seats. One man remarked to my friend that the Prince was shorter than he expected him to be, adding rather pensively: “I used to be about that height myself once.” He had lost both his legs. PARIS COMEDY. This story comes to me from Paris, with the personal guarantee of a trustworthy correspondent for its exact truth. An American lady in Paris, who is not without social importance and political influence, was using her ’phone to call up a friend. Though she speaks French well, she does so with a slightly perplexing American twang. The hello girl had some difficulty in hearing what she said, and exclaimed sotto voce, but clearly enough for the lady to hear her, “To Hell with the U.S.” After seeking redress from several officials in vain, including the maire, the indignant American lady went to the U.S. Ambassador himself. That dignitary’s feelings maybe pictured, on being bothered with this comparatively ridiculous affair midst the crash of Ministries and the repudiation of Yankee war loans. RECOGNISED. But the lady was obstinate. So they took, her to the telephone exchange, where she was confronted with 25 hello girls, and asked to pick out the culprit. Nothing daunted she had all the girls paraded past her, and each one had to ejaculate “To Hell with the U.S.’’ . The aggrieved lady identified the voice of one girl as that of her phone talk, and the girl admitted that she was indeed the offender. What happened to the girl, in the present strained state of FrancoAmerican relations, I am unable to say. But one Paris newspaper promptly related the incident and headed it “Twen-ty-five ’phone girls damn the U.S.” Pro-

bably French opinion on the Boulevards

is well content with the denouement, - and more so .than most American residents in cynical Paris. SPATES OF SPEECHMAKING. Some of our Society hostesses seem to be borrowing ideas from the 8.8. C. The ordinary person in the street has an insatiable desire to listen to the speeches of our well-known public men and public women. That is why it is nearly always a celebrity who is invited to make the public appeal for charities that is broadcast every Sunday evening. On behalf of charity, also, one or two titled ladies are now making arrangements to transfer the programme of the 8.8. C. to their own drawing-rooms. The cocktail party is a thing of the past, and guests are now invited to come and listen to a public discussion on some topic of the

day, the invitation being accompanied by an awe-inspiring list of the people who promise to speak. Dinner parties at one or other of tire popular restaurants, generally precede these oratorical orgies in Mayfair, so the proper after-dinner atmosphere is created for impromptu witticisms. DUCHESS’S FRIEND. The Duchess of York’s new Lady-in-Waiting, Mrs. Geoffrey Bowlby, is a close friend who is now a widow. Her young husband was killed in action quite early in the War. As a girl the Duchess spent a lot of her time in Hertfordshire, and the Bowlbys are one of the oldest of the county families,, with a fine old family

residence. Mrs. Bowlby’s father was a famous Irish Peer, Lord Valentia, an exGuardsman who was for many years one of the best-tailored and best-set-up MJP.’s at Westminster. Lord Valentia’s fame and name still survive there, and are likely long to do so. Because h® was the sagacious parliamentary Mess President, if one may use an Army term, who founded the celebrated Valentia Vat, in which the House of Commons matures its specially blended whisky. They need good whisky , in an institution that makes the licensing laws but never observes them. AXED PEERESS. There is a good deal of curiosity, apparently shared by the lady herself, as to why Lady Snowden has been retired from her 8.8. C. directorship. She states emphatically that she did not herself retire, or take any steps 1 in that direction, but has been abruptly “axed.” Though the emolument connected with the post is quite a respectable salary, Lady Snowden probably feels most keenly the loss of a job in which she took both pride and interest. She was always a most active director, and never let anything detach her from closa attention to the 8.8. C. work. Those' Socialists who enjoy provoking piquant situations are now significantly emphasising the fact that Lady Snowden’s successor on the 8.8. C. board, Mrs. Hamilton, has written a glowing eulogy on the Prime Minister, whose personal relations with the Snowdens has never been excessively cordial. TOWER WEDDING. We are to have, as the last social event of note in the Old Year, a wedding in the Tower of London. This is almost unprecedented in modern times. I believe there was, some six years ago, a Tower wedding, the bride in that case being the daughter of one of the official warders, but no Society marriage has taken place there within recollection. The bride in this case will be Miss Dorothea Staveley-Hill, and her bridegroom is to be Captain Fergus Forbes, of the Coldstream Guards, who are at present stationed on duty in the Tower. Miss Staveley-Hill may set a new Society fashion, for after all is said and done, a Tower wedding takes the' shine out of even St. Margaret’s, Westminster, for romantic interest and cachet. The Chapel Royal of St. Peter-ad-Vincula is the Tower church, the ancient bell of which has, it is to be feared, more often in its history tolled than chimed merrily. EMBARRASSING. A lady journalist has just been confiding to me her sensations during what was to her quite a novel experience. It was necessary that she should be. Xrayed, and she went to a Harley-street specialist for that purpose. Fully clothed as she was, she stood up inside a cabinet rather like a telephone-box that had undergone a drastic slimming course. Then the specialist switched on the Xrays, and peered for results through the glass sides of the cabinet. This lady told me that it suddenly occured to her what a remarkable, situation she occupied, standing there outwardly fully dressed, but actually, so far as the examining doctor was concerned, not only without clothes at all, but actually without even flesh. She consoled herself, however,

with the reflection that nothing could be more decorously “Victorian” than a skeleton, which was what she must have looked to the distinguished Harley-street practitioner. ? . ANTIDOTE. London has just had an all-too-rare chance of enjoying the performances staged by the travelling repertory theatre of the Arts League of Service. This is the nearest thing we have to the Russian Chauve Souris, and its old folk songs are every bit as good as any Bohemian gipsy choruses. Under the inspiration of Miss Eleanor Elder, who is also the star turn, this company is giving cinemasodden country-folk as well as townpeople an opp"~t unity to appreciate something better than American film ethics and art. The London programme was a delightful one, but one of the best items, a skit on rural concert parties, has had in country areas to be discreetly dropped. The rural audiences failed to detect the comedy, or, worse still, oddly resented it! It would be difficult to imagine more flattering dramatic criticism! I liked most the little comedy in which, after fooling a self-made magnate into paying five times more than he intended for her Victorian home—on purely old-world sentimental grounds— Miss Elder gaily lights a gasper and calls for a cocktail. ALL WRONG. We were assured that Christmas pantomime was a dying institution. But this year London is staging more than ever, and only the conscientious high-brows profess to deplore the revival. They prefer, of course, something Russian and gloomily macabre for the Christmas festival. Fortunately managers realise that a really rollicking panto, with plenty of easy fun, catchy tunes, and pretty girls, is what the majority of people want at this season. Nor is there much truth in the cynical legend that grown-ups, who pretend to be bored with it for the sake of the little ones, are more appreciative of panto than the youngsters. But I enter one solemn and indignant caveat. To the Vaudeville’s Cinderella, though Miss Diana Lincoln is the delightful principal girl, they have a male actor as principal boy. This is fiat heresy—a deadly “breech”. with tradition. Who wants to gaze on a pair of masculine legs? LATEST EYELASH FAD. Harley-street eye specialists are, I am told, confidently expecting more business in the near future. They are banking on the new fashion for brighter eyelashes, which is the latest feminine craze. Like most fashion absurdities, it comes from Paris, but shows signs now of taking fashionable Mayfair more or less by storm. There are several sorts of eyelash treatment. One consists of sticking long artificial lashes on to the existing real ones. This has a grave disadvantage, as the attached lashes are very apt to moult as the fair wearer grows heated at dinner or in the dance hall. But the film vamp has taken it up enthusiastically, and one really beautiful actress in a current film, makes herself look absurd by wearing two-inch eyelashes that sweep her sumptuously decorated cheeks. Other eyelash treatment involves dyeing

the real eyelashes either silver or in brighter colours. A lady has already been seen abroad in the West End whose advanced evening dress included rainbow lashes. . . BARLEY. It is always possible to be sure of one thing when any really new up-to-date movement gets started. Eventually it will revert to the elementary principles of stolid antiquity. Thus disciples of the slimming cult in fashionable Mayfair have just made , a great discovery. They have been informed, on the highest Harley Street authority, that for their special and peculiar purposes there is nothing like Scotch broth. It appears

i the barley, that plays so important a part ■ in that familiar soup, is simply “it” for : feeding without fattening. And as slim- ■ ming, despite rumours that the latest dress models encourage a little roundness here and there, is still de rigueur, Society dames are making Scotch broth their sheet anchor this Winter. You will hardly take up a West End menu without finding it in the place of honour. I am only waiting now to hear that Harley Street’s very latest cure for colds is rubbing the nose with a tallow candle. PUTTING BACK THE * CLOCK. There is a movement to revive the At Home. The movement originates in political circles, but is not due to the Merry Wives of Westminster, that group of good-looking hostesses who are setting themselves to build up afresh the glories of the political salon. The wives of several ex-Ministers, however, are now giving regular weekly At Homes. They contracted the habit when their husbands were still members of the Government, and the At Home resolved itself more or less into an official re- , ception. The At Homes to which we are now bidden are still afternoon affairs, but with the differences that cocktails generally take the place of the tea and toasted cakes that were served of yore. TENNIS OR GOLF? It is only a lucky few amongst lawn tennis players who get the opportunity I of wintering in South Africa, on the ■ Riviera, or in the West Indies. The I less fortunate have to turn to other pursuits to keep themselves fit dumig the I winter months. Miss Stammers, who J has been officially ranked No. 3 amongst I lady players, has solved the problem to ' her complete satisfaction. She has taken lup golf and lacrosse with equal enthusiasm. It is evident, moreover, that she is going to take golf very seriously, for she has put herself in training under no less a person than Abe Mitchell. Many lawn tennis fans look upon Miss Stammers already as a potential champion of the summer game. It would be a pity if the fascination of the Royal and Ancient should wean her from her first love.