PARTIES ARE DEAD.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18203, 2 March 1929, Page 15

PARTIES ARE DEAD.

LADY CUNARD’S OPINION. VOGUE OF SOUPLESS DINNERS. Lady Cunard looked round, upon the host of people which filled her Grosvenor-square drawing-room recently • “Parties,” said Lady Cunard, “are dead.” Guests looked at each other; they looked round the walls of this great room, at the Marie-Laurencin pictures which delicate and aloof, had regarded so many of the most brilliant parties since the war. They looked at Lady Cunard, small, erect, vivacious, drawing her guests together, pulling a strand from there, inter-weaving them into a perfect pattern as in some great cat’scradle. And Lady Cunard said that parties were dead. The guests wondered at the para dox. But Lady Cunard is a clever woman; Lady Cunard is shrewd, and when she makes a pronouncement it is correct. Lady Cunard expounded her thesis. “The day of big parties,” she said, “is over. In future we shall have small dinners and luncheons, supper-parties for twenty or thirty people at the most; but no more routs and crushes.” A step in the right direction. The best hostess in Berlin, regarded also as the best hostess in Europe—with the exception, surely, of Lady Cunard herself—is a woman called Baroness Horsemann. Baroness Horsemann’s social activities are founded on two firm principles ; (a) She has never been konwn to entertain more than twenty people at a time. (b) She never, at any meal, gives her guests more than three course*. That is another thing; no more long dinners. The days of gastronomic excess are finished. Soup is finished—which means that some slang expert must think of a new phrase for “in the soup.” Lady Cunard says that she never gives soup to the younger generation. She gives them short, soup-less dinners. They prefer it.

THE ROOM I LOVE. The room I love is full of tasks Inviting me; I shall not shirk Their simple, pleasant busy-ness, The rhythm of familiar work. The room I love is full of thoughts Stored there in books and by the friends Who talk with me and leave behind A spirit that with silence blends. The room I love is full of peace For no one talks there for display, No one brings hate or prejudice And no one takes my peace away.