FEMININE INTERESTS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, 17 July 1930, Page 4

FEMININE INTERESTS

PERSONAL AND FASHION NOTES. How the Duke and Duchess of York Spend their Week-ends: The Duke and Duchess of York took Naseby Hall as much in order to get quiet week-ends away from London as to give the Duke a convenient centre from which to hunt with some of the famous Leicestershire packs. Although they are both busy people, who deserve quiet spells between rounds of engagements, they are also very fond of having their friends with them in an informal way. They very wisely spare themselves the fatigue of week-end guests, but frequently after hunting the Duke returns to Naseby accompanied by friends for a dinner-supper, and there may be music, the wireless, or quiet conversation to pass the evening hours along. Sunday is a quiet, restful day for the Duke and Duchess. The only set item in their programme is attendance at Naseby village Church. Princess Elizabeth does not accompany her parents to the service, although she envies very much her cousin, the youthful Lord Lascelles, who, since he was six years old, has been taljen to church by his mother. Princess Mary, and who listens most Intently while his father, Lord Harewood, reads the lessons.

Harewood is within such easy motoring distance of many friends of the Duke and Duchess that they are rarely alone for luncheon, and sometimes the Prince of Wales or the Duke of Gloucester joins them. The Duke of York is very fond of exercise. Like the Prince of .Wales, indeed, he finds it an absolute necessity if he is to keep fit in his strenuous life, and he often has a round of golf on Sunday afternoon, sometimes with the Prince as opponent.

The garden at Naseby, which is not large or elaborate, but is an improvement on the strip of ground which is all the Duchess can call her own, at her house in Piccadilly, attracts her and the small Princess Elizabeth while the golfers are away. It is said that the Duohess was once heard to say, in rather a pathetic tone of voice: “I wish I had a garden," and the grounds in which Naseby Hall stand make up to her a little for what she misses so much in town. The Duchess has inherited from her mother, Lady the tremendous gift of making any place where she is, homelike and restful. She has brought a new and delightful atmosphere into, the rooms at Naseby Hall, which she has also beautified by the addition of pieces of furniture, pictures and books sent specially from 145, Piccadilly. There are always lots of flowers everywhere, and her own charming presence is a joy in itself to her guests. So many of them say that, away from the strain of her public appearances, she is even more sweet and charming—which hardly seems possible—than when one comes across her in London. The Remarkable Love Story of Wagner and Liszt’s Daughter: Frau Cosima Wagner, the daughter of Liszt and widow of Richard Wagner, died at Bayreuth recently, says a writer in a London paper. She was ninety-three years of age, and had survived her famous husband by fortyseven years. She had a romantic I history, and her marriage with | Wagner was the climax of an extraordinary triple friendship between her father, Wagner and Hans von Bulow, one of the most famous of German conductors.

Her father, when a young man of twenty-four, and already a celebrity—the friend of Paganini, Berlioz, Chopin, George Sand, and many other notable men and women —eloped from Paris in 1835 with Marie d’Agoult, daughter of the Count de Flavigny, and wife of Count Charles d’Agourt, Master of Horse to the Dauphin of France. The lovers went to Switzerland, and here their first child was born. Cosima, the second child, was born at Bellagio, on Lake Como, on December 25, 1837.

Cosima, at the age of nineteen, married Hans von Bulow, then a pianist of the first rank, a pupil of Liszt, and, like Liszt, a great champion of Wagner, then struggling against poverty and the furious hostility of most of the world. Von Bulow adored Liszt, and ■ called him "Illustrious Master." Liszt idolised Wagner, and Wagner wrote to Liszt, "I regard you as my saviour himself." Such was the extraordinary relationship between the three men, when von Bulow fell in love with Cosima, who had oome to stay with her father in Berlin. Four years after Cosima married von Bulow. She was staying in. Bavaria, following the Weimar Music Festival of 1861, when her father, with Wagner, paid her a visit. Wagner had seen her on her wedding journey at his house in Zurich four years before. Now he fell in love with her. “He found her," writes M. Guy de Pourtales, in his book, Franz Liszt, “shy and seductive. This ardent and concentrated man of almost fifty, so unhappy in his own household, expanded in the company of this beautiful feminine Liszt, whose soul he divined that he had attracted just as he had captured that of her father.” Then, when Cosima was in mourning for her sister, she met Wagner in Leipzig, where von Bulow, her husband, was playing a new concerto by Liszt, her father. Veiled in black, pale, Cosima seemed," says M. de Pourtales, “to have come from another planet. The whole world outside became mere shadow-play for these two beings, who were already living entirely in one another. Yet they said nothing.

"It was only on November 28 of the following year, in Berlin, through which Wagner was passing, that, seated side by side on the cushions of a landeau, they made their avowals. Between Bulow and Wagner there had existed for almost twenty years a spotless friendship, and in the younger the same mad passion of adoration as in Liszt. But the time for resistance had passed.” Cosima had become Wagner’s secretary, and she now shared his daily life. Von Bulow ignored everything, “unable to find any screen against the catastrophe which he tried not to see.” At last Cosima prepared to join Wagner in Lucerne. Bulow showed “heroic fortitude.” There was a divorce, Cosima married Wagner at Lucerne in 1870, and when he died in Venice in 1883, it was thought, says M. de Pourtales, that Cosima would die too. She recovered, and for more than forty years remained “the vital heart of Bayreuth," the shrine of Wagner. Paris Summer Fashions: Accounts of the recent Paris openings revealed that important houses again featured the late afternoon frock. This is a type of costume far more closely related to the evening mode than to the afternoon mode as it used to be before acute romanticism set in. It has almost as many titles as the Prince of Wales—besides the late afternoon frock, it is called the formal afternoon or informal evening dress, the daylight dinner and restaurant dress, the race dress, the cocktail dress. They vary a good deal, of course, but there is this much in common—they all have long, full

skirts, and a general air of semiformality appropriate to many summer occasions. Appropriateness is the A of fashion’s ABC; the right dress for the right occasion is fashion’s first law. This is pretty trite, but it can' bear repeating when the late afternoon frock is under consideration, for no other phase of to-day’s mode is so full of pitfalls. It seems hardly necessary to say that this sort of dress is not to be worn on the street, yet observation indicates that an occasional wearer considers it the ideal costume for a brisk walk. Decidedly, it is a dress for the leisured and somewhat formal hours; for women who spend the summer at resorts or country homes, and, in town, for hostesses given to formal bridge, tea or other parties. With a jacket or cape and a hat, it may go down to dinner or the theatre when one’s escort does not dress; without them it is sufficiently formal for many summer evening parties. If an examination of your life and ways convinces you that the late afternoon or dinner frock has a place in your wardrobe, then by all means indulge. It is a charming fashion, and it is interpreted in such a variety of moods that every woman can find the one she likes the best. Mostly it has a high decolletage, but not always. Skirts are invariably long and usually even. Sleeves may be short, threequarter, or long; if there is no sleeve, a capelet or jacket of a bit of drapery pretends to cover part of the arm. Patou showed long-sleeved dinner frocks of black lace and chiffon, but others sleeveless but accompanied by jackets. Lelong, who christened them “late afternoon gowns,” sponsored the sleeveless frock with a cape. Ardanse’s new collection included several Sunday night dresses that were slightly reminiscent of her smashing hit at the February openings—that wing-sleeved bracelet dress that was seen everywhere. Martial et Armand was another featured the afternoon frock. Little puffs at the elbow were noted on some frocks there —a hint that the leg-o’-mutton sleeve may be on its way back. Worth liked short coats or separate capes with his frocks.

While everybody else is busy turning out "afternoon” clothes to be worn in the evening, Vionnet added to the general confusion by making evening dresses with high decolletages. One of her new frocks in white crepe roma was built up straight to the collarbone in black.

Brought Up on Strict Lines: There are many pretty girls about, but among the most beautiful are certainly those who came out the same season—-I mean Lady “Georgie” Curzon and Miss Angela Nevill (writes a London correspondent). They both have perfect complexions and delicious little features, and—rare in these days—charming manners. But then, they have been brought up on stricter lines than many girls are in these modern times. They are never allowed to go to parties and dances unless chaperoned, and Lady ‘‘Georgie” still has to do a certain amount of study and reading. She was looking very pretty when I saw her at a big dance recently, wearing a long, trailing irock with a high waist ,in soft silver net over a silver slip. I should not think this particular frock was home-made, but I know that many of Lady Georgiana Curzon’s pretty .dresses are made at home.

Vogue for Fresh Flowers: You can’t be a constant attendant at this season’s dances without becoming aware of the steady vogue for shoulder sprays of fresh flowers. Possibly it has its birth in the number of patterned chiffon, faconne, or taffeta frocks one sees about, whose designs do not adapt themselves readily to any trimming save that introduced in self-colour. That shoulder spray in many cases proves just the chic touch needed Tor relief, whether it be of humble home origin with sprays of maidenhair carefully introduced, or else the more sophisticated product of a florist’s handling. One delightful spray in autumn shades merited a close inspection a day or so ago. It seemed incredible that after our wealth of winter frosts sufficient autumn leaves should 'still survive to tone with flame-coloured arbutilons even in one small spray. But, after all, it’s the florist’s art to turn every spot or speck of colour to good advantage. That ruddy foliage was nothing more nor less than strawberry leaves. Cotton for Court Wear:

The example which the Queen has set in deciding to include cotton gowns in her wardrobe this season, with the purpose of helping the Lancashire cotton industry has already had its effect on women in many different walks of life, says a London writer. One of the most interesting responses to the Royal command has come from several young debutantes, who visited their dressmakers to see what could be done in the way of a cotton Court dress with an underlining of taffeta or some other material possessing stability. Although the cotton fabrics for which the Queen expressed a preference when she was shown patterns were mostly in blue, she has yet to make her selection from the many materials Mr E. H. Symonds, the managing director of Reville’s, took down to Windsor for her Majesty’s inspection. “How charming they are,” was her comment on looking through them. Princess Helena Victoria is another member of the Royal Family who has chosen a cotton afternoon frock, also in blue. It is a cotton ninon in a marble pattern, with a touch of black and grey in it.

An 18th. Century Art: Yet another form of art in which the Queen has developed an interest is painting on glass, which was done extensively in the eighteenth century in England and in China, and her Majesty spent an hour or so in a King Street gallery the other morning examining a rare collection.

Sir Arthur du Cros, the owner of Craigweil House, is one of the few private collectors of these curios and valuable paintings; Lord Sandwick is another.

The Queen saw Chinese landscapes painted on glass from the back, worth each more than £SOO, and portraits of the British wives of British merchants painted in Chinese homes in Chinese dress, as was the fashion about 200 years ago. Ernest Thesiger, the actor, is one of the few modern painters on glass by the same method. The Woman Aviator: Some day an aviation book will be specially written on the history of the woman aviator. Old-time myth has no heroine attempting, like the Celtic Prince Blaudud, of Icarus, to fly with A;ery unsuitable wings. Women waited until aviation was in the sphere of the practical, and tfcjen they came in fairly early. It is strange to look up an old magazine, and read in it a tribute to Miss Harriett Quimby, the first woman to be licensed as an air pilot—and that as far back as 1911. In that year she obtained her certificate, going up 200 ft., less than that being sufficient. She was also the first woman to fly across the English Channel. She is reported to have said, not long before her accidental death, 18 years ago, that ‘‘woman would regard flying from its sporting and not from its professional aspect. Why should women be air drivers any more than drivers on locomotives or captains on ships ”

The war, it seems, interrupted women very much in their new en-

thusiasm—men were doing such wonderful stunts in the air that anything women could do was unremarkable. Early in the ’twenties, however, there was a revival among the women. An American paper tells us that there are now 70 women with pilots’ certificates in America, but that only seven of these have qualified themselves, by 200 hours or more of solo flying, to act as transport pilots. New Fashion for Nannie: The smart Nannie in the London park is seldom seen nowadays wearing the bonnet that was once the only wear, and a pioneer institute for training children’s nurses has now changed its uniform wear from a bonnet to a neat, brown straw hat.

This, change was made because nurses complained that a bonnet would not “sit” upon a shingled head. Shingling is now quite usual among nurses, and, one would think, much more sensible and hygienic, though some mothers think it detracts from the dignity of the Nannie. It is certainly a sign of the times that even at this institute, the founder of which was visited by the Queen on her last birthday for a congratulatory talk, it has been necessary to remind nurses that smoking must not be indulged in while on duty or in the nurseries.