AN EASTERN NIGHT

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18796, 7 February 1931, Page 13

AN EASTERN NIGHT

SCINTILLATING JEWELS. INDIAN PRINCES APPEAR. One of the most brilliant assemblies seen in London in recent years was witnessed at Lancaster House, St. James’, when the Government entertained the Indian princes and the other delegates to the India Round Table Conference. The guests, who were received by Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, the Prime Minister, numbered 2000 and the garments of the Eastern potentates and their womenfolk were dazzlingly colourful and bejewelled, states a London writer. Crowds began to arrive before 10.15 and gathered in the central hall waiting for the Prime Minister, who took his stand with Miss Macdonald at the top of the stairs and received the Marquess of Reading as his first guest. The English M.P.’s and peers present were smothered in decorations and stars and ribbons covered the chests of most of the Indian delegates. The silver and gold brocades and the silk saris of the Indian women, and the coloured native uniforms and vivid turbaned heads of the men from India, made the room blaze and glitter. There was the Maharajah of Burdwan in plain black clothes covered with medals. There were splendid •Sikh potentates with heads crowned like kings and resplendent among them the Maharajah of Kashmir in a turban of light daffodil hue and superb brocaded tunic, his legs tight in white Johdpur trousers. There was the Duke of Atholl in kilts. And up the stairs pressed rajahs and ranees and diwans and even mullahs and khans, each a glory in native accoutrements and chromatic shades.

One of the most noticeable was the Maharajah of Jhalawar, with immense skirted coat of saffron silk, wearing a brilliant mauve head-dress shaped like the hat of a cardinal.

But English friends and visitors crowded round Mahomet Ali, the Mahonvraedan leader, and his brother. The elder wore a blaze of medals and rich ornaments and weapons and his brother stood, a huge, bearded figure, in full white robe. On the hands of some of his suite blazed pearls the size of sixpences and emeralds as big as "TUVKrtigeS.

Then there was that romantic figure, with its fierce moustaches and superb good looks—Sir Umar Hiyut Khan. His turban ended in a white crest of muslin and jewels worth a ransom, drawn from the depths of Golconda, glowed in the richest settings on his forehead. In the background was a shy figure which allowed itself to be announced among the last. Across the chest of this person ran a rainbow of ribbons and on peering round I discovered him to be Admiral Jellicoe. Seldom has the pomp and splendour of the East mixed more magically with the matter-of-fact drabness of the West. The Indian women guests outshone the men. They had chosen to appear in saris and robes of the most delicate gauzes and hand-embroidered muslins in the softer colourings of the East. A tall, handsome woman with liquid brown eyes and masses of black hair wore draperies of ivory muslin, needlerun in the most marvellous way in a design of tiny flowerets and butterflies. The tints were so true to nature, and yet so delicately worked, that only the closest examination revealed the full beauty of the pattern. Her sari was caught to her hair with a wonderful jewelled brooch and the edge of the ivory fold which covered her head was encrusted with a flower pattern in rose and silver threads. There were women in shawl-like robes of shimmering gold gauze shot through with old rose tones and others in cerise bordered with silver, and blue worked with the yellow that belongs to sunrays.

A pattern of silver squares decorated one exquisite sari and ivory-white draperies were embossed with the apple-blossom pinks and tender leaf greens of springtime. Soft silk brocades had their ground pattern picked out in metal threads, which scintillated as their wearers moved, and many of the beautiful gauzes were striped and bordered with a contrasting colour.