ROYAL GARDEN PARTY.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 579, 8 October 1932, Page 20 (Supplement)

ROYAL GARDEN PARTY.

At the Royal garden party, the last of the season, writes Nelle M. Scanlan, two of the sweetest girls were young Chinese, part of the Diplomatic corps. Young, their olive skin shone through the transparent muslin of their sleeves and shoulders. The patterned organdie of the exquisiteJy-eut dresses were of the daintiest colours. Their dark, shingled hair was slightly waved, a. touch of rouge under the eyes —eyes which were not very slanted —and they carried themselves with such easy grace and balanced their drooping hate as though of Western birth. Indeed, the West has much of deportment to learn from the East —their ease of movement, their poise of head, that lack of hearty clumsiness that speaks of a life of hunting and shooting and golf. The Indian women, with their lovely silken saris, and jewels studding their noses, were to be seen with one or two white women, in similar costume—European* who have married into the East. After an hour spent talking among their guests, the Royal party moved to the Royal Pavilion for tea, and under the Shemariah afterwards, the King and Queon received a number who were chosen for special presentation. Queued up, waiting for the moment when they would he bidden by the Chamberlain to come forward and meet the King and Queen, I found Mrs. Bean, daughter of the late Richard John Seddon, who was presented bv Sir Thomas Wilford. Nearby waited Mr. “Billie” Hughes, the onetime fiery Prime Minister of Australia. At that moment, Princess Mary and the Earl of Hare wood came from the tea pavilion, and the Princess Royal recognised Mr. Hughes. She stopped and spoke to him, but he is very deaf now, and his wife had to repeat very loudly in his ear her inquiries. Mrs. Bean told me that the King and Queen recalled many incidente connected with her father. “Mr. Seddon had a wonderful memory; he never forgot a face,” the King said to her. And then it was all over. The Royal procession, informal but definite, made its way through the curteeving crowd back to the East door. The band played “Clod Save the King.” The crowd, a little thinned now, began to scatter. Many who had not had tea or the famous raspberries and cream, drifted to the long buffet for guests. T stood on the steps | of the Palace, watching the last cf the gav crowd. Lady Asquith, in a white cotton frock, patterned with Liny flowers, and a white hat, old Dame Kendall, a true Victorian, in her taffeta, full and flowing, of parma violet, and her tiny bonnet to match. j „„d Lady Alexander in crushed straw I berry, were among the gue»U.