Mundane Musings

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 98, 16 July 1927, Page 19

Mundane Musings

The Tip-Toe Sisters

Derek was at the window. “There go the Tip-toe Sisters,” he exclaimed, in scoffing tones. “The what?” said Maisie, following his glance. “The Tip-toe Sisters, displaying their world-renowned high-stepping-act. Watch me make the Wool worth building look like a one-storeyed bungalow,” snorted Derek. “You must be mad,” said Maisie, coldly. “Just because you happen to catch sight of Janet Anstruther going off to the theatre—she told me this morning they were going to 'Rosmersholm’ —and Violet Brown-Jones happens to be coming up the road. I don't know what ” “On her way back from Buckingham Palace, where she’s been havingtea with her old pal. Queen Mary,” said Derek, gloomily. “That is. if she can spare a minute from lunching at the Savoy with ‘the dear Duchess,’ or taking her second best tiara to the opera. It makes me sick. Tiptoeing may be good for the ankles, but it’s rotten for the temper.” “I don’t understand.” “Oh, yes, you do. Janet Anstruther’s taking poor Anstruther to an Ibsen revival, when she knows perfectly well that what he’d really enjoy would be a music-hall, or ‘Rookery Nook.’ That woman’s perpetually on tiptoes, intellectually, getting intense over Bach’s fugues, when I know that in her heart she prefers ‘Rose Marie,’ struggling miserably with Marcel Proust when she could be happy with Ethel M Dell, forcing the wretched Anstruther to leave his detective story, or the account of what the Tottenham Hotspurs did to Aston Villa, to take her to an exhibition of Epstein’s work, or listen to her reading aloud from some obscure Russian novelist.” “I don’t see why you should be so sniffy just because she’s trying to improve her mind.” “I shouldn’t be, if that was what she was doing, but I know it’s nothing of the kind. She doesn’t care twopence for all these highbrow books, and plays, and music. She’s just showing off and being silly and pretentious, and making her wretched husband just as miserable by her intellectual snobbery, as that other tiptoer, Mrs. BrownJones, is by all this social stuff.” “Violet Brown-Jones is an ambitious woman.” “She’s a very stupid one. A fellow at the club told me that Brown-Jones is in a very dicky position, financially, and it’s entirely on account of all this tiptoeing. She forced him to take n house at two hundred a year, instead of a hundred, which was all he could afford She insisted on keeping a Crossley, instead of a Ford, on having a mink coat, instead of a seal rabbit, or whatever you call the things. She’s entered Dicky for Eton, because Sherbourne isn’t good enough. She won’t go to that little place in Soho, because ‘everybody goes to Claridge’s, my dear,’ and she’s so busy finding out whether Mrs. Pipsqueak really is one of the Devonshire Pipsqueaks and not the Clapham kind, that she can hardly be civil when you meet her.” “She is rather awful,” admitted Maisie. “Still, no one wants to spend their entire life in a cheap suburb.” “Of course not. There’s no earthly reason why one shouldn’t try to ‘better oneself,’ as the maids say, intellect!.! ally and socially, but that’s quite a dif ferent thing from this perpetual ceaseless straining after ‘the dear Duchess.’ or Dostoievsky. Of all theatrical turns, heaven defend me from the Tiptoe Sisters, and all their acts.”