GOING, GONE.

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 892, 8 February 1930, Page 24

GOING, GONE.

Emilie Polini s Farewell to Australia THE THINGS SHE LOVED Betty Riddell, a New Zealand journalist now in Sydney, writes the followmg account of the sale of Emilie Poliiu’s household effects. Ladies and gentlemen, I have furnitm-e “ °® erln S >' ou today some furniture . . the residue of the estate of a very charming lady . . . Emilie Polim, who died in America some time ago . . . lier daughter Patricia will benefit from the sale.” ™ rlCia Wl, ‘ Ladies and gentlemen, a very charming lady—the smiling dark Polini -whose small hands caressed the russet roses of this couch. The crowd of buyers swelter in a room too near the roof, the dust rises Phi ; w Carpets of pale sold and Chinese blue, and swims about, the mirrors which reflected her soft eyes rhe auctioneer swings his hammer, shouts his wares, the assistant holds them up—one by one the things she loved go down for their amount of silver. The glass and china are shown, sold and bundled out of the way. Ladies in satin and carters in hessian leave finger marks on Spanish mahogany and damask drapes There is offered a Toby jug, a set of door knobs, a Norman Lindsay et ching of a frightened girl creeping down stairs.

Emilie Polini was the heroine of countless comedies and of a more in timate tragedy of marriage and motherhood, and she has become a sort of tender legend to the Australian stage The law humiliated her when she was alive and vanquished her when she was dead, and now' the practical world against which she fought so fiercely has beaten her.

- It . has scattered her goods into a hundred homes, and there is no more Emilie Polini.

The theatres that Polini knew are changed, her audiences are gone or they forget. There remains only a record in the court, and the background of her home, broken up todav m a city auction room. The hammer came down on her treasures, and on

There is no more Emilie Polini. Ladies and gentlemen—goinc going—gone!