The Letters of Annabel Lee

Radio Record, Volume I, Issue 21, 9 December 1927, Page 6

The Letters of Annabel Lee

My Dear Elisabeth,The Christmas month seems to (have come in even more hastily than usual, and the shops are filled to overflowing with seductive gewgaws that ravish the hearts of old and young. Particularly am I impressed, now that hordes of them throng the streets, the girls slim and colourful, the boys in white flannels, with the beauty and strength of young New Zealand. And intelligent withal. While wandering across hill and dale in search of a flat-which sounds so like a human entity, doesn’t it?--Nona and I lost our bearings several times amid the twists and turns of sequestered spots, where we were tracking down the ideal "two rooms and kitchenette" like a pair of sleuth hounds. And those who restored us to the right track, answered our enquiries briefly and to the point, without a trace of the puzzled distrust apt to appear in the face of the grown-up suddenly accosted, were boys of twelve or so. Full of go and ginger, entirely devoid of curiosity (or was this just natural good manners?), with nice freckled faces and carroty locks, they almost literally helped us over the stile. Nona’s shallow purse and fastidious taste are hard to reeoncile, and she is still homeless. In one strange place of doomful aspect, a "foreign body’ eyed us distrustfully. "I want’ no young gals here, with their swearing and their cocktails!’ he announced truculently, as he wrathfully eyed the petite and slender figure that deludes so many into classing Nona as one of the Very Young. After a chat, however, in which there was an opportunity to grasp the really remarkable astuieness of the fairy he had condemned, his opinion changed. "Not so young as you look. You ain’t no chicken, I ean see that!" he stated, with conviction, as we departed, leaving his flat on his hands. Quite a lot of desirable nests there are, with views, fascinating modern stoves, penny-in-the-slot caliphonts, and musical instruments tabooed, all very desirable to the lover of peace and the soft ways of life; but invariably going, going, or already gone to some nabob. Alas, when the perfect home, the perfect partner, is at last discovered, he, she, or it is so frequently just out of reach.

Which reminds me of that play by Somerset Maugham, in which he elaborates the theory that when the darling of our eyes, the desire of our heart, is at the long last within our reach, we don’t want it any more. Wherein I don’t agree with him; that is to say, if we knew what we wanted, which few women do, Talking of youth, how diverting, to be sure, is that modern young man, Mr. Beverley Nicholls, clever compiler of "Crazy Pavements," who is so ingenuously interested in his own ego, writing his autobiography at the early age of twenty-five. A year or so later, he now gives a smiling world the explanation of Why He Remains a Bachelor, tactfully telling that it is because of the essentially transitory nature of human emotions, forbidding him to tie himself irrevocably to Only One; and further mentioning that, being eminently adapted to paddling his own canoe in luxurious loneliness, he will not trust himself to that sex which he shrewdly suspects are hopelessly bad housekeepers. Well, well! From Dunedin comes a tale of rain and rain and rain, drenching, hopeless, unabated, reducing the gayest hearts to pessimism, and entirely ruining that great occasion, the People’s Day at the Show. One reegrets this the more, as the Southern City is so ready in response to any and every good cause, be it civic, social, or philanthropic. Perhaps more particularly does it rise to anything connected with arts, the recent reception to Joseph Hislop being a particularly successful function; for is he not one of the elect, a great artist, an Edinburgh man, no less, and One of Us! The clannish Scot asks no more of the chosen, and on this occasion gave a right royal party in the Somerset Hall, the decorative scheme carried out in tall glimmering poppies and purple patches of beautiful blooms. Many interesting and notable people turned up to honour this musician of charm and achievement. Mrs. Hudson was a vivacious and. delightful hostess, and Mrs. Wilkie, so long a notable figure in the world of music, was greeted gladly by many old friends, also receiving, as always, the affectionate homage of the younger generation, many of whom she has trained in the pleasant path of music and art generally.

Susan Ertz has put plenty of "punch" into her latest book, "‘Now East, Now West," a sparkling presentment of a pair of married Americans who go forth to England in a snobbish quest of social splashing on the part of the wife, and of the people that ambitious young woman met there and the giddy pinnacles she climbed. A brilliant portrayal of a not uncommon type that thoroughly believes in its own attractions and readily credits mere man, when he flatters and philanders, with the desire to do and dare all, and throw his bonnet over the windmill, if need be, for her sweet sake. Her fascinating Englishman was not in tke least desirous of anything of the sort, and Althea had a rude awakening, going thankfully back to her nice, stodgy, American husband, who meantime had been effectively consoled by an extremely clever and companionable lady of fifty summers, to whom Mrs. Ertz gives pride of place in her gallery of attractive women; so it would seem as though the pendulum veers from the young, lovely and _ sophisticated to the middle-aged and still more sophisticated. Thoroughly exhausted with househunting, we turned into a tea-room in Manners Street, where we were deafened with jazz, and then went forth and bought some attractive trifles in the way of mats and things for the dressing-table, fashioned of golden lace adorned with tiny flowerets ravishing enough to have come from the garden of Titania. Hats are good this season: with scanty trimming, and of supple and pliable straws. One of the cloche variety, with a yellow rose and a brown one, at a perilous angle, would make a lovely setting for the eyes of youth and its complexion; while the tawnyyellow chapeaux, that are so modish, when worn by the flaxen nymphs, who abound, will certainly persuade gentlemen to prefer blondes. The artificial flowers are beautiful enough to have come from Mars, where ’tis said the flowers of happiness grow; and somehow remind me of a poem I liked in my romantie youth:A lilybud, a pink, a rase, I'll give to you; But you must bring me oceans more, he true, be true! Your

ANNABEL

LEE