The Letters Of Annabel Lee

Radio Record, Volume I, Issue 28, 27 January 1928, Page 6

The Letters Of Annabel Lee

My dear Elisabeth: Evadne came and went this week, after her tour abroad, in a blue and green suit of travel, an Arlenish Green Hat, and earrings of jade that suited well her slender oval face and expression of sparkling vivacity. Also I had the opportunity of welcoming Mrs. H-, who made an effective passage down the gangway garbed in a suit of stockinette, cleverly dissembled to a slight roughness of surface and markings skilful and deceitful enough to achieve a close resemblance to the hard-worked epidermis of the domestic calf, the charm of which age cannot wither nor custom stale. I am told that, even after Bond Street, our dressing is quite admirable in taste and modishness, except that we have not yet widened our hat brims, particularly in front. Very distinctive are the clothes secured by Evadne, who on a gshallow purse, aided by a taste that is uncrring, does wonderful things. Particularly was I charmed with a mole coat of fur. of a chie and slimness remarkable, and a cheapness that made me sigh. Much she has to tell of English hospitality, of royal gracious welcoming of a stranger in a strange land; of English homes entrancingly oak beamed and stately of staircase, and gardens primrose-starred and thick with daffodils. Interested in many things, particularly the cause of education, she was impressed by a school in a very poor district, where hundreds of children in the slum area are well and truly trained in the art of musie as well as in more utilitarian subjects. The singing of these children showed a quality of joyfulness, an exactitude of method, and heauty of modulation, admirably attained by one who is a master in musicianly knowledge and understanding of child psychology. Evadne was taken to hear a concert of the trained voices of two thousand children who sang with remarkable beauty and appeal; and also was told that these youthful followers of the muse sang for the wireless, and, from the impression gained of their melodious achievement and charming articulation, I found myself envying possessors of wireless sets in London. Do you’ observe the waistline creeps up and up and up? On the humming thoroughfare, plain and | 0 S000 00 0 a 00>

pretty maidens are wearing brief skirts ruffled to somewhere very near the human waist. In panic I watch the steady ascent, for to me, and to many, the long line is sartorial salvation. A figure that is Junoesque, a limb that is perfect, is adaptive; but imperfection clings to a mode that is merciful, and short legs look better, move better, create a more successful illusion with a not too clearly indicated waist. On conveying myself to an early exhibition of the autumn modes, I find that true and tried ally, the ensemble of navy blue, much to the fore in several attractive silken creations, one with a beguiling hint of powder blue introduced unexpectedly and with success; another boasting a jumper of comfort and elegance, with rose and blue and green stripes that, curiously enough, although they go round and round as insistently as those on a vulgar beer barrel, by a strange skill have the effect of lessening, and not augmenting, that bugbear of modern matron and maid, incipient avoirdupois. .

In these days of demolished conventions, grotesque smears and splashes of colour that we are told represent intimate emotion, staccato cxelamations of an ugliness and ¢xasperation unexampled, which are looked upon us inspired by devotees of the cult, it is interesting to be informed by that arch-priest of highbrows, Mr. Osbert Sitwell, that the standard of beauty remains lofty; he being of the considered opinion that, matched against the beauties of preeeding ages, those of the present day can more than hold their own, the tendency to uniformity being unable to eradicate the stamp of individual loveliness. Quite often he sees faces that in the next few years will assuredly launch a thousand ships. It is encouraging to be assured by this very superior, though sincere, lover of Art (particularly on the Sitwellesque plane) that there is loveliness now just as in the days of Romney, Gainsborough and Helen of Troy. Mr. Sitwell’s wife is a very beautiful and uncommon type, if we are to judge from a group of photographs which are the work of a 22-year old artist, who is responsible also for an astounding portrait of the Sitwell sister, a poscuse par excellence, who has elected to be portrayed in "lying in state,*"? and succeeds in making a 1) ee) Sa) Sa (SE O

quite triumphant study of a corpse, which common, everyday word, one feels, would be painful and disconcerting to the subject of the picture, the possessor of remarkable intellectual beauty and many gifts and graces, from which the saving salt of humour obviously has been omitted. Mr. Arnold Bennett is somewhat unpopular for the moment, owing to the doubtful taste of his strictures concerning the absence of the Royal Family from the funeral service of the veteran novelist and poet, whose ashes lie in Westminster Abbey, while his heart remains, as always, in the country he loved and immortalised. My. Bennett’s admirable and buoyant novel "Mr. Prohawk" has been dramatised and is running suecessfully in London; the principal actor making up with extreme similitude as a replica of Mr. Bennett himself. Quite an idea this, for the lovers of the limelight, the Margots of this world, of whom there are many, both small and great. It is only necessary to write a play, beg, borrow or pay an actor to make up in your own image; and behold, before you will pirouette, or strut, or glide yourself as you long to be. Tf you ate lucky, that is to say, and pick xour actor carefully; there being al-

ways the off chance that we might "see ourselves as ithers see us’, an even more interesting experience, and as humbling, possibly, as to hear frank personal comments repeated by a kind and candid friend. An intriguing idea has been advanced by a courageous citizen of the under world concerning the always interesting subject of the holy estate. This brave lady thinks and hopes that one day, matrimony will be preceded by a trial trip, a preliminary canter, so to speak, over the meadows of romantic experience, which, one surmises, would be apt to become a little battered en route, as the merry men and maids went their rocky way, making short work of those dull, but necessary, bulwarks of convention, created for the h=" tering up of average morality, which is inclined to be wobbly, and not for those unfaltering, bright, bohemian spirits that in our optimistic moments we imagine ourselves to be, and in reality very seldom are. In any case, as always, the way of the pioneer remains hard. Your

ANNABEL

LEE