The Letters Of Annabel Lee

Radio Record, Volume I, Issue 30, 10 February 1928, Page 6

The Letters Of Annabel Lee

My Dear Elisabeth, How trying, to be sure, are those expansive people with long memories. One such I met recently, with whom I "mixed" in the over-vaunted period of schooldays. Lookirig me over reflectively, she sighed with a sympathy as deep as though I were already defunct. "I'd never, NEVER, have known you again," she informed me encouragingly. "Once your hair was curly, and quite a nice colour" (examining it, suspecting Inecto). "And, you poor thing, what makes you So Frightfully Thin!" as though it were a crime to be in the mode. Truth, and a human desire for the retort discourteous prompted a reply on the same rudely familiar lines, that I preferred a straightly brushed coiffure and a weight of eight-stone-five to locks crisply crimped and a figure to which years had bestowed unmistakable portliness; but reflecting that, when dealing with banality, discretion is the better part, I made a hurried adieu, the whilé an appraising gaze took in my essemble of success (I had hoped) of black and white, and the rest of me, down to reptile-clad feet. Later, chatting to Richard, this unwise woman commented adversely on my taste in clothes, adding, "Annabel must be ....or thereabout!" (I draw a veil). "You won’t believe me, but once upon a time she was pretty!" In consuming wrath Richard hastened to tell me this, and we both thought it an excellent joke, for, in the dear perversity of man, he thinks I still am! On conveying myself and another to a sale of sales, to which furiously flocks the entirely female population, the wonder obtruded as to why some attractive garments lie submerged until the advent of the Great Hustle. Endeavouring hurriedly to clothe myself for the holidays, had my eye lighted upon a suit of sandeoloured stockinette, it would undoubtedly have been mine, with its elegant line, and buttoned to the chin in manner seductive to one the slender column of whose throat approximates to that of the giraffe. Similarly with some simple gowns of merit, gracefully fashioned of the ever welcome crepe-de chene of most excellent colour and quality. Alas, now that we have replenished the wardrobe and paid the piper-or, if spendthrifts, still have to foot the bill -temptation is spread as a net before our willing feet, Assuredly an inspiration of the Evil One was the ee ee ee ee EEL, es EL, |,

First Cheap Sale. It may be that Eve that day descried a wrinkle instead of a dimple, a shade in the beauteous sparkle of those eyes that Adam loved, a dimming of the roseate pallor of perfection; and, as other Eves have done right down the ages, reflecting that her day was dying, she recklessly plunged into the purchase of new clothes, garbed ir which she emerged, the earliest New Woman of the World. A coat, cinnamon in hue, is to be had for a quite inadequate sum, of a check not too overpowering, a collar not too high, and an enveloping voluptuousness so dear when the nights grow chill and we no longer fare forth in Mr. Sidey’s too imsistent sunshine. Elegant dinner gowns that apparently reduce the figure, and not too direfully deplete the exchequer, are to be had for the buying; and though just now it may be there is neither the time nor the place nor the loved one all together, the night will come when Just the Frock for Me will come into its own, and when dining and doing a theatre with a friend of friends, he will rejoice in, without understanding, an especial radiance. First choose your frock, as Mrs. Beeton once said, or something like it. After that, suecess lies in the wearing. Yesterday I admired Mrs. G , who made a graceful call in a gown of hemlock blue, boldly embroidered round the hem of the quite long. tunic in modern barbaric design of colours the most bizarre. Of a height that is regal and unusually generous proportions in these thin times, with her poised grace and greying hair, her Junoesque figure never fails to attain distinction denied to smaller fry. The lawful possessor of one who does not weary in well-doing, and daily reminds her that she is a pearl among women, she is assured of an encouragement most welcome which, I am convinced, is a considerable aid to that perennial chie and charm. Miss Maude Royden is triumphantly candid in her lately published book, "I Believe in God." Born orator and preacher, she will have many admirers in New Zealand, where, being human, we like to be admonished, so long as we don’t have to live up to it. Actuated, there is no doubt, by a love for humanity, and ignoring natural reticence concerning intimate conviction, Miss Roy5 ee 7) eee, 2 eer, ee ee, ft ee fk es

den proclaims an unfaltering faith on lines of a tolerant Anglicanism. With conviction she states her view on matters ecclesiastical and the trend of religious thought; all most interesting in the present chaos of opinion, and provoeative of reflection on the greatest of themes, Miss Royden’s contribution to modern controversy being very helpful to those who fain would find a spiritual haven. From this cheerful and inspiring attitude towards our pathetic humanity, it is a long ery to the pessimistic philosophy of the great poet and novelist who so lately left us, and whose ashes lie, with those of the good and great of our nation, in Westminster Abbey. "We are flies to the gods, who kill us for their sport," writes Thomas Hardy; and most of those imperishable novels of his leave us with a sense of depletion, a dreary impression of human effort futile against the decree of destiny, the jeer of the little gods, the laughter of the Immortals. Alas, for Tess, in her youth so beautiful, innocent and gay, but powerless in the clutch of the tragedy that closes in upon her, fiapping its pat-like wings. Fortunately, as it happens, each of us looks at life through his own loophole, and mercifully to many is given a vision of ultimate good, and not of ultimate evil. | Emphasising the beauty of the world we live in are the poems of. Mr. W. H. Davies, super-tramp, delightful dawdler by the wayside. With his rare gift of simplicity of poetic expression, it is puzzling to understand why Mr. Davies should try his hand at novel-writing-and such inconspicuous novel-writing too. It is only when he leaves his everyday plot to look after itself, and leads us and his hero to a boat and reeds and a river that we recognise the dreamer and rover that we know. Better a few simple verses and love therewith, than a pretentious novel and ineptitude. Mr. Davies should stick to his last, so appealing in love of beauty of hedgerow, the golden world of morning, and butterfly "Songs of Joy." 4 poor life this if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare; No time to turn at Beauty’s glance, And watch her feet, how they can dance. Your

ANNABEL

LEE