ROUNDABOUT Meeting People and Seeing Places

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 37, 24 February 1939, Page 21

ROUNDABOUT Meeting People and Seeing Places

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MURIEL

LEWIS

M-G-M Presents .. .

the week-end of Wellington’s lovely surroundings -of the beauty to be- had within a short distance of the city in almost any direction. I was sitting with friends at an amazing window in a house that, ‘‘like an cagle’s nest, hangs from the -crest’’ ofa broom-grown steep at LEastbourne, bordering a stretch of real native bush. The wide, unbroken view, in mauves and greys with sweeping lines of silver, lay around us, and I was envious till I remembered what we busy city folk have at our very doors. WiEWS! Have you noticed the street view from the pavement opposite Stewart Dawson’s Corner, looking down both Customhouse Quay and Lambton Quay to the Bank and the Post Office? You'll get areal thrill if you pause just long enough to put the picture. back a hundred years. See the Bank of New ‘Zealand in 1840-with a HEARD a great deal over p

small boat tied to a post in the sea just behind it. Watch Edward Gibbon Wakefield tramp up the steps and in through the front door-hear him call a greeting to the accountant and his clerk inside, as he goes towards the door to the manager’s room. (Going to try for another overdraft?) You can’t believe it, can you? But it’s true. And do you know of the cannon sunk in the pavement of Bond Street, which was used long ago as a hitching-post for the horses of the country folk who came to town for stores? It takes a bit of finding-but it’s there. You don’t eall that a view? I ean’t see why not. THE road to professional singing does not often lead to a passion for beauty culture, but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t. In the case of Mrs. Elaine Dorgan it has done so, with yery successful results. For most of the years. of her boarding-school life, an Ultimate Object-the concert stage -was dangled before her eyes,

and at the age of nineteen she was released with a beautifully trained mezzo-soprano voice. And so she married. Almost immediately, however, Fate took a heavy hand. Mrs. Dorgan lost her husband in an air tragedy, and she, also in the erash, suffered a year’s convalescenee. Lying in hospital, the young widow read enough of beauty culture to become an enthusiast, and later, took up the study seriously. She has now one of those jobs that fill with envy and _ despair the hearts of stay-at-home stenographers and store attendants. She travels around Australia and New Zealand in the interests of the firm whose products she so cleverly and charminely demonstrates; a few months here, a few wecks there; always interested in the problems of others, ready to give advice in the most friendly and delightful manner. iM RS. DORGAN is intensely interested in the Russian Ballet, and is arranging a tea in Wellington in honour of the famous ballerina, Irina Baro-

_-- nova-as she has already done in all the States of Australia, where their visits coincided. They have already kept dates together at David Jones’s in Sydney, Myers’s in Melbourne, and at Finney-Iles’s in Brisbane. So now a real Russian Festival Tea will take place at the D.I.C. on Thursday afternoon at half-past 3. A Russian lady living in Wellington has been induced to oversee the cakes and so on-so that we may expect an atmosphere quite out of the ordinary. As we shall all be thoroughly ballet-minded by that time, we should be grateful to Mrs. Elaine Dorgan for receiving her celebrated guest in surroundings that give us all a chance of enjoying the proximity of one of the world’s greatest artists. ON’T you love the picture on this page of the young feneer? It’s Miss Barbara Gil-

lespie, who is instructor to two fencing clubs in Wellington (the Swords Club and the Jenkins Fencing Academy), to classes at the Wanganui Collegiate School and the Wanganui Girls’ College. She’s a most delightful lass, the steel of her enthusiastic youth tempered by a thorough knowledge of her job. , I ean’t help wondering whether this developing interest in the ancient sport will do something to counteract the too obvious effect of the Wellington winds on the deportment of our young lovelies. If so, it will be in the nature of a publie benefit,