THE CHINA MAIL, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1952.
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THE CAN-CAN
It was the world of
THE GALLANTS
The World of Rosa Lewis
By Jack Miller
HE fame of Rosa Lewis, whose death was announced a few days ago, was a compact thing. Nine people in ten may never have heard the name, to the tenth and that would be a man-Rosa was a reality and a legend. And an age.
Her age was the Edwardian. "Or shall we be kinder and say her heyday was the Edwardian. Her age spanned the reigns, coming in with hansom cabs and refusing' to go out with doodle-bugs and rockets.
For Rosa was two things: the spirit of zociety on a night out a slightly raffish night out, if you like-and she was a silvery, Boul sitting deflant in on armchair, sipping champagne, while the bombs dropped around and the plaster fell on her.
Rosa was a legend-I said that; they said so many things about her, over so many years, that it is difficult to separate the corn from the truth.
That hotel of hers, for a start. The, Cavendish, in Jermyn Street, London. The gossips of the day sald that Edward VII gave it to her, and Lord Ribblesdale furnish- ed it.
But nobody ever proved those things, or tried to.
But we do know that Edward VII used to go there. Everybody did,
Everybody
who
was anybody; which means the bloods who were blades in the dim and distant, and are now staid old entries in the pages of Debrett or the Almanach de Gotha or the New York Social Register. Or, more likely, just u reference in Who Was Who,
They talked a lot about the Saturday- to Monday parties -which-Rosa-and-her- girls ran for wealthy
guests, but nobody
wrote much about them.
The kind
ONE WOMAN'S CURIOUS FAME WRITES 'FINIS' TO A VANISHED AGE---
ROSA, THE DEFIANT, QUE GENKLOUS *For me, champagne, For me quests. champagne."
Souvenirs, a visitors' book, a picture of the original Rippy.
There WES a lot more: Ilke that In the book, and many names: Baron Hirsch, who left King Edward £50,000 In his will and this. bit about Winston Churchill:-
By was cooking (for Lody Randolph Churchlit, 'her accond employer) and her son cam? into the kitchen and said: '13. the King coming?' I' thought ho was the hairdresser, su I called him 'Copper top" and told him to clear out."
But the story was written not by Rosa, but by an American Journalist called Law- ,woman
(on, and Rosa denied the whole lot and said the bobk was travesty."
it
'THE CAVENDISH · Through these doors -..
For 50 years she had that hotel, and for 60 years she had .:p companion, Miss Edith Jeffrey, "For-years and years she had a dog called Kippy, a West High- land white terrier.
Hippy was in, the trenches once, with some of Rosa's de parted guests: Kippy died and Kippy was rebom, but always there was a white terrier called Kippy at the Cavendish,
the end nobody knows how many. Kipples there have been.
During the two wars, the Cavendish, by nature a genteel "family" hotel, became agaili a meeting place for young men- briefly-about-town.
wonian såld she had spent the night before her wedding at the You could walk in any mom-. Cavendish, and the Bary said:
ing and seo letters for half a "Left Bam curly morning: dozen or more titled men jying Horrible. Doped up with brandy. on the hall table. You probably Married 12.35,"
still can:
The man she married whs
And you can still hear stories
Actually Rosa wrote her own story round the walls of the front room at the Cavendish; there hung 800 pictures of the famous: Edward VII and the Kalser and the Duke of Windsor,
Eden Sir William father
of Anthony Randolph not Bam, the man she left in of Rosa's legendary generosity; Churchill, Lord Portarlington, the early morning. Lord
Lovat, Isadora Duncan
In 1827 this woman cald she and Ellen Keyes the VC., Prince Obolan was to be married again
to another man, sky, Augusius John, and Lord
a 64-year-old bachelor who lived at the
Geoffrey
Lonsdale, along with dukes, Cavendish. marquises, viscounts, barons, baronets, and knighis, Tallulah Bankhead and Michael Redding, grave and a few more,
Two Bomb. Hits
The story of Rosa's own wed-
of young men who lingered on Nobody can count the number
at the Cavendish expecting their unpaid bills to be wayed in their faces and the bills were never produced.
you care to accept it, is
Always there was a drink for quite something. She was Rosa a friend, and a little pungent Ovenden, of a nine-child family wit, and a lo_macy Ianguage transplanted to Leyton In Esex; almost to the end.
not yet 20, beautiful morning.
in Killarney and quick on thỡ brawl. Bride and groom (quag-
SHE lined the wall too with a relled on the way out of church.
Hwall newspaper," made up of clippings about her famous friends. And about the war.
The war came home to her, with two hits on the Cavendish, But it never 'closed, and she never moved ... and, of course, the picture of the Kaiser had kng since been removed. Some subalterns dumped it down the And a bomb that pasange. landed on a Piccadilly church in 1941 destroyed many of the
others.
Not Many Guests
That book, the American one HER friends might like to know that Rosa refuted,,quotes her: 'LÀ thại .Rosa .did not suffer
much.
"I don't know why I married, but I just did. i ..
She did not drink champagne "I was not in love with Leyris
on her last day-pity. That would
in have been so much. was in love character. She was just droway everybody else with him.
·
And the paint on the ground-
"My family said if I did not floor suite where she lived so-
long was still wet.
Some- marry they would shoot me; so naturally married, and after how one feels. Rosa' must have I threw the resented dying upstairs. Even at ring at him at the church door 85.
that?
Then
It used to be said that when- and left him fat."
And the hotel was quiet. Not ever a young man of fondly-Rosa drank nothing but cham- many guests in the 100 rooms; came to London his father would
Rosa Lewin."
with
set to
tell him as his father had told Pagne, expected her "guests" to a sort of between-season
drink nothing but champagne, the Christmas shoppers him in his time-Go and see and if they drank it but could arrive, and the top floor still
not afford it... somehow it suffering from the war. appeared on the bill of some-.
Her nephew, Mr Frederick body who could.
Hils, says the hotel will go on She spent
£50,000 on her just the same, still the Caven- hotel and she gave thousands dish. But
wil 17-Without away.
She saw everybody who came of thing they started life as a clock. written about her. They called in her sitting-room door was said was not the kind of maker's daughter, and went "The Queen of Cooks and never closed. She used to say
Some Kings."
nobody
her hotel could use Let us to work when she was 12, thing you write.
unless they were "Introduced,” Top of the Kings, of course, and once she admonished a admit that Rosa knew how As a shilling-a-week kitchen-
is noisy young man: "You treat to throw a gay party, and maid at the Comte de whs Edward VII, and il
recalled in case you are my house as if it was an hotel" leave it at that. She knew Paris's, at Sandhurst.
culinary minded-that he liked how to cook and to cater
plain food, boiled bacon, and too. Plenty has been writ-
"at beans"; that he liked ten about that.
plain bolled pear with no colouring, and the only davour- ing he liked with his fruit was kirsch.
There was a time when Rosu ran a guest house
Bel gravia-you know, the place Queen Victoria Insisted on call ing Pimlico...
Around 1911 she used to go Lord Astor's Hever
To Work At 12 AND when you work it out down to
if we accept half of Castle to see to the cooking for partics. She arrived by car what has been written and with
on the door. nothing of what has been Lord Ribblesdale's. said about Rosa Lewis-she
By 1925 she had met so leaves not a bad legacy to many kings and catered for so fame, considering that she many cards that a book was
a coronel
HE MADE
IN THE
I don't like to read books, they mass up
my mind.
T
!
a
The Kalser came into the book, too. The last Kalser, the one with the withered arm, and Is recorded that he was "very generous" to Rosa, and that on account of his arm he ate with
14
four specially made forks, and couldn't tackle fresh herrings.
MOTOR
Once In Trouble
CHE was only once in trouble.
in 1939 she was fined £40 for selling drinks after time. By then Rosa had been running the 36 years, during Cavendish which, her. solicitor.......sajd, “the house had a wonderful reputa tion and there had never been the slightest complaint,"
But
In 1925 a woman's diary was
read in the Divorce Court. This
MOTOR MILLIONS MODEL T WAY
By
NANCY SPAIN
spare
(an
Reza?
SPIVSKI
His only interests : “Jazz and Linda.” The drawing is Russian.)
UNIV
embarrassing,
Zoot-suit Ivan gets
an official carpeting
jacket. His stare is vacant, His only interest is Jazz music and his cult for the divine Linda "***
In a further article Komso¬ molskaya. Pravda talis how n schoolgirl called Nina; fell in love with Rem! Sabinov, I a student of the Moscow, Univer- sity School of Law.
To ram the point home, an-
Rem is bad, very bad, says the paper.
He swindled Nina stockholders went to law and
out of her money to buy him- he had to buy them out,
sell a motorźcycle, - But, what He sued the Chicago Tribune
is much worse, he took her to a THIS was the opinion junk heap.
thear old when it called him an "igno2- The statisticians produced only the
students": Model T, which could be mend- awarded humiliating demages won his case, and was
party where everybody of Henry Ford, the went nervously home.
talked about "the gay life, and with B Ford said that statistics were ed by anyone boas mechanic, de-
jazz music," dead before they were written part and a book of the words, of six cents, Bitterly hurt, he
interested signer, and mass manuface down. "By the time anyone has And second,
Students who are he invented the spent the rest of his life trying prove how intelligent, and
things neglect their turer of the good old Model collected
TNIVERSITY students in in such a large quantity of conveyor belt and to banished to
studios and are always at the T, the Model A Fordor, and facts about anything." he saidy for ever from his factories the educated he was.
Russia dream about bottom of their class He started the Dearborn "the divine" Linda Darnell, sight of a сосу
cor standing the. Ford V8-the Henry "their value has changed and
are only a reco they
record of the stili, surrounded by mechanics dependent Ford who thought history pact. Useless, even dangerous, as running like beavers, wasting magazine that ran anti-Jewish singWestern Jazz tunes other article in the Komsomol was bunk.
time with every stop they took, stories), he wrote three books and show guides to the future."
a marked pre- organ pictures two students of Sorensen, the mighty in collaboration, and he built ference for the knee-long the Moscow Financial, Institute, Anatoli Danilov and Imran His own Historical significance. The only facts Ford cared about It was
alarming is brilliantly discussed in TIE wore those the discovered as he wrecker of statisticians, who at Greenfield -- an WILD WHEEL (Cresset Press, moved forward. And that is why pulled the rope that moved the American village, "to show how "zoot" sult and are about Abdullayev.. 15.)
by Garet Garrett.
he thought history was bunk, first conveyor belt. And it was our American ancestors lived" to get a resounding kick in It consists entirely of trans- their extra-narrow pants Ford also thought "too many
Sorensen who, years later in
for doing so...
Danilov "alts with one leg Agures make your head swell up
World War II, "consulting" for plantations.
placed high upon the other, like a drum."
A tow other things that Ford a firm of aircraft manufacturers, All his life he
Komsomolskaya Pravda, "the chewing a piece of -7 Antericen waged a violent, personal war
remembered Ford's first prin-
newspaper of the Soviet Com gum. A busincis that makes too ciple.
The prospect of getting against statisticians.
Two of the show. places are munist Youth Organisation hold of a foreign - made' shirt much profit disappears almost es, Apparent!
he discovered +
understand this charmingly Irrelevant: quickly as one that operates at "! don't
"an (Komsomol), is currently pub makes. nest of them, collected in a cor- a 1959.
tremendously bird's nest method," he said, Engilsh Cotswold village of lishing a series of articles which excited." ner of River Rouge, his famous Machines are to a mechanic "FEst you build the plane and stone" and a 18th century herb bring startling revelations about
for only Abdullayev lives motor works. He sent for Soren- what books are to a writer. then you bring everything into farm, "to please Mrs Ford."" the attitude of the Russlan
real sen, the production manager,
Apart from this there are it through little boles. I'd build.
dus: restaurants, and a good time, tho to Everybody wants to be some
cultural regimen- then stuff the Stephen (The Old Folks at tation imposed by the regime. Interesting point: How did the The , campaign** rulses, pian place he ain't....as soon as hu. It in sections, gets there he wants to go right sections and bring them to Home) Foster's, actual house, a The newspaper recently. pub-
Anda sult and the Missippi steamboat
called fished a cartoon showing the 'back,
gether last."
hot, only to got
Moscow Suwanee, usually getting steam
finished type of perfect, up, and the Logan County foreigner" as personified by ・ n even, as
as far as remoto Rostov?
£ * Boviet Way" of " Abraham whero courthouse
of "stylish". students at sold a
"Dld I hear you needed space?" ho said.
Sorensen agreed.
thought we-L
*
·ཝོ
1
youth's
ན
EXCITED
call"
zoot
but
University in Viction diplomat for salos
OT
maybe through Boylet PLASTERED
But
It shows that the fron Curinin is not tightly closed And this is how thul Soviet as it to despised
It may be that is de along
"In that corner on the second And it was on this revolu- floor," said Ford, "there is a tionary creed, with a capital of big roam with a lot of people only 20,000 dollars, that Ford
group making figures. You can have built a motor business that And this revolutionised the Lincoln practised low, dat space if you go and take changed the American way of aircraft Industry, But the den in the streets of Green-
Oh yes, and cars are forbid, the Molotov
Rostov. He it."
revolution was · Ford's, who Ho wanted all Amerlens to virtually invented mass prom
flokl have cars because he wanted duction.
man. Avho had said, his own ** employeds to have
without thinking much about dt, So Sorensen and two men with them: "And that is why, ho He did a lot of other crazy that history was bunk found brod university sply blunt instruments burst in upon doubled pay packets and set things too. He equipped a Peace himself in his eighties; fascinated the twittering statisticians and his target at producing Ford chip in. World, War:1. He ran bor: any object with a history. "His hair, is pi plastered with cult for movie stars, young wrecked... their department, every ten esconds, dung k
for President, stepping off the The, past: had a sevenge, brillantine His walkyls Russians sometimes ermanage lo agathing, computing machines, He did it, too, and this was wagon at the last minuto in "Current time mays Mr. Ger- languid, as if he were straid of gett glimpse of an unknown mimcographs, tabulating type way back in 1914
Cavour of Calvin Coolidge. He rett, "claimed his mind; and the lifting his shining shoes off the thing called freedom ass welers tearing up charts and 20 schlerved dils Incredible ploughed hick, ale pronte into, kulers als imagination, but the door. His weak body tila prek throwing the whole lot on the target In two ways. First, he his business unit biker cibec prav back fils hangt.
ommmoulaged ! by an
KALPH HEWING
scribed:-
sult, the
with music and the