Boiffe
THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, SATURDAY, MAY 15, 1948.
GILES SAYS HELLO TO THE START OF THE CRICKET
SEASON
Dephmes
der. Dames
"Tea's ready, Alƒ . . .”
JESTS AND JEERS
Somebody's afraid of Communism taking on in Hongkong. Maybe he's encountered the red tape.
FE
GLASSHOUSE SPECIALISTS
“You take the bowlers and I'll look after the batting."
BATH'S
FESTIVAL OF THE ARTS BRINGS SURPRISES
Evelyn Laye starts her
'third career?
BATH. PESTIVALS are starting up everywhere this spring, like daisies. With Stratford-on- Avon under way, Brighton get- ting rendy and Edinburgh quickening, it is Bath's turn. Only Bath, being Bath, calls its Festival an Assembly and is playing Mozart and Sheridan.
I came away from Its Hitle 18th century theatre (ike the inside of around comût box) and walked through echoing stone colonnades and empty Incomparable sireels, trying to sort out my feelings about the dramatic piece de resistance of the first Bath Assembly--Evelyn Laye as Lady Teazle in Sheridan's "School for Scandal."*
Все
rather
by
Margaret LANE
the whole of one scene, an interest- ing view of what the actors were doing while waiting for their cues, And Leon Quantermalne, who as Sir Peter Teazle was another who brought blessed professional quality into the acting, forgot his lines so often that you could hear the audience cracking its knuckles, with
suspense.
it should
If I give the impression, however. that the Bath audience was not makes a goud-humoured shot at this absolutely enchanted. I should be exacting part, which de- wrong. Speeded up, tightened, and
comedy generally made to jump
success of the six weeks' mands immense charm, a manner of great delicacy, and a make a
provincial tour which is to follow sense of quality in its actresses.
the Assembly. But it seemed a woste to be doing these things during the Assembly itself and not at the rehearsals,
many of
Miss Laye's range is small, but what she can do, she does prettily, arid with a disciplined profes slonalism that is comforting to the Dollar Draw nerves, strained and racked as they Fascinating though it is to were with
the unlucky for a good shortcomings which beset the beat Evelyn Laye, who many years now has been making of amateur productions. a second
She charms us so much by beauty career as principal boy, emerging
the most delicious and pretty behaviour that it is hard looking Lady Tenzle you can Im- to know why Mr. Basil Dean allow angine, ravishing and fresh and ed her to sing three verses of "Early (from How K) not a day over 20, One Morning" in the second act, for
The headache from which Hong- kong
is suffering has been aptly described as immigraine.
"Arabs Posed On Border," says newspaper poster. Probably theatri- cal troupes,
foot from a footpad.
Like School
it is very for indeed from being she sang flatter than I have ever known anyone venture to do in perfect production.
But then, how can one have pre- publle before. The Bath audience, It's a wise dog that knows a lot- fect production at festivals? A which is used to music, was visibly
season which Insts week or ten shaken. days cannot make much money, and so cannot afford to spend much, This is a pity, for festivals ATC primarily designed to draw visitors and even dollars, to the city that holds them; and a first festival is in my case liable to be a timid affair,, "They used to rave about her since local tradesmen have not yet now they just whisper."
gathered enough confidence to put
money in it.
It is better to be a little pebble an the beach than a big tombstone.
Overheard at a party:
"In the Arctic they live on candles and blubber."
"Well, if I had to eat candles 1 think I would too."
soner.
Cautious Start
cautious Initial stages.
make allowances
fer
12
There were several unlucky me-- eldents on this first night which it would perhaps be unkind to men- tion, for. It is all such an admirable the right direction, and effort in surely, one thinks, they will all be smoothed
out after A few
more performances? But the still small volve at the back of my head insists that
has those intended to draw aud
he world
He is personally more than £100,- 000 out of pocket on account of Glyndebourne opera, and has got tired of throwing good money after bad.
The Skupa Puppets, which by all accounts are wonderful, have finish- ed their tiny season at the Assembly and are already in London.
The Chlidren's Theatre, another venture under Glyndebourne's wing,
TRUMAN FEELS CONFIDENT
By MERRIMAN SMITH United Press White House Reporter
DRESIDENT Truman reach-
year In office on April 12 with a calm believe that, despite re- cent roverses, ho will be re- elected.
a
.
His confidance is neither cocky nor entirely complete. Ho knows ho is in for political slug-fest during the coming campaign. But he is not about to let anyone talk him out of running,
to
Life around the White House is a
me of F.D.R. For one thing, there is not the same tension and excite- ment. The Truman familly lives much more simply than their predo- cessors. Aside from formal func- tions required by custom, there is much less entertaining.
After dinner with Mrs Truman and Margaret, If she is in town, the President usually adjourns to his study to read the never-ending stream of government papers which always threatens to engulf a Pres!- dent. At bedtime, he often reads himself to sleep with Д mystery
a
Three years ogo on April 12, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, fabulous political strategist and father of the New Deal, alumped novel. over in his chair at Warm Springs, Georgia, victim of sudden cerebral Mr Truman gels around town haemorrhage. A few hours later he lot more than the Inte President. was dead and the mild-mannered The week rarely passes in which ho Missourian, then the Vice-President, does not attend some outside dinner was abruptly projected into the in his honour, or go with his family world's toughest job.
to a concert at Constitution Hall.
DAILY SCHEDULE
His daily schedule begins early in the morning with a look at paper and the mail. After a simple breakfast of stewed fruit and ont-. meal, he tackles his work an hour before bla staff arrives.
Mr Truman's three years in the White House have been marked by une crisia after another-strikes. inflation, Russia, Palestine. Since the | start of 1947; his party has been in
the minority in Congress.
In recent months, he has been lambasted by leaders of his own party from the South because of his | civil rights programme. There has been frequent talk of efforts to get him to withdraw from the race.
To all this, the President takes a attitude. One of his philosophic close friends called it "almost fatalistic."
what "He
"He belloves he's right in he's doing," this friend said. belleves the people feel the same way, and that
way,
Is playing Clifford Bux's "The Im-they'll re-elect him.
feeling that
mortal Lady" in tho deadening wastes of Bath's modern Pavilion, to large audiences.
con-
VALLEYS & PEAKS
too along
three
the
The schedule for the day in Anal-. ly determined at a staff conference at D a.m., and by lunch-time, the President will have conferred with
dozen anywhere from in
to 200 peoples. He goes to the residential part of the White House for lunch, and usually gets a brief nap afterward.
Most of the afternoons are spent on paper work. The President tries to leave his office between 5 and 6 p.m.
The
.
Like most Presidents, he tries to escape from the burdens of his job "He's been around politics
when passible. This may take the long to think he can get On To 1951!
form of a vacation in Florida or a closo without valleys between the peaks, low-stake poker game with His stock may go up and down, friends. Or it may mean an unan- There are some excellent certs, and the elegant Pump Room But he firmly believes it will be up
several times before election day. nounced visit to an art gallery, or a call on an old friend in the hos- Festival Club, where the most in- has been temporarily turned into a
when the votes are counted."
pital. elegantly loud dance music defeats years in the White House have
Truman's Physically, Me all attempts at human communten treated him kindly. His doctor says tons. There is also a little hesitant he is in excellent shape for a man decoration of the city, rising to a of 63. crisis of bunting at the railway "11 Seraglio," which is a sort of stations.
He eats lightly, as he always did. He likes miniature Glyndebourne production,
to walk at dusk In the Bath is my favourite city aboye parks near the White House, always will be the only taste of Glynde- all others, so I shall look forward unheralded and rarely accompanied bourne opera to be had this year, to its Assembly of, say, 1951, when by anyone 'but a secrel service since Mr. John Christle has sudden it will perhaps have made enough agent. When his busy schedule ly stopped pouring money into the money to be uncompromising about permits, he swims in the small beautiful and unprofitable concern. quality in every particular,
White House pool
THE NEXT OBJECT IS....
President has not talked much about his campaign plans. Ho teels no doubt that he will bo uominated. After the convention, ho plans to do everything he can to got re-elected.
When people came running to him with a fearful story of some new political blast against him, he says, "That's old stuff to me-I've heard it all before-there's not a singhe now. thing they can say about me."
Animal, Vegetable
and Mineral
spring-cleaning means The tempo was far too slow. O.K.? Then we're off.
and
soup.
a
making don't seem to have been highly thought of at first.
THE ANSWER
IS GIVEN... by..
potash add a pinch of salt, and stir. So you think of soap when you are playing Twenty Questions you will
have to say it is animal, vegetable and mineral-unless you are thinking of the kind that is
specially made for high-minded vegetarians.
And that reminds me. Teetotalers should beware of transparent soap. It is made by mixing ordinary soap
BERNARD WICKSTEED with alcohol.
In
When I discovered this, I-rang up- soapmaker and asked if there was
that you could drink it instead wasting it on washing.
of
topical and talk makers just about as much as LET'S Le about
that he did the men who collected soap. Why is
So soap
and soap- where there are lo bo only topical? Well, tomorrow is the manure. The Bath Assembly is In these seven performances In all, and first day of spring. Spring wisely chosen a policy which will to Bath, they ought to be pretty good means...spring-cleaning,
Now they are quite respectable. certain at the beginning,
Everybody uses
soap-except my least until the African monkey nut any way of getting the spirit out so The magistrate was not exactly modesty of performance. The avow-
son and one person in every thou- scheme has got going. clear as 10 what the case was all ed purpose is to minke the arts Dialogue as light, as pointed, us
sand carns a living by making it. about, so he questioned the pri- concert music,
witly as
Sheridan's, does not need opera, drama-ne-
When I was in Morocco
Americans use 24lb. of soap per Of course most of the fals cessible to the comparatively un- long pauses and heavy underlining
At one time Britain soap are not edible, but at. Боте "What were you doing when you sophisticated audiences of the West, and wailing for the laughs.
few weeks back I was told the head per year.
used nearly as much but rationing stage in their manufacture many of were arrested?"
and
There were just those errors of Arabs there still burn roots and has cut it down to 181b, Russians use them could be made so. And in- especially to children. "Waiting, sir."
Nothing heavy is intended; Bath pause and emphasis that happen in rub on the ashes when they feel 5.75, and the Chinese less than genious chemist could probably dish for?"
school be gay. End-of-term
productions.
207.a. desparately
up a plate of "soap meunier" if he A Mozart's
was hungry enough. Things went wrong with the stage they want freshening up. (under Seragito" Glyndebourne direction)
This introduces a line of thought is
management. Doors. which the
were friend of mine who once lived that
Some of the old hands in the sonp may have a special appeal slammed after dramatic exits chosen
and Basil opera.
Dean's
trste If the 450,000,000 Industry often
soop to see ot production
the "School
for for closed
intrigues with the Arabs tried it himself, to schoolboys. lete-a-fele
the how it's cooking. If it's soo salty it Chinese took to using seap on Scandal" the chosen play.
swung malignantly clways
open and said it was quite as good game scale as Americans do, there will crack when it dries, and Whatever is shaky about this again, to be anxiously closed afterns some of the soap we get to- would be such a famine of fats and there is a sharp taste it means there Sheridan production, one thing is
oll that thousands of people would is too much soda. certain: Evelyn Laye is a delicious
starve to death,
".
is
"Who was to give you the money?"
The man I was waiting for, sir."} "What did he owe it to you for?" "Waiting, sir."
to
The magistrate's head began swim, and he made a inst effort.
"What do you do for a living?" he demanded,
"Waiting, sir."
anxious to
**Il
or
u time,
The backdrop got too much light | day. Lady Teazle in appearance, and she behind it, so that one had, through
A TEST FOR THE ROYAL
ACADEMY PICTURES
by FRANCIS HOWARD Chairman of the National Portrait Society
if
He said that if there was the soap- makers would do it themselves. As It is they recover 80 percent of the alcohol used in manufacture, and if they could get the rest they would. Gorm killer
NOAP has
properties, a fact I've been iry- great antiseptic
ing to impress you on my son. The germ-killing is mostly done by the Perfumes that are put in to make it smell nice.
A French chenilst proved this by putting different kinds of soap
In beef tea. He infected the brow with germs, and then saw how much of each variety of soap it took to kill them oft
came
Now then, what is soap made of? We used to do the same So every time Chinese or a Like roast pork, it is said to have schooiboy doesn't wash his face he been discovered by accident. The thing. Alfred the Great never is helping to save someone's life. fat of sacrificed animals melted and used soap, nor did Ethelwulf,
mixed with the potash in the embers Look at it this way. To provide of the priestly fires, and so formed Ethelbert, Etheibald, nor Ethel- us with our 181b. of soap per head a crude soap. red the Unready. They couldn't we use about a quarter of a million
lons of fat and oil every your. For One place where such sacrifices have done if they'd wanted to, the same amount of soap per head were held was Sapo Hill, near because there wasn't any made the Chinese would need 2,500,000 Rome, and that may be how soup
He found that off of thyme was until the twelfth century. tons of fat and oil, a quantity that got its name.
the most effective of the perfumes is about equal to the entire butter,
Nowadays it is made more scien- commonly used and patchouli margarine, and cooking fat ration
the The exception
tifically, and there is a Soapmakers least. In between the two of Britain for five years.
and Fat Spiliters' Federation, with cloves, peppermint, eucalyptus, offices in Caxton-street, Westmins- lavender, Canadian enako root, and the sculpture section there is some painter of landscape he is. I would THE carliest known reference
Soap tasting ter. An ordinary cake of soap that ylang-ylang, which is an oll made stuff by people rather possess one of his snow scenes
British sonp was writ- DDICTS of pseudo-juvenile, notoriety-seeking
who know better, can do better, and like "My Garden In Winter" caveman, negroid and other don't deserve to be named.
than ten in Latin in 1132 and said: WITHOUT wishing any harm to you buy in a shop may have been from flowers grown in the Philip
W the Chinese, the Javanese, the whales, sheep, cows, coconuts, mon-
made out of ingredients taken from pines. Monet ever "Francus saponarios amat ut anything of the kind parasitic studio growths
One remarkable work in this sec- painted: their meticulous accuracy stercorarios,'
I'd like to finish up with a shaggy which
Burmese, the Indians, the Russlans key nuts cottonseed and olives, means, variously called Modernism, tion is the huge "Expulsion of Adam to the lighting and tone of the mo
and the peoples of Afrien, let us
dog story about soap-but nono of been roughly, that Francus (who keep our Angers crossed and hope The soapmakers and fat splitters my friends seems to know any, Futurism. Vorticism, Dadaism, and Eve," by Estcourt J. Clark. ment depicted has rarely
Roup- ever he was) loved the
they don't change their habits, at mix these with caustic soda Surrealism and Abstractism which is carved out of the trunk of equalled.
or suppose the subject's too clean. will find little to encourage their churchyard,
Devonshire Philip Connard's "Miss Freda something little Hardman" is another pletorial por- illusions or affections, in this short of genius. It seems inexpll-
expll-trait one could live with, and hang year's Royal Academy.
to me that this was not chosen harmoniously with old, or good But visitors will find more by the Chantrey Bequest committee modern, pictures.
In preference to the term-cotta life- The drawings, etchings and water-
A
LONDON.
n yew tree from
cable to
with
than' sufficient work of com- size statue "Youth" by Slektriet 'colours present perhaps the best mondable aesthetic and technical Charou bought, qualities to reassure them about £1,000,
I am told, for average achievement this year. Sir Muirhead Bone's remarkable chalk and pastel drawing, "Whitehall from a Room in the Admiralty" is a com- bination of genlus and
technical
the present and future of Bri- tisir art. There are indeed few
If I were invited to choose one mastery of which only he is capable. exhibitors, in or pulside the
picture to live with. I think the Since Menge! there is no one else Academy, who have not greater cholce would le between A. R. who can perform such fents, though technical accomplishment, wider Thomson's brilliant portrait of a we are perhaps stronger. In topo- range, and more imagination small hoy. "Master Michael Solig- graphical and landscapo draughts- than any of the heterogeneous or conversation piece The
" Leigh-Pemberton's charming manship than any other nation today, rabble designated the "School Elders, and Munning's "My Garden drawings always
Ian Strang's sterling and dignified interest me-be- of Paris." And all seem too in Winter
entre of their own merit and be- Intelligent to harbour the ill- Leigh-Pemberton's graceful talent cause they illustrato an inherited
alon that abstract reactions to all the place left empty by the death tendency and instinct for art which visual experience can be put of Rex Whistler, but with a rather runs through all its history.
and less Impersonal Particularly appealing and skilful are the several drawings of children
Into any recognisable graphic or more original
touch.
plastic form,
Of Munnings's gifts it is unneces- by Robert Austin, and there are ex- There are, however, a few 'things sary to pererade anyone nowadays, cellent drawings by John Wheatley, In the last room leaning at varying, but I doubt if it is fully realized Margery Gil Malcolm Osborne, angles towards modernism, and in how datingulahed and, subflo a Willtuni Robins and John Platt.
to
PAULA BY DENNIS
WHAT'S WORRYING YOU
MISS PATON?
IT'S ABOUT RITA YOU KNOW WE LIVE TOGETHER AHD-:
WHEATLEY
WELL, LAST NIGHT, SHE DID HOT
COME HOME.
SHE MAY HAVE GONE
Meadows and Paula discover that the star of the
show la missing.
DOWN "ID THAT COTTAGE
OF HERS IN THE COUNTRY'LL CHECK UP
YOU KNOW HOW
SCARED SHE
WAS.
[OH, THANK YOU, SERGEANT-
THAT WILL PUT MY MIND
AT REST.
WITH THE LOCAL
POLICE.