THE CHINA MAIL, MAY 10, 1939
England Through Eyes Of An American Woman
"THE ENGLISH always speak of Margate as a place of vulgar and feverish gaiety, but the beach and promenate look to an Ameri- can like a Quaker meeting. The sun is weak and the English are modest. The pagan abandon of Margate could be scraped to- gether and piled up under & thimble,"
"With
Malice Towards Some" Is Hilarious Travel
orally is not one of the sugared plums.
Diary
Ás even some English people fail to find hunting alluring, it is not "Englishwomen have had the surprising that Margaret is at her strength drained out of them by devastating best when recording a the debilitating effort to be Eng- fox hunt. lish ladies,” she' Bays. "The poor Explaining the ethics of the sport things spend half their time gar- she assures us that "After several dening and the other half being seasons a fox grows so polite that respected and avoided by English- he turns round and says 'yoo hoo' to the pack whenever they lose the their scent, but in his first season he is
apt to be a little gauche.”
men.
She has a theory about hats
"I think they keep them suspend- ed on pulleys from the
lish manners.
Margaret is. a conscientious, bedroom tourist, "I have a sense of the
80
well-fed, well-washed, well-groomed men and a quantity of women looking as if they had all changed clothes with each other, just for a lark." Margaret Halsey and her husband endured some dis-. heartening samples of English en- tertaining.
ceiling, and when they want to put past which could be laid out flat one on they go and stand directly and made up into awnings.”
is under it, pull a rope, and it drops. Tramping round London down, smack, squarely on top of tiring that "by the time I get home the head. Then, without touching again my feet are going to be of a finger to it, they march out of such a size that I will be able to the house."
have drawers put in them' and use But she is impressed with Eng- them for desks."
To anyone
who has ploughed back of it. These, combined with Eng- through the solemn pages of facts the stretched out pieces of water, modu- in guide books her graphic descrip- make the houses, which in
feet, tions of scenery are like gay little English villages seem to be
bing up against, each other like puppies in a basket, seem in Pur- ford to be hudding together for- "It stands on a hilly little penin- the definite purpose of protection." sula which, having Plymouth Sound On their trip to Norway she and on the side and the Atlantic Ocean Henry, her husband, go through a· on the other two, is instinct with village which "stands at the edge. horizons. Purford itself has been of the fjord on a green and amiable: boldly tacked to the side of a steep slope with mountains leaning over descent which plunges suicidally its shoulder and breathing down: into Plymouth Sound.
its, neck."
This is her picture of Purford, a
When a woman describes herself
"The manners of educated on a Customs form as a "parasite" lishmen are so exquisitely and an English train engine as be- lated.... such leaping to ing "only about thirty-four inches such opening of doors, such pictures. around the bust," her travel-book lightning flourishes with matches is not likely to be an orthodox one. and cigarettes--it is all so heroic, village in Cornwall.
Where most travel writers serve 1 never quite get over the feeling up their discovery of England as that someone has just said,
in the lifeboats."' lush fruits, Margaret Halsey, "Malice Towards Some," pro- vides salted almonds with just an occasional sugared plum.
"To
"HEAVY" FOOD Her remarks on English food spare only the roast beef of old England.
Margaret Halsey is the wife of & young American University lec- "I was well warned about Eng-
"The streets of the village turer who went to England with an lish food, but I wonder sometimes virtually perpendicular, and exchange professorship.
how they ever manage to prise it rendered still more improbable His work took them to Exeter, up long enough to get a plate under being, in addition, so narrow where they met the English gentry. it. They travelled in England, and "Soup tasted as if it had a four-year-old child with a visited Norway, Sweden, and Paris. been drained out of the umbrella
'Margaret kept notes during their stand
It is possible to eat travels and the result is a divert- English pie crust whatever you may ing book bristling with wisecracks, think at first. The English eat it, which have made the English peo- and when they stand up and walk ple smile or snarl, according to away they are hardly bent all.
their capacity for laughing or not "Savory. This is a sardine rest-
laughing at themselves.
ing on toast which sweats melted Although she is quite kindly dis- butter. It serves no discernible posed to some individual English function except to give the maids women, her opinion about them gen- another lap to walk."
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વાળમાં
-
other
rub-.
are After her visit to Paris she are observes: "The main difference be-
by tween England and Paris is that that England looks comfortable but is. pail not, whereas Paris is just the other in its hand constitutes a traffic way round.” jam.
English hotels, entertaining, ser- “Sprinkled in among the white vants, the "ungentry," whom she cottages are others which have likes much better than the gentry.. been plastered in burnt orange or children, furniture, and her lanky
salmon-pink or tan... Along some absent-minded husband-are--- all' of the streets a sea-wall with pur- bombarded with wisecracks. ple-flowering vines growing over it The illustrations in this book, interposes benevolently to keep you which reflect Margaret's inability from falling over on to the dark, to be awestruck, are by Harold W. malign.coastal rocks below.
Hailstone.
"Though & shelter of woods "With Malice Towards Some," By flanks Purford on either side, tall, Margaret Halsey. (Hamish Hamil-. green hills rise baldly up at the ton).
MOPSY GLADY'S PARKER
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TERDAY,
MOPSY
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