Good-humoured Ladies
WHEN all else fails at the party, and George has finally found the drink, we can always play Fit the Author to the Quotation. We'll start with two easy ones :
'I saw no hampers of chicken and champagne delivered at the theatre from Buckingham Palace. The only ones that arrived came from Mrs. Douglas Fairbanks . .
'I was quite excited about the house—it was attractive—the beach was sandy, the rent was only $75.00 a month and there was that washing machine.'
That's right: Miss Maxwell, regal, and Mrs. MacDonald, domestic. Both Americans, they share a slick ear for the lively phrase, a proclivity for wisecracks when rattled. But this (and green passports) is all that they do have in common, for Miss Maxwell is a unique phenomenon, a self-made arbiter (and now chronicler) of Café Society, publicist of playboys and ageing flappers, while Mrs. MacDonald, charming, likeable, friendly, is never more than an exceptionally articulate housewife.
They all have a wildly busy time, digging for clams, stopping dog-fights, bringing up adolescents, humouring negroes. Everyone is such a good scout that only in a twelve-year-old, apparently, does any sense of weltanschauung lurk, for she hands in a school essay titled: 'I Don't Believe in God and Neither Does My Uncle Frank.' Anyway, it is perhaps unfair to look for encyclopedias in entertainments. Onions in the Stew is a happy, brittle work, that keeps one amused to the last page. DAVID STONE
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