Pictures and the Picturegoer (Jan-Dec 1924)

AUGUST 1924 Picture s and Picture puer Threadncedle Street. London, familiar to you but not to the Valentinos. I shall probably have only two or three hours sleep at most if I keep on writing any longer. Natacha has fallen asleep and I have the sensation of being alone in London . . . rain falling ... a London peopled by the ghosts of all the famous personages of Dickens and history . . . and friends . . . friends of mine . . . waving little white flags of a beautiful truce, to welcome me in. . . In the morning the London Press will be awaiting me, I am told . . . and in the afternoon I shall go forth to make what I can of London . . . mine. . . What will it give to me? London, First Day. I have lived my first day in London. *■ And it has in no wise disappointed me. I am always conscious of a certain thrill when a dream lives up to the expectation. Not so very many do. One dreams of a thing, a place, an event, for a long, long while, and then, just before the dream is to come true, one feels a certain fear. Or / do, at any rate. Perhaps, after all, the dream won't be all we have thought it, hoped it. Perhaps we are in for a disappointment, a disillusionment. That is how I felt about London. That city of my dreams . . . peopled with figures steeped in history and the lore of Dickens and Shakespeare ... if it should disappoint me. . . But it didn't. The London I saw was the London of my dreams. The London of history, and of the great men who have immortalised it in words. I arose at nine in the morning in order to be ready for the Press, for interviews. compai Kitti all, I" amy bi foun in i < , and ii beautiful than another ii little t'> 'l" wnii a and all to do with the individual. I didn't Bay what I may say here, in my own diary, and thai is thai on the whole th< American girl leads the way in beauty, all things duly con 1 may perhaps be prejudii I married an American girl. B honestly do no! think so. Or it because America is the great melting pot, of beauty as well as of races, it may he that th< beauty of all countries and all races has filtered into America and made of the American woman a uor^cous composite of all other beauties. But certainly 1 hav< obs< rved that the American yirls all ha thing of beauty. They may not all be classic types, hut almost every or, tliem has a chic, a smartness, a knack for wearing clothes, some outstanding mark of loveliness that commends her to the eye. I should say that in other countries one out of every fifty women will be bea'1fiful, but in America only one out of every fifty will be plain. That is, privately, about the way that I would figure it. This first day I have seen forty-five interviewers and every one of the forty five shot at me, as an opening question, "What do you think of London?" That i s , after all, such a large question. . . especially for me who, at ten this morning, had not yet seen Londen. And to each of them I answered that I didn't know, since I hadn't seen the city. ""The interviewers go about their work much as the interviewers do in America. Most of them asked me questions about women, my opinions as to the modern woman, my ideas on beauty, my preferences in type, my comparative ideas as to the beauty of Italian women versus American women, English women versus American women and so forth. I said that to me comparisons regarding women were odious. How can you The Valentinos with Rudy's Aunt, who accompanied them for part of their journey. """The English women, I noted to-day from the brief observations I was able to make, have extraordinarily lovely complexions and a certain look of robust, glowing health, that is very charming. Well, but to get back to my interviewers . . . this first day, as I say, I have seen forty-five. And when the forty-fifth had departed and I found that I was scheduled for a similar number on the morrow, I determined that, if I wanted to really see London, I would have to somehow apportion my days. I therefore told my secretary that I would devote the hours between ten and twelve to interviewers, but from noon