The Miami Herald from Miami, Florida • 119

TTTTT 149 0 4' 1 4 0 0 4 4 SjvS Sunday January 18 1959 Page 27 IN JAMAICA Mop Goset In Your Kitchen Can Be Decorative As Well As Functional woven cane adds patterned texture to doors lets air circulate freely Adele Astaire Is Proud of Brother Fred By HELEN WELLS Herald Society Editor SHE HAS A PIQUANT pixie face with high cheek bones and pointed chin like her famous brother Fred Astaire Adele Astaire now 3Irs Kingman Douglass since 1947 and before then Lady PERSON Charles Cavendish is a no-nonsense person rn who enjoys life to the hilt When interviewed she was wearing a sim- person: pie white cotton house coat as we sipped coffee in her delightful cottage at Montego Bay Jamaica She and Mr Douglass an investment banker are among the original share holders in an exclusive cottage and hotel resort They also have a home in the hunting country of Virginia at Middleburg an apartment in New York and she frequently visits Castle Lismore in England the country seat of Lord Cavendish who died in 1944 a far cry from the days when little Adele Austerlitz and her one year younger brother Fred tapped their way to fame and fortune on Broadway Their father was an Austrian and they took the name of their grandmother Astaire and made it famous and synonomous with dancing They were playing in London when someone brought young Lord Charles Cavendish (he was five years younger than Adele) back stage and introduced him He w-as going to America to study banking with Morgan so when the London show closed and they were back in New York Adele and Lord met again By the time he was ready to return to England they were engaged but had to keep quiet until Lord broke the news gently to his family They were married in 1933 and during their marriage lost three sons born prematurely forgotten I ever w'as on the said Mrs Douglass But immensely proud of brother success retire no one will let He is going to Australia to make a movie the with Ava Gardner and has finished a book of his life written in long hand which will be off the presses soon Noel Coward gave the book its wonderful title In Adele Douglass spends her time working needle point and doing gardening old Dowager Duchess (she is now 86) taught me these things in fact she taught me many she explained When John Foster Dulles was at the resort a week ago Mrs Douglass asked him do you think of Prime Minister Harold When he answered that he thought Macmillan was a good able man she replied so happy to hear you say that You see Harold is my The Prime wife is the former Lady Dorothy Cavendish but Mr Dulles was the of confusion trying to get the relationship straightened out in his mind! The one annoying thing in Adele Douglass life Is the fact that growing older despise to touch up my she said I also despise gray hair on myself My husband has no gray hair but then he have much hair at By Kay Murphy Herald Decorating Editor How well organized are you for the mopping up operation at your house? Not only do you need specific mops for specifie purposes but you also need a handy hideaway to store them in The kitchen's the obvious place for a mop closet but most builders are inclined to skimp on its dimensions Which Is understandable How many of them have ever handled the mopping up operation That handy hideaway in the kitchen take up much room It can be shallower in depth than other types of closets the width important makes It Easier to space mops out along nekmaxi the wall for quick drying wet mops that is Keeps them from dampening dry mops by proximity too Color incidentally makes mopping up operation much less a chore than it was when grandmother was a girl A dingy string mop a feather duster and straw broom comprised her cleaning equipment Now you can have a rosepetal pink mop Or perhaps you prefer marigold or geranium? Lemon yellow leaf green or the jewel color turquoise? Man-made fibers now compete with cotton fluffy fast-drying dacrons and nylons Some mops come equipped with a of pads that you can suds out by hand or spin clean in your automatic washer Sponge mops are more absorbent Dry mops are chemically treated to attract the dust A few are impregnated with floor polish Mops are easier to manipulate too thanks to nylon bearings neatly-engineered frames and self-squeezing devices -j ptn-ot -n-umrr- if n-w-wr wt" "iiBiw Yidal: Are shaped like a Greek temple staffed with a brace of trusted servants and two dogs what Edith Wharton called Hudson River he explained I love it Cold in winter of course and lonely if you like writing Fortunately I Vidal is the cousin of Senator Kennedy's lovely wife Jacqueline Bouvier more complicated than he sighs one of those relationships that scarcely exist outside of America My mother married her step-father so we both had the same When in Miami Vidal stays at the Towers Hotel which with the Robert Clay swimming pool constitutes a little island of quiet in the middle of our noisy city The Miami River isn't the Hudson he admits but it's a river and to watch the boats steaming up and down is a pleasure for any author By Beatrice Washburn Herald Staff Writer Gore Vidal whose Visit to a Small Planet will be presented at the Coconut Grove Playhouse Jan 26 says he has given up novels for playwriting because nobody reads novels any more on the way declares the tall handsome young man whose many contradictions make him as interesting to interview as he is to meet read Americans are the most illiterate people in the western hemisphere Our middle class is the stupidest in the world from a literary standpoint that is We are a mechanistic society People would rather learn with their hands than with their brains the future we shall learn by a kind of osmosis absorb news and world events through television radio or movies The public for the novel is gone though there are many fine novelists at work among Racing Through Fern Gully WE DUCKED into Kingston briefly first and then took a car from there to the north coast It takes nerves of steel to ride the narrow mountainous roads in Jamaica You must have blind faith and the philosophy of a fatalist to brave the hairpin turns especially nerve wracking to Americans who drive 6n the right side of the road Our driver went blithely along with his hand constantly on the horn and there were only two near misses! It w'as worth every second of the strain Particularly the three miles through the fantastic Fern Gully This is a narrow road through a deep natural gorge with magnificent ferns growing in profusion up its sides which give the gorge a soft green light You seem to be moving in an eerie underwater magic and expect to see a mermaid slide out from behind a fern any minute We saw Mr and Mrs Morris Lapidus (hotel architect) and Harry Fineman president of Paw Rubber and Mrs and George Finley radio comment9tor on NBC from Washington When we passed the famous Rose Hill plantation our driver told us that the lovely old house was haunted and been inhabited in many years where the White Witch of Rose Hall he said she see a mon she like speak to another woman she call him in her house That mon never seen Enough to give anyone the shivers Plush Fields of Coconut ON THE WA to Montego Bay we passed lush fields of coconuts sugar cane and bananas Tucked away behind a field of cane was the Temple Galleries operated by Richard Temple Englishman who started his factory four years ago with ten native workmen and now employs 250 He creates amazing reproductions of antique furniture and also imports exquisite antiques both furniture and bric-a-brac from England He designed the smart black and white furnishings with Chinese influence in the Jack cottage in which we stayed Mr Pershing is the son of the late General Black Jack Pershing When we moved out Ethel Merman and her husband Bob Six moved for a stay Absorb History Painlessly9 IS CHARACTERISTIC that Americans read historical novels in such great he adds they absorb history painlessly and by throwing themselves back into the past avoid the problems of the present which are so appalling that even the greatest writers are puzzled to explain Nevertheless we are a complex society says the author of Williwaw The City and The Pillar Dark Green Dark Red and In a Yellow Wood is not the organization man nor the girl next door Actually our culture if you can use the word- is as complex as that portrayed by Marcel Proust America there are little pockets of thought quiet unconventional people little oases of ideas You stick to the great hotels and the four lane highways of course if you wish to find interesting people But they exist in virtually every state waiting for We're Hungry for Happiness WHAT IS THE formula for a successful novelist? Or for that matter since he is both a successful playwright? There any he declares Could he teach play writing? one he says promptly there are no rules It can be learned perhaps with attention to Aeschylus Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw but it can't be taught because there are no rules managers and producers have no idea what show' is going to be a smash hit and what is going to close within three The American public is not an easy audience he claims because of its obsession for happiness Ev ery thing must hav a happy ending are hungry for what we call happiness We demand it in our cars our women our swimming pools skyscrapers and our homes How different is our philosophy from that of Franee for instance where there is no such thing as psychoanalysis People of the older countries are either satisifed with what they have or don't tear themselves to pieces over what they They have learned to live with themselves knowing that we are each stuck with ourselves as a life companion on the continent they are not obsessed with self analysis which destroys as many people as Hfrld Staff Photo by Bill Bandars Novelist Gore Vidal are a mechanistic society to college just started living and writing After producing five successful novels he decided that there enough money in them set myself a five year plan' Started writing plays movies and television acts hard to make a living in this country by writing alone Seeing I had no talent for school teaching or journalism I turned to the theater and set out to make enough money to last the rest of my And did he? he admits quietly I live till He Set Out To Make Money VIDAL WAS PRACTICALLY A boy wonder when he published his first novel Williwaw at the age of 19 He enlisted in the Coast Guard when he was 18 and fresh cut of Exeter school never went HE LIVES IN 4 great house on the Hudson River 1 1 I A A a A at.