Word: hostesses
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Died. Mary Margaret McBride, 76, homespun radio talk-show hostess whose loyal fans once filled Yankee Stadium in tribute; after a long illness; in West Shokan, N.Y. On network radio for nearly 20 years, she started her guests talking comfortably "by telling a story about them that's funny or sweet." A Missouri-born Baptist, she refused to advertise either alcohol or tobacco but kept a number of food sponsors very happy (and her weight at 180 Ibs. or so) by sampling their products on the air and talking lyrically about them...
...were right. But trapped in a boondoggle-a National Endowment for the Humanities grant for a book on women writers-Moers betrayed her better judgment. With forced bravado, she tucks three centuries of French, English and American authors between the covers of her book, as if she were playing hostess to a slumber party of pen pals...
...wife followed shortly thereafter by her emotional annihilation. Round after round of George vs. Martha actively involves Nick and Honey, a young married couple who spend the entire evening entertained by their baffling hosts. They are introduced to such favorite American pastimes as "Get the Guests" and "Hump the Hostess". Honey hasn't the stomach for the escapades and finally curls up in a fetal position on the bathroom floor. While Nick has leapt, feet first, into an upstairs bedroom with Martha, George pulls a volume from a shelf of his extensive library and reads: "And the west, encumbered...
Darroch concentrates instead on Ottoline's relationships with more influential artists and thinkers--it is her contribution to their lives, after all, that lifts Lady Morrell from the sad category of the eccentric to the realm of the creative. From her first days in London as a political hostess, to her old age spent in Garsington, the country home that became a haven for both aging artists and young Oxford undergraduates, Ottoline kept herself surrounded by a protective wall of friends and acquaintances. Like Hermione Roddice, she filled her house with intellectuals, defining her own worth by her part...
Virginia Woolf described Ottoline as "a Spanish galleon, hung with golden coins and lovely silken sails." Other writers, Darroch says, described her variously as "an oversized Infanta of Spain, an enormous bird, a lion-hunting hostess." In Those Barren Leaves, Aldous Huxley described those moments, just before retiring, when the Ottoline-like character would turn to her house guest and ask probing, intimate questions. "For on the threshold of her bed-chamber she would halt," he says, "desperately renewing the conversation with whichever of her guests happened to light her upstairs. Who knew? Perhaps in these last five minutes...