Word: humes
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Died. Humphrey Hume Wrong, 60, topflight Canadian diplomat, Under Secretary of State for External Affairs, and former (1946-53) Ambassador to the U.S.; after long illness; in Ottawa...
...Liner is Hume Probyne, a gentleman steeped in the genteel tradition. ("It had been a better world when John was John or Jack, he ruminated. If this fad for men's names in 'y' or 'ie' was not a sign of decay, it was, he thought, proof that male infancy was being prolonged.") They meet when Hume is sent to New York on a family mission: to pry his nephew from Rose, who is presumed to be using her assets to earn Main Line dividends. Since she is really trying to dissolve the partnership, Hume...
Soon Rose's job brings her to a Main Line mansion, and the Main Liners parade in their native habitat: Hume's father, a Victorian-minded patriarch who has always acted like a father "and not that odious distortion called a 'pal' "; Hume's mother, a forthright, witty woman with unpredictable ideas whose ironic attitude toward inheritance taxes is: "We'd be better off if we could take the taxes and let the government have the inheritance"; Hume's nephew, who wants a job to prove that, despite his wealth...
Before Rose accepts Hume's offer of marriage, she has refused proposals from two other Main Liners. Her "simple unaffectedness" seems to be irresistible. As for Main Liners, Hume defends them against the common accusation of being lordly by firmly declaring, "We are plain people." Within Novelist Huston's one-dimensional range, they are so plain as to seem commonplace, but that may not be entirely the author's fault...
...groomed for Broadway in 1939 but closed out of town. Last week it became the first play offered by the Phoenix Theater, a professional, well-heeled repertory group that, to avoid Broadway costs, will produce on lower Second Avenue. The stars this time are Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn...