1936 On the Continent

of this modest essay.
On Folk Art and Apple Pie
    Polish folk art will probably be of particular interest to ladies with an artistic sense, as it offers unlimited opportunities for the adornment of the home and for individualising dress. For instance, you could have in your home a Polish room furnished in the Zakopane style, with the walls covered with tapestries or suitable pictures. On the tables you might put some of the embroidered white runners used by the peasants, and flower-pots painted in vivid patterns. There are some very decorative chandeliers, beautifully carved forks and spoons and hundreds of small things which might create a harmonious and original whole.
    Polish cooking is an intricate art, and instead of quoting here a few recipes which in any case would only give you a very faint idea of the real thing, I think I ought rather to dwell on the moral advantages of a genuine devotion to the culinary craft. A Chinese sage, more in earnest than I am now, has said that variety in food is the mark of a superior civilisation, using this as an argument for the supremacy of China over the barbarous West. I have often wondered why, instead of mercilessly regulating the thirst of the citizen, the legislators of England have not thought of the wonderful results that might be produced by a Bill prohibiting the public or private sale and consumption of apple pie. Such a law would be sure to stimulate artistic interest in the discovery of suitable alternativesto the banned dish, and when the time came for the repeal of the Apple Pie (Prohibition) Bill the very tasty things that would have been invented in the meantime would be too firmly established in public favour to be affected.
    The Poles of old were a rather lawless lot, and that is probably why they went through the process outlined above without a special law. However, the result was exactly the same. And it is the inventiveness of the Polish cook that deserves praise rather than her actual accomplishments.
    I have already mentioned in the general section the national costume and its possible uses, but although it is very attractive, it would be a mistake to expect to see women in gaily coloured scarves and striped capes in the streets of Warsaw. You may, on the other hand, see there women of a truly Parisian
chic
—in its Warsaw variant. I believe that you will sometimes find in the Warsaw shops great bargains in fine furs, provided you are something of an expert in the matter. Fashion parades are held in some of the better shops—notably at Herse and Zmigryder’s—and also in the S.I.M. Café.
    The hairdressers are reputed to be good. The famous “Antoine” of Paris is a Pole named Cierplikowski, and he probably has some equally talented relations in Poland. The better hotels, like the Bristol and the Europejski, have their own beauty parlours, which are open to non-residents as well. There is also the well-known Ewaryst, Mazurkiewicz, Bagnowski, and many others. I omit the addresses because they would convey no meaning to the foreign reader, and if she (or indeed he) tells a cabby to drive to any of the places or shops named here, there will be no difficulty in finding it. On a fine day it is rather amusing to drive about in an open cab and see everything at your leisure; unfortunately the buses are all single-deckers.
Polish Music
    The high standard of Polish music is well known throughout the world. I am afraid that I am not quite so well informed on this subject as the rest of the world, but I suppose it must be interesting to hear in their original setting the popular Polish melodies which have inspired Chopin, Paderewski and so many others.
    The best known modern Polish singers can be heard not only in Poland but practically everywhere else, and yet there may be something in their Warsaw performances that is lacking in the others.
    Some women visitors might like to see the tombs of the heroic girls of Lwow, who fell, together with their brothers, when the city was under siege in 1919. More interesting than the tombs are the pathetic and true stories of these fearless volunteers who were not content to comfort the soldiers behind the lines, but fought side by side with them in the trenches. They were true to the tradition of generations of Polish women to whom patriotic devotion to their country was a religion, and more. It is important to realise this characteristic in order to understand the position of Polish women in their native