The ideological splits in the federal Labor government were made worse by James Scullin’s junket overseas; when he finally returned to Australia in January 1931, the populace had learned enough about his caretaker, Joe Lyons, to like him increasingly better than Scullin. For Charles’s sake Kitty tried to sustain fascination in the names — and the personalities owning the names — but politics, time was teaching her, lay far from her heart. Those politicians she met she found uninspiring, no different from most men. Generally, she judged, they didn’t take special care of their appearance or display beautiful manners; between the dandruff, the blubbery paunches, the bad teeth, the combed-over baldness, the noses empurpled with grog-blossoms, and the soup stains on their ties, they were a dreary lot. “If only wireless sets had a moving picture attached!” she said to Charles, “politicians would have to smarten up their act because the people who vote for them would actually see them in action, how they look and behave.
