A MAID IN MAYFAIR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 156, 4 July 1931, Page 4 (Supplement)

A MAID IN MAYFAIR.

WOMEN SMOKERS.

FLATS OUT OF FASHION,

(From Our London Lady Correspondent.)

All unheralded and unsung a marked social change is taking place in London. Women are using less make-up. For the past two years many of the women you met in the street and in the restaurants resembled so many painted dolls. Their eyebrows were plucked, their cheeks were rouged and their lips, looked as though the face had been»gashed with a knife. In regard to lipstick especially much more restraint is now being exercised. Younger girls in particular are beginning to realise that the natural complexion is more attractive than anything that art can supply. Very soon lavish make-up will be restricted to those of mature age who spek to hide the wrinkles of advancing years. Another minor change is that you rarely .-see a woman "making up" nowadays in a restaurant. Public opinion has been too strong for them in this respect, even in the Bohemian resorts of Soho. They keep their powder puffs for the cloakroom.

SAY IT WITH FLOWERS. The Baroness Szveteney, who has been complaining to a London gossip, writer that Englishmen are ungallant, bases hexcharge on the fact that the men she has met in London omit the little courtesy, so common on the Continent, of sending flowers the next morning to a woman who entertains them at dance or dinner. She might have carried the complaint a little further. Wherever you go on the Continent,'it is.the. almost invariable rule that, if .a man asks a lady to dinner or to a dance, he sends her flowers to wear for the evening. It is a pretty custom, and there is no reason why it should not be adopted in; this country. The florists assuredly wbuld welcome it! But because the custom has not yet been adopted amongst us, it is a;little unfair to charge the men with being ungallant. Englishmen, as a class, are as courteous as Frenchmen, as Austrians, or as Italians. And they are not only equally courteous, but they are much more genuine. THE FLIGHT FROM THE FLATS. People on the lookout for moderatelyrented mansion flats in London find that rents tend to. drop rather than to rise. The explanation, lies in the fact that tenants of some of these rather hurriedly-constructed blocks of flats have found them full of constant and nerveracking noise, and are thankfully leaving them the moment their leases rim out. In thickly populated centres the traffic and outside din is nothing compared to the irritation caused by what might be described as the little domestic noises. The walls are thin, doors and .the window-frames do not fit, and the result is that the tenant of one flat can hear her neighbour's wii-eless, gramophone or piano as plainly as if it were in her own room. ""Even the sounds of cooking and washing-up penetrate from one kitchenette to the other. . People who have ex' perienced a year or two of flats are now looking for houses in the suburbs, many of which are now being adapted as "suites"' in a vei*y satisfactory way. Just as the feminine profession of cook is being invaded by men cooks, -who* describe themselves as good plain cooks and not as chefs, so are men encroaching on. the "charing" world. A'-large block of offices near; Fleet Street, after experimenting with male cleaners, has now dismissed all its, women, and is employing an entirely male staff. The majority of these men are ex-naval ratings . who have had years, of experience in scientific scrubbing, and so : far. they have maintained a much higherstandard of cleanliness than did the charladies. They do not work in two shifts, morning and evening, but come in after the offices close and work all night. They are being paid higher wages than the women, but fewer of them are required to do the same work.

PHONE COLOUR SCHEME. Intent On trying to disprove '.the theory that a great State Department cannot compete for enterprise with a private.; firm; the Post Office is- n6w . going to furnish artistic telephones. This is an attempt to keep well abreast of the current craze for en "euite colour schemes in domestic environment. Hitherto, the * telephone has been of the one drab and unattractive shade. In the near future, however, the P.M.G. wil] be able to offer the ambitious housewife the choice of five different art shades— silver, bronlze, green, ivory and a nicely mottled effect. The last-mentioned, is prißsumably a subtle bid to fit in even With thOee household schemes that reject cn suite ' fashion, and cling to the' ' Old Victorian assortment of colours, but .it is a happy thought. Language may be less hectic, in the event of a hitch in getting the call, if the receiver is really a dainty hue. THE DEFIANT SEX. The railway companies' big push against smoking in non-smokers is, I am 'told by a high official, mainly directed against women. Inn um6rable complaints of this abuse have reached* the companies, and four-fifths come from men who have been annoyed by women who answer rudely when requested not to puff cigarettes in a non-smoker. Apparently many women, now that nearly all of them smoke, regard the' non-smoking regulations as obsolete, their feminine egoism that-these existed purely.' for their comfort ill,'.the old days before women took to • the cigarette. It is very rarely a man attempts to light up in a non-smoker, but some women do it persistently and defiantly. Thus we have the comic anomaly now that the railways are asserting themselves to keep nOn-smokers as asylums in the main for men. Perhaps eventually we shall have •compartments marked "smoking" • and "men only." , LITERARY GHOST HOUSES There has been some ado about structural alterations now being carried out at' Keats' old Hatnpstead residence, but just at the moment a number of literary London, houses ai'e.more or less in the news. It was at No; ,29, Park Lane, which ie now displaying "for sale" boards, Lord Bcaconsfield lived, and Wrote "Sybil" and "Coningsby." Also in the market is the less pretentious mansion in' Warwick Crescent, not far from Paddiiigton Station, where Browning lived for a quarter of a century, and wrote "The Ring and the Book." Either for sale or to let is the. line house 011 Hill, overlooking lven Wood and Fitzroy Park, in which Coleridge died His study has been left for nearly century just as it was when the author of "The Ancicnt Mariner" occupied it. The house next door is occupied now' by "Sir Neville and Lady Pearson, the latter still better recognisfed as Gladys Cooper.