ENVIED GIRLS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 32, 9 February 1929, Page 14

ENVIED GIRLS

YESTERDAY AND' TO-DAY

It is the fashion to disapprove of tho girl of -to-day, but that lias been the case ever since Youth and-Age began. Perhaps, it is an unconscious revolt of tho latter against the opportunities that are awaiting Youth and which have passed Age by for ever (writes Lady Kitty Vincent in the London "Daily Mail").

I cannot but envy tlio girls of to-day-when I think of my own girlhood. At the time I was perfectly happy, for. all my contemporaries were brought up.i» exactly the- samo way; but.few girls can realise tho difference between then aiifl now. , There is no doubt that the war hastened tho change, for, otherwise, I am almost certain that it would have takn longer to reverse so completely tJio order of things as they were. We were never allowed to write to the young men of our acquaintance andif they wrote to us we had, of course, to show' the letters... to -our mothers. However, not many of them took'tho trouble to conduct a corespondence which would have been singularly uninspiring. If a young man did writo more than once or twice we were very excited, for it probably meant that ho was seriously epris. Dances were marvellous affairs in those days,"'wo wore beautifully dressea and our hair was "done" by a firstclass maid. ; I am bound to say we looked much more soignee than many of tho girls of to-day, but the balls themselves ivero very much of a gamble. You were never quite sure whether your favourite partner would be there, and there was no question of ringing him up to find out. I think my mother would havo passed away in a fit if I had done such athing. If he were -there he did not d_are ask one for more' than the regulation three dances, or. he might havo been supposed to be entertaining matrimonial intentions; \

It was much more difficult to be friends with a man in those days than it -,is now,, and yet .there were many more men. But "friendship" between a, girl and a boy would have been looked upon as distinctly "odd,'?-, and .it would not have been encouraged by the mammas. '..-..

As for ,tho idea of a girl being allowed to bo brought home by a young man, such an idea .would simply never have' entered their heads..! If a mother was too worn out to stayat a ball' and she saw that her daughter v/as amusingfhcrself she would hand her on to a friend to look after, and tho latter regarded it as, a sacred trust and would take the girl to her very door and see her .inside. ■ ,

We used to attend a function of which. I never hear in these days, and that was a "water-party." Large numbers of young women dressed in white muslin and floppy hats would.be invited by somebody who had a house on tho river, and an. equal number of young men provided.' On these occasions one chaperon was considered sufficient, lut tho young men «'iud maidens went'on the river in parties of four or more, and it was not a case of "Maimiqarid my litilo eanbe."

I know a girl who went on the river alone with a young man in a boat, and although she joined the others at luncheon and they all went home to.- v gethcr she was discovered for years afterwards to be rather "fust" and other girls' mothers looked at her askance. •

We were funny prim little things in thoso days, but we .were rather darlings and we had heaps and heaps of proposals. We had'dear little, waists and. we wore wreaths of flowers in our hair in tlie evening and carried large feather fans.