MAINLY FOR WOMEN

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 April 1929, Page 7

MAINLY FOR WOMEN

ITEMS OE INTEREST

(Notes by

Marjorie)

MILADY’S WALK.

(By Doreen Dawson).

It appears that French girls filled all the leading places in an international walking contest held at a Paris theatre, where the votes of the audience decided that British, American, and German girls could not compete with the French for grace. Monsieur Mariot, the promoter of the contest, declared that the whole secret of the French girl’s grace is that she does not walk. She glides. Since high heels—really high heels of the exaggerated Louis type—are still the favourite footwear of the typical Parisienne, this is a bit of a blow to those of us who have listened attentively and with respect to the claims of the low-heel school of physical grace. On every hand we read eulogistic tributes to the Englishwoman’s vastly improved walk and carriage since the initiation of the low-heeled mode. And I seem to remember a long-accepted dictum that the walk and carriage of the American girl constituted an example for the whole world of women. Presumably the standards of grace may vary as do the standards of facial beauty. It is not inconceivable that an audience of doctors and sculptors, let us say, might vote the vaunted high heeled “glide” of the Parisienne a mincing, affected, and unnatural movment; and manifest a professional preference for the freer and less studied grace' of her English and American sisters. It is one thing to pass a “walking” test over a few yards of stage-flooring. It is quite another to maintain the perfect balance of body and limbs over a long-distance, crosscountry area. What might be considered elegant foot and ankle work in a. theatrical mise-en-scene would take on a very different aspect under natural outdoor conditions.

That graceful comportment is de pendent on a high-heeled “glide” is too fantastic a physical culture theory I fancy, to win more than a comparatively few partisan subscribers. The old Grecian ideal will continue to take precedence of the Gallic interpretation of pedestrian art, in the enlightened judgment of those legions of feminine converts to the low-heeled vogue. . Grace, like beauty, is in the mind s eye of the beholder. And the typical modern feminine mentality prefers an unfettered step, to a shackled strut. SLEEVES AND CUFFS. Sleeves —and especially cuffs—are very important this season. Wide gauntlet cuffs of starched hemstitched muslin, with neat little collars en suite, are featured on one or two daytime models. White muslin on black looks especially well; so does stone-colour on olive green. Alternatively you may choose to add a long, cascading jabot of fine lace to the V opening of your more regal afternoon frock of satin, moire, taffetas or crepe. Then you will finish the long sleeves with shaped frills of similar lace; frills that fall over the knuckles and make youi’ fingers look lovely! The mitten sleeve is being revived by one designer. It looks quaintly in keeping with the demure little frocks he makes for his youngei’ customers. Black semi-evening frocks, for instance, all full and billowy as to skirt and all tight and trim as to bodice, with long transparent sleeves moulding the white arms and terminating actually in mittens over the hands! —D.D.

SECRET OF GOOD MANNERS. There is just one supreme secret of good manners. The heart must right. The kindly action, the gracious word, the pleasant smile, the deference to age on the part of youth, all the things that contribute to the real beauty and charm of life, spring from one source —the heart. All our improved educational systems, our deeper knowledge of human psychology, will avail us little in the garnering of human happiness if we neglect this secret garden of the soul. Manners maketh man —and they make a nation. No educational curriculum is complete which does not teach our growing girls and boys that good manners are not only a sure passport to success, but to that ultimate joy in living without which worldly success is but Dead Sea fruit. Happiness—lasting happiness—is impossible without some regard for the happiness of others, which can so often be fostered by the smallest acts of kindness, acts that become instinctive and spontaneous if they be practised from day to day. We all want harmopy rather than discoid; peace instead of strife. And good manners go farther than many of us realise toward the promotion of universal goodwill. —P.K.

FLIRTING’S HISTORY.

THE INCONSTANT SWAIN.

The charming art of flirtation has been so strongly associated with the modern girl that the verb “to flirt” seems to belong to this century. In the reign of Louis XIV, the courtiers and even the King himself spent many an idle hour in the shady nooks of the gardens at Versailles indulging in the pastime of coquetry. That was nothing new, for surely it was done in the hanging gardens of Babylon. But in the gardens of Versailles, where courtiers swept the paths with their befeathered hats, and ladies bowed their peruked heads in recognition, and blossoms were exchanged, symbols of unspoken words and thoughts, this perfumed coquetry was called “fieureter” —an exquisite playing with the emotions by means of flowers. Is it not possible that out of “fieureter” the word “flirt” may have grown? The question was put to Dr Frank H. Vixetelly, maker of dictionaries. Though he does not admit that flirt sprang from the romantic background of Versailles, he avows that originally “flurt” was. accepted as a contracted form of the French “fieureter,” from “fleur,” to go a-flowering. In Cotgrave’s Dictionary the definition of “fieureter” is to pass over lightly, touching a thing in going by it: metaphorically it is the bee’s nimble skipping from flower to flower as she feeds.

“Out of this,” to quote Dr Vizetelly, “Stevens, in 1706, deducted ‘to dally with; to trifle’; .and why not, when he had Tver’s “Comnie un papillon coletant de fleurette en fleurette’? One of Punch’s versatile contributors in the summer of 1575 told his readers that ‘a butterfly vagrant flits light o’er the flower beds of beauty in June.’ Here is a connection between flit and. flirt, and who would quarrel with it? Everyone who notices a butterfly flitting from flower to flower in the summer sun will cheerfully admit that its airy dance is in perfect keeping with the course of the colourful, frivolous but ephemeral and beautiful creature.

“The Anglo-Saxon word for ‘trifle’ is ‘fleardian’; it may have been from this source that the Scots got ‘flyrd, to flirt, and ‘flird,’ to flutter; but according to Jamieson the Scottish word that means to flirt is ‘flicker.’ I flycker, as a birde dothe when he

hovereth, Je volette, I flycker, I kysse togyther, Je baise! Thus wrote Palsgrave in his ‘Lesclarcissment.’ ” Look where one may, Dr Vizetf Hy points out, the word is associated with the very ideal of inconstancy. “In Ih«j Far East.” he says, “the bee is described as ‘a lover, gallant, libertine’; in Brazil, where the natives are enamoured by the beauty of the beekke hummingbird, the little creature is called ‘kissflower.’ The Italians appl}Z ‘farfalla,’ butterfly, to a fickle man.” Somebody once asked: “Why is a rose red?” The answer was supplied by a contributor to “Temple Bar Magazine”: The rose of old. they say. was white, Till love one day in wanton flight. Flirting away from flower to flower A rose-tree brushed in evil hour. Once again linking the poet’s conception of the flower-loving bee with the flirt, the lexicographer quoted the following verse: — And as for the beo And his industry I distrust his toilsome hours, For he roves up and down Like a man about town, With a natural taste for flowers. Nathan Bailey, in his dictionary, defined the word flirt as a. “sorry baggage, a. light housewife,” and to flirt as to “banter or jeer.” That was in 1724. Turning to the Anglo-Saxon forebears of “to flirt,” .Dr Vizetelly calls attention to the fact that though Cotgrave traced flirt, to the French, the Dictionary of Parisian Argot, issued in 1872, defined flirtation as "gallant badinage and coquetry,” claiming that it was an Anglicism.

Our more matter-of-fact English ancestors did not take flirting in so light a mood. Among the old authors it did not mean to trifle with, as in wooing. “Originally,” ' says the editor of the Standard Dictionary, “it meant to jerk or pull lightly away, to flick. Dekker in one of his plays, ‘Satiromastic’ makes one of his characters say: "Tis the fashion to flirt ink in every man’s face. Swift, in ‘The Tattler,’ explains flirting as ‘that sprinkling which some careless quean flirts on you from her mop.’ Poetically George Colman used the couplet: Flirting his sweet and tiny shower Upon a milk-white April flower. "In the days when we were not so hard put to it for thrills the English traveller Richard Eden reminded the neople of his time that the natives of New India, as he termed it, enjoyed nose-thrills, “flirting’ upward and wide when they turned up their noses at anything that they did not like. “In the prologue to Sheridan’s ‘School for Scandal’ the word was first used in the sense of coquetry by David Garrick. But it was left to George Eliot to remind us bi ‘Adam Bede' that ‘every man likes to flirt with a pretty girl, and every pretty girl likes to be flirted with.’ To play at. courtship is not by any means modern. Earl Buchan, whose ‘Fugitive Essays’ were issued anonymously in 1793, took note of the fact that the ‘men of his time flirted with the beauties of his day.’ ”