MAINLY FOR WOMEN

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 November 1929, Page 9

MAINLY FOR WOMEN

ITEMS OE INTEREST

(Notes by

Marjorie)

OBSERVATORY LIFE. “NO PLACE FOR A WOMAN.” Among the passengers by the Otranto to Sydney recently was Mrs H. F. Johnston, wife of the director, of the Magnetic Observatory at Watheroo, West Australia. Mrs Johnston, who is on her way to New Zealand, has spent more than five years at Watheroo, an isolated district 138 miles north of Perth. She was the only woman, at the observatory, writes “Isabel-Anne” in the Adelaide “Observer.” Although, her home was so far from civilisation, there were no inconveniences. Electricity was installed in the Corm of labour-saving devices, such as washing machines and fans, all through the house. In spite of such ideal domestic conditions, life was anything but ideal. There were all the pests of the desert to combat. “That, part of the world is no place for a woman,” Mrs Johnston said. “I shall be very glad to get back among women for a change. If I gave a party at Watheroo, men were my only guests.” Mrs Johnston, who before her marriage was woman’s editor of the “Lyttelton Times” (Miss Kitty Reading), for more than six years, had some, knowledge of the work of the magnetic observatory, and has been able to help her husband with some of his experiments. Free-lance journalism also helped to break the dreariness of monotony during the years outback.

“The children took, too much of my time to allow me to devote much time seriously to anything else,” she said, “but terrestrial magnetism is a fascinating subject. I do not know why more women do not become experts in this branch of research work. They take physics courses, but it seems to be one of the least popular professions for women.”

According to Mrs Johnston, the observatory at Watheroo, is one of the only two of its kind in the world. The other is at Huancayo., near Lima, South America. The site in West Australia was chosen because it was in practically the same latitude as that in South ’America, and formed a Jink vith other magnetic stations throughout the world.

It is financed by the Carnegie Insti lute in Washington, U.S.A., and is purely for research work in terrestrial magnetism to establish the co-relation between the electricity in the earth and the air. The isolated position of Watheroo was chosen because of the sensitivity of the instruments. It had to be ,a site whore there was neither iron in the sand nor any disturbance from railways or other magnetic powers. After her holiday in New Zealand, Mrs Johnston intends to go to England for two years, and then back to her home in "Washington, D.C. Her husband, who is following in a few weeks, is going . with a party of scientists in the yacht Carnegie, next year, on a cruise to the South Seas, surveying the ocean and taking soundings.

The Carnegie is a unique vessel. It is the only one of its kind in the world, and has not a particle of iron in the whole ship. It will arrive in Sydney at the beginning of next year.

THE MAN WHO TRIED. Willesden Magistrate: What definite attempt have you made since 1926 to support your family? Defendant: I have 'written for a Council house, and had no reply.

SEX APPEAL IN WHISKERS. WHAT MODERN GIRLS MISS. Statisticians, filling in the hours before they grapple with the census of 1930, have discovered that the habit of shaving is now more universal than at any other time since the Napoleonic wars, but they do not tell us why. The ancient argument against whiskers no longer holds —that they made a convenient handle by which an enemy could grip you while he stabbed you under the fifth rib. • But in our time neither in, love nor war is a smooth face of any advantage.. In war, shaving, even with the safety razor’ is one of the plagues of discipline. In love the smooth shaven face is a handicap.

Nature undoubtedly intended that a man should glory in his beard; that he should nourish it and grow it as a distinguishing attribute to sex appeal. How interesting it would be if we could only know whether during the periods when whiskers had been popular men were more successful in courtship than in the long stretches of beardless time. There is much to support an argument, in the affirmative. Polygamy and whiskers have always flourished side by side. We have the outstanding examples of King Solomon and Henry VIII., who were full-bearded, and who were irresistible lovers.

Everybody knows how the Queen of Sheba, succumbed to the spell of King Solomon in ,the'- very face, of his 300 lawful consorts. Coining from Ethiopia, where men could raise only wisps of beard, she was probably smitten at her very first sight of the silken cascade of hair flowing over the great king’s bosom. As for King Henry, though he was mighty handsome as a youth, Holbein’s portrait of him in the days of his swift wooing disclose nothing of the matinee idol—indicate nothing of the secret of his charm with women, unless it was his reddish, fan-shaped beard.

Redoubtable wooers seem to -have been scarce during the long, beardless generations that separated Queen Anne from Queen Victoria. The remarkable Victorian revival of beards, therefore, naturally prompts the query whether it was accompanied by any significant evidence of their sex appeal. We only know that everybody who was anybody, on both sides of the sea, followed the fashion —men of letters and of science, statesmen, artists, musicians.'

HARD FATE OF THE BEARDLESS

Though we may' look in vain in the sober chronicles of the time for any notes on the influence of this extraordinary prevalence of facial herbage in affairs of the heart, mid-Victorian fiction is filled with allusions to it. An ambrosial, Jovian board was the .surest thing to set a maidenly heart palpitating—the almost inevitable precursor of conquest.- Anthoy Trollope, who let no razor touch his face, had a particular fondness for the whiskers of his favourite characters. In “Barchester Towers” hardly a man is without them. There is the prebendary, whose whiskers were very large and white, “and gave to his face the appearance of a benevolent, sleepy old lion.” His son Bertie’s beard “had been prepared in the Holy Land and was patriarchal.” He never shaved and rarely trimmed it. It was glossy and soft, “such that ladies might desire to reel it off and work it into their patterns in lieu of floss silk.” The hero of “The Three Clerks” had “a pair of black curly whiskers which almost surrounded his face and had been the delight and wonder of the maidservants in his mother’s house.” It might be hard to prove that Trollope’s heroes are always so bedecked and equally hard to prove that all his odious characters are beardless, but it is significant that one of the most unpleasant of the letter, the Rev. Mr Slope, wore no whiskers and was always punctiliously shaven. Was it just for that one lady of whom he was enamoured laughed his love to scorn, and another boxed his ears? If, then a beard is a way to a woman’s favour, how should it be worn? Ou that point Trollope and his contemporary novelists fail to throw any light. But there is evidence to show that Dundreary weepers and the full, Solomonic beard vf ere closely tied for favour. Both had to be tended and groomed with infinite care, like the mane and tail of a- prize stallion. Side whiskers were especially difficult. Their proud possessor could not lay his cheek upon his hand without undoing his whole facial structure. If, however, he let the hair grow all over his face, he could, as a writer o'f the time informs us, indulge freely “in the joy of playing meditatively with a rich, untrammelled beard”—a joy which the demure maidens of that de. corous era perhaps permitted themselves to share.

The conclusion of the whole matter is that the women of this beardless age do not know what they are missing. . They may turn up their hoses at beards now, but they will . surely dote upon them madly when the whirligig of fashion brings them in again, the inevitable hour which awaits only the coming of a new hero of the air or the camp or a new screen star blessed with a beard streaming in the wind like that of a Norse god in Valhalla.

CHOKER NECKLACES. If anybody tejls you that /choker necklaces are no longer fashionable, then do not believe them, says a writer in "The Leader.” They are more fashionable than they have ever been before. True, they are not the tight chokers; that.is, they do not fit close to the neck, but rest just at. the base of the throat. The most fashionable of all are made of large beads, either round, oval, or square. One of the smartest of chokers seen in a little French shop was made of great round beads, in different colours, red,, yellow, powder blue, apple green, but the remarkable part was that each bead was made of hundreds of small bead£ in that colour, woven into tight round balls. Beside the choker, that dangled elegantly from one of the new aluminium and onyx stands, was a hand-bag, wallet shape, made of the same beads, embroidered in, a bold modern design. The crystal and . coloured bead chokers are considered vary smart;, crystal and amber is a favourite and very lovely combination. The crystal beads are usually a thick

oval shape aud the z amber square; sometimes they are separated with flat pearl dises. . Crystal and green glass and crystal and onyx! are also fashionable. It is. mostly the young girls who wear these. chokers, and very attractive . they, look with the' fashionable toque hats. . -