The Gentleman With a Duster.

Hokitika Guardian, 21 June 1921, Page 3

The Gentleman With a Duster.

SINS OF MODERN “FASHION.” t CHORUS-GIRL WIVES. I • The “Gentleman with a Duster,” who t rubbed the mirrors of Downing-street ■ unkindly a little while ago in a series of articles, published in April a new ■ book attacking what is called Society. I. The book is called “The Glass of ; Fashion” and the author says: I : By the term Fashion I mean all those I! noisy, ostentatious, and frivolous peoI pie, patricians and plutocrats, politi- [ dans and financiers, lawyers and ; | tradesmen, actors and artists, who have scrambled on to the summit of England’s national life, and who, setting the worst possible examples in morals and manners, are never so happy as when they are making people talk about them. It is of these ostentatious people I write, and my chief hope is to make the Gentry of England talk about them in such a manner as will eitliei bring them to a sense of their duties or lead to_ their expulsion from the heights. CHOOSING A WIFE. The author, generally understood to lie Mr Harold Begbie, deplores the cynicism, the frivolity, the indelicacy of fashionable people, as revealed by Colonel Ilepington’s and Mrs Asquith’s books. He attacks their bad manners, their low ideals in marriage, their responsibility for “the corruption of women.” It is all very much like Father Bernard Vaughan’s sermons on the Sins of Society. Here is a passage which shows the nature of the onslaught : It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that great numbers of young men in fashionable society pick up their wives just as a sensualist picks up a woman in-the street. . . . The .chorus girl whom they find so seductive at a table in a restaurant, so intoxicating in the padded recesses of a motor car, is a person of no education and of few morals; she would not for the world walk the pavements at night, but she would not scruple to sell herself into a union, legal or illegal, with a rich man for whom she entertains no deep affection. &he belongs, as a rule, to the lower middle classes, and has spent her childhood in the suburbs. Her solitary cleverness is a faculty for imitation; she can affect a drawl of boredom, has all the phrases of smart society on the tip of her tongue, and can powder her chin, in public with the very gesture of a duke’s daughter. Fundamentally she is as ignorant as a Red Indian. That a young Englishman of the highest class in 'the land, with all the brilliant and beautiful women of the world to choose from, should select such a trivial little baggage as this for the mate of his soul and the companion of his life, is hot a matter for amusement or amazement, but a fact of great social importance. LADY OF VICTORIAN. Here and there, however, are stories which have been told to the author to show that there is another side to the shield. There is an old bachelor who lives in London, looked after by an oM butler and an old cook, who lias A district in Whitechapel which he visits regularly, calling on old people in their little houses, just as he calls on ladies in this part of the town. He does not preach, distribute tracts, or argue as a political propagandist; lie is a social visitor to these old bodies, calling to inquire after their health and patiently listening to their gossip. Once every week Fie takes a blind man for a walk. There is a hospital in London to which lie goes to talk to the patients who have no visitors. He has been a constant friend to St Dunstan’s. Very few people in London know anything about this part of his life. Another story concerns Mrs Henry Edwardes and her wonderful hospitality to our Dominion soldiers: This Mrs Edwardes is pinned to her chair by rheumatoid arthritis as effectually as Prometheus to his rock. She can lift her hands a few inches and that is all. Unable to attend meetings or to take part in the mechanism of organisation, this charming woman, who lias known Courts and capitals and who is so well read and so spiritually wise, remained in her chair, and round that chair in her drawing-room . gathered officers from every quarter of the British Commonwealth, telling her about their homes and listening to her good counsel with reverence and affection. That chair in the drawing-room of Herbert-crescent became for me a veritable throne of England, and the stoop-• ing lady clothed in beautiful white' draperies and old lace who sat there j surrounded by soldiers from beyond the seas seemed to me a reincarnation of the Victorian spirit of domestic life. Her graciousness, her exceeding gentle- J ness, her perfect sympathy with human , nature are all strung together by a vigorous intellectual good sense which gives power to her sweetness.—Daily . Mail.