MISS COLONIA IN LONDON.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CI, Issue 11885, 8 May 1899, Page 3

MISS COLONIA IN LONDON.

[Correspondent “Canterbury Times”! LONDON, March 3. " My Dear Cousins,—The breath of spring is beginning to entice us out into the open again, and the golden wealth of the daffodils in the shops suggest walks in the park and field, but alas, the March of Fashion will, I fear, give its followers a very halting gait. Sleeves are to be tighter than ever,' so are skirts—even of the walking gowns. In fact, the long narrow skirts are to be so tight above the knees as to threaten to split whenever the wearer puts her best foot foremost. At the ankles, however, they burst forth into a perfect whirlpool of ' billowy flounces. These skirts are generally trimmed eitner with stitched trappings of their own materia], or with a .similar kind of ornamentation in satin or silk, matching exactly in colour the original fabric. Sometimes the strappings are carried in a straight line from waist to hem, while at others they describe a series of curves, and so simulate a double or triple skirt. I hone that we shall not have. to follow fashion blindly, but shall be able to induce a sweet reasonableness on .the part of our dressmaker, otherwise I fear that the rational .dress league will' make' a‘ - great many converts. >.! DRAWING-ROOMS. The Two drawing-rooms that were held this week by Princess Christian have been rendered .somewhat sombre by the death of Prince‘Alfred, -which has obliged the Royal Princesses, Ladies and Maids of Honour, to be be attired in black, and those attending the drawing rooms to wear half mourning, that is, white, black, the combination of the two, mauve, grey, and combinations of white or black with -mauve or grey. The ' only gems allowed to be worn are diamonds and pearls. Of course the debutantes will not be affected by the . mourning regulations, for their dresses, trains, trimmings and flowers are always white and simple. Pearls are, too, their most appropriate wear, although here and there a very plain diamond ornament sparkles forth. Those ladies, however, who looked forward to appearing in some' of the brilliant gorgeous colours that are to be fashionable this season must have been sadly disappointed,' and if they " had ordered '• their costumes betimes must have been sadly inconvenienced by the necessity of ordering a gown of staid apd serious hue. However, the more brilliant costumes will come in for the May drawing rooms which the Queen herself is likely to hold. I doubt if many dresses had, been ordered for the drawing rooms before the mourning regulations wete promulgated. As a rule, my dears, these matters are till the last moment. The costumiere and lingere are rushed by their customers all at once, and it is only by supreme patience and perseverance, by worldng day and night, defying the factory inspectors, who are on the qui yive at this time, that many of the court trains reach the houses of the wearers, when the carriages are at the door. You can imagine the fearful anxiety of the wearer, who has perhaps -had her hair done over night by some fashionable coiffeur, lest.she miss her,train and —the drawing-room. And when at last the ordeal is over, and the debutante has ordered tier train and backed and curtsied in the most approved fashion, she has still to pose for the photographer, and to smile and make herself agreeable to a crowd of admiring friends, who must be invited to christen the costume as it were. No wonder that at the end of the day many a debutante succumbs, quite fagged out. Really, I don’t think the game is‘worth the candle, and I quite sympathise with those democratic Agents-General—too few, alas! —who, with their wives and daughters, decline to offer themselves upon the shrine of the Fetish fashion. An Agent-General has, of course, being a servant of the Crown, to appear in a Court uniform, which, in the first place, is repugnant to his democratic ideas, and, in the second, costs him some sixty guineas, and will, in all probability, never be worn again. He cannot, like the United States Ambassador, appear in a plain but dignified suit of black. Of course, the Agent-General’s wife and daughter must also’ pay pretty heavily if they wish to be presented; but then, after all, their costumes will be used again and again. Presentation dresses vary m price from forty to seventy ' guineas, but the front and skirt make .a smart evening or dinner dress, and out of the train comes another dress, and possibly if the train has been with a 'different material and in a different colour, even a third. Of course, the debutante’s dress does not cost so much. Seventeen or eighteen guineas is quite enough to pay, even if the . train, some eight or nine yards long, be made of brocades, satin'moire, or velvet. Afterwards the dress can he converted into a ball-dress or- an evening-gown. Mauve and white were the chief colours seen both in dresses and flowers. _ The bouquets, indeed," were remarkable for their artistic effect and lightness in the hand. The Goodyear bow, in, which the blossoms were tied up in loops, each holding a distinctive flower, was very much in evidence. Cattleyad and feathery asparagus, lilies of the valley, and Neapolitan or dark blue English violets, pale Parma violets made up with broad black velvet ribbon, white roses and white tulips, mauve orchids and white lilies with grey or mauve ribbons seemed the favourite flowers. In fact, simplicity and good taste rather than gorgeous brilliancy seemed to mark the costumes and accessories this week. INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OR WOMEN.,

The arrangements of the International Congress of Women are now nearly complete. The Congress is to open its session on June 26, and to continue until July 4. The Congress will be managed by the International Council of Women, whose headquarters wjll be the Westminster Town Hall, "St Martin’s Town Hall and the Convocation Hall of Church House, Dean’s Yard. Westminster will also be occupied by different sections. The delegates, who during their stay will be the guests of people interested in. women’s work, will be welcomed by the

International Council on Monday, June 26, i at the Westminster Town Hall. That evening the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland will hold a reception for them at Stafford House. On Tuesday evening they will discuss international arbitration at the Queen’s Hall. On Wednesday, Lady Battersea will entertain delegates and speakers at Surrey House. On Thursday the political enfranchisement of women is to be the piece de resistance. On Friday, temperance industrial problems and the like are to be dealt with. G-arden parties on. Saturday, 1 given by the Bishop of London and Mrs Creighton at Fulham Palace, and on Tuesday °by Lord Rothschild and Mrs Leopold de Rothschild, at Gunnersbiiry Park, will wind up the round of-entertainments. A very complete and comprehensive programme of work has been mapped out into five sections, Education, Professions for Women, Legislative and Industrial Questions, Political and Social Work. Each section will hold two sessions daily, opened by a short paper; which' will be followed by a discussion, inaugurated by invited speakers. French, German and English are to be the languages used, and in order that all may understand printed translations of the French and German papers are to be circulated, and interpreters will be at hand to translate those languages into the vulgar tongue.

I have no space to give you details of the programme, but the following list of headings will give you some idea of the large area that will be covered by the various papers. The Educational Section, of which the convener is Miss Faithful, will deal with—Child Life and Training, School, Universities, Modem Educational Experiments, Technical Education, Co-Education, Training of Teachers, Examinations, Women as Educators. The Professional Section includes Professions, and the Effect upon Domestic Life of the Admission of Women to the Professions, Medicine, Nursing, Art, Science, the Drama and Music, Literature and Journalism, Inspectors, Civil Service, Agriculture and Horticulture, including dairying, poultry-farming, bee-keeping, horse-breeding. Mrs Alec Tweedie, who is an authority on agriculture and butter-mak-ing, is convener of this section. Mrs J. R. Macdonald will convene the Legislative and Industrial Section, which has some knotty questions to consider, including Special Labour Legislation for Women and Children, Attitude of Different Schools of Reform as to Women’s Industrial Position, Civil Disabilities of Women in Regard to Marriage, Divorce and Property Laws, and the Guardianship of Children, Trade Unionism, Co-operation and Profit-sharing, Technical and Industrial Training, Legislation for the Dependent Classes, Scientific Treatment of Domestic Service, the Home as Workshop. The Ethics of Wage-earning looks interesting, as it is to comprehend the unpaid services of the housewife, equal pay for equal work, the living-wage, the pocketmoney wage and legal education of women. In the Political Section, for which the Hon Mrs A. T. Lyttelton is responsible, besides the Parliamentary Enfranchisement of Women and Their Status in Local Government, we are to consider their responsibilities and duties in politics aiid in administrative work.

The Social . Section, convened by Mrs Benson, has a wide field for inquiry. Prisons and Reformatories, Preventive and Rescue Work, Treatment of the Destitute Classes, Social . Settlements, Women’s Clubs, Emigration and Protection of Young Travellers, Provident Schemes, Temperance, Amusements, and the Social for an Equal Moral Standard for Men and Women are some of the subjects on which we are to hear experts hold forth. Apropos of the Conference, perhaps you are not so clear about the nature and raison d’etre of tho International Council of Women as you ought to be. I confess I had rather, vague ideas on the subject until I read its President’s short catechism. It owes its origin to a number of American women, who convened a representative assembly of which Mrs Fawcett was . elected president, of delegates from different nations at Washington in 1888, to organise international and national councils of women. At the same time the National Council of Women of the United States was formed, with Miss Prances Willard as president. In 1893 the International Council held its quinquennial meeting ini Chicago, at the World’s Fair, and women workers of thirty different nationalities were then represented. These,' returning to their own countries, formed National Councils there, and such Councils now exist in the United States, Canada, Germany, Sweden, Great Britain and Ireland, New Zealand, New South Wales and Italy. These Councils are confederations of societies, and' are each officially represented at the International Cohncil by their President and two delegates, while the executive of the latter Council is composed of the Presidents of each National Council, together with the elected officers of the International Council. The main object of the International and of the National Councils that compose it is to further the application of the golden rule —Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you—to society, custom and law. By its constitution, the International Council is expressly forbidden to identify itself specially with any movement. It is oiganised in the interest of no propaganda, and has no power over its members beyond that of suggestion and sympathy. Its objects are: (1) To provide a means of communication between women’s organisations in all countries, and (2) To provide opportunities for women to meet together from all parts of the world to confer upon questions relating to the welfare of the family and the commonwealth. And now I expect you have had just about enough of the work-a-day side of our existence. Let us change the subject, and consider amusements, though not from the ethical standpoint, as the Congress proposes to do. CLUDS.

Since I last wrote you I have visited two clubs, the Empress and the Writers’. A friend who has been much in Russia and Pans, and who-writes.-largely for art journals, kindly asked me to afternoon tea, and, as we gossiped in one corner of the. bright winter garden to two rather interesting men, the afternoon passed very quickly, without my talcing in very many of the de-., tails of the club. The room, hasa glass

roof, like a conservatory, and is decorated by palms and plants in handsome china jars. AH the easy chairs were filled by very smartly dressed members and their friends, busily engaged with tea and chatter. Prom the winter garden you go out on to a gallery, from which steps lead into a very cosy little morning-room, where y6u can retire and write your letters, or indulge in a dolce fan niente without fear of interruption. Be-' tween the winter garden and the hall is a little reception room, which is far too small for the large number of members. A very ■narrow. .staircase- leads up to the drawing; room on one side and the. dining-room oh the other. These regions are barred to the mere, man, except when he is being taken in to dinner. The dining-room is very simple, but very smart, and looked attractive, but, as only sixty ,or -seventy can . sit down at once, you liave often, to "wait half an hour before you can get a seat. The predominant colour of the drawing-room was gold, rather typical of the wealth of many of the members. It appeared to me, indeed, that the fittings and furniture were, perhaps, just a little too smart and new. The rooms did not, somehow, look as if they were lived in. You felt that when you calne to the club you must put on your best frock and be on your best behaviour. A staircase as steep as a ladder takes you up to the bedrooms, which are much too few for the nearly 3000 members of the club, in the new premises which are going up next door, members are to have fifty-two bedrooms, an entire suite of library, dining, drawing and other rooms for members only, besides a reception hall, dining and drawingrooms and lounge to which guests wiU be, admitted. ’ . , , T ... ,: T And what did we talk about 1 think I hear you say. Well, for once, my dears, the conversation was singularly free of conventionalities. Mr Trevor-Battye, the naturalist and explorer in Arctic and Siberian regions, a tall, well .groomed man—who, from his accent and clothes, might have spent all his life in London instead of in the wild regions of the world—and my artistic friend plunged into a discussion on the meaning of colours, the sensations and sounds represented by them and tHe connection between violets and violins. We ail added our quota, generally sarcastic, to the discussion, which drifted into art in general, and then to female suffrage when Mr Bassett Roe, a well-known actor, one of the Three Musketeers at the Garrick, joined us. With his arrival the talk became theatrical. The confidence of the tyro on the stage as opposed to the nervousness of the experienced actor, “'The Ambassador'’ and Miss Elizabeth Robins’s book “ The Open Question,” were the chief topics upon which we dealt lightly. Of course you are reading “The Open Question” under the pseudonym of “C. E. Raimond." It is quite the book of the hour, and deals with the fortunes of a decadent family, just as you might expect from so strong an admirer of Ibsen as Miss Robins, whose Scandinavian servant in her tiny flat is said to have been a present ; from the mystical dramatist. Ibsen was her dbing and her undoing, so our Musketeer told us. On the one hand her wonderful acting of the characters in his plays brought her into prominence and made her many friends in the most intellectual of London society. On the other, those who had once seen her in an Ibsen drama, could never imagine her in any other piece. With her it must be Aut Ibsen aut nihil, and when the Ibsen tide receded it left her high and dry on the dramatic shelf. But literature came to her aid, and no doubt C. E. Raimond, the author, will eventually be longer remembered than. Elizabeth Robing, fJEe interpreter of Ibsen. Now, my dears, I hope you have some idea of the things they say and the things they do at the Empress. A. week or so ago, Ida Osborne, one of my numerous cousins, took me to a Friday “At Home” at the Writers’ Club. There is no “swagger” whateverabouttheWriters. You descend by some very unpretentious stairs into the basement oL Hastings House, where you find a compact little block of rooms, self-contained, and guarded by. a womanly Cerberus. A narrow passage with writing and smoking-rooms on one side, and dressing and dining-rooms on the other, takes you into the long reception-room, a great contrast to the magnificence of the Empress quarters. The furniture is of the plainest; on the walls, which are covered by a -striped salmon-coloured paper, bang a few engravings of women writers,' Md a comfortable cosy comer is the only sign of luxury. On thisparticular Friday Mrs Bur;. nett-Smith (Annie S. Swan of the “Woman at Home”) was the hostess, and a, very kind, unromantic, motherly person she looked. But the real lioness of the afternoon was John Oliver Hobbes (Mrs Craigin), who, from the time of her arrival to that of her departure, was quite hemmed in by an admiring throng doing her homage. I just caught a glimpse of her sweeping out of the room. She is a tall, slender, handsome woman of thirty-one, and wore a very smart gown of solver grey and a silver toque with brown and green foliage and flowers. She must have felt very warm in the handsome cape of rich brown sables she wore, as the room was distinctly dose. However, she smiled graciously upon her satellites. She is seldom seen at the club, and her visit this time was due to her election as Chairman of Committee the previous week. “ The Ambassador ” is now running at St James’, as well as a new one-act play, “ The Repentance,” of which the action takes place in Bilbao during the Carlist rising of 1835, and as Mr Alexander has just accepted from her pen a poetical tragedy, “Osbem and.iUrsyne,” of the period of the Norman Conquest and tire First Crusade, it looks rather as if “John Oliver Hobbes” intends for the time being to devote herself , to drama instead of fiction.

Lesser stars at the Writers were quite put in the shade by this fashionable comet and her train, and even the regular members of the club seemed to be ignorant of the identity of most of the celebrities, making -wild guesses in their attempts to: fit a name to a face. However, Beatrice, Harraden, of “ Ships that Pass in the' Night,” was points! out to me, a queer ; little bundle in a baggy "black dress, with a bandanna handkerchief round her neck,-' and a large velvet- Tam-o’-Shauter on her long, somewhat unkempt head of hair. She looked for all the world like a female Bunthome, very intense and very earnest, but seemed a general favourite. One of her sisters, by the way,, used 'to figure largely ns a : prominent ■ aesthete , in Du Maurier’s > drawings: for “Punch.” Beatrice Harraden herself , is. just about to publish a -new book, ‘‘The Fowler.” A few, rather •. piquanfooting

actress type, a bulky editor with'a long beard and a bald head, Miss Billington ■ of the ~ “ Daily. , Telegraph,” a number of rather strong-minded and. doydEy. diessed women, and one or two “ Johnnies ’’ pretty well comprise the tea-sipping throng. . You could see with half a glanca that most of the women there worked and worked hard for t their thejr living. “ She collects , photographs of Royalties. was .a - remark I caught. amid the clatter of tea-cups, while on the other side of me a jonrhahtit was narrating how a hawk 1 had pounced- on a pigeon af the Guildhall, And she’had, sent an.exchisive paragraph to the “ Chronicle.” Most of the. people 1 ; however, seemed too busy, .searching for celebrities to engage in anything more than a very disjointed conversation. Just as I was leaving, I met ' Miss Swanhilda Bulan, the young Ifew Zealander, who is one of the leaders of the Ratiohal Dress League, but who, on this occasion, wore the conventional skirt and a rather coquettish little Hussar cap.with shaving brtish.