Famous Beauties of the Past

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6815, 21 January 1929, Page 4

Famous Beauties of the Past

“Modern Girls Look Alike,” Says Famous Lily Langtry

Lady de Bathe, in the days when she was Lily Langtry, was the outstanding beauty of her generation. On her 7 hth birthday, she looked back at the beautiful women of her time and decided that the girls of to-day, by contrast, lack radiance, and all look alike.

seemed to bring sunshine into the room. ; ._ To-day women are becoming so standardised in figure and dress that they all seem to look like each other. You can see half a dozen women all sitting round the same table, all shaven and shorn, all in tight little felt hats, and all in the same severely cut uniform. Because that is yvhat it really is nowadays. In Victorian times we all used to dress differently. *l. for example, used to wear no jewellery. I did my hair in a special way. I used to wear black nearly always, with skirts of a peculiarly trailing

VERY years we live in is a better one. This is my honest opinion, after having lived through what has been, after all, a very eventful period. It was not until I was nearly 15 years old that I saw my first railway train (it went at a slug’s pace over three times of track in Jersey, where I was born), and now, as I am writing, a Zeppelin is trying to fly the Atlantic.

It is all very wonderful and increasingly interesting for anyone who is still well enough to appreciate what is going on in the world. Yes. People who talk about the good old days have forgotten the nuisance of having no telephone, no electricity, no fast, comfortable cars. They have forgotten how they used to pay visits to country houses where it waft always cold, where the draw-ing-rooms were badly lighted with oil lamps, where you only had candles in your bedroom, and where, consequently, you were always covered with wax.

Wo used to have gas in the theatre (says Lady de Bathe, writing in the “Daily Mail”) in the old days of the Haymarket, but that was almost worse than the oil lamps. Night after night I used to feel very sick and have terrible headaches. I felt that I wanted to die. I was being gassed every evening that I was performing there. The comfort of to-day is very pleasant; it is also very necessary. We live at such a rate nowadays, that we could no't carry on for a mqnth under the old conditions. lam in my seventies, and yet during the course of the day I get through twice as much as I did when I was a young woman.

description, shoulders slashed with white or gold, and a deep collar ot Venetian lace. Mrs. Cornwallis West wore her golden hair in little curls on the top of her head, while at the back of the neck it was as short as it is the fashion to-day. In contrast to me, she loved bright colours, and I hav ® seen her in a black velvet toque with as many as five differently coloured ostrich feathers of red and orange. Lady de Grey—she was a radiant beauty; Lady Dudley, dark and longnecked; the Duchess of Leinster, a beauty of the opulent type, all dressed distinctively.

London has seen many changes in her manners and modes in the past 50 years.

Fifty years ago there were more beauties but far fewer pretty women. Women to-day ought to haye the courage of their convictions and dress to suit their own style of looks, instead of dressing like their next-door neighbour. On the whole women and men are much more attractive to look at,

Take women, for example. You never see a radiant beauty nowadays; it 13 difficult to explain what 1 mean by radiant, but I remember Lord Rosebery using the phrase when lie was explaining that a woman he knew

however, than they used to be. Their hands in particular have, improved. I believe I was the first woman in England to have my hands manicured. To-day nearly every woman does so and many men as well. In my young days men often had sadly neglected hands. Women frequently had shiny noses. - -

But still, women did not have such hard faces as they do now. I shall never forget how, a year or two ago, at Monte Carlo, a positively horsefaced woman came up to me and said, “I have always wanted to meet you; Lady de Bathe, because people are always telling me how. much I look like you.” -'' Her husband then approached and said, “Yes, my wife has always been known as the Jersey Lily of Australia."

I could not think what to say. Again, quite recently, another woman, whose face really seemed to have slipped sideways, told me that she, too, was considered to look like me, though she admitted that she was, thought to be a good deal handsomer. That, again, was an awkward moment. However, I escap'ed by saying, “Of. course, it is a curious thing how one never knows quite what one looks like.”