Eighty-One Talks to Eighteen “If I Were a Girl Again”

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6946, 27 June 1929, Page 4

Eighty-One Talks to Eighteen “If I Were a Girl Again”

This great -actress, Dame Madge Kendal, celebrated her eighty-first birthday by giving a Victorian tea party designed to out-brighten the parties of the Bright Young People of today. Iler article, printed below, will bring back happy memories to the older folk, and, reading it, the modern girl may ask herself, “Am I getting the best out of lifet”

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T is extraordinarily difficult for me to answer the question, “What would you do if you were a girl again?” says Dame Madge, writ-

ing for “Tit Bits.” So many people are ready impulsively to tell what they would do if they had their time over again; the errors they would never commit, the steps they would know better than to take. But youth and age cannot go together, and that is just the trouble. “If youth but knew; if age only could!" I have reached the age at which ihen and women acquire a philosophy, an age from which I can look back and see mistakes and missed opportunities, and if I try to put myself in the position of the modern girl, surely my ideas must be tinged by this very philosophy and I must speak as a modern while having behind me the experience of a Victorian.

First and foremost comes the question of what I should do with the wider opportunities that women receive today. I am sure I should take advantage of some—not all—of them, and I must say here that it seems to me that the modern girl is missing her chance. How many of them are making a success of their lives? I hear of women lawyers, women accountants, women stockbrokers, and women architects, but I hear of them only because they are the exceptions. Most girls are typists and industrial and commercial assistants, and so they remain until they marry or until they die. Why aren’t there more successes in this new women’s sphere of life? I wonder if it is because the modern girl doesn’t care? It seems to me that if I were a girl again I would care; that I should not rest content in a very humble sphere when a wider one was open to me. I should feel within me an urge to “make a name for myself”; perhaps, being modern, I should want more money to spend on clothes and pleasure, and so I should work all the harder, and as a consequence enjoy my pleasures all the more keenly. Mind you, I would not bo a bluestocking in these days. I would dance, I would sing, I would laugh with my friends, and I should feel that zest for life that youth the world over knows. But there would be times after the work was done and the last dance had ended when I should enjoy solitude and quiet reflection. ' Age, it is said, lives on its memories, but this is not always true, and at least, if age knows the beauty of contemplation, so, as a modern girl, I should soon realise its worth.

We live in strange times; the modern girl has much to endure, much to f'ce, and while relaxation is good there must be times when, as a modern girl, I should want an opportunity to look ahead, to ' turn aside from excitement, and mentally to prepare myself for the struggles, disappointments, and trials that come to all. I wonder what I should do where sports are ccncerned. She is a very sturdy, very independent type, this modern girl "sportsman”; she jets out into the open-air and her cheeks glow with health. And yet somehow I cannot see myself playing hockey or lacrosse, pulling in a rowing four, crashing through an “ace” service, or running twenty miles across country. I could see myself riding, I am sure I should still love walking, but perhaps I’m prejudiced and I cannot see myself burning to enter a Rugger scrum, because I have definite ideas on keeping the feminine qualities untouched by masculinity, and because I was trained in deportment —a word which is, I am sorry to see, slipping away from our vocabularies. These Hectic Days

If there is anything sweeter on earth than a young girl of today, quiet, long-legged, lissom, and with eyes as clear as an April morning, I have yet to find it. Why should this beauty, this sheer charm, be lost in the muscular struggle of the playing fields and the strain to emulate the far-stronger man? If I were a girl again I should want to stay young, and it seejns to me nowadays they are old far too soon—old in

mind and at least mature in body long before their time.

So I’m afraid I should be something of a bookworm in these hectic days, and there I should have some trouble, shouldn’t I? These books and these plays!—whatever are we to do about them? And, as a modern girl, what should I read? Obviously, I should read novels, and of novelists I should probably adore John Galsworthy. So I should read his novels and come to know something about the Victorians —those old fogies now woven into one large doormat on which the youth of England wipes its feet. Strange, when you think of it, that those same Victorians raised this nation from an island power to the first power in the world. I know what I should think of the “doctor-consulting-room” school of writers. If I declare that I should hate them, you’ll say that I’m speaking as a Victorian and not as a modern girl. But I have an idea that the average modern girl doesn’t really care for such books. I rather fancy that the modern girl is a little nicer than certain writers want us to believe.

And what should I want from life? Why, happiness, of course! The Holy Grail we all seek. And some of us find it. Perhaps then I should be glad of the experience of age. Happiness! This is fhe most difficult point of them all to deal with. Today I know how happiness may be achieved. Should lif I were twentyone? I am afraid not —not even in these old-young days. I am afraid that I should make mis-

takes; that I should not discriminate between the genuine and the spurious; that I should mix up pleasure and contentment; that I should learn my lessons through bitterness —just as we all have done and all will do. So for a moment let me be old and young at the same time. Let me have my “old” mind and speak_ with a youthful tongue. If I were a girl again I would use my common sense. I would apply myself to whatever task I undertook and, leaving pleasure and ultra-modernity to fill its properly small part in my life, I would get on with the things that bring the deeper satisfaction, the calm of contentment. I would face the trials and troubles of the day without flinching, conscious that by working steadily and worthily I was not only creating happiness for myself, but helping others. I would take an intelligent interest in what was going on about me, but I would refuse to place too great an importance on “modern movements.” The simple truths of life are not changed by the shortening of a skirt or greater freedom between the sexes, and it is upon the simple things that we build our characters. Why try to evade responsibility? Why turn from duty? If we leave our tasks undone, the whole world is poorer, and eventually someone else has to do them. Is the modern girl so weak that she must be carried a passenger through life? I think not. As a modern girl I should refuse this humiliation. Life has taught me much. Happiness comes through getting on with one’s work, whatever it may be, and doing it to the best of one’s ability. It comes through sacrifice. Pleasure cloys the palate and leaves life tasteless. The joy is in the struggle. Old truths, these, but still truths which remain unshakable. If I were a girl If youth but knew!