THE HABITS OF MRS. LANGTRY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8928, 17 December 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE HABITS OF MRS. LANGTRY.

When- the contents of the little Lmgfcry house in Park Lane were sold and the social career of the famous Jersey beauty came to an end all the fashionable London world gathered to the auction of her effects, and were considerably surprised at the revelations of the luxury within that modest little domicile. The house was small, but everything in it was of the finest and most expensive quality. The damask was as thick and shining as white satin, all the beautiful Belfast bed linen was embroidered with a double "L," and many of the sheets and pillow-Blips were edged with lace. The hangings, rags, embroideries, and furnishings wire of the richest and all the domestic appointments exquisitely dainty and costly. This passion for luxury is an integral quality of the beauty's nature. She cannot exist without it, and will have it at any cost. The moment she settles down anywhere it begins in three days to show itself in all sorts of charming adjuncts, and her house on Twenty-third-street was a perfect marvel of costly loveliness. Her piano was draped with an India shawl, the card-trays and ash-receivers were richly enamelled, the rugs were of the most expensive furs, the candlesticks of solid silver. Evory detail, every appurtenancel, had an intrinsic money value apart from what beauty it possessed, and as for her personal appointments, they were fitted for the use of an empress. All the fittings of her travelling dressing-case are in gold and the heaviest crystal, and Ivory, shell, silver and porcelain made into the dainty and luxurious toilet devices that only Parisians can manufacture furnish forth her bathroom and dressingtable.

The same daintiness and splendour extend themselves to her wardrobe. Mrs. Langtry never wears silk undergarments, but has an unlimited supply, made of the finest and sheerest of batiste. An order that was sent home to her from a big importing house the other day contained two dozen of everything made of batiste, in all the delicate ■hades of blue, lilao, pink, and cream, trimmed lavishly with crisp laoes and tied with tiny ribbon bows of the same or of contrasting oolours. The petticoats were many of them in colours also, though the majority were white, and were flounced nearly all up to the waist with many ruffles of lace and tine hand embroidery. With this order, which included night-dresses, dreesing sacques,, andunder waists, were eighteen pairs of corsets. These were of shapes to match the underclothes, and while not very much trimmed, were of the thickest silk and frilled around the tops with lace. They are all made to order, arid are to wear with special dresses, giving different effects in the length of the waist, Ac. Mrs. Langtry is, as she grows older, j nat a little inclined to embonpoint, a consummation she dreads, and her corsets are made just now with extra care to oonceal the tendency. She has measured her waist, just so many centimetres, and her corsets are always laced to come within that measurement every time she puts them on. She looks very charming in her morning neglige, which consists of a slate-grey Chinese robe of China silk, lined with white crepe. It is embroidered heavily with gold and has the hanging square sleeves and broad girdle of the Chinese woman's garb. She wears a little white and gold 'kerchief folded above her throat, and over thin laps the robe showing a little of the white beneath. She a sticks pearl-tipped, dagger-pin in the breast of the dress, twists her hair in a loose knot on top of her head, and impales it with a golden shaft tipped like the pin in her bosom, in it aha does not look a day over twentyfive.