LONDON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 13948, 2 January 1909, Page 1 (Supplement)

LONDON.

WOMEN-THEIR CLUBS. AND CRUSADES. No. VI.

BY MRS. LEO MYKK3.

Aix the cant about freedwomen, clubwomen, and bachelor maids being unsoxed is over and done with. It is a view that was dynamited and scattered to the winds of the grim Past in the latter days of the 19th century, disappearing with the crinoline, " vapors," and smelling salts. In England, that smug stronghold of the suppressed and rigidly conventional female type, the freed woman had fairly to take a bold leap over centuries of prejudice. She did it to her everlasting credit. . . The old order died hardhut decorously. In truth, it may bo said of this class, as of Byron, that "nothing in life became them so well as the quitting of it. Club life for women has killed that terrible old tyrant, that lady of limitations—Mrs. Grundy. And so there are in London to-day delightful centres of brightness and interest where women congregate with all the freedom and camaraderie of men, proving that clubbable qualities are not monopolised by the other sex. The club is an adjunct to the home: an avenue with broader vistas, fresher atmosphere, and more stimulating surroundings. Whatever fad or fancy you may have, there is a snug clubhouse wherein you may pursue it, wherein you may meet your kind and craft, wherein you may roam or read, talk or smoke, lunch, dine, and even reside at will. With many women, clubs are merely a graceful and fashionable way of wasting time intelligently. To many more, however, they area wonderhouso of interest and important movements, opening bright new windows in their minds—minds that have grown beyond measurement of the dully conventional yardstick. . . . Again, there are women's clubs in London which exist, for no special purpose beyond being a rallying-ground for fashionables in thrilling gowns, who sip tea and consume cakes. . . . What is your object?" I asked of my hostess at ono of those smart clubs in Dover-street, where we were discussing a delectable luncheon in a sumptuous white and gold dining-room, decorated with lovely women in enchanting frocks. The scene was full of animated charm and beauty. "0! my dear," she laughed, and waved a. pretty hand over tho room, " these women have no object. They are solely subjective. They come here to the tune of ten guineas a- year subscription merely to escape from home and husband!" It is quite the fad! Which playful bit of irony was somewhat more subtly proven in another club in Piccadilly—a brainy club, crowded with alert, ambitious women. Of my hostess there, on being invited to a journalistic dinner, I asked: "May I bring my husband?" "O, do, by all means," she replied jovially. " Husbands are encouraged here, you know—but— they are badly fed!" . What subtle strategy! Bearing but the matrimonial axiom that the anchor to married male constancy lies in good feeding, the married heart in duo course changing its anatomical location from cardiac to gastric! Yet, must I whisper it? Men are welcomed at women's clubs with open arms; and, what is more, they like it there. Whether they come out of curiosity, bred by pique, or from a benevolent indulgence in women's whimsies, it is difficult to decide. But there they are, lounging and lunching and apparently enjoying themselves, promoting that feeling of fellowship which scouts sex complications and makes the meeting of men and women a pleasant comradeship of absolute equality—as it should be.

And, may I add, that I have yet to discover the situation where the proximity of a husband proved disadvantageous! Even in women's clubs man has his indispensable use. ... It seemed to me an amusing experience to leave my husband waiting in the hall of the Lyceum Club, Piccadilly, while I introduced myself to the secretary in her busy sanctum above. Delicious sensation, thought I! But it was merely a matter of time till he scored at a luncheon where some clubwomen and he were my guests. All was going merrily, until in an illuminating moment I remembered I had left my purse at home and my husband settled the bill! 0, impish irony of Fate, that woman's emancipation should be so frail, so dependent on pounds and pence!

Yet, many clubwomen, like Cobden, do not want Protection! In England there are ever-increasing numbers of women who have no home-ties: who, thrown on their individual resources and realising their abilities and possibilities, map out and consummate a career, in the scheme of which man plays a very minor part. These women are, on the average, very delightful to meet. Stimulated by their interest in life, they possess purpose and personality which gives to their laces that expression of intelligence and character more permanent, and, to many, more attractive than modish beauty. And many of them are young and pretty, imbued with the joie do vie, and not above the aUuiremcnts of Bond-street —making that erstwhile smart sally of Robert IngorsolFs: " The day I sec a handsome woman in tho ranks of emancipated females 111 turn partisan!"a criticism of artish insignificance. . . . For brains and dowdinees have ceased to be interchangeable terms. Independence cf thought and action bring with them sufficient sense to realise the decorative value of becoming clothes and a perception which tends towards tho cultivation of an attractive personality.

A lady novelist and founder of tho Lyceum Club, Miss Constance Smedley, has a. face of arresting charm, like a Greuze head with its halo of soft chestnut hair. Modishly dressed and on the blithe 6ide of thirty, she has achieved literary, success and has established tho strongest and most important woman's club in all London, with flourishing branches in Paris, Berlin, and New York. This club is a seething centre of woman's work, with international club branches and special circles representing every phase and development of industry pursued by women. The clubhouse is humming with important movements: alive with currents of all kinds tapped by women— department admirably organised, furnishing a wealth of information and direction, as well as providing an active camping-ground _ for whatever cult or profession the individual woman is following either as dilettante or professional. . _ New and numerous are the galleys in which advanced women voyage in this their brisk and busy era. The Artsmusic, literature, painting, and_ sculpture have been subdivided and specialised: tho latter, interpreted and adapted from mediaeval mode to modern usages under the head of "Arts and Crafts," give women an occupation peculiarly congenial in the line of original designs and productions in metal and jewel work, furniture and textile fabric^: house and mural decorations, bookmaking and bookbinding.

Music, painting, illustrating, and literary work aggregate the largest number of devotees. Many earnest' women have iden-

tified themselves with tho Public Service ! Board, working diligently in matters pertaining to the Housing Question and Public Health. ... At a club luncheon my near neighbour was a fragile little lady, exquisitely feminine, who was engaged by the London County Council to give " 'talks" on sanitation, hygiene, and baby-culture to the poor in the slums. Just then her work lay in Lambeth. At my right sat a Scotch lady of quite sixty yours, garbed in black velvet and large cameo brooches, who wrote' "Fashion and Frivol" articles for The Lady's Pictorial. . . . The wife of T. P. O'Connor graced the head of the table, handsome ana vivacious, interesting and witty.- She represented the type of the active, individual woman, no less a devoted wife and an able assistant in her husband's journalistic work. Later, when I tea-d and talked with a large literary light, her mother descended upon us, saying: " Violet, dear, you have taken my table. I had engaged it for four." . . . "Sorry, mother, don't blame me. Ask the waiter," answered the authoress, smiling and continuing Iter conversation with me. Tho mother trailed off quietly, which seems to be "a way" mothers of literary lights have of being extinguished. Yot> the mother herself was a woman of ability and activity. This illustrates one of the marked features of club life for women. It keeps them young, alert, and enthusiastic. It is the "elixir vitae" of mind and body, keeping the woman of sixty as purposeful and as interesting as her own daughter. Surveying the scene in the lounge-room of any club for women you cannot fail to be impressed by the general appearance of prolonged youth among the members. It is the triumph of attractive middleage, a ripe and full-flowering maturity, which is making old age obsolete and dowdy. Club life is responsible for the decline of elderliness. It has also routed for ever that large and arid tribe of Insular spinsters of insular veins and selfrighteous rigidity. It has removed the blinkers of prejudice and convention from the eyes and mind of hundreds of women whose vision was narrowed and warped. The majority of these are still mere lookers-on in the Drama of Peal Life for Women, but they enjoy sitting in the stall near " the thick of it" and catching much of its spirit and glow. Faddists there are in plenty. Some who go in for Idealism and Jaegars! Others who run amuck on socialism and cigarette-smoking. A section who hunt old prints and wear art gowns. Others who subsist on vegetarianism and the Higher Criticism. A cult who climb the Alps- and return to London to debate such questions as: "Would the sum of human happiness be increased if family life were abolished?" But it is in the history of every new movement to throw off its crop of absurdities. As an offset to these fantastics, the strong majority of advanced women are straight and earnest expounders of their cause. We hear the clatnourings of the Suffragettes, but we do not see that silent army of women, wage-earners toiling towards their empire of emancipation. "Those who shout and shriek, rant and attack, voluntarily make of themselves a blatant brass-band of notoriety to further the cause of the crusade. But when gentlewomen like Lady Frances Balfour, Lady Meath, and scores of their class plead for the rights of their more obscure sisters, you are made to feel the equity of their demands. They find much to be said on behalf of women having a voice in legislation which concerns their homes, their children, their servants, their property, and their work. These women of the leisured, ornamental class admit they do not want the franchise for themselves, but that they conscientiously plead for it in tho name of women workers, widow taxpayers and property-owners. There is also a forceful men's League for Women Suffrage, at tho meetings of which such personalities us the Rev. R. J. Campbell. Dr. Stanton Coit, Professor Ayrton, Bernard Shaw, Israel Zangwill, Walter Crane, and W. M. Rosetti speak. It is now a great national question. Enfranchised or not —woman has proven her power and won her place. Let us hopo that, for the preservation of sentiment and the future of the race, man. ever yet "a lifilo lower than the angels," will sun his soul in the light of her eyes.