The Victorian Sunrise

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21462, 8 April 1933, Page 6 (Supplement)

The Victorian Sunrise

Lewis Carroll, in one of liis poems, enunciates the theory that it takes exactly 20 years to make a ghost. Nearly the same period is needed to transform the dowdy and old-fashioned into the picturesque and old-world. So now the time has arrived for fashion to discard her sneers at aunts and grandmothers and claim for the beauties of the lato Victorian and Edwardian Courts a loveliness with which 110 modern woman can compete. In the radiance of their stately beauty their portraits are to gaze down from the galleries in Old Bond Street. Freed by the dictates of their portraj'ers from the boater hats, the muffling skirts and leg-of-mutton sleeves in which they chose to hide their charms, the young as well as the middle-aged are ready to confess that exceptional beauty was the hall-mark of that generation as, with the free use of cosmetics, universal prettiness is the mark of our own.

That beauty was so compelling because, say the critics, these women were brought up to be beautiful. They rose from hours on their back-boards to walk in gardens with gloves on their hands and parasols over their heads. They eschewed games; they made an art of dignity. Above all, they knew nothing of the rush and bustle of modern life.

PEACE AND REPOSE

Against that argument it is only fair that those who remember the Victorians and Edwardians should record a protest. Tho wealthy, and conspicuous have always been tempted to live for 24 hours every day. Since the time of Adam every unbusinesslike woman has complained of her want of leisure. Tho only real difference lies in a chango in the attitude of every woman toward life. The Victorians made leisure and enjoyed leisure. To-day it is unfashionable, it is dowdy, to have any time to spare. Only the strongest souls are wdlmg to admit that they have or can make time of their own for literary or artistic interests which win them neither publicity nor money. No young person with any self-respect would ever admit she had a moment to spare. It is not surprising that in the modern rush to be rushed, the bustle to be bustled, women have lost that charming atmosphere of peace and repose which clung to the Victorian lady.

It would be absurd to conclude, in spite of this temporary madness, that the position and pursuits of women have not changed immeasurably for the better in the last three decades. The leisure hours of our grandmothers were often wasted in trivialities, the rebellion of generous a 1 independent spirits against the time wasted meaninglessl.v was a tragedy of last century. But it is time that the pendulum should swing back again for those women who are not obliged to make their own way in the world, and that the rising generation should devote a little time to the art of making and enjoying leisure hours.