NOTES FOR WOMEN.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18765, 19 January 1923, Page 8

NOTES FOR WOMEN.

THE LETTERS OF LADY, PALMERSTON. " NEW WOMEN ” IN 1827. QUEEN VICTORIA’S PRUSSIAN SUITOR. “Lady Palmerston and Her Times” is a selection from the letters of the last Lady Palmerston, wife of the famous English Prime Minister, with excellent introductions and notes by Mabell Countess of Airlio, her descendant. Lady Palmerston was by birth a Lamb, daughter of the Lady Melbourne, who was Byron’s most intimate woman friend, sister of that Lord Melbourne who was the devoted friend of Queen Victoria in her early' days, and sister-in-law of Caroline PonBonby, known for most of her life as Lady Caroline Lamb, whom Lord Melbourne married. Lady Palmerston was intimate with tho great Whig families of her day; she was in touch with everything that happened: and she was the last great lady in England to keep a political salon. Tho influence of a gentle talk in th® perfumed drawing-room of Cambridge House did great things. Many a constituent or a member of the AVhig party, frightened by Lord Palmerston s aud-acitj or exasperated by his untimely jauntiness of manner, was soothed into acquiescence in his policy bv the gentle Lady Palmerston. She was most tolerant in her views. The earlier letters give (the Daily Mail remarks) an entertaining picture of the opening years of tho 19th century, just after the war with Napoleon, when there were “Reds,” riots, unemployment, and constant trouble in Ireland: In 1813 the workmen had risen and broken the new machinery which they considered to bo the cause of their sufferings. Tho risings which had taken placo were quelled by the military. Radical placards described "the present state of Great Britain; Four millions of people on the point of starvation ; one" and a-half millions in straitened circumstances; one-half million in dazzling luxury.” It was still fashionable for men to drink 100 much. “Papa,” she writes, “manages somehow or other to bo drunkish.” In 1823 she complains of London air; I do believe there is something poisonous in the air of London at this season (March), hut particularly this year. Everybody looks ill and complains and the number of deaths have been quite dreadful. Some people say it is the Gass (used for lighting, then a novelty), hut yet I should think this can hardly lie. Practical jokes were much in fashion: Think what a good joke was play'd upon Lamhton at his races—tho house full of people, no lamps, no candle, the whole house lighted by gass when somebody went and turned the great cock (off). His Carbonic Majesty (the nickname for Lord Durham, as Lamhton after became) was in a tremendous rage. There were new women in 1827: The Sheridans are much admired but are strange girls, swear and say all sorts of odd things to make the men laugh. The friendship of Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister, with the young Queen Victoria set tongues wagging. Melbourne's brother wrote: Impress upon Wm. (Melbourne) to Be very cautious about communicating what passes between him and the Queen only. Some tilings have come round to me, good, and in a good sense, but one never knows what use may be made of such things some day, and he is habitually incautious. He sends suggestions os to the Queen’s future husband; I know but two to choose from, and neither of them with the years or experience which would be good. One is the second son of the Duke of Coburg (whom she subsequently married). The other is a Prince Adalbert of Prussia — nephew or cousin to tho King, of whom everybody speaks well. Between the two connections I should prefer the Prussian.

Her Majesty clearly had a fortunate (escape. It is odd to find that Queen Victoria, Who later became so staunch a Conservative, was in her early years “wild about Free Trade.” Lady Palmerston’s circle had the prejudices of her time. National education her brother describes as “madness”; the penny post, which now, alas, we have lost, as “a humbug and an expensive one.” She lived on, surviving two husbands, to 1869, and died in a calm and beautiful old ago. AMATEUR DRESSMAKING. When adding a frill allow half as much’ material again as the length, of the edge to which the frill is to be attached. If a bodice or coat hangs badly under the arms, take up more material on the shoulder seams. This will probably make the armhole rather tight,-and if bo it will require sloping out a little more. When au armhole is inclined to pucker, carefully snip the edges at intervals and press thoroughly. If a coat is to be lined only half way bind the seams with proper binding. Skirt seams should be very well pressed and “pinked” out along both edges of the material. It is quicker* to pinch the material up double and to snip out V-shaped pieces than to apply the scissors to the single edge of the material. To make a plain ruching cut the material on the cross; for a pleated ruching cut the material on the straight.

When machining very fine silk, georgette, or delicate muslin, lay a piece of thin paper under the material and sow through both thicknesses. Tear the paper away carefully bo that the thread is not pulled. To make a buttonhole on a coat of heavy material take a piece of the cloth and tack it on tho right side over the place where the buttonhole is to be made. Then machine through both thicknesses in the shape of a buttonhole. Slit tho material between the lines of stitching, draw tho material through the opening and fell down firmly and invisibly on the wrong side. Bring the facing over, make a slit which allows tho edges to be turned under, and invisibly catch down. —English paper. MARRYING FOR THE DOLE. NEW FACTOR IN SERVANT PROBLEM. Marrying for the dole is a new venture at Home, and one that is complicating tho domestic servant problem. “I had a housemaid,” writes a correspondent. “She is not much more than 20, and had been with mo four years. She had a comfortable home, a good wage, and two nights off in the week. At Christmas she is going to marry a man who is out of employment, with no home to take her to and no prospects of a job. “I formed tho opinion that he is marrying the girl solely for tho purpose of receiving additional unemployment pay, and 1 wrote to the Labour Exchange at Wood Green, asking whether if a single man drawing unemployment pay should get married while still on tho Labour Exchange books he would be entitled to claim additional unemployment pay in respect of his wife. “The reply was: ‘Yes, subject to tho appropriate regulations.’ I think this is a public scandal.” Remonstrances vm this subject have been addressed to tho Tottenham Council, but as one of tho members said: “Wo can do nothing. There is no law against an unemployed man getting married, and if servant girls are ready to give up a good situation for a bad matrimonial experiment, nobody can stop them. Not so Jong ago there was a case in tho police court where a girl pleaded for leniency for a man, saying: ‘We are going to be married as soon as he gets the dole.’ ” A Labour Exchange official said, generally speaking, married men in receipt of the dole are regarded with envy by single men, for the wife not only increases tho allowance but frequently adds to the income by her work. Under tho Unemployment Insurance Act unemployed men receive 15s a week. In tho case of a married man an additional 5s per week is allowed for his wife.

LONG SKIRT MENACE. By Dorothy Richardson, in the Daily Mail. That the Englishwoman is remarkable for her beauty wo have long been accustomed lo hear. But when the foreign male visitor exclaims that there is not a single ugly ■woman in London we git up and look around. Clearly, something has bewitched him. [What is it? [What does a discriminating man notice

first? Carriage, bearing, style. If style is there he will be blind to defects in detail. And there is no doubt whatever that tne clue to tho lyrical outcry is the Englishwoman’s new-born style. Its origin is partly moral. Women have become morally visible. And, partly, it is physical. For, to the horror of the overinflammable of both sexes, women have also become physically visible. For either reason the difference is immeasurable between the bearing of the average woman of to-day and the ambling shuffle of the average woman during the reign of tho long skirt. The coming of the short skirt revealed at once the hidden horrors of tho Englishwoman's walk. She saw for herself the astonishing behaviour of her feet, altered it, and found sesthetic, and, incidentally, physiological salvation. The straight, free stride from the hips, feet, and legs one with the body, swinging it easily along instead of flattening just anyhow under its weight, braces the whole frame, throws back tho shoulders, raises the head, brightens the eyes, and makes walking a joy. The itiutroduotion of tho long skirt will be an (esthetic and a physiological tragedy. It is ugly and inconvenient. It is dangerous. Not a single good word can bo said for it. Long draperies are graceful. But they are graceful only whore they are suitable. There will always lie place for them. At present wo are asked to accept a compromise in tho dress that is neither long nor short; neither high nor low. Hideously it cuts across tho curves of tho nock and shoulders, hideously it reveals tho thickest of tho ankle, displaying it unmodified by the balancing curve above it. It is said to be modest. It is, in effect, th© extreme of immodest false modesty. Those funny little poor dears the ankle gazers, who shriek out against current immodesties, and their counterparts, the women who would manage to be exciting in prison garb, will remain themselves whatever tho fashion. To these men and these women sex is everything. That does not matter. But it dees matter that they think sox is shameful, and the human, and especially the feminine, form an indecent object. The short skirt has been long-lived because women have blessed it. If it •’■oes they know exactly what personally they are sacrificing. But tho sacrifice for tho race is incalculable.

MEN EXCLUDED. An American described to mo the other day (says a writer in a London daily) the parties that are given by them for one sex, and she declared that they were a success. Not only picnics, but also luncheon and dinner parties. In a small country town like that of “Main Street,” where the women know all the men and aro each married to one of them, suon parties might be pleasant. The possibilities of fresh and living combination being exhausted, the women might be thrown back on each other for companionship; but to give a successful dinner for women only in a big town is a difficult matter. In the first place, women do not herd together like men. They each stand at the centre of life, while man the wanderer adventures in little armies and sits afterward — all that remains of him—by the campfires to tell over his fights. In the second place, charming women like to meet men, for only men pay that tribute to (heir charm which is the proof that they possess it These things admitted, however, it .is possible to give a successful party “for women only” even in England, but —goodness! how careful we have to be in the selection of the guests. , The interesting womah is she wno has done something, who can talk from a vine experience, and who has lived —not the woman who has only looked on and picked up her opinions and information from newspapers and books. The most terrible of all people to meet socially is the woman who thinks it the right thing to talk to an artist of any kind about art. She is almost always uncritical, also she knows nothing of the matter frorh the inside, and the result for the poor artist ia irritation beyond bearing with virility. But if to (the feast for women only women of affairs are asked, these are likely to got as much pleasure out of the party ns might the same number of intelligent men. I remember giving a dinner of this sort, and we all told of the days when wo had not known whore our next meal was to come from, of the shifts we had been put to. and the way in which gradually we had made good. It was a riotous party, lasting until serious and sober husbands came from their clubs to take their housemates away. I wonder whether when American women get together they do their entertaining as carefully and—get as much fun out of it?

THE BRITISH BREAKFAST. POPULARITY OF FRUIT. Social observers are (the Daily Telegraph says) noting a change in that time-honoured institution of the British breakfast. They base their deduction upon market reports which tell of an increasing consumption of grape-fruit, melons, nad bananas, which are relatively new additions to the menu of the first meal of the day. They might go further, and draw inferences from the varieties of cereals offered in the price list of any popular store. As is usual when people set themselves out to discourse upon changes, they are gloomy on the subject, and fear that it portends some sort of domestic revolution. For many, a majority perhaps, had come indeed to the habit of thinking of the English breakfast us one of the things which marked us off from the rest of the world, a racial institution. For other nations the trivialities of coffee and rolls might suffice. To make Englishmen, a breakfast of several heavy courses was necessary. But this simple faith is only one more example of the weakness of human nature. We are all apt to believe that what is has always been and must always be. The English breakfast as an Ossa upon Pelion of heavy food is, in fact, a modern invention. Ixiss than a, century ago the breakfast table at a great London house offered nothing more than tea and coffee, rolls and butter, and some boiled eggs. Such is Macaulay’s detailed catalogue of the faro offered him by Lady Holland, a hostess who took an anxious pride in the achievements of her kitchen. Macaulay’s careful description was made to show his sisters that the great folks of Holland House lived in just the same way as the quiet people of Bloomsbury. But about the same time, or a little later, we find evidence of a very different scheme of breakfast. A letter of Diokens from Yorkshire describes a meal of ham and oggs, pie, and a piece of beef about the shape and size of his_ portmanteau, with a number of accessories. During the middle years of the nineteenth century the Yorkshire breakfast, or an elaboration of it. became the standard, and the old fashion, which was, in effect, what we call the Continental breakfast, was abandoned. By the 'seventies, as a contemporary chronicler of social customs puts it, breakfast had become “an affair of covered dishes.” that was tho ago of breakfast parties. Lives of groat men of the period all remind us that tho Victorians found themselves able to bo at their brightest and best, digestively and intellectually, over their morning meal. Mr Gladstone used to give a breakfast party “on every Thursday morning in the session, when, as one of the guests records with awe. “while wo ate broiled salmon and drank coffee our host discoursed to an admiring circle about the colour sense in Homer or tho policy of the ancient Hittites.”

There are various reasons why the breakfast of to-day has become a shorter, simpler matter. First, there is the much greater cost of i all sorts of provisions. Even in a luxurious household there must bo limitations when the best bacon is 2s 4d a lb, eggs 5s a dozen, and fresh kidneys 9d each. Then the modern domestic helper is not as early a riser as wore her forerunners half a century ago, and an elaborate breakfast calls for time in preparation. Again, as luncheon has developed in importance, breakfast has declined, for oven the largest appetites hardly call for two meals with abundant meat courses at the short interval between, say, 8.30 and 1 o’clock. The fruit habit wo have acquired through foreign travel, and the presence of American visitors in our midst. But one docs not view the now situation pessimistically. Fashions change in meals no in other directions, and though there are historians who attribute our racial qualities to beef and beer, ns against the grain of the Latin and Aryan folk, the British constitution has proved over and over again that it can adapt itself to many variations of dietary and meals.