LADIES' GOSSIP.

Otago Witness, Issue 2456, 10 April 1901, Page 59

LADIES' GOSSIP.

— One effect of the demise of the Crown hi» been materially to change th^ relative precedence of the members of the Royal family. Ihus the Heir Apparent and his wife, the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and Yoik, and the Princess Royal, Duchess of Fife, the Prificess Victoru, and the Princess Charles of Denmark lank before the King's brother, sisters, and sis-ters-in-h'w, the Duke of Connaught, Princess Christian and Princes Beatrice, the Duchess, of Connaught and the Duchess of Albtr.y; aijd these, moreover, give place to the children of the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York and the children of the Princess Royal and the Duke of Fife.

— The late Queen has by her will bequeathed both R°lmoial Castie and CK borne H-nT-e to the King. It was alwuy^ her Majtsty'-s special desire tint her Highland home should cont.nue to b^ a Royal residence ; and of course Oiboine would be far too l'irge and expensive a place for "any of the Royal Family except the King to keep up Her Majesty nutuially wished Princes* Hei:.\ of Battenberg to continue to be assented with the Isle of Wight, on account of tho Princess hokhng the post ofiiovcrnor o: the Island, and also of Prince Henry of Battonberg being buried in Whippinghcim Church. Consequently two small houses (which are connected by an underground passage) on the 0.-borne est ite have been left to Piaices^ Beatrice, who will probably sntnd nio^t of her lime theia with l'Ci- children Tii3 Duke and Duehe«s of Connaught will continue to lutve Bagshot Park a« their country residence, ard they may also veiy possibly be gianted Yoik Hou«e instead of the:r present apartments in Buckingham Palaco, when the Duke and Djciie's of Cornwall move to either Mailborough Hou'-e or Cl.'ienre House. The death of Queen Victona will make no difference to Pniice and Princess Christian, who will continue to h\e at Cumberland Lodge ; and it is understood that their voimger daughtm. Pnnce-s Louise of Schlesw ' r-UoMein, who was until recently iiKinv.'l to Pr nee Arihcit of Anhalt, will i ; v"c W'lh h :• piinns, although she will h.ne hrr own lad; -m-wa.ting.

— Many ladies, says a London paper, aie now taking lessons in floral dccoiation from a Japanese professor. The Japanese are past niastei > in the art of arranging flowers, and they make a very few flowers go a very lung wavw a'v All their floral anangen.ents are symbolic of something or othei — the time, the reason, the person in whose garden they giow, or who gave them. One might almost say that every hour of the day has its own special flower. One arrangement is. known as ''Heaven, Earth, and Hades," and consists of one very tall blossom, one shorter, and one drooping dov.-nw ard*. The symbolism of this is sufficently simple —In all matters concerning the dress worn at her Court the late Sovereign was most particular There might be no infringement of the laws hud down, except that in cases of deep black mourning cor- 1 sent might be gamed to wearing black plumes and veil and elnvc-s at a Uiawinc,-] Room ; also in cases ot delicacy it was po •! sible to obtcun peim.ssion to wear hig.i' bodices, but in seeking for this a doctor' v

certificate was requisite. It was stated that one lady went to Court without plumes and veil, urging that her hair was cut short, and it was impossible to fasten these appendages to Court costume on her head. The statement went that the Queen was consulted as to her entering the Throne {Room, and that her Majesty replied that Ifche lady in question was granted permission to absent herself from Court until her h?4r grew. — Queen Alexandra has tie same quiet "•way of bestowing personal favours as Queen Victoria. An instance of this is cited in the story of how, one day, she met a dressSnaker waiting at Marlborough House, having just brought some things that she had been making Jor the young Princesses. The iQueen, taking the girl into a private room, examined the work she had brought, judging it with the eye of a connoisseur, she herself feeing an expert at fine sewing, and having, it is said-, made much of her beautiful trousseau herself. Noting that all the work was hand-sewn, she inquired why the girl had not used a machine to help her with her task. It then came out that the girl, who had an ailing mother to support, was too poor to buy or hire one. The Queen's sympathy was at once enlisted, and she ordered that wine and fruit should be sent imme- j diately to the invalid, following up the {ifts on Christmas Day, which fell shortly

afterwards, with the present of a good sewing machine, on -nhich were the words: " A gift from Alexandra, ' the girl then learning for the first time who the lady was to whom she had told her trouble. — The end of a year always produces unlimited crops of reflections — sighs from the pentimental, wailings from the pessimist, warnings from the wiseacre. At the end of a centuiy the symptoms of this annual epidemic are necessaiily more acute; so contagious is the malady, indeed, that I am only saved (says the Birmingham Gazette) from lapsing into a moral essay upon a century's dress by happening upon a description of a lady's toilet accessories of two centuries ago," from w inch we may congratulate ourselves upon our advance from the woman of that day at least, whatever we be. This was her list of essentials: — Chains, cornets, pendants, bracelets and earrings, pins, girdles, spangles, embroideries and rings, shadows, rebatoes, libands, ruffs, cuffs, falls, scarfs, feather?, fans, masks, muffs, laces, cauls, thin tiffanies, cobweb lawn and farthingoles, sweet falls, veils, wimples, glasses, crisping p'ns, pots of ointment, combs with poking sticks and bodkins, coifs, gorges, fringes, rolls, fillets and han laces, silks, damasks, velvets, tinsels, cloth of gold of t.ssues, with colouis of a hundred-fold, ending with storax and spikenard to burn in her chamber,, while

daubing herself with civet, musk, and amber.

— The picture of her late Majesty which Mr Herkomer is to paint is for the King, and the work is never likely to be seen publicly. No portrait of Queen Victoria, painted in her maturer years by a first-rate artist, exists. There are many admirable portrait-statues and busts, but with her youthful days and her early married life the successful portraits in oil of her Majesty ceased. The most beautiful is said to be that painted by Leslie in the Coionation Oath scene. „ — What the King would do without Sir Francis Knollys his Majesty only knows. He would miss him as a man would miss his right hand. Sir Francis is a marvel of energy. It is he who opens King Edward's letters, sees all his telegrams, attends ,to all his dispatches. He sends out, in the King's name, a thousand pounds' worth of telegrams every year, and opens five hundred letters a day. They come from all sorts of places, from all sorts and conditions of men. Every day scores of letters reach the King concerning ceremonies in which he is to take part, and all this mass of correspondence passes through the hands of Sir Francis Knollys. He attends to all .the King's annual subscriptions, which, 'chiefly in guineas and five pound notes, run into nearly £2000 a year. Every morning for half an hour Sir Francis Knollys receives instructions from the King. He writes every important letter with his own hand ; typewriters have not yet been used in royal correspondence. Practically all the correspondence reaching the King is courteously acknowledged, keeping ibusy Sir Francis Knollys and his two assistants and a staff of clerks. It is the business of Sir Francis Knollys to be a sort of supplemental memory to the King. He keeps a list of all the Royal engagements and arranges the progress of all Royal journeys. — Lady Beatrice Pole-Carew (nee Butler) is the eldest daughter of the Marquis and Marchioness of Ormonde, and was one of the belles of the last London season. Lady Beatrice is a keen rider to hounds, and loves open-air pursuits. The late Lord Lismore left his money and house, "with all the art treasures it contained, to the Ladies Butler after the death of his widow, which occurred recently. Lady Beatrice is therefore co-heiress with her sister, and has an income of several thousands a year.

— Queen Alexandra, who since f-he first set foot on these shores as Princess Alexandra of Denmark has won all hearts byher beauty, her sweetness of disposition, ar.d her gentle sympathy, dislikes crape, as also does her husband, the King. In her deepest griefs her Majesty has only had small trimmings of crape on her dresses. The ladies about the Court and the personal friends of the Royal Family will wear deep mourning trimmed heavily, however, with civpe for some time. Pearls and diamonds are frequently seen with, crape. Opals and rubies "and amethysts a*-e worn in halfmourning. Jet is allowable in deepest affliction, and natural flowers of any hue in no way clash with the most sombre garb. These are the conventionalities of dress

— Hawkstone, in Shropshire, which place Lord Hill's trustees have just sold, is one of the most bpautiful places in England. Besides the great natural beauty of the grounds, it has a most curious artificial grotto, perched on the top of high rocks, which is reached by a path so steep as to be more suited to goats than to human beings. The lake and deer park are very beautiful ; but the same Lord Hill who spent thousands on making the grotto rather spoiled the place by the erection, at enormous expense, of various spurious ruins. Rather an alarming feature is a cave in a lonely dell, in which is a lifesize stone lion, apparently lying in wait for the unwary passer-by. He is quite uncomfortably lifelike in the half light. The present Lord Hill is in Canada, where he has an appointment. Sir Rowland Hill, of postage-stamp fame, was a member of this family.

— There is no more popular young chatelaine than Consuela, Duchess of Marlborough. She is not only extremely liberal, but accompanies her generosity by a delightful and indefatigable personal interest. At Blenheim, Chiistmas is kept in quite old-world fashion, everybody on the estate receiving a present of some kind from the Duchess. Picturesque ConsuciO plays the part of Santa Claus herself, distributing the various gifts at the cottages w hich are scattered about in seven different villages. She also is always present with the Duke and members of her house party at the Christmas tree for the children, which i« rigged up in the riding school at night. The Blenheimites soon discovered that the young Ducb.es>> was by no means the typical up-to-date American, whose ways and ideas Arc ftaithnglv unconventional and new The Duchess, with her delicate personality, her reverence for old customs and traditions, and her distaste for the sporting, masculine woman, is moie suggestive of the old English aristociat than a New Yoik belle. She does not pride herself at all upon beincr modern, and clings io duty, affection, and kindness as the chief feminine graces.

— An odd sort of contrivance and one peculiaily modern is a rotary hand fan that is run by pressure upon the handles, somewhat like tho<-e of a glove-stretcher or curling tongs, and held in one hand m the same maniier. The fan, an American invention, is thiee-bladed, and about 6m in diameter, and in appearance is like an electric fan. It turns on a spindle, to which is attached a very simple gearing that is operated by pressure upon the tw o handles When the handlfi have been pressed together a spring attached opens them out a^ain ready for ancther prc-sure. The rotation of the fan is continuously in the same direction, and it turn* at a high speed

— The Duke and Duchess of Manchester have returned to New Yoik after their honeymoon, and the newspapers of that city are giving lengthy accounts of their doings. The Duke, it appears, has had his measurements taken by the Bertillon system, and his photograph has been registered in the interesting collection known as ''the rogues' gallery" at police headquarters, where it 1^ recorded as "the Duke of Manchester, alias 'Kirn. " Mr Zim-

merman, the father of the Duchess, is said to have made handsome provision for the young couple. He has taken a fancy to his aristocratic son-in-law, and wishes the Duke to settle for some years, at least, 111 America, and to go into the railway business, in which Mr Zimmerman himself has made a large fortune. — "Keep love for youth, and violets for the spring!" exclaimed Christina Rosetti, indignantly, when autumn violets first became familiar in our gardens. We fear tho poetess, says a writer in a Home paper, would have had to accommodate her sensibilities to the violet born "when wornout autumn grieves" (as she herself phrased it) had she lived a few years longer. Autumn would hardly seem autumn now without the fragrant purple baskets of the street flower-girls, and the dainty mauve Parma bouquets of the florists,' windows. Yet we do not make nearly so much real use of the violet on this side of the Channel as does the coquette and practical Frenchwoman, both sides of her nature finding expression in the uses to which she puts the blooms. If she takes a chill she orders her femme-de-chambre to concoct her a "tisane de violettes," than which there can be no better febrifuge of the simple kind, and surely it is the most poetical of medicines! The coquette half of madame's nature comes out in her pretty habit of dropping crushed violet heads down the decolletage of her evening dress to he above her heart, and breathe forth a perfume than no essence bottle or scent sachets could even faintly imitate. The rich damask rosepetals that she u^es for the same purpose in summer are not so effective, though quite as pretty in idea. —"A Debutante" writes to Modern Society : — " My chaperon, who is a woman of wide experience and great social tact, gave me a curious and interesting lecture the other clay on the subject of recognising social position at a glance. I am afraid the immediate cause of the lectuiv %tofi the f^cfc that I had allowed myself to become rather too thick (unduly intimate, she would have said) with a girl who turned cut to be very much of an outsider. Being only a few months out of school, I find it difficult to 'place' people at a glaa^e, as my godmother (not, alas, a fairy one!) does with «uch ease. ,

'"My dear,' she said, 'it really is not only a matter of good boots and gloves, and the right set of sleeve at the shoulder, as you seem to think. I have known extremely good people who wore sixpenny lace in their toque, and could not avoid a "lucid interval"' at the back of the waist. Heads certainly go a long way. "By their heads ye shall know them," my daughter-in-law says, and really the child is right in the main, though there are other things. Certainly, in the present day, a fuzzy head stamps anyone as impossible, and a jughandle coil halfway up is nearly as good a label. But a girl may dress her hair, or have it dressed, to perfection, and yet be entirely outside "the set." Money will do a great deal, and even pawnbrokers' daughters can go to the best shops. " ' Look for the expression, my dear, if you are in doubt. (Of course, when you've heard a psison talk you might to know without any difficulty.) A good-natured looking girl — as people describe that painful sort of half-grin — Is sure to be bourgeoise. Smart people don't look goodnatured. They may be, but they don't hang their good nature out of their features, any more than they harm their stockings and pelticoats to dry outride their windows. A somewhat grave expression, with a high carriage of the head and slow movement of the eyes, is the correct thing. Never laugh or smile unless you are saying or hearing something humorous, which seldom occurs. Avoid, abovo everything, a person who carries a set smile about with her and never unlaces it till she goes to bed. She is either a vulgar young woman or a disappointed oldish one who is afraid of looking soured. Avoid, also, a woman who sits apologetically on her chair or loafs back in it in public. Both are very middleclacs habits."