LADIES' GOSSIP.

Otago Witness, Issue 2809, 15 January 1908, Page 73

LADIES' GOSSIP.

—It is curious that groomsmen — so popular in America — have never caught on in. England. Of course, there is nothing an Englishman hates so much as looking like a fool, and this, it must be confessed, men are apt to do when they make bold' to appear in a bridal procession. — Gentlewoman.

— Lady Helen Grimston, the eldest daughter of Lord and Lady Verulam, has just secured her certificate as an expert butter-maker from the Essex County Council. She went through the three weeks' course in the work of cooling and separating milk, churning, making butter, and managing a dairy at the County Dairy School at Oheimsford, and proposes to take over the superintendence of the dairy at Gorhambury. — There was almost a note of despair in the cry of Miss Sarah Gray, a surgeon in the Nottingham Women's Hospital, for a standard of medical etiquette for lady doctors. She was speaking at the London B,oyal Free Hospital School for Women, and expressed a very earnest wish that a. more definite standard of medical etiquette could be laid down for lady doctors in regard to matters of dress, and co forth. Doctors, she went on, should know when and whom to fright-en. Sometimes it was all-important to alarm the friends of a patient, sometimes it was almost criminal to do so.

— The most costly necklace ' in the world belongs to the Countess Henckel, a lady well known in London and Paris society, the value of which is said to be £50,000. It is really composed of three necklaces, each of historic interest. One was the property of tiie ex-Queen of Naples, sister of the late Austrian Empress, the second, once the property of a Spanish grandee, while the third was formerly owned by the Empress Eugenic. Not long ago a necklace composed of 412 pearls, in eight rows, the property of the late Duchess of Montrcee, was sold for £11,820. The Empress Frederick of Germans is said to have possessed a necklace of 32 pearb, worth at least £40,000; while Lady Ilchester's necklace of black pearls is valued at about £25,000. — The monument over the grave of Lady Campbell-Bannerman at Meigle, Perthshire, has been completed. It consists of an oblong grey granite slab, /built into a wall of the church. It is beautifully ornamented at the top with a Greek frieze and flower, while over and partially around the inscription hangs a richly sculptured wearth of laurel with berries. Filling up spaces on each side are sprays of her favourite flower, while the inscription runs: "Sarah Charlotte CampbellBannerman, daughter of Major-general Sir Charles Bruce, X.C.8., and for 46 years wife and constant companion of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, P.C., G.C.8., M.P."

—A, Frenchman has been criticising the Englishwoman's style of dress, and even the most patriotic of us will detect come truth in the criticism. That the coster-girl taste for a flaunting hat exists in the breaste of almost every Englishwoman can hardly be denied. The strange thing is that the Teserve and restraint ■wbich characterises the dTeas of the Queen and assert her foreign blood more clearly than anything else about ber should have had so little effect upon the Englishwoman's millinery. The smart and the dowdy alike betray in their clothes a lamentable want of discretion. Colour and form are indiscreet, size is indiscreet, and importance of reticence is ignored. We at least used to have a reputation for being trim and neat and well turned out in our tailor-made garments, even though we could not achieve smartness in the Parisian style; but of late years trimness eeems to have been ousted by a rage for the floppy and the so-called picturesque ! — The Lady. . The cult of the garden is very much, especially for women, the cult of the hour. It is a fashionable hobby, though, I venture to think, a lasting one, and in several cases the cult has developed into serious business. Lady Limenck, forinstance, cultivates shamrock for her league; Lady Aileen Wyndham-Quin runs a thriving violet farm ; Lady Desart is endeavouring to establish the tobacco plant in Co. Kilkenny, and the Hon. Frances Wolseley has a school for gardening and a market garden at Glynde, in Sussex. It has been left, however, to the Hon. Mrs Richard Grosvenor, of Woking, to evolve the profession if • landscapegardening for women. Mrs Grosvenor is taking up, professionally, the business of a landscape gardener.- She has all the practical qualifications for the work, and, in addition, is ve*y artistic— The Bystander. There is one letter in these volumes ("Letters of- Queen--' Victoria") which deserves special attention. It. waswritten by the Queen to the LoTd Chancellor Campbell shortly after the passing of the divorce laws, in the fifties. In it (says the Gentlewoman) her Majesty asked the head of the Justiciary if it -would be possible to pass drlaw to prevent the publication of the scandalous details in divorce cases, and thus preserve the morality of the youth of the country from defilement. Her Majesty's 'desire was never carried out. Is it possible now to do something in the direction advocated Cy her Majesty, and which is even" more necessary at the present moment than- it ■was in the days when she wrote that letter? If the Ministry would carry an act effectually to dry up this fount of pollution of our young, these letters of Queen Victoria will not have been published in vain.

— What struck me most forcibly about the Queen of Spain (writes a correspondent of P.T.0.) was ncr complete change of expression. As a girl the expression of her face in repose was the one thing not wholly attractive about iW 1& srag

ness drove the duke to this terrible act. On our way home we discussed the details with bated breath-— how the Duchess had first been stabbed', then smothered under the canopy of the bed, which the Duke pulled down on her; how the Duke /was tried by his peers and sentenced to death, but the night before the execution was found •dead io hia oell, frien-ds havings smuggled in poison to him. The French governess went to America, and married' the Rev. Henry M. Field, brother of Cyrus W. Field, of Atlantic cable fame." — The Countess of Warwick is spoken, to in very plain terms by the Gentlewoman. To- no one (says the writer) should the perils of Socialism appeal more strongly than to the Countess of Warwick. She cannot be ignorant- of the monstrous abuses it would carry in its train — the spoliation, the injustice, the contempt of all religion, the disregard of every social and moral obligation. She is a woman of intelligence, and yet she shuts her eyes to all these evils, and some strange perversity makes her false alike to her country and the class to which she belongs. But more than all is she false to the people whose welfare she professes to have most at heart — to the working men and women who throng to hear her speak and think her utterances are words of simple truth. They know that she is a woman of position and authority, and take her to be the spokeswoman of her class ; they do not understand that her ardent protestations come from herself alone, and for reasons of her own. They see her, beautifully dressed, smiling at them from a platform, or a seat in a cart j they note her furs, her jewels and gems, all the accessories that add to the charm of beauty. She calls them her "dear comrades," and they imagine that in the future which Socialism promises, they will all become her equals. But that future, as they see it, is a myth — an impossible existence. For Socialism does not exalt j ib reduces all things, all people, all enterprise, all ambition to one dull mediocrity. The wording man would still be a worker, the working woman still a drudge, an 4 both without a spark of persogal interest to give a gest to toil^

40, and spent the rest of their days in genteel seclusion, doing fancy work. Speaking of the great difficulties of growing old, Mrs Creighton remarked; that wisdom consisted in the recognition of one's limitations, and the discipline of life would make the effort and acceptance of limitations almost instinctively ■pax-fc- o£ one's very nature. Women; too, should cultivate the capacity to be alone, for it was a great gain to themselves and to others. Loneliness must come and must deepen. Yet it need never be complete, for it was filled with memories, and those very memories may be revelations which life could never have given. These who had learnt to be alone would find the hours of solitude more peopled than hours spent in company, the past voices would be even clearer than the present, not because they were past, but because they call on into the future — a- very beautiful thought and very pathetic when coming from herself.

not exactly a hard look, but it was curiously proud and chilly for so young a girl. Those who knew her best translated it as the expression of a certain disappointment, a certain resentment against fate. The Princess Ena, accustomed till she entered her teens to being the idol of a court, 'the petted granddaughter of the greatest of sovereigns, was not wholly content under more modest conditions. Her marriage, which gave her not only affection such as is rarely found in royal alliances, but a dazzling position, rendered her at peace with all the world. The ice melted, the hauteur vanished, and those who have seen Queen Victoria Eugenic since her return to England have seen a radiant girl with smiling soft eyes. — Mrs Cornwallis-West (late Lady Randolph Churchill), beginning her memoirs in the November number of the Century Magazine, writes of her visit to France prior to the last Revolution : "My sister and) I and the Countess Hatzfeldt were once invited by .ie Due de Praslin to visit his beautiful chateau of VauxPraslin. Our host took us all over the huge building, pointing out everything of historical interest, until we came to an ornamented door, before which he paused', but did not enter. 'La chambre de feu Due de Praslin,' he said in a grim voice, and then passed on. This was the room in which the late Duke, his father, had murdered his mother, a deed which filled the world with horror, and which undoubtedly precipitated the revolution of 1848. The Duchess's unfounded jealousy of their French gover-

| Middle ajyed People. It is plain enough that advancing age kills some of the wild energy of life, but the loss of that may well mean more happiness. There ia really nothing disheartening in the discovery that you cannot control the whole world to your desires. None of us can do that, but each _of us can control a fraction of it if we understand just where that fraction begins and ends. The knowledge of what you cannot do comes only with age. The knowledge of what you cannot do is a condition of knowing what you can. And the best happiness lies in doing what you can do well. From whict it would seem to follow that happiness belongs to the older folks. And as young people would scorn the idea, all is well. Middle age, in the jpinion of Mrs Creighton, is the working period of life, and she is inclined to think it is Happier than youth. People differed as to when middle age began or the exact period when it became old age. How often, when a post was advertised, it was intimated! that no one owr 40 need apply. Why, if a woman was worth anything, she ought to be just getting to her best at 40 for actual work, and stay there, it might be hoped, till 60. When a man of 40 was made a bishop or a Cabinet Minister he was regarded as very young for the post, but a woman of 40 was regarded as too old to be head-mistress of a school or matron of an institution. She could only suppose that this was a survival from days when women took to caps and an armchair by the fire soon after

Gowns of delicate material should be put away in long boxes or bureau drawers, each skirt being folded in the plaits into ■which it should fall when worn. The bodices should be stuffed with tissue paper, the sleeves and trimmings filled out with tissue paper also. Fuller's earth is excellent for cleaning suede gloves. Put the gloves on the hands, and rub the earth in well with a 6inall soft brush. An old nail or tooth brush answers the purpose admirably. Some people use ,a mixture of the earth and powdered alum in equal quantities'. To clean coloured kid gloves, a bath of gasolene (rectified petroleum)- is always to be recommended, the liquid being -poured into a basin and the gloved hands washed in it. Then wipe with a piece of flannel, and allow the gloves to dry on the hands, taking care not to perform the operation at night or in a room with a fire, as the gasolene is highly inflammable. When quite dry, lay the gloves in the sun. White silks jand satins, before being laid away, should be first wrapped up in blue paper to prevent the tint from becoming discoloured. There is a rule which should be made in every home .with regard to the stockings worn by the various members of the family, and it is this : The moment even a pin -head of a hole appears place the stocking in the laundry basket at onre, no matter how short a time they may hive been worn. The hours of weary labour that this saves to the darner of the household, and the prolongation of the life of the stockings cannot be estimated, for the places that are wearing /