LADIES' GOSSIP.

Otago Witness, Issue 2934, 8 June 1910, Page 93

LADIES' GOSSIP.

There are signs- 'that the quiet woman is returning to popular favour, the woman whose fascination makes itself felt not so much in what she does or says as in that elusive and intangible quality known as personality. Modesty and a humble mind have been rather overshadowed of late, but these virtues are coming into prominence again.—Gentlewoman. —lt has been left for Miss Saffron Pickersgill-Cunliffe, daughter of Mr and Mrs H. Pickersgill-Cunliffe, of Staughton Manor, Hunts., to provide the wedding novelty of the season, for at her wedding on Saturday at St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, to Mr Arthur Bertram. Randolph, son of the late Mr Arthur Randolph Randolph, of East Court, Malmesbury. she was attended by a "' best girl " in the person of Miss Coxhead. The bride was unattended by bridesmaids, Miss Coxhead, the "best girl," awaiting the bride at the top of the centre aisle, ■ and standing on the left side, exactly opposite the best man, Mr James Corbin. The "best girl's" duties were- to hold the bride's gloves and her bouquet and to "attend" her friend, much in the same way as Mr Randolph was "attended" by his best man.

The lady typists and other business girls of New York find it necessary to protect themselves against the unwelcome attentions of male passengers by tramcar or omnibus, and a New York girl has devised a very neat method. Every day she appeared at the office with an encyclo-paedia-looking volume labelled " The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." One evening her employer caught sight of it, and exclaimed, "Well, for pity's sake, don't tell me you are reading this?" The girl broke into a friendly smile. " Why,- this is my chaperon, which I take with me to have going home alone on. the cars," she said. ■ "Ever since I've been carrying it I haven't seen a man yet who would look at me a second time." The voiing lady addled that only the outside belonged to Gibbon: the covers were filled with the lafcsst fiction papers. The outstanding temptation to the professional Photographer, said Mr E. 0. Hoppe, F.R.P.S., in a lecture at the opening of a house exhibition of his camera portraits . at the Royal Photographic (Society, was to become a courtier rather than an artist. The retoucher in, portraiture had flattered public vanitv and perverted public taste. The wrinkle, so carefully touched out. Dften signified humour or patience, and was an index to the best side of the character, and the lines and irregularities in such faces as those of Carlyle and General Booth were badges of honour. The new school of professional ohotography aimed to show the sitter as he was, instead of giving him a face which might be a new-laid egg for all the likeness it bore to his own. • —A wonderful woman is Miss Genevieve Ward, the veteran actress, who recently celebrated her seventy-second birthday. She attributes her good health to simole life and cheerfulness. Live moderately and take plenty of exercise. That is the secret of long life, say savs; and every morning she takes a .regular Sandow course and walks a few miles each dav. It is probably news to some that Miss Ward is a countess. At 17 she married a Russian nobleman, Count Constantine de Guerbel. who afterwards endeavoured to repudiate the marriage, in spite of the fact that it was performed in Paris in the presence of the American Consul. But the count reckoned without the determination of the actress. She secured an audience with the Czar, and he issued a special ukase ordering the Count to repeat the marriage ceremony. To the Count's amazement, when the bride appeared in the church she was led to the altar in mourning, with a long veil of black crape as for a funeral. Beside her stood her brothers, armed with loaded revolvers. At the door of the church was a carriage, into which they handed her as soon as the ceremony was over. She never saw her husband again. Some interesting facts will be found in Mr G. P. Upton's book, the "Woman in Music." whv women are not composers. Whv, asks the author, is it that, as music is the interpreter and language of the emotions, woman, "who is the inspiration of Jove, who has a more powerful, and at the same time more delicate, emotional force than man, who is artistic by temnerament. whose whole organi«rn is sensitively strung, and who is religious, bv nature—why is it that woman, with all these musical elements in her nature.

is receptive rather than creative? Why is it that music only comes ; to her as a balm, a rest or a solace of happiness among her oleasur.es'arid her sorrows, and that it does not find its highest sources in her? In other fields of art woman has been creative." •He answers, ■ that for women "to treat emotions as if they were mathematics, to bind and measure and limit them within' the rigid laws of harmony and counterpoint, and to express them with arbitary signs,, is a coldblooded operation, possible only to the sterner and more obdurate nature of man."

The Duchess of Bedford, who has just made a record catch of salmon in the Tay—she' landed 18, weighing 2601 b, in one day —is the most notable of all living sportswomen. There" is no single phase of sport at which she does not excel, and eh© can give a better account of herself with the gun than many of the stronger sex. In one season 3427 head of game fell to her grace's gun, and she has brought down as many as 115 partridges in a single day's driving. Her record for a day is a tag of 200 pheasants, but the duchess modestly explains this total with the- adjective "tame." She has shot 70 birds at a single stand. Her predilection for snipe-shooting by herself, which she places only second to grouse driving, shows that with the true sporting instinct she shoots for the sport rather than the bag. Yet it is curious to note that, until her marriage, she had never fired a shot in her life. Now, she is such a hardened veteran, that even wild duck _ shootins-, which carries with it more possible hardship than any other home venture for

game, has no terrors for her. On one occasion she. brought down 29 birds with 56 shots, which is an excellent average. The duchess is no novice at literature, as her book on Canada, "The Impressions of a Tenderfoot," and her contributions to the literature of sport show. Mme. Rejane, the famous French comedienne, who k making her first appearance on the variety stage at the Hippodrome, is a notable example of the triumph of genius over adverse circumstances. Her father was an unsuccessful shopkeeper, who tried acting and failed, and eventually became a ticket-collector at the Ambigu Theatre in Paris, ( while her mother attended to the buffet in the foyer. Life was one long struggle, and when her father died Mme. Rejane lived! by making fans at : 2s a'dozen. She thought herself fortunate if she earned 2s a day. From this pittance to an unrivalled position or the stage is a big leap, but it was attained by sheer hard work. She had every handicap possible, including that of her "name, which is really Reju. Mme. Rejane always wears two mascots—an old brooch given her by an aunt on the day she made her first appearance, and a curious ring given her by King Edward, which she always wears "in respectful homage to her kindest critic." She has a full share of the actress's superstition. Always nervous, ■ her invariable rule when she is playing in a strange place is to look for a child in the audience on the first night. If one is present she will play to that child the whole of the evening.' Children bring her luck, she says.