THE END OF THE CHAPERON.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 23, Issue 5, 19 January 1912, Page 2

THE END OF THE CHAPERON.

In that very amusing book of reminiscences, “Notes from the Life of an Ordinary Mortal,” we learn, for the first time, the exact date of.the abolishment of the chaperon, and the persons who were responsible for her virtual disappearance—at any rate, in an aggravated form—from our midst. This portentous event, began it seems, in the year ISS-),, and in the family of the wife of, England’s present Prime Minister. Mr. Liddell tells us that Miss Laura and Miss Margot Tennant were young ladies of the highest accomplishments, devoted to sport, andl of a lively turn of mind. Lady Tennant, on the other hand, was “a delightfully placid person, who was allowed a great deal of liberty by her daughters, and seldom, interfered in social arrangements.” It was at the Glen, Sir Charles Tennant’s lovely place in Scotland, that the fashion was first seen, in these islands, of the young members of the family setting the pace,, so to speak—a pace which produced, according to our author, ‘“a gaiety and abandon” which made a stay with the Tennant family resemble “a perpetual valse.” There was no attempt, he declares, at chaperonage, which caused some astonishment to a visitor who, although only thirty-eight, had been brought up in somewhat severe aristocratic circles. “All the old-fash-ioned restrictions as to the manner or place of companionship between young men and maidens was entirely ignored,” says the autobiographer, with the result that an invitation to the Glen became one of the most sought after by everyone of note. This wise policy of trusting yo : n; people of the right sort together has done more for the equality of woman than a thousand pamphlets or rivers of rhetoric. The abolishment of the chaperon was the beginning of freedom. —The “Sketch.”