CIGARETTE PAPERS.

Southland Times, Issue 22011, 10 May 1933, Page 6

CIGARETTE PAPERS.

THE BEST QUALITY. Evelyn in his diary for may 10, 1654, writes: “My Lady Gerrard treated us at Mulberry Garden, now the only place of refreshment about the town for persons of the best quality to be exceedingly cheated at; Cromwell and his partizans having shut up and seized on Spring Gardens, which till now had been the usual rendezvous for the ladies and gallants at this season.” Buckingham Palace now occupies the site of Mulberry Gardens. The Gardens were places where the "best quality” enjoyed themselves in all manner of escapades, and the records of these and later times show that the frivolities at the gardens, which embraced gambling and worse, were exceedingly popular. The ladies and gallants could meet clandestinely at these places of amusement, and there are accounts, too, of elopements and abductions, duels and open robberies, though it was in the Georgian period that the gardens were really at their height. It is interesting to note that Evelyn a little after this adds: “I now observed how the women began to paint themselves, formerly a most ignominious thing, and used only by prostitutes.” The rise and fall of the fashion of painting by women would form the subject of an interesting work, because it is known that in the days of Pharoahs women of fashion “made-up” and, of course, the Roman women also improved their faces with cosmetics. During the early Victorian period makeup was decidedly unfashionable, though women of ill-repute still used it boldly in the streets. In the latter part of the last century it became fashionable again and developed until to-day even the most extravagant use is considered smart. The possibility of a swing back to the untouched face may come; but in the meantime fashionable women all over the world use artificial aids, and adopt unnatural colouring, thus taking the same course as the women of the savage races who decorate their faces without regard for the natural tints. —CRITICUS.