Mundane Musings

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 143, 7 September 1927, Page 5

Mundane Musings

Discoveries About Men

I am always altering, or rather, bringing up to date, my ideas about men. As a study, they have been my absorbing pgssion since I was knee-higli to a duck. And, if I consider myself proudly to be one of the leading stockists (to use that lovely new advertising word) in truths about men, you can regard it as evidence of a thoroughly well-spent life. A husband who is old enough to view with some pain the antics of a charming 21-years-old son who divides his life into office grind, tennis, dances and girls, remembering that when he was his boy’s age he was grubbing for liis own living and his ma’s in a solicitor’s office, said to me, apropos of wives who let their husbands go to pot: “Women are fools. They can do anything with a man if they want to. But they won’t trouble.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him what I really thought about that. Of course, women can do anything they like with a man. If they want to. But they don’t always want to. If they let a man go it’s because they don’t care. A man will say in your ear by way of paying tribute to your alleged powers of life and death: “You know you could do anything you like with my soul.” I can still remember the look of hurt astonishment o’erspreading amiable male features when someone I knew extremely well, says an English writer, said shortly, and anything but sweetly, “Keep it to yourself. I have as much as I can do to bring myself up, without having to supervise existence for an able-bodied man.” There’s not a male breathing who isn’t shocked as well as astounded to find a woman he fancies doesn’t care a couple of stage dams about him. I’m stire men would get on better with women if they didn’t swank so much. They can’t help it, of course. It starts from the nursery days. Little boys brag and little girls tell tales. Ob, the weary hours some of us have spent, listening (arid without being able to get a word in’edgeways) to stories of the high favour with which a gentleman friend imagines he is received everywhere; his generosity; his influence; his “rows” with rivals or inferiors, in which, naturally, he comes out always top dog; and the pleasure he takes in imparting to us a sense that the whole wide world has its eyes upon this extraordinary creature, watching his every act with vivid interest.

The silly liars some men are. And do some of us remember the awful numb feeling that attacks us when, at the end of some hours long discourse, this self-loving gentleman has come to a sudden full stop squeezed us round the waist appreciatively, saying, brightly and kindly ‘And now tell me all about yourself”? The Crown Prosecutor would do well to know that I have been on the point of cold-blooded murder many a time. I have discovered that it doesn’t mat:er in the least in a man’s eyes how outrageous or how startling female dress is, providing the wearer carries it off and is at an attractive age. But nothing affronts a man more (unles he is her relative or close friend, when he keeps his mouth shut) than to see a woman bearing every mark of old age and adipose tissue creeping on, flaunting the short skirts, the sleeveless jumpers, the flesh stockings, and the ray trappings or the styles that look .veil only on fair, slim and twenty. I know this, too. If a woman wants !o be noticed, it is necessary that she should be one of two things. She can be extremely pretty and taking, and wear any old, cheap and illassorted clothes. It doesn’t matter. Sh e can also be extremely smart and soignee, and yet be excessively plain. Even downright ugly. It doesn’t matter. Men are extraordinarily sensitive to feminine clothes. Bright, pretty, fresh, colourful, noticeable ones. Didn’t Balzac say that men marry women’s raiment? One of the black spots in my career as an admirer and a lover of mankind was the passing of the interest of a fellow to whom I was very much attracted. It was when I had desk room in a newspaper office during one terribly miserable winter of drenching rains and soul-clogging fogs. My economical conscience forced me to do the right thing. I tricked myself out in brown woollens, Russian boots, golf stockings, a dull mac guaranteed not to show the mud, a dowdy allweather hat, and woollen gloves. I was warm, dry and rheumaticproof, but I must have had all the exciting, passionate qualities of a bit of chewed brown paper. Brown is not my colour. Now, that charming man, though I say it myself, had a mental crush on me. It might have developed as I wanted it to develop, into one of those dear love affairs that add so much to the joy, amusement and sweetness of life. But there wasn’t a chance, and we passed out of each other’s lives like drowned rats in a gutter. I knew, instinctively, that had it been a gay and golden summertime I would have had quite a different story to tell. Months and months afterwards I met him again. The brown woolly bundle of a but# v as he always remembered me was now metamorphosed into a sparkling (well I can sparkle when I’m in a good temper), slender, neat person in a silver dress silver shoes, a 15s hair-cut. oOs French blush silk stockings, and 1 could see his astonishment, and—--shall I say it?—perhaps chagrin, as he took my hand in greeting, saying, I had no idea you were so—so— ’” I knew what he wanted to say, but 1 m not going to tell you here. It was too late. I had lost my taste ior him. My attentions were engaged elsewhere with someone who loved me entirely for my wonderful brain. Now, there’s a warning to girls for

DEATH OF MRS. L. FILLEUL

Mrs.' Louisa Filleul, who died at her home, Bassett Road, Remuera, on Monday at the age of S 9, was the widow of the late Mr. W. G. Filleul. Coming to New Zealand with her husband in ISSS. Mrs. Filleul landed at Lyttelton and went to Oamaru. After the death of her husband, Mrs. Filleul came to Auckland, where she has lived for the last 13 j-ears. Her j | mother was related to Florence Night- ; j ingale.

LATE MISS A. I. STAMPER A well-known member of the nursing profession, Miss Adeline lalitha Stamper, who has died at the age of 70, was a daughter of the late Mr. John Stamper, at one-time a prominent barrister of Dunedin. After Mr. Stamper’s death. Miss Stamper and her mother went to Papanui. Christchurch, where they lived for many years. Miss Stamper entered the nursing profession late in life and went through a course of training at the Karitane Children’s Hospital. Dunedin. She was appointed Plunket nurse at Dannevirke, on the recommendation of Dr. Truby King, and was stationed there for a long time. A few years ago she returned and lived at Remuera with her sister. Mrs. Francis Fletcher.

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