WOMAN'S WORLD.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7889, 19 December 1903, Page 3

WOMAN'S WORLD.

The Czarina has an unlimited allowance for diess,' but -away from Court dresses in simple black. Her State gowns, however, are superb. Queen Marghatita of Italy has a private purse .for dress of about £3000 a year. But the Queen, makes large yearly purchases of. costly lace. The Queen of Ho-Hanell is an royal lady. Nearly all her dresses come from Paris, and she leves bright colours, spangles and ostrich plumes. Her dress bill runs to nearly £4000 a year. A very pretty innovation was witnessed at the wedding of" Mr Rupert Guinness and Lord Onslow's daughter, when dried rose leaves were thrown over them in place of. the timehonoured and often destructive slipper. A correspondent of the " Liberte " reports that Madame Humbert has become exceedingly docile arocß submissive since her transfer to the prison of Fresnes. She is perfectly calm, if not silent, and passes all her day in sewing. , Miss Alice Hollander, -the young Australian contralto, was among the vocalists at. the Cryr stal Palace concert on OctobeT 31, arid on the following Wednesday she sang at the first of the season's London ballad concerts at St James's Hall. • . ■ The Empress of Germany is the only royal ■ lady who never orders a stitch from Paris. She goes to Vienna, if -the milliners and tailors of the Fatherland cannot supply her wants. Her dress allowance is £2000 la year, and she rarely exceeds it. "Weddings ;a& midnight are becoming the thing in' New York. Bride and bridegroom in the evening attend' a theatre, then, a sumptuous •dinner is given, which foists till neax to midnight, when the whole company betake themselves to the nearest church. Last month sixteen, weddings were (performed; in this fashion. Bed is the autumn colour. We «xc too fond of neglecting colour in New Zealand, and yet the colour of our curroundings certainly affects our temperament. There are some rooms one can never feel happy in, and many people cannot tell the reason why. The explaration lies in the colour of the walls, the curtains, or the carpet Queen Alexandra has a favourite teapot, which is often in use when the Queen is at Sandringbam. It is exceedingly curious, very old, and is said to be of priceless value. The teapot is in the shape of a stout Dutchman sitting astride a barrel of wine. The old man's cap serves for a lid, and a gold tap lets out the favourite five o'clock beverage. Mrs Probyn, of Ennismore Gardens, Kensington, the widow of Major Probyn, of Huntley Manor, Gloucestershire, whose death ia just announced, was known as " a mother of countesses." She was the mother of Countess Amhurst, of the Countess of Lisburne, and of Lady Rodney, and was the sister of Mr F. C. Philips, the novelist. It is a curious fact that Lady Amhurst was first married to the fifth Earl of Lisburne, and that her younger sister was married^ to his son, the sixth Earl of Lisburne. J Queen Alexandra, says an authority, does not spend a penny over £2000 a. year for her dresses. Yet she never appears twice at a great Court function in "the same gown. Something like eight gorgeous frocks are ordered each year for her from Paris. Eaoh is worn once, and then her staff of salaried seamstresses recast it for evening wear. She gets a batch, of hate every season from Paris 1 , and when one haa appeared! once. a.t «■ publio function it is recast and worn again . and again in private society. Paradoxically enough, the owner of the greatest artillery works in the world is a girl of nineteen— Fraulein Antoinette Bertha Krupp, whose father, the late Baron Krupp, died recently, leaving her a fortune estimated at £15,000,000. Gossip just now mentions her as the fiancee of Herr Felix Klemperer, the chairman of the Berlin- Machine Manufacturing Company, the largest concern in Germany atfer Krupp's. Fraulein Krupp is believed to be the wealthiest woman in the Old World, however she may be regarded in the New, with Miss Carnegie with all her father's millions in the .scale. Fond of outdoor exercise, she is a fearless equestrienne, indefatigable on the links, and a good cyclist. The mystery of Marie BashkirtEeff, that strange, erotic, turbulent young soul, who fell sadly in love "with a British duke at the mature age of twelve, and recorded her sensations in a diary running to several hundreds of pages, will soon be a mystery no longer. Prince Bojidar Karageorgevitch, in an interesting paper in the " Fortnightly," shows that Marie, so far from being an extremely precocious little girl of twelve when she compiled the diary which created such an enormous sensation a few years ago, was actually between sixteen and seventeen years of age when, she became fascinated -with the Duke of Hamilton. If this be true, then Marie passes out of the land of freaks, and takes her place with other normal souls who have loved and suffered to an abnormal extent. But the new facts, had they been known at the time the book was published, would have rendered impossible one of the greatest literary '"booms " of recent years. King Edward evidently intends to spend far more of his time in his English residences than did his illustrious mother. The domestic staff at Balmoral has been greatly reduced in every department. For instance, the bakery, in which three bakers were constantly employed during tho reign of the late Queen, has been abolished, and the household supplies are now obtained every day fromi the local tradesman at Ballater. Fancy bread and confectionery are supplied from Windsor, by train or post. The resident doctor and trained nurses, who formerly occupied the small hospital o:x the Balmoral estate, have been dispensed with, and now — except when his Majesty is in residence at the Castle — there is no medical man within ten miles of the estate. Her late Majesty spent a Invpo amount of money every year with the Edinburgh jewellers and ether tradesmen, from ■vrhoin many of her presents were purchased. King Edward prefers to get things in London. Lady Londonderry is no pessimist with regard to woman'B status. Opening a r.ew school of cookery at Xewcastle the other d«y, she remarked: "It is said that it is womsn s lot to suckle fools and chronicle small beer, and that the band that rocks the cradle rule? the world. Whatever truth there is in that, the future of the race ip in the hands of women, and they should therefore expand tjioir intellects and raise their characters." Thnt is the line to take. The days of " the shriekinsr sisterhood." when the term "the woman movement " was synonymous with the recital of a list of every fad under the pun. have <*-one for ever. The hour of the hror-d-mindod thinker, who has never allowed her scientific culture to exclude her womanly sympathy from all that is involved in the phrare "human nature," and who knows that reform can only come from within, has come at last. Congresses, and conventions, and agitation? for political "freedom" are all very well in their wav, hut it is through the development of the individual woman that progress must come. and throusrh that door alone.