Women I Admire

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 4, Issue 10, 1 April 1926, Page 35

Women I Admire

33? SIR JOHN FOSTER FRASER

It is rather like filling up a questionnaire to catalogue the women I admire, for their number is infinite. In the United States, where I was interviewed twice a day, the second thing on which I was ordered to stand and deliver was my opinion of American women. Didnt I think they were the finest women on God’s earth? At first I was inclined to be patriotically discriminating in my appreciation. Oh, gee! They didn’t want to hear about English

everybody knew they had thick ankles and big, flat feet what they wanted to know was, had I ever in my multitudinous wanderings come across such perfectly lovely, cultured creatures as the women I had met in the most exclusive circles of American society? In time I learnt to give the pertinacious interviewers exactly what they wanted. “Your women!” I would declare with enraptured gesture, “they are the most beautiful peaches that were ever sent from heaven.” Thus I learnt the art of becoming popular with the American public, and I was able to read in the Toledo Blade the Omaha Bee, or some similar enterprising journal: “British Nobleman Boosts American Beauty!” course, there are many women one likes for particular occasions, and a very few women that one can like on all occasions. There are captivating creatures with whom I love to dine and to dis-

creetly discuss the tendencies of modern drama; but they are not the sort of women- I would prefer to see on the other side of the breakfast dishes every morning. There was a judge who married his cook because she was a very good cook; but the mischief was that after he married her she never cooked for him again. A friend of mine married his secretary, and everybody said what a fool he was. Not at all. She was a nice woman, and, during the eighteen months ere

he discovered he was in love, he saw her in the morning mood, noticed she was punctual, conscientious, had a lively intelligence, could write a sensible letter, read good books, was courageously independently, and generally worthy of esteem. He was less likely to make a mistake than if he had let his heart slip to some sylph whom he met at dances, and the chief thing he knew about her was that she was jolly good fun in a punt on the Thames. TT is the habit of men who have A reached my urbane age, the amiable fifties, to be just a little pontifical about the carryings on of the modern young woman, with her shingled hair and bobbed tresses, wagging her powder-puff and manipulating her incarnadine lipstick in public, and making her waist-band encompass the least slender portion of her figure. My philosophy is that the customs

of an age are exactly suitable for that age, and, therefore, the ways of the young lady of the period are just about what they ought to be. Yet I expect that a quarter of a century hence the girls of to-day, who come in for so much reproof from frumpish elders, will be telling their own frolicsome progeny their conduct is absolutely unbelievable, and certainly nothing of the kind was done in the more refined and restrained far-off days of 1926. When I seriously think about it I fancy it would be easier to write about the women I do not admire than about those I do —for one can

let oneself go if disparagement is the work in hand, whereas admiration must not be jaunty or flippant, and praise must not be laid on with a trowel, though I have met women who pant with ecstasy when receiving a double measure of adulation. "XJO man should talk or write “*■ ™ about the women he admires unless his admiration is founded on deep respect. At dinner parties and little supper-and-dance gatherings after the theatre, I am constantly meeting the most captivating of women, sprightly and graceful, and with little laughs that sound delicious across the champagne glasses; but I don’t admire them. I have an idea that most of them have breakfast in bed, and I have a gruff prejudice against women who do not come down to breakfast.

Not at night time, when you are full of sumptuous fare, and the lights are low, and the music divine, and the atmosphere sensuously alluring, should a man make up his mind about a woman; but in the morning, when the light is clear, and she is her real self. If I were giving advice to a young man I would say “Do your sweethearting in the morning. Invite the girl to go a long walk with you before breakfast. It is very nice to be out before breakfast, especially in the woods. And you will learn more about the girl you are fond of in half a dozen such walks

than a whole season of evening parties and crushes, and dances and theatres, and junketing at cabarets.” AJOTHING is more idle or ungracious than to praise the women of one country by implied depreciation of the women of other countries; besides, it is bad manners. The women of all countries have their adorable half-hours. It is sweet to recline in a Venetian gondola close to a soft-breath-ing Italian woman whilst watching the lights of the Lido in the distance. It is, or was, a soul feast to sit through the white night of Russia in June with a Russian woman, temperamental and emotional, and discuss things that don’t matter, but are very pleasant. It brings a smile to recall exquisite little “affairs” in

Egypt and in Japan, in Hungary and Argentine, in Spain and in India, of moonlight nights in the Mediterranean, and joyous sunny picnic days amongst the woods and lakes of North America—soft, luscious memories of innumerable women whom one has admired awhile and lost long sync. OUT what is the kind of woman 1 admire most of all ? She is an Englishwoman, not radiantly beautiful like a picture postcard actress, but with the sweetness of her nature shining in her countenance. She is in full womanhood, and she is not ever dabbing her face with powder in public. She is fond of dancing and the theatre, and of parties, but she is much fonder of life in the country, loves horses, and knows something about other animals. She does not spend her afternoons at bridge parties, preferring to be in the garden, gloved, and with a trowel in her hand. She is respected by all the folk in her neighbourhood, and

when she goes out to tea she has something else to talk about than the foibles of other women. She plays tennis a little, and golf a little, but her affection is centred in her home, and she has some acquaintance with the linen cupboard and the kitchen, and is by no means the sort of woman who gigglingly confesses she knows nothing about cooking. She is fond of a really good novel, but she likes to read the newspaper and learn what is happening in the great world. She does not fuss and meddle in public affairs, but knows there is a lot of quiet, good work for women to do, and she does not advance the perpetual excuse she is “much too busy” when asked to do some of it. She does not worry about the war between the sexes; she regards man as a pal, a big baby sometimes that needs mothering, but the staunchest friend in the hour of need. She is just a good healthy-bodied, heal-thy-minded Englishwoman. Yes, that is the kind of woman I admire most of all.