AN ENGLISHWOMAN'S BOOTS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1216, 26 August 1911, Page 11

AN ENGLISHWOMAN'S BOOTS.

FRENCH CARICATURE. Commenting on the Frenchman's usual caricature of an Englishwoman, a writer in the London "Daily Telegraph' says he invariably depicts her in large, clumsy hob-nailed boots. Incidentally, in tho course of the following remarks, the same writer has, strange to say, a little word in favour of the hobble skirt:— "As a matter of fact, we never had a type of woman in that type of boot, but our women's boots were, bad enough in all conscience, and a nation may bo pardoned for stereotyping its apt caricature. Even in England we visualise an Italian as a man who plays an organ and lives on macaroni and the capers of monkeys, whilo for purposes of identification we still cling to the belief that tho German wears a moustache like Bismarck and parades a pipe that knocks the size of the discarded calabash silly. The French type of Englishwoman was founded on an abiding truth—she was bigger-booted than she might have been. All that, however, is a thing of the past. The Englishwoman to-day is no more bigbooted than she is big-toothed. While she never wore hob-nails, her boot's, be it admitted, had that look about them. It is one of the glories achieved by hobble skirts and all the abbreviations and slenderfications (my word) which havo happened to the lower garment' since the crinolino and the bustle that they havo hit tho old hob-nailed boot so hard that you cannot find one clumping a foot of pavement between Piccadilly and Hyde Park corner, unless it is on" the practical foot of a peripatetic navvy. "To-day the English woman does not wear hob-nailed boots or boots at all. Sho wears shoci, and pretty shoes, chic enough to twinkle picmantly on the boulevards of the French capital. If you doubt my word, start at Leicester Square and travel through Regent Street to the Marblo Arch; collecting boot impressions. You will find your boot impressions are all dancing littlo tit-bils _ of colour, and that the shape—if an impression ever had shape—follows the model of the shoe. You will find these shoes are no longer made of leather—or, at least', black leather. They affect all the colours of a rainbow perfectly arching itself to its utmost. You will find them pink or salmon coloured, whitetopped, red-strapped, yellow-buttoned, and if you do not' find them exactly that way, you will find them any colour you want tD see/body, tops, straps, or buttons, even to the hue that prevailed when our forefathers affected gamboge, uppers. Not a hob shape, in the lot, nor a nail in the sole, hut shapely, in every colour possible to tender suede tho sort of footwear fairies might have worn as they went dancing through the woodlands, if they ever danced at all.

"Also they have buckles, and when you see a boot' with a buckle, a feminine shoo without one is a grim monstrosity, meet only for a Parisian caricature. The buckle is a pretty thing. It shines in the sun, catches up the light and gives it back, as stars tako up the light of heaven and wink it like laughter through the skies. A buckle—why, a buckled shoe is better than a silver-gilt spur on the foot of a, scarlet-clad man-at-arms. Where the ■ spur rings a martial, bighooted laughter, the buckle is the dimpling smile of a procession of half-dancing shoes. They go trip-trip-tripping down Piccadilly, as you may see them for yourself on any one of these days of July. And even as they trip they tramp upon tho hand from Paris which > drew our English women once, and maybe, even does to-day,, so booted as if she considered a trip across tho blessed city a greater adventure than a climb across tho Himalaya?."