TIDINESS

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 94, 15 January 1935, Page 5

TIDINESS

What Youth Now Lacks A VIRTUE OF YESTERDAY My grandmother would have given her hearty assent to the discovery by an eminent architect recently that tidiness is one of the things which the present age lacks, though not perhaps for exactly the same reasons as those which Sir Giles Gilbert Scott had .u mind. Looking back over the years and making such comparisons as advancing age can make without rancour, 1 think it is true that. the word which has fallen most into disuse iu the. language of modern life is tidiness. Some people would give “obedience” the first place, but we hear often still of. obedience if only in the form of warnings to modern parents not to expect nor to exact it from their children. It is difficult to bring home to the modern generation the place which tidiness filled in the lives of boys and girls forty or fifty years ago. “Put your work (or your play) tidily away and get ready to go for your walk.” “Make yourself tidy for lunch.” "My dear, how untidy you look, run upstairs and ” I was brought up in a house full of books. As regards the books, censorship was not severe. On Sunday evenings, for instance, we used to pore over Foxe’s Book of Martyrs with those terribly lurid illustrations, not at all the kind of thing which would be advised for imaginative children just before going to bed nowadays. But while we were little hindered in our reading, that great Victorian rule “a place for everything and everything in its place” was sternly enforced. With what premonitory tremors would one see a parent carrying a book one had put down on a table or left in a chair, and certain to ask “Which of you has been reading ? Put it back in the proper place. Books must be put tidily away, not left about anywhere.” Personal Appearance. Whether we were boys or girls, our hair was a great nuisance to us. Our hair was always “untidy.” There has been lately, I think, a style of coiffure intended to produce a “windblown effect”; it would not have passed muster for a moment in a Victorian household. It was a rule with my grandmother, when we stayed with her, to relate any misdoings to our personal appearance. The' lectures (and they were long and emphatic) which followed sins of commission and omission passed to a, dreaded close with some such coda as*“And your nails!” entailing a journey upstairs and much hard work with an uncompromising nail-brush. I suppose that the young person of today would reply brightly, “Oh, granny, don’t fuss!” So, too, of the rooms in which we lived. There seems to be a curiously mistaken belief among modern people that there is something “snobbish” iu the use of the word drawing-room, and. so many modern people in small houses prefer the ugly but expressive word “lounge.” The drawing-room of the Victorian house is represented sometimes as a room overfull of “hideous” furniture, stiffly placed, a room which had nothing in it of comfort or character, a stiff room, a tidy room. In my memories of the drawing-rooms of the people among whom I spent my childhood there is nothing at all true in such descriptions except the accusation of tidiness. But then we were expected to be tidy in any room in which.we lived. Often we were untidy, just as sometimes we told lies to avoid punishment, and sometimes we quarrelled and fought among ourselves, and sometimes we .behaved as young humanity always has behaved, but it ij_true that the drawing-room was a tidy room although we lived in it. Houses which had many servants were kept tidy by the servants in some degree, but it is perfectly true that it is (or was) possible to be comfortable and tidy too. Evenings in the Drawing Room. I shut my eyes and see a big room with a great fire burning in what seemed to us a satisfactory grate. On one side of the fixe is the low chair in which my mother always sat; scattered'about tue room, in deep comfortable chairs for the most part, children large and small. This is the good hour; no fear of callers, nursery tea is over, most of the members of the family meet here before dinner or bedtime. Certainly no one is "lounging”; any such propensity would be checked by a quiet “My dear, look bow you’re sitting” ; but everyone is comfortable. We have not achieved perfection iu tidiness, but at least that rage for untidiness which seems to be the rule of comfort to-da.y has not penetrated here. For our books, our games, our work, there are "proper places”; we shall be expected to put them away tidily when the time comes. If we move pieces of furniture for cue purpose or another, we shall be expected to put them back in place. Perhaps we have been singing Gilbert and Sullivan choruses; when we have finished the piano must be closed and the music put tidily away, not left on the musicstand or allowed to spread over the tlopr. If we are still under nursery control, our hair has been brushed and our faces and hands washed before we came downstairs. Our elders would never think of coming in from out of doors and sitting down without first going upstairs to make themselves tidy. A dreadful picture this, I suppose, according to modern ideas a picture of repression and frustrated impulses and goodness knows what of possible mischief. And yet there are thousands of men and women in later middle-age who look back with grateful hearts to those drawing-room evenings, the preface to which was “Let me see whether you are tidy,” before we were allowed to descend. —ILK.C U in the “Manchester Guardian.” ROYAL WEDDING-RINGS Royal brides were not always content with a plain wedding-ring of Welsh gold. Both in the Middle Ages and iu the gay days of the Restoration the wedding-ring was an elaborate affair set with precious stones. In the. ease of Mary Queen of Scots there is mention in her will of “a diamond ring enamelled in red,” and opposite this bequest she has written in her own hand, “Cest celui de quoy je fus espousee—Au roi qui la mie doune.” But even in those days the plain, unadorned ring was coming into favour. A few years earlier, when Mary Tudor was married, she had expressed her preference for "a plain ring of gold like other maidens.” Corsage Sprays or Orchids, Roses, Violets. Debutantes’ Posies.—Miss Murray, 36 Willis St. Phone 40-541. — Advt.