ELEGANT PARISIENNES

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20132, 29 December 1939, Page 12

ELEGANT PARISIENNES

CHIC IN THE COUNTRY EVACUATED FAMILIES # . HELPING ON FARMS SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE, Nov. 3. It is easy even for a stranger to pick out the Parisian women and children evacuated to this tiny buttcr-and-milk village. Among the peasants who drag bundles of lettuces and wear black cotton smocks and carpet slippers, these women still hop on high heels, we hr veiled hats, a bunch of flowers and smart, tight town-cut black dresses. Their children, trying to play hoops on the rough, dusty pavements, wear white socks, kid shoes, gloves and coats and hats as they did in the Paris parks. They stumble and fall, cut their knees, and then cry, “Maman. maman,” while the brown, perky village children in sabots and cotton overalls call them town babies Men Have Gone

Driving out through the country villages was the first wartime atmosphere I had felt, writes Ilildo Marchant in a London daily newspaper. The villages had only women and children in their streets and in the fields.

Women are doing the farm work and driving carts, but they arc not uniformed landgiiJs. The French peasant women have always worked in the fields.

They know the land, how to drive teams of horses, to work the plough and gather potatoes. When I arrived at this village my first sight was of four village children pulling some of the Paris children round on a vegetable barrow.

While the village women washed clothes a stream of elegant Parisiennes took fluffy poodles and dachshunds walking through the country lanes lined with apple trees. Lunching at a village. 1 saw an old peasant hobbling down the street on a stick with four lively Parisian children dancing round him. It was Ficd Piper himself, whistling a tunc and taking them towards the river for an afternoon's fishing. Most Adaptable

The Paris women want something to do, and some of them are trying to heln on farms while the children go to the village school.

One consolation is that the French farm food is still the richest and best in the world. I spoke to one woman from Paris She told me: “We’ve settled down here. Our husbands are mobilised, and it is much healthier here for children. We will cook and will work ii the fields."

Frenchwomen are most adaptable Thev will all settle down But their smart style will never change.