THE GLASS OF FASHION

Hokitika Guardian, 31 August 1921, Page 1

THE GLASS OF FASHION

Not long ago the anonymous ‘‘Gentleman with a Duster” published his “Mirrors of Downing Street,” in which lie lamented the decade nee of the public hie of our time. Gladstone represents to Inin the beau ideal of .statesmanship; his regret is that the Gladstonian mantle has descended upon no one. The greatest crises of Britain’s history failed to produce the man. We are ruled by medio-crit ies and opportunists. In “The (Hass of Fashion” he bestows upon contemporary social life the same austere censure which in the former book lie bestowed on our political life. A sentence in thb introduction might be taken as bis text. “Folly as an aberration is laughable; as a fashion, as a rule of life, it is disastrous.” And with the world of fashion folly lias become a fashion. By the term “fashion” lie means “all these noisy, ostentatious, and frivolous people, patricians and plutocrats, politicians and financiers, lawyers and tradesmen, actors and artists, who have scrambled on to the summit of England’s national life, and who, setting the worst possible examples in morals and manners, are never so happy as when they are making people talk about them.” And he sets out “neither to laugh at Fashion after the manner of the satirists, nor to abuse it after the manner of political extremists, but to criticise it in the spirit of one who clearly recognises its value to the commonwealth, and wou'd have it faithful to its duties and proud of its privileges.” It is tlie custom to sneer at the pretensions of aristocracy and society, but, alter all. these* can wield an immense power for good or ill. In most communities there are a few thousands oi persons who by virtue of talent, wealth, or birth form a class apart. These set the tone for the nation; they are the model upon which their less exalted follow countrymen 'shape themselves. Tbeir responsibilities are correspondingly great, but nowadays we look in vain for any sign that fashion as a whole is conscious of them. A generation ago it was different. There were exceptions, of course, but in the main “the great” bad a sense of what was due to their dignity and their position. Th. obligations of tank and.castc were not forgotten. But now what do we find in “Fashion r” Superficiality and shallowness, insincerity, a craving for notoriety ami sensation —a blase spirit which reacts only to the most hectic forms oi excitement. Hie author iegards Colonel Bepington’s “Diaries’ and Mrs Asquith’s “Reminisfcnees” as typical products of tbeii age and milieu. He admits the interest of Colonel Repington’s memoirs, but is shocked at their cynicism and flippant levity. A few miles away the armies are lighting in intolerable ugliness ami i qualm'. ( olotiel Repiiigton gossips about bis smart dinners and jolly week-end parti's with Olympian detachment. Again the author condemns Mrs Asquiths lack of reticence. “The path into/ which her disposition urged her appeals to have been the path of sensationalism. To attract attention to herself s'ne converted her share ol the hidden river of life into a fountain that should never cease to play it you will into ~ burst water pipe. .. . . -Mrs Asquu i seems from the evidence of I hose pages deliberately to have sought notoriety by shock tactics. She lias arrived at rim wall by trampling down the flowers. ’ Such is the nature of th# indictment which the gentleman with the ‘luster brings against the high society ol today. lie is not always censorious. Simplicity, decorum, reserve, and restraint arc not yet wholly extinct 'ir tiics. But their possessors are not those who are most in the public eye Tin* noise and glitter of the fashionable cirrus usurp popular attention. UI course the gi ntleman will) the duster is not the first to cry woe unto a perverse anil pleasure-loving generation ; Horn time immemorial men have insisted that tbeir own age compares very uiitavinirablv with its predecessor. But tbeir* is a good deal oi substance in what lie mis toUty, although bis manner of saving it is occasionally a trifle portentous.