AFTERNOON CALLS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 384, 5 August 1911, Page 6

AFTERNOON CALLS.

THE CUSTOM IN DECLINE. "This season is notable for the fact that the time hallowed habit of paying afternoon calls is shown to be falling into disuse, and that the woman of the leisured class no longer regards the formal dropping into tea and chat with her acquaintance as a needful and in evitable part of the routine of her daily life and duties," writes Cicely Hamilton in the London "Daily Mail."

"The custom of afternoon calling had never any meaning to it; was never, so far as one can see, anything more than a pretence at occupation on the part of persons who had no duties wherewith to fill out the long and lazy hours that stretch between dinner and luncheon —and who sec to work to invent a colourable substitute for such duties. About the custom there was never any real spirit of social intercourse, no fellowship, no gaiety, no impetus of argument or differing points of view. It was a custom insipid, restricted, and petty- —a mere habit o± putting in an appearance at certain stated hours in certain stated houses,

"Nothing came to it, either good or bad. What woman has ever left an afternoon tea party the richer for a newly caught idea, the merrier for a deft thought deftly worded? For the most part all she does carry away with her is an impression of dullness and general insignificance of talk.

"There must be a reason, of course, for the fact that while man and man can be jolly together—with ease and on the slightest provocation- —woman and woman are apt to be bored with each other. The customary masculine explanation has at least the merit of extreme simplicity. It is merely this —'that women dislike each other, naturally and inevitably. "Personally I do not accept it; for the plain and sufficient reason that I have heard women—many women talk to each other with energy, with animation, with intelligence, when they had anything to say that needed saying. Why they are the reverse of animated, intelligent and energetic in speech and thought when they payformal visits and collect round afternoon tea tables is because women of the class that collect around afternoon tea tables have usually little that matters to say ; not because they are less gifted than other classes, but because they are still, as they always have been, hedged about with restrictions in the subject-matter of their conversation. Men clumsier talkers as a rule —are left free to deal with what they will in speech. In a smoking room all heaven and earth are open to discussion. In the drawing-room on the other hand, the rule has always been that conversation shall merely skim the surface of life and the world. It is against the drawing-room convention of deadly dulnes3 and restricted speech that —often unconsciouslv —the modern woman revotls,"