THE GIRL OF THE PERIOD.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IV, Issue 29, 5 February 1869, Page 2

THE GIRL OF THE PERIOD.

We have been requested by many of our readers to publish the following article, which appeared in the Saturday Review. We are unable to give it in its entirety, but have selected such portions as we thought would prove mo6t interesting. Time was when the stereotyped phrase •a fair young English girl,' meant the ideal of womanhood, to us, at least, of some I'irih and breeding. It meant a crea!. ure generous, capable, and modest ; someihing franker than a French woman; move to be trusted than an Italian, as bi:i'*e as au American, but more refined, as domestic as a German, and more graceful. It meant a girl who could be trusted alone if need be, because of the innate purity and dignity of her nature, but who was neather bold in bearing nor masculine in mind ; a girl who, when she married, would be her husband's friend aud compan iou, but never his rival ; one who would consider their interests identical^ and not hold him as just so much game for spoil ; who would make his house his true home aud place of rest, uot a mere passage-place for vanity and ostentation to go through ; a tender mother, an industrious housekeeper, a judicious mistress. We prided ourselves as a nation on our women. We thought we had the pick of creation in this fair young English girl of ours, aud envied no other men their own. We admired the languid grace and subtle fire ofthe South ; the docility and childlike affectionateness of the East seemed to us sweet and simple and restful; the vivacious sparkle of the tWm and sprightly Parisienne was a pleasant little excitement when we met with it in its own domain ; but our allegiance never wandered from our brown haired girls at home, and our heaits were less vagrant than our faucies. This was in the old time and wheu English girls were content to be what God and nature had made them. Of late years we have changed the pattern, and have given to the world a race of women as utterly unlike the old insular ideal as if we had created another nation altogether. The girl of the period, and the fair young English girl of the past, have nothing in common save ancestry* and their mother tongue ; and even of this last the modern version makes almost a new language, through the copious additions it has received' from the current slang of the day. The girl of the period is a creature who dyes ber hair and paints her face, as the first articles of her personal religion ; whose sole idea of life is plenty of fun and luxury ; and whose dress is the object of such thought and intellect as she possesses. Her main endeavor in this is to outvie lier neighbors in the extravagance of fashiou. No matter whether, as in the time of crinolines, she sacrificed decency, or, as now, in the time of trains, she sacrifices cleanliness ; no matter either,, whether she makes herself a nuisance and an inconvenience to every one she meets. The girl ofthe period has done away with such moral muffishness as consideration for others, or regard for counsel and rebuke. It was all very well in old fashioned timesj when fathers and mothers had some authority and were treated with respect, to be tutored and made to obey, but she is far too fast and flourishing to be stopped iu mid-career by these slow old morals ; aud as she dresses to please herself, she does not care if she displeases every one else. Nothing is too extraordinary and nothing too exaggerated for her vitiated taste ; and things which in themselves would be useful reforms if let alone, become monstrosities worse than those whicb. they have displaced so soon as she begins to manipulate and improve. If a sensible fashion lifts the gown out of the mud she raises hers midway to her knee. If the absurd structure of wire and buckram, once called a bonnet, is modified to something that shall protect the wearer's face without putting out the. eyes of her companion, she cuts hers down to four straws aud a rosebud, or a tag of lace and a bunch of glass beads. If there* is a reaction against an excess of t Rowland's Macassar, and hair shiny and sticky with grease. is thought less nice than if left clean and healthily crisp, she dries and frizzes and sticks hers out on end like certain savages in Africa, or lets it wander down her back like Madge Wildfire's, and thinks herself all the more beautiful the nearer she approaches in look like a maniac or a uegvess. With purity of taste she

has lost also that far more precious purity and delicacy of pre'eeption which sometimes mean more than appears on the surface. *■* * * "No oue can say of the modern English girl that she is tender, loving, retiring, or domestic. The old fault so often found 'by keen-sighk-d Frenchwomen, that she was so fattilly romanesgue, so proue to sa- | crifice appearances and social advantages for l<»ve, will never be set down to the girl , of tlie period. Love indeed is the last thing she thinks of, and the least of the •dangers besetting her. Love in a cottage, that seductive dream which used to vex •the heart and disturb the calculations of prudent -mothers,* is now a myth of past •ages. The legal barter of herself for so much money, representing so much dash, so much luxury aud pleasure — that is her idea of marringe; the only idea worth entertaining. For all seriousness of thought respecting the duties or the consequences of marriage, she has not a trace. If children come, they find but a stepmother's cold welcome from her ; and if lier busband thinks that he has married anything lbat is to belong to him — . tacens ei pla■cens uxor pledged to make him happy — the soooerhe wakes from foiri h.-illucinatiou -and understands that he has simply married some one who will condescend to spend bis money en herself, and who will "shelter his indiscretions behind the shield of his name, ihe less severe will be his disappointment. She bas married his iiouse, I his carriage, his balance at the banker's, ! Ii is title ; and he himself is just tbe inevi-table-condition clogging the wheel of her fortune; at best au adjunct to be tolerated • with more or less patience as may chance. For ic is ouly the old-fashioned sort, not girls of the period pur saner, tbat marry for love, or put the husband before the banker. But she does not marry easily. Men are alraid of her ; aud with reason. They may amuse themselves with her for an evening, but they do uot take her readily for life. * * # # It is terribly significant of the preseut state of things when men a**e free to write as they do of the women of their own nation. Every word of censure flung against them is two-edged, and wounds those who ■condemn as much as those who are condemned ; for surely it need hardly be said that men hold nothing so dear as the honor of their women, and that no one living would willingly lower the repute of his mother er sisters. It is only wheu these have placed themselves beyond the pale of tbe masculine respect that such things could be written as are written now; when they become again what they were once they will gather round them the love aud homage aud chivalrous devotion which were then an Englishwoman's natural inheritance. The marvel, iu the present fashiou cf life arnoDg women, is how it holds its ground iu spite of the disapprobation of men. It used to be an old-time notion that the sexes were made for each other, and that it was only •natural for them to please each otber, and to set themselves out for thafc end. Bufc ■the girl of the period does not please men. She pleases them as little as she elevates ■them ; and how little she does that the class of women she has taken as her models of itself testifies. All men whose opinion is worth having prefer the simple and genuius girl of the past, with her tender little ways and pretty bashful modesties, to this loud and rampant modernisation, with her false red hair and painted skin, talking slang as glibly as a man, and by preference leading the conversation to doubtful subjects. She thinks she •is piquaute aud exciting when she thus makes herself the bad copy of a worse original; aud she will not see that though •men laugh with her they do not respect , her, though they flirt with her they do not marry her; she will not believe that bhe is not the kind of thing they waut, and that she is acting against nature and •her own interests when she disregards their advice and offends their taste. We do not see how she makes out her account, viewing her life from any side; bufc all we i eau do is to wait .patiently until the national madness has passed, and our women have come back again to the old English ideal, once the most beautiful, the most ■modest, the most essentially womanly iu the world. Tiiat very clever, facile, and sensational writer, Miss Braddon, has joined the staff •of the Saturday Review. If she is to ■contribute anything of the ' girl of the

period ' style, she will be very severe oii her sex, if we may judge by an "article of her's in the Broadway. By the way, the series of articles under the above title, which created such a sensatiou, were from the pen of a lady, tbe sister of tbe Marquis of Salisbury, who himself has long been a contributor. — Court Journal.