THE REIGNING BEAUTIES.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 907, 8 January 1881, Page 2

THE REIGNING BEAUTIES.

Every one knows there is a great rivalry between Mrs Langtry and Mrs Wheeler—greater between them than any other of the reigning beauties—and that whatever one can do so as to “ score ” off the other, is done by each. Mrs. Langtry is known to possess very beautiful arms, while Mrs Wheeler’s are thin and scraggy. On the other hand, the reverse extremities of Mrs Wheeler are regarded by those who have seen them as models of shape and form, while Mrs Langtry, though possessing fairly small feet, when lien chausee, can only boast of upward continuations of a very pipe-stem order. Well, the season before last Mrs Langtry set the fashion of the sleeveless ball dresses, and, of course, Mrs Wheeler, much to her detriment, had to adopt the style. But she set to ■work to think how she could retaliate, and this is how she did it. At the first ball she appeared at, last season, she wore a dress with a very short skirt. The Prince admired it, and, as a matter of course, it became the fashion. But what was Mrs Langtry to do ? She tried it once, but the effect, as may be imagined, was disastrous. Then she set to work to cudgel her brains, and —happy thought!—at the next ball, instead of adding an inch or two to her draperies, as she had first thought of doing, she had actually taken a reef in her already short skirt. But underneath appeared a pair of a certain article of ladies’ lingerie which, on the present occasion, shall be otherwise unmentionable, of knickerbocker cut, and reaching to her ankles, where they were decreased in fulness by a narrow band, and thence fell over her instep in a short flounce of point lace. The effect was immense. The Prince was more than delighted with it, and not only did Mrs. Wheeler find herself completely checkmated at her own game, but, as the wearing of the additional garment a la Langtry at once became the thing, she •of course was obliged to adopt it, and thus conceal what it had been her motive to so subtly disclose. It has been by such daring, and, at the same time, shrewd acts as this that Mrs. Langtry has become the lionne she is, and by the continued exercise of her audacious wits holds her own as she does. She is always equal to the occasion, and the present instance is a fair example of what she can do, and not only be tolerated but followed.