MUNDANE MUSINGS

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 3, 25 March 1927, Page 4

MUNDANE MUSINGS

WHY DO THEY DO IT? We’ve all met the girls who are everlastingly depreciating and underrating their own belongings and achievements, haven’t we? I’ve often wondered if they mean any of it, or if it’s just a “pose” affected for who knows what stupid reason? You know the sort of girl I mean, the one who scorns every single thing belonging to her . . . who is always to be heard loudly proclaiming that she “can’t play any game for nuts” . . . who is quite certain that she hasn’t a hope of getting anything she wants, whether it’s a job or an invitation to some very special party, who . . . but, of course, you know her well enough! And isn’t she rather a bore? The one thing that greatly puzzles me about her conversation is that I never know what to say in reply. The other day Ann blew into the* club, and I said in friendly fashion, “My dear child, what an adorable hat!” “Oh, my dear,” said Ann, “you don’t really think so? Why it was dirt cheap —I picked it up at a sale for 10s 6d, and I can really only wear it on wet days ” Now was she simply saying something that was not quite the truth, or am I not a judge of a good hat? The latter reflection and the implied insult to my taste irritated me exceedingly. And I don’t believe she thought it as bad as all that, or why on earth would she have bought the thing? CONTEMPT OF MERE HUSBANDS! Elizabeth is just as annoying, only she’s not content with decrying her hats, but includes her husband among her despised possessions. “What a dear Allan is!” I said to her one day, and received a heartrending groan in reply, followed by: “Darling! His manners are so dreadful! I never know what he’s going to say next, and if he can make a faux pas about anything, he will! No more tact than an elephant, and about as much savoir-faire as our cat! Only yesterday ...” She burbled on for ages, telling me of poor Allan’s latest mistakes.

Now what, in the name of all the books of etiquette ever written, was the correct reply for me to make? Ought I to have volubly sympathised with her for having a husband who so awkwardly “put his foot in it,” —in which case my words would most certainly have been thrown back at me some time later? Or ought I to have (as I did), said that he always seemed to me to be a' model of good manners and charm? —which merely brought down on my long-suffering head a perfect avalanche of contemptuous information about him?

If he’s really like that, why did the girl marry him? POSSIBLE REMEDIES

H’mm! I wonder if there really are any remedies? I suppose if I said to either of them about their hats or husbands:

“Yes, you’re right, it’s an awful thing, and you look a freak in it!” or, “Yes, Elizabeth, he’s a pretty average kind of husband, but I suppose he’s the best you could get!” I should only have my hair torn out by the roots. But wouldn’t it be amusing for once to take them at their own rather inane words? When you asked some awkward person to make up a set of tennis, and she simpered, “Oh, but I can’t play for little apples!” wouldn’t it be a relief to be able to retort: “Well, in that case, don’t, for we never play for anything but little apples! ” Between ourselves I don’t believe it’s modesty at all; it’s just silliness. I was affected like that myself on one occasion, when I’d been asked to relieve an older writer than myself for a week. “Of course I’m not nearly so capable as you are,” I bleated with mealymouthed sweetness. “Of course you’re not,” she snapped, “who the dickens ever thought you were?” H.M. IN OPERA Miss Marian Talley, the twenty-year-old daughter of a railway telegraphist of Kansas City (U.S.A.) made her debut in opera a little over a year ago, and now she has been engaged to appear at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, her salary being, it is reported, £6OO a night. VALETUDINARIAN VIGNETTE There is an elderly lady of my acquaintance who finds intolerable the onslaught of old age. It is impossible to withhold pity from her, despite the acute irritation and discomfort one experiences in her company. For the change came so swiftly; so unbelievably. From being still a much-sought-after personality, cradled in flattery from adolescence to advanced middleage, she became suddenly an old, old woman. Once rich in solaces of the intellect, these too have departed and left her doubly forlorn. Her whole interest and outlook is centred and concentrated on °r “symptoms.” These she retails by <• hour to her unfortunate family •cle, not to mention the doctor who -s charge of her case. She cannot •ear to believe that what is of such .mpassioned import to herself is sheer martyrdom to those who must listen, day in, day out, to her endless plaints. The mental aspect of her malady has made it terribly clear thai the nature of those solaces of the mind was peculiarly feminine. That is to say, no matter what she read, no matter what topic she discussed, she herself was always the centre and circumference of the theme. It was not other peoples’ thoughts, per se, that interested her; it was their reactions to her own adroit interpolations. Always she was obsessed by the impression she was •reating; always she was conscious, too, that even a sage will expand most flatteringly beneath the encouragement of a pair of brilliant eyes, a comely prettiness of feature, and an irresistible charm of manner.

And now that the charm is faded, now that the eyes are hidden behind smoked glasses, it has been cruelly hard for her to realise that these weapons, when they were unimpaired, counted for so much in her intellectual hunting-grounds. So soon, so tragically soon, she has become persuaded that the only way to re-focus attention on herself is by reciting the litany of her woes. Even here her native agility has not deserted her. She still is instinctively aware when she has oversounded the note of tragedy, and essays to regain lost ground with a valiant attempt at humour. Laughs at herself when tears no longer “draw” a defenceless audience.

A pitiful picture. And provocative too, of a secret fear. Will old age, the real thing that can be denied no longer, afflict in similar fashion the increasing army of “new-young” women whose exploitation of their own personalities is the key-note of the new feminine creed? Will the transition grow more and more disastrous as the period of procrastination is prolonged v