FRILLS FADS & FOIBLES

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 176, 15 October 1927, Page 21 (Supplement)

FRILLS FADS & FOIBLES

Mundane Musings Almost a Lady

No current contribution to our social history impressed me quite so much as this statement made by the mother of two English society girls whose gown and millinery shop in the West End of London was lately the scene of a series of particularly mean and cruel hoaxes. “My daughters kept themselves to themselves, and I cannot help thinking that there are people about here (the neighbourhood of the shop) who think they are snobbish. “They are not, although they never talk to anyone outside their own class.” You could have knocked me down with an ostrich feather when 1 read that. My plebian bosom was filled with just the same wild, exquisite joy

as another simple (simple’s an excellent word) remark of the highest class appearing in the English Press this year, and which I have been keeping by me to pass on to you at the earliest possible moment. It’s the letter from the widow of a famous manager. It was part of a discussion in an evening newspaper on the vulgarity, if any, of the new theatre audiences. Sir, —I don’t think I can give an opinion on this. In my husband’s time at the Theatre everyone wore evening dress and behaved well. Gosh, when I read about these perfect ladies I realise what worlds apart from them I am. Could I put on my evening frock and sit in a stall seat and feel and behave like a perfect lady? I could not. No matter how low in the neck my dress is, it doesn’t seem to make any difference to my low desire to trip up those high-born people who sweep roughshod over my knees to get to their seat during the middle of the first act. Not even a fifteen-shilling haircut, shampoo and water-wave (Georges, the brute, always charges me this on gala nights) prevents me

from aching to fight the fat man on my right who wants all of the armrest and half on my seat. Nor do golden slippers and 50-gauge silk stockings make me any more kindly disposed toward our suet-like actresses, who are so full of “naice” accent that you can't hear a word they say. As for keeping myself to myself and never going out of my own class, why bless you, the only class I own is the working class, and that’s too comprehensive to get out of. There’s something about me which makes people open their hearts to me at sight. This is all wrong, isn’t it? If I had real class to me they'd know it, wouldn’t they, and keep a respectful distance? As it is, any taxi driver careering me home in the small hours, rarely lets me get away with my change without observing what a fine morning it is, and what with one thing leading to another, I am standing in front of the old bus looking at his owner-driver’s licence by the light of the lamp, so that he can prove to me he is sixty, and not forty, as I thought, and hearing all about the scholarship luck of his young grandson. And there was that thirty-six-year-old music teacher I travelled with in the train a little while ago. In one short phrase she tojd me the whole sad story of her life. She was another of these strange people who never go outside their own class. But she goes further: she never goes outside her own sex. We were busy chatting over a recent crime passionel. She was scornfully bitter in her summing-up. “Girls ask for it nowadays. Why, I went all through the war in a garrison town, and was never sauced once by a soldier. Men know.” Poor, darling, frozen-faced, perfect lady. Men do. And when I think of what we imperfect ladies, myself included, put up with during these never-to-be-forgot-ten days, solely in the interests of the national motto that nothing was too good for our dear Service men, I real-

I ise now why the war lasted so long. Still, I know for a fact that quite a lot of us, myself included, liked it like that. The sauce, I mean. Periodically, I do say things that alienate me from my best friends for as much as a month at a time. One of them, having sent beautiful twins upon this beautiful world, invited me to try the christening cake. “Margaret, darling, if I put a piece of this under my pillow to-night, will I dream of my future twins?” “Oh Jane, how could you?” she grieved. Oh, I could* all right. Another of my* pals who was in danger of receiving a knighthood, said he hoped it wouldn’t come off because it meant so many complications. “There’s things like top hats. I should have to pay my bills. And then it wouldn't do to be seen too often at the bar of the Nose in Bloom.” “Booze,” I said coldly, “is not my hobby. That condition wouldn’t affect me, though I can’t see why it should be worse for a knight to raise a thirst in a pub than in the dining room of his own house. But if I were made Dame Jane (don’t giggle, it’s rude), I should hate it like anything if I couldn’t go around in my beloved old clothes and tried and trusty hats. And would I have to go always into the 2s 8d seats of our cinema, all full of antimacassars and couples with two heads that think as one? And what about my habit of liking to ride on tops of trams? Could a Dame do that? And would I have to give up knowing you? . . Almost a lady, as you see. Why, I recognised at sight all the swear words in the latest “sparkling” play we That shows you I never kept myself to myself, doesn’t it? Half a coconut shell is excellent for the elusive soap in the bath; it floats on the water and can, of course, be seen, thus being particularly helpful when children are being bathed. ' 1