WOMAN'S WORLD

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 35, 4 August 1911, Page 6

WOMAN'S WORLD

(Conducted by "Eileen 1 '). NOTES FROM HOME A BABY FOR NEWNIIAM. London, June 1(5. Mr. Charles P. Trevelyan, M.r.J Parliamentary secretary for bhe Education Department, created a good deal of amusement in a speech at the annual summer festival of the College for Working Women, Pitzroy street, when he said he had always been an enthusiast for women's education, and his wife and he had shown it by putting their eldest girl I down for Newnham College in order that she might enjoy the excellent education given there. That was probably when she was six months old, the earliest on record for any women's college.

SAPPHO CHAMPIONED. Mr. W. L. Courtenay, literary editor of the Daily Telegraph,' and editor of the 'Fortnightly Review,' came forward on Saturday ait the 'Royal Institute as a champion of Sappho, the famous Grecian poetess, who is commonly supposed t* have born none too spotless a reputation. The position of a woman like Sappho (Born 620 B.C.),Mr. Courtenay insisted, with her friends and associates, was only , possible under conditions of social life in which men and women met as equals. llt was necessary to imagine a society in which it was not considered improper or indelicate to write frankly and openly about emotions, feelings, and passion. We looked at Sappho through the distorted spectacles of Attic comic dramatists. Stories- were recklessly invented about her. She was supposed to have had many lovers, but one of those supposed lovers was 100 years old when she was born, and another had not been born at the time of her death. A WOMEN'S HOLIDAY FUND.

In a letter this week to The Times,'! signed, among others, by the Bishop of i London, pleading for support for t.ht I working women's holiday from visitors.l to London, occurs the following tren-1 chant sentence, whose authorship is notl difficult to guess. "We fee! it somewhat, of a disgrace that a work which has! done iso much good for sixteen years, should have, comparatively speaking, received so little support. A very slight effort of imagination is all that is needed to make everyone realise how absolutely j necessary it must be for the hard-work-ing women of London to have some respite from the grey monotony and grind-1 ing fatigue of their daily life, if their homes and their children are to be happy .•. . The price of one hat or one box ,of cigars sacrificed' 'by some of those thousands and given to this society would amount to a °nm that would enable large nni' 'ii-rs of poor women to spend a week or two out of town, who will otherwise have their applications refused for want of funds." I ELLEN TERRY LECTURES.

Under the auspices of the Pioneer! Players, Miss Ellen Terry gave this week J the second of her remarkable lectures on Shako-;,earc's heroines. Many of her points concerning those heroines she. designated "triumphant" may interest] lovers of Shakespeare in New Zealand.! The three heroines that she classed par-1 ticulariy together were Beatrice, Rosa-j lind, and Portia. All, she said, were j radiant, chivalrous, intelligent, indepen-1 dent.and all healthy and of fine physique.! If they had met with, say, a disappoint-1 ment in love, they would not, as didj Viola, have "sat, like Patience on a] monument, smiling at grief." They would have turned their abilities into I some other channel —one probably where; [ they could best benefit their less mastcr- ! ful sisters. Once again Miss Terry found in the splendor of their womanhood «, championship of the present suffrage movement. It was not merely imagination on Shakespeare's part, she said. Those women really existed in Shakespeare's time. Some modern folk seemed to think that the early Victorian

woman—the "domestic ornament of the 'thirties and 'forties"—represented a permanent English ideal which could not be improved upon without a revolution. This was not so. There was always the "appeal to Shakespeare." In his day, as now, there was a great movement for the advance of women. Did not Lady Jane Grey read Plato in the original at 13, and Mary Queen of Scots make an oration in Latin, and Queen Elizabeth translate from the classics, while even the average well-bred English girl of those times was familiar with Xenophon and Seneca? Hence, to some extentj at any rate, the line intelligence, the fearless spirit, of those Shakespearean hero-! ines.

WHAT A CHILD SHOULD KNOW. An interesting list of what the London County Council consider a child of 11 to 14 should know was drawn up recently by the Central Consultative Committee. Included in the list are the following: At 11. —To read intelligently such books as "Gulliver's Travels" and Kingsley's ''Water Babies," and simple selections from poetry; to give an account of some incident actually observed; to draw simple plans of the school groundi and district; to make weather observations and records; to draw simple objects from Nature. At 14. —To show a knowledge of the laws of health; to read some of the plays of Shakespeare; to write original (including imaginative) compositions; to show a fair knowledge of government, local and Imperial; to show a general' knowledge of types of people; to draw from memory. WOMEN'S EDUCATION IN GERMANY. It is a somewhat strange coincidence that, soon after writing about the Home Science scheme started in connection] with the London University, one should! hear of a similar idea set afoot in' Leipzig. There is this great difference,! however, that the London plari is receiving wholesale support, and the German one—in a country noted for its solid domesticity—is finding little favor. The scheme is fathered by the Leipzig Association for Family and Popular Education, who have issued an appeal for help and funds to establish a. women's university in the autumn of the present year. The object of the promoters of the idea is not to train women for the various open professions, but to provide an opportunity for future mothers to acquire scientific knowledge which will enable them to fulfil more adequately

their ethical and social duties within the circle of the family and in public life. The appeal is signed by live professors of the University of Leipzig. HONOR TO WOMEN WRITERS. •■ ■■* It will be interesting to women interested in the recognition of women's work to hear that the Earl-Marshall has allotted a. seat in Westminster Abbey to the Society of Women Journalists for the ceremony of the Coronation. The society will be represented by its president, Mrs. Bedford Fenwick, once the matron of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and now editor of the British Journal of j Nursing. SUFFRAGISTS AND THE KING.

An illuminated address, the work of the Artists' Suffrage League, is being 1 sent to their Majesties from the federations and societies of the National Union of 1 Women's 'Suffrage Societies. The words, intermingled with the design of the rose, the thistle and the shamrock, express the patriotism of suffragists throughout the United Kingdom and their efforts towards the attainment of fuller recognition as citizens.