FEMALE MASHERS.

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 163, 27 October 1883, Page 11

FEMALE MASHERS.

Site was inevitable ; and she has come. The " female masher," dimly foreshadowed during the last London season, has become a very uncomfortable fact at the seaside. She is to be seen in all the glory of her shame and the sublimity of her impudence 'on tho Spa at Scarborough, on the pier at liyde, on the Lees at Folkestone, and in Devonshire Park at Eastbourne. Woman delights in contradiction, and consequently the female masher is in all her charauteristics the exact opposite of her male companion. He, poor fellow, takes a conscious pride in his effeminacy ; she, silly soul, is masculine from the crown of her billycock hat to the point of her laced-up double-soled boots. The masher male is washed out and walks delicately ; his linen is spotless, his manners feeble, his demeanour limp, his jewellery resplendent, his appetite unwholesome, his thirst satisfied with lemon or milk, his smoking confined to cigarettes of the mildest brand, his conversation " yea yea " or " n*y nay." lie has lost all desire for exercise, and is a stranger to activity. At the seaside lie does not walk desperately, as his forefathers did, or boat, or fish, or play cricket, or even lawn-tennis. He never* earns a healthy meal by honest exercise or healthy perspiration. He dres3e's and he dawdles. His costumes are contained in half-a-dozen trunks?, like those of a Saratoga belle. It's his fancy to vary his attire at least three tmes a day, and to display change even in this variety. The coat, trousers, and vest, according to seaside etiquette, are never of one pattern. He is great in coloured waistcoats, like the young Oxford undergraduate of a quarter of a century ago. If it were not for the pier, or the esplanade, or the spa, or the winter garden, the masher male wot ild die of self-imposed fatigue. He does not go healthily out to bathe these lovely mornings from a boat off the beach. Tho bathing boat- .... •Myp-Kin at the various watering-places that fl-.i-ir !%^k:v V ~". *' > 'ie. He does not get sun-burned »::'( V.i vis, '^■■■■> ■'. •r'fuuV preserves his complexion an-Ui- the :>!)ui.' wf :> hiV-'* W: with an abnormal !mm. ii-i- : iu fam\\ K- ■-■>lk vhfl ai^ide world ::t orck-r io !>o ii.Uiurrii, 11* pt^e* \u\ a<lim/'*tion on I lie mot'ii'JUC p>-> !> . h;" 1 eoiirls rpuumd for in.V -ii-.i.ui^-ui.-.heii foil" or. tin 1 .■■J'U-rnuno p-ira-'ie. Us.* j!u'- : ■■!! .1 iiii\.eii --lilwiiAs uux»;d— iiifd'i.-v of (•veilin*' Ui\'<M u!ic! .•■:it;:-v:iy j;u4c'H, and (iawdie.s it wji y the evening lookup on whilst ->th<!r- sing, or appears stupid whilst ouli'-rs dto-u;:. !•-... iiitm-vuh he (ills up at the bar of the s-'-i^'de hoU'l, winch serves him as a convenient club lounge, nod where once more he attitudinises for admiration, cawless of the humour he provokes, and too dense to appreciate the cynical sneers of the philosophising barmaid. Conscious of the presence of this strange individual, the masher female has apparently determined to take upon herself the duties and inheritance of a lost manhood. She has become a little swell in petticoats, tf she only dared, she would appear at the evening sea-side dances in the knee-breeches and black silk stockings, the evening coat and white waistcoat of the two little actresses who took part in a recent Gaiety burlesque. Saving her petticoats, retained apparently out of respect for the law that prohibits interchange of costume by the sexes, the female masher is a little man. She is stiff and starch, well set up, and all over buttons. Her hat is made at a man's shop, so is her trim little jacket, so are her innumerable waistcoats, so apparently are her boots. She is essentially tailor-made from head to foot. When the weather is gusty, she covers all with a tailor made, tight-fitting coat, to which .■>. certain swagger is imparted by the use of the new preposterous and most hideous swaying crinolette. If manners oft proclaim the man, costume certainly advertises the woman ; so the female masher does not assume masculine attire without imitating, parrot like, the affectation of her evident model. On the pier and promenade of to-day the man is not in it. It is the woman who laughs loudly, talks at the top of her voice, takes the pavement, and elbows the crowd to the light and to the left. The female masher is neither polite in her manners nor select in her conversation. On a very slight acquaintance she will communicate suspicious stones to a perfect stranger, and there is no slang or popular vulgarity with which she is not acquainted. In a dog-carts at the station she takes the reins ; in the yacht she handles the tiller. She whistles as she walks along the pier, and hitches up her clothes as if she were a sailor. At a dance in the Assembly Rooms at night she evidently finds the opposite sex so insipid that she seizes upon the first girl she comes across, and whirls her round the room. The ordinary, well-behaved, and courteous man finds the " female masher" the most difficult person to contend with ; for when she is rude— as she very frequently is — there is necessarily no reply. She can insult and injure without any chance of " setting-down " from any one unless ho be old enough to be her father. Such a rebuff one of these impudent minxes received in my hearing the other day at a seaside railwaystation. A female masher of a- pronounced type, after swaggering about a railway station, walking like a dragoon, a.nd flourishing a stick igjj§|&ad of a parasol, was anxious to enter a train fropj which an elderly gentleman was handing his greyhaired wife with her innumerable impedimenta. The process was too tedious for Miss Masher, who

observed far too audibly to her companion : " Well, I suppose when these people got out, we shall be allowed to get in." There was a malicious sneer in the delivery of this sarcasm which would have frightened a younger man. But the old gentleman was equal to the occasion. Jt My dear young lady," said he, " a little patience will do no harm. Iv fact if you practise patience it is possible that some day you may get a husband, though I should venture to consider that it was no desirable event ! " Then taking off his hat, lie. retired with his wife and her parcels. But Miss Masher was far too pachydermatous even so much as to notice or appreciate the rebuff. She entered the carriage in which I happened to be sitting, and proceeded as follows : — She first took up the newspapers which happened to be there, and flung them into another seat, occupying, why I cannot conceive, the seat oj>positd to nio. " I don't know what those papers arc, or whose thoy aro, and I don't care," was hor first remark, although, as I was the only other occupant of the carriage it would not have been difficult to solve that problem. The conversation she indulged in with her friond was the reverse of edifying, being a coarse mixture of slang and sometimes vulgar repartee. I. am not naturally over-scrupulous or over-modest, but I was obliged to stare out of the window in order to pretend not to appreciate tho brazen conduct that, had it have boon recognised, and laughed at, would have been rewarded with a snoor or a scowl, for Miss Masher, although she takes enough liberties herself, never allows one. During tho remainder of the journey my edifying companion employed herself by whistling ' pupular airs and by rucking up her dress in order to pull up hor stockings — .an occupation harmless in itself, but scarcely in accordance with the decorum of a public conveyance. *Now I was curious to ascertain the habitat of this young lady. Who could she be ? To what class of society could she belong ? She was evidently a lady born, if not a lady bred. She was no frequenter of tho musichalls, where such manners aro applauded as something vastly witty. Judgo of my surprise when she stopped at a railway - station closo to the abode of a popular nobloman, and was driven off in the private omnibus attached to the mansion. If, then, such youug ladies set ho unenviable an oxamplo, it is small wonder that the mashordoin of socioty in its most pronounced form should be imitated by other girls and women equally arrogant and equally vain. Miss Masher ■ of Folkstono and Eastbourne, is reproduced in a J still more masculine fashion at Margate and Yarmouth. — Truth,