THE ATHLETIC GIRL.
WANTED: A groom, tall, good-looking, steady.
WANTED: A housemaid, neat, respectable, no fringe.
WANTED: A cook, good, plain.
So run certain familiar advertisements. They are cited here as
containing the descriptive words which have a particular applicability
to the athletic girl, who, to state the general case in regard to her,
is tall, good-looking, steady; neat, respectable, with no fringe; good,
plain.
[Illustration: The athletic girl]
This fact notwithstanding, the average athletic girl would not make
a successful groom; still less would she give satisfaction as a
housemaid; and least of all has she in her the makings of a good cook.
Some hold that she has in her the makings of a good pianist, but that
is a mistake, for she has no _adagio_. “I call a girl like that a
fortist, not a pianist,” was said of her the other day.
Not always, but very often, the athletic girl’s is the prosaic type of
mind, concerning which Lowell writes—
“The danger of the prosaic type of mind lies in the stolid sense
of superiority which blinds it to everything ideal, to the use of
everything that does not serve the practical purposes of life. Do
we not remember how the all-observing and all-fathoming Shakespeare
has typified this in Bottom the Weaver? Surrounded by all the fairy
creations of fancy, he sends one to fetch him the bag of a humble-bee,
and can find no better employment for Mustard-seed than to help
Cavalero Cobweb scratch his ass’s head between the ears. When Titania,
queen of that fair, ideal world, offers him a feast of beauty, he says
he has a good stomach to a pottle of hay!”
The athletic girl easily thus runs to prose. Sometimes her prose is
very funny. She looked up lately from a novel with the speech—
“There’s one thing I do want to know most awfully, Daddy—how people
‘gnash’ their teeth. Is it anything like this—or this—or this?”
Each question was accompanied by a facial illustration. Daddy is a
serious man, but he laughed heartily.
Sometimes, however, Daddy shakes his head. The following is a case in
point.
“Do you know, my dear,” he asked, “the difference between a soprano and
a contralto?”
“Why, of course, Dad,” was the answer. “The one’s a squeak and the
other’s a squawk.”
[Illustration]
Such a girl has some knowledge, but she lacks some grace. Very often
the athletic girl lacks both knowledge and grace. Sometimes, too, she
lacks brains. The outward marks by which you shall know her in that
case are that she has large ears and a little forehead. There are
exceptions to this rule, but they are not many.
Of accomplishments the average athletic girl has few. All the French
she knows she puts into a smile, and that smile is the one with which
she meets any references to customs of the good old time. It says—
_Nous avons changé tout cela._
[Illustration: Her ancestress]
Twenty years ago this girl was the girl who wished she was a boy. It
is one of the changes which time has wrought in her case that she no
longer wishes that. She is happy and proud to be a girl of to-day,
believing, as she does, that girls and women never had a chance to
distinguish themselves in feats of strength till to-day. Remind her of
Joan of Arc, and she will reply that that was an isolated case; draw
her attention to the passage in Motley’s _Rise and Fall of the Dutch
Republic_, referring to the garrison of Haarlem in 1572, and she will
stare. The passage in question runs—
“The garrison at least numbered one thousand pioneers or delvers,
three thousand fighting men, and about three hundred fighting women.
This last was a most efficient corps, all females of respectable
character, armed with sword, musket, and dagger. Their chief, Frau
Kenau Hasselaer, was a widow of distinguished family and unblemished
character, about forty-seven years of age, who, at the head of her
Amazons, participated in many of the most fiercely contested actions of
the siege, both within and without the walls.”
Elegance of speech is not, as a rule, a primary characteristic of the
athletic girl, and it has been noticed that, while she prefers the use
of any name to that of the baptismal or family one, she usually goes to
the brute creation for a substitute, selecting—in so far merciful—the
names of the pleasantly associated animals commonly called domestic.
Thus ass, goose, duck, pig, cart-horse, cow, and—lately at the zenith
of its popularity with her—_hound_, are all of her word-treasure. It
is to be expected that she will add to this list in the course of time
“barn-fowl,” and some other, and that, when she has exhausted the names
belonging to the domestic animals, she will have recourse to those
placarded at the Zoo. It does not seem probable that she will ever be
guilty of the banality attaching to the use of Christian names alone.
As a letter-writer the average athletic girl does not shine. First, as
for her handwriting, it is perhaps best described in some words which
Goldsmith gives to Tony Lumpkin—
“Here are such handles and shanks and dashes that one can scarcely know
the head from the tail.”
The speed at which she writes, too, is productive of direful blunders
of the kind of _Dear Madman_ for “Dear Madam”; and the “burst of
speaking,” to use a phrase from Shakespeare, which characterises her
_vivâ voce_ manner, has its effect upon her epistolary style. It lacks
repose. Another detracting feature of it is connected with the fact
that this type of girl affects insensibility just as her ancestresses
of a hundred years ago affected sensibility. There is scarce a whit to
choose between them in their affectations.
It is not that the athletic girl has no heart. There follows here her
description of a parting scene in which she was one of two.
“I made an owl of myself, got the gulps, and could not even say
good-bye.”
In other words, the athletic girl broke down.
Books enter little into the life of this girl, yet she—may—belong
to a reading society. The following (writer, an athletic girl) bears
witness to that fact—
“Our next Shakespeare reading is next Tuesday. Last year I never took
part in them, but am going to this year, though I rather hate them.
_Twelfth Night_ is the play chosen, and I have been given two rotten
parts where I have to say every now and then, ‘Good my lord,’ and
‘Prithee, tell me.’”
The same girl writes—
“I have just read a most frightfully good book, _The Prisoner of
Zenda_. It is simply the thrillingest thing that ever was written.”
In another letter she writes—
“Do you know the poetry of Gordon? An Australian man. All about horses.
First-class.”
The margin-note style is in peculiar favour with the athletic girl.
The personal note is one seldom struck by this girl, and the elegiac
note is one scarcely ever struck by her. Even when she has a grievance
she keeps a high heart. Who but she could write—
“For some extraordinary and unknown reason my head is aching. It is
such a novel sensation that I rather like it.”
[Illustration: A Novel Sensation]
Her letter-endings take their colour from her character, real or
assumed. “In haste” is much in favour with her, and I have letters from
her ending “Bye, bye!” and “Ta, ta! Yours affec.”
I will close this paper with a true story. In it will be shown how a
lady, late an athletic girl, was wooed and—not won.
Her admirer was a widower, with one child. His home overlooked
the school of which this lady, young as she was—for she was only
six-and-twenty—was head-mistress. The widower, on re-marrying bent,
sent in his card on what was called “office day.”
The name on the card was _Colonel Hewson_. The young head-mistress,
whose name was Alice Joyce, read it, and gave the conventional order,
“Show him in.”
Alice Joyce had some slight acquaintance with Colonel Hewson, and had
also some slight inkling that he admired her. She did not admire him,
and would have liked to deny herself to him, but she was not authorised
to do this on “office day.” Perhaps he had come to place a pupil. His
only child was a boy, but, perhaps, he had girl-relations. “Show him
in,” said conscientious Alice Joyce, and Colonel Hewson was shown in.
“I thought you’d be surprised to see me,” he said crisply, on entering.
Alice smiled, and requested him to be seated. Then she left it to him
to open the talk, occupying herself with a revolving bookcase, which
she gently agitated.
Colonel Hewson was a bronzed man of travel, who, according to rumour,
had penetrated into Asiatic jungles, and seen tigers and other
undomestic animals eye to eye without blenching. He had, however, never
before entered a lady’s school, and a terror the like unto which he had
never experienced now held him tongue-tied.
Alice Joyce, good-naturedly racked her brains to think of something
that would set him at his ease, and ultimately put the young
head-mistress’s stock question—
“Would you like to see our gymnasium?”
Colonel Hewson expressed himself as not unwilling.
The gymnasium was empty, save of apparatuses, of which, movable and
immovable, it had a great number. Alice Joyce had considerable skill in
showing these off, and handled weights and bars with a facility which
impressed her visitor. Up and down the gymnasium they went, swinging
dumb-bells. Suddenly Alice Joyce pulled up short—
“As you are so much interested in all this, Colonel Hewson,” she said,
“do come and see the girls at it.”
[Illustration: Entertaining a dumb beau with dumb-bells]
“Can anyone come?” was asked.
“No, no; only parents and anyone whom I may happen to invite. I shall
be pleased to see you, though you’re not a parent.”
Colonel Hewson expressed his deep sense of obligation with a rather
blank face, adding, in mild protest, that he regarded himself as
a parent. Here was one result of Alice Joyce’s having become a
head-mistress. She had come to narrow the meaning of some words. She
was startled herself to find that things had come to this pass, and
said apologetically—
“When I say ‘parent,’ I mean the person in that relationship to
girls—my girls. It is stupid of me, because, of course, there _are_”
(her voice paused on a higher note) “other parents.”
Colonel Hewson’s face remained rather blank, and he put his hand on an
iron ring suspended from the roof. Alice Joyce the while had stationed
herself beside a trapeze bar. Colonel Hewson in a lady’s gymnasium was
not the most valiant man in the world, but he now took heart of grace
and proposed marriage to Alice Joyce.
The end of the story is perhaps best told in the words of the heroine—
“Of course I said ‘No’ to him. Really men are very tiresome. _Fancy a
man’s proposing when you’re showing him the gymnasium!_”
[Illustration: CRUSHED]
(_To be continued._)
[Illustration]
EMBROIDERY WITH CHENILLE.
Chenille was, in days past, a popular material for fancy needlework. It
has recently, after a period of disuse, been restored to favour under
somewhat different conditions. Modern chenilles are obtainable in many
more soft and carefully shaded tints, and though coarse makes are still
used, some of the finer qualities are no thicker than a strand of rope
silk.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.—PENWIPER.]
Chenille can be used as a working thread if passed through the eye of
a chenille needle, or it can be caught down in the desired curves by
couching it in place with finer silk.
In the little penwiper shown at Fig. 1 both these methods are
employed. The small branching pattern within the scrolls is executed
in actual stitchery with chenilles, while for the curves and along
the top some of the same materials are sewn down with stitches of
silk. As to colouring, the background is green and the chenilles are
brown, blue, pink and green in tint; the brown and green details are
secured with stitches of bright yellow crewel silk, which give little
touches of brightness at intervals. Two hints may be gleaned from this
penwiper. Firstly, that for workers with whom felt-work, on account
of its easiness of execution, is still popular, chenille has a better
appearance than flat silk embroidery; and, secondly, that on such small
articles as the one before us scraps of various colours remaining over
from larger undertakings can be profitably utilised.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.—HANDKERCHIEF SACHET.]
[Illustration: FIG. 3.—HINGE.]
Work upon single thread canvas is almost as inexpensive as that upon
felt. Many shops show a large stock of sachets, such as that figured
here, and of other trifles; mats, chair-backs, cushion-covers, and so
on, similarly made, stamped with a design and bordered with satin.
To embroider these in any but a commonplace manner might be thought
impossible. Yet they can be improved and made more important-looking
by working with chenille.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.—RETICULE.]
[Illustration: FIG. 5.—SASH-END.]
The handkerchief sachet at Fig. 2 is worked in brown, green, pink
and light and dark blue. There is no couching here, but the chenille
is used to make actual outline and satin stitches according to the
necessities of the pattern. The velvet-like surface of the chenille
is quite satisfactory, and the colour and substance of the canvas are
repeated, or at least suggested, in the lace edging of the sachet. This
is in reality crochet, worked with cream-coloured cotton of a rather
coarse size.
Setting aside now such materials as felt and canvas, we come next to
consider the suitability of chenille on richer backgrounds; silk,
velvet, and so on. Here the finer qualities especially are to be
seen to full advantage. One of the newest forms of the work has
been introduced by Mrs. Brackett of 95, New Bond Street, W., and is
remarkable as including imitations of ancient Roman coins. These
are of various sizes and designs and found in two colours; gold and
“vert-de-gris,” the latter suggesting the effect of centuries of ill
usage. These “coins” are of course thin and light, and pierced with
holes at the edges so as to be easily sewn to the background.
The designs of which they form a part are more or less in character
with them and often suggest antique metal-work. For instance, Fig. 3
shows a specimen of such Roman embroidery where the pattern bears a
certain resemblance to a heavy hinge, the effect being lightened with a
coiled spray of highly conventional foliage.
Attention is always paid to the colouring of this work. The foundation
material is heavy cream-coloured, or rather dark ivory moire, shot with
gold, and on this all the outlines of the pattern are followed with
gilt tinsel varying from a fine cord to the most delicate passing.
The main portions of the pattern are further emphasised within this
boundary, with fine silk chenille of several shades of dull olive green
sewn down with invisible stitches of filoselle or horse-tail. French
knots in tinsel (passing) and in shades of green embroidery silk are
employed as fillings, the silks being carefully chosen to assort with
the tints of the chenilles. All the scroll-work is worked with the
passing, the leaves being outlined with the green silks.
The subject chosen for illustration here is a cover for a blotter,
which being raised displays the pad, while at the back of the
embroidery, which is stiffened with stout cardboard, are pockets of
pink and grey-green silk to hold letters, or paper and envelopes. The
work is finally finished off with a border of dull gold cord.
Similar designs appear on various other articles. Blotters and
book-covers form an appropriate background, and so also do small
caskets with slightly domed tops.
The reticule at Fig. 4 is made on quite a different principle
throughout. The front and back are formed of shield-shaped panels of
wood or strong card, covered with chenille embroidery and with brocade
respectively. The front section only concerns us here. The fabric
chosen is dark blue velvet, and on this is worked in tones of brighter
blue a very conventional flower. Long and short stitch is used for the
shading, the stitches being made, of course, with a large-eyed needle
threaded with chenille. The colouring is darkest in the centre, round a
pink circle, from which start three “stamens” of brown chenille edged
with fine tinsel. Some of the same Japanese tinsel is used for veining
the flower, and a few gilt sequins are introduced to give a little
additional brightness. The stem is of green chenille.
To make up the reticule, the panel covered with embroidery as well as
the opposite one of pale terra cotta, blue and gold brocade were lined
with thin silk of a dull, brownish terra-cotta colour. A two-inch wide
band of some of the same silk was sewn round the curves (but not along
the tops) of both sections, thus forming the frame-work of the bag by
hinging the two parts of it together. A similar band of some of the
same silk was laid over the first one and gathered along both edges
that it might set rather fully. Above the shields a strip nearly as
high as they (four to five inches) of some of the same silk, was sewn
on. This was made of double material, that it might not be too limp,
and two lines of stitches two inches from the top formed a running
for the blue suspension cords. These were finished off with a cluster
of shaded-blue baby ribbons. Lastly an edging of gilt gimp edged the
shields and concealed their junction to the silk beyond.
The three principal colours used, terra cotta, blue and gilt, proved
more successful than a medley of many carelessly chosen tints such as
an amateur embroideress is but too apt to display.
It cannot be too often repeated that materials to be used together
should be first arranged and selected together, not merely worked up
because each in itself is bright or pleasing.
As a general rule the more shades and the fewer colours, the better
will be the final effect.
Tones of willowy green and of pink are the only colours admitted in
the sash-end seen in the illustration (Fig. 5). Here, again, is yet
another way of using chenilles, quite different from those previously
mentioned. In working the first thing to be done is to trace upon the
material, pink watered silk ribbon in this instance, the outlines
of the design. The bow and loops are formed of real ribbon folded,
gathered, and coaxed into the desired form, and secured lightly and
firmly with tacking threads. Along both edges of the ribbon, just
within the selvedge, is couched a line of chenille of a slightly darker
shade of green. This couching secures the green ribbon to the moire,
and the tacking threads can be cut and drawn out at once, before they
have had time to mark the material. The nine oval pendants issuing from
the lowest loop of ribbon are worked over with chenille of graduating
shades of green, the material being simply laid across and across the
space to be covered, and caught down with stitches of silk at the
sides. These stitches sink into the chenille and are covered, and are
further effectually concealed with a line of Japanese tinsel, carried
round each pendant and serving to keep it in a good shape. The chenille
when taken from side to side in the manner described does not in
itself define the form sufficiently clearly. The showers of sequins,
pinkish and green in colouring, must on no account be overlooked. They
are graduated in size and may vary in form, according to the worker’s
convenience, but should not be omitted altogether.
LEIRION CLIFFORD.
“OUR HERO.”
BY AGNES GIBERNE, Author of “Sun, Moon and Stars,” “The Girl at the
Dower House,” etc.