_Mary_. There were two things in your last chapter that I did not
quite understand--the National Debt and the Flappers.
_Mrs. M_. About the National Debt, my dear child, I think you must
wait until your papa comes home to tea, but perhaps I can satisfy
your curiosity about the Flappers, who were indeed amongst the most
singular and formidable products of the age we have been discussing.
The origin of the term is obscure, some authorities connecting it with
the term "flap-doodle," others with the motion of a bird's wings, and
I remember a verse in an old song which ran as follows:--
"Place me somewhere east of Suez
On a lone and rocky shore,
Where the Britons cease from Britling
And the flappers flap no more."
This, however, does not throw much light on the subject. Perhaps
the term Flapper may best be defined as meaning a twentieth-century
hoyden, and was applied to a type of girl from the age of thirteen to
seventeen, whose extravagances in speech, manner and dress caused deep
dismay among the more serious members of the community. In particular
the learned Dr. SHADWELL denounced them with great severity in a
leading review, but with little result. They bedizened themselves with
frippery, shrieked like parrots on all occasions and interpreted the
motto of the time, "Carry On," in a sense deplorably remote from its
higher significance.
_George_. I think it seems, Mamma, as if the young girls of those
times must have tried to make themselves as unpleasant as possible.
How thankful I am that Mary is not a Flapper!
_Mrs. M_. You may well be. But allowance must be made for the
misapplied energy of our ancestors. If the Flappers excite our
disgust, their subsequent treatment moves our commiseration, since the
Sumptuary and Disciplinary Laws passed by the House of Ladies dealt in
drastic fashion with the offences which I have described. As a matter
of fact many Flappers grew up into excellent and patriotic women. I
remember my grandmother saying to me once, "When I was sixteen I had a
voice like a cockatoo and the manners of a monkey," but nothing could
have been more discreet or sedate than her deportment in old age.
_Richard_. Did the Flappers speak English?
_Mrs. M_. Presumably; but, judging from the records of their dialect
which have come down to us, their speech was made up of a succession
of squeals rather than of articulate words, and has so far defied
the efforts of modern philologists. Indeed speech seems to have been
almost at a discount, owing to the immense popularity of the moving
picture play, then in its infancy and as yet unaccompanied by
mechanical reproduction of the voices of the actors. Indeed at one
time it was said that there were only three adjectives in use in
Flapper society--"ripping," "rotten" and "top-hole," I think they
were.
_George_. What stupid words! I wish they could have heard some of
papa's adjectives.
_Mrs. M_. Your father, my dear, has a copious and picturesque
vocabulary, but phrases which are pardonable in moments of expansion
in a person of mature years are not always suitable for juveniles.
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