The culmination of Australian bad manners was probably reached when the New Year of 1908 was ushered in. Australia on New Year's Eve follows the silly practice of hanging about the streets of the city generally doing nothing. But this time it did something. It let off fireworks. It blew horns and otherwise made a fool of itself. And eventually growing tired of making a fool of itself, it proceeded to make a hog of itself. The women, I understand, were as much to blame as the men at the outset. What followed cannot be related, but the Saturnalia of Ancient Rome, the Bal des Quartz Arts, and the worst of the orgies of seventeenth century rural England all found excellent imitations in the streets of Sydney that night.
Chapter IV.
MISS AUSTRALIA.
Everything goes by comparison. If I were unacquainted with England, America, France, Germany and Italy, I might share the delusion cherished by most Australian people—that your women are beautiful. But, having seen the rose, how can I be content with the dandelion?
In accepting the praise of Miss Lily Brayton, your women should remember that this popular actress had a royal time in Australia, and probably was not unmindful of the possibilities of a return visit. No, I am not a disgruntled actress who has found Australian audiences unappreciative of my talent. I am merely a much-travelled woman blessed—or cursed—with the faculty of being able to see things as they really are. When I say that the women to be seen in the streets of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Hobart are unattractive, I am merely stating the truth as it appeals to me.
Someone with a surprising lack of humour—or an extra large share of it—once wrote of the stately carriage of Australia's matrons and daughters. In my travels in this country the number of women encountered who knew how to walk might be counted on the fingers of one hand. I have seen more grace among the factory girls of Poplar, among the midinettes of the Latin Quarter, and among petticoated toughs of the Bowery, than it has been my fortune to meet in Pitt-street or on the Melbourne Block. Australian women don't walk. Those who don't waddle with an unnatural movement of the hips, like a drake expressing his satisfaction with an extra fat frog, affect a ridiculous mincing gait that resembles nothing so much as the painful perambulation of a youngster who takes off his boots on a hard, pebbly road for the first time.
The best figure I have seen in Australia was that of a young girl of about 18. She was beautifully moulded, with a bust to inspire a poet, and hips of exquisite roundness. Generally speaking, Melbourne women are more favoured in this respect than their Sydney sisters. Here, due possibly to surf-bathing—the bust development is abnormal, while the hips have a flat, board-like appearance. One Sydney woman with rounded hips was introduced to me at tea at the Australia. She was so well formed that I couldn't resist the temptation of testing her genuineness with a hatpin. I don't say that she was padded—I only assert that she took half an inch of steel without flinching!
The best complexions in the Commonwealth are seen at Hobart and Toowoomba—in fact, there seems to be no really pretty skins at any other places. Your women paint and powder too much. The spectacle of young girls of 17 and 18 with rouged cheeks and carmine lips is an absurdity in a country that believes that its women are beautiful.
The new short skirt about to be tried in Paris will never become popular—Australian legs could not be held up to ridicule in that way. It is noteworthy that while in other countries the girl with a pretty ankle and a shapely calf is not unconscious of her charms, the Australian woman is always careful to adjust her skirt on seating herself in tram or train. Why? Because she regards it as immodest to show her legs? The display on the surf beaches disposes of that idea. The answer is found in the fact that, generally speaking, Australian legs are better hidden from view. They are either thick and stocky at the ankles, with a heap of ill-formed flesh above, or are thin almost to the vanishing point. One misses the beautifully-rounded ankles and the graceful tapering calves that peep from beneath petticoats in Bond-street, the Avenue de l'Opera, and Fifth-avenue.
I was amused while at the Hotel Australia one afternoon last week to notice that one "lady," who had evidently studied my first article in the Sydney "Sun," was endeavouring to prove that local legs are worth viewing. Her dress had been carefully adjusted so as to provide a generous display of stocking reaching nearly to the knee. Like so many people in a young country, where the polish and refinement that comes from association with countries in which culture is a much more highly-prized asset, is lacking, she failed to recognise the border line that separates easy naturalness from sheer vulgarity. A woman who pulls up her dress deliberately in order to show her legs is pitifully immodest. The woman who, with malice aforethought, shows her legs is vulgar, and the woman who takes all sorts of trouble to hide them is a prude, but the woman who allows them to be viewed, if the position in which she is seated permits their display, is unaffected and natural. In the society in which I moved in England, France and America, both the women and the men are frankly natural. Here there is, on the one hand, a restraint that is ludicrous, and, on the other hand, a familiarity that is indelicate.