More and more each season does Paris send us the sort of gown and hatpin, belt and handkerchief and hair ornament, that goes to New York, and more and more is the saying, “She dresses quite like an American woman,” accepted as a kindly comment, wherever it is offered.
A general impression, also, is prevailing to the effect that one reason why our American cousins wear their fine frocks with such good results is because they hold their heads high and their backs flat and straight. There is even now, in London, a vastly popular corsetière who does not hesitate to recommend herself as the only artiste in town who can persuade any form, stout or lean, to assume at once the exact outlines of the admired American figure.
The Duchess of Roxburghe, Mrs. Kennard and the Countess of Suffolk are all very fair examples, in our eyes, of the high perfection of line to which the feminine form divine can and does attain in America; for all these women hold themselves with the most superlative grace, wear gowns that would make Solomon in all his glory feel envious, and help to maintain the now fixed belief in England that all Americans are tall, straight, slender and born with a capacity for wearing diamond tiaras with as much ease as straw hats.
It would not be fair, though, to lay too much of the social success of King Edward’s fair new subjects and visitors wholly at their wardrobe doors, for the two most influential and prominent American women just now in London are neither of them titled, nor do they place too much stress on the gorgeousness of their frocks and frills.
Both Mrs. Arthur Paget—who was Miss Minnie Stevens, of New York—and Mrs. Ronalds are listed everywhere among the most popular of our hostesses, and Mrs. Ronalds, especially, is a distinct power in the musical world. Scarcely a famous artist comes to town but sooner or later he hears, to his advantage, of this wealthy American.
Her red and white music room—by far the most artistic and completely equipped private salon of its kind in London—has sheltered distinguished companies of the very fashionable and intellectual English music lovers; she has made her Sunday afternoons of something more than mere frivolous importance, and won for them, indeed, a decided and enviable celebrity, for Mrs. Ronalds is one of those American women who possess a genius for hospitality.
Mrs. Paget, it is true, takes due rank in the same category, and both these women have all the truly American tastes for featuring their entertainments most delightfully. To continue in the commonplace round of quite conventional functions, as approved by society, is not to be borne by these energetic and novelty-loving ladies, and a dinner, a supper party or a dance at Mrs. Paget’s is sure to develop some unexpected and charming phase.
It is to Mrs. Paget, for example, that we are indebted for the introduction of that purely American festivity, “The Ladies’ Luncheon.” “The Ladies’ Luncheon” is now quite acclimatized here; we have accepted it as we have also accepted “The Ladies’ Dinner-party,” which was wholly unknown previous to the American invasion. Whether Mrs. Paget was instrumental or not in making for the last-mentioned form of entertainment a place among our conservative hostesses is not quite proven, but it is safe to say that this tall, vivacious, energetic lady, who skates as well as she dances, golfs and drives a motor car, carries almost more social power in her small right hand than any other untitled woman in London.
She is heartily admired by our present king and queen, who find in her sparkling talk very much the same mental stimulus that one derives from the Duchess Consuelo’s gay epigrams, and, above everything else, the court and its circle of society reverence the charms of the woman whose brain bubbles over with ideas.
If a dance, a dinner, a bazaar or a picnic is on foot, Mrs. Paget can map out and put through the enterprise with amazing skill and readiness, and she shows all the American’s shrewd business instinct for profitably pleasing a ticket-purchasing public when a charity fund must be swelled or a hospital assisted.