She is a woman who matters very much indeed. By birth and by marriage she belongs to two extremely ancient families, which were settled in Britain when it was entirely covered with forests and inhabited largely by wild beasts. But it is not any advantage of birth or of wealth that has made her the great social figure she is. It is her extraordinary charm and her arresting personality. She is not strictly beautiful, but her smile is peculiarly her own—a rare distinction in these days when there is so much that is artificial.
She has the reputation of being one of the three best dressed women in Europe, and never wears anything, not even her boots, more than once. Her wit is positively brilliant, and in this connection it may be asserted once for all that it was she who first gave vogue to the greeting, "Doodledo," an abbreviated form of "How d'you do," though others have been given the credit for that sparkling pleasantry. In the art of "setting down" she is unapproachable, combining gentle courtesy with fine satire and mordant epigram, as on the occasion when a certain pushing and impossible outside person claimed her acquaintance in public with a loud "How are you?" With her own look and smile she turned and gave him his coup de grâce—"Not any the better for seeing you!"—at which an exalted foreign Personage, who was chatting with her laughed so much that he fell into an apoplexy.
She and her husband are sometimes at their beautiful place in Middleshire, and sometimes at their mansion in Belvenor Square. When they are not in England they are generally abroad. She is devoted to horse-riding, motoring, yachting, and ski-ing, but has not, like some of her set, forgotten how to walk. On the contrary, when in town she may occasionally be seen taking this old-fashioned form of exercise in the Park, placing one foot alternately before the other in her charmingly characteristic manner.
She has once or twice, in a delightfully mischievous spirit, amused herself by flouting those very social ordinances of which she is an acknowledged high priestess. When wars, strikes, and Governments are forgotten, it will still be remembered how, some years ago when she was a few months younger than she is now, she appeared in her box at the opera on a Melba (and therefore a tiara) night wearing a necklace of spar beads and a large ribbon bow on her head. An electric shock ran through the house; opera and singers were unheeded; and the beautiful Countess of —— tore the family diamonds from her head and neck, and, with a shriek of despair, flung them into the orchestra.
The subject of our article could have shone in any or all of the arts, had she cared to give her time and talents to them. Let it be said, too, that, though surrounded from her infancy with "all this world and all the glory of it," she has a serious side to her character, countenances the Church, and by no means discourages religion.
It is widely known that she keeps a diary. Ah! if only that diary, in its dainty, morocco, gold-clasped volumes, could be abstracted from the wonderful mother-o'-pearl escritoire, carried out of the exquisite Renaissance boudoir, down the noble staircase and out of the massive hall-door, and, after the spelling, grammar and composition had been slightly overhauled, if it could but be published and given to the eager world, what an intellectual feast it would provide! And to the fair, gifted, high-born diarist what a fortune it would bring, and what a number of simply absorbing libel cases!
Guess Who It Is.
The Daily Mail must be more careful with its posters. Here are two recent examples:—
£2 a Week for Life.