Beauty

This article reminded me of some rather wonderful ladies who were much admired in the Edwardian era.

As I lived in New Zealand I was never able to see Miss Ray tread the boards but her postcards certainly made it to our country, as did her fame.  Her most popular post card was from the play Bubbles.

Such a lovely head.

Sadly the impending  marriage that was reported in 1912 did not work out, and neither did a come back.  Somehow it makes me terribly sad to think of Miss Ray ending her days (four decades of them) in an asylum.  Who can really say where life will take us even at the seeming pinnacle of fame and success?

I showed her to Mr. Errors and he was quite struck by her.  I think he has rather a soft spot for the forgotten star.  We went on a hunt through the papers together for more clues about Miss Ray, and it is hard not to read many of the pieces that feature her without a sense of poignancy.  How light and free she was in 1905,

Miss Ray seems to have been able to laugh easily at the ridiculous.

All the admiration and adulation seems to have gone wrong for Gabrielle when she married Eric Loder in 1912. 

What can this mean?  What passed between them?  It seems an extraordinarily strange ending to a marriage.  A marriage that was officially terminated in 1915.

A sort of a “friend” met her in 1916 and said,

“Gabs and I dined at the Carlton together. She is fast losing her looks – in two or three years her career will be over and I fear for her.”

Time and tastes are fickle.  Cruel to Miss Gabrielle Ray, slim and graceful, patting a wayward mass of shimmering hair and laughing in 1905. 

How to be a woman

I can’t decide if the women’s page of the Evening Post in 1912 was satire or reportage.

I assume this is reportage:

It is difficult to understand the urge of some women in 1912 to be hobbled by their skirts.

But then Mr. Errors couldn’t explain this either:

I suppose this is quite handy when you need to go to the toilet but otherwise I can’t see the use of this fashion.  The poor, emaciated boys who shuffle around with their underwear showing seem to be constantly pulling their jeans back up again.  We can be thankful that this is a fashion paired with boxers and not briefs.

Although the reporter from the Evening Post is not impressed by a divorce being granted on the grounds of anorexia, many of the articles in this section are about fashion and beauty products.  Which makes the following piece rather curious.

I can remember a time when makeup was considered the preserve of women of ill-repute.  Perhaps this is what the writer is against.  I’m afraid though, that we are not done with our guide to woman-hood.  Here are two pieces that I assume are satirical.  The first offers us a guide to determining the age of a dinner guest.

I am not sure what the cheese reference means.  Mr. Errors enjoys cheese.  He enjoys it so much that Ms Errors has to routinely berate him about the cost of cheese.  Both of them are over 35 but there is, unfortunately, a distinct lack of game offered at the dining table.  In fact, they eat a lot of foreign muck: pasta and rice and noodles.  Personally I feel that they are dicing with their constitutions.  What I wouldn’t give to come to dinner and find some nice chops and a mound of vegetables boiled for the requisite twenty minutes.

The final piece today is about dancing.  I think this is definitely a satire on the various dance crazes that were sweeping the dance halls of the time.

I neither Grizzly Beared or Turkey Trotted in my time, although I came into the living the other day and found Mr Errors doing what I assume was the Grizzly Bear with his youngest daughter.

Next to this absurdity I think the Turkey Trot appears to be quite civilised.  More civilised than the Bunny Hug anyway.

 

 

 

Small people

I think it would be understating things to say that Women in Print for 4 March, 1912 was eclectic, however, I am beginning to understand Man of Errors better and can usually guess which piece he will like best.  He is a simple man with simple comedic tastes, and I correctly assessed that this little (excuse me) item would tickle his fancy.

Mr. Errors suggested that Marie Jeanette was actually a child and that the people of 1912 were all idiots.  I suggested that a society that funds the antics of the “people” on Jersey Shore or Keeping Up With the Kardashians is not in a position to judge.   As for the claim that she was 14 centimetres at birth?  Well, it must have been an easy delivery.

Mr. Errors is perhaps unaware that the person at the head of this article – General Tom Thumb – was an actual person of great celebrity and had only reached the height of 3’4″ at the time of his death at the age of 45.  When he first became famous he was well under three foot.

Mr Stratton (to use his real name) appeared regularly in the papers here, but usually in a comic light.

The Evening Post reported that General Tom Thumb had at different times:

• Kissed two million ladies
• Wooed a little maid and was set to “wed, wed, wed”
• Was arrested in Savannah for driving his miniature carriage on the sidewalk and fined $10

Amongst other things.

His marriage was fully reported around the world as was his death.  When he began his career he was famous for dressing up as Napoleon.  Presumably this wasn’t a big draw when he toured France.

Marie Jeanette, on the other hand, never reappears in the record of the Evening Post.

Page nine

Mr. Errors and I had a talk about my column on his blog.  Actually, he did most of the talking and I listened (he certainly has a high opinion of his opinions).  He has suggested that I am taking too long to read each paper from 1912 and therefore I am not producing articles for his blog regularly enough.  He suggested that I just focus on one or two things.  Then he told me what those things were going to be: anything I could find on page nine of the Evening Post.

I went and looked at page nine.  It is the page that features stories for women and advertising (mainly for women).  I protested.  He insisted.  I asked for an explanation.  He said that I needed to broaden my horizons.  I protested quite vigorously that having been born in 1860, killed by a tram on a Wellington street in 1929 and suddenly resurrected in 2012 to write a column for blog meant my experiences were already quite broad.  He relented a little and said I could also review popular music in New Zealand every week because, “I know how much you like music”.  Yes, I said, I like music, but what is on the top of the pops now is certainly not music.  He looked at me quite grimly and said: “only female artists.  You can only review female artists on the top twenty.”  Then he smiled and said,

“If I created you… it’s easy enough for me to uncreate you.”

I went and looked at page nine.

***

Good lord.  Imported human hair?  Washable hair pads?  Quite a startling beginning to my attempts to understand women.

Aside from a piece about how to wear a scarf (there are a bewildering number of ways), and how to manage your servants, there is this little piece on children.

Now, Mr. Errors has two daughters, one aged five and half, and the other one and a half.  They are rather unruly examples of their sex, but charming in their way.  As I am a bachelor of 152 years it is perhaps not my place to comment on child-rearing, but it is my distinct impression that Mr. Errors is being reared by his daughters and not the other way round.  I had thought this was due to natural flaws in his character, and these certainly abound, but perhaps it is to do with the number of toys his children have and that devilish box they call a TV.  Surely all these moving pictures and jarring sounds are leading to a gross over stimulation.  Much better, the writer of this article suggests, that the infant simply look at the world around them.

Indeed. 

Mr. Errors has a garden.  The principle purpose of which seems to be for him to complain about.  Perhaps he should let his children roam more in it.  This would certainly stop them barging into my room at all hours and asking if they can play the drums on my head.  Impertinent.

Let him alone while he is good.  Splendid.

Finally, this young New Zealand lady has had a popular song in this country recently.  I draw your attention to it because Mr. Errors has recently taken up lawn bowls.

Her name is Anna.  She has an “h” at the end but I cannot bring myself to do this to a perfectly good name.  She appears to have a tattoo, and like wearing shoes called stilettos.  Lawn bowling, like everything else in the world, seems to have changed.

Mr. Errors assures me that if you “click” on the picture it will display the “video”.  I have seen this “video” and it is hard to decide which is more appalling: the antics of youth or the antics of the elderly.

Waitangi Day

I was quite looking forward to my usual cup of tea and morning paper after Man of Errors and has family had left the house, but when I padded down to the kitchen I found Errors in the living room reading a book.  He tells me it is a holiday called Waitangi Day.  Of course I had no idea what he was talking about; there was certainly no Waitangi Day in my lifetime.  The coverage of Waitangi Day in 2012 seems to suggest it is some kind of event where people can be rude to the Premier.  I’m not sure why exactly.

When I was alive we lived in quite a harmonious time.  The Treaty of Waitangi is something that I don’t think most Europeans even really knew about.  Judge Prendergast declared it a nullity in 1877.  Prendergast concluded that a treaty can only exist between two civilised parties and as New Zealand was populated by primitive barbarians and savages a proper treaty was actually impossible.  Prendergast’s judgement certainly cleared up any difficulties around land title, and ushered in generations of progress for New Zealand.  When I was a young man the Maori were supposed to die out, and our job was to smooth the dying pillow for them.  It certainly would have been convenient.

It seems that the current government are doing some things that some Maori disagree with and that these chaps expressed it quite forcibly and it was reported quite offensively.

During the heated protests, Wi Popata screamed abuse at both the Maori and National Party politicians. With fellow protesters, he called Sharples a “nigger” and told Key to go home.

Whoever wrote this needs to be reprimanded by his editor; “home” surely needs a capital H if Mr. Popata is referring to the Old Country.

I sense I have to tread carefully around this topic with Errors.  While he shakes his head over violence and taunts, he doesn’t seem in step with the majority view of New Zealand.  After all this Mr. Key won most of the vote, and if he wants to take Treaty of Waitangi clauses out of things then as far as I can see he is simply logically following Prendergast, and the will of the people.

Errors tells me that Kiwi Blog is a very popular site and the “commentary” there seems exactly in accordance with Prendergast (you will have to excuse some offensive language below, I apologise):

There is a lot more of this.  Some people talked about Apartheid which Errors had to explain to me.  Probably Errors gave a biased account but it seems that Apartheid disadvantaged one race so I’m not sure how policies that seek to advantage one race can be called Apartheid.  Actually, a lot of the commentators don’t make much sense and are very offensive.  I was surprised to learn that the gentleman who allows this filth to appear under his name is also invited onto national radio programmes as a serious commentator.

To be fair to the protestors some of their complaints seem well founded, “Mr Key was challenged over deep-sea oil drilling and plans”.  Good on the protestors for having a go at the government over this issue.  One hundred years ago we were talking about doing this, and I find it unbelievable that we are still dragging the chain.  With Maori support for drilling it is hard to see what is stopping us.

The Evening Post, 7 Feb 1912

Surely there is no debate around the idea that the industrial revolution has brought untold benefit to Europeans around the world?  Get on with it and start drilling.

Actually there is much in the news lately that makes me feel that while many things have changed in New Zealand, many of the core values that built this country remain intact.  The reaction to the Crafar farm sale has been illustrative.

Some people have said that we should be just as concerned about selling land to Americans, the British and Europeans but this is ridiculous.   Why should we be concerned about selling our land to the Mother Country or our sisters across the sea?  Free trade, China and Britain have a complicated history The culturally alien Chinese have had to be taught a few lessons about how this works.  We are British, lights of civilisation and beacons to the world, and China has much to learn at our feet.