AFTERNOON GALLS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3271, 17 July 1911, Page 2

AFTERNOON GALLS.

ARE THEY ON THE DECLINE?

“This season is notable for the fact that the time-hallowed habit of paying afternoon calls is shown to be falling into disuse, and that the woman of the leisured ■ class no longer regards the formal dropping into tea and chat with her acquaintances as a needful and inevitable part of the routine of her daily life and duties,” writes Cicely Hamilton in the “Mail.”

“The custom of afternoon calling had never any meaning to it; was never, so far as” one can see, anything more than a pretence at occupation on the part of persons who had no duties wherewith) to fill out the long and lazy hours that stretch between dinner and luncheon—and who set to work to invent a colourable substitute for such duties.' About the custom there was never any real spirit of social intercourse ; no fellowship, no gaiety, .no impetus of argument or differing points of view. It was a custom insipid, restricted, and petty—a mere habit of putting in an appearance at certain stated hours in certain stated houses.

“Nothing came of it, either good or bad What woman has ever-left an afternoon tea-party the richer for a newly caught idea, the merrier for a deft thought deftly worded? For the most part all she does carry away with her is an impression of dullness and general insignificance of talk. “There must be a reason, of course, for the fact that while man and man can be jolly together—with ease and on the slightest provocation'—woman and woman are apt to be bored with each other. The customary masculine explanation has at least the merit of extreme simplicity. It is merely this—that women dislike each other, naturally and inevitably. “Personally I do not accept it; for the plain and -sufficient reason that I have heard women—many women-—talk to each other with energy, with animation, with intelligence, when they had anything to say that needed saying. Why they are the reverse, of animated, intelligent, and energetic in speech and thought when they pay formal visits and collect round afternoon tea tables is because women of the class that collect round afternoon tea tables have usually little that matters to say; not because they are less gifted than other classes but because thev are still (as they always have been) hedged about with restrictions on the subject-matter of their conversation. Men—clumsier talkers, as a rule—-are left free to deal with what they will in speech. In a smoking-room all heaven and earth are open to discussion. In the drawingroom. on the other hand, the rule has always been that conversation shall merely skim the .surface of life and the world. It is against the drawing-room convention of deadly ' dullness and restricted speech that—often, unconsciously—tlie modern woman revolts.”