The Oregon daily journal., March 29, 1908, Page 30, Image 30

THE OREGON SUNDAY JOURNAL, PORTLAND SUNDAY .HORNING,. EIARCH 29, 1903
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iiruuua'uuUDnrinoali!
- i- ,
How the Ancient
Egyptian Women
Discounted all Our
Modern Styles.
THARAOH, is my, hat on straight f"
. It was the familuir question.
m a
' Lastertide had not yet been
breamed of; the springtime that America and
middle Europe know was a fable, recalled by
doubtfully smiling travelers; the prophecy
that imperial Egypt would become vassal to
IBriton, Turk, or even Roman, would have
J been, met with the stare that wonders over
madniss, for even .Rome consisted merely of
tome stray pigs and a pack of wolves.
' But in Egypt, as far back as 4000 years
ago, and probably in the generations that
flourished there nearer to the daw?, of time,
the eternal Question held its perennial sway.
Egypt s queens, from beautiful Nebto and
entrancing Tata, down to irresistible Cle-
opatra, when she gave foolish Antony the
title of her lord, had the same anxiety which
'has beset the sex to this very day, when
. 'the military cone soars' toward affrighted
heaven, while heaven hurriedly withdraws its
..." - m m m
atch .lest SOme fashionable J eather brush away
I rilLvv nf itt stars
0 gaiaxy or us lu'3- .
flats! Why, the fearful and wonderful
productions from Paris and from Mile. Ale-
V. . 7 ' i - J , j ,;;,-
Vontgle, French modiste and milliner, are no
Wore tO be compared With the Creations Of
vncient Egypt than the inventions of modern
man can compare with the original creation.
IT'S HARD; of course, Jfs hard, to pay H9.87 for a
brand new Parisian novelty spring confection and
then have some mousing old scientist come along
and declare that Clara Louise Chnemtamum, who
played queen ever Egypt three centuries before
Barneses III planted vineyards, for the new town he
jCounded to the delta of the Nile, had hat that would
fcav mad the : 1908 triumph look like $l.38-could
there be any chagrin more disheartening?
There, could; and there is. It would come when
that same scientific, necrologlc, archeologlcal, recon
Bite, obsolete old fossil chose to aver that you couldn't
Invent a style, a custom, a prerogative that would
mount to more than a meek echo of thosa the women
' bt Egypt enjoyed before your hundredth ancestress
pas teaching her grandmother how to suck eggs. '
... Tour hats? The Audubon Society and the S. P. C.
la., whose appeals against the slaying of birds for
, our decoration and delectation seem to date back
fceyond your earliest, innocently sympathttlc childhood.
t lought to have begun somewhere back ln the Egyptian
past, say about the era of King Amounoph, when he
sat upon the knees of hie governess and cast admiring
yes upon the millinery of his royal mamma, as she
' went out calling with a large and handsomely em
; Jsalmed vulture on the top of her head.
Your bonwets, down even to the quaint Dutch caps
' that so Jealously and eo atlnglly hide your crowning
rloryl The Egyptian women, at some epoch or an
other, discounted them all, with peaks that rivaled the
pyramids fend with capes that set the fashion for the
in nolnt of fact, the mllllwer's art would appear to
t have vastly degenerated. Today its highest claim to
honor Is that it calls for ekilled designing of hats thai
shall be "pictures." In those days It attained the
ifllgnity of being architecture.
T'pi ORIGIN OF THE HAIR WAVE
But supply modern hairdresslng, and that nobles
iwork of man or woman, the Marcel wave eurely, these
"Styles are new?
AS iney usea 10 say in ine lasnionaojo uuvei
, lla! no. ,
The women of Egypt started in with heads of hatr
as good as those of the loveliest brunwttes now making
lociir QeuiH limy oti u ju; uctier, lor lucy ucux i o w t-
. grandmothers with histories of alternation between
tice powder and curling tons.
They turned right in and plaited those voluminous
locks into pigtails innumerable, until they realized
- that atyle is not tradition, but novelty. Forthwith,
- thy unplatted them, and, like Jane, who when ehe
left the village was so shy, they hung those tresses
' down their back.
Fashions change now every season; but in those
. f Hlhan aa .11. all Irnnm , V . . . or,.. w.mM. (vA n
. (ipare bf tore the arrival of eternity, they moved some
what more slowly say, about once in two or three
6y nasties.
But the Egyptian women got there at last; they
Curled the hair in rinsrlets ahnul thn honA nnrt -imprt
. a, few at the nape of the neck as fascinators; and, Jf
they- hadn't nough hair of their own to spare, they
added a few rurU that had belonged to somebody else.
Just as you did a few years ago, when you looked o
lovely. - -
If they were not satisfied with their hair which
ever .way they were able to arrange it, thev had no
more ecrupiee inaa the modern woman about buying
u who! wig. And they were a good deal cleaner than
the fanh!onabl beauties of the European courts a
few gnerationa back who, only recently emerged
jromUi Middle Ages-that "thousand years without a
kath" delighted beholders with the most marvelous
urmructurei in hirsute material; and kept tl
eoffure foundations o permanently fre from comb
irntt crush mat the imitation "rat" of the nrrimnt
fciiaht welt have Ita real prototype in the recent Dast.
Cleopatra advised Caesar to use a hair tonic, ac-
cording t Bernard Shaw: Bernard, we he aald it,4? v
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HE
proD&bly knew nobody would believe him.
where everybody made a mistake.
Cleopatra could have tipped off the strenuous Ro
man to more hair tonics than any three tonnorlal
artists and any five massage specialists In. the United
States Jr Fifth avenue. She had whole millennia of
hair tonlo experiments to draw upon, from the rat of
a black serpent to the oil in which he should have
boiled a hoof from his favorite donkey.
As frtr rnameHr-ji on ICflrvntfjin IaHv'ii Arnniilnff'-tAtilA
had more dainty alabaster vases, artistically carved
ar" and dellcate trays than the husband of the most
elegantly perfected Parlslenne ever failed to learn
the use of.
On this sld of the water our women go only half
the glorious way of fashion, after all; that is why so
many styles that Jook lnlmlUble ln Parl8 are not at all
Imitable here. Yet even the extreme of paint, powder
SrV1 Etf&
cruue in me eyes 01 ine Egyptian woman or lasnion.
A calm, unprejudiced view of the countless draw
ings that have come to light ln the course of excava
tions ln Egypt would convince any woman, let alone
any common, logical male archeologlst, that the novelty-craving
sex might plan and contrive and devise,
with gores, tucks, ruffles, hems, pleats and cuts on
the bias, for the next 4000 years, and still fall to pro
duce a fashion essentially different from something
that adorned their sisters of antiquity, whose paor
shriveled forms, once so warm and glowing with the'
fragrant fires of youth, thw thieving fellaheen rejoice
to dig out of the rious peace of ages, that they may
violate the dust covered slumber and loot an earrinir
or a brooch. -,
From the dolls that tiny Tala played with to the1
dress her motner wore, in some manner the fashions
of nowadays seom to have been either completely an
ticipated or, at least, prefigured in ancient Egypt
There Is. a remarkably up-to-date Illustration:
For several yearn-the nklrt nf tho mnrW fa.,i,,
bbi woman nas Deen growing tighter
and tighter.
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taps to Beauty,
H
AS the "youngest grandmother of Eu
rope" discovered the secret of perpetual
youth?
To the whole civilized world Oupen
Alexandra of England is a marvel. At 60 shoi
loolca younger than her daughters. Old Father
Time has dealt "aa leniently with her as with Cleo-
patra or Julie Recamier.
y Passe ladies of all lands are pessimistic.
They smile the smiles of the knowing when the
queen's never-fading beattty is mentioned. What
they seek are tho secrets of hervanity box.
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I'll
frankly designed to emphasize the outlines of the
lower limbs. Fashioned with a plainness which elim
inated every accessory that might detract from the
admirable simplicity of nature's curves, the limit was
at length achieved; constriction could go no further.
. Behold a new, a brand new fashion; tights from
ankle to walstund welter nlchts, to quote from the
innocuous German except the skirt, and that skirt
sufficiently delicate to let the light shine through.
It was a new fashion, indeed; new enough to startle
Into life all the criticism which has been the breath
of fashion since the first woman with a good neck be
came morally convinced that decollete was full dress.
What wonderful f$ce cream does she use?
Is it true that she enamels bo dreadfully that sho
dare not smile!
Neither, Bay those who know, Caroful diet
ing, constant maBsagingthese are tho only
means the queen uses to preserve her beauty.
w
WHETHER the beauty question starts with
Helen of Troy or Madame Nazlmova, her
majesty of England la pretty sure to figure
in the conversation before the first breath la
exhausted.
In the early daya of her marriage the then princess
of Wales was likely to be referred to as the most
peerleea eauty of the day. Everything she did was
quoted, everything ahe wore was copied for she has
always known how. to dress. ;
After the birth of her numerous sons and daugh
ters tho marvel of the princess' unchanging beauty
continued to be a favorite topio Of discussion.
And when the daughters grew up and appeared
nt court they were one after another compared with
their mother, who 'looked equally as young aa any
of them, and much more beautiful t
About this time it began to be whispered about
among those who were in no way connected with the
princess that It waa to her "vanity box" that she
now owed her reputation as the most beautiful royal
personage of her time. Especially emphatic ln this
were those who had never seen her royal highness. .
The theory had its side of reason, at least so it
very naturally ; grew, especially when the cosmetic
maker realized Its value among gullible women.
From the time of the queen's coronation on' It has
Hot been by her flawless skin nor the exquisite con
tour of her oval face that she has retained her place
in the beauty discussion, 'but by the probability of
her using or not using this or that face bleach, or
rouge, or enamel.
Never had the beauty specialist such a valuable
asset a Queen Alexandra! Which la not by any means
loat upon those to whom it means the most.
In London, in Paris, in, Berlin the beauty doctor
will caxefuily close the door of the little mirrored
in . '-H I i I i i h
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Today or, to be very timely, this evenlng-th9 trans
lucent gown is the very, very latest thlng5Ih fashion.
And It la, at the same time, the very, very an
clentesti Only it Is a poor,' pitiful, weak, timorous
for all It is so temerarious Imitation of the most
popular style that was known in Egypt from time im
memorial. These daring ladles of A. D. 1908 could go back Into
century past century of B. C, and feel meek and hum
ble of spirit beside even the least stylish of fashion
able women then.
If, so lightly olad in her semi-transparent dress
and the half revealed tights, one of them had alighted
at the door of an old Egyptian house and deceived the
slaves into admitting her to the gay and cultured
company who were talking art, listening to the band
and comparing bracelets and earrings while they
awaited the summons to dinner, she would have found
herself very much behind the times.
"Who can this overdressed frump possibly be?"
the women would have wondered. "Might be almost
'passable, if she had a decent skirt on," the men would
have commented, in confidential' asides. "Some
wretched barbarian from that horrid Greece, where
they keep their women Indoors, loaded down with
draperies," her hostess would have surmised. "I sup
pose I shall be compelled to introduce her to avoid a
ecene.."
And then those gentle visions of beauty would have
greeted her with the supercilious tolerance a really
fashionable woman can deign-to such a dowd from the
elegant superiority of her own total freedom from
tights and her attire In a simple skirt so thin that th
archeologists have disputed, time and again, whether
it could be anything at all or, at most, an optical
illusion.
The physical culture fad never happened before;
oh, no, of course not was as surely part of the Egyp
chamber of horrors" before confiding to one that it
is this very selfsame smothering face steamer or
prickly electric battery that the queen employs before
applying hla own particular make of sticky paste,
which she invariably, uses as a foundation to hold his
own particular rouge and powder against( the treach
erous dampness of a London fog, the furies of a channel
gale or the blaze of a Riviera sun!
mat some ot these stories, at least, find a certain
fm?unLof c'denc8 is shown by their repetition, the
. ..v " mo uua maimer 01 HUH in
n ooiiiuiencemeni., at least
The SCenn Wns thA rinnlr nf an Innnmltilr transat
lantic Hner; the time, a few weeks ago; the charac
ters, a little group of ultra-fashionable women pas
sengers. As they sat In their steamer chairs they fairly
hugged themselves figuratively speaking, for it was
not because of the cold, but on account of the knowl
edge that they would make their flight into the
height of the American season plumed in the very
latest feather of the Rue de la Paix. By outstaying
the aumrher tourist and tho .commercial "buyer" they
had procured for themselves the duplicates of thosa
later models prepared for ..' European royalties and
court beauties. .J .
BEST-DRESSED SOVEREIGN
The taste of royalty in dress was trie subject under
fire, . the palm being voted to the ueen of England
as the best dressed sovereign of Europe. Thus the
ball was started rolling along the old familiar alley,
though with a different tuning this time that brought,
in an unexpected ten-stroke for the queen's much
disputed naturalness.
- One woman remarked that ahe had eeen the queen
in Bond street Just before sailing. "Of course, we
are all tired of hearing It, but it la really true that
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tian woman's devotion to fashion aa well, aa the
tightly fitting dress la now the logical sequence of the
physical culture fad.
Even archery, which some groups of girls took up
recently perhaps in the hope of bust and shoulder
was Just about as popular, and just about no more
popular, with the daintily ambitious damsels of old
Pharaoh's time.
They played handball a little better then than now;
they took the loose change away from friendly game
sters Just as hospitably as wo take It with bridge, and
they knew the quality of fashionable wines quite as
authoritatively as any duly learned hostess of today
Indeed, a good deal better, for they' knew so much
about wines that they limited their use to matrons,
where modern society has found it smart for girls to
be connolsseuses of claret.
Aa for woman's rights, the latest revelations which
we have from the Papyrus Libbey, now the property of
the Toledo Museum of Art, show that modern woman.
Instead of being engaged ln a struggle for new ones.
is simply climbing back to the grandeurs which long
ago were hers.
When a woman marrted, in the reign of Kabbasha,
aa late as 341 B. C, she dictated the terms. When
she repudiated her spouse, she let him have only half
th dowry and he had to give it In the first place.
There was no foreign marriage dot Investment
about the Egyptian woman; she knew her value. And".
whenever she did decide to separate from him, out of
all the money they saved during marriage she could
pack him off Into the empty world with only 33 per
cent.
But these last few details are mentioned ln strict
confidence, you know.
she did not look a minute over 80."
"Ah, but did you see her smile?" asked a wiser,
speaker. According to the latter, the queen Is nowi
like that poor old English king whose son waa lost ln
the "white ship" and who was "never seen to a mile
after that day" the day In Queen Alexandra "a case
Deing tho one when she was supposed to have taken
to wearing a certain crackly enamel on her face. It
had be,en shown to this woman in a coiffeur's place
not far from Buckingham Palace.
And so it went The poor lady is not only supposed
to wear a false neck, falaw eyebrows and a wig, but
she now remains away from many functions that she,
has been wont to attend, owing, not to the in-'
crease of years, but to the hair dye which ahe used,
before she took to a wig. This particular dye has not)
only made her bald, but had rendered her embarraae
ingly deaf!
At thla point of the conversation a woman nearb:
drew her chair up to the group. Her radiant com-j
plexion would have marked hr as English If hettl
"I cannot resist telling you what I know about f
this," she said, "for the subject Is important to all
of us and it has always had a special Interest to me. 1
-jl anow wnac i am going to ten you to m truew
because my husband Is a physician in om of the iargdi
London hospitals, and so in close communication wltlj
the leading men of his profession. In thia way, too, J
have been seeing the queen at close range for. a greaii'
number of years, wonderine more each succeeding timtf
if my eyes might not be playing me a trick. It
"The last time that I camo face to face with hef
majesty was a few weeks ago at a reunion of in
members of the Botanical Gardens. It was a clearfl
orignt aay, ana i stood as near to her as I am to an.vj
or you. rsne iooKea not a minute older than you do 1
The speaker inclined her head in the direction Of a!
preiiy, itveiy-iooKing little matron or 30.
"The queen's hair is tinted, but I am sure that U
me oniy touch ot artificiality about ner. ane does no
wear a wig, and as to her deafness.wit may exist a
times, but I have never noticed any member of- he
household, nor any one else, raise their voice li
speaking to her. She, perhaps, uees the usual toucll
or face powder, but not a suspicion of rouse, for he
skin at the distance of three' feet looks as soft' an ,1
smooth as a baby's. The fact is merely this: Qav?
Alexandra has supplanted Cleopatra and Julie Recuwlti
In the affections of fickle old Father Time! . - if
"The secret of It? Why, I don't believe the queer
makes any secret of it. The whole thing is massage
and diet thia I know through m husband for th$
- queen's beauty is especially; looked after by the best,
specialist in England. Every morning the massage hi,
prescribed. I believe that some hours are given to it)
as well as to exercise and bathing, In all of whtci'
. the aueen 1 careful that the most minute direction
shall be carried out. She has. never been a vain worn
an in the least, but sn appreciates her beauty an
- tias always taken great eare of It. The method t
merely a natural, if luxurious, on of preserving
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