When Women Should Drink

1903

It Is Better If They Leave Ardent Spirits Alone

That many society women drink ardent spirits, and sometimes to excess, is a well known fact. They have many opportunities for indulgence in this form of dissipation that the men do not imagine exist. Of course, the society woman does not "drink" in the sense in which the hag in the slum and the bibulous cook do. She is too careful of her sylphlike figure and of her porcelain skin to indulge in much champagne, and she has enough to make her nervous about whisky, but what she does take is a sip of liquor here and a tumblerful of Madeira there and a drop or two of cognac in her coffee after luncheon, and maybe a cocktail to give her an appetite for dinner. This all counts up at the end of the day, and after a while madam feels the need of her little fillips and encouragers in order to enable her to carry out the exacting routine of her busy social life. She doesn't realize that she drinks. But stimulate she certainly does.

Living as she does in an electric atmosphere and under highly unwholesome and artificial conditions, with nerves always strung to the highest state of tension and ever looking out for some new form of excitement, it is almost inevitable that artificial stimulants should be reported to in order to enable the jaded human organization to meet the excessive demands that are made upon it. From morning until night, and often through the night, as well, there is one long round of worry and excitement.

The demands of fashionable society are so exacting that even the simplest things become either fatiguing or exciting. The mere act of dressing, for instance, which has to be repeated several times in the day, makes a severe call upon the strength of a delicate woman, even if she has a clever maid to assist her, and after having been laced into her armor of satin and lace and had her head coiffed elaborately she is too tired to go out without having recourse to a nip of cognac or cordial to brace her up and give her courage to face the world with the stereotyped smile of amiability expected from her.

Then there are the ordeals of shopping and trying on. Standing on high heels and in a tightly-laced corset — straight-front hygienists notwithstanding — to have a heavy velvet gown fitted in a superheated room is an ordeal that would cause most men to topple over and faint. But the poor fashionable lady has to stand it and perhaps drive off to pay a half dozen calls after she has been dismissed by the dressmaker. But the dressmaker knows the psychological moment when the customer is just on the verge of fainting or hysterics, and comes forward with an offer of a glass of Benedictine or the "finest drop" of green Chartreuse, and her fair customer finds it so grateful and comforting that on her next visit she looks out for it as a matter of course, and in a short time starts a bottle in her own room, if she has not already done so.

The high-sounding names of the various expensive liqueurs have such a distinguished ring about them that it never occurs to the lady who is consuming them that she "drinks." Some women delude themselves still further by drinking eau de cologne or some other perfume on the assumption that a pick-me-up of this kind is quite harmless, whereas, if anything, it is more deadly than the other.

Of course, it is not suggested for moment that all women who have recourse to this kind of thing go the length of making themselves intoxicated. But they do often get as far as acquiring a color and sparkle in the eye and a style of conversation, all of which are quite foreign to their real nature, and the effect in the long run is bound to be unmanageable nerves, if nothing worse.