Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 97, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 April 1915 — Page 2

SHE PLANS FOB SOCIETY PEOPLE

How Mrs. Hawkesworth Made a Success of the Dances in City Hotels. DOES THINGS ON BIG SCALE First Gained Prominence Through Her ••Chansons Crinolines," and Now Manages Many Distinctive Affairs for Women of Fashionable Circles. By OSBORN MARSHALL. <Copyri<ht. McClure Newspaper Syndicate.) It was when the craze for afternoon dancing had just hit New York that Mrs. R. W. Hawkesworth made the master stroke of her business career. Several of the large cases In New Y ork had begun what they called the ' the dansant,” and If you went into any one of these places in the late afternoon before six you would see men and women tangoing and trotting between the tables, indulging in what they took pleasure iq knowing was the latest form of amusement. Everyone who had the price and who cared for that sort of amusement went to these dances, and as there are all sorts of people in New York so there was all sorts of dancing. That is one of the things that made these dancing teas so successful. StMl there were some ultra-conserva-tive New York people who liked to dance in the afternoon who held back from the showy cases. Their social life centered about their own homes or the large hotels. Tea drinking in the palm gardens or Turkish rooms of the palatial hotels had amused them other seasons, but it seemed dull when there was the possibility of dancing. Mrs. Hawkesworth, part of whose business it is to feel the pulse of society, pondered over the situation and then, with her plans made, she went to the manager of one of the newlyopened and largest hotels of the city. “Afternoon dancing has come to stay,** she told him. “So far the only place people can dance is in the showy

cases. I will undertake to conduct afternoon dances in your hotel for you and guarantee success if you will let me have carte blanche. There must be no objectionable dancing and we must cater to the conservative element.” She named the commission at which she would undertake this work and told the manager of the hotel to let her know what he thought of the proposition when he thought it over. The hotel man decided at once, and before many days had passed one of the ball rooms on the twenty-fourth floor of this big hotel had been opened for afternoon dancing. The price of admission was a dollar and anyone who wished might attend. Started Subscription Dances. Soon other hotel managers, hearing of Mrs. Hawkesworth’s success, came to her and asked her to do the same thing for them. There is a great deal to do in managing these dances besides providing music and a suitable floor, and they knew that it was better to pay Mrs. Hawkesworth a high commission than to experiment themselves. But Mrs. Hawkesworth wisely refused to duplicate her achievements. She had another plan. While these public dances had gone —and are still going*—wonderfully well, there were still some society people of New York who wanted something even more exclusive. They would dance in the afternoon at a hotel, they told Mrs. Hawkesworth, if the dances could be put on the subscription basis. Hence Mrs. Hawkesworth opened a net d subscription afternoon dances at a hotel in New York, to which the

general public is not admitted, but which are attended by the most distinguished of New York society folk. Mrs. Hawkesworth had come to be regarded as the genius of the afternoon dance and demands came for her servIces from far and near. So now in one of the most exclusive hotels in Philadelphia the best-behaved daughters bf the bid families can dance with perfect propriety. In a world-known hotel tn Washington the most prominent society folk —members of the diplomatic corps, senators* and cabinet ministers* wives and daughters and sons, and no doubt senators and cabient ministers themselves —can indulge in the newest steps. In Pittsburgh, too, the millionaire set gather in the afternoon dances at one of the most palatial hotels of the city. All these dances are under Mrs. Hawkesworth’s supervision. They were started by her and are conducted according to her plan. Only five winters ago Mrs. Hawkesworth faced one of the hardest situations that a woman ever has to face. She was suddenly left a widow and without money.- She had been used to luxuries and was a woman of mature years, without a grain of business experience and with no means —so it seemed —of earning an income. She had been given a good musical training as a girl and she had played the piano as a pastime throughout her married life. Her friends suggested that she could earn a little by teaching music. Mrs. Hawkesworth had the good fortune to know Victor Herbert. She had played as an amateur in ensemble music which he had conducted, and she asked him what chance she had as a teacher. “Your gift lies in managing, not in teaching,** he told her, and she took his advice seriously. She decided to make her first money by getting up a concert Does Big Things With Concerts. There are some people who instinctively begin things In a small way. If they decide to conduct musicales they give the first one on a small scale. They would use a friend’s drawing room, employ cheap local talent and ask only their acquaintances to subscribe. But Mrs. Hawkesworth is not one of this class. She decided she would have none but the best singers, and that her patronesses should be only women of wealth. The very day she decided to give the musicale she went unaided and unintroduced to

Everyone Went to These Dances.

some of the biggest entertainers in the world and before nightfall she had drawn up contracts with Alma Gluck, Geraldine Farrar and Adeline Genee, all of whom happened to be in New York at that time. These contracts involved >6,000, a sum which she could not possibly have paid if the next step in her program had not proved successful. This step was securing patrons. Mrs. Hawkesworth called on a list of the most prominent society women of New York and asked them to subscribe to the new’ series of morning musicales she purposed giving at the Plaza hotel. They w’ere to be different from other musicales, she assured them, and her assurance was convincing. The next thing to do was to make the musicales different.' It was not enough to have Geraldine Farrar sing and Genee dance. That was no special treat to society folk. Mrs. Hawkesworth decided on having her performers dress in costume suited to the songs they sang. For her first performance she planned costumes and songs of the nattier style and so with the aid of the best costumers she could secure, her stars were dressed in the white curls and bouffant skirts of the period of Louis XV. That suggested the naihe bf the series of entertainments, the “Chansons Crinolines” —a name which has played no little part in the subsequent success of these entertainments. Now the name “Chanson Crinoline” is known to. society and musical folk all over the country. Mrs. Hawkesworth has stuck to her of having the artists all in cos-

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

tame, although they, are not all in crinoline. When Amato appears she has him dress in Italian costume to fit the Italian love songs he has to Bing. Olive Fremstedt sings Swedish songs tn the peasant costume of . the North, and Lucresia Bori sang Spanish folk songs in the characteristic mantilla of her native country. When Edmond Clement sang his delightful old French songs he dressed in satin knee breeches, brocaded coat, powdered wig; silk stockings and shoe buckler- “ Arranger” for Society Folk. The first one of these “Chansons Crinolines” was a howling success, and Mrs. Hawkesworth’s future was assured. Society people—always anxious to be amused—saw possibilities in this quiet-voiced, energetic little woman, whose widow’s weeds were in such striking contrast to the gay entertainments she had arranged. If she could arrange unusual musicales why couldn’t she arrange unusual dances, dinners and private entertainments of all kinds? This was a departure from her intention to be a musicale manager, but Mrs. Hawkesworth was still too eager to make a living to refuse. That was four years ago, and now among society folk in New York and Newport she is as well known as an arranger of dances and dinners that are unusual as David Belasco is known as a theatrical manager. At one dance Mrs. Hawkesworth arranges a shower of real butterflies that flit through the ballroom just at the appointed moment like a dream of fairyland. At another she has a yoke of flower-crowned oxen bring in the professional dancers. At another she has an arrangement like an enormous book, so that the professional entertainers seem to jump from the pages of a story as they appear. “Where do you get all these ideas?” people are constantly asking Mrs. Hawkesworth, for they know she doesn’t have time to travel far for them. “It is simply a matter of concentration,’’ she says. “If I want a new idea I just sit down and think and think and if I think long enough it comes. That is concentration, Isn’t It?” But don’t imagine that every clever widow suddenly thrown on her own resources could do the same. There aren’t fifty women in New York who have energy enough. To prove this here is the schedule of just one of Mrs. Hawkesworth’s days: One of Her Busy Days. She appears at her office at about ten in the morning. The chances are that she will begin work with her secretary over an itemized bill for an entertainment given the night before, for society women want very exact figures and are more apt to quibble over five dollars paid for a spotlight which they think ought to have been only four dollars and fifty cents than anyone else. Then comes a telephone message from a woman well known in society. “Oh, Mrs. Hawkesworth,” she says wearily. “I have been appointed chairman for the charity ball of such-and-such a league, and we want something original. I have tried to manage but it is quite beyond me. Will you come up to my house this afternoon and talk it over?” Another telephone follows. It is from another society woman, known for the daring entertainments she gives. “Mrs. Hawkesworth,” she says gayly, “I am giving dinner tomorrow and I want a moving-picture performance afterward. I haven’t the least idea how to arrange for it and I just took a fancy to have It a moment ago.” Then, as Mrs. Hawkesworth is racking her brains thinking how she will go about it and is just setting out to a moving-picture establishment, the telephone rings again. This time it is a message from one her musical stars who has been taken ill the last minute and cannot keep an appointment. As she hangs up the receiver from this call she is thinking whom she can get to take his place. She cannot wait to finish her work on the bills, although they must be posted that afternoon, for she must now hurry tothe hotel in Fifty-seventh street where she has dally office hours in connection with her afternoon dances. Here she has a rehearsal for a special dance the week following. After that is over, she has to go to amorist’s shop to make arrangements for some unusual dinner decorations and from there to Interview one of the greatest singers she has secured for her next “Chanson Crinoline” about the costume she is to weaf and the songs she is to sing. This takes till late afternoon and then she drops in at one of the hotels to see that the dancing is going on all right. Mrs. Hawkesworth is very particular about these dances. That is one of the reasons why they have been so successful with the more conservative elements. Perhaps a society woman with the best of intentions has drawn out a cigarette case, or perhaps one of the devotees of the fox trot has been demonstrating some steps that might lead to criticism. In this event it is Mrs. Hawkesworth’s duty to remonstrate with the offender so tactfully that she doesn’t know she has been reproved. Then, after a little rest and a hasty evening toilet, Mrs. Hawkesworth is whisked In a taxicab to the home of the society leader who is giving a big dinner that night. Mrs. Hawkesworth is never one of the party. In many cases the hostesses have suggested that she join in the festivities which she keeps in motion, but Mrs. Hawkesworth has no interest in the social side of the game she plays. She enters as noiselessly as the caterer or the florist, and is Only known by the results of her labor.

Group of the renegade Piutes and their captors. The band was captured in Utah after a stiff fight with the posse. -.---inr-Viwwj-

RIDES WITH DEATH

Bearer of War Dispatches in Con* stant Peril. Letter From French Soldier Relates Narrow Escapes of Friend Who Makes Frequent Trips to the Trenches. New York. —The danger undergone by a messenger carrying dispatches from the war office to the front is told in a letter received by Robert Stovold of this city from his brother in the French army. The letter says, in part: “George and the duke -are also in the army now as interpreters. They are with General French and the English army all of the time. Harry is engaged to take officers with dispatches from the war office to the front three and four times a week. He sees George often*, “Three times a week George has to take dispatches up to the firing line. This is a pretty risky job and he has had several narrow escapes. Once he had to Jump out of his automobile and lie down for several hours while shells and bullets went whistling by over him. Another time as he was driving along with his automobile some Germans hiding in the woods fired at him. Fortunately they missed him, but several of the bullets struck the automobile. “Another time a shell burst twenty yards from him, but by a miracle he Was not touched. He was enveloped in smoke, however, the fumes of the shell making him feel sick and giddy. George, however, seems to think it great sport. “Harry Colliard in the trenches also has been in some of the thickest of the fighting. He is fighting there day and night. Although he has been in many of the bayonet charges, he has bo far escaped unscathed. Let’s hope it will always be thus. Bob’s brother has not been so fortunate. He was wounded in the head by shrapnel and picked up on the battlefield insensible. He found himself in the hospital when he recovered. He is nearly well now, though, and hopes to return soon to have another smack at those Germans. “What a terrible war this is, Bob. Several of my very dear friends have been killed, a few others wounded and one is now a prisoner in Germany. If it were not for the wonderful fighting of the English we would have suffered more. But by the time you get this letter you will be reading that the Germans are in full retreat.” After relating the sufferings of the wounded and the hardships undergone the writer closes with the words, “I should just like to have the job of shooting that kaiser.”

MISS ALICE GERSTENBERG

One of the youthful and extremely promising novelists and dramatists is Miss Alice Gerstenberg. After spending three years at Bryn Mawr college she decided that she wanted some “real work,” as she sincerely put it, and launched into the literary field. As an author Miss Gerstenberg is not unknown to the American public, her “Unquenched Fire” and “The Conscience of Sarah Platt” having been favorably received. qu the dramatic field Miss Gerstenberg is known to the theater goers by

RENEGADE PIUTES CAPTURED

her ‘‘Alice in Wonderland" and the "Model Maid." With all these activities in the literary field Miss Gerstenberg finds time to belong to many clubs in her home city, Chicago. Still she is the most modest and unassuming little person in the world.

HOW THE KAISER APPEARS

Correspondent Writes Pen Picture of Emperor as He Saw Him at Front. Berlin. — A. pen picture of the kaiser appears in the Kreuz-Zeitung from its war correspondent with the German troops in Poland, who says: “The kaiser appeared with General Mackensen, and passed along in front of the officers and troops. I had not seen him since the time when at the beginning of the war he spoke to the crowd from the balcony of the castle in Berlin. “For one moment I had formed the impression that he had become terribly gray in the campaign. That, however, was an error, which arose from the fact that his head protector, which he was wearing owing to the extremely cold weather, was gray. “The supreme war lord appears, on the contrary, extraordinarily fresh and elastic, even though the seriousness of these last months has left marks on his features, and a certain bitterness which formerly was not present comes into his voice when he speaks. “When I saw him I could not help thinking of the kaiser parade in 1895 on the Spandau drill ground. How brilliant he then looked, how forceful, how confident in the future and victory!” 1

AUSTRIAN BAR IN PROTEST

Object to Restraining Refugee Lawyers of Galicia and Bukowina From Practicing. Vienna—A committee of the Austrian Bar association has recently drawn up a vigorous protest against the enactments of the government restraining the refugee lawyers of Galicia and Bukowina from the practice of their profession in lower Austria. The representations of the committee, which has behind it not only the prominent lawyers of Vienna, but of all the Austrian crownlands, received instant and hearty indorsement from the bar. The Austrian Bar association repudiated all sympathy with the illiberal policy of the state authorities, and by a three-quarters vote* of its members, put itself on record against the proceedings disbarring its colleagues from Galicia and Bukowina. Public opinion, too, keenly alive to the fact that the government is imposing disabilities on a part of its population which is suffering for its sake, is in emphatic accord with the stand of the lawyer’s committee.

TO BE SOLDIER, EATS BEANS

Youth Who Tried to Enlist Three Times Is Under Weight—Physician Advises Him. Alexandria, Ind. —Paul Hogle, a high school pupil, who has had ambitions to join the United States army, returned from Indianapolis, where he made his third unsuccessful attempt to enlist hnder the Stars and Stripes. At Muncie the young toan was informed six months ago that he was not old enough. When he tried to join the army at the Anderson recruiting station his parents objected. A few days ago he slipped away to Indianapolis.. Everything went along fine until it came to the question of weight He was five pounds under the prescribed weight He has been advised by a local physician to confine his diet to beans to take on extra weight.

BELGIANS GIVEN BACK JOBS

Sign Declaration They Will Refrain From Acts Prejudicial to Germany. T Amsterdam, Holland. —A Brussels dispatch to the Telegraaf says that all former employees of the Belgian government in the post and telegraph departments, as well as other branches of the government, have resumed work after signing a declaration that they will refrain from acts prejudicial to Germany. A German administrator has been appointed for each department. .

“SOLOMON” ENDS BABY CASE

This Time In Person of New York Lawyer—He Foregoes the Sword. New York. —May a child be held for board unpaid? The question was asked of Magistrate Barlow, when Mrs. May Berghard, whose baby was born last August, summoned to court Mrs. Minnie Curtis because she had refused to give up the child until Mrs. Berghard paid |lO arrears of board for the baby. On consulting the court Bible, Magistrate Barlow, in emulation of King Solomon in a similar case, glanced about for the state sword which should have been behind his chair. The court stenographer had taken it away to sharpen his pencil, and In default of anything bigger than a paper cutter Magistrate Barlow threw biblical instructions to the winds, and gave the child back to its mother. •

ENGLISH WADING STOCKINGS

The British war office, after careful experiments, has adopted a new wader stocking for the use of the troops in wet or flooded trenches. The waders are light and strong and are absolutely waterproof. They are lined with wool and are worn on the bare foot inside the army service boot. During the experiments the soldiers suffered no 111 effects from long periods of immersion of the feet in icy water.

PAYS FOR TURKEY HE STOLE

But It Took Him Twenty-Seven Year* to Discover That the Act Was Sinful. Atkin, Ark. —A. D. Stubbs of Carden Bottom, six miles south of here, received from the post office there a dollar and the following letter of explanation: “A. D. Stubbs —Dear friend: Please find enclosed |1 for one turkey I killed of yours twenty-seven years ago In the woods hear the mouth of Petit Jean river. This turkey was taken to George Shoemake’s and we cooked it and ate it I am serving God. Will you please forgive me for this sinful act? L. R. Eagan.’’ The letter was mailed at Kansas City. Mr. Stubbs remembers Eagan well, but was not aware of the killing . of the turkey. Mr. Stubbs at once applied the dollar to the cause of foreign missions.

"I’M ONLY 98,” SHE SAYS

Arrested for Begging, New Jersey Woman Denies She’s Too Old to Work. Atlantic City, N. J.—“l had to beg. They all said I was too old to work, but I’m not,” said Mrs. Edna Sheppard when arraigned before Recorder Gaskill on the charge of seeking alms on the streets. “Well, you don’t look exactly like a 'spring chicken. Just what is your age?” inquired the court “Nona of your freshness, young man. I’m ■ only ninety-eight and I’m not ashamed to tell it either,” was the ply“Prisoner, discharged,” was the verdict, after Investigation had shown Mrs. Sheppard really was within two years of the century mark.

Gets Along With Part of Brain.

Paris.—Doctor Guepin has removed one-sixth of a wounded soldier’s brain without the patient suffering serious