General Remarks.
Educated men and women of to-day study social, domestic and political economy, forgetting that vital economy that Delsarte teaches is more essential to our interests and the interests of our descendants.
“Relax, relax, relax!” one is tempted to cry in unison with Edmond Russell. Give us what there is in you. Make yourself “a being whose body is the exponent of the soul responsive to every command of the spirit.”
Cease limping through life on high-heeled shoes. Cease lifting the shoulders, fidgeting the hands, painfully raising the eyebrows, and contorting the face into a meaningless smile. Remember that all facial contortions leave indelible traces in their wake. The laugh, or broad smile that half closes, or squints the eyes, engraves those fine ray-like, much-dreaded lines about the eye, known as crow’s feet. Remember that “laughter ages the face more than tears.” Smile more often with the eyes. Let them light up and laugh for you. Trust me, in most cases a vast improvement will result, since scarcely any adult laughs well, and if there is some trait of affectation, frivolity, cruelty, or even coarseness in the character, uncontrolled laughter will be the sure exponent thereof.
Rest more. Do not try to accomplish too many things at once. Do not let your thoughts be weeks or days ahead of you and the task in hand. This would be imposing double duty upon the already strained physique. If the body is at one store, do not let the mind fly off to shop in half a dozen other stores to snatch “bargains” from the hands of other over-burdened ones.
Straighten out the frowns on your strained brows. Cease carrying numberless loose packages, and loads of heavy skirts in your hands, and struggling with the well-dressed mob to secure coveted bargains. They are dearly bought at the loss of beauty, youth and repose. One such day ages the face. If you do not believe it, ye dwellers in cities, go stand before your mirror next time you reach home, dusty, rasped, fragmentary, weary from a day of counter-shoving, neither mistress of yourself nor those about you, and the face that meets your gaze will tell its own story.
Rightly does Herbert Spencer say, “We have had something too much of the gospel of work, it is time to preach the gospel of relaxation.”
And this chapter will have reached its aim if it shall be the means of inducing any to become disciples of Delsarte, restful converts of this gospel of relaxation, which is one with the Gospel of Beauty.
[Art of Dress]
“Dress may be called the speech of the body,” says Mrs. Haweis.
A woman’s dress should be so much the expression of herself that, seeing it, we think not of the gown, but of the woman who is its soul. The true art of dress is reached when it serves only to heighten the charms of the wearer, not to draw attention from her to center upon her garments. One writer on beauty in dress claims that “the object is threefold: to cover, to warm, to beautify,” and in dealing with this latter point farther says that, “rather than to beautify, it is to emphasize beauty.” To this statement should be added that its mission is also to minimize or do away with defects.
Most dressing is done to enhance the beauty of the face, but women should remember that the tint of the complexion, the color of hair and eyes, are but a small part of the personnel. The physique must be taken into account. The “type” is a fact fixed and inevitable, and the woman is wise who sets herself steadfastly to “develop and emphasize its beauties and overshadow and efface its defects.”
It is only by real study that a woman grows to understand and analyze her “type” and suit all accessories to her own personality; to adjust, as it were, her “relations.” Art, after all, is simply, as Edmund Russell admirably defines it, “relations, the right thing in the right place.”
Study your own individuality and assert it in your dress. “No woman need be ugly if she knows her own points,” and some points of attractiveness every woman has. Lord Chesterfield, that cynical man of the world, assures us that “no woman is ugly when she is well dressed.” That is, dressed with reference to revealing good points and concealing weak ones. Time spent in this study is gain, when one remembers in how many ways actual outward ugliness is an impediment. “The greater portion of ill-tempered, ugly women are ill-tempered simply because they believe themselves hopelessly ugly.” A woman, finding her fairer friends constantly preferred despite her vain attempts to please, grows disheartened, then sarcastic, envious, ill-tempered, half unconsciously.
“Knowledge is power; beauty and knowledge combined are well-nigh all-powerful.”