FAMOUS BEAUTIES
And like another Helen, fired another Troy.—Dryden.
Cleopatra
What was her inner character? A voluptuous woman of the East, say the Romans, eager to enchain any master of a Roman army by the foulest arts; the Roman oligarchy not only hated but dreaded Cleopatra. To them she was the representative of that “regal” sway, that rule by volition instead of by traditional order, which, with their statesmanlike instinct, they saw the triumphant aristocrat whom their system tended to produce would ultimately desire. They cursed her as the greatest of Asiatic harlots, whereas she was more of a Greek, and much more like Mary Stuart as her enemies have painted her, a woman unscrupulous in gratifying her fancies, careless even of murder when needful—Cleopatra murdered her brother-husband, just as Mary murdered her cousin-husband—but who used her charms chiefly as instruments to attain her ends, which were, first of all, the empire of the East, which her ancestors had striven to acquire—and very nearly acquired. She always selected as a lover the head of the invading Roman army, and always used him to help her in founding, as she hoped, the empire of the East. Her attractive power was probably not her beauty. Her coins do not reveal a beautiful woman, but a broad-browed, thoughtful queen; and Plutarch, in describing her, evidently speaks on the authority of men whose fathers had studied her face. He says,—
“Her actual beauty, it is said, was not in itself so remarkable that none could be compared with her, or that no one could see her without being struck by it, but the contact of her presence, if you lived with her, was irresistible: the attraction of her person, joining with the charm of her conversation and the character that attended all she said or did, was something bewitching. It was a pleasure merely to hear the sound of her voice, with which, like an instrument of many strings, she could pass from one language to another; so that there were few of the barbarian nations that she answered by an interpreter; in most of them she spoke herself, as to the Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes, Parthians and many others, whose language she had learned.”
Phryne
This Athenian hetæra was a creature of surpassing physical perfection. She acquired so much wealth by her charms that she offered to rebuild the walls of Thebes if she might put on them this inscription: “Alexander destroyed them, but Phryne rebuilt them.” Apelles’ celebrated picture of Venus Anadyomene was from Phryne, who entered the sea with hair dishevelled for a model. She is shown rising from the sea, and wringing the water from her hair with her hands. The Cnidian Venus of Praxiteles was also taken from the same model. Among his most celebrated works the Cnidian Aphrodite stands first, as one of the most famous art creations of antiquity. “The old authors,” says Lübke, “are filled with its fame; and they relate that the Bithynian king, Nicomedes, offered the people of Cnidos the payment of their whole state debt in exchange for this work. The artist had represented the goddess entirely nude, but had modified this bold innovation by making her left hand about to take up a garment, as though she had just emerged from the bath, while with her right she modestly shielded her person. The quiet of her posture was enlivened by a delicate sense of life, which gave to the outlines of the beautiful form a pleasant look of animation: the glance of the eyes had that liquid, melting expression, which, far removed from the mere craving of desire, might best convey the tender longing of a goddess of love. However numerous may be the copies of this famous statue that have come down to us, they can, at best, only convey to us the outward characteristics of its attitude, not the exquisite purity of the work of Praxiteles himself.”
William W. Story’s beautiful lines on Praxiteles and Phryne are well worth quoting here:
A thousand silent years ago,
The twilight faint and pale
Was drawing o’er the sunset glow
Its soft and shadowy veil,—
When from his work the sculptor stayed
His hand and turned to one
Who stood beside him half in shade,
Said with a sigh, “’Tis done.”
Thus much is saved from chance and change,
That waits for me and thee,
Thus much—how little! from the range
Of Death to Destiny.
Phryne, thy human lips shall pale,
Thy rounded limbs decay,—
Nor love nor prayers can aught avail
To bid thy beauty stay;
But there thy smile for centuries
On marble lips shall live,—
For Art can grant what love denies
And fix the fugitive.
Sad thought! nor age, nor death shall fade
The youth of this cold bust,
When this quick brain and hand that made,
And thou and I are dust!
When all our hopes and fears are dead
And both our hearts are cold,
And love is like a tune that’s played
And life a tale that’s told,
This senseless stone so coldly fair
That love nor life can warm,
The same enchanting look shall wear,
The same enchanting form.
Its peace no changes shall destroy,
Its beauty age shall spare,
The bitterness of vanished joy,
The wearing waste of care.
And there upon that silent face
Shall unborn ages see
Perennial youth, perennial grace
And sealed serenity.
And strangers, when we sleep in peace,
Shall say not quite unmoved,
So smiled upon Praxiteles
The Phryne whom he loved.
Isabella of Castile
Irving says in his “Life of Columbus”: “Contemporary writers have been enthusiastic in their descriptions of Isabella, but time has sanctioned their eulogies. She is one of the purest and most beautiful characters in history. She was well-formed, of middle size, with great dignity and gracefulness of deportment, and a mingled gravity of sweetness of demeanor. Her complexion was fair, her hair auburn; her eyes were of a clear blue, with a benign expression; and there was a singular modesty in her countenance, gracing, as it did, a wonderful firmness of purpose and earnestness of spirit. Though strongly attached to her husband, and studious of his fame, yet she always maintained her distinct rights as an allied prince. She exceeded in beauty, in personal dignity, in acuteness of genius, and in grandeur of soul. Combining the active and resolute qualities of man with the softer charities of woman, she mingled in the warlike councils of her husband, engaged personally in his enterprises, and in some instances, surpassed him in the firmness and intrepidity of her measures; while, being inspired with a truer idea of glory, she infused a more lofty and generous temper into his subtle and calculating policy.
“While all her public thoughts and acts were princely and august, her private habits were simple, frugal, and unostentatious. In the intervals of state business, she assembled around her the ablest men in literature and science, and directed herself by their counsels, in promoting letters and arts. Through her patronage, Salamanca, the great seat of learning in Spain, rose to that height which it assumed among the learned institutions of the age. She promoted the distribution of honors and rewards for the promulgation of knowledge; she fostered the art of printing recently invented, and encouraged the establishment of presses in every part of the kingdom.
Prescott, in his “History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella,” in describing the personal appearance of the queen, says: “She was exceedingly beautiful; ‘the handsomest lady,’ says one of the household [Oviedo], ‘whom I ever beheld, and the most gracious in her manners.’ The portrait still existing of her, in the royal palace, is conspicuous for an open symmetry of features indicative of the natural serenity of temper, and that beautiful harmony of intellectual and moral qualities which most distinguished her. It is not easy to obtain a dispassionate portrait of Isabella. The Spaniards who revert to her glorious reign are so smitten with her moral perfections, that even in depicting her personal attractions, they borrow somewhat of the exaggerated coloring of romance.”
Diana of Poitiers
Francis I. and his son Henry II. of France were both controlled, even in the most important affairs, by female influence, and by shallow-minded and incapable favorites. The mistress of the former was the Duchess d’Etampes, and that of the latter, Diana of Poitiers, widow of Louis de Brézé, grand seneschal of Normandy. Henry was the junior of Diana by nearly twenty years, but this difference did not prevent her, at the age of forty, from attaching herself to the dauphin. While Francis lived, the two favorites divided the court, but upon the accession of the dauphin as Henry II. Diana became virtual mistress of the kingdom, Henry being a man of dull understanding and feeble character, and her rival, d’Etampes, was sent into exile. The young queen, Catherine de Medici, was noted for her beauty and accomplishments, but both were unavailing against the complete ascendency of Diana. Her wonderful beauty and her fascination were such that the king gave her many public tokens of his infatuation, admitted her to his councils, and created her Duchess of Valentinois. She retained her power over the royal lover until his death, even at the age of sixty, ruling him with the double force of her beauty and her intellect.
Ninon de L’Enclos
This modern Aspasia, like her Greek prototype, was remarkable not only for her beauty and wit, but for her fondness for cultivated society. Both of them, though of easy virtue and devoted to pleasure to the end of life, held receptions which were frequented by the most intellectual men and women of the period in which they lived. Ninon had a constant succession of lovers, but at the same time her society was courted by Mme. de Lafayette, Mme. de Sully, Mme. Scarron (afterward De Maintenon), and Christina of Sweden, and among her most favored admirers were the great Condé, La Rochefoucauld, Villarceaux, and D’Estrées. She was regarded as a model of refinement and elegance in her manners. She lived to the age of ninety, yet preserved her beauty and fascination to the last. She had lovers for three generations in the family of Sévigné. She had two illegitimate sons, one of whom, in ignorance of his birth and relationship, was the victim of an unhallowed passion for his mother. He was then nineteen years of age, and Ninon was fifty-six. While urging his love, she found that the only way to check his importunity was to disclose her secret. Thereupon he blew out his brains, but the tragedy made little impression upon Ninon, as she was dead to the instincts of maternal tenderness.
Mary Stuart
Of all unsolved problems of history, says Lyman Abbott, there is none more perplexing, none more seemingly insoluble, than that afforded by the career and character of Mary Queen of Scots. Time has done nothing to detract from the peculiar witchery of her charms, or the romantic interest which attaches to her strange adventures. Her admirers are as enthusiastic three centuries removed from her as were those who fell beneath the peculiar spell of her presence—a spell which few were ever able wholly to resist. The controversy which waged about her while living continues as hot, and almost as bitter, over her grave. History can come no nearer a verdict than could her own contemporaries. Its only answer, like theirs, is, “We cannot agree.”
The difficulties which beset any attempt to tell correctly the story of her career, to analyze aright her character, are very great. The student of history finds no impartial witness; few in her own time who are not ready to tell and to believe about her the most barefaced lies which will promote their own party. During her life she was calumniated and eulogized with equal audacity. Since her death the same curiously contradictory estimates of her character have been vigorously maintained—by those, too, who have not their judgment impaired by the prejudices which environed her. On one hand, we are assured that she was “the most amiable of women;” “the upright queen, the noble and true woman, the faithful spouse, and affectionate mother;” “the poor martyred queen;” “the helpless victim of fraud and force;” an “illustrious victim of statecraft,” whose “kindly spirit in posterity and matchless heroism in misfortune” award her “the most prominent place in the annals of her sex.” On the other hand, we are assured by men equally competent to judge, that she was “a spoiled beauty;” “the heroine of an adulterous melodrame;” “the victim of a blind imperious passion;” an “apt scholar in the profound dissimulation of that school of which Catherine de Medici was the chief instructor;” “a bad woman disguised in the livery of a martyr,” having “a proud heart, a crafty wit, and indurate mind against God and his truth;” “a bold, unscrupulous, ambitious woman,” with “the panther’s nature—graceful, beautiful, malignant, untamable.”
Dr. Abbott thus summarizes a net-work of evidence: A wife learns to loathe her husband; utters her passionate hate in terms that are unmistakable; is reconciled to him for a purpose; casts him off when that purpose is accomplished; makes no secret of her desire for a divorce; listens with but cold rebuke to intimations of his assassination; dallies while he languishes upon a sick-bed so long as death is near; hastens to him only when he is convalescent; becomes, in seeming, reconciled to him; by her blandishments allays his terror and arrests his flight, which nothing else could arrest; brings him with her to the house chosen by the assassins for his tomb—a house which has absolutely nothing else to recommend it but its singular adaptation to the deed of cruelty to be wrought there; remains with him till within two hours of his murder; hears with unconcern the story of his tragic end, which thrills all other hearts with horror; makes no effort to bring the perpetrators of the crime to punishment; rewards the suspected with places and pensions, and the chief criminal (Bothwell) with her hand in marriage while the blood is still wet on his.
Before the murder of Darnley it was the misfortune of Mary’s life that stories against which a fair reputation should be a sufficient defence stick to her like burs to a shaggy coat; stories of unwomanly intimacy first with Chastelar, then with Rizzio, and then with Bothwell. She was certainly careless, if not criminal. At least, so thought John Knox and the straiter sect of the Covenanters.
Pompadour
In the long roll of left-hand queens there is no one whose career affords anything approaching the attraction for the student of history that is offered by that of Mme. de Pompadour. For nineteen years she was the virtual ruler of France,—in other words, the ruler of the greatest power in Europe. She conferred pensions and places, appointed Generals, selected Ambassadors, made and unmade Prime Ministers. Upon her rests the responsibility for the sudden but not unreasonable change in the traditional policy of France towards the House of Hapsburg, which enabled the vindictive Maria Theresa to fan the ashes of the War of the Austrian Succession into the devouring flame which ravaged Europe for seven years. To her influence, also, must be attributed in a great measure the suppression of the Jesuits in France.
If we turn from politics to other aspects of French civilization, we cannot but recognize the imprint of her hand. It is to her that France is indebted for the manufacture of Sèvres porcelain, while the establishment of the Ecole Militaire, which, in the twenty-seven years of its existence, gave to the country so many distinguished officers, Napoleon among the number, was mainly due to her efforts. In her also men of letters and artists found a generous and appreciative friend. She protected Voltaire and Montesquieu, rescued the elder Crébillon from poverty and neglect, encouraged Diderot and d’Alembert in their labors and made the fortune of Marmontel. It was she who introduced Boucher and his works to the court of Louis XV. and promoted in every way the interests of his fellow-painters. In a word, from the day on which she was installed at Versailles as maîtresse déclarée or maítresse en titre, till her death in 1764, a period of some nineteen years, the influence of Mme. de Pompadour was paramount in all matters, from politics to porcelain, and she was, in fact, the true sovereign in France.
How was it possible that a woman of middle-class origin, the daughter of a man who had been forced to fly his country to escape being broken on the wheel, should attain to a post which had hitherto been regarded as the peculiar appanage of the daughters of nobles, and, generally, of great nobles? It is certain that from the beginning her elevation was the signal for an outburst of hostility to which a less remarkable woman must have succumbed. She was called upon to face at once the enmity of the royal family, of powerful ministers, of ladies of the court, of the Jesuits, and of the rabble of Paris, for even the latter resented their sovereign’s departure from the custom observed by his predecessors of selecting mistresses from the noblesse. Not only did she never flinch for a moment from the unequal contest, but never till the hour of her death did she fail to sustain her position of predominance, except for a brief interval, when the attempt of Damiens to assassinate Louis XV. seemed to render her fall inevitable. When she died at the early age of 42, she did not succumb to the fear of any personal rivals or enemies, but to the mortification and grief produced by the disastrous outcome of the war into which she had dragged her country.
To the question how it was possible for a woman of middle-class origin to achieve what she did it scarcely suffices to say that, by the verdict even of unfriendly contemporaries, she was the most thoroughly accomplished and highly educated woman in France. She was also one of the most beautiful, and, by all odds, the most fascinating. Touching this point, the evidence of Diderot’s friend, Georges le Roy, may be cited. “She was,” he says “rather above the middle height, slender, supple and graceful. Her hair was luxurious, of a light, chestnut shade rather than fair, and the eyebrows which crowned her magnificent eyes were of the same hue. She had a perfectly formed nose, a charming mouth, lovely teeth, and a ravishing smile, while the most exquisite skin one could wish to behold put the finishing touch to all her beauty. Her eyes had a singular fascination, which they owed, perhaps, to the uncertainty of their color. They possessed neither the dazzling splendor of black eyes, the tender languor of blue, nor yet the peculiar keenness of gray. Their undecided color seemed to lend to them every kind of charm, and to express in turn all the feelings of an intensely mobile nature.” It is said her foot, her hand, her figure, were of a perfection acclaimed by painters and by sculptors, and that her temperament was intensely sympathetic and ardent.
Eugénie
The courtiers at the Tuileries used to say that no other woman who then sat on a throne could display so small a foot or so dainty a hand as Empress Eugénie. Her stature was less than middle height, or about the same as the Emperor’s; her figure was lithe and supple, and her arms, shoulders and bust, while ample, were delicately moulded. Her long neck, with its gentle curves, was pronounced by not a few painters to be a model which the old Greeks might have envied in their conceptions of female grace. Her carriage in its lightness and quickness betokened a compact, muscular strength, and there were few women of her court who surpassed her in physical endurance.
Despite the general smallness of her head it was more than usually high and broad above the eyes, and this served to impart to her oval face an expression of mental power. The eyes were variously described by writers of the time as blue, as dark blue, as grayish-blue and as dark gray. But all agreed in ascribing to them a remarkable crystal-like lustre under the shade of sweeping lashes. In truth, their color appears to have taken on different hues at different times, and the peculiarly fine arching of the brows framed them with something like a piquant outline. The nose, slightly inclined to be aquiline, and the small mouth and chin were perhaps the least striking of the features. But the teeth when she smiled shone with a sort of dazzling whiteness, and, indeed, gave rise to a fashion of wearing false ones like them. Her skin, which was of a slightly olive tinge, was so smooth and velvety that the most envious women who surrounded her thought that in neither gaslight nor sunlight was it less clear and pure, and that no art could bring it nearer perfection. Her profusion of light brown hair, which was often described as golden, and which it was thought she artificially colored, was looked upon by many as her chief charm. It was her custom to wear violets in it; in her childhood a fortune-teller had told her that the violet was the flower of the Bonapartes and that time would make it hers, too; and so it was that it long became the favorite of every beauty in the civilized world who thought that she looked like Eugénie, or who made Eugénie her standard of fashion.
The Countess Montijo before her marriage to Napoleon III. was a picturesque figure. She frequented the bull fights at Madrid in odd fancy costumes, she galloped through the streets of the city of an afternoon on a horse without a saddle, and smoking a cigar or cigarette, and she often appeared in man’s attire. The gilded youths of Madrid raved about her, fluttered round her—but not one of them wanted to marry her. Here is a picture set forth by one who saw her at one of her favorite bull fights:
Her slender figure is well defined by a costly bodice which enhances her beauty and elegance. Her dainty hand is armed with a riding whip, instead of a fan, for she generally arrives at the circus on a wild Andalusian horse, and in her belt she carries a sharp-pointed dagger. Her little feet are incased in red satin boots. Her head is crowned with her broad, golden plaits, interwoven with pearls and real flowers; her clear brow shines with youth and beauty and her gentle blue eyes sparkle from beneath the long lashes which almost conceal them. Her exquisitely formed nose, her mouth, fresher than a rosebud; the perfect oval of her face, the loveliness of which is only equalled by her graceful bearing, arouses the admiration of all. She is the recognized queen of beauty. It is she who crowns the victorious toreador, and her white hands present him with the prize due to his courage or agility, while she accompanies the gift with her most captivating smile.
In the early years of her married life the Empress was heartily admired by the French people. She was certainly beautiful, and she filled her position with unexpected dignity and grace. Her kindness of heart was great and unaffected, and she inaugurated notable charitable enterprises with a judgment remarkably good. In most directions she was a better wife than Napoleon III. deserved, and she was an excellent mother. If the Court over which she presided was a frivolous, corrupt, and vulgar one, it was perhaps not altogether her fault. The Paris tradesmen assuredly had no reason to turn against her, for her craze for dress and show kept a stream of gold running through their shops, and there was always something on the carpet with which to amuse the crowd. The Church, too, had reason to think well of her, for she was ever its devout, not to say bigoted, adherent. Whenever she meddled with politics she was mischievous, even absurd. She was bitter in her hatreds, and foolish in many of her friendships. It is to her credit that she always showed great respect for brains, and admired even those who attacked her in print if they did it cleverly. Her literary tastes were not profound nor otherwise unusual, but they were far from contemptible. She had some taste in art—but not enough, be it remembered, to prevent her from introducing the most hideous abomination of modern times, the enormous crinoline. She set the pace in fashion towards the novel rather than the beautiful, and the feminine world has not yet, in truth, fallen out of step. She was never a thoroughly happy woman, even when the world seemed to offer her most. The sharpest thorn in her lot was her consciousness that she was not born in the purple, and she felt to the depths of her being the slights she received from those more fortunately placed. Her grandfather, Kirkpatrick, who hailed from the north of Ireland, settled in Malaga, and engaged in a large grocery trade. Eventually he married Mlle. Grevigny, the daughter of a wealthy grocer of Bruges, Belgium. They had two remarkably handsome daughters, one of whom married Count de Teba, afterward Count Montijo. The Montijos are a very ancient Spanish house. The origin of the family goes back farther than the institution of nobility in Spain, and among its ancestors are Alfonso Perez de Guzman, that hero of the thirteenth century whose exploits are still recounted by Spanish peasants, as well as Gonsalvo de Cordova, the great general and friend of Columbus.