Having laid it down as a first principle, that no demeanor, whether in a princess or a country girl, can be becoming that is not grounded in feminine delicacy, I shall proceed to show, that a different deportment is expected from different persons. Certain characteristics of persons are suited to certain styles of manner; and also the same demeanor does not agree as well with the steward’s daughter as the squire’s bride.
As in a former chapter I have particularized the dresses which are adapted to the gay and the grave, so in the next I propose pointing out the appropriate miens which belong to the various degrees of beauty and classes of society.
PECULIARITIES IN CARRIAGE AND DEMEANOR.
“By her graceful walk, the Queen of Love is known.”
Virgil.
As order is the beautiful harmonizer of the universe, so consistency is the graceful combiner of all that is in woman to perfection.
In reference to this sentiment, her manners must bear due affinity with her figure, and her deportment with her rank. The youthful and delicate-shaped girl is allowed a gaiety of air which would ill become a women of maturer years and larger proportions; but at all times of life, when the figure is slender, a swan-like neck, and the motions are naturally swaying, for that girl, or that woman, to affect what is called a majestic air, would be as unavailing as absurd. It is not in the power of a figure so constructed ever to look majestic. By stiffening her joints, walking with an erect mien, and drawing up her neck, she would certainly be upright; she would seem to have had a determined dancing-master, who, in spite of nature and grace, had made her hold up her head; but she would never look like anything but a stiff, inelegant creature. The character of these slight forms corresponds with their resemblances in the vegetable world: the aspen, the willow, bend their gentle heads at every passing breeze, and their flexible and tender arms toss in the wind with grace and beauty: such is the woman of delicate proportions. She must enter a room either with the buoyant step of a young nymph, if youth is her passport to sportiveness; or, if she is advanced nearer the meridian of life, she then may glide in, with that ease of manner which gives play to all the graceful motions of her elegantly undulating form. For her to crane up her neck, would be to change its fine swan-like bend into the scraggy throat of the ostrich: all her movements should be of a flexible character. Her mode of salutation should be rather a bow than a courtesy; and when she sits, she should model her easy attitude rather by the ideas of the painter, when he would pourtray a reclining nymph, than according to the lessons of the grace-destroying governess, who would marshal her pupils on their chairs like a rank of drilled recruits. In short, for a slender or thin woman, to be stiff at any time, is, in the first case, to render of no effect the advantages of nature; and, in the next, to increase and aggravate her defects, by making it more conspicuous by a constrained and ridiculous carriage.
Though we cannot unite the majestic air which declares command with this easy, nymph-like deportment, the dignity of modesty may be its inseparable companion. The timid, the retreating step; the downcast eye; the varying complexion, “blushing at the deep regard she draws!” all these belong to this class of females; and they are charms so truly feminine, so exquisitely lovely, that I cannot but place them with their counterpart, the ethereal form, as the perfection of female beauty.
The woman whose figure bears nature’s own stamp of majesty, is generally of a stately make; her person is squarer, and has more of embonpoint than the foregoing. The very muscles of her neck are so formed as to show their adaptation to an erect posture. There is a sort of loftiness in the natural movement of her head, in the high swell of her expansive bosom. The step of this woman should be grave and firm: her motions few and commanding; and the carriage of her head and person erect and steady. An excess in stateliness could not have any worse effect on her, than perverting the majesty of nature into the haughtiness of art. We might admire or revere the first; the last we would probably resent and detest. The dignified beauty must therefore beware of overstraining the natural bent of her character: it is like the bombast of exalted language which never fails to lose its aim, and engender disgust. We might laugh at a delicate girl, so far exaggerating the pliancy of her form and ease of manners, as to twist herself into the thousand antics of a Columbine: she aims at pleasing us, and though she chooses the wrong method, we will not frown, but only smile at the ridiculous exhibition. But when a majestic fair one presumes to arrogate an undue consequence in her air, it is not to gratify our senses that she assumes the extraordinary diadem: and, irritated at the contempt her greatness would wish to throw upon us inferior personages, we treat her like an usurper; and, armed with a sense of injustice, we determine to pull her at once from her throne.
The easy, graceful air, we see, belongs exclusively to the slender beauty, and the moderated majestic mien to a greater embonpoint.
There is a race of women whose persons have no determined character. These must regulate and adopt their demeanors according to the degrees in which they approach the two before-mentioned classes. But in all cases, let it never be forgotten, that a too faint copy of a model is better than an overcharged one. Excess is always bad. Moderation never offends. By falling easily into the degree of undulating grace, or the dignified demeanor which suits your character, you merely put on the robe which nature designed, and the habit will be fit and becoming.