All the light-complexioned women may be classed as blondes, whether the pure red and white that strive for ascendency be pacified by golden hair, or whether a more even tint of the cheek find its correspondence in hair of chestnut hue. There are also women of high vitality, with gifts never too forthputting because blended into a harmonious disposition, who contribute still a fresh tone to this chromatic scale; for their heads wear the crisp aureole of another shade that seems to invite you, as William Blake, the painter, invited his city friend, to a "thatched roof of rusted gold." Beneath these roofs we can take shelter, fearing no catastrophe, unless the rich and winning manners bring one on. In Bellini's portrait of Cassandra Fedeli,[21] the famous improvisatrice, whom the Venetians crowned early in the sixteenth century, this gracious style of woman is preserved.
There is a kind of brunette whose eyes are black as the sloe-berry, with the pupil and the iris melted together: they are couched underneath sombre hedges of eyebrows, and silently keep a good look-out. "The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman:" so can the princesses of the same color be ladies, but their style may ambush wickedness enough to task the most adventurous resources of a criminal lawyer. You will notice, however, that their scheming minds are endowed with little sprightliness. Intrigue does not put forth a sparkling surface that is swept by the light thrills of various moods that blow: the social prattle lacks the tone of charming simplicity and ease. The face is subject to lowering weather when one of these women meditates a poisoning: there is one clinch of the teeth as the limbs collect to make a fatal spring, one glance askant at the person whom she is diplomatically entertaining with arrangements for his ruin. They cannot so readily nurse a fell purpose with a melting air of maternity which transpires in every line of the face and limbs, as the victim is held cosingly to the fatal breast. He is clutched a little too menacingly, and has time for a suspicion concerning the nutriment he is about to draw.
But when blonde women have a talent for mischief, they delicately distinguish themselves from the brunettes in the style of it. For downright, unadulterated mischief, let us be commended to the blonde women of the Indo-Germanic races. And frequently it is merely organic, with no more premeditation or sense of consciousness than a stinging-nettle has. They know how to be unaffectedly unscrupulous, as Miss Rosamond Vincy was in "Middlemarch," with a gay versatility that is rare in women of a differently-tempered color. Your riant blonde can drop a bolt from a clear sky, and scatter your long-projected picnic with sudden misery. As you look up, it is hardly credible: how or when did the weather change? You almost doubt the evidence of sense. Darnley must have been blown up by accident. There will always be two parties relative to any transaction which implicates a blonde woman, because her resources of demeanor are so ample, she can recur to them so nimbly, she can meet gathering suspicions with such angelic refutation in her smile, and the sluice-gates of emotion are so nicely hung that a touch of taper fingers can let into the scene a freshet of disclaimer that sweeps your rubbishy doubts away. Not a smut escapes from the internal simmering to settle upon the snow-white guarantee of appearance. She reminds us of that adaptation to machines which exercise a driving-power, by which they are enabled to consume their own smoke and cinders. Her transparency of skin, and the freshness of color that spreads up to the temple's whiteness like an after-glow upon the glacier, lend the proper blush to all her actions. She enjoys the constant advantage of a face that has the traditional tint of innocency: when delicate culture and mobile gifts are behind, sportive moods come out to make a charming din that just drowns the blab of mischief.
If the poets have assigned good and noble actions to the blonde women of the imagination, the same function working in legendary lore has attributed from the most ancient times, and with striking persistency, mankind's woes to golden beauties. "Lilith, the first wife of Adam, was a cold, passionless, splendid woman, with wondrous golden hair. She was created Adam's equal in every respect, therefore properly enough refused to obey him. For this she was driven from the Garden of Eden; and Eve was made to order out of one of Adam's ribs. Then the Golden-haired Lilith, jealous, enraged, pining for her lost home in Paradise, took the form of a serpent, crept into the garden, and tempted Adam and Eve to their destruction. And from that day to this, Lilith, the cold, passionless beauty with golden hair, has roamed up and down the earth, snaring the sons of Adam and destroying them. You may always know her dead victims; for, whenever a man has been destroyed by the hands of Lilith, you will always find a single golden hair wrapped tight around his lifeless heart."[22]
A late poet unwinds into verse the fatal hair around his heart:—
"Seeing thy face, with all thy fluctuant hair
Falling in dull gold opulence from thy brow,
Watching thy light blue eyes, now fired, or now
Laughterful, or now dim as with despair,
I wonder, friend, that it should be God's care
To have made at all (what matter when or how?)
A being so sadly, desolately rare,
So beautifully incomplete as thou!
"O rank, black pool, with one star's imaged form!
O deep, rich-hearted rose, with rot at core!
O summer heaven, half-purpled with stern storm!
O lily, with one white leaf dipt in gore!
O angel shape, whom over curves and clings
The awful imminence of a devil's wings!"
Greek genius understood of course that when Pandora was endowed with gifts, Aphrodite took a double handful of the golden foam off Cyprus, whence her own blondness rose, and gilded Pandora's clay. What a pity that the mischievous Hermes put a thieving flattery into that gracious form! It ran into the fingers with an instinct to baffle man's profoundest forethought. In one of her Greek aspects she was called Ἁνησἱδωδοϛ, bestower of presents, like those of Ceres, colored like the golden-bearded rye and corn.
Lydgate married Miss Rosamond, that piece of unexceptionable blondness, whose temper during matrimonial crises was so cool and even as to amount to the highest provocation. A perfectly well-regulated bit of Nature's chasteness was this wife, who went about the town prevaricating and misrepresenting when her husband's affairs had become involved, telling fresh fibs to cover the flanks of her first ones; thus building a track that shunted him off into ever new embarrassments. Infantile bloominess of flesh and even-tempered eyes were nothing but the skim of tortuous pride; and a lie dropped from her lips the prettiest product in the world.
Shakspeare fancied that Caliban's mother, Sycorax, was a "blue-eyed hag." Bianca Capello, a woman of solid and whole-souled powers of mischief, was the "golden-haired" sorceress of Venice.
The women of the Huzules, a Sclavonic tribe that has settled in the Carpathian range, are vastly superior to the men. The blonde type predominates. They ride horses astride, and in morals are perfect Messalinas, filling the villages with intrigues which frequently have most tragic terminations.