So was Helen Jegado a pure blonde. She lived in the time of Louis Philippe; and a great many persons fell victims to her genius for murder. No less than twenty-five are positively known to have been taken off by her. She managed wonderfully to use two innocent women to cover these crimes and to be suspected instead of herself. At the place of execution she exonerated them.
Charlotte Corday's hair "seemed black when fastened in a large mass around her head: it seemed gold-colored at the points of the tresses, like the ear of corn,—deeper and more lustrous than the wheat-stalk in the sunlight." Her variable eyes were "blue when she reflected, almost black when called into animated play." Her skin had the wholesome and marbled whiteness of perfect health.
Rebecca Sharp had "a knack of adopting a demure ingénue air, under which she was most dangerous. She said the wickedest things with the most simple, unaffected air when in this mood, and would take care artlessly to apologize for her blunders, so that all the world should know that she had made them."
Ninon de l'Enclos, and Madame de Chevreuse, the famous conspirator who baffled two cardinals with an admirable mixture of pluck and cunning, were pure blondes. Such women court their objects and pursue their schemes in a manifold and sprightly fashion: their magnetic power flits to and fro, many-colored, subtle, silent, swift as an aurora. They have complicated the policy of courts and sown dissension in cabinets. They misrepresent a statesman's secrets, set one clique against another, stir about in society till it becomes one stupendous snarl; and perhaps you cannot point to a spot upon their reputation. They give slander itself no opportunity to lie as they can do, while they immaculately defy truth to brand as counterfeit the phrases of their charming insincerity. Look at the smooth brow that sheds your scrutiny: there's not a crease nor wrinkle on it where suspicion may lodge to fester. The eyes embrace you with the frankness of Joab, who took Abner aside to speak with him, quietly, asking, "Art thou in health, my brother?" and smote him there under the fifth rib, and left him far from well.
Among blonde women we can easily observe two kinds, which may be called, for brevity, the lunar and the solar. The one kind seems as if blanched by sunlight that has been reflected: it wilts from defect rather than excess of warming power. The passions are low-toned, like the body: a sort of scrofulous habit seems indicated by a too delicate and thin complexion; it lurks in the lifeless yellow or chestnut of the hair, in the unsound teeth and the languid speech. There is little valor for mischief in them, as there is little ambition for achievement. Their virtue seems only a temper that is kept faint as if by constant exudation of the blood.
But the Mary Stuart of history and the Lady Macbeth of Shakspeare belong to a different type. We know that the former had a delicate exterior, auburn hair, and beaming blue eyes: her tone of speaking was gentle and sweet, excellently soft and low. Mrs. Siddons, whose style and color were altogether different, became so saturated with Lady Macbeth as to be convinced she must have been a blonde. We think that Shakspeare implies and justifies this delicate perception, and turns it into history. Both the queens of Scotland represented the kind of blonde women who are fired by sunlight: it crisps the golden or the chestnut hair, becomes quicksilver in the veins, hits every brain-cell with its actinic ray, and chases over the yielding hair in ripples like a blown wheat-field. The voice is low, but ever clear and even,—a fabric closely woven throughout, capable of sustaining the strongest moments of the soul, and of vibrating with them: the whole gamut of passion may be swept by it, from the enticing whisper to the peal of defiance. It is a trumpet, made of silver, and not one note of it is brassy; but it pierces the distance none the less directly, and summons Macbeth by sonorous phrases out of the mist and pointlessness of dreams.
But Nature drew the character of Mary Stuart from elements less simple than were used by Shakspeare in constructing Lady Macbeth. Mary, to all the culture of her times, added various tastes and a delicate susceptibility for art: she loved music, plays, minstrels, games, and was passionately devoted to the chase. Her great pace in hunting, her fiery dash through the underbrush, was observed and has been long remembered. Once, having been thrown from her horse, the attendants found her on the ground, gayly laughing as she put up the dishevelled hair.
In the cold autumn of 1562, she went in person upon an expedition to punish a Highland clan. She jested with fatigues and hardships, "and was as much at her ease," says Froude, "galloping a half-broken stallion over the heather as when languishing in her boudoir over a love-sonnet." She said "she wished she was a man, to know what life it was to lie all night in the field, or to walk on the causey with a Glasgow buckler and a broadsword."
She reminds us of Bathsheba in the novel which has been already quoted. Talking with her maid Liddy, she said, "I hope I am not a bold sort of maid,—mannish?" she continued, with some anxiety. To which Liddy replied, "Oh, no, not mannish; but so almighty womanish that 'tis getting on that way sometimes."
At the age of nineteen, the delicately nurtured woman set sail from France for Scotland, to begin that long, indomitable struggle to succeed Elizabeth, and to break the Reformation in England. The wiliest and most inflexible of Queen Elizabeth's counsellors shivered their weapons against the guard of her swift tact, until imprisonment, which was twice escaped from, and death,—