In breaking her rusty fetters, and stepping out into the glorious liberty of the free, Woman has one great thing to remember and to strive for,—a thing that she is at present, in her newly emancipated condition, somewhat prone to forget. In claiming and securing intellectual equality with Man, she should ever bear in mind that such a position is only to be held by always maintaining and preserving as great an Unlikeness to him as possible in her life and surroundings. Let her imitate him in nothing but independence and individuality. Let her eschew his fashions in dress, his talk and his manners. A woman who wears “mannish” clothes, smokes cigars, rattles out slang, gambles at cards, and drinks brandy and soda on the slightest provocation, is lost altogether, both as woman and man, and becomes sexless. But the woman whose dress is always becoming and graceful, whose voice is equable and tender, who enhances whatever beauty she possesses by exquisite manner, unblemished reputation, and intellectual capacity combined, raises herself not only to an equality with man, but goes so far above him that she straightway becomes the Goddess and he the Worshipper. This is as it should be. Men adore what they cannot imitate. Therefore when men are drunken, let women be sober; when men are licentious, let women be chaste; when men are turf-hunters and card-players, let women absent themselves from both the race-course and the gambling-table; and while placing a gentle yet firm ban on laxity in morals and disregard of the binding sanctity of family life, let them silently work on and make progress in every art, every profession, every useful handicraft, that they may not be dependent for home or livelihood on man’s merely casual fancy or idle whim. The mistake of Woman’s progress up to the present, has been her slavish imitation of Man’s often unadmirable tastes, and a pathetic “going down” under his lofty disdain. Once grasp the fact that his disdain is not “lofty” but merely comic, and that his case is only that of the Distressful Peacock, hurt by indifference to his tail, things will right themselves. Nature has already endowed Woman with the contrasting elements of beauty, delicacy, and soft charm, as opposed to man’s frequent ugliness and roughness; let Woman herself continue to emphasize the difference by bringing out her original and individual qualities in all she does or attempts to do. Of course for a long time yet, Man will declare “feminine individuality” to be non-existent; but as we know the quality is as plain and patent as “masculine individuality,” we have only to insist upon it and assert it, and in due course it will be fully admitted and acknowledged. Meantime, while pressing on towards the desired goal, Woman must learn the chief lesson of successful progress, which is, not to copy Man, but to carefully preserve her beautiful Unlikeness to him in every possible way, so that, while asserting and gaining intellectual equality with him, she shall gradually arrive at such ascendancy as to prove herself ever the finer and the nobler Creature.
THE PALM OF BEAUTY
It would seem, according to the society press, that beauty is a very common article. Indeed, if we are to accept the innocent ebullitions of the callow youths who drink beer and play skittles in the Social-Paragraph line of journalism, and who in their soft guilelessness are taken in and “used” by certain ladies of a type resembling Miss Skeggs and Lady Blarney in the Vicar of Wakefield, we are bound to believe that beautiful women are as common as blackberries, only more so. In the columns devoted by newspaper editors to the meanderings of those intelligent persons, male and female, who sign themselves as Onlookers, Observers, Butterflies, Little Tomtits, and what may be called “I Spys!” generally, one hardly ever sees the name of a lady without the epithet “beautiful” tacked on to it, especially if the lady happens to have money. This is curious, but true. And supposing the so-called Beautiful One has not only money, commonly speaking, but heaps of money, mines of money, she is always stated to be “young” as well. The heavier the bullion, the more assured the youthfulness. If unkind Time shows her to be the mother of a family where the eldest sprout is some twenty odd years of age, the complaisant “I Spy” is equal to the occasion and writes of her thus—“The beautiful Mrs. Juno-Athene brought her eldest girl, looking more like her sister than her mother.” Whereat Mrs. Juno-Athene is satisfied,—everybody smiles, and all things are cosy and comfortable. If any one should dare to say, especially in print, that Mrs. Juno-Athene is not “beautiful” at all, nor “youthful” in either looks or bearing, there would be ructions. Somebody would get into trouble. The “I Spy” might even be dismissed from his or her post of social paragraphist to the Daily Error. Heaven forbid that such a catastrophe should happen through the indiscretion of a mere miserable truth-monger! Let Mrs. Juno-Athene be beautifully and eternally young, by all means, so long as she can afford to pay for it. The humbug of it is at any rate kindly and chivalrous, and does nobody any harm, while it puts money in the purse of the hardworking penster, who is compelled to deal delicately with these little social matters sometimes, or else ruminate on a dinner instead of eating it.
Nevertheless, despite the “I Spys,” and the perennial charms of Mrs. Juno-Athene, beauty is as rare and choice a thing as ever it was in the days of old when men went mad for it, and Greeks and Trojans fought for Helen, who, so some historians say, was past forty when her bewitching fairness set the soul of Troy on fire. A really beautiful woman is scarcely ever seen, not even in Great Britain, where average good looks are pleasantly paramount. Prettiness,—the prettiness which is made up of a good skin, bright eyes, soft and abundant hair, and a supple figure,—is quite ordinary. It can be seen every day among barmaids, shop girls, and milliners’ mannequins. But Beauty—the divine and subtle charm which enraptures all beholders,—the perfect form, united to the perfect face in which pure and noble thought is expressed in every feature, in every glance of eye, in every smile that makes a sweet mouth sweeter,—this is what we may search for through all the Isles of Britain, ay, and through Europe and America and the whole world besides, and seldom or never find it.
Nine-tenths of the women who are styled “beautiful” by the society paragraphist, possess merely the average good looks;—the rest are generally more particularly distinguished by some single and special trait which may perchance be natural, and may equally be artificial, such as uncommon-coloured hair (which may be dyed), a brilliant complexion (which may be put on), or a marvellously “svelte” figure (which may be the happy result of carefully designed corsets, well pulled in). Most of the eulogized “beauties” of the Upper Ten to-day, have, or are able to get, sufficient money or credit supplied to them for dressing well,—and not only well, but elaborately and extravagantly, and dress is often the “beauty” instead of the woman. To judge whether the woman herself is really beautiful without the modiste’s assistance, it would be necessary to see her deprived of all her fashionable clothes. Her bought hair should be taken off and only the natural remainder left. She should be content to stand sans paint, sans powder, sans back coil, sans corsets, in a plain white gown, falling from her neck and shoulders to her feet, and thus cheaply, yet decently clad, submit herself to the gaze of her male flatterers in full daylight. How many of the “beautiful” Mrs. Juno-Athenes or the “lovely” Lady Spendthrifts could stand such a test unflinchingly? Yet the simplest draperies clothe the Greek marbles when they are clothed at all, and jewels and fripperies on the goddess Diana would make her grace seem vulgar and her perfection common. Beauty, real beauty, needs no “creator of costume” to define it, but is, as the poets say, when unadorned, adorned the most.
Now it is absolutely impossible to meet with any “unadorned” sort of beauty in those circles of rank and fashion where the society paragraphist basks at his or her pleasure. On the contrary, there is so much over-adornment in vogue that it is sometimes difficult to find the actual true colour and personality of certain ladies whose charms are daily eulogized by an obliging press. Layers of pearl enamel picked out with rouge, entirely conceal their human identity. It is doubtful whether there was ever more face-painting and “faking up” of beauty than there is now,—never did beauty specialists and beauty doctors drive such a roaring trade. The profits of beauty-faking are enormous. Some idea of it may be gained by the fact that there is a certain shrewd and highly intelligent “doctor” in Paris, who, seeing which way the wind of fashion blows, brews a harmless little mixture of rose-water, eau-de-cologne, tincture of benzoin and cochineal, which materials are quite the reverse of costly, and calling it by a pretty sobriquet, sells the same at twenty-five shillings a bottle! He is making a fortune out of women’s stupidity, is this good “doctor,” and who shall blame him? Fools exist merely that the wise may use them. One has only to read the ladies’ papers, especially the advertisements therein, to grasp a faint notion of what is being done to spur on the “beauty” craze. Yet beauty remains as rare and remote as ever, and often when we see some of the ladies whose “exquisite loveliness” has been praised for years in nearly every newspaper on this, or the other side of the Atlantic, we fall back dismayed, with a sense of the deepest disappointment and aggravation, and wonder what we have done to be so deceived?
Taken in the majority, the women of Great Britain are supposed to hold the palm of beauty against all other women of the nations of the world, and if the word “beauty” be changed to prettiness, the supposition is no doubt correct. It is somewhat unfortunate, however, that either through the advice of their dressmakers or their own erroneous conceptions of Form, they should appear to resent the soft outlines and gracious curves of nature, for either by the over-excess of their outdoor sports, or the undue compression of corsets, they are gradually doing away with their originally intended shapes and becoming as flat-chested as jockeys under training. No flat-chested woman is pretty. No woman with large hands, large feet, and the coarse muscular throat and jaw developed by constant bicycle-riding, can be called fascinating. The bony and resolute lady whose lines of figure run straight down without a curve anywhere from head to heel, may possibly be a good athlete, but her looks are by no means to her advantage. Men’s hearts are not enthralled or captured by a Something appearing to be neither man nor woman. And there are a great many of these Somethings about just now. I am ignorant as to whether American women go in for mannish sports as frequently and ardently as their British sisters, but I notice that they have daintier hands and feet, and less pronounced “muscle.”
At the same time American women on an average, are not so pretty as British women on the same average. The American complexion is unfortunate. Often radiant and delicate in earliest youth, it fades with maturity like a brilliant flower scorched by too hot a sun, and once departed returns no more. The clear complexion of British women is their best feature. The natural rose and white skin of an English, Irish or Scottish girl,—especially a girl born and bred in the country, is wonderfully fresh and lovely and lasting, and often accompanies her right through her life to old age. That is, of course, if she leaves it alone, and is satisfied merely to keep it clean, without any “adornment” from the beauty doctor. And, though steadily withholding the divine word “beauty” from the greater portion of the “beauties” at the Court of King Edward VII. it is unquestionably the fact that the prettiest women in the world are the British. Americans are likely to contest this. They will, as indeed in true chivalry they must, declare that their own “beauties” are best. But one can only speak from personal experience, and I am bound to say that I have never seen a pretty American woman pretty enough to beat a pretty British woman. This, with every possible admission made for the hard-working society paragraphist, compelled to write of numerous “beautiful” Ladies So-and-So, and “charming” Mrs. Cashboxes, who, when one comes to look at them are neither “beautiful” nor “charming” at all.