But British feminine prettiness would be infinitely more captivating than it is, if it were associated with a little extra additional touch of vivacity and intelligence. When it is put in the shade, (as frequently happens,) by the sparkling allurements of the Viennese coquette, the graceful savoir faire of the French mondaine, or the enticing charm of lustrous-eyed sirens from southern Italy, it is merely because of its lack of wit. It is a good thing to have a pretty face; but if the face be only like a wax mask, moveless and expressionless, it soon ceases to attract. The loveliest picture would bore us if we had to stare at it dumbly all day. And there is undeniably a stiffness, a formality, and often a most repellent and unsympathetic coldness about the British fair sex, which re-acts upon the men and women of other more warm-hearted and impulsive nations, in a manner highly disadvantageous to the ladies of our Fortunate Isles. For it is not real stiffness, or real formality after all,—nor is it the snowy chill of a touch-me-not chastity, by any means,—it is merely a most painful, and in many cases, most absurd self-consciousness. British women are always more or less wondering what their sister women are thinking about them. They can manage their men all right; but they put on curious and unbecoming airs directly other feminine influences than their own come into play. They invite the comment of the opposite sex, but they dread the criticism of their own. The awkward girl who sits on the edge of a chair with her feet scraping the carpet and her hands twiddling uneasily in her lap, is awkward simply because she has, by some means or other, been made self-conscious,—and because, in the excess of this self-consciousness she stupidly imagines every one in the room must be staring at her. The average London woman, dressed like a fashion-plate, who rustles in at afternoon tea, with her card-case well in evidence, and her face carefully set in proper “visiting lines,” offers herself up in this way as a subject for the satirist, out of the same disfiguring self-consciousness, which robs her entirely of the indifferent ease and careless grace which should,—to quote the greatest of American philosophers, Emerson,—cause her to “repel interference by a decided and proud choice of influences,” and to “inspire every beholder with something of her own nobleness.” She is probably not naturally formal,—she is no doubt exceedingly constrained and uncomfortable in her fashionable attire,—and one may take it for granted that she would rather be herself than try to be a Something which is a Nothing. But Custom and Convention are her bogie men, always guarding her on either side, and investing her too often with such deplorable self-consciousness that her eye becomes furtive, her mouth hard and secretive, her conversation inane, and her whole personality an uncomfortable exhalation of stupidity and dullness.
Nevertheless, setting Custom and Convention apart for the nonce, and bidding them descend into the shadows of hypocrisy which are their native atmosphere, the British woman remains the prettiest in the world. What a galaxy of feminine charms can be gathered under the word “British”! England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland offer all together such countless examples of woman’s loveliness, that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to give the prize for good looks to one portion of Britain more than to the other. America, so far as her samples have been, and are, seen in Europe, cannot outrival the “Old Country” in the prettiness of its women. But it is prettiness only; not Beauty. Beauty remains intrinsically where it was first born and first admitted into the annals of Art and Literature. Its home is still in “the Isles of Greece, where burning Sappho loved and sung.”
Nothing that was ever created in the way of female loveliness can surpass the beauty of a beautiful Greek woman. True, she is as rare as a butterfly in a snow storm. True, the women of Athens and of Greece generally, taken in the rough majority, are not on an average, even pretty. Nevertheless the palm of beauty remains with them—because there are always two,—or may be three of them, who dawn year by year upon the world in all the old perfection of the classic models, and who may truly be taken for newly-descended goddesses, so faultlessly formed, so exquisitely featured are they. They are not famed by the paragraphist, and they probably will never get the chance of moving in the circles of the British “Upper Ten” or the American “Four Hundred.” But they are the daughters of Aphrodite still, and hold fast their heavenly mother’s attributes. It is easy to find a hundred or more pretty British and American women for one beautiful Greek—but when found, the beautiful Greek eclipses them all. She is still the wonder of the world,—the crown of womanly beauty at its best. She shows the heritage of her race in her regal step and freedom of movement,—in the lovely curves of her figure, in the classic perfection of her face with its broad brows, lustrous eyes, arched sweet lips and delicate contour of chin and throat, and perhaps more than all in the queenly indifference she bears towards her own loveliness. So,
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine,
On Suli’s bank and Parga’s shore,
Exists the remnant of a line
Such as the Doric mothers bore;
And there perhaps some seed is sown
The Heracleidan blood might own!
And there still, may be found the perfection of womanhood—the one rare Greek lily, which blossoming at few and far intervals shows in its exquisite form and colouring what Woman should be at her fairest. To her, therefore, must be given the Palm of Beauty. But after the lily, then the rose!—or rather the roses, multitudinous, varied, and always sweet—of the Fortunate Isles of Britain.