Mr. Norman Lindsay—whose clever work I admired long before I came to this supersensitive Commonwealth—has done me a service in subscribing himself as the man who has seen more of the Australian girl than any of his envious countrymen. If his knowledge is so extensive, and he is the true artist that we all believe him to be, it follows that his drawing must reflect the local type. And what do we find—the grace and beauty over which so many of your frenzied correspondents have rhapsodised? Not on your life. The Norman Lindsay girl is hardly a girl at all. With the calves of a footballer and the upper limbs of a Sandow, she is a fearful and wonderful example of the female form divine. The faces of Mr. Lindsay's women remind me more than anything else of the religious pictures of my youth, designed to represent the torments of hell, and to frighten people into the narrow way. Your foremost black-and-whiter admires the beauty of strength. Well, a draught horse with whiskers half way up its legs is a beautiful thing to draw a heavy load of turnips or road metal, but no one would think of comparing its ungainly proportions with the symmetrical form of the thoroughbred racer. If Australia is trying to breed a race of Amazons, well and good—you are getting along very nicely. But if you are anxious to match your girls with the comelier women of other countries—you have a perfectly clean palette, as my old friend Charles Dana Gibson would put it.
People who read their history closely are familiar with the evolutionary phases through which most young countries pass. Here is first the halting, apologetic stage, represented in the case of Australia by its early-day subservience to England and everything English. Nothing could be any good that was not imported. The next stage was reached when you began to produce a handful of clever men and women, whose success in science, music, art, and sport laid the foundations of a belief that gradually developed into arrogant big-headedness. If Australia could produce a Brennan, a Melba, a Mackennal, a Trumper, an Arnst, and a Gray, why should there be any limit to the fertility of its genius-breeding soil? The idea tickled your vanity, and you allowed it to grow recklessly. People who came from other countries saw your weakness, recognised it as an inevitable phase in your progress towards national sobriety and staidness, and said nice things about you. It made the visitors' stay more pleasant, and, as you will in time grow out of your folly, it helped rather than impeded your development.
Have you ever noticed a puppy let off the chain after being tied up for a long time? He will jump and frisk as though jumping and frisking were the things he was born for, and every time you pat him he bounds a little higher. By-and-bye he begins to feel tired, his tail-wagging becomes less vigorous, and eventually he sits down quietly and wonders why he was silly enough to exert himself so needlessly. He notices, too, that the other dog who watched him with amused tolerance isn't quite such a mongrel as he seemed to be when he gambolled round him; in fact, on closer inspection, he is recognised as being bigger and possessing a shinier coat than his chastened observer. The puppy has learned wisdom. But that pawing and prancing and hind leg foolishness were a necessary part of his education, and every human caress helped him along.
Australia is not yet through the cavorting stage, but it will grow out of it in time, just as other countries have done. If I were an altruist instead of an impartial observer, whose tongue and pen are always guided by clear vision and ripened judgment, I would, I suppose, have helped on the evolutionary process by feeding your vanity with the tablespoonsful doses administered by other visitors. I know I have made myself very unpopular because I wrote the truth as it appealed to me, but we all can't take liberties with our consciences, even to please the women of Australia.
I have been in this country for several months, so that I have had plenty of opportunity of judging the external excellencies of my self-confident southern sisters. The diagrams which I have prepared may help my critics to understand what a perfect figure should look like. The outline of the average Australian woman is shown alongside that of my friend, Miss Maimie Valdervant, of Fifth-avenue, New York. The colonial imperfections are easily distinguishable—the pouter-pigeon breast, the low, flat hips, and the thick, stocky ankles. Miss Valdervant is a beautifully moulded girl, but her shapeliness is not unique. At a weekend party on the Adirondacks at least 10 of the 22 girls present were equally comely. Well do I remember the late Stanford White saying, when someone remarked upon his display of Phidias-chiselled womanhood, that it was nothing unusual. At the Grand Prix meeting at Longchamps Count Pielliet's party was similarly noteworthy; the same thing might be said of the late Viscount Avonmore's famous gathering of 1907, in which I shared with Lady Marjorie Warshane the honor of being the finest figured woman on the lawn.
Who is Valerie Desmond, that she should dare criticise the myriad Venuses of Australia? What does she know of beauty? He who drives fat oxen should himself be fat, and similarly she who writes of the feminine form should have some pretensions to shapeliness herself. I append my measurements for the benefit of my numerous critics:—
| Height | 5 ft. 5 in. |
| Weight | 10 st. 3½ lb. |
| Neck | 14 in. |
| Bust | 38¾ in. |
| Waist | 25 in. |
| Hips | 41 in. |
| Calf | 14½ in. |
| Ankle | 7 in. |
The fact that I was asked by the late Sir Edward Poynter to sit for one of his classical studies indicates what a famous artist thought of these proportions.
The reference by one visiting actress who attacked me in the paper to Miss Annette Kellermann's perfection of figure amused me. Everyone in America, if not in Australia, knows how much of her popularity is due to beauty and how much to her press agent. Your clever and jolly water nymph is anything but well balanced. Her legs are—or were when I last saw them—much too thin for her superb bust. It is just the reverse with Miss Pansy Montague (La Milo). The upper half of her spoils an otherwise beautiful figure. The genius of Cruikshank—an Australian of whom, in his own particular line, his country has reason to be proud—makes amends for this deficiency. He was able to convince the English public that La Milo was one of the most beautiful women living, and the habit of admiring her became general. I remember drawing Mr. W.T. Stead's attention to her comparatively puny bust, but so completely had Cruikshank gulled him that he wouldn't hear a word against her.
