Maids Wives and Bachelors Part 11

The portraits of men or women occupying prominent positions should always have their name and that of the artist on the back. If this had been done in times past, how many nameless portraits, now of little value, would be held in high estimation! From the time of Henry the Eighth to the time of Charles the First it was usual to insert in a corner the armorial bearings of the person represented. This did not, indeed, accurately identify the individual, but it made it easier to determine. There is a masterpiece of Vandyck's in the National Gallery of England that goes by the name of "Gevartius." But no one knows who Gevartius was. Here is an old man's head made memorable for all time,--a head which would be thought cheap at $10,000, and which, if it were for sale, would attract connoisseurs from all parts of the civilized world, and it is without a name. How much more valuable and interesting it would be if its history were known! Therefore no feeling of modesty should prevent eminent characters from insuring the ident.i.ty of their pictures. Let us imagine a picture of Abraham Lincoln and one of Professor Morse two hundred years hence, with the name attached in one case, and a mere tradition of ident.i.ty in the other, and it will be easy to estimate the difference in value.

Americans have been accused of an undue taste for portraiture; the taste has its foundation in the character of the nation. It corresponds with that estimation of the personal worth of a man, and that full appreciation of individual independence, which form such important elements in our national character.

The Crown of Beauty

The glory and the crown of physical perfection is beautiful hair.

Venus would not charm us if she were bald, and neither poet, painter, nor sculptor would dare to give us a "subject" which should lack this, the charm of all other charms. Neither is it a modern fancy. Homer, when he would praise Helen, calls her "the beautiful-haired Helen,"

and Petronius, in his famous picture of Circe, makes much of "trailing locks."

The loveliness of long hair in woman seems never to have been disputed, and it had also a very wide acceptance as a mark of masculine strength and beauty. St. Paul, it is true, says that it is a shame to a man to have long hair, but his opinion is not to be taken without reservation, for both the traditions of poetry and painting give to the Saviour, and also to the Beloved Disciple, long locks of curling brown hair. The Greek warriors and most of the Asiatic nations prided themselves on their long hair, and the Romans gave a great significance to it by making it the badge of a freeman. Caesar, too, distinctly says that he always compelled the men of a province which he had conquered to shave off their hair in token of submission.

The Saxon and Danish rulers of England were equally famous for their long yellow locks, and the fashion continued with little or no intermission until the dynasty of the Tudor kings. They affected, for some reason or other, short hair; and "King Hal" is undoubtedly indebted for his "bluff look" to the short, thick crop which he wore.

The fashion even extended to the women of that age, and their pictured faces, with their hair all hidden away under a _coif_, have a most hard, stiff, and unlovely appearance. Under the Stuarts, long, flowing hair again became fashionable with the Royalist party, who made their "love locks" the sign and emblem of their loyalty. On the contrary, the Puritans made short hair almost a tenet of faith and a part of their creed. Within the last ten years hair has been again the sign of political feeling, for, during the Civil War, the Southern women in favor of the Confederacy wore one long curl behind the left ear, while those in favor of the Union wore one behind each ear.

During the last century men have gradually cut their hair shorter and shorter. They pretend, of course, fashion dictates the order; but a woman may be allowed to doubt whether necessity did not first dictate to fashion. Certainly ladies prefer in men hair that is moderately long, thick, and curling, to the penitentiary style of last year. And suppose they could have long hair, but cut it for their own comfort, the act says very little for their gallantry. I have no need to point to the chignons, braids, and artifices which women use to lengthen their hair in order to please men, who decline to return the compliment, even to a degree that would be vastly becoming to them.

After the length of hair, color is the point of most interest. In reality there are but two colors, black and red. Brown, golden, yellow, etc., are intermediate, the difference in shade being determined by the sulphur and oxygen or carbon which prevails. In black hair, carbon exceeds; in golden hair, sulphur and oxygen. It has been insisted that climate determines the color of hair; that fair-haired people are found north of parallel 48; brown hair between 48 and 45; which would include Northern France, Switzerland, Bohemia, Austria, and touch Georgia and Circa.s.sia, Canada, and the northern part of Maine; and that below that line come the black-haired races of Spain, Naples, Turkey, etc., etc. But this is easily disproved. Take, for instance, the parallel 50 and follow it round the world. Upon it may be found the curly, golden-haired European; the black, straight hair of the Mongolian and American Indian, and again, in Canada, it will give us the fair-haired Saxon girl. So, then, it is race, and not climate, which determines the color. I am inclined to think, too, that temperament has something to do with it, since we find black-haired Celts, golden-haired Venetians, and fair and black-haired Jews.

The ancient civilized nations pa.s.sionately admired red hair. Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Turks, and Spaniards have given it to their warriors and beauties. Somehow among the Anglo-Saxon race it has a bad reputation. Both in novels and plays it is common to give the rascal of the plot "villanous red hair;" and in the English school of painters, the traitor Judas is generally distinguished by it. In the East, black is the favorite color, and the Persians abhor a red-haired woman. Light brown or golden hair is the universal favorite. The Greeks gave it to Apollo, Venus, and Minerva. The Romans had such a pa.s.sion for it that, in the days of the Empire, light hair brought from Germany (to make wigs for Roman ladies) sold for its weight in gold. The Germans themselves, not content with the beautiful hair Nature had given them, made a soap of goat's tallow and beechwood ashes to brighten the color. Homer loved "blondes," and Milton and Shakespeare are full of golden-haired beauties, while the pages of the novelist and the galleries of painters, ancient and modern, show the same preference.

Lavater insists greatly on the color of hair as an index to the disposition. "Chestnut hair," he says, "indicates love of change and great vivacity; black hair, pa.s.sion, strength, ambition, and energy; fair hair, mildness, tenderness, and judgment."

Fashion has dressed the hair in many absurd and also in many beautiful forms; but through all changes, curls, floating free and natural, have had a majority of admirers. Some one says that "of all the revolvers aimed at men's hearts, curls are the most deadly," and from the persistent instinct of women in retaining them, I am inclined to indorse this statement. The Armenians and some other Asiatics twist the hair into the form of a mitre; the Parthians and Persians leave it long and floating; the Scythians and Goths wear it short, thick, and bristling; the Arabians and kindred people often cut it on the crown.

In the South of Europe, "to be in the hair" is a common expression for unmarried girls, because they wear their hair long and flowing, while matrons put it up in a coil at the back of the head.

Until the ninth century in England, Nature pretty much led the fashions in hair-dressing; then plaits turned up on each side of the cheek were introduced; and in the eleventh century the hair all disappeared under the head-dress of that time. Early in the sixteenth century ladies began to "turn up" the hair. Queen Margaret of Navarre frizzed and turned back her abundant locks just as the women of our own day do. The custom, too, that is now prevalent of braiding the hair in two long locks and tying them at the ends with ribbons was a favorite style in the early part of the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century women used powder to such an extent as almost to destroy the color of the hair, and during the past hundred years every possible arrangement and non-arrangement has had a temporary favor.

I have nothing to say about the customs of the present day. If there is any property in which a woman has undisputed right, it is surely in her own hair; and if she chooses to wear it in an unbecoming or inartistic style, it is certainly no one's business that I can perceive. a.s.suredly not the men's, since I have already shown that they, either through inability or selfishness, decline to wear the thick, flowing locks with which Nature crowns manly strength and beauty, and which are all women's admiration.

The majority of women have a natural taste in this matter, and very few are so silly as to sacrifice their beauty to fashion. Two or three rules are fundamental in all arrangements of the hair: one is that a superabundance at the back of the head always imparts an animal expression; another, that it is peculiarly ugly to sweep the whole forehead bare. The Greeks, supreme authorities on all subjects of beauty and taste, were never guilty of such an atrocity. In all their exquisite statues the hair is set low. A third is that "bands" are the most trying of all _coiffures_, and never ought to be adopted except by faces of cla.s.sic beauty. To add them to a round, merry face with a nose retrousse is as absurd as to put a Doric frieze on an irregular building. A general and positive one is that all hair is spoiled, both in quality and color, by oiling, for it takes from it that elasticity and lightness which is its chief charm and characteristic; the last (which I have no hope ladies will heed just at present) is, never to hide the natural form of the head.

Waste of Vitality

If we come to reflect upon it, in middle age we find that the one great cause of departure from the ideal in real life is our liability to take cold. Almost all our pleasures are bound up with this probability, for when we have taken cold we are far too stupid either to give or enjoy pleasure. And there is no philosophy connected with colds. Serious illnesses are full of instruction and resignation, but who thinks of being resigned to a cold, or of making a profitable use of it?

"Chilly" is a word that of late years has come to be a frequent and pitiably significant one on the lips of the middle-aged. They have a terror of the frost and snow which they once enjoyed so keenly, and they really suffer much more than they will allow themselves to confess.

The most invigorating and inspiriting of all climates is 64, but if the gla.s.s fall to 50, chilly people are miserable; they feel draughts everywhere, especially on the face, and very likely the first symptoms of a neuralgic attack. At 40--which must have been the in-door winter temperature of our forefathers--they become irritable and shivery, and lose all energy. If the temperature fall below 30, they "take cold," and exhibit all the mental inertia and many of the physical symptoms of influenza, which nevertheless has not attacked them.

Let us at once admit a truth: the young and robust despise the chilly for their chilliness, for there is such a thing as physical pride, and a very unpleasant thing it is in families. These physical Pharisees are always recommending the "roughing" and "hardening" process, and they would gladly revive for the poor invalid the cold-water torture of the past.

Without being conscious of it, they are cruel. Chilly people are not made better by the unsympathetic remarks of those of quicker blood.

There is no good in a.s.suring them that the cold is healthy and seasonable. They feel keenly the half-joking imputation of "cosseting," though perhaps they are too inert and miserable to defend themselves.

Strong walking exercise is the remedy always proposed. Many cannot take it. Others make a laudable effort to follow the prescription, and perhaps during it feel a glow of warmth to which in the house--though the house is thoroughly warmed--they are strangers. But half an hour after their return home the tide of life has receded again, and they are as chilly and nervous as before.

Nevertheless, they have pa.s.sed through an experience which, if they would consider it, indicates their relief, if not their cure. While out-of-doors they thought it necessary to cover their feet with warm hosiery and thick boots, the head with a bonnet and veil, their hands with gloves and a fur m.u.f.f, their body with some fur or wadded garment half an inch thick. In short, when they went out they imitated Nature, and protected themselves as she does animals.

But just as soon as they return home they uncover their head and hands, replace the warm, heavy clothing of the feet with some of a more elegant but far colder quality, and take off altogether the thick warm garments worn out-of-doors. A bear that should follow the same course when it went home to its snug subterranean den would naturally enough die of some pulmonary disease. Nations which are subjected to long and severe winters have learned the more natural and excellent way. The Laplander keeps on his fur, the Russian his wadded garment, the Tartar his sheep-skin, the Shetlander goes about in his house in his wadmal. It is only in our high state of civilization that men and women divest themselves of half their clothing with the thermometer below zero, and then run to the fire to warm their freezing hands and feet.

If warm clothing protects us out of the house, it will do the same in the house; and it is no more "coddling," and much more sensible and satisfactory than cowering over a grate. Under the head-dress a silk skullcap is a most effective protection against draughts, and would prevent many an attack of neuralgia. A silk or wash-leather vest will keep the body at a more equable temperature than the best fire. A shawl to most middle-aged ladies is a graceful toilet adjunct even in the house, and it is capable of retaining as well as of imparting much warmth. When very chilly after removal of outside wraps, or from any other cause, try a wadded dressing-gown over the usual clothing. In five minutes the added comfort will be recognized.

The secret is, then, to keep the body at its proper temperature in the house by the adoption of sufficient warm clothing, instead of trusting to artificially heated atmosphere. No one will be more liable to take cold out of the house because she has been warm in the house. There is no more sense in shivering in-doors in order to prepare the body to endure the out-door climate than there would be in sleeping with too few blankets for fear of increasing the sense of cold when out of bed.

A stuffy room, with air constantly heated to 75, is the most efficacious invention ever devised for ruining health. But it is equally true that _habitual warmth_ is the very best preserver of const.i.tutional strength in middle and old age; and undoubtedly this is best maintained by a temperature of 68 and plenty of clothing.

A very important aid to warmth is a proper diet. Many women who suffer continually from a sense of chill, below the tide of healthy life, have yet constantly at hand an abundance of nourishing food. But they eat one day at one hour, the next at another; they don't care what they eat, and take anything a flippant-minded cook chooses to send them; they wait for some one when themselves hungry, out of mere domestic courtesy; and when their husbands are from home they take tea and biscuits because it is not worth while giving servants the trouble of cooking for them alone. In all these and many similar ways vitality is continually lost, and with every loss of vitality there is a corresponding access of slow, chilly, shivering inertia.

It is a great mistake that women are taught from childhood that it is meritorious in their s.e.x to conceal their own wants, and to postpone their own convenience to that of fathers, brothers, husbands, and even servants. For in the end they break down, and are left in a state of ill health in which all the wheels of life run slow. The trouble, in a sentence, is that women _have no wives_--no one to remind them when they are in a draught, or come in with wet feet, no one to get them a warm drink when chilly, and ward off the little ills (which soon become great ones) by loving, thoughtful, constant care and attention.

All women know how hard it is to live the usual life of work and amus.e.m.e.nt in a physical condition of far below the requisite strength.

Nothing induces this condition like chronic chill. In it no vitality can be gained, and very much may be continually lost. Therefore every plan should be tried which promises to raise the temperature to a healthy standard. Try the effect of a room heated to 68, and plenty of warm, constantly warm clothing.

A Little Matter of Money

"It is unpleasant not to have money," says Mr. Hazlitt; indeed, it has become a sort of social offence to be short of virtue in this respect; for both nationally and personally, we are loath to confess so tragic a calamity. We may a.s.sert that, having food and clothes, we are therewith content, and that we would not encounter the perils and snares of vast wealth; but are we quite sure that this humility and contentment is not a fine name for being too lazy to earn money, or too extravagant to keep it? Again, if all were content with the simple satisfaction of their necessities--if n.o.body wanted to be rich--n.o.body would be industrious or frugal, or strive to acquire knowledge. Who then would build our churches, and endow our colleges? Who would send out missionaries, and encourage science and inventions? The golden grapes may be out of our reach, but they are a n.o.ble fruit when pressed by kindly hands, and have given graciously unto the world their wine of consolation.

The fact is that we have come to a time in which the want of money is about as bad a moral distemper as the love of it. The latter position is an admitted truth; the former is only beginning to put forth its claims to the notice of professed moralists. Whatever special virtue there was in poverty seems to be in direct antagonism to the spirit of the present day; for there is no doubt that worldly prosperity has come to be regarded as one of the legitimate fruits of the gospel. The modern Church puts forth her hands and grasps the promise of the life that now is, as well as that which is to come. Why not? Money gives a power of doing good that nothing material can equal. Even "The Truth"

has now to depend on the currency, and the most evangelical societies pay treasurers as well as missionaries.

The amount of money in a man's pocket is a great moral factor. He who has plenty of ready cash and is not good-natured needs a thorough change, and nothing but being born again will cure him. But the man who is in a chronic state of poverty is a man placed in selfish relations to every one around him. How hard it is for such a one to be generous, just, and sympathetic! He is almost compelled to look on his fellow-creatures with the eye of a slave-merchant, to consider: How can they profit me? What can I gain by them? He must marry for money, or not marry for the want of it. His friendship is a kind of traffic.

His religion is subject to considerations, for he will either go to church for a certain connection, or he will not go at all because of the collections.

Now, there is abundance of living strength in Christianity to meet this and all other special wants of the age. There is no doubt that money is the principle of our social gravitation, and we need preachers who will not be afraid to tell us the truth, even though n.o.body has ever told it just in that particular way before. We accept without demur all that has been said about the evils of loving money; will some of our spiritual teachers tell us how to avoid the evils and cure the moral and physical distress caused by the want of money?

That this is a gigantic evil, we have constant proof in the daily papers; in murder, theft, suicide, domestic misery and cruelty. These criminals are far seldomer influenced by the love of money than by the want of it. If instead of being without a dollar, they had had sufficient for their necessities, would they have run such risks, incurred such guilt, staked life on one desperate chance, flung it away in despairing misery?

Of course the word "sufficient" is very elastic. It can be so moderate and temperate; and again it can grasp at impossibilities. "My wants,"

said the Count Mirabel, "are few: a fine house, fine carriages, fine horses, a complete wardrobe, the best opera box, the first cook, and plenty of pocket-money--that is all I require." He thought his desires very temperate; so also did the Scotchman, who, praying for a modest competency, added, "and that there be no mistake, let it be seven hundred pounds a year, paid quarterly in advance." There are indeed all sorts of difficulties connected with this question, and anybody can find their way into them. But there must also be a way out; and if our guides would survey the ground a little, they would earn and have our thanks. For undoubtedly this want of money is as great a provocation to sin as the love of it. An empty purse is as full of wicked thoughts as an evil heart; and the Father who allotted seven guardian angels to man, and made five of them hover round his pockets--empty or full--knew well his most vulnerable points.

Mission of Household Furniture

Have wood and paper and upholstery really any moral and emotional agencies?