Rambles in Womanland Part 12

One would hardly expect woman, with all the dangers and sufferings attending motherhood, to last longer than man. Yet undoubtedly she does.

I know in Brittany a peasant woman who is now ninety-seven. She does her sewing without spectacles; she walks a couple of miles every day; goes to bed at eight, rises at six in the winter and at five in the summer.

She eats and sleeps well, and is in the enjoyment of perfect health. She had seventeen children. The healthiest trees are those which bear fruit every year.

The reason for woman's longevity is not far to seek. Women lead more careful, regular, and sheltered lives than men. It is the man who has to fight daily with the world, and how hard and trying the fight often is none but the fighter himself can tell.

He succ.u.mbs to more temptations than woman, because more come his way.

It is the man who is often called upon to undermine his bodily vigour by earning his bread at unhealthy occupations. It is he who goes down the mines, to sea, and to the battlefield.

CHAPTER XXI

WOMEN MAY ALL BE BEAUTIFUL

Nothing is more difficult to define than beauty. It is not something absolute, like truth; it differs according to times, countries, races, and individual tastes. Greek beauty is not Parisian beauty, English beauty is pretty well the opposite of Italian beauty.

A European beauty might strike a Chinaman as very ugly, and a Chinese beauty would find no admirer in Europe, except, perhaps, among blase people with the most fastidious tastes and ever in search of novelty.

The Buddha of the Hindoos has nothing in common with the Jupiter of the Greeks. Ancient art differs entirely from modern art.

In Antiquity, beauty consists in the harmony of the proportions, the purity of the lines, the n.o.bility of form and att.i.tude, the sobriety of the figure, and the coldness of the expression. In modern times, beauty consists in gracefulness, piquancy, intelligence, sentiment, vivacity, and exuberance of form.

But there are two kinds of beauty in women: that which is natural to them, and that which they can acquire by carefully studying what suits them best to wear, and how they can use to advantage their style of face and figure.

I have seen women absolutely transformed by the hands of a skilful dressmaker or a clever hairdresser.

The natural beauty is that happy ensemble of lines and expression which attract and charm the eyes. It is not at all indispensable that this ensemble should be harmonious. On the contrary, contrasts are often less cold and monotonous than perfect harmony, and the statuesque beauty generally leaves us unmoved.

The woman who looks amiable and cheerful is naturally beautiful--far more so than a woman with irreproachable sculptural outlines and features so regular that she makes you wish she had some redeeming defect or other. Perfection was attractive in ancient Greece; it is not now.

Perfection seldom looks amiable and bright, and modern beauty must look intelligent--brilliant even. Ancient Greece would not have looked at a turned-up nose; but such a nose denotes gaiety, wit, spirit of repartee, and we like it.

I hope I shall not offend that most talented of French actresses, Madame Rejane, or her admirers, by saying that Athens would have refused to look at her; but the Parisians, the descendants and successors of the Attic Greeks, love her, with her big mouth, square when it laughs, and her turned-up nose. To them she is the embodiment of liveliness, wit, and gaiety.

A small, piquante brunette, with small, keen eyes, thick lips, thin, alert; a blonde dishevelled, like a spaniel, with glorious form, will excite admiration--both are beautiful.

But the other beauty, the one that can be obtained of art, is at the disposal of every woman. In fact, the woman who knows how to put on her dress and do her hair well, who has on a becoming hat, pretty shoes, and neat gloves, who has good taste in furniture, who speaks pleasantly, smiles cheerfully and good-naturedly, who has elegance of manners and a pretty voice, who has a bright conversation--that woman will be declared pretty, even beautiful, far more readily and unanimously than the real beauty, one who fails to pay attention to her dress and manners, who has no consciousness of her power and her value, and who constantly forgets that good surroundings are to her what a handsome frame is to a picture.

Practically every woman can obtain this result, and that is why I have ent.i.tled this chapter 'Women may All be Beautiful.'

CHAPTER XXII

WOMEN AT SEA

Of all the pitiful sights, of all the pathetic figures in the world, there is none to compare to women at sea.

Is it possible that these dejected, abject-looking bundles of misery only yesterday were the bright, proud, elegant, queenly fashion-plates whom I saw on Fifth Avenue? _Quantum mutatae ab illis!_ What a metamorphosis!

Poor things! Even the most terrible home ruler is satisfied with the lower berth, and gives her husband a chance to look down upon her. She is meek and grateful, she is submissive, and her imploring eyes beg the most hen-pecked husband not to take advantage of his temporary superiority.

She arrived on board flamboyant, with her most bewitching finery on, or a most becoming yachting-suit. She meant to 'fetch' all the men on deck.

She went radiant to the saloon and examined the lovely flowers which had been sent to wish her _bon voyage_. _Bon voyage!_ What irony!

These flowers are the very emblem of all that is going to happen to her--bright, fresh, and erect as the boat starts; wet, withered, drooping, and dripping, with no life left, twenty-four hours later.

She is present at the first meal, and declares to her neighbours that things at sea are not so bad as some people pretend, and the Atlantic is too often libelled. Besides, she is used to travelling, and she knows a remedy for sea-sickness.

Before sailing she doctored herself. She took an infallible drug--a rather unpleasant one, it is true; but what is that compared to the benefit derived from it? Yes, an infallible remedy--at any rate, one that succeeds nine times out of ten. Alas! this time is going to be the tenth.

You get outside the harbour, and leave Sandy Hook behind you. She has taken soup and fish. Somehow she now feels she has had enough. Her appet.i.te is satisfied, and she goes on deck. When you see her again, she is lying on an easy-chair, packed as carefully and tightly as a valuable clock that is to be sent to the Antipodes.

There she now lies, motionless, speechless, helpless, and hopeless, wondering if the infallible remedy is going to fail. The yachting-cap is no longer roguish and c.o.c.ky, but hanging over her eyes, or her beautiful hat is replaced by a tam-o'-shanter. The damp air has already taken away all her curls, and her hair, straight as drum-sticks, is hanging in front and behind, and, worse than all, she doesn't care. Provided you don't speak to her, don't shake her, and don't ask her to move, she doesn't care.

The boat is heaving. All the different parts of her anatomy go up with the boat, but they all come down again one by one, and she has to gather them together. She is at sea with a vengeance! Her husband is all right, the brute! so is pretty Miss So-and-So, who is chatting with him, the cat!

Their smiles and insulting pictures of health are more than she can bear. She is a good Christian, but if only that girl could be sick, too!

What business has she to be well?

Of course, her husband has packed her up, tucked her in most carefully, and placed grapes and iced soda-water within her reach. He has done his duty, and now he makes himself scarce. Maybe he is flirting on the weather side, maybe he is in the smoke-room having a game of piquet or poker.

Anyway, he is all right, having a good time. Why isn't he sick, too?

For six or seven days, that bright American woman, who runs household, husband, children, and servants with one glance of the eye, is at the mercy of everyone who belongs to her, suffering agonies, tortures of body and mind, and you would imagine that a boat sees her on the Atlantic for the last time.

You would think that all the beauties of American scenery, its seash.o.r.es, lakes, and mountains, will attract her next season. Not a bit of it. In order to be seen at the dreary funereal functions of Mayfair and Belgravia, she will cross again. She goes where duty calls her. She has to be 'in it' first, in the hope of soon being 'of it.'

And, in order to secure her social standing on a sure basis, twice a year she will pack her belongings and suffer death agonies. The pluck and power of endurance of women is perfectly prodigious.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE SECRET OF WOMAN'S BEAUTY

The secret of a woman's beauty is not to be discovered in her dressing-room, as cynics might intimate; it is not obtained by the use of cosmetics, pomade, magic waters, and ointments; by the application of red, white, and black, neither by painting nor dyeing; the real secret of woman's beauty lies in resplendent health and a cheerful mind.

It was only a few days ago that I said to a lady, an intimate friend of mine, who has just been promoted to the dignity of a grandmother: 'Won't you make up your mind one of these days to look over thirty years of age?' My lady friend is very beautiful, and she knows it; but she carries her beauty without any affectation and b.u.mptiousness.