It is slow poison that kills love most surely. Love will survive even infidelity rather than boredom or satiety.
Men study women, and form opinions, generally wrong ones. Women look at men, guess their character, and seldom make mistakes.
All the efforts that an old woman makes to hide her age only help to advertise it louder.
Of a man and a woman, it is the one who is loved, but who does not love, that is the unhappier of the two.
Women often see without looking; men often look without seeing.
I know handsome men who are bald, and there are not a few, but many, who derive distinction from this baldness. There are men—severe, stern types of men—who are not disfigured, but improved, by spectacles. Just imagine, if you can, the possibility of a bald woman with spectacles inspiring a tender passion! So much for the infallibility of the proverb, 'What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,' so often quoted by women when they are told that men can afford to do this or that, but not they. Lady women-righters, please answer.
In the tender relations between men and women, novelty is a wonderful attraction, and habit a powerful bond; but between the two there is a bottomless precipice into which love often falls, never to be heard of afterward. Happy those who know how to bridge over the chasm!
A woman never forgets, however old she may be, that she was once very beautiful. Why should she? The pity is that she very often forgets that she is so no longer. My pet aversion in society is the woman of sixty who succeeds in making herself look fifty, thinks she is forty, acts as if she were thirty, and dresses as if she were twenty.
I am not prepared to say that celibacy is preferable to marriage; it has, however, this decided advantage over it: a bachelor can always cease to be one the moment he has discovered that he has made a mistake.
Women are extremists in everything. Poets, painters and sculptors know this so well that they have always taken women as models for War, Pestilence, Death, Famine and Justice, Virtue, Glory, Victory, Pity, Charity. On the other hand, virtues and vices, blessings and calamities of a lesser degree are represented by men. Such are Work, Perseverance, Laziness, Avarice, etc.
It is not given to any man or woman to fall in love more than once with the same person. And although men and women may love several times in succession, they can only once love to the fulness of their hearts.
Love does to women what the sun does to flowers: it colours them, embellishes them, makes them look radiant and beautiful; but when it is too ardent it consumes and withers them.
There are two terribly embarrassing moments in the life of a man. The first is when he has to say 'all' to the woman he loves, and the second when all is said.
If a man is not to a certain extent ill at ease in the presence of a woman, you may be quite sure that he does not really love her.
A woman explains the beauty of a woman; a man feels it. A man does not always know why a woman is beautiful; a woman always does.
The sweetest music in the ears of a woman is the sound of the praises of the man whom she loves.
It is a mistake for a married couple to consider that marriage has made them one. To be attractive to each other they should each preserve their personality quite distinct. Marriage is very often dull because man and wife are one, and feel lonely. Most people get bored in their own company.
Happiness in matrimony is sober, serious, based on love, confidence, and friendship. Those who seek in it frivolity, pleasure, noise, and passion condemn themselves to penal servitude.
The great misfortune of mankind is that matrimony is the only vocation for which candidates have had no training; yet it is the one that requires the most careful preparation.
On the part of a husband, violent jealousy is an insult to his wife, but delicate, discreet jealousy is almost a compliment to her, for it proves his lack of self-confidence, and that sometimes he feels he is not good enough for her, not worthy of her.
Most women have the hearts of poets and the minds of diplomatists. What makes a wife so useful to an ambassador is that she adds her own power of intuition to the five senses already possessed by her husband.
Love in matrimony can live only on condition that man and wife remain interesting in each other's eyes. Devotion, fidelity, attention to duty, and all the troop of domestic virtues will not be sufficient to keep love alive.
Beauty is not the mother of Love. On the contrary, it is often love which engenders beauty, gives brilliancy to the eyes, gracefulness to the body, vibration to the voice. Love is the sun that hatches the flowers of the soul. The face which reflects all the inner sentiments of the heart betrays the love of its owner, and is beautiful.
Those who in good faith promise eternal love and those who believe in such promises are dupes—the former of their hearts, the latter of their vanity. Wine well taken care of improves by keeping, but not for ever; it is destined to turn to vinegar sooner or later.
Love is a great healer. The worst characteristic traits of a man and of a woman have been known to be cured by it.
Men and women do not love before they are thirty, men especially. Until then it is little more than rehearsing. Fortunate are those who retain for the play the same company they had engaged for the rehearsal.
Naturalists make little difference between women and the other females of the animal kingdom: they declare that the mission of woman is to be a mother. Napoleon I., who was a naturalist, being asked to give a definition of the best woman, answered: 'The one who bears most children.' And as for him man was mere 'cannon flesh,' I am surprised he did not say, 'The one who bears most boys.'
Moralists are kinder to women; they go so far as to grant that woman's mission is twofold: that she is intended to be a wife and a mother; that she is to be the guardian of the hearth, submissive and devoted to man, her lord and master; to look after her household, and be absorbed by her duties toward her husband and children.
No sinecure, this mission of woman, as you see—no joke either; but moralists have no sense of humour—not a particle of it.
No doubt this double rôle of wife and mother is most respectable; it is even sacred; but woman's nature demands something else. To restrict her circle of activity and influence to her family is to misappreciate her many faculties, her aspirations, her feelings, which, like those of men, are entitled to respect; it amounts to not recognising that her mission is not only familial, but social also.
I will not dwell on the part she is called upon to play in the family as wife and mother. We men all know it, whether we are husbands or sons; but we have also to consider what the rôle of woman is in that society of which she is the great civilizing element as well as the greatest ornament.
The most noble part that has been allotted to woman is that of the flower in the vegetable kingdom. This rôle consists in throwing a spell over the world, in making life more refined and poetical—in a word, in spreading fragrance around her and imparting it to all who come in contact with her. A wag once said that but for the women men could have hoped for Paradise. Good! But what about this world? Is not woman the direct or indirect motive for all our actions? Is she not the embodiment of the beautiful, and therefore the mother of Art?
If she is sometimes the cause of a crime, is she not always the cause of the most heroic deeds performed by man? Can we for a moment suppose society without her? Why, without her it would fall into a state of indolence and degradation, even of utter abjection. Would life be worth living without the sweet presence of kind, cheerful, and amiable women?
Ah, my dear sir, make fun of woman in your club as much as you like; crack jokes at her expense to your heart's content; but acknowledge frankly that you are under her power—at least, I hope, under her influence—and that you could no more do without her than without the air which enables you to breathe.
Talk of woman's mission as wife and mother, as naturalists and moralists do, but let all of us artists cry at the top of our voices that woman's mission is to make life beautiful by the cultivation of her own beauty, beauty of body, mind, and heart.
It is the duty of woman to look as beautiful as she can; it is her imperious duty to charm the world by her sweetness and amiability. A woman who neglects this duty is guilty toward her fellow-creatures, even guilty toward her Maker, by not helping the destiny for which she was created. Countries are civilized in proportion to the influence that women have over men in them.
As long as gardens have flowers and the world has beautiful and amiable women, so long will life be worth living.
Many, many years ago a great council was held to discuss the question whether women had souls. I forget the conclusion which that learned assembly arrived at; but what is certain is that now most men do believe that women have souls, although a great number of them are still of opinion that woman is a being inferior to man.
They hold that man is the lord of creation, the masterpiece, the last word of the Almighty.
Now, is this really the case? First, God made the earth, then light, after which He created fishes, birds, and animals of all sorts. Then He said: 'I will now create a being far above all the other animals.'
He took some mud; mark well, I say, some mud, and made Adam. In His wisdom He thought that mud was not good enough to make woman out of, and for her creation he took matter which had already been purified by His Divine breath, and He took part of Adam, and out of it made Eve.
Now, surely, my dear fellow-men, you must own that either mud is better stuff than yourself, or you must confess that woman has a nobler origin than you. You can't get out of it.
Please notice the order of creation: Fish, birds, animals, man and woman. If men do not admit that the Creator began by the least and finished with the best, they will have to conclude that lobsters, eels, crocodiles, sharks, owls, vultures, and mere sparrows are beings superior to them.
If men do not recognise the superiority of these animals over them, they will have to come to the conclusion that the work of creation is one of improvement every day.
But man will say, woman is not so strong as we are. True enough; but horses are stronger than men; elephants by trampling on them can make marmalade of them. Stags are swifter than men. Camels can carry a weight of 2,500 lb. on their backs. Birds can fly, and men are only trying machines to help them do it.
Is man more intelligent than woman? Certainly not. Who ate the apple? I know that Eve was the first to be disobedient, but she had an idea, at all events before Adam had one.
Had he even the power of resistance? No. Did he even try to shield woman after the offence was committed? No, he didn't, the coward. He turned against her and accused her of being the cause of the whole evil done. Poor beginning, a poor show, and a sad lesson by which men have profited, and to this day they turn against the woman they have deceived, and often abandon her. Man is still true to his origin.
My dear sirs, the proof that God was satisfied that, in creating woman, He had said the last word of His Divine work, is that He entrusted her with the most noble of missions, that of bearing the future generations, of bringing children to the world, of guiding their first steps, of cultivating their minds and inculcating in them the love of what is good and right. In intending woman to be mother, God proclaimed the superiority of women over the rest of the creation.
I have constantly heard women complain, in Paris, in London, and in New York, that they can seldom go out in the street without being followed and annoyed by men, many of whom look like gentlemen.
And they express their complaint in tones of indignation not altogether free from a little air of self-satisfaction that seems to say: 'Of course a pretty woman like myself is bound to be noticed and stared at by men.'
Well, I hate to say anything unpleasant to women, but there is an illusion in which they too often indulge, and which I should like to dispel at once.
There are women beautiful as they can be, who can walk in every city perfectly unmolested and in perfect comfort and security, and who would be unable to tell you whether any man or woman had noticed them.
We men are not so bold as many women believe, nor are we so silly. We have instinct, and we know pretty well the woman who enjoys being noticed and looked at, and even the one who seeks that enjoyment for purpose of self-satisfaction or vanity.
I am over fifty years old, and any girl of twenty, I guarantee, will make me feel as timid as she likes in her presence, not by words, but simply by her attitude of dignity and reserve.
And I believe that practically the same might be said of every man who is not an unmitigated scoundrel or blackguard.
In a word, I should like to prove that a woman, who is too often noticed and followed in the street, should be offended by it, and have enough conscience of her value to mention it as little as possible; she should also exercise more control over herself and pay great attention to the way she dresses, looks and walks when out in the street.
For if she is constantly followed, take it for granted that there is in her appearance something, just a little something, that gives a wrong impression of her.
Let women have simplicity in their toilette, dignity in their manner, a severe gracefulness in their general attitude, and I guarantee you that no man—I mean no fairly well-bred man—will ever turn round to look at them.
Women should not call it success. They should feel humiliated to see that some gloriously beautiful women do not obtain it. They should take advice and seek a remedy with the earnestness of that cashier who, returning home, could not even take notice of his wife and children, much less kiss them, until he had discovered the cause of an error of a penny in his accounts amounting to several thousands of pounds.
When a woman tells me that she cannot go out without men looking and smiling at her, I have always a mind to say to her: 'Perhaps you wink at them.'
Among the men who are the most dangerous for women must be reckoned those whose advances of love generally prove unsuccessful. Women have no idea of the harm that may be done to them by those parasites of their homes.
A woman, young, amiable, and cheerful, welcomes such men in her house without entertaining any suspicion. She invites them to her receptions, her dinner-parties; she often finds them pleasant, witty, and then they venture a few flattering compliments. She at first accepts them as the current coin of society, and pays no attention to them.
As she is amiable to her guests, she is not on her guard, and she treats them to the same smiles, which these fops of the purest water often imagine are gracious smiles conferred on them only. Thus encouraged, they go further, and venture compliments bordering on declarations of love, or, at any rate, on expressions of deep admiration. The young woman, used to compliments, takes no notice of our heroes, or pretends to have understood nothing.
Her silence is then taken for a tacit acceptance, and the fops, emboldened, make an open declaration of love. Now, a regular flirt or coquette knows how to encourage or discourage a man with one glance, but a perfectly good woman is taken unaware; she feels embarrassed, and, thus apparently encouraged, these men get bolder and bolder, until the young woman has to show them the door.
Then her troubles begin. These parasites will go to their clubs, and, even in drawing-rooms, say that she is a heartless coquette who encourages men to make love to her just to amuse herself. They abuse her, watch her, and, if one day she should compromise herself in the least, woe to her if the secret should fall into such men's hands! There is no revenge of which they are not capable. A case of this sort was, not long ago, investigated thoroughly, and it turned out that an anonymous letter had been written to the husband of a most charming society woman by a cur whom she had to turn out of her house for offering her a worthless love.
There is to be met in society a man who is particularly provoking and supremely objectionable and offensive. He is about forty, very gentlemanly, self-possessed, irreproachably dressed, well informed, interesting talker, with a somewhat patronizing air, and an eternal smile of self-satisfaction on his face.
This man has compromised more women than many a 'devil of a fellow.' If you say before him, 'Mrs. X. is very beautiful, isn't she?' he says nothing, but smiles complacently. So you look at him and add:
'Oh, you know her, then?' He smiles again. 'You don't say so!' you remark. 'I should have thought her a woman above the breath of suspicion.'
He smiles still. You become persuaded that he is, or has been, on the most intimate terms with the lady in question.
Mention before him the name of any woman you like to choose, and if the woman is in the least fashionable, or renowned for her beauty or position, he smiles.
If at a ball he asks a lady to give him the pleasure of her partnership for a waltz or a polka, he leans close toward her, smiling at her in such a strange way that people believe he is telling her words of love, or, worse, that he is granted permission to do so.
If he calls on a lady on her reception day, he has a way to salute her, to kiss her hand, to look at her in a patronizing way that seems to say to the other callers:
'See how ceremonious I am with her before other people, and what a good comedian I am!'
And he smiles, smiles, and smiles.
Women are ill at ease in his presence. They hate him, but as he is content with smiling, and goes no further, what are they to do? They avoid him when they can, his smiles are so compromising.
And they are right. His smiles are more compromising than bonâ fide slander and calumny.
The men hate him, too, but they feel as powerless as the women do. They would like to slap his face, but you cannot say to a man:
'I slap your face because I saw you smile on hearing my wife's name.'
No, that would be too absurd. He knows it, and that is why he goes on smiling. He is safe.
When he hears a bit of gossip on a woman, he immediately takes her defence, but in such a weak manner, and with such a smile on his face all the time, that people immediately come to the conclusion that 'it must be all true.'
What is most provoking is that the man has not a bad reputation. He has never been openly mixed in any intrigue, and even his intimate friends have never heard of any love affair connecting him with any woman. For some people he is an enigma, for others a clever comedian, a maniac, a bore, or a fop.
For men who justly hold that women should be treated with such respect that no act of man should cause anyone to even breathe a light remark on their character, the man who smiles is a cur.
The love of little girls for their dolls is a very serious love; it absolutely amounts to maternal tenderness. I have watched little girls nurse their dolls, and detected in their eyes that almost divine glance that you can see in devoted mothers tending their little children. For that matter a little girl is only a woman in miniature. A young boy has none, or very few, of the characteristics of a man; but a young girl has, at ten years of age, all the characteristics of a woman.
I have known little girls of ten and twelve who were perfect flirts, little coquettes, careful housekeepers, and, toward their dolls, most devoted mothers. I remember one who sternly refused to accompany us to a most tempting party, because her doll had a cold and she felt she must stay at home to nurse it. She was absolutely serious over it, and found even great delight in remaining at home all the time by the bedside of her doll. I remember another who had spent the whole morning cleaning her doll's house from top to bottom. When it was all over she drew a great sigh of relief. 'At last,' she said, 'the house is clean; that's comfort, anyway.' A good, dutiful, bourgeois housewife would not have expressed herself otherwise. Have you not, some of you, even seen little girls give medicines to their dolls, rock them to sleep, put them to bed, tuck them in most carefully, and see that the bedclothes did not choke them and cause them to have nightmares? I have, many times.
A man very often shows inclinations, tastes, and all sorts of characteristic traits which his parents never discovered in him when he was a young boy; but a woman of thirty is what she was when she was ten, only a little more so. A bad boy may become a very good man, and I have known very good boys become very bad men; but a caressing, loving little girl will surely make a loving wife and a tender mother; a cold and uncaressing little girl will become a heartless woman, an indifferent wife and mother. A boy is a boy! a little girl is a little woman.
This is so true that women, many women at all events, who treated their dolls as if they were children, treat their children as if they were dolls. It is the survival of the little girl in the woman. I have known women allow the hair of their boys to fall down their backs in long curls because they looked prettier and more like dolls, although they must have known that the sap of their young bodies was feeding hair at the expense of other far more important parts of their anatomy. When you see a woman most attentive to her baby, insisting on washing it, dressing it herself, you say: 'She is a most dutiful mother; she would trust no one but herself to attend her little child.' But it is not only the satisfaction of a duty performed that makes that woman look so happy, it is also the pleasure she derives from it. And the odds are ten to one that this very woman will play at doll with her child a great deal too long, and that the day on which she will be compelled to allow the child to have some liberty and become independent of her, she will resent it.
There is not, I believe, a single elderly woman that does not prefer the child of her daughter to her daughter herself, who has become now an unmanageable doll who dresses and undresses without the help of anybody. And if this daughter does not allow her mother to do with the grandchild just as she likes, there will be trouble, caused by jealousy. There will be two women now to play at dolls. Why does a grandmother indulge a young child, give it sweets and candies? Is it to give that child a good digestion? No; it is to play at dolls. Do they dress little girls like the 'principal boys' of pantomimes in the palace scene, in order to make them acquire modest tastes and sensible notions? No; it is to play at dolls.
Woman plays at dolls to the end of her life, with her toys, with her children, with her grandchildren, and with herself.
I have never heard women have a good word to say of daughters-in-law who had not given children to their sons. Poor, dear old ladies! They certainly were under the impression that their sons had only one object in view when they contemplated matrimony, that of presenting 'Grannie' with dolls to play with. I quite understand that grandmothers should be admired, that children should bless them, and even advise other children to 'get some,' when they have not got any, but I do not think that grandmothers should be held up to the world as models, because more than nine times out of ten they spoil children, and derive pleasure not from duties performed to the child, but from the satisfaction of playing at dolls. I have very often met sensible mothers, but grandmothers seldom; they generally are incorrigible sinners—and proud of it, too.
Alphonse Karr, in his 'Reminiscences,' relates how he used to meet in society a young and charming woman who always behaved towards him in a very cool manner. Unable to understand the reason, he one day took a chair by her side, made himself particularly pleasant, and point-blank asked her why she did not seem pleased to meet him, and inquired whether he might have unconsciously done anything to cause her displeasure. For a long time she defended herself, assuring him that her coldness towards him was only in his imagination; but, as he insisted, she at last said to him: 'Well, I will tell you. It was thirty-five years ago. One afternoon you called on us, and I was in the drawing-room. Being invited to take a seat by my mother, you chose an arm-chair on which my doll was asleep. You removed it, and quite unceremoniously laid it on a table, head downwards, at the risk of hurting it. In fact, you damaged its nose. I conceived for you a perfect hatred, and, upon my word, I do not think that I am now capable of forgiving you altogether.'
Moral.—If you want to get into the good graces of a woman, praise her baby; if you want a little girl to love you, admire her dolls and treat them with respect.
There are in the world men who are devotion and self-abnegation personified; there are women who are the embodiment of selfishness. From this we cannot lay down a rule any more than we could if, in landing in New York, we saw a red-haired woman, and said at once:
'The Americans are a red-haired people.'
But as, during my life, I have known more men who are selfish than unselfish, and more women who are unselfish than selfish, I am prepared to conclude that man is more selfish than woman.
I have known men of small income (and in their way good men they were) belong to two or three clubs, dine at expensive restaurants, and smoke excellent cigars all day long.
Their daughters had to give lessons in order to obtain the money that was necessary for dressing decently, and the house had to be kept on most economical lines.
I have known others, not worse than those I have just mentioned, allow nothing but water on their family table, and take champagne for dinner at the club or the restaurant.
I could divide selfish men into two classes: the man with good redeeming features, and the execrably selfish man.
The former is good-hearted and fairly sensitive. He hates nobody, because hatred disturbs sleep and rest. He avoids emotions for his own comfort; he is learnedly selfish.
If you are unhappy, in distressed circumstances, don't bother him about it. He is sorry, he cannot help it, and he would rather not hear of it.
If you are ill, do not expect a visit from him; the sight of pain or grief affects him. If you are in want, he may send you a £5 note, but he does not want to see you. He seeks the company of cheerful and happy people only.
He has an income of £6,000 a year, and will tell you that nobody dies of starvation except in novels.
He turns his head from wretches shivering with cold in the street, and is of opinion that a good Government should suppress paupers and all sorts of people who disturb the peace and happiness of the rich. His friends call him 'a good fellow.'
The other type is execrable. The miseries of other people increase his happiness. When he sees a starving-looking man or a sick one, he returns thanks that he is rich and healthy.
He does not avoid the unfortunate: he almost seeks them. The more horrible tales you tell him of poverty, sorrows, disease, wretchedness, the happier he is to feel that he runs no danger of ever encountering such calamities.
Well wrapped up in furs in a good carriage, the sight of a beggar, benumbed with cold, sitting on the stone steps of an empty house, doubles his comfort. He finds his carriage better suspended, and his furs warmer.
He almost believes that the abject poor were invented to make him appreciate his good fortune better. He is not unlike those fanatics of a certain school who believe that the greatest bliss reserved for the elect in heaven is to see their less fortunate brethren burn in hell. As I have said, this type of selfish man is execrable.
Since the escapade of the Royal Princess of Saxony with the French tutor Giron, many have asked me, 'Do you approve or forgive her? Do you not think that a woman who can no longer endure life with a sullen and unsympathetic husband has a right to break away from the social conventionalities of life and go her own way in search of happiness?'
The question is not easy to answer. There may be, or there may not be, extenuating circumstances in the conduct of a woman who deserts her husband, or a man who leaves his wife.
First of all, let me say that I place the consideration of duty far higher than that of personal happiness. Therefore, a man or a woman who abandons a home where there are children of a tender age, children who require the protection of a father and the affection of a mother, which no one can replace, is a coward that should be placed under the ban of society.
I don't care how much a woman may fall in love with a man, or a man with a woman, the duty of either is to remain by the side of their children, to watch over their education, and to see them launched in life. If they shirk this duty, there is no excuse, no atonement for their conduct, which closely borders on crime.
When there are no children, I admit that there may be circumstances in which I would forgive a man or a woman who leaves a home in which life has become unendurable, in order to seek happiness in the company of a partner who has given proof of love, devotion, and disinterestedness. I might also be prepared to forgive if the children were grown up and able to support themselves.
On no account, however, could I approve, or even forgive, a man who leaves a wife with whom life may have become as intolerable as you like without duly providing for her comfort, even if by so doing he should have nothing left for himself, and be obliged to start life afresh.
I do not admit that anyone, man or woman, has a right to shirk responsibilities imposed by solemn promises. Let them set this right first of all. After that, let them solve the problem of happiness as best they can.
No doubt there are drawbacks in holding royal honours, but I believe in the old motto, Noblesse oblige; and if noblesse does, surely royalty should. Royalty nowadays is not of much use, except when it gives to the people over which it rules the example of all virtues, of all domestic virtues especially.
When people are born in the purple, they are born with responsibilities. If they fling them to the four winds of the earth, there is no use for royalty: the reason for its existence has ceased to exist.
Every year in Paris, in springtime, we see the American women reappear with the regularity of the swallow. We expect them, we watch for their arrival, and we are delighted when we hear them say, with their singing voices, that they have come for our season, which begins in April and goes on till 'The Grand Prix' is run during the second week of June.
The American woman is not only received, but eagerly sought in our most aristocratic society. Her amiability and brilliancy have forced open the doors of our most exclusive mansions. She affords so much pleasure that she is indispensable. We are dull without her, because she is not only beautiful and a feast for the eyes, but she is bright, brilliant, witty, unconventional, and a feast for the mind. It is thanks to all these qualities, far more than to her dollars, that the American woman is to-day part and parcel of what is called 'Tout Paris.' And, indeed, there is no woman in the world so attractive as the fair daughter of Uncle Sam. Her physical, moral, and intellectual charms make her the most interesting woman one may wish to meet.
The English woman is very often beautiful. Her freshness is exquisite, her figure excellent when she knows how to enhance its beauty by well-made garments. She is, perhaps, beyond competition when she is really beautiful, but her beauty is too often statuesque, and lacks lustre and piquancy. The French woman is supple and graceful, but she is more fascinating by her manner, by her chic, than by the beauty of her complexion, the regularity of her features, and the proportions of her figure. The German is often fine, but generally heavy, compact, and lacking elegance.
The American woman is an altogether. She has the piquancy, the fascinating manner, the elegance, the grace, and the gait of the Parisienne; but, besides, she often possesses the eyes of a Spaniard, the proud figure of a Roman, and the delicate features of an English woman. If, during the Paris season, you walk in the Champs-Elysées district, where all the best Americans are settled, you will admire those women looking radiant with intelligence, cheerful, independent, who, you can see, have the consciousness of their value.
The education which she has received has developed all her faculties. The liberty she always enjoyed, the constant attentions she has received from father, brother, husband, and all her male friends, have made her feel safe everywhere, and she goes about freely, with a firm step that stamps her American. Thanks to her finesse, her power of observation, her native adaptability, she can fit herself for every station of life. If one day she finds herself mistress of the White House or Vice-Queen of India, she immediately feels at home. She may be ever so learned, she is never a pedant. She is, and remains, a woman in whose company a man feels at once at his ease; a sort of fascinating good fellow, with all the best attributes of womanhood; a little of a coquette, with a suspicion of a touch of blue-stocking—but so little. She loves dresses, and none puts them on better than she does. English women, even the most elegant ones at home, seldom favour us, when they visit us, but with all the worst frumps and frippery they can find in their wardrobe. The American women are considerate enough to try and do their best for us, and we appreciate the compliment. And thus they brighten our theatres, our promenades, our balls and dinner-parties, our fashionable restaurants, and Paris, which loves them, could not now do without them.
A few weeks ago I was watching the church parade in Hyde Park, London, between the statue of Achilles and Stanhope Gate, when I met an American lady of my acquaintance. We walked together for awhile, and then sat down in order to watch the fashionable crowd more closely.
It is said that, although Americans and Englishmen think a great deal of one another nowadays, you seldom hear American women praise the women of England, and more seldom still hear English women say a good word of American women.
So I was tickled to know what my American lady friend thought of the crowd that was performing before us, and I asked her to give me her impressions.
'Well,' she said, 'it is as good as, if not better than, anything that New York could produce. Possibly on some special occasion Fifth Avenue might turn out a few lovelier dresses, but the London average is above the New York average. You see fewer absolute failures here among the women, while the men are quite unapproachable—surely Londoners are the best-dressed men in the world.'
'And the New Yorkers the most brand-newly dressed men,' I interrupted. 'But you are right. I like to think that a coat has been worn just more than once. But please go on.'
'The days when the London girl was really badly dressed are dead and gone. We have educated her, we Americans, until she has all but reached our standard. Just think what the London shops were fifteen and even ten years ago! Something awful! But now I can buy in them everything I want just as easily as though I were in Paris or New York.
'I don't know whether the supply of pretty dresses and dainty et ceteras made the demand, or whether it was the other way about, but, at any rate, there has been a change within the last decade that is almost a revolution. The London woman of to-day dresses quite as well as her sister across the Channel or the Atlantic.'
I was getting sadly disappointed, for my lady friend is a critic and a wit, and I was expecting a few amusing remarks on English women. So I ventured:
'So you think that now English women can obtain in London dresses just as pretty as women can in Paris and New York?
'Certainly,' she replied. 'Yet they never look so well, because, you see, when they get these pretty dresses, these poor English women don't know how to put them on. The English girl's education is not yet completed. She has not learned how to carry herself as we have in America, both at home and at school. You know the splendid air and prima donna effects that American women can bring off when they choose. These young English women have hardly a suspicion of them.
'In taste for the delicate things of dress the Londoner is now just about where she should be; but she has not yet learned how to wear a dress. A French woman or an American would make fifty per cent, more of it than the English woman knows how to do; and if this is to be remedied, English girls will first have to be taught how to walk and how to hold themselves.'
And no doubt my American friend had hit on the national defect of English women—their bad way of walking and holding themselves.
One's thoughts naturally fly to Spain, where every member of the feminine sex, from the little girl of four to the old woman, who in England would be bent and tottering, knows how to carry herself as if she were a queen.
If it is true that this result is achieved by the Spanish custom of carrying everything on the head instead of on the back or in the hand, it is a pity the English do not make their girls begin at once to carry their school-satchels in a way that will make them hold their heads up instead of down, and accentuate gracefully their lines both behind and in front.
When I was in South Africa I invariably admired the manner in which the Kaffir and Zulu women walked and held themselves. On watching them I often exclaimed: 'If English women could only walk and carry themselves as these women do, with their pretty faces and figures, with their beautiful skin and complexion, they would have few rivals in the world.'
It is by walking barefooted and carrying everything on their heads that the women of Kaffirland and Zululand learn to walk so well, to hold their heads up, to bring their chests forward, to throw back their shoulders, and give to their gait that gentle swing which is so dainty and graceful.
American women obtain the same result by being drilled at school, for it is incontestable, and, I believe, incontested, that they are the best walking women, and also those who, with the Parisiennes, know best how to put on their dresses.
Heller, who has collected the greatest number of instances of extreme long life, found 1,000 persons who lived from 100 to 110, 60 from 110 to 120, 30 from 120 to 130, 15 from 130 to 140, 6 from 140 to 150, and one who lived to be 169 years of age.
French writes that from 1881 to 1890, in Massachusetts, there were 203 deaths of persons past the age of 100. Of these 153 were women and 50 were men. Let us add that the parts of the world which have supplied, in proportion to their population, the greatest number of centenarians, are New England, Scotland, and Brittany.
All these centenarians, without exception, have been found among the humbler classes, and most of them among peasants—that is to say, among the workers of the community who lead quiet, regular, and busy lives.
It is worthy of note that just those very principles which were laid down by the Founder of the Christian religion as best for the eternal welfare of the soul have been proved by the passing years to be best for the body also.
It is not those who are clad in purple and fine linen and fare sumptuously every day who are strong enough to climb to the clear heights of a great age. Neither titles nor wealth keep the feet from wearying of the uphill path of life.
They who would have their days long in the land must honour their great mother, Nature. They must walk in her ways. Nature does not rejoice in sluggards, therefore they must work, and the more steadily they work the longer they live.
Men of thought have always been distinguished for their age. Solon, Sophocles, Pindar, Anacreon, and Xenophon were octogenarians. Kant, Buffon, Goethe, Fontenelle, and Newton were over eighty. Michael Angelo and Titian were eighty-nine and ninety-nine respectively. Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, lived to be eighty.
Victor Hugo was over eighty. Gladstone, who worked every minute of his life, always in search of new subjects to master, and who took his recreation in bodily work—gardening, cutting down his trees—died at eighty-eight.
Sidney Cooper, the English animal painter, whose work of last year will be exhibited at the Royal Academy, London, this year, died at ninety-nine, practically with his brushes in his hands.
The preponderance of females over males in the matter of long life is a striking fact. It is also constant. All authorities agree in this, that more women than men live to be very old. The more fragile pitcher is not so soon broken at the fountain. Why?
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 succumbs 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.
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 blasé 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 nobility of form and attitude, 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 entitled this chapter 'Women may All be Beautiful.'