The Last of the Rose.--Weighing in the Balances.--To Love and
to be Loved.--The Enigma of Love.--Its Power over the Lot of
Men.--Inspiration in the Looks.--The Land of Spring.--The
Duchess of Devonshire.--Women at and after Thirty.--Training of
Emotion.--Warming the Voice.--Crow’s-feet at the Opera.--Bohemian
Arsenic Waters.--Recipe from Madame Vestris.--Milk of
Roses.--Sweet-oils.--Opera-dancers’ Prescription for Restoring
Suppleness.
For any woman, maid or matron, past youth, who hears the leaves begin
to drop, and sees the roses curl in the warm summer of her life, this
chapter is written. It is well that with the decay of bloom and outward
charm there should be a lessening of feeling, an amiable indifference
to the homage that youth covets eagerly. The woman of--who dares fill
in the age?--the woman who finds the faint lines on her cheek and the
pallor creeping to her lip should have learned and tasted many things
in her life--so many that she can appraise the value of all, and resign
them contentedly, with a little sigh, not for what they were, but for
what they were not.
She should have loved, and, if possible, have won love in return,
though that is less matter. The wisdom, the blessedness, come through
loving, not through being loved.
It is well if she can accept the complement of her affection, and find
out of what mutable elements it is made: its fervor and forgetfulness;
its devotion, often eclipsed and as often surprising with its fresh
strength--weak where we trust it most, and standing proof where we
surely expect it to fail.
Such is the love of man. It is a riddle, whose learning has cost gray
hairs on tender temples, the roses from many cheeks.
It is the tradition that love makes or mars a woman’s life; but I
have yet to learn that it does not exert an equal though silent power
over the lot of men. Be that as it may, a woman in love is far more
beautiful than one out of it. And this is true if the love last to
threescore.
Let women, if they would remain charming, by all means keep their hold
on love, their faith in romance. The power of feeling gives vitality
and interest to faces long after their first flush has passed. Speaking
as matter of fact, this is the case, for emotion has a livelier power
than the sun has over the blood, and the miracle of love in making a
plain girl pretty is explained by the stimulating effects of happiness
on the circulation. If you would preserve inspiration in your looks,
beware how you repress emotion. Cultivate, not the signs of it, but
emotion itself, for the two things are very distinct. Suffer yourself
to be touched and swayed by noble music and passion. To do this, place
yourself often under the best influences within reach. There may be
pathos enough in the rendering of a poor little girl’s song at the
piano to stir tenderly chords of feeling that were growing dull for
want of use. The rose of morning, the perfume of spring, have rapt
many a middle-aged woman away to divine regions of fancy, from which
she came back with their dewy freshness and smell lingering about her.
Youth has its daylong reveries while its hands are at work. We older
ones need to reserve with jealous care our hours of solitude, in which
the springs fill up.
The faces of old beauties have no charm beyond that of feeling. Look at
the women who were reputed the belles of our large cities twenty years
ago. They may be well preserved; but in most cases they are mere masks
in discolored wax. The pearly teeth, the small Grecian features, the
soft, fine hair and regular eyes are left, but the brow has learned
neither to weep nor smile, the lips are composed, and might be mute
for all the expression that replaces their lost crimson. One could
adore the wasted beauty of the Duchess of Devonshire, “worn by the
agitations of a brilliant and romantic life,” for the sake of the
fire and kindness that lit even its death-pillow; and the Josephine
of Malmaison, with eyes always eloquent of tears, wins more devotion
than the empress at Saint Cloud, confessed the loveliest woman of
France. Let no woman fall into the mistake of preserving her beauty by
refraining from emotion, for all she can keep by such costly pains will
be the coffin-like shapeliness of flowers preserved in sand.
Laugh, weep, rejoice, or suffer as life provides. Only feel something
natural, worthy and vivid enough not to leave your face a blank.
There is a time between twenty-five and thirty-five when the struggle
of life, mean or lofty as it may be, oppresses women sorely. Fret
and care write crossing script on their faces, which grow yellow and
pinched till they despair of comeliness. This is when they are learning
to live. Ten years or so make the lesson easy, and it is one of the
thankfulest things in the world to see such faces going back to the
blossom and sunny sweetness of their spring. Many a woman is handsomer
at thirty-nine than she was at thirty. Nature responds wonderfully to
the reliefs afforded her. The only counsel is to let Nature go free. Do
not think, because trial has bent spirit and frame together, that they
should stay so a moment after the heavy hand is off. If you feel like
singing, sing, not humming low, but joyful and clear as the larks, that
would carol just as gayly at ninety, if larks lived so long, as the
first summer they left their nests. The worst of English and American
systems of manners is the constant repression they demand. It impairs
even the physical powers, so that in training a singer the first thing
great artists do is to teach her to feel, in order, as they say, to
“warm up” the voice and give it fullness. Women need to cultivate
pleasure and amusement far more after they are thirty than before it,
I mean romantic pleasures, such as come from exquisite colors and
sceneries in nature or their homes, from poetry and the loveliest
music. They are twice as impressible then as they are in youth, if
they know how to get hold of the right notes. They leave themselves to
fall out of tune, and forget to respond.
Yet, as a woman does not love to carry her thinned tresses and
crow’s-feet into the glare of the opera, or to talk poetry when
rheumatism twinges her middle finger, the craft of the toilet comes
in most gratefully. The freshness of the skin is prolonged by a
simple secret, the tepid bath in which bran is stirred, followed by
long friction, till the flesh fairly shines. This keeps the blood at
the surface, and has its effect in warding off wrinkles. Bohemian
countesses over thirty may go to arsenic springs, as they were wont to
do, for the benefit of their complexions; but the home bath-room is
more efficacious than even the minute doses of quicksilver with which
the ladies of George the First’s court used to poison themselves--a
primitive way of getting at the virtues of blue-pill.
The celebrated Madame Vestris slept with her face covered by a paste
which gave firmness to a loose skin and prevented wrinkles. It was a
recipe which the Spanish ladies are fond of using, which requires the
whites of four eggs boiled in rose-water, to which is added half an
ounce of alum, and as much oil of sweet almonds, the whole beaten to a
paste.
A favorite cosmetic of the time of Charles II. was the milk of roses,
said to give a fair and youthful appearance to faded cheeks. It was
made by boiling gum-benzoin in the spirits of wine till it formed
a rich tincture, fifteen drops of which in a glass of water made a
fragrant milk, in which the face and arms were bathed, leaving the
lotion to dry on. It obliterates wrinkles as far as any thing can
besides enamel.
To restore suppleness to the joints, the Oriental practice may be
revived of anointing the body with oil. The best sweet-oil or oil of
almonds is used for this purpose, slightly perfumed with attar of roses
or oil of violets. The joints of the knees, shoulders, and fingers are
to be oiled daily, and the ointment well rubbed into the skin, till it
leaves no gloss. The muscles of the back feel a sensible relief from
this treatment, especially when strained with work or with carrying
children. The anointing should follow the bath, when the two are taken
together. It is a pity this custom has ever fallen into disuse among
our people, who need it quite as much as the sensuous Orientals.
Opera-dancers in Europe use an ointment which is thus given by Lola
Montez: The fat of deer or stag, eight ounces; olive-oil, six ounces;
virgin wax, three ounces; white brandy, half a pint; musk, one grain;
rose-water, four ounces. The fat, oil, and wax are melted together,
and the rose-water stirred into the brandy, after which all are beaten
together. It is used to give suppleness to the limbs in dancing, and
relieves the stiffness ensuing on violent exercise. Ambergris would
suit modern taste better than musk in preparing this.