CONCERNING THE PERFECT WOMAN, AND THEREFORE CONCERNING ALL FEMININE
READERS
As I once more got under way, my thoughts slowly loitered back to the
theme which had been occupying them before I dropped asleep. What was
my working hypothesis of the Perfect Woman, towards whom I was thus
leisurely strolling? She might be defined, I reflected, as The Woman
Who Is Worthy Of Us; but the improbability which every healthily
conceited young man must feel of ever finding such a one made the
definition seem a little unserviceable. Or, if you prefer, since we
seem to be dealing with impossibles, we might turn about and more truly
define her as The Woman of Whom We are Worthy, for who dare say that
she exists? If, again, she were defined as the Woman our More
Fortunate Friend Marries, her unapproachableness would rob the
definition of any practical value. Other generalisations proving
equally unprofitable, I began scientifically to consider in detail the
attributes of the supposititious paragon,--attributes of body and mind
and heart. This was soon done; but again, as I thus conned all those
virtues which I was to expect united in one unhappy woman, the result
was still unsatisfying, for I began to perceive that it was really not
perfection that I was in search of. As I added virtue after virtue to
the female monster in my mind, and the result remained still inanimate
and unalluring, I realised that the lack I was conscious of was not any
new perfection, but just one or two honest human imperfections. And
this, try as I would, was just what I could not imagine.
For, if you reflect a moment, you will see that, while it is easy to
choose what virtues we would have our wife possess, it is all but
impossible to imagine those faults we would desire in her, which I
think most lovers would admit add piquancy to the loved one, that
fascinating wayward imperfection which paradoxically makes her perfect.
Faults in the abstract are each and all so uninviting, not to say
alarming, but, associated with certain eyes and hair and tender little
gowns, it is curious how they lose their terrors; and, as with vice in
the poet's image, we end by embracing what we began by dreading. You
see the fault becomes a virtue when it is hers, the treason prospers;
wherefore, no doubt, the impossibility of imagining it. What
particular fault will suit a particular unknown girl is obviously as
difficult to determine as in what colours she will look her best.
So, I say, I plied my brains in vain for that becoming fault. It was
the same whether I considered her beauty, her heart, or her mind. A
charming old Italian writer has laid down the canons of perfect
feminine beauty with much nicety in a delicious discourse, which, as he
delivered it in a sixteenth-century Florentine garden to an audience of
beautiful and noble ladies, an audience not too large to be intimate
and not too small to be embarrassing, it was his delightful good
fortune and privilege to illustrate by pretty and sly references to the
characteristic beauties of the several ladies seated like a ring of
roses around him. Thus he would refer to the shape of Madonna
Lampiada's sumptuous eyelids, and to her shell-like ears, to the
correct length and shape of Madonna Amororrisca's nose, to the lily
tower of Madonna Verdespina's throat; nor would the unabashed old
Florentine shrink from calling attention to the unfairness of Madonna
Selvaggia's covering up her dainty bosom, just as he was about to
discourse upon "those two hills of snow and of roses with two little
crowns of fine rubies on their peaks." How could a man lecture if his
diagrams were going to behave like that! Then, feigning a tiff, he
would close his manuscript, and all the ladies with their birdlike
voices would beseech him with "Oh, no, Messer Firenzuola, please go on
again; it's SO charming!" while, as if by accident, Madonna Selvaggia's
moonlike bosom would once more slip out its heavenly silver, perceiving
which, Messer Firenzuola would open his manuscript again and proceed
with his sweet learning.
Happy Firenzuola! Oh, days that are no more!
By selecting for his illustrations one feature from one lady and
another from another, Messer Firenzuola builds up an ideal of the
Beautiful Woman, which, were she to be possible, would probably be as
faultily faultless as the Perfect Woman, were she possible.
Moreover, much about the same time as Firenzuola was writing,
Botticelli's blonde, angular, retrousse women were breaking every one
of that beauty-master's canons, perfect in beauty none the less; and
lovers then, and perhaps particularly now, have found the perfect
beauty in faces to which Messer Firenzuola would have denied the name
of face at all, by virtue of a quality which indeed he has tabulated,
but which is far too elusive and undefinable, too spiritual for him
truly to have understood,--a quality which nowadays we are tardily
recognising as the first and last of all beauty, either of nature or
art,--the supreme, truly divine, because materialistically
unaccountable, quality of Charm!
"Beauty that makes holy earth and heaven May have faults from head to
feet."
O loveliest and best-loved face that ever hallowed the eyes that now
seek for you in vain! Such was your strange lunar magic, such the
light not even death could dim. And such may be the loveliest and
best-loved face for you who are reading these pages,--faces little
understood on earth because they belong to heaven.
There is indeed only one law of beauty on which we may rely,--that it
invariably breaks all the laws laid down for it by the professors of
aesthetics. All the beauty that has ever been in the world has broken
the laws of all previous beauty, and unwillingly dictated laws to the
beauty that succeeded it,--laws which that beauty has no less
spiritedly broken, to prove in turn dictator to its successor.
The immortal sculptors, painters, and poets have always done exactly
what their critics forbade them to do. The obedient in art are always
the forgotten.
Likewise beautiful women have always been a law unto themselves. Who
could have prophesied in what way any of these inspired law-breakers
would break the law, what new type of perfect imperfection they would
create?
So we return to the Perfect Woman, having gained this much knowledge of
her,--that her perfection is nothing more or less than her unique,
individual, charming imperfection, and that she is simply the woman we
love and who is fool enough to love us.