the snow-drop, the brilliant ranunculus, and a long train of rival
sweets, offer themselves at the shrine of female taste. From this rich
assemblage are selected and formed those delicious garlands which deck
the snowy brows of Celia, which twine with Chloe’s golden hair. From
this fair parterre we collect the variegated _bouquet_, which, reposing
on the bosom of beauty, mingles its fragrant breath with hers.
This tender, this exquisite sweetness, which we inhale from the lily,
the rose, or the violet, is far preferable to all the extracted
perfumes that ever were wafted “from Indus to the pole.” They are not
only purer and more balmy; but, when, on approaching a lovely woman,
we find, not only our eye delighted with the sight of beauty, but our
senses “wrapped in the sweet embrace of soft perfumes;” when it is not
the preconcerted fragrancy of essences drawn from east to west, and
poured upon the fair with the design to _affect our senses_; then we
yield ourselves to the lovely breathing of nature. We see her in the
charming creature before us, blooming in youth and freshness; we feel
her in the thousand odors of Paradise emanating from the newly-plucked
flowers, which seem to share her being, imbibing and partaking
sweetness.
Amidst the variety of materials with which women decorate their
persons, there is not one that requires greater discrimination in the
use than those articles of jewelry which we denominate trinkets. Here
good taste, the general regulatrix, now resumes her sway. The blind
directress of the luxuriant imagination gives grace to solidity, and
consequence to trifles. Her magic spirit breathes in the laurels of
the hero, dwells on the lip of oratory, and sparkles in the gem that
decorates the fair!
To women of the most exalted as well as of the more humble ranks, we
recommend a moderate, rather than a profuse, display of conspicuous
and showy ornaments. A well-educated taste ought to open the eyes
of a woman to be a tolerably correct judge of the perfections or
imperfections of her own person; and by that judgment she ought to
regulate the adoption or rejection of striking decoration.
It is well to remind my youthful reader that she can never learn these
truths (when they are on the defective side) but from the decisions
of her own impartial mind. Few women, much less men, would venture to
say to an improperly dressed young lady,--“Madam, your fingers are two
clumsy to wear with advantage that brilliant ring;--your neck and arms
are two meagre, discolored, or coarse, to adopt the pearl bracelet
or necklace; unless, indeed, you soften the contrast by putting a
lace shirt and long sleeves between your skin and the pearls.” These
observations would place the too frank adviser in a similar situation
with that of Gil Blas when correcting the manuscripts of the conceited
_Prelate of Granada_;--and, therefore, we cannot expect that any friend
should run the risk of incurring our resentment, when they might retain
our favor by only permitting us to make ourselves as ridiculous as we
please.
Let me then, in the light of an _author_, who cannot be supposed,
in a general address, to mean any individual personal reflections,
admonish my readers, one and all, not to neglect composing their
complexions with the hues and brilliancy of the gems offered to them to
wear. Clear brunettes shine with the greatest lustre when they adopt
pearls, diamonds, topazes, and bright amber. The fair beauty may also
wear all these with advantage, while she exclusively claims as her
own, emeralds, garnets, amethysts, rubies, onyxes, &c. &c. Cornelian,
coral, and jet, may be worn by either; but certainly produce the most
pleasing effect on the rose and lily complexion.
Ornaments and trimmings of silver are to be preferred to gold, when
intended for the fair beauty. The white lustre of the first of these
costly metals harmonizes better with delicacy of skin than the glaring
effulgence of the gold. By a parity of reasoning, gold agrees better
with the brunette, as its yellow and flaming hue lights up the fire of
her eyes, and exhibits her complexion in the brightest contrast.
If the _clavicle_, or collar-bone, be too apparent, either from
accidental thinness or original shape, remedy the defect by letting
the necklace fall immediately into the cavity which the ungraceful
projection occasions. But should this bone protrude itself to an
absolutely ugly extent, I would recommend the neck to be completely
covered by a lace handkerchief and frill; for its exposure would only
give a bad specimen of a figure which may be, in every other part, of a
just and fine proportion.
If the prevailing fashion be to reject the long sleeve, and to
partially display the arm, let the glove advance considerably above the
elbow, and there be fastened with a drawing-string, or armlet. But this
should only be the case when the arm is muscular, coarse, or scraggy.
When it is fair, smooth, and round, it will admit of the glove being
pushed down to a little above the wrists.
There is perhaps no single beauty of the female form which obtains so
much admiration as a well-proportioned foot and ankle. Possibly the
liveliness of this sentiment may be increased in this instance by the
rarity of the perfection being found amongst the British fair.
There is a _je ne sais quoi_ in a fine ankle, which seems to assure the
gazer that the whole of the form, of which it is a sample, is shaped
with the same exquisite grace. A heavy leg and foot seems to hint that
the whole of the limbs which the drapery conceals are in a gravitating
proportion with their clumsy foundations; and where we see ponderosity
of body, we are apt to conclude that there is equal heaviness in mind
and feelings. This may be an unjust mode of reasoning, but it is a very
common one; and so I account for the general prejudice against any
unusual weight in the lower extremities.
When we consider that it required the famous sculptor of Greece to
collect the most beautiful virgins from every part of his country
before he could find a living model for every part of his projected
statue of perfect beauty; when we consider this, that the very native
land of female charms could not produce one woman completely faultless
in her form--how can we be so unreasonable as to demand such perfection
in a daughter of Britain?
Let not the other sex scrutinize too closely, nor demand that
universal and correct symmetry in their wives and daughters, which
was never yet found but in the elaborately chiseled models of the
sculptor’s study.
It must not, however, be presumed from what I have said, that the
generality of other countries are happier in the beautiful formation
of their women’s forms than England, or that the British fair are at
all more notorious than many other nations for heavy feet and legs. So
far from it, there are ladies in England with feet and ankles of so
delicate a symmetry, that there is nothing in modelling or in marble
to excel their perfection. But to make a display of them--to exhibit
them by unusually short petticoats, and draw attention by extraordinary
gay attire, is an instance of immodesty and ill-taste, which attracts
contempt instead of admiration. Men despise her for her impropriety,
and envious women have a fair subject on which to ground their
detractions.
In short, it can never be sufficiently inculcated, that modesty is the
most graceful ornament of beauty.
“She that has that, is clad in complete steel.”
Be the foot eminently handsome, or the reverse, it alike requires to be
arrayed soberly. Except on certain brilliant occasions, its shoe should
be confined to grave and clean-looking colors; of the first, black,
grays, and browns; of the last, white, nankeen, pale-blue, green, &c.,
according to the color of the dress, and the time of day. I should
suppose it almost useless to say, that (except in a carriage) the dark
colors ought to be preferred in a morning. To be sure, there is nothing
out of character in wearing nankeen shoes or half-boots in the early
part of the day, even in walking, provided the other parts of your
dress be spotless white, or of the same buff hue. The other delicate
colors I have mentioned above (I repeat, except in a carriage) are
confined to evening dresses. Red morocco, scarlet, and those very vivid
hues, cannot be worn with any propriety until winter, when the color of
the mantle or pelisse may sanction its fulness. On brilliant assembly
nights, or court drawing-rooms, the spangled or diamond-decorated
slipper has a magnificent and appropriate effect. But for the raiment
of the leg, we totally disapprove, at all times, of the much ornamented
stocking.
The open-wove clock and instep, instead of displaying fine proportion,
confuse the contour; and may produce an impression of gaiety, but
exclude that of beauty, whose rays always strike singly. But if the
cloak be a colored or a gold one, as I have sometimes seen, how glaring
is the exhibition! how coarse the association of ideas it produces
in the fancy! Instead of a woman of refined manners and polished
habits, your imagination reverts to the gross and revolting females
of Portsmouth-point, or Plymouth-dock; or at least to the hired
opera-dancer, whose business it is to make her foot and ankle the
principal object which characterizes her charms, and attracts the _coup
d’œil_ of the whole assembly.
If I may give my fair friends a hint on this delicate subject, it would
be that the finest rounded ankles are most effectually shown by wearing
a silk stocking _without any clock_. The eye then slides easily over
the unbroken line, and takes in all its beauties. But when the ankle is
rather large, or square, then a pretty unobtrusive net clock, of the
same color as the stocking, will be a useful division, and induce the
beholder to believe the perfect symmetry of the parts. A very thick leg
cannot be disguised or amended; and in this case I can only recommend
absolute neatness in the dressing of the limb, and petticoats so long
that there is hardly a chance of its ever being seen.
One cause of _thick ankles_ in young women is want of exercise, and
abiding much in overheated rooms. Standing too long has often the same
effect, by subjecting the limb to an unnatural load, and therefore to
swelling. The only preventive, or cure, for this malady, is a strict
attention to health. You might as well expect to see a rose-bush
spring, bud, and bloom, in a closely-pent oven, as anticipate fine
proportions and complexion from a long continuance of the exotic
fashions of modern days.
If a girl wishes to be well-shaped and well-complexioned, she must
use due exercise _on foot_. Horseback is an excellent auxiliary, as
it gives much the same degree of motion, with double the animation,
in consequence of the change of air, and variation of objects; but
carriage exercise is so little, that we cannot recommend it to any case
that is short of an absolute invalid. A woman in respectable health
must _walk_, to maintain her happy temperament. By this she will still
more consolidate her solids, and preserve the shape with which nature
has kindly endowed her. If it was originally fine, it will remain;
and if it was but ordinary, it will at least save itself from growing
deformed.
ON DEPORTMENT.
“Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye,
In every gesture dignity and love.”
MILTON.
Having discoursed so largely on form and apparel, I shall now throw
together a few hints on that indispensable assistant-grace of beauty,
an elegant and appropriate air.
This subject should be particularly considered; and the arguments from
such reflections strongly enforced on the attention of young women.
There is scarcely an observer of manners and their effects, who will
not maintain that the most beautiful and well-dressed woman will soon
cease to please, unless her charms are accompanied with the ineffable
enchantment of a graceful demeanor. A pretty face may be seen every
day, but grace and elegance, being generally the offspring of a
polished mind, are more distinguished.
While we exult in the pre-eminent beauty of our fair countrywomen;
while we talk of their lilies and roses, and downy skins; we cannot but
shrink from comparison when we bring their manners in parallel with the
females of other nations, who have not half their corporeal advantages.
I am not going to deny, that in this land of beauty, (a land to which
a certain cardinal, many centuries ago, gave the appellation of _the
native paradise of angels_!) we shall find the fair
“Fitted to shine in courts, or walk the shade,
With innocence and contemplation join’d.”
There are many lovely women of all ranks in England who merit this
encomium: but I am not writing an eulogium on these happy exceptions;
I feel it my duty to admonish the general race of my female
contemporaries. To the rising generation I especially address myself;
and when the young belle in her teens listens to the suggestions of
experience, perhaps the advice may not be quite so unpalatable, when
she understands that it comes from one who has studied the graces
at more than one of the courts of the Bourbons; and, since their
dispersion, has followed the flight of elegance wherever it was to be
found.
The _awkward, reserved_ air of the early part of the last century
has given way, not to _grace_ and _frankness_, but to an _unblushing
impudence_, which is the very assassin of female virtue and connubial
honor. Think not I am too severe, ye indulgent mothers! regard me
not as a cynic, ye thoughtless daughters of imitation! I mean not to
arraign your hearts, but your manners; I seek to pluck the garb of
Phryné from your chaste and Christian shoulders. Who, that is an
actress, when called upon to perform the part of spotless _Virginia_,
would rush upon the stage half naked, dancing, rolling her eyes as
if intoxicated, and flirting with every officer of the _pretorian
guard_ who crossed her path? In such a case should we not call the
actress mad? or say, “If such were Virginia, he performed a rash and
unnecessary act, who avenged the insulted person of such a wanton on
the first magistrate of Rome!”
Yet such Virginias are our Virginias! and to see a modest, abashed,
retiring, blushing girl enter one of our assemblies, is as uncommon a
sight as now and then an embassy from a foreign land. The modern taste
for exhibitions of all kinds is the chief source of this depravity;
a girl is no longer taught to dance that she may move easily in the
occasional festivities of her neighborhood, and enjoy the graceful
exercise of a birth-day or a race ball, without annoying the movements
of her companions. No! these are not sufficient: she takes her lessons
of the _corps de ballet_, that she may present herself in the ball-room
or on a stage; and while the motions of her limbs, and the exposure
of her person, scandalize every discreet matron present, she believes
herself the object of general admiration, the very _ne plus ultra_ of
the art. In like manner, her musical talents are cultivated. She does
not learn to compose, with her sweet lullaby, the unquiet hours of
old age or of sickness, to rest and sleep: enough for her relations,
father, brothers, husband, that she practises all day the crude and
disagreeable parts of her lessons. It is for the guest, the gay
assembly, the concert of _amateurs_, that she reserves her harmonies;
and to them she sings and plays till she believes _herself_ the tenth
muse, and _them_ her adorers.
Can we be surprised that from such an education should be produced the
vain, the conceited, the presumptuous, the impudent?
To check this growing evil, by showing the young candidate for
admiration what is “woman’s best knowledge and her praise;” to show her
what is indeed the proper, the graceful, the winning deportment, is the
design of these few following pages; and I trust that my young reader
will receive them as the admonition of a tender and experienced parent,
and not allow “a mother’s precepts to be vain!”
Having laid it down as a first principle, that no demeanor, whether
in a princess or a country girl, can be becoming that is not grounded
in _feminine delicacy_, I shall proceed to show, that a different
deportment is expected from different persons. Certain characteristics
of persons are suited to certain styles of manner; and also the same
demeanor does not agree as well with the steward’s daughter as the
squire’s bride.
As in a former chapter I have particularized the dresses which are
adapted to the gay and the grave, so in the next I propose pointing out
the appropriate miens which belong to the various degrees of beauty and
classes of society.
PECULIARITIES IN CARRIAGE AND DEMEANOR.
“By her graceful walk, the Queen of Love is known.”
VIRGIL.
As order is the beautiful harmonizer of the universe, so consistency is
the graceful combiner of all that is in woman to perfection.
In reference to this sentiment, her manners must bear due affinity
with her figure, and her deportment with her rank. The youthful and
delicate-shaped girl is allowed a gaiety of air which would ill become
a women of maturer years and larger proportions; but at all times of
life, when the figure is slender, a swan-like neck, and the motions
are naturally swaying, for that girl, or that woman, to affect what
is called a majestic air, would be as unavailing as absurd. It is
not in the power of a figure so constructed ever to look majestic.
By stiffening her joints, walking with an erect mien, and drawing up
her neck, she would certainly be upright; she would seem to have had
a determined dancing-master, who, in spite of nature and grace, had
made her _hold up her head_; but she would never look like anything
but a stiff, inelegant creature. The character of these slight forms
corresponds with their resemblances in the vegetable world: the
aspen, the willow, bend their gentle heads at every passing breeze,
and their flexible and tender arms toss in the wind with grace and
beauty: such is the woman of delicate proportions. She must enter a
room either with the buoyant step of a young nymph, if youth is her
passport to sportiveness; or, if she is advanced nearer the meridian
of life, she then may glide in, with that ease of manner which gives
play to all the graceful motions of her elegantly undulating form. For
her to crane up her neck, would be to change its fine swan-like bend
into the scraggy throat of the ostrich: all her movements should be of
a flexible character. Her mode of salutation should be rather a bow
than a courtesy; and when she sits, she should model her easy attitude
rather by the ideas of the painter, when he would pourtray a reclining
nymph, than according to the lessons of the grace-destroying governess,
who would marshal her pupils on their chairs like a rank of drilled
recruits. In short, for a slender or thin woman, to be stiff at any
time, is, in the first case, to render of no effect the advantages of
nature; and, in the next, to increase and aggravate her defects, by
making it more conspicuous by a constrained and ridiculous carriage.
Though we cannot unite the majestic air which declares command with
this easy, nymph-like deportment, the dignity of modesty may be its
inseparable companion. The timid, the retreating step; the downcast
eye; the varying complexion, “blushing at the deep regard she draws!”
all these belong to this class of females; and they are charms so
truly feminine, so exquisitely lovely, that I cannot but place them
with their counterpart, the ethereal form, as the perfection of female
beauty.
The woman whose figure bears nature’s own stamp of majesty, is
generally of a stately make; her person is squarer, and has more of
_embonpoint_ than the foregoing. The very muscles of her neck are so
formed as to show their adaptation to an erect posture. There is a
sort of loftiness in the natural movement of her head, in the high
swell of her expansive bosom. The step of this woman should be grave
and firm: her motions few and commanding; and the carriage of her
head and person erect and steady. An excess in stateliness could not
have any worse effect on her, than perverting the majesty of nature
into the haughtiness of art. We might admire or revere the first; the
last we would probably resent and detest. The dignified beauty must
therefore beware of overstraining the natural bent of her character: it
is like the bombast of exalted language which never fails to lose its
aim, and engender disgust. We might laugh at a delicate girl, so far
exaggerating the pliancy of her form and ease of manners, as to twist
herself into the thousand antics of a Columbine: she aims at pleasing
us, and though she chooses the wrong method, we will not frown, but
only smile at the ridiculous exhibition. But when a majestic fair one
presumes to arrogate an undue consequence in her air, it is not to
gratify our senses that she assumes the extraordinary diadem: and,
irritated at the contempt her greatness would wish to throw upon us
inferior personages, we treat her like an usurper; and, armed with a
sense of injustice, we determine to pull her at once from her throne.
The easy, graceful air, we see, belongs exclusively to the slender
beauty, and the moderated majestic mien to a greater _embonpoint_.
There is a race of women whose persons have no determined character.
These must regulate and adopt their demeanors according to the degrees
in which they approach the two before-mentioned classes. But in all
cases, let it never be forgotten, that a too faint copy of a model is
better than an overcharged one. Excess is always bad. Moderation never
offends. By falling easily into the degree of undulating grace, or the
dignified demeanor which suits your character, you merely put on the
robe which nature designed, and the habit will be fit and becoming.
But when the nymph-like form assumes a regal port, or a commanding
dame pretends to “skip and play,” the affectation on both sides is
equally absurd: discords of this kind are ever ridiculous and odious.
Besides these, there are affectations of other descriptions, of equal
folly and bad effect. Some ladies, to whom nature has given a good
sight, and lovely orbs to look through, must needs pretend a kind
of half-blindness, and they go peeping about through an eye-glass,
dangling at the end of a long gold chain, hanging at their necks. Not
content with this affectation of one defect, they assume another, and
lisp so inarticulately, that hardly three words in a sentence are
intelligible. All such follies as these are not more a death-blow to
all respect for the novice that plays them off, than they are sure
antidotes to any charms she may possess. Simplicity is the perfection
of form; simplicity is the perfection of fine dressing; simplicity is
the perfection of air and manners.
In the details of carriage, we must not omit a due attention to gait,
and its accompanying air. We find that it was “by her _graceful walk_
the Queen of Love was known!” In this particular, the French women far
exceed us. Pope observes, that “they move easiest who have learnt to
_dance_.” And it is the step of the highly-accomplished dancer that we
see in the generality of well-bred Frenchwomen; not the march of the
military sergeant, which is the usual study with our pedestrian Graces.
There is a buoyant lightness, a dignified ease in the walk of a lady,
who has been taught the use of her limbs by a fine dancer, which is
never seen in her who has been drilled by the halbert, and told to
_stand at ease_ with her hands resting on her stomach, as if reposing
on the trigger of her fire-lock. Such a way as we have fallen upon
to teach our daughters the _graceful step of the Queen of Love_, is,
indeed, so singular, that until another race of Amazons arise, to whom
military tactics may be useful, we have no chance of any imitators.
Indeed, the marching walk of Englishwomen is so ridiculous, even in the
eyes of their own countrymen, that I remember of being one day in St.
James’s Park, with one of these female recruits, when a sentinel, with
a humorous gravity, struck his musket to her as she passed.