From time immemorial, beauty has been considered the glory, if not the necessity, of woman. This is so true, that it is almost impossible to associate the name of any distinguished female in history with any other idea than that of physical perfection. From Evre to Marie Antoinette, they flit across the magic mirror of our imagination clad in varying but distinctive graces. For it is an instinct of human nature to invest the unseen and remote with the excellence which has birth mainly in our dreams.
Poetry assists us in this unconscious idealization; so does her sister, Art. That poet or painter would soon find his occupation gone, who could or would present to us the majestic women of the past without surrounding them with this all-subduing halo. Though we know that but few of those,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corriders of time.
could have possessed the regularity of feature and harmony of parts whose expression is beauty, we are willing to believe that Juno, Venus, or Minerva smiled in every woman whose name has survived the era in which she lived.
But how is it in reality? Are our best, and finest, and most notable women, usually fair? Would a poet or an artist search among those who bear the most distinguished and influential names, for the expressed ideal of feminine loveliness either in its winsomeness or its might? Would he even find it in the majority of our social leaders? Would he not have to round many a curve, and hold a ruby glass up before many a complexion before he could deceive even himself into believing he had an image of beauty before him? Yet what power, what charm, what majesty even, frequently surround such women.
I am an ardent worshiper of beauty, and yet I have often been obliged to acknowledge that some women I have met could do very well without it, and that in a few cases, ugliness has possessed sufficient character to raise it into the charmed circle usually supposed to enfold only the fair.
For beauty is not the mere product of line and color. Regular features, creamy complexions, while charming in themselves, are not sufficient to constitute attractive loveliness. I have seen women—we all have—with no visible flaw in face or form, who, after all, were not beautiful; and I have seen others, with decided physical defects in both regards, who, judged by any standard save that of rule and measure, were so lovely that homage followed their every footstep.
I am not speaking now of those who, by their mental and spiritual endowments, grow luminous to the eye and attractive to the heart of man. But of those who possess a weird and absolute charm without possessing the contour and coloring in which charm usually arrays itself. Such women may be good, may be evil, may be gifted, or may be barren of every attraction save that which lurks under slowly lifted lids or around the corners of strangely mobile lips.
That such women sway mankind there is no gainsaying. What moves us, necessarily more or less rules us. But is beauty, instantaneous as its effects may be, the strongest element of woman’s power? doubt it, unless with it are given that tact and winsomeness which makes its reign perpetual. For, look about among your friends. Who are the happy women? The great beauties? Observation does not reward us by an unqualified assent. Who have made the best matches: The “daughters of the gods, divinely fair,” or women with so little pretension to attraction, that we have to look at them long, before we can detect the tender smile or piquant look which makes them in the privacy of home-life the beacon-star of more than one devoted heart.
Now, why is this? If beauty is so potent why does it so often fail to yield its possessor that fruition which is certainly promised by its rarity and distinction? First, because beauty alone dazzles, but does not hold, and, secondly, because there is a charm which does hold, a charm so potent that, if linked to beauty, it makes that beauty irresistible, and, if linked to ugliness, is even capable as I have before hinted, of rendering that very ugliness attractive, if not positively loveworthy. This charm is usually designated by the word manner, but its name should be soul. For, while manner is more or less the result of training, the allurement of which I speak owns a deeper source than any which can can come from mere surface finish. For it has birth in the individuality, in that essence of being which infuses character into the speech, the look, and even into the pose of a person.
And so it is that we see coarse-featured, but nobly-speaking, women filling places to which poetry and art would delegate only the beautiful: and in the wives of our most successful and honorable men, we discover women of fine minds, loving natures, and sparkling wit, but oftener than not of diminutive figure, pallid complexion or inharmonious features.
And it is well that this is so. For, while charm is plenty, extreme beauty is rare. In all New York you might find twelve women who would fulfill the poet’s ideal. But would you find more? It is, therefore, fortunate that success, influence, and even happiness, do not depend upon the possession of this not only rare but fleeting grace.
In my life I have known many women well. Among them is a fair majority of what the truly appreciative would call happy, for which fact I thank God, as it has helped me to take on the whole, a hopeful view of life as well of human nature. Now, are these women, blessed as many of them are with devoted husbands, cheerful homes, cultivated society, and leisure for the exercise of any special talent they may possess, beautiful women? With one or two exceptions, No. Indeed, more than a few of them are positively plain, if feature only is considered, while from the rest I can single out but two or three whose faces and figures conform to any of the recognized standards of physical perfection. But they are loved, they are honored, they are deferred to. While not eliciting the admiration of every passer by, they have acquired through the force, sweetness, or originality of their character, the appreciation of those whose appreciation confers honor and happiness, and, consequently, their days pass in an atmosphere of peace and good will which is far above the delirious admiration accorded to the simply beautiful, as the placid shining of the sunbeam is to the phenomenal blaze of an evanescent flame.
Of the beautiful women I have known, but few have attained superiority of any kind. In marriage they have frequently made failures; why, I do not know, unless the possession of great loveliness is incompatible with the possession of an equal amount of good judgment. So much is expected by the woman accustomed to admiration, that she plays and palters with her fate till the crooked stick is all that is left her. This we see exemplified again and again. While the earnest, lofty, sweet-smiling woman of the pale hair and doubtful line of nose, has, perhaps, one true lover whose worth she has time to recognize, an acknowledged beauty will find herself surrounded by a crowd of showy egotists whose admiration so dazes and bewilders her that she is sometimes tempted to bestow herself upon the most importunate one in order to end the unseemly struggle.
Then the incentive to education, and to the cultivation of one’s especial powers is lacking. Forgetting that the triumphs which have made a holiday of youth must lessen with the years, many a fair one neglects that training of the mind which gives to her who is poor in all else, an endless storehouse of wealth for which she can hope to produce treasures for her own delectation and that of those about her, long after the fitful bloom upon her handsome sister’s cheek has faded with the roses of departed summer.
Though the world can show instances here and there of women in whose dazzling glances genius and beauty struggle for equal recognition, are they not the exception proving the rule? To win without effort, and yet to ignore these victories for the sake of the more lasting and honorable ones which follow the attainment of excellence in any one thing, means character, and character added to loveliness gives us those rare specimens of womanly perfection which assure us that poetry and art are not solely in the minds of men, but exist here and there in an embodied form for the encouragement and delight of struggling human nature.
One anecdote to show what an endowment greater than beauty can do; Charlotte Cushman, as we know, had soul, but little physical attraction. I have heard a gentleman say who saw her act in the “Lady of Lyons” that when she first appeared on the stage as Pauline, he felt inclined to question whether Claude Melnotte or any other man could consider himself the lover of a woman so apparently lacking in every feminine grace. But by the time the play was finished, he found himself wondering not if any man could love her, but that every man did not. To such an extent can genius triumph over merely physical defects.
Can women without beauty hope, then, for sway not only over the minds, but the hearts of men? Yes, if the lack does not extend deeper than the skin, which is supposed to be the boundary-line of all physical loveliness. Though she may find herself jostled aside by some dazzling belle in the crowded ball room, she may look for recognition where the heart desires it most, and where are hidden those roots whose flowers and fruition are the fullest honor and the completest happiness.