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American Board, in the work which it has recently completed in three different tribes, the Choctaws, Cherokees and the Tuscaroras, has expended less than the present expenses of our nation for a single day. "Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it."

IF

ARTICLE VI.

THE ENGLISH WOMAN AT HOME.

If you want to see the English woman you must go to England. A lion in his native forest is a very different affair from a lion travelling in foreign lands, or sojourning at the Regent's Park, or the Aquarial Gardens. A star would not look well anywhere but in the firmament, and a cloud taken out of heaven is a cloud no longer. No man has seen the heavens who has not seen the clouds and stars, and you may travel England through, rejoicing every day in its green fields, and magnificent trees, and sweetest singing-birds singing almost all the year round, and massive architecture, and beautiful ruins, and all the manifold indications of a high civilization and great social refinement; but you do not know the England of history, and romance, and poetry, and song, till you have been introduced to its happy homes, and been made glad by the sweet, quiet, soothing presence of its noble-hearted women.

We offer to our readers a sketch, from drawings made on the spot, of the English woman at home, her personal attributes, social relations, and peculiar influence. It will be our aim to present the accidental in our subject, preserving at the same time what is universal-woman as she is in England to-day, the daughter, the wife, the mother, still exhibiting in strong relief, woman as she is everywhere. When Raffaelle (as the legend hath it) saw in the streets of Florence the wife of a peasant whose surprising beauty seemed to him the realization of his own ideal of the Madonna, and, in his eager haste to

secure a face he had never seen before, sketched it on the spot upon the head of a cask, he produced a picture which has been universally admired ever since, not because he painted an Italian woman, but because he painted woman - put upon his rude panel the radiant image of that which is everywhere the joy of man's heart and the light of his home. Yet the Italian is there, not a Jewess, nor a Greek; and our portraiture will be expected to exhibit the peculiar lineaments of an English woman, not so much wherein she resembles, as wherein she differs from woman elsewhere, and especially from our own fair countrywomen.

We shall not deny that the fame which England has had from time immemorial for the beauty of its women is fully deserved. Yet we are not at all surprised that the stranger in England is usually disappointed at the comparatively small number of beautiful women that he sees, a proportion decidedly smaller than is found in our own country. The Juliets and Desdemonas are doubtless there, but their number is not large. In the delightful suburbs of London, where so many of her merchants, and tradesmen, and professional gentlemen reside, such as Islington, Clapham or Camberwell, you will meet every day, when it does not rain, throngs of stately dames, with their blooming daughters, and the younger children, led, or carried, or drawn in their tiny carriages by servant-maids, taking their usual morning walk. You will not fail to note that many of them are what are called in England fine women that is to say, of handsome form, broad shoulders, deep, full chest, good bust, and remarkably healthy countenance, dressed in the severest taste, and of easy, graceful carriage; but you will see very few that are beautiful, while some will seem to you distressingly plain. So also in Hyde Park, on a fine summer afternoon, when the glittering and almost interminable procession of nobility and gentry is rolling by, you may see, every day, creatures as transcendent in their personal charms as any whose form and features have been immortalized by the pencil of Sir Joshua Reynolds or Sir Peter Lely; but their comparaative number is very small. An hour's survey of the gay passers-by in that brilliant cavalcade will be productive far less of admiration than of disappointment- disappointment, not more

of previous expectations than of expectations which will be excited on the spot. As you catch a glimpse of some half a score of ladies on horseback approaching at a distance, each attended by gallant knight, so finely developed are their forms, so graceful and becoming their full flowing habits and plumed ridingcaps, and so admirable their horsemanship as they dash fearlessly along upon their mettlesome steeds, presenting altogether a very splendid and stirring picture, that you will be expecting to find the fair equestrians, as they come near enough to be seen, all as enchanting as Juno or Psyche. Instead of this, with here and there a truly magnificent exception, you will see faces which will make it exceeding plain to you that personal beauty is not one of the things monopolized by the British aristocracy.

If Raffaelle had to seek his ideal Madonna among the English women of the nineteenth century, we by no means affirm that she would be found to be either the wife or the daughter of a peasant. We quite as little believe that she would prove to be a countess or a duchess. It will have to be conceded, we think, that a larger proportion of well-developed forms and handsome faces is found among those who rank not only below the aristocracy and gentry, but below the middle class-mechanics, artisans, and laboring people. It is no mere conceit of the artist that some of the most exquisite things displayed in the windows of London print-sellers and in the annual exhibitions of paintings are peasant girls. The rustic maiden, in her loose, easy attire, presents a picture of unchecked, harmonious development much more nearly resembling the approved models of Roman and Grecian sculpture than the proud beauties seen in the Regent Street or Hyde Park.

We remember a handsome young lord, who frequented one of the most charming watering-places in England, accompanied by his exceedingly beautiful wife. He had first seen her behind the counter of a Berlin-wool shop, and was so enamored of her charms of form and feature that he made love to her not as "the Lord Burleigh" courted "the village maiden,” but in his own proper character-took her away from the shop, had her educated, and then made her his wife and a noble lady. Among the fashionable crowd who congregated at that delight

ful watering-place, quite as much for vanity and mutual admiration as anything else, she was the acknowledged queen of beauty, the cynosure of every eye. Whether she was the

daughter of a peasant or a mechanic, we did not chance to hear, but her position in the shop where her husband first saw her was only a single remove from that of a servant. It was a position to which an intelligent servant might easily transfer herself. Neither is it by any means impossible or unlikely that some of her sisters may have been ladies' maids or upper nurses in gentlemen's families.

The prevailing differences in personal appearance between the English woman and the Anglo-American might furnish an interesting subject of inquiry for the ethnologist. The robuster frame, and rounder form, and larger features, and ruddier complexion of the Anglo-Saxon are not more conspicuous than her fairer hair, and brow so slightly marked, and soft blue eyes. Black hair and eyes, and strongly-marked brows, are seldom Her hair is not so luxuriant, nor her complexion so delicate, as we see every day at home. As a girl, she is less beautiful than ours, and instances of beauty of countenance are far less numerous than with us.

seen.

The dress of the English woman has a character of its own. Whether in town or country, in the fashionable promenades of London, or in the Sabbath congregation of a fashionable London church, you are struck with the more quiet and sober character of female attire as compared with New York or Boston. There is, in particular, much less of brilliant colors. London gives law to the country in this matter, as in most things conventional, and the fogs, and smoke, and dreariness of the Great Metropolis have doubtless some considerable influence in forming the prevailing taste in a case of so much importance. But this is not the only thing. The predominant idea of an Englishman, in all matters whatsoever, as all the world knows, is his own dear comfort. There are few things which exhibit this national temper in stronger relief, or with more good sense and gracefulness, than the attire of their women. We believe that everybody who has visited England will agree with us that this contributes greatly to the good appearance of English women. A woman uncomfortably dressed is not as attractive as she

might be. For a whole nation of women to have learned that taste and elegance in dress may be combined with luxurious comfort, is surely something in its bearing on various human interests of paramount importance. We would like to say to all our fair countrywomen that the women of England have done this, and are demonstrating it. The thing with which we remember to have been impressed from the commencement of our acquaintance with English women, was a beautiful adaptation in their dress to climate, weather, circumstances. Abroad, as they are, on the cold, damp, chilling days of which England has so many, there is nothing in their appearance to awaken your apprehensions, whether for their comfort or their health no thin shoes, or gossamer dresses, or pitiful apologies for cloaks, making you think of shivering limbs, and cold, damp feet, and coughs, and consumption. It is impossible to doubt that the habits of the women of England in the matter of dress have very much to do with the appearance of full joyous health which they everywhere exhibit—in the city hardly less than in the country. You would think it expressly contrived to be a defence against chills and damps and discomfort; and to keep up the cheerful glow of the heart and the warm, sunny smile of the countenance. How many of our beautiful and accomplished girls have gone to their graves too soon, and how many more will go, from a disregard, as foolish as it is wicked, of the laws of health in dress, it is sad to remember. The sacrifices offered on the altar of the goddess of fashion in every civilized and enlightened age and country have been very many and precious, and the future will be substantially as the past in this respect. We are glad, however, to make a note of certain signs. of improvement among ourselves. Thick boots for a duchess is an old fashion in London and Paris; but having observed, now for some time past, that there is no more elegant ladies' boot at Moseley's, in Summer Street, than that which has a sole as thick as the Boston Review, and especially having observed that the ladies of Beacon Street purchase those boots and wear them as no inappropriate part of an elegant outfit in their promenades on the Common, we venture to prophesy that the number of young women who will lose their bloom and go to

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