About Beauty: English or American ?

Otago Witness, Issue 2817, 4 March 1908, Page 73

About Beauty : English or American ?

A callous English critic came out the other day with this terrible arraignment of the gentler sex, writes Mr Alan Dale, the American dramatic critic, in the Cosmopolitan Magazine <. '' I shall assert, though it wer^ at the risk of my life, that -the American woman is not always beautiful. I shall go further, and say that for one beautiful woman per thousand in America we can produce three in England, and four or five in Ireland. • Furthermore, the English or the Irish beauty will last three times as long as the

' American variety." This cold-blooded allusion (remarks Mr Alan Dale) to the endurance of beauty, as though it were a coat or a skirt that would last you through a prescribed number of seasons, is really the esdential point in the whole discussion. That London is full of charming women nobody will deny. I was astonished myself at the musical-comedy showing of beautiful types. But the very cruelty of this type of beauty lies precisely in the fact that it wears well. — Not Enough "Ginger." — The English maiden is fitted with attributes that cause her to wear well, just ac the Nuremberg doll wears well. She is as placid as the surface of a June lake ; ehe is as unruffled as the depths of a sequestered mill-pond. She is as emotional as the perfectly chiselled wax figure in the window of a fashionable hair dresser's shop. Her soul is as completely disguised as her figure. Both seem flat, stale, and unprofitable. No turbulence of movement adds wrinkles to her smooth and velvet features. She declines to vary. She is above or below a standard. The standard is that of a pensive madonna, who accepts life for what -it is and disdains to add to it ; burdens by the mere "ginger"' of vivacity. Whether this is due in any measiue to her male relations one cannot say, but sufficient is it that this is the chief characteristic of the English girl. — Her Goidness Bores. — She is veTy lovely, very sad, and very perfect. She keeps young for ages until you tire to death of her. Who would like a coat that never wore out? Who would pwrchase a skirt that lasted for ever? Has endurance any value beyond that of a mere physical feat, and who would not sooner watch the play of emotion and the tumult of- human thrill in the face of a less perfect woman, one who had no war to wage with time, and was satisfied with pulsing through her little day as tempestuously as possible? — The Rampageous American. — The American girl, unlike her English sister, has the charm of vivacity of motion, and of emotion. Her model is not that of the doll. Her surface is rarely still and unruffled. She goes through a few seasons of rampage and activity, and is old while her English sister is still in a state of unkaleidoscopic juvenility. And j then — she is no longer needed. She is j not trotted forth as a once-beauty. There is no loyalty to give her a continued , existence.' Out she goes— down and out. Her place is filled 'By others, younger, newer, and more up-to-date. — Like a " Gloire de Dijon." — The beauty that by its very stress and strain is obliged to wear itself out lias surely a more sterling value. The American girl blooms effulgent'ly like a Gloire de Dijon rose; she scatters her fragrance with the recklessness of improvidence ; she has a short, a merry, and a violent day, and she passes out resignedly. She has none of the characteristics that resist wear and tear. She sings with the fury of her lungs ; she acts with the fervour of her temperament. She dances with the abandon of her limbs, and — she is a wreck.— P.T.O.