THE HAND 0F MY LADY.

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 313, 19 December 1936, Page 2

THE HAND 0F MY LADY.

My lady’s hand occupied a prominent part in romance and history, says 4*he ‘‘Daily Mail.” It is the lover Florizel who says to the coy Perdita in “A Winter’s Tale”: I take thy hand, this hand, As soft as dove’s down and as white as it; Or Ethiopian’s tooth or the fanned '•snow, That’s bolted by the northern blasts twice o’er.

We know that Aphrodite’s hand had “rosy slender fingers,” and that th© hand of one of Cleopatra’s 'women threw Antony into raptures, but not long enough to break the .spell cast around him biy- the “glorious sorceress of the Nile.” The hands of the Egyptian women were celebrated for their contour, and the old necromancers of Ramesan days used to. hold them in awe for their deli- ■ *' cate lines.

Old history says that the hand of Anne of Austria was as "white as snow,” and the world knows that good Queen Bess was not very proud of ’the shape of her royal fingers. It was not enough that she was destined. to lend her name to the golden age of literature. As she aged her hand became more and more unshapely, much to her. chagrin, and thp ladies of her court who were richer than the queen in this respect received more than one rebuff. Yet her hand could sign the death warrants of Essex and of Mary of Scots, the unfortunate queen whose white hand, fairer than her English eo&sin’s, lured the harper Rizzio to hii death, "where iye queen’s staircase doth begin.” Queen Bese had not the only faulty hand to be found in history. 'Josephine was similarly afflicted,, but Josephine was not so “touchy?, on What was considered a royal misfortuqe. Possibly it was the negress of Martinique, fit that hand saw the crown of ahrjempress, and the homage of a world- It was not a hand like Lady Macßethls, which “all the perfumes of Araby” could not sweeten.

•’lt is old.Gower, who sings; . J, saw her weave the sleided silk With fingers long, small, white as T milk, and. the wily Vivien with her hand CMt Merlin into the enchanted sleep, if..

In the Arthurian tales we see the snowy' fingers of I-seult, and Romeo breaks into raptures over Juliet’s hands. As an adjunct of beauty my lady s hand has had a certain value in all climes and ages. It was never hidden in gloves by the beauties of Rome, and Cicero stepped aside from oratory long enough to speak of ‘‘the subtle devices of the fingers” after seeing them at the lute. Old writers have left on record the assertion that it was Poppaea’s shapely hand more than her eyes that entranced Nero.