East Saginaw courier. (East Saginaw, Mich.) 1859-18??, 1862-11-25
ENGLISH WOMEN.
BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

kave heard a good deal of the to
nacity with which the English ladies
retain their beauty to an advanced pc
riod of their life; but (not to suggest
that an American eye needs use and cul
tivation before it can quite appreciate
the charm of English beauty at any age,
it strikes me that an English lady Of
fifty is apt to become creature less re
fined aud delicate, so far as her phys
:1.s sv~-, tha- -..y t'';"s that we Wost
ern people class under the name of won
an. She has an awful ponderosity o
frame, not pulpy, like the looser devel
opement of our fat women, but massive
with solid beef and streaky tallow; that
(though struggling manfully against the
ideal you inevitably think of her as made
of steaks and sirloins. When she walks
her advance is elephantine. When she
sits down it is on a great round space
of her Makers foo.stool, where she looks
as If nothing would move her. She i'm
poses awe and respect by the muchness
of her personality, to such degree that
you probably credit her greater moral
and intellectual force than she can fully
claim. Her visage is usually grim and
stern, not always positively forbidding,
yet calmly terrible, not merely by its
breadth and weight of feature, but be-
cause it seems tn express so much well
founded selfreliance, such acquaintance
with the world, its tolls, its troubles and
dangers, and such sturdy capacity for
trampling down foe. Without any.
thing positively salient, or actually Of.
fensive, or indeed unjustly formidable
to her neighbors, she has the effect Of a
seventy four gun ship in time of peace /;
while you assure yourself that there is
no real danger, you cannot help think.
ing how tremendous would he her onset
If pugnaciously inclined, and how futile
the effort to inflct any counter injury.
She certainly looks tenfold, nay, hun,
dred fold better able to take care of
herself than our slender. framed and hag.
gard womankind; but have not found
reason to suppose that the English dow.
ager OF fifty has greater courage, forti.
tude and strength of character than our
women Of similar age, or even tougher
endurance than they. Morally,
she is strong, / suspect, only in society,
and in the common routine of social af.
fairs, and would be found powerless and
timid in any exceptional strait that
might call for energy outside of the con
amid which she has grown
up.
You can meet this figure in the street,
and live, and even smile at the recollec.
ton. But conceive Of her in the ball
room, with the bare brawny arms that
she invariably displays there, and all
the other corresponding development,
such as is beautiful in the maiden bios.
som, but spectacle to howl at in such
IN over.blown cabbage.rose IS this.
Yet, somewhere in this enormous
bulk there must be hidden the modest,
slender, violet.nature Of a girl, whom an
alien mass Of earthiness has unkindly
overgrown; for an English maiden in
her teens, though very seldom so pretty
as our own damsels, possesses, to say
The truth, certain charm Of half bios
som, and delcately folded leaves, and
tender womanhood shielded by maiden.
" reserves, with which, somehow or
other, our American girls often fail to
sdorn themselves during an appreciable
1t is pity that the English
violet should grow into such an outrage.
ously developed peony as | have at.
to describe. / wonder whcth.
sr a middle aged husband ought to be
as legally marriedto all these
that have overgrown the slen-
derness Of his bride since he lei her to
the altar, and which make her so much
more than he ever bargained forl Is it
not sounder view Of the case, that the
bond cannot be held to in