Daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, Va. [W. Va.]) 1859-1865, 1862-10-01
English LOdIes-Their appearance
an advanced period OF 1Ifc-An In
tereStlng article.

English LOdIes-Their appearance
an advanced period OF Iife-An in.
tereStlng article.
have heard good deal of the tenacity
with which English ladies retain their per-
sonal beauty to a late period of life; but
(nOt to suggest that an American eye
needs use and cultivation before it can
quite appreciate the charm of English
beauty at any nge) it strikes me that an
English lady of fifty is apt to become
creature less refined and delicate, so far as
her physique goes, than anything that we
western people class under the name of
woman. She has un awful ponderosity of
frame, not pulpy, like the looser develop.
ment of our few fat women, but massive
with solid beef and streaky tallow; SO that
(though Struggling manfuliy against the
idea) you inevitably think of her as made
up of steaks and sirloins. When she walks
her advance is elephantine. When she sits
down, it is on a great round place of her
Makers footstool, where she looks rs if
nothing could ever move her. She imposes
awe and respect by the muchness of her
personality, to such degree that you
probably credit her with far greater
moral and intellectual force than she
can fair claim. Her visage is usually
grim and stern, not always positiv-
ly forbidding, yet calmly terrible, not
merely by its breadth aud weight of feat.
ure, but because it seems to express so
much well-founded self-reliance, such ac-
quaintanCe with the world, its tolls, troub-
les and dangers, and such sturdy capacity
for trnmpling down foe. Without any
thing positively salient, or actively offens-
i've, or, indeed, unjustly formidable to her
neighbors. she has the effect of seventy
four gun ship in time of peace; for, while
you assure yourself that their is no real
danger, you cannot help thinking how tre-
mehdous would be her onset, if pugna-
ciously inclined, aud how futile the effort
to inhict any counter-injury. She certain
ly looks tenfOld-nay, a hundredfold-bet-
ter able to take care of herself then our
slender framed and haggard womenkind +;
but have not found reason to suppose
that the English dowager of City has actu-
ally greater courage, fortitude, aud strength
of character than our women of similar
age, or even tougher physical endurance
than they. Morally, she is strong, / sus-
pect, only in society, and in the common
routine of social affairs, and would be
found powerless and timd in any cxcep-
tional strait that might call for energy out
side of the couveutionalities amid which
she has grown up.
You can meetthis figure in the street, and
live, and even smile a. the recollection
| But conceive of her in ballroom, with
the bare, browny arms that she invariably
displays there, and all the other Correspou-
ding development, such as is beautiful in
the maiden blossom, but n spectacle to
howl at in such an overblowu cabbage-rose
as this.
Yet somewhere in this enormous bulk
there must be hidden the modest, slender,
violet nature OF girl. whom an alien mass
of earthiness has unkindly overgrown; for
an English maiden in her teens, though
very seldom as pretty as our own damsels.
possesses, to say the truth, a certain charm
of half-blossom, and delicately folded
leaves, and tender womanhood shielded by
maidenly reserves, with which, somehow
or other, our American girls often fail to
adorn themselves during au appreciable mo-
ment. Itis a pity that the English violet,
should grow into such an outrageously de-
veloped peony as have attempted to de-
scribe. l wonder whether middle.aged
husband ought'to be considered as legally
married to allthe accretions that have over
CROWD the Rlenderness of his bride, since
he led her to the altar, and which make
her SO much more than he ever bargaiued
fprl, Is it not .soVnder view of the case
that thematEimonial bond cannot be held