The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1874-05-01
The Truth About Our GrandmOthsrs

The Truth About Our Grandmothers.
Every young woman of the present
generation, SO soon as she ventures Ia
have headache or a set of nerves. il
Immediately confronted by Indignant
critics with her grandmother. If the
grandmother is living, the fact of her
eXlstance IS appealed to; if there is only
3 departed grandmother to remember.
the maiden is confronted with a ghost.
That ghost is endowed with as many ex-
eellencies as those with which Miss
Betsey Irotwood endowed the neice that
never had been born; and as David
Copperfeld was reproached with the
virtues OF his unborn sister, who fiwould
never have run away" so that grand
daughter with the headache is re-
preached with the ghostly projections
OF her grandmother, who never had a
headache-Or, if she had, il is luckily
forgotten. 1t is necessary to ask, some
times, what was really the truth abont
our grandmothers Were they such
models Of bodily perfection as is usually
claimed? ?
five look at the early colonial days.
we are at once met by the fact that, al
though families were then often larger
than is now common, yet this phenom-
enon was by no means universal and
was balanced by good many childless
MONIES. Of this any one can satisfy
himself by looking over any family his
tory; and he can also satisfy himself of
the fact-first pointed out, believe, by
Mrs. Dall-that third and fourth mar
riages were then more obviously and
unquestionably more common than
now. The inference would seem to be.
that there is a little illusion about the
health Of those days, as there is about
the health of savage races. In both
cases it is not so much that the average
health is greater under less highly civil
hzed conditions, but that these condi-
tions kill of the weak and leave only
the strong. Modern civilized society,
on the other hand, preserves the health
OF many men and wonderland permits
them to marry and become parents-who
under the seventies of savage life or of
pioneer life would have died and given
way TO others.
On this / will not dwell, because these
good ladies were not strictly our grand
mothers, being further removed. But of
those who were our grandmothers-the
women of the Revolutionary and post
Revolutionary epOchs-we happen to
have very definite physiological obser-
vations recOrded-rather fiattering, it is
true, but frank and searching. What
these good women are 10 the imagina-
tion ftheirdescendants we know. Mrs.
Stowe describes them as "the race of
strong, hardy, cheerful girls that used
10 grow up in country places and make
the bright, neat, New England kitchens
Of olden times, land adds, "this race
OF women, the pride of olden time, is
daily lessening; and i'm their stead come
the fragile, easily-fatigued, languid girls
of modern age, drilled in boOk-learn-
ing, ignorant of common things"
House aud Home Papers, p. 2O5.)
What now was the testimony of those
who saw our grandmothers in the flesh?
AS il happens there were a good many
foreigners, generally Frenchmen, who
came to visit the new republic during
the Presidency Of Washington. Let us
take, for instance, the testimony of the
two following:
Thea bbeRObin was chaplain in Roch-
ambeau's army during the Revolution,
and wrote thus in regard to the Ameri-
can ladies in his Z" "-NOuUedu VOy0qe dams
pAnlerique Septe1ltriOnale," published
in 1852:
''They are tall and weIl-proportioned;
their features are generally regular;
their eomplexions are generally fair and
without color. At
twenty years of age the women have no
longer the freshness of youth. At
thirty-five or forty they are wrinkled
and decrepit The men are almost as
premature"
Again. The Chevalier Louis Felix de
Beaujour lived in the Uuited States
from 1904 to 1914, as cOnsul-general and
charge ddGdireSj and wrote a book,
Immediately after, called "a sketch Of
the United States at the Commence
ment of the Present Century" In this
he thus describes American women:
"The women have more of that deli
cate beauty which belongs to their sex,
and in general have finer features and
more expression in their physiOgnomy.
Their stature is unusually tall and
nearly all are possessed of a light and
airy shape; the breast high, fine head
and their color Of q dazzling whiteness.
Let us imagine, under this brilliant form,
the most modest demeanoT, chaste and
virginal air, accompanied by those single
and unaffected graces which flow from
artless nature, and we may have an idea
Of their beauty; but this beauty fades
and passes in a moment. At the age OF
twenty-five their form changes, and at
thirty the whole of their charms have
disappeared
L take both these extracts from the
appendix to 1.-THE Republican Court !"
by Rufus w. Griswold New York, 1856
They belong TO a class of facts which. as
1t seems to me, are singularly ignored
by some of our physiologists0fac
showing that the modification of the
American type began very early aud is,
as rule, due to causes lying far behind
those fashions or studies of the present
day to which they are so hastily and
superticially attributed. Here are our
grandmothers and great grandmothers
seen by the eyes of impartial or even
hattering critics. These critics were
not Englishmen, accustomed to a ro-
buster and ruddier type of women; but
Frenchmen, used to a type more like
the American. They were not mere
hasty travellers; for the one at least lived
here ten years, and the other was sta
toned for some time at Newport, r. /.