Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1880-04-22
Beauty Hero and Abroad.

St Louis Globe.Democrat.
A Fourth street bookseller having some
grudge against England has been exhibit
ing in his sh0w-window an assortment of
photographs fthe professional beauties of
London society before which the untraveled
American fingers moment and then walks
away saying to himself: eff those are the
beauties, wonder what the ugly ones are
like" Of these beauties the most famous
Of all, Mrs. Langtry, the Lily of
Jersey, first brought into notice by
the portrait by Millais, and
raised to notOriety by the admiration
Of the Prince of Wales set, has shapely
head and a pair of tender eyes, but her
nose and mouth are anything but beautiful,
and her jaws are sunken in with an ugly
depression too common among the famine
pinched peasants of Conemara to be a sign
of beauty in London belle. Mrs. Corn
wallis West is worthy of her fame, but the
young wife of the old Earl Dudley gives
you full view of a pair of Calmuck nos
trils as she looks at you with a brassy, not
to say hOrsey, expression; and the Countess
of LOnsdale, who was admired rs Lady
Gladys Herbert, is a monumental being of
six feet and over. A charming creature,
no doubt, in the eyes Of Captain Bates and
Colonel Goschen, but hardly calculated to
win the admiration of ordinary men who
do not travel with the circus.
If we turn from the professional beau
ties of high life in England to those of
lower social station, we find nothing to
change our unfavOrable estimate OF their
good looks. Among the famous blondes
we remember of Maud Branscombe with
the face of an angel on weazened, little
body, Pauline Markham, whom Richard
Grant White celebrated as having the
lost arms of the Venus de Milo" and who
was a sculpturesque young person on
the stage, but with a dull-loOking face,
and then there was Lydia Thompson
herself, who has left no one to take her
place as buriesque actress, but her beau
ty is not anything to speak of seriously.
| Miss Nelson, a half-Spaniard, and with
all her attractions of the Spanish type, is
| the most beautiful woman the American
stage has known. Her genius, her sympa-
| thetic voice, and many accomplishments
| enhance the charm of her face-and yet, in
point of figure Miss Nelson nigh. dress
in mans clothes and escape detection her
figure is truly English-and angular.
In fact, female beauty is a rarity in
| every other county of the world except
ILLS ldNOTCu we lcdNc OuG VI luSS-
| ton the German, Russian and Scandila-
| Wan nations, for there beauty is almost a
| myth. In Italy there is a stately beauty
| of form and richness of color among the
peasants, accompanied by stolid impas-
siveness the vaunted beauties Of Spain
| are dumpy little women, with sallow
faces and no intelligence. In Vienna
alone, of all the great cities in Europe,
,f1,i If
| is i'm st. Louis or Baltimore, and there the
beauty comes from the Hungarians, across
the river. In Paris there is type OF
female beauty, dainty, refined, and ex-
| quisite, but frail and delicate rs the hot
house exotic, which it resembles, rather
than the blooming rosebud of an American
cottage garden.
1t is only in this country that female
beauty of the highest type is common. 1t
is no eXaggcration to say that one can see
more beauty in a St. Louis theatre Oh 4
favorite Friday night than in a years res
| idence in Europe. There is more beauty
walks down Broadway in New York OF a
Saturday afternoon, or on Fifth avenue
| after church on Sundays, than has been
seen in England in all the 1900 years since
the DAYS of BOadicea. 1t is so common
here that it is never noticed as exceptional
and our young queens of society hold
their thrones, not by any wonderful
superiority over the rest i'll beauty,
but merely as the first among their equals.
If proofs demanded one need 90 no far
ther than to the nearest girls school, or
take trip in the cars, Or look i'll at the
watering places. And the beauty of face
and form, and the intelligence Of express
sion, without which beauty fails to charm,
arc confined to the descendants OF no spe-
cial race, to the favorites Of no special class
of society. They are as common in the
village rs in the city; the mechanics S
daughter, who SO often takes her
place in society among the children
Of milliOnaires, suffers rs little in
comparison of looks as in compari-
son of intelligence or manners. The
descendants of the great European immi-
grafton which began in '4S hold their own
with the descendants of the pre-Revolution-
ary immigration. 1t seems as if Providence
which had favored this land in SO many
ways, had favored our girls in the special
way which they would most prefer, had
given to the chemistry of our wind
and rain, OF our sky and soil, the potency
sought by magic philtcrs, and had added
to Its other good gifts by making
the land of freedom also the home
of beauty. Only those who have been
abroad know how meagre is the vaunted
store of beauty in foreign lands, how rich
the array of female loveliness which bright
ems the everyday life of this plain republic.
Many of us, it is true, have suspected that
this was about the way of it, and that
American beauty lacked the renown of
publicity, not because it was so rare, but
because it was so common. We need not
fear to examine the evidence when it is
put before us and to study the compari-
sons which lie at hand. The more we look
into it the deeper will be our appreciation
Of " our girls" and we are not likely to
think more highly of them than they de-
serve