The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1894-06-08
WITcHING WOMEN OF HISTORY.
Men Worshiped and Obeyed Them
Wherein Lay the Charm?

Men worshIped and Obeyed Them
Wherein Lay the Charm?
What, asks Walter Besant, is woman's
greatest charm? Sweet looks, sweet
speech, sweet smiles, sweet voice, love-
ly eyes, a comely head, graceful fig
ure; all these are gifts and graces to be
ardently desired. Yet there is one gift
that surpasses all the rest. At the
Royal academy, London, there are the
portraits of three women, Lady Ham,
ilton. Mrs. Jordan and Sophie Arnould.
The lovely Emma is a type of rustic
beauty at its best-not refined-likelv
to become coarse. Mrs Jordan shows,
behind charming face, intellect, wit,
cleverness and a gentle heart Sophie
Arnould shows greater wit, greater
cleverness and heart not SO
gentle, perhaps On each of the
faces there is in addition, unmistak-
ably, the same quality, rare and won
derful. 1t is the quality for which
there is no other word than witchery.
These were all three witches, but in
stead of being burned at the stake
they set fire to every masculine heart
that approached them. And the noble
procession of fair women-Delilah,
Bathsheba, and her contemporary,
Helen of Troy; Aspasia, Cleopatra,
Diana de Poictiers, Mary, queen of
SCOTS: Nell Gwynne-they were all
witches, and they all possessed the
wonderful, indescribable look which
proclaimed their mysterious power of
fascination. Many there are who have
this fairies gift in a greater or less
degree. Providentially, few know
their own power, and are content to
bewitch one man alone out of all the
earth.
And what is the secret of this gift?
1t is certainly not faultless beauty, for
it is a perfectly comprehensive para
dox that as a rule the women who
have been noted for the fascination of
their beauty were not pretty women
at all. Anne Boleyn had many plastic
defects. The duchess of burgundy,
who lit up in the old age of Louis XIV.
the court of Versailles and neutralized
the morose influence of Nine. de Main
tenor, had 4 goitrous neck and decayed
front teeth, yet she was proclaimed a
beauty. Marguerite de Valois, with
whom most of the prominent French
men of her day were at some time or
another desperately in love, had heavy
checks, too prominent eyes, and
thick, hanging under lip. The last
Duchess de Berry would not have been
allowed to so much as compete at
beauty show had she presented herself
incognito. Sir Walter Scott, who was
close to her at mass in the Tuileries
chapel, wrote in his diary that she was
plain and that her eyes were not fell
lows
At what age is this charm most
subtle? Swift wrote with cruel candor
of Stella's fading charms. and sent her
as birthday gil. rhymed Recipe
to Restore Her Lost Youth, at period
shat we should consider the prime of
life. The caustic dean of ST. Patrick's
wondering
How angels look at thirty-six,
proves a sharp contrast to the more
modern writer, George Lewes, who, in
his Life of Goethe" speaks of thirty
three as the fascinating period in a
woman's life, being that in which he
considered her to have reached the
full development of her powers
of mind and body. And thirty
three was the age at which
Frau Won Stein proved dangerous
to the heart of the poet who had sur
vived the more youthful charms of a
Gretchen, Charlotte and Lii. The
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in the polite land of the French, drawn
with a sharper and more merciless hand
than in our own; yet it is the glory of
that French life, with its clear and
practical limitations and its alteration
of youthful beauty, to have presented
the finest flower of courtesy that the
world has ever known to women who
had lost the charms of early youth and
ruled the minds, and even the hearts,
of men by their wit and wisdom. their
vivacity and their grace. 1t is impos-
sible to read the descriptions of salon
life in Paris without realizing the
immense power of such women
as Nine. de Rambouillet, Mime. |
Deffand, who could tolerate any
thing but the commonplace; Mime. |
Neckar, her brilliant daughter. Nine. |
de Stael. and her cherished friend, |
Mime. dHoudetot, exercised in literary, |
social and political matters
1t is interesting to see how the age |
of the heroine of the modern novel diff
fers from that of older writers. Out of |
thirty of Scott's heroines, sixteen are
described as under twenty, three are
over twenty, and only one, Amy Rob-
sart, is heroine ''of an uncertain age"
since she is historically middle-aged |
matron and fictitiously a youthful
bride. But the conspicuous character
of the modern novel is woman, not a
girl, who has lived and experienced
much, and not infrequently is married,
before the story introduces her as its
central fiGure.-N. Y. sun.