In other days it was the men who struggled the hardest against their fate. Up to this century, the male had always been the ornamental5 member of a family. Cæsar, we read, coveted6 a laurel crown principally because it would help to conceal7 his baldness. The wigs8 of the Grand Monarque are historical. It is characteristic of the time that the latter’s attempts at rejuvenation9 should have been taken as a matter of course, while a few years later poor Madame de Pompadour’s artifices11 to retain her fleeting12 youth were laughed at and decried13.
To-day the situation is reversed. The battle, given up by the men—who now accept their fate with equanimity—is being waged by their better halves with a vigor15 heretofore unknown. So general has this mania16 become that if asked what one weakness was most characteristic of modern women, what peculiarity17 marked them as different from their sisters in other centuries, I should unhesitatingly answer, “The desire to look younger than their years.”
That people should long to be handsomer or taller or better proportioned than a cruel Providence18 has made them, is natural enough; but that so much time and trouble should be spent simply in trying to look “young,” does seem unreasonable19, especially when it is evident to everybody that such efforts must, in the nature of things, be failures. The men or women who do not look their age are rare. In each generation there are exceptions, people who, from one cause or another—generally an excellent constitution—succeed in producing the illusion of youth for a few years after youth itself has flown.
A curious fatality20 that has the air of a nemesis21 pursues those who succeed in giving this false appearance. When pointing them out to strangers, their admirers (in order to make the contrast more effective) add a decade or so to the real age. Only last month I was sitting at dinner opposite a famous French beauty, who at fifty succeeds in looking barely thirty. During the meal both my neighbors directed attention to her appearance, and in each case said: “Isn’t she a wonder! You know she’s over sixty!” So all that poor lady gained by looking youthful was ten years added to her age!
The desire to remain attractive as long as possible is not only a reasonable but a commendable22 ambition. Unfortunately the stupid means most of our matrons adopt to accomplish this end produce exactly the opposite result.
One sign of deficient23 taste in our day is this failure to perceive that every age has a charm of its own which can be enhanced by appropriate surroundings, but is lost when placed in an incongruous setting. It saddens a lover of the beautiful to see matrons going so far astray in their desire to please as to pose for young women when they no longer can look the part.
Why will she train that wintry curl in such a springlike way?
That this folly is in the air to-day, few will dispute. It seems to be perpetrated unconsciously by the greater number, with no particular object in view, simply because other people do it. An unanswerable argument when used by one of the fair sex!
Few matrons stop to think for themselves, or they would realize that by appearing in the same attire25 as their daughters they challenge a comparison which can only be to their disadvantage, and should be if possible avoided. Is there any disillusion26 more painful than, on approaching what appeared from a distance to be a young girl, to find one’s self face to face with sixty years of wrinkles? That is a modern version of the saying, “an old head on young shoulders,” with a vengeance27! If mistaken sexagenarians could divine the effect that tired eyes smiling from under false hair, aged14 throats clasped with collars of pearls, and rheumatic old ribs28 braced29 into a semblance30 of girlish grace, produce on the men for whose benefit such adornments have been arranged, reform would quickly follow. There is something absolutely uncanny in the illusion. The more successful it is, the more weird31 the effect.
No one wants to see Polonius in the finery of Mercutio. What a sense of fitness demands is, on the contrary, a “make up” in keeping with the rôle, which does not mean that a woman is to become a frump, but only that she is to make herself attractive in another way.
During the Ancien Régime in France, matters of taste were considered all-important; an entire court would consult on the shade of a brocade, and hail a new coiffure as an event. The great ladies who had left their youth behind never then committed the blunder, so common among our middle-aged32 ladies, of aping the maidens33 of the day. They were far too clever for that, and appreciated the advantages to be gained from sombre stuffs and flattering laces. Let those who doubt study Nattier’s exquisite34 portrait of Maria Leczinska. Nothing in the pose or toilet suggests a desire on the painter’s part to rejuvenate35 his sitter. If anything, the queen’s age is emphasized as something honorable. The gray hair is simply arranged and partly veiled with black lace, which sets off her delicate, faded face to perfection, but without flattery or fraud.
We find the same view taken of age by the masters of the Renaissance36, who appreciated its charm and loved to reproduce its grace.
Queen Elizabeth stands out in history as a woman who struggled ungracefully against growing old. Her wigs and hoops37 and farthingales served only to make her ridiculous, and the fact that she wished to be painted without shadows in order to appear “young,” is recorded as an aberration38 of a great mind.
Are there no painters to-day who will whisper to our wives and mothers the secret of looking really lovely, and persuade them to abandon their foolish efforts at rejuvenation?
Let us see some real old ladies once more, as they look at us from miniature and portrait. Few of us, I imagine, but cherish the memory of some such being in the old home, a soft-voiced grandmother, with silvery hair brushed under a discreet39 and flattering cap, with soft, dark raiment and tulle-wrapped throat. There are still, it is to be hoped, many such lovable women in our land, but at times I look about me in dismay, and wonder who is to take their places when they are gone. Are there to be no more “old ladies”? Will the next generation have to look back when the word “grandmother” is mentioned, to a stylish40 vision in Parisian apparel, décolleté and decked in jewels, or arrayed in cocky little bonnets41, perched on tousled curls, knowing jackets, and golfing skirts?
The present horror of anything elderly comes, probably, from the fact that the preceding generation went to the other extreme, young women retiring at forty into becapped old age. Knowing how easily our excitable race runs to exaggeration, one trembles to think what surprises the future may hold, or what will be the next decree of Dame10 Fashion. Having eliminated the “old lady” from off the face of the earth, how fast shall we continue down the fatal slope toward the ridiculous? Shall we be compelled by a current stronger than our wills to array ourselves each year (the bare thought makes one shudder) in more and more youthful apparel, until corpulent senators take to running about in “sailor suits,” and octogenarian business men go “down town” in “pinafores,” while belles42 of sixty or seventy summers appear in Kate Greenaway costumes, and dine out in short-sleeved bibs, which will allow coy glimpses of their cunning old ankles to appear over their socks?
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1
fraught
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| adj.充满…的，伴有(危险等)的；忧虑的 | |
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folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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meekly
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| adv.温顺地，逆来顺受地 | |
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insidious
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| adj.阴险的，隐匿的，暗中为害的，（疾病）不知不觉之间加剧 | |
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ornamental
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| adj.装饰的；作装饰用的；n.装饰品；观赏植物 | |
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6
coveted
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| adj.令人垂涎的；垂涎的，梦寐以求的v.贪求，觊觎(covet的过去分词)；垂涎；贪图 | |
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conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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wigs
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| n.假发，法官帽( wig的名词复数 ) | |
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rejuvenation
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| n. 复原，再生, 更新, 嫩化, 恢复 | |
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dame
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| n.女士 | |
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artifices
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| n.灵巧( artifice的名词复数 )；诡计；巧妙办法；虚伪行为 | |
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12
fleeting
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| adj.短暂的，飞逝的 | |
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13
decried
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| v.公开反对，谴责( decry的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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vigor
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| n.活力，精力，元气 | |
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mania
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| n.疯狂；躁狂症，狂热，癖好 | |
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17
peculiarity
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| n.独特性，特色；特殊的东西；怪癖 | |
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providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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fatality
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| n.不幸，灾祸，天命 | |
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nemesis
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| n.给以报应者，复仇者，难以对付的敌手 | |
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commendable
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| adj.值得称赞的 | |
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deficient
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| adj.不足的，不充份的，有缺陷的 | |
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maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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25
attire
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| v.穿衣，装扮[同]array；n.衣着；盛装 | |
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26
disillusion
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| vt.使不再抱幻想，使理想破灭 | |
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27
vengeance
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| n.报复，报仇，复仇 | |
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28
ribs
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| n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹 | |
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29
braced
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| adj.拉牢的v.支住( brace的过去式和过去分词 )；撑牢；使自己站稳；振作起来 | |
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semblance
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| n.外貌，外表 | |
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weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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32
middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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33
maidens
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| 处女( maiden的名词复数 )； 少女； 未婚女子； （板球运动）未得分的一轮投球 | |
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34
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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35
rejuvenate
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| v.(使)返老还童；(使)恢复活力 | |
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renaissance
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| n.复活，复兴，文艺复兴 | |
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37
hoops
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| n.箍( hoop的名词复数 )；（篮球）篮圈；（旧时儿童玩的）大环子；（两端埋在地里的）小铁弓 | |
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38
aberration
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| n.离开正路，脱离常规，色差 | |
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39
discreet
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| adj.(言行)谨慎的；慎重的；有判断力的 | |
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40
stylish
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| adj.流行的，时髦的；漂亮的，气派的 | |
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41
bonnets
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| n.童帽( bonnet的名词复数 )；（烟囱等的）覆盖物；（苏格兰男子的）无边呢帽；（女子戴的）任何一种帽子 | |
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42
belles
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| n.美女( belle的名词复数 )；最美的美女 | |
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