| | | | Without doubt it is a time of trial to all women, more or | less painful according to individual disposition, when they | first begin to grow old and lose their good looks. Youth | and beauty make up so much of their personal value, so | much of their natural raison d'etre, | that when these are gone many feel as if their | whole career was at an end, and as if nothing was left to | them now that they are no longer young enough to be loved | as girls are | | loved, or pretty enough to be admired as once they were | admired. For women of a certain position have so little | wholesome occupation, and so little ambition for anything, | save indeed that miserable thing called

"getting on in | society,"

that they cannot change their way of life | with advancing years; they do not attempt to find interest in | things outside themselves, and independent of the mere | personal attractiveness which in youth constituted their | whole pleasure of existence. This is essentially the case | with fashionable women, who have staked their all on | appearance, and to whom good looks are of more account | than noble deeds; and, accordingly, the struggle to remain | young is a frantic one with them, and as degrading as it is | frantic. With the ideal woman of middle age ~~ that | pleasant women, with her happy face and softened manner, | who unites the charms of both epochs, retaining the ready | responsiveness of youth while adding the wider sympathies | of experience ~~ with her there has never been any such | struggle to make herself an anachronism. Consequently | she remains beautiful to the last, far more beautiful than all | the pastes and washes in Madame Rachel's shop could | make her. Sometimes, if rarely in these latter days, we | meet her in society, where she carries with her an | atmosphere of her own ~~ an atmosphere of honest, | wholesome truth and love, which makes | everyone who enters it better and purer for | the time. All children and all young persons love her, | because she understands and loves them. For she is | essentially a mother ~~ that is, a woman who can forget | herself, who can give without asking to receive, and who, | without losing any of the individualism which belongs to | self-respect, can yet live for and in the lives of others, and | find her best joy in the well-being of those about her. | There is no servility, no exaggerated sacrifice in this; it is | simply the fulfillment of woman's highest duty ~~ the | expression of that grand maternal instinct which need not | necessarily include the fact of personal maternity, but | which must find utterance in some line of unselfish action | with all women worthy of the name. The ideal woman of | middle age understands the young because she has lived | with them. If a mother, she has performed her maternal | duties with cheerfulness and love. There has been no | giving up her nursery to the care of a hired servant who is | expected to do for twenty pounds a year what the | tremendous instinct of a mother's love could not find | strength to do. When she had children, she attended to | them in great part herself, and learnt all about their tempers, | their maladies, and the best methods of management; as | they grew up she was still the best friend they had, the | Providence of their young lives who gave them both care | and justice, both love and guidance. Such a manner of life | has forced her to forget herself. When her child lay ill, | perhaps dying, she had no heart and no time to think of her | with her hair pushed back from her face; and what a fright | she must have looked in the morning light after her | sleepless night of watching. The world and all its petty | pleasures and paltry pain, faded away in the presence of the | stern tragedy of the hour; and not the finest ball of the | season seemed to be worth a thought compared to the | all-absorbing question of whether her child slept after his | draught and whether he ate his food with better appetite. | And such a life, in spite of all its cares has kept her young | as well as unselfish; we should rather say, young because | unselfish. As she comes into the room with her daughters, | her kindly face unpolluted by paint, her dress picturesque | or fashionable according to her taste, but decent in form | and consistent in tone with her age, it is often remarked that | she looks more like their sister than their mother. This is | because she is in harmony with her age, and has not | therefore put herself in rivalry with them; and harmony is | the very keystone of beauty. Her hair may be streaked with | white, the girlish firmness and transparency of her skin has | gone, the pearly clearness of her eye is clouded, and the | slender grace of line is lost, but for all that she is beautiful, | and she is intrinsically young. What she has lost in outside | material charm ~~ in that mere | beaute du diable of youth ~~ she has gained in | character and expression; and, not attempting to simulate | the attractiveness of a girl, she keeps what nature gave her | ~~ the attractiveness of middle age. And as every epoch | has its own beauty, if women would but learn that truth, she | is as beautiful now as a matron of fifty, because in harmony | with her years, and because her beauty has been carried on | from matter to spirit, as she was when a maiden of sixteen. | This is the ideal woman of middle age, met with even yet at | times in society ~~ the woman whom all men respect, | whom all women envy, and wonder how she does it, and | whom all the young adore, and wish they had for an elder | sister or an aunt. And the secret of it all lies in trust, in | love, in purity, and in unselfishness. | Standing far in front of this sweet and wholesome | idealization is femme passee | of to-day ~~ the reality as we meet with it at balls | and fetes and afternoon at homes, ever foremost in the mad | chase after pleasure, for which alone she seems to think she | has been sent into the world. Dressed in the extreme of | youthful fashion, her thinning hair dyed and crimped and | fired till it is more like red-brown tow than hair, her flaccid | cheeks ruddled, her throat whitened, her bust displayed | with unflinching generosity, as if beauty was to be | measured by cubic inches, her lusterless eyes blackened | round the lids, to give the semblance of limpidity to the | tarnished whites ~~ perhaps the pupil dilated by | belladonna, or perhaps a false and fatal brilliancy for the | moment given by opium, or by eau de cologne, of which | she has a store in her carriage, and drinks as she passes | from ball to ball; no kindly drapery of lace or gauze to | conceal the breadth of her robust maturity, or to soften the | dreadful shadows of her leanness ~~ there she stands, the | wretched creature who will not consent to grow old, and | who will still affect to be like a fresh coquettish girl when | she is nothing but la femme passee | ~~ la femme passee et ridicule into the bargain. | There is not a folly for which even the thoughtlessness of | youth is but a poor excuse into which she, in all the | plenitude of her abundant experience, does not plunge. | Wife and mother as she may be, she flirts and makes love | as if an honourable issue was as open to her as to her | daughter, or as if she did not know to what end flirting and | making love lead in all ages. If we watch the career of such | a woman, we see how, by slow but very sure degrees, she is | obliged to lower the standard of her adorers, and to take up | at last with men of inferior social position, who are content | to buy her patronage by their devotion. To the best men of | her own class she can give nothing that they value; so she | barters with snobs, who go into the transaction with their | eyes open, and take the whole affair as a matter of | exchange, and quid pro quo | rigidly exacted. Or she does really dazzle some very | young and low born man who is weak a well as ambitious, | and who thinks the fugitive regard of a middle-aged woman | of high rank something to be proud of and boasted about. | That she is as old as his own mother ~~ at this moment | selling tapes behind a village counter, or gathering up the | eggs in a country farm ~~ tells nothing against the | association with him; and the woman who began her career | of flirtation with the son of a duke ends it with the son of a | shopkeeper, having between these two terms spanned all | the several degrees of degradation which lie between giving | and buying. She cannot help herself; for it is part of the | insignia of her artificial youth to have the reputation of a | love affair, or the pretence of one, if even the reality is a | mere delusion. When such a woman as this is one of the | matrons, and consequently one of the leaders of society, | what can we expect from the girls? What worse example | could be given to the young? When we see her with her | own daughters we feel instinctively that she is the most | disastrous adviser they could have; and when in the | company of girls or young married women not belonging to | her, we doubt whether we ought not to warn their natural | guardians against allowing such association, for all that her | standing in society is undeniable, and not a door is shut | against her. We may have no absolutely tangible reason to | give for our distaste beyond the self-evident facts that she | paints her face and dyes her hair, dresses in a very | decollete style, and affects | a girlish manner that is out of harmony with her age and | condition. But though we cannot formularize reasons, we | have instincts; and sometimes instinct sees more clearly | than reason. | What good in life does this kind of woman do? All her | time is taken up, first in trying to make herself look twenty | or thirty years younger than she is, and then is trying to | make others believe the same; and she has neither thought | nor energy to spare from this, to her, far more important | work than is feeding the hungry or nursing the sick, | rescuing the fallen or soothing the sorrowful. The final | cause of her existence seems to be the impetus she has | given to a certain branch of trade manufacture ~~ unless we | add to this, the corruption of society. For whom, but for | her, are the

"little secrets"

which are continually | being advertised as woman's social salvation ~~ regardless | of grammar? The ; the ; the , | and ~~ which does not wash off; the ; | the , and , which are cynically offered | for the use and adoption of our mothers and daughters, find | their chief patroness in the femme | passee who makes herself up ~~ the middle-aged | matron engaged in her frantic struggle against time, and | obstinately refusing to grow old in spite of all that nature | may say or do. Bad as the girl of the period often is, this | horrible travesty of her vices in the modern matron is even | worse. Indeed, were it not for her, the girls would never | have gone to such lengths as those to which they have | gone; for elder women have naturally immense influence | over younger ones, and if mothers were to set their faces | resolutely against the follies of the day, daughters would | and must give in. As it is, they go even ahead of the young, | and by example on the one hand and rivalry on the other, | sow the curse of corruption broadest where they were | meant to have only a pure influence and to set a wise | example. Were it not for those who still remain faithful, | women who regard themselves as appointed by God the | trustees for humanity and virtue, the world would go to ruin | forthwith; but so long as the five righteous are left we have | hope, and a certain amount of security for the future, when | the present disgraceful madness of society shall have | subsided.