Читать книгу Jonathan and His Continent: Rambles Through American Society - O'Rell Max - Страница 6

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Types.—Manly Beauty.—The Indian Type.—Second Beauty in the Women of the New World.—Something Wanting in the Beauty of Most American Women.

he American men are generally thin. Their faces glow with intelligence and energy, and in this mainly consists their handsomeness. I do not think it can be possible to see anywhere a finer assemblage of men than that which meets at the Century Club of New York every first Saturday of the month. It is not male beauty such as the Greeks portrayed it, but a manly beauty in all its intellectual force. The hair, often abundant, is négligé, sometimes even almost disordered-looking; the dress displays taste and care without aiming at elegance; the face is pale and serious, but lights up with an amiable smile: you divine that resolution and gentleness live in harmony in the American character.

The features are bony, the forehead straight, the nose sharp and often pinched-looking in its thinness. One seems at times to recognise in the faces something of the Indian type: the temples indented, the cheek-bones prominent, the eyes small, keen, and deepset.

The well-bred American is, to my mind, a happy combination of the Frenchman and the Englishman, having less stiffness than the latter, and more simplicity than the former.

As for the women, I do not hesitate to say that in the east, in New York especially, they might be taken for Frenchwomen. It is the same type, the same gait, the same vivacity, the same petulance, the same amplitude of proportions.

The beauty of the American women, like that of the men, is due much more to the animation of the face than to form or colouring. The average of good looks is very high, indeed. I do not remember to have seen one hopelessly plain woman during my six months' ramble in the States.

American women generally enjoy that second youth which Nature bestows also on numbers of Frenchwomen. At forty, they bloom out into a more majestic beauty. The eyes retain their fire and lustre, the skin does not wrinkle, the hands, neck, and arms remain firm and white. It is true that, in America, hair turns grey early; but, so far from detracting from the American woman's charms, it gives her an air of distinction, and is often positively an attraction.

If the Americans descend from the English, their women have not inherited from their grandmothers either their teeth, their hands, or their feet. I have seen, in America, the daintiest little hands and feet in the world (this is not an Americanism).

The New Yorkers and Bostonians will have it to be that Chicago women have enormous feet and hands. I was willing to believe this, up to the day I went to Chicago. I found the Chicago women, and those of the west generally, pretty, with more colour than their eastern sisters; only, as a rule, quite slight, not to say thin.

That which is lacking in the pretty American faces of the east is colour and freshness. The complexion is pale; and it is only their plumpness, which comes to their rescue after thirty, and prevents them from looking faded. Those who remain thin, generally fade quickly; the complexion becomes the colour of whity-brown paper, and wrinkles freely.

If American women went in for more outdoor exercise; if they let the outer air penetrate constantly into their rooms; if they gave up living in hothouses, they would have some colour, and their beauty need, perhaps, fear no competition in Europe.