| <Saturday Review, 20 March, 1869, 377-8>
| <CHARMING WOMEN.>
| <Eliza Lynn Linton>
| <etext downloaded from Project Gutenberg with thanks>
| There are certain women who are invariably spoken of as charming. We
| never hear any other epithet applied to them. They are not said to be
| pretty, nor amiable, nor clever, though they may be all three, but
| simply charming; which we may take as a kind of verbal amalgam ~~ the
| concentration and concretion of all praise. The main feature about
| these charming women is their intense feminality. There is no blurring
| of the outlines here; no confusion of qualities admirable enough in
| themselves but slightly out of place considering the sex; no Amazonian
| virtues which leave one in doubt as to whether we have not before us
| Achilles in petticoats rather than a true Pyrrha or a more tender
| Deidamia.
| A charming woman is woman all over ~~ one who places her glory in being
| a woman and has no desire to be anything else. She is a woman rather
| than a human being, and a lady rather than a woman. One of her
| characteristics is the exquisite grace of her manner which so sweetly
| represents the tender nature within. She has not an angle anywhere. If
| she were to be expressed geometrically, Hogarth's Line of Beauty
| is the sole figure that could be used for her. She is flowing,
| graceful, bending in mind as in body; she is neither self-asserting
| nor aggressive, neither rigid nor narrow; she is a creature who glides
| gracefully through life, and adjusts herself to her company and her
| circumstances in a manner little less than marvellous; working her own
| way without tumult or sharpness; creeping round the obstacles she
| cannot overthrow, and quietly wearing down more friable opposition
| with that gentle persistency which does so much more than turmoil and
| disturbance.
| Even if enthusiastic ~~ which she is for art, either as music, as
| painting, or yet as poetry ~~ she is enthusiastic in such a sweet and
| graceful way that <reg orig=”no one”> no-one </reg> 
| can be offended by a fire which shines and
| does not burn. There is no touch of scorn about her and no assumption
| of superior knowledge. She speaks to you, poor ignorant Philistine,
| with the most flattering conviction that you follow her in all her
| flights; and when she comes out, quite naturally, with her pretty
| little bits of recondite lore or professional technicalities, you
| cannot be so boorish as to ask for an explanation of these trite
| matters which she makes so sure you must understand. Are you not an
| educated person with a soul to be saved? can you then be ignorant of
| things with which <reg orig=”every one”> everyone </reg> 
| of culture is familiar? She discourses
| confidentially of musicians and painters unknown to fame, and speaks
| as if she knew the secret doings of the Conservatoire and the R. A.
| council-chamber alike. The models and the methods, the loves and
| the hates, of the artistic world are to her things of every-day life,
| and you cannot tell her that she is shooting her delicate shafts wide
| of the mark, and that you know no more of what she means than if she
| were talking in the choicest Arabic.
| If she has been abroad ~~ and she generally has been 
| more or less ~~ she
| will pour out her tender little rhapsodies about palazzi and musei of
| which you have never heard, but every room of which she assumes you
| know by heart; and she will speak of out-of-the-way churches, and grim
| old castles perched upon vine-clad mounts, as if you were as well
| acquainted with them as with your native hamlet. She will bring into
| her discourse all manner of Italian technicalities, as if you
| understood the subject as well as she herself understands it; though
| your learning is limited to a knowledge of how much has been done in
| jute and tallow this last half year, or how many pockets of hops went
| off in the market last week. If she has a liking for high life and
| titles ~~ and what charming woman has not? ~~ 
| she will mention the names
| of all manner of counts and dukes and monsignori unknown to English
| society, as though they were her brothers; but if you were to
| interrupt the gentle ripple of her speech with such rude breakwaters
| as <p> 'who?' </p> and <p> 'what?' </p> the charming woman 
| would think you a horrid
| bore ~~ and no man would willingly face that humiliation. One may be a
| rhinoceros in one's own haunts, but, as the fable tells us, even
| rhinoceroses are ashamed of their parentage when among gazelles.
| Never self-asserting, never contradictory, only sweetly and tenderly
| putting you right when you blunder, the charming woman nevertheless
| always makes you feel her superiority. True, she lays herself as it
| were at your feet and gives you a thousand delicate flatteries ~~
| indeed
| among her specialities is that of being able to set you on good terms
| with yourself by her art of subtle flattery; but despite her own
| self-abasement and your exaltation you cannot but feel her
| superiority; and, although she is too charming to acknowledge what
| would wound your pride, you know that she feels it too, and tries to
| hide it. All of which has the effect of making you admire her still
| more for her grace and tact.
| The charming woman is generally notoriously in love with her husband,
| who is almost always inferior to her in birth, acquirements, manner,
| appearance. This Titania-like affection of hers only shows her
| feminine qualities of sacrifice and wifely devotion to greater
| advantage, and makes other men envy more ferociously the lucky fellow
| who has drawn such a prize. The husband of a charming woman is indeed
| lucky in the world's esteem; no man more so. Though he may be one of
| the most ordinary, perhaps unpleasant, fellows you know, with a sour
| face, an underbred air, and by no means famous in his special sphere,
| his wife speaks of him enthusiastically as so good, so clever, so
| delightful! <reg orig=”No one”> No-one </reg> 
| knows how good he is, she says; though of
| course he has his little peculiarities of temper and the rest of it,
| and perhaps <reg orig=”every one”> everyone </reg> 
| would not bear with them as she does. But then
| she knows him, and knows his wonderful worth and value! If they are
| not seen much together, that comes from causes over which they have no
| control, not from anything like disinclination to each other's
| society. Certainly, for so happy a marriage, it is a little surprising
| how very seldom they are together; and how all her friends are hers
| only and not his, and how much she goes into society without him. On
| the whole, counting hours, they live very much more apart than united;
| but that is the misfortune of his career, of his health, 
| or of hers ~~ a
| misfortune due to any cause but that of diversity of tastes,
| inharmoniousness of pursuits, or lack of love.
| Full of home affection and the tenderest sentiment as she is, the
| charming woman does sometimes the oddest-looking things, which a rough
| little domestic creature without graceful pretensions would not dream
| of doing. Her child is lying dangerously ill, perhaps dying, and she
| appears at the grand ball of the season, subdued certainly ~~ how well
| that sweet melancholy becomes her! ~~ but always graceful, always
| thoughtful for others, and attentive to the minutest detail of her
| social duties. And though indeed, she will tell you, she does not know
| how she got dressed at all, because of the state of cruel anxiety in
| which she is, yet she is undeniably the best dressed woman in the room
| and the most carefully appointed. It is against her own will that
| she is there, you may be sure; but she has been forced to sacrifice
| herself, and tear herself away for an hour. The exigencies of society
| are so merciless! ~~ the world is such a terrible Juggernaut! she says,
| raising her eyes with plaintive earnestness to yours in the
| breathing-times of the waltz.
| She has another trial if her husband is ordered out to Canada or the
| West Indies. Dearly as she loves him, and though she is heart-broken
| at the idea of the separation, yet her health cannot stand the
| climate; and she must obey her doctor's orders. She is so delicate,
| you know ~~ all charming women are delicate ~~ and the doctor tells her
| she could not live six months either in Toronto or Port Royal. If her
| lord and master had to go on diplomatic service to St. Petersburg or
| Madrid, she might be able to stand the climate then; but that is
| different. A dull station, without any of her favourite pleasures,
| would be more than she could bear; so she remains behind, goes out
| into society, and writes her husband tender and amusing letters once a
| month.
| The charming woman is the gentlest of her sex. She would not do a
| cruel thing nor say an unkind word for the world. When she tells you
| the unpleasant things which ill-natured people have said of your
| friends or hers, she tells them in the sweetest and dearest way
| imaginable. She is so sure there is not a syllable of truth in it all;
| and what a shame it is that people should be so ill-natured! In the
| gentle tone of sympathy and deprecation peculiar to her, she
| gives you all the ugly and uncomfortable reports which have come to
| her, and of which you have never heard a breath until this moment. Yet
| it is you who are stupid, not she who is initiative, for she tells
| them to you as if they were of patent notoriety to the whole world;
| only she does not believe them, remember! She takes the most
| scrupulous care to deny and defend as she retails, and you cannot
| class her with the tribe of the ill-natured whom she censures,
| setting, as she does, the whole strength of her gentle words and
| generous disbelief in opposition to these ugly rumours. Yet you wish
| she had not told you. Her disclaimers spring so evidently from the
| affectionate amiability of her own mind, which cannot bear to think
| evil, that they have not much effect upon you. The excuse dies away
| from your memory, but the ill-savoured report roots; and you feel that
| you have lost your respect for your former friends for ever; or, if
| they were only hers, then, that nothing should tempt you to know them.
| There is no smoke without some fire, you think; and the charming woman
| cannot possibly have kindled the flame herself out of sticks and
| leaves and rubbish of her own collecting. But how sweet and charitable
| she was when she told you! how much you love her for her tenderness of
| nature! what a guileless and delightful creature she is!
| The charming woman is kind and graceful, but she does not command the
| stronger virtues. She flatters sweetly, but, it must be
| confessed, she fibs as sweetly. She sometimes owns to this, but only
| to fibs that do more good than harm ~~ fibs into the utterance of which
| she is forced for the sake of peace and to avoid mischief. It is a
| feminine privilege, she says; and men agree with her. Truth at all
| times ~~ bold, uncompromising, stern-faced truth ~~ is coarse and
| indelicate she says; a masculine quality as little fitted for women as
| courage or great bodily strength. Her husband knows that she fibs; her
| friends at times find her out too; but though the women throw it at
| her as an accusation, the men accept it as a quality without which she
| would be less the charming woman that she is; and not only forgive it,
| but like her the better for the grace and tact and suppleness she
| displays in the process of manufacture. Hers are not the severer
| virtues, but the gentler, the more insinuating; and absolute
| truth ~~ truth at any price and on all occasions ~~ 
| does not come into the
| list.
| Charming women, with their plastic manners and non-aggressive force,
| always have their own way in the end. They are the women who influence
| by unseen methods and who shrink from any open display of power. They
| know that their <hi> metier </hi> is to soothe men, 
| to put them on good terms
| with themselves, and so to get the benefit of the good humour they
| induce; and they dread nothing so much as a contest of wills. They
| coax and flatter for their rights, and consequently they are given
| privileges in excess of their rights; whereas the women who take
| their rights, as things to which they are entitled without favour,
| lose them and their privileges together. This art of self-abasement
| for future exaltation is one which it is given only to few to carry to
| perfection, but no woman is really charming without it. In fact it is
| part of her power; and she knows it. Though charming women are
| decidedly the favourites with men, they are careful to keep on good
| terms with their own sex; and in society you may often see them almost
| ostentatiously surrounded by women only, whom they take pains to
| please or exert themselves to amuse, but whom they throw into the
| shade in the most astonishing way.
| Whatever these really charming women are, or do, or wear, is exactly
| the right thing; and every other woman fails in proportion to the
| distance she is removed from this model. When a charming woman is
| dressed richly, the simpler costumes of her friends look poor and
| mean; when she is <hi> à la bergère </hi>, 
| the Court dresses about her are
| vulgar; when she is gay, quietness is dullness; when she is quiet,
| laughter is coarse. And there is no use in trying to imitate her. She
| is the very Will-o'-the-wisp of her circle, and no sooner shows her
| light here than she flits away there; she has no sooner set one
| fashion, which her admiring friends have adopted with infinite pains
| and trouble, than she has struck out a new one which renders all the
| previous labour in vain. This is part of her very essence; and the
| originality which is simply perfection that cannot be repeated, and
| not eccentricity that <reg orig=”no one”> no-one </reg> 
| will imitate, comes in as one of the
| finest and most potent of her charms. When she lends her patterns to
| her friends, or tells them this or that little secret, she laughs in
| her heart, knowing that she has shown them a path they cannot possibly
| follow and raised up a standard to which they cannot attain. And even
| should they do either, then she knows that, by the time they have
| begun to get up to her, she will be miles away, and that no art
| whatever can approximate them to her as she is. What she was she
| tosses among them as a worn-out garment; what she is they cannot be.
| She remains still the unapproachable, the inimitable, the charming
| woman <hi> par excellence </hi> of her set, whom none can rival.