NIMIUM NE CREDE COLORI
Embellissez-vous. By Lucie Delarue-Mardrus. (Editions le France, Paris. 10 francs.) PROLONGING the youth of woman, says Mlle. Delarue-Mardrus, is one of the greatest of this age's scientific discoveries. Ninon de Lenelos' unfading charm would no longer astonish her contemporaries, indeed we can see her counterparts of to-day, issuing reincarnated from the beauty salons of Bond Street, the Rue de la Paix, or Fifth Avenue. For a time and at a price, XXth-century woman may drink of the fountain of perpetual youth.
But our author does not disguise the fact that these waters may be bitter. She draws a ghastly picture of a beauty of other days, whom she met again after a two years' treatment of massage, face-lifting and diet (tout comme quelquc grand mutile de la guerre) with wig, false teeth, chicken bone in nose, throat slit and resewn and other details too unpleasant to mention—a ghoul inhabiting the body she had once admired. Against such conflicts with natural law, Mlle. Delarue-Mardrus protests. But for the adornment of youth, and the enhance- ment of the natural graces of womankind, she states a strong
case.
How can we deny that " making-up " is no more artificial than dressing ? Why, except that we are slaves of fashion, should any man who shaves, dare to tell his wife that her eyebrows should go unplucked ?
In spite of the vertiginous progress of feminism, the power and the happiness of woman remain largely in pleasing. The day this is changed, the face of the world will have changed, and will be ugly one.
" To be beautiful, even if one is a Saint, is always a tremendous advantage. Without searching in heaven, on this poor earth it is obvious that . . . the brain of a woman has never received its greatest reward unless her outward appearance gives sign of her inward grace."
An army of fathers and mothers and husbands may protest that their daughters or their wives must not be artificial. Yet the first artifice is dress. We were born naked, but we cannot live as the beasts : the swaddled infant has already entered into the artifice of civilization. Powder and paint are hypo crisies perhaps, but more venial than many others in this world of make-believe. " God made the eglantine, he left us to make the rose. Surely nobody protests against roses ? Well, then, what is the matter with powder, paint and lipstick ? "
Having thus dealt with the philosophy of the matter, she comes to the mirror, orange sticks, collyrium, rouge, powder- puffs and pencils. We shall not follow her into these in- timacies, except to observe that the eyes have a fuller treat- ment than any other feature, and rightly so, for the eyes of every normal human being are jewels of greater or less lustre, and in the nice adjustment of their setting every woman may claim her share of beauty. Some eyes have lights behind them that are in themselves a treasure and there is a world in their depths of which the tongue of man may not tell, but these things are only to be seen by the right beholders and are in the domain of mystery, not maequillage. Besides these secret glories, there is an open glory : the eye is the soul's windoW and that window needs a frame—" in nine eases ont'of our nuthOr adds cautiously. For Ourselves, -sve-' confesS to preferring the tenth case. Beauty is a thinisand Miles from being skin deep and all men and most intelligent women knovi this in spite of the millions that are spent' in adVertisementa to convince us that the, contrary is true. But ,With a healthy cOniplexion for a basis, a woman can probably enhance her beantY with ,cosmeties; provided she comes to their use with a mind chastened by the importance' of the subject (as treated by Mlle. Delarue=. Mardrus, for example) instead of dabbing with piiff and lip- stick in the twilight; from some casual vanity case. The Ely can he painted and it.is-the lily's right to ehooie her paints.. And if it is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well. EMbellisez: rows tells hoW, and it is so pleasantly Written that it is no wonder that 22,000 copies have already been sold in Fiance.
F. Y.-B.
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