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Show WOMAN'S FORM. Bab's Babble on the Figures and Curves of Women. Watching a dancer the other night, a dancer who is as graceful 89 possible,, who can make her tiny feet seem on a level wi.h her head, make them whirl through the air as it they were simply fairy slippers, I heard a small boy in the gallery call ont, "Say, do yon catch on to her carves?" I began to look at her then with the eyes of the small boy that critic who, having seen all sorts and conditions of women, was capable of judging. The curves of a woman's body aro nt once the most beautiful and the most absolutely modest in the world. As Eve stood in the garden of EJen, with no stain of sin on her soul,' sho is the embodiment of exqnisite feminine modesty. Later on, even, when she has fallen, and she Is seeking to hide herself, the perfection of her form is so great that you feel like bow ing before her as the representative mother of the world. The email boy, with his slang had unconsciously reached ont to the greatest charm that a woman can possess, and besides which beauty of face is as nothing. The perfect feminine figure, as any artist will tell yon, must never achieve an angle in any position, and the woman must naturally fall into those attitudes that form curves. If yon watch a woman who la simply herself, and who is not posing for yonr benefit, you will see that, sitting, standing or walking, she unconsciously does this; and it is only when she is subject to tiiat undesirable disease, vanity, that she is stiff and angular, The dancer admiredrby the critic of the gallery was not a very large woman, certainly not Leslie Carter is slender, but well formed and grateful; all her movements are pleasing, and when she takes a few dauoing steps she delights the gallery critic by her lightness, and the fact that she has no angles. Many of the women of the stage have extremely beantiful figures, many more are like those off it, too fat or too thin, and very often where they might use lamb's wool advantageously they apply too much, or do not know, how to use it correctly. cor-rectly. Who of us has not seen a chorus where symmetry was exhibited by a series of lumps, presumably fat, and thon spaces as flat as the desert of Sahara? The woman who doesn't know how to make herself look better by the disposition dispo-sition of her belonging-i had much better not attempt to do anything bnt let long, lank natnre announce itself. Among the fashionable set, good figures are the exception rather than the rnlo, most of the women being too fat. Of course this does not apply to the young girls, bnt they, like all American young girls in the norjb, are apt to be at thj other extreme, and that is a little scrawny, We are of so many nationalities nation-alities that it is amusing to hear of a woman who traces her fine figure to the different blood she inherits. She says: 'T got my handsome neck and arms from my "English grandmother, my hips from my French grandmother, my clear pure skin from an Irish grandfather, and its smoothness from a Spanish one. The smallness of my feet and hands I inherit from iny mother, who is an American, and my quickness in solving all this from my father, who is an American politician, born in Ireland." Bab. what anybody would call a stout woman, for fat is as ab90lately destructive destruc-tive to beauty as are huge bones. Xatarally the women of the stage, the ones beat known to all, are the ones whie figures can be criticised. Be-giuing Be-giuing with the beauty of the stage, Mrs. Langtry, who can deny her grace? her arms and neck are perfect, but the 1 jwer part of her body is angniar and ungraceful, so, for that reason, she is always clever enough to have her gowns so draped that as far as possible the defects are hidden. 'Her defects cf figure are simply those of the Engl'shv woman in general, for she is by no means, taken altogether, as handsome a figure as the American woman, although al-though she usnally surpasses her in beanty of bnst and arms. Mme. Bernhardt Bern-hardt Is a seductive figure, for sleuder-ness sleuder-ness does not of necessity hint of angles and thinness. A small-boned woman whose bones are properly covered may be as beautifully formed as the woman with greater height and weight. Jane Harding has essentially the figure of the .French woman of fashion, the small waist, broad shoulders and large hips, it is a figure that one is inclined to call chic rather than artistic. Agnes Booth has grown too stout and matronly looking to be criticised, but I have been told by people who saw her play Cleopatra, Cle-opatra, that she fulfilled.Gautier's ideas of the beautiful Egyptian. Modjeska is angular. Fanny Davenport is, just now, a most perfect figure, for having lost some of her flesh and being a large woman, the amonnt she still weighs is only that which should be hers by right. Ada Reban always impresses you on the stage as looking all right but you are not conscious of any of that charm of curve which is a painter's delight and the fascination of so many women. In the world of light opera, Delia Fox may be cited as having the most boyish figure, Anna O'Keefe tho most feminine in the dressmaker's sense, tut Marie Jauseu the most absolutely perfect in all senses. Just watch her as she moves; wherever she goes she seems to carry with htr the perfect line of which Dumas wrote, and which, after all, is the line of fascination. If she moves her hand, a curve Is achived from the shoulders to the elbow; if she throws her foot in some careless position the line from the waist to the knee Is almost the same as that famous one which we call the line of beanty, and when she stands perfectly still, her feet close together, to-gether, her hands by her side, from her neck down she is a succession of beautiful beauti-ful curves, over which a 'French artist would rave would do more, wonld make immortal. Sadie Martinot has a fascinating fasci-nating figure, that, as she moves, beautifully gowned, as she always is, suggeSa to you her intonse femininity; eve.y rustle of her silk gown seems to say. "I am ffininine, I am mysterious, bnt be sure that I am charming-" Johnstone Bennett, "Jane," is a girlish figure, pleasing to look npon and essentially essen-tially suggestive of youth. Lotta, well, who ever thought anything of Lotta's Dgnrt? She will look 16 when she is 60. Kate Forsyth has a most magnificent figure, it is Juno-like; bnt if yon remember, remem-ber, it was not jnno who fascinated mankind; it was the smaller, lissome and more womanly Venns whom they adored. Christine Nelson long ago grew too fat, and then she is not womanly looking she is too suggestive of Vikings to delight humanity. Mrs. Brown-Potter is bony; bnt Mrs, Brown Potter is so essentially feminine that her bones seem to know how to enrve and make the lines of her figure at least womanly to look npon. Mrs. |
