The Beautiful Woman in the Seventeenth Century

This is the third installment in the series 'The Beautiful Woman through the Ages'; we shall follow it in the coming issue with the fourth installment, on the beauties of the eighteenth century.

Thanks be to the men of letters and the historians: they have left us, between the covers of their books, and in their poems and their confessions, a great deal about the fair women of France and England in the seventeenth century. So that when we come to speak of the beautiful woman of that age, we do not confine our talk to one woman and no other, but recount in it the charms of a number of women who were the pearls upon the necklaces of beauty, and whose fame rose high on men's tongues, and in their thoughts, and their dreams.

Among the beautiful Frenchwomen was Aubré de La Vallière, whose slenderness of figure reached a point that amazed the men of the court, who tried in vain to understand the secret of the King's attachment to her. We read one critic commenting on her beauty by saying that she had no bosom! She limped slightly in her walk, and had two black eyes, and appeared at her best when she wore the coat she used for riding, since it hid her chest, while the neckcloth made it look fuller.

There was also Madame de Montespan, whom Madame de Sévigné, that connoisseur of beauty, described as blonde, golden-haired, suggestive of majesty and strength. She wrote of her: "Here is haughty beauty, opulent beauty. Here is an abundance of fair hair, and a blueness of eye that seems to hold fire; here are marvelous features, and a white, gleaming skin. She is a woman filled with desire, not with love; with splendor, not with poetry. And I believe her back is much too flat; but her beauty is astonishing beyond dispute... She dresses, from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet, in the French fashion. Her hair is full of a thousand curls, and over her brow two locks glide down to the bottom of her cheeks. On her hair are black ribbons, on her head precious pearls, and she wears no hat. All in all, she is a triumphant beauty."

As for Marie de Chuzir, "she had a face oval in shape, a complexion whose whiteness dazzled the eyes, two large blue eyes skilled in expressing what they concealed, and a wealth of thick dark hair; and very few of the women with whom the court of France was blessed were more beautiful than she. Her beauty was heightened by her gaiety and mirth and by an extraordinary vivacity, which lent her personality an irresistible charm."

So much for France. In England, the court and society were adorned with a number of the century's beauties, at their head Elizabeth Hamilton. "Her figure was among the most splendid figures women ever had; she had a neck and arms than which God never created anything more beautiful or more radiant. All her movements were dignified and graceful, and the young women of society took her as a model to imitate in conduct and in dress. Her complexion had a color that the various powders found it hard to counterfeit. Her eyes were not large, but they were full of life, and capable of expressing whatever passed through her mind. Her mouth was sweet, and the lines of her body attained a perfection that no other body attained... And possessing

such qualities, she was able to win love wherever she turned."

And there was Nell Gwyn, the famous comic actress of her age. Her face was long, sweet, sad. She had a fine figure, despite her shortness, and was pleasant company, without show or affectation. The great poet Dryden was among her admirers.

And there was Miss Menifer, who "was adorned with all the glittering treasures of youth." One critic left a description of her in which he dwelt on the beauty of her mouth, "which was not the smallest in the world, yet it was the sweetest of mouths... And if her arms lacked graceful length, and if her nose fell short of matching the splendor of the other parts of her body, her mouth made up for it all, piercing the heart with a thousand arrows."

The historians of beauty agree, or nearly agree, that Frances Stuart was the summit of English beauty in the century we are considering; and that it was in consequence of this that she was chosen as the model from which was taken the figure of "Britannia," struck for the first time upon the copper coins of England. Among the factors that increased her fame and spread the renown of her beauty may have been her refusal of the King's love and her withholding of herself from him, which caused him much pain and trouble.

Samuel Pepys, author of the diary famous in the history of English literature, described her thus: "Methinks she is the most beautiful woman I ever saw in my life. She is far more beautiful than I had imagined..."

Another writer says: "It would have been impossible for any woman to have more beauty, or less wit..." And in truth she was somewhat feather-brained: her greatest delight was to sit on the floor and play with stones, building houses out of them. But this did not lessen King Charles's love for her or his attachment to her; he used to say that what interested him in a woman was neither her mind nor her soul!

The writers of the age have left us a few anecdotes about this sweet, strange belle. It appears she was narcissistic in her inclinations, loving her own beauty without being conscious of the power it held over men.

Gramont relates that one day certain Russian ambassadors arrived at the English court on an official mission. "The conversation turned to the appearance and looks of the Russians. And I know not where the buffoon Crofts had heard that the people of Muscovy had beautiful wives, and that the Russian woman had beautiful legs. No sooner had the King heard this than he affirmed that there was no woman in existence whose leg attained the beauty of Frances Stuart's. And she, wishing to prove to the company the truth of His Majesty's word, in one swift flash had lifted her gown from her leg to a considerable height, and displayed its beauty to those present. They were taken with the sight, and some of them were on the point of casting themselves at her feet, the better to enjoy her beauty. The Duke James, however, set about criticizing her legs, claiming that they were too thin, that he personally preferred short, plump legs, and that he could not relish the beauty of legs unless they wore stockings of green..."

And Gramont says in another place that Frances Stuart "was fully conscious of the extent of her beauty and of her superiority in it over all other women; and it was therefore impossible for the name of any woman at court to be mentioned, and her arms or her legs praised, without her flaring up and setting about challenging the company that her own arms, or her own legs, were the more beautiful — joining to the word tangible, practical proof... And I believe it would not be difficult at all, if one used a little tact, to make her strip entirely naked in full view of the company, without her perceiving that she was doing anything shocking or unseemly."