The Quest of the Golden Girl | Page 7

unprofitable, I began scientifically to consider in detail the attributes of
the supposititious paragon,--attributes of body and mind and heart. This
was soon done; but again, as I thus conned all those virtues which I was
to expect united in one unhappy woman, the result was still
unsatisfying, for I began to perceive that it was really not perfection
that I was in search of. As I added virtue after virtue to the female
monster in my mind, and the result remained still inanimate and
unalluring, I realised that the lack I was conscious of was not any new
perfection, but just one or two honest human imperfections. And this,
try as I would, was just what I could not imagine.
For, if you reflect a moment, you will see that, while it is easy to
choose what virtues we would have our wife possess, it is all but
impossible to imagine those faults we would desire in her, which I
think most lovers would admit add piquancy to the loved one, that
fascinating wayward imperfection which paradoxically makes her
perfect.
Faults in the abstract are each and all so uninviting, not to say alarming,
but, associated with certain eyes and hair and tender little gowns, it is
curious how they lose their terrors; and, as with vice in the poet's image,
we end by embracing what we began by dreading. You see the fault
becomes a virtue when it is hers, the treason prospers; wherefore, no
doubt, the impossibility of imagining it. What particular fault will suit a
particular unknown girl is obviously as difficult to determine as in what
colours she will look her best.

So, I say, I plied my brains in vain for that becoming fault. It was the
same whether I considered her beauty, her heart, or her mind. A
charming old Italian writer has laid down the canons of perfect
feminine beauty with much nicety in a delicious discourse, which, as he
delivered it in a sixteenth- century Florentine garden to an audience of
beautiful and noble ladies, an audience not too large to be intimate and
not too small to be embarrassing, it was his delightful good fortune and
privilege to illustrate by pretty and sly references to the characteristic
beauties of the several ladies seated like a ring of roses around him.
Thus he would refer to the shape of Madonna Lampiada's sumptuous
eyelids, and to her shell-like ears, to the correct length and shape of
Madonna Amororrisca's nose, to the lily tower of Madonna
Verdespina's throat; nor would the unabashed old Florentine shrink
from calling attention to the unfairness of Madonna Selvaggia's
covering up her dainty bosom, just as he was about to discourse upon
"those two hills of snow and of roses with two little crowns of fine
rubies on their peaks. "How could a man lecture if his diagrams were
going to behave like that! Then, feigning a tiff, he would close his
manuscript, and all the ladies with their birdlike voices would beseech
him with "Oh, no, Messer Firenzuola, please go on again; it's SO
charming!" while, as if by accident, Madonna Selvaggia's moonlike
bosom would once more slip out its heavenly silver, perceiving which,
Messer Firenzuola would open his manuscript again and proceed with
his sweet learning.
Happy Firenzuola! Oh, days that are no more!
By selecting for his illustrations one feature from one lady and another
from another, Messer Firenzuola builds up an ideal of the Beautiful
Woman, which, were she to be possible, would probably be as faultily
faultless as the Perfect Woman, were she possible.
Moreover, much about the same time as Firenzuola was writing,
Botticelli's blonde, angular, retrousse women were breaking every one
of that beauty- master's canons, perfect in beauty none the less; and
lovers then, and perhaps particularly now, have found the perfect
beauty in faces to which Messer Firenzuola would have denied the

name of face at all, by virtue of a quality which indeed he has tabulated,
but which is far too elusive and undefinable, too spiritual for him truly
to have understood,--a quality which nowadays we are tardily
recognising as the first and last of all beauty, either of nature or art,--the
supreme, truly divine, because materialistically unaccountable, quality
of Charm!
"Beauty that makes holy earth and heaven May have faults from head
to feet."
O loveliest and best-loved face that ever hallowed the eyes that now
seek for you in vain! Such was your strange lunar magic, such the light
not even death could dim. And such may be the loveliest and best-
loved face for you who are reading these pages,--faces little understood
on earth because they belong to heaven.
There is indeed only one law of beauty on which we may rely,--that it
invariably breaks all the