FAMOUS BEAUTIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 83, 8 April 1933, Page 3 (Supplement)

FAMOUS BEAUTIES.

CLEOPATRA AND OTHERS.

WHY THEY ARE RENOWNED.

The divinity of beauty, which all the, world adores and nobody can define because no one really knows of what it consists, has ever interested humanity. No age claims her. Helen of Troy smiles across the years to Diane de Poitiers, who looking forward, sees the lovely light reflected in the Countess de Grammont, and so down to our present day.

And all those Beloved Women whose beauty drove men mad and whose small white hands toyed with the strings of that puppet show, History, had their beauty secrets.

Many of the most famous beauties were actually quite plain if we are to believe the comments of biographers who did not happen to be in love with them. No doubt the Roman matrons wondered what on earth Antony saw in Cleopatra with her snub nose and short statue! Madame Becaimer had thin hair and meagre arms, and a decided moustache on her upper lip. Du Barry's complexion was blotchy. Marie Antoinette was

handicapped by a mis-shapen mouth, and Nell Gwyn was called by her Royal lover "little pig-eyed Nell." Yet these women were all hailed as beauties. Crowds gathered to stare at then when they moved abroad, so that in some cases they were compelled to have a guard to keep off the admiring

throng. In their scented boudoirs history was. made, and kings and ministers laid aside the business of State to attend the levee, and watch the miracle of toilette, while tirewomen arranged a ribbon, and a hairdresser erected the tower of powdered hair entwined with flowers, lace and plumes. Who knows how many wars came out of the jewelled jars and gold-crusted powder boxes upon those dressing tables! If the barbers, the waiting maids and the perfumers who knew the boudoir secrets of those famous beauties had only written them down , for future generations. If we could look over the "ivory shoulder" of the matchless Helen and see what creams and powders went on to the ."face that launched a thousand ships"! She was forty when she fled with the enamoured Paris, she was fifty when two nations fought to possess her. And when the Trojans, maddened by defeat, rushed upon her to kill her, she turned the golden beauty of her face upon £hem, and their spears fell in

amaze. Cleopatra, the enchantress of the Nile, was an extravagant user of Oriental balm, and bathed in the perfumed oils of the palm and olive instead of in water. She spent hours over her toilette, reclining before mirro/s of polished steel while slaves rubbed her smooth skin still smoother wi.th pumice stone and applied unguents, perfumes and paints. Lucrezia Borgia kept her dazzling skin by bathing her face in decoctions of herbs and strawberry juice, and in spite of her reputation for poisoning off her admirers when they began to bore her, she was adored to a ripe old age. It is probable that the record for preserving beauty is held by the radiant Ninon de L'Enclos who was loved by three generations of men. On her sixtieth birthday her hair was still redgold, her eyes dark and luminous, and her complexion like peach bloom. When she was ninety, men still vied for her love and wrote impassioned letters to her.

It was wluf/ered that she employed magic to keep age away. One day—so the story went—she stood alone in her boudoir, when she saw in the mirror the reflection of a man in a black cloak and hat standing behind her. "When youth is gone, love is gone," the apparition said, "the admiration of men melts like snow at the first touch of age in women." He handed her a crystal vial of rosy liquid, and bidding her put a drop of it in her bath every Diwning, disappeared.