WHEN BEAUTY DEPARTS.

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 March 1930, Page 3

WHEN BEAUTY DEPARTS.

I PERSONALITY CULTIVATED. If life is wonderful in the 20’s, living is fascinating in the 40’s! You won’t find many women eager to echo this epigram. The best years seem gone, distress and disappointment have clouded youthful dreams. Richness of colour and variety have faded from the days that loom ahead. But Fritzl Scheff laughs at this drab picture of sthe middle years. After a lapse of almost a generation she was recently again the centre of the Victor Herbert music festivals held throughout America. “Mlle Modiste” brought her back in the spotlight with all the charm and exuberant vitality of 20 years ago. “Beauty—what is it?” The slim hands of the little Viennese vibrate with expression. “A lustre of the skin, a light in the eye. When a man marries a woman for her face she eventually loses her freshness and, presto! he is tired of his bargain. But if he marries for companionship his wife grows old and he doesn’t know it.”

The petite prima donna shrugs her shoulders, waves her fingers and the air is electric. Her hair still has its pristine fire, her eyes flash with brilliant lights, and the trim little figure seems hardly to have changed a line in a quarter of a century. “You. seem to have the secret of eternal beauty, mademoiselle. How does one achieve it?” “They say I still have good looks,” she said, laughing heartily. “There is no secret. Get a big jar qf cold cream, put my name and face on it and we’ll both make millions. “But to be serious a moment. There are things one can do. “Enjoy every minute of life. Don’t think of yesterday—and what does one know of to-morrow? I am Viennese. We have learned to laugh no matter what has happened. “No chip on the shoulder! That is very important. Don’t walk around with a sad face complaining that life owes you something. Life doesn’t owe anybody anything. You take what you can get and be thankful. “In a long life we all have -ups and downs. Don’t preen yourself on being a marvel when you are lucky enough to be up, and don’t feel greatly distressed when you are not temporarily a success.

“I have always been around, yet people seem to think 1 have come out of retirement. 1 always knew what I needed to be once more prominent in the public eye, but no manager would believe it. That’s always the way of the world. High praise when you please and the cold shoulder when you don’t. “In my home in Vienna there was discipline, balance and tolerance. “My father was a physician. He had military ideas, so I learppd to live systematically and moderately and not over-rate the value of anything. “Even in those days every woman in Continental Europe smoked. But I do not like the stained fingers, the tyranny of habit, the poisoned breath, so I do not smoke. I have not your American prejudices, but still I do not smoke.

“Of course, as you know, everyone drinks abroad. But my mother used to say that alcohol was bad for the complexion. Also, it drains the eye of its natural brilliance. So, although I do not approvp of prohibition, I do not drink/ except when I may take a cocktail at a party in order not to be conspicuous by refusing. “But to give myself up to poison, to lose my senses in alcohol, to drown my personality in drink—never! “Personality is what counts —personality, brains and imagination. These things go on long after beauty has disappeared. They are the permanent charms. “Youth is wonderful, but it is a kind of intoxication. It is froth and exuberance. You wake up in the morning and you float through life without knowing what you are doing. “But when you double the 20’s yon

don’t have to grow old —you grow up. You look at life through your intelligence and your imagination. You see, you hear, you plan. You make life conscious and deliberate, and you can feel that you have a hand in your own destiny. “What do you know about living or about life in your 20’s? “Don’t live in the past. There is nothing to 'be done about what is gone. Regret is an empty sigh. Living is understanding. You have more capacity now to enjoy, to know, to be really alive. The past may be a bad dream or a glorious memory, but, in any event, it is gone. Take your happiness now. “Straining after something belonging to somebody else is not happiness. One woman cannot do everything. You cannot be a mother, a club-woman, a society woman, a social worker and an expert in everything. You are limited by time and vitality. “Measure what you can do with your intelligence, and yonr energy and stick to it regardless of your neighbours. Make your own happiness and yon will find that they envy you. Happiness is one of the few things both rare and real.

“if you have developed one talent, you are sure to have several. But you must learn to stick to one. There is hardly time in a busy life to do more than one thing well. “Did you know I was a very fine

pianist? But I gave it up. 1 have a. plastic talent, too. I once modelled a head and a sculptor said I must forthwith begin my studies. But I laughed. How could I do anything else when the stage took every ounce of my energy? “Balance is a great word by which to guide one’s life. It is difficult to describe, but it means not to overvalue what is temporary and of little worth, to live with moderation and use what brains you have and not to take oneself too seriously.

“I read with amazement of these men who kill themselves at 50. They have lost their money, maybe. The stock-market crash has ruined them. Ruined them financially, that is till. Ilave they not the same brains that made the money for them? They have not lost their experience, their knowledge, their associations. If it is money the}' want to win again, it ought to be easier, since years of work have sharpened for them the tools with which money is made.” “Perhaps, mademoiselle,” it was

suggested, “there is the matter of pride. They can’t face their friends in poverty.” z

“But that is cowardly,” she replied with spirit. “If it took twenty years to make the first fortune, it. may take only five to make the second. Money is not happiness. Happiness is the capacity to look at life and enjoy what it has to offer at the moment. “I have a car. It is pleasant to ride in one. But if I had no car I could ride in the trolleys. And that would be much better than walking on a long journey. One must remember that things could always he worse than they are.”