THE AGE OF BEAUTY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20268, 29 November 1927, Page 11

THE AGE OF BEAUTY.

The refusal of this generation to grow old has been the subject of much discussion by moralists and men of science. The professions are crowded with sprightly youths of three score and tin. The age of a woman has become impossible to guess, and, indeed, a matter of mere statistical interest. Grandmothers dazzle us with the shape and the complexion of ingenues, and if, by compensation, the ingenue knows as much as her grandmother, no doubt that also is evidence of the progress of humanity. Once upon a time our elders used to ugh “Si la jeunesse savait, si la vieillesse pouvait! Now there ie nothing which youth does not know, and hardly anything which age doea not think it can do. But, as ueual, they have gone farther than this in America (says the London Daily Telegraph). Their laat exponent of the theory and practice of being beautiful ie a Venus of 103, Madame Marie Charlotte Davenport came to the United States from Russia 50 years ago. Ever since, or for the greater part of the time, for she began by rearing her 11 children, she has been lecturing on the pursuit of beauty. Yet, we ,are assured, she remains a shining example of her precepts, and might be “ taken for a woman several score yean younger.” A certain vagueness aa to bow many score may be in such a case permitted to the dazzled eyes of the reporter. We are to confess that this seems likely to be another American record. We hardly know which to admire the mors, the endurance of Madame Davenport -or America’s appetite for lectures. Where shall she find her rival? Poets have dreamed that Helen of Troy was ever young and ever beautiful. Rider Haggard’s heroine enchanted generation after generation.' But that was art magic. The books say that Ninon de I’Endos was beautiful at 70 as at 17, and had at her feet the sons of those whose fathers had been her lovers. But Ninon died when she wag a mere chit of 90. We must give the apple to Madame Davenport. Happy is America in being taught by such a professor how to keep young and how to grow old beautifully.