POWDER AND PUFF.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 50, 12 December 1891, Page 676

POWDER AND PUFF.

HERE was a jaunty air about the seedy man as he came in with a roll of inanuscript under his arm. A rosebud was pinned daintily on the shiny lapel of his ' i ; . coat, and he swept the little room with a niost gallant bow. SlSif/. * * Been in ladies’society to-night!’ jggA I • Yes, you noticed my bow, of course. ( Curiously enough, gentlemen, after I •Jt— ! have been in ladies’ society my gallantry i >s noticeable sometimes for a week. I ' was a gallant once. No, Ido not need * * to look in the glass, but there was a time when I had a calf that graced a silk stocking, and 1 could pace a minuet with the best. Ay de mi! The calf has gone, gentlemen ; let us drink to the departed calf.’ • A pretty rise she gave you.’ ‘ Yes. Nature’s own decoration ; symbol of everything that is pure ; and like all pure things sometimes the badge of everything that is false. A lady bestowed this order on me. It was a lady gave the badge of the highest honour in England.’ • Are you often taken like this ?’ • No, unfortunately, it is but seldom this dingy lapel knows the caress of a dainty flower, and yet—and yet ’ ‘ What ?’

‘ It does seem harsh to say it, but her neck and shoulders were a study in chalk ; her face was a pastel, with a long a. It was behind the scenes. I called to see the leading man about a play, and as I sat in the greenroom she came in and struck a pose before the long looking-glass. She rubbed off a little dab of powder from her nose. Gentlemen, one touch of powder makes all women kin. She looked superb, but when she gave me her hand, it had a gentle white roughness on the back that stopped the magnetism. She was fixing a bunch of roses at her corsage. She had torn an envelope off and thrown it in pieces on the floor. But she wore the flowers. Her lips had a redder tinge than nature ever gave, even in poetry. One of the roses dropped. I picked it up. She took it in her ivory hand, and with a little smile thanked me and gave it back. Ah me I The coquetry of a woman ! I pinned it in my coat, and have felt like bowing ever since.’ * Perhaps she was struck with your gallantry.’ ‘ No. It was simply the nature of the ordinary woman. A woman is never unwilling to make an impression on a man. Then she swept out of the room and went on the stage.' * Why do actresses make up so much ’’ * Well, partly for sensible reasonsand partly because they are women. I think women learn to paint their faces from an infantine study of dolls. Mothers always give girl babies dolls about the first thing, and they go and get a wax figure with dabs of red on its cheeks and lips, and sometimes on its forehead and a shiny tow wig. The child gets her first impression of what can be done in making a human .ace pretty by looking at the doll. It might be all right if the baby did not invariably in kissing the doll imbibe, to speak delicately, the complexion, but she finds it is not real, and when she grows up and she does not look verywell some morning she remembers the doll, and dabs a little rouge and powder on her cheeks.’ ‘ There’s something in that.’ ‘The women of Oriental nations paint. It has been so from the beginning of the world. In ancient Babylon they sold face powder warranted not to wipe off. There were manicures in Pompeii and hair stores in Herculaneum, and the girls of Carthage, I doubt not, painted their eyes with sloes, and—who knows—never washed their faces. But in the Orient women do not paint to hide the bad complexion ; they paint purely for decoration. It is bad artistic taste, not deceit.’

‘ I guess so. ’ ‘Why do actresses make up! Well, in all the days of the drama, from tallow and dips, through the development of oil and gas, up to the present, I suppose, it was necessary for appearance. The most brilliant complexion looked dark in the light. Now that we have electricity there is not so much need for make up ; but it is a kind of disguise, I suppose. It would not do if things on the stage were what they seem. That is why so many men fall in love with actresses, and so few marry them. Now, what can you tell about an actress, when she is on the stage, even if she can’t act. You know as well as Ido that the lines and peculiarities of the face are very important guides to character. There are few things so potent as a dimple and a woman’s chin, and when you see that smiling sign of good nature on the stage and become attracted to its owner it is rather trying to find she has washed it off when yon are introduced to her in the real world.’

‘ It is kind of disappointing.’ • And as to hair—well —anyway, in ordinary life you have to be introduced to a woman at least twice—once with her hat on and again with her bat off—before you know her. And sometimes you need to be introduced to her every time she gets a new bonnet. To tell you the truth, gentlemen, the developments of civilisation are so confusing that I don’t see how anybody is going to be identified if it goes much farther.’

• I guess we’ll always know you.’ ‘ I nope so—l hope so. You shall be my friends just the same when I reach that pinnacle of fame ’ • How are you going to get thete!’ ‘ Hush ' You see that roll of paper ! That is my masterpiece. Some day ’ • Tell us about it.’

* Some other time, gentlemen. It is very depressing behind the scenes of a theatre at a great play. Fancy Theodora in a small square room with walls all stained, seated on a stool before a looking-glass about two feet square. Trunks all around, skirts thrown on one side, dresses hang ing up, an assortment of haresfeet, powder putt's ami camel's hair brushes on a little boaid table, with a piece of cloth or a piece of paper covered with powder and shades of rouge, ami little spots of black where she has laid the implement she has used to pencil her eyes ami eyebrows. Strange, gentlemen, is the thought that the spirit of a great Empress can develop itself, even in this cramped-up, disorderly, cubbyhole, ami that a woman can spring from this motley gathering of sublunary ami practical details of personal ap

pearance to carry an audience into perfect illusion of tragic passion. Go to ! After all, the smell and the flavour are all we want out of the dantiest viands ; there is a plain, ordinary, everyday patent for freezing icecream, and it is only the cook who never eats with any comfort. The Howers grow out of the earth ; nobody cares to look upon the wine when it is sour ; the beauty of the Burgundy is sometimes killed by the taste of the cork ; everything in life is illusion and the illusion of the moment. Gori be good to us ! the five senses are all we have, and we can't trust them always.’ ‘ You are pessimistic.’ ‘ No ; only I thought as I watched this beautiful creature posing before glass in the green-room, how much illusion there was in the world, and how much attraction there could be in things, if only they had been created so. If this vision had been genuine, it might have cheered my lonely longing for the lovely, but it made me feel sad, that the beautiful could be so unreal, the unreal so beautiful.’ ‘ She seems to have hit you pretty hard with that rose.’ * No. She is a product of the drama, the drama is a product of her. Men and women have never been satisfied with the way they have been created ; never will be. Most people are satisfied with themselves, but they are not satisfied with other people. So they developed dramatists to create people that agreed with their imagination. When a dramatist does that he makes money. When he doesn’t he is no good. Dramatists created new figures, actors dressed them up, and the dressing became popular. When the dramatists found that out they created more people that could be dressed up. Even old Shylock was never so popular as after Henry Irving made him a swell financier. And now the people in plays are more dress than character—just as they are in real life, for that matter. Gentlemen, the modern drama is a kind of * spring opening,’ and Sarah Bernhardt leads the world of millinery almost as much as she leads the world of acting.’ The rose fell from his button-hole as he eesticulated. He stooped and picked it up. He looked at it foi a moment. ■ See,’ he said sadly. ‘ Her rose has powder on it too.’ And he picked up his hat and his manuscript and wandered out into the night.

Peter Robertson.