These pages may meet the eye of some who are exulting in all the gladness of youthful Beauty. To such we address a few words of warning against confiding in this most alluring yet most illusive mirage. Yes! even beauty, so much prized, has often proved only a mockery and a snare; and, when unaccompanied by the fear of God, has been a source of sorrow to its possessors.
What suggestions illustrative of the truth of this remark are called forth by the name of Mary, Queen of Scots! If ever the possession of beauty and female charms could have guaranteed happiness, she might with justice have expected it. "All contemporary authors," says Robertson the historian, "agree in ascribing to Mary the utmost beauty of countenance and elegance of shape of which the human form is capable. No one ever beheld her without admiration." Yet this very beauty proved one of the causes of her ruin. "Ah! what a life were this, merry ladies, could it only last forever!" said the Scottish reformer Knox, when he visited her court and glanced at its brilliant circle. Truly was this warning given. Behind the deceptive scene was lurking the scaffold and an ignominious death. A few years more saw the once young and beautiful queen bending beneath the executioner's ax and closing her career in shame and sorrow.
The life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, is another illustration of the mirage of beauty. Distinguished by her personal charms, she ascended, when very young, the throne of one of the most powerful countries in Europe and gave herself up to a life of worldly enjoyment. All that art and luxury could contribute to make life happy were hers. Yet, in the end, it proved baseless as the mirage. Time rolled on and saw the once youthful and romantic queen, with locks turned prematurely gray by sorrow, conducted by a yelling mob to the guillotine.
Josephine, the wife of Napoleon, was also distinguished for her personal charms and her devotion to the pleasures of the world. She, too, found them all delusive, saw her regal power dissolve like a vision, and died of a broken heart.
Descending from the circle of royalty, we find a similar lesson conveyed in recent times in the career of the celebrated LADY HAMILTON, or The Beauty.
The name of this woman will be familiar to all who have read the life of Lord Nelson. His unhappy connection with her casts a shade on his character and was the cause of the chief blot which rests upon his fame, in the execution of Caraccioli at Naples. Lady Hamilton was distinguished above almost every woman of her age for personal beauty. A poetical writer, when sketching her character, thus speaks:
“I've seen thy bust in many lands:
I've seen the stranger pause with lifted hands,
In deep mute admiration—while his eye
Dwelt sparkling on its peerless symmetry.
I've seen the poet's, painter's, sculptor's gaze
Speak with rapt glance the eloquence of praise.”
Her accomplishments were scarcely inferior to her beauty. "She was skilled," says her biographer, "in music and painting. She had exquisite taste, and her features could express every emotion by turn." By her fascinating manners she soon acquired a great influence over Nelson, and her friendship was eagerly sought by crowds of aspirants for court favor. The letters of Lord Nelson, afterward published, contained several addressed to her by persons in the upper classes of society, who, in the hour of prosperity, fawned upon her and were ready to do her abject homage. These letters commence, "My dear Lady Hamilton;" "My esteemed Lady Hamilton." The world lay at her feet, and nothing seemed to forebode that what she was following was but as the mirage. The only occasion on which Beckford of Fonthill threw open his splendid mansion to company was when Lady Hamilton, along with Lord Nelson, visited it. All that the wealth of the princely owner could furnish was provided to give splendor to the scene. The grounds were illuminated by lamps and torches, and the interior of the apartments was a blaze of jewelry and gold and silver. "Spiced wine," says the Gentleman's Magazine of the day, "and confectionery in golden baskets were handed round to the company." A numerous party was assembled, and Lady Hamilton shone the envy of them all. Attired in a rich costume, she entered with a golden urn in her hands and recited some verses, which the company was far too politic not rapturously to applaud, spoken as they were by one who had such influence over the hero of the hour. No one was there to tell her that all this was but deception, that sin surely carried its own punishment with it, and the pleasures she was pursuing were merely the mirage. And yet it was even so.
Thirteen years after the banquet at Fonthill had taken place, a lady buying some meat for her dog at a butcher's stall in Calais was thus accosted by the butcher's wife: "Ah, madam you seem a benevolent lady, and upstairs there is a poor English woman who would be glad of the smallest piece of meat which you are buying for your dog." Who was the grateful recipient of such humble alms? Alas! Lady Hamilton, the beauty! After the death of Lord Nelson, deserted by those who fawned upon her in prosperity, she gradually became impoverished and died in a wretched lodging in Calais. Her property consisted only of a few pawnbrokers' duplicates. Her body was put into a common deal box, without any inscription. A pall was made by the hand of charity out of an old silk gown belonging to the deceased, stitched upon a white curtain; and, over the praises of statesmen, warriors, poets and artists, the funeral service was read by an Irish officer on half-pay. "Her remains lie buried," says Rae Wilson the traveler, "in the ditch of Calais." By others, the spot of her internment is said now to be used as a common wood-yard, nothing indicating where her ashes repose. Such was the end of the beauty. How emphatically had her career been only the mirage!
If any confirmation were needed of the melancholy truth conveyed in the above lesson, it would be found in the life of the well-known Lady Hester Stanhope. Few women entered life with greater opportunities of enjoying it than she did; and seldom was an elevation so dazzling as hers. The niece of Mr. Pitt, the favorite minister of George III, she was flattered by royalty and made a theme for the illustration of poetry, painting and sculpture. Sated, however, with worldly greatness, she retired to the solitudes of the East and there attempted to establish her reputation as Queen of the Desert. Her lofty visions all faded, however, and in the evening of life, forsaken by her friends and burdened with pecuniary difficulties, the once youthful beauty thus confessed how she had proved the vanity of life: "She began," says her biographer, "to cry and to wring her hands, presenting a most melancholy picture of despair. She then spoke thus: look on me; what a lesson I am against vanity! Look at this arm, all skin and bone—so thin that you may see through it. It was once, without exaggeration, so rounded that you could not pinch the skin up. My neck was once so fair, that a pearl necklace scarcely showed on it; and men—men who were no fools, but sensible men—would say to me: "You have a neck of which you may really be proud. You are one of nature's favorites, and may be excused for admiring that beautiful skin." What would they say if they could behold me now, with my teeth all gone and long lines on my face?... In this mournful strain," adds her biographer, "she went on. Everything around her presented so affecting a picture that, unable to restrain my emotions, I burst into tears." Such were the confessions of a beauty. How completely had she found all her youthful charms illusive as the mirage!