t is a
painted face. On the stage, of course, it is right and proper. The stage is
a world of make-believe, and it is the business of the lady of sixty to
give you the impression that she is a sweet young thing of seventeen. There
is no affectation in this. It is her vocation to be young, and she follows
it as willingly or unwillingly as you or I follow our respective callings.
At the moment, for example, I would do anything to escape writing this
article, for the sun is shining in the bluest of April skies and the bees
are foraging in the orchard, and everything calls me outside to the woods
and hills. But I must bake my tale of bricks first with as much pretence of
enjoying the job as possible. And in the same way, and perhaps sometimes
with the same distaste, the Juliet of middle age puts on the bloom of the
Juliet of seventeen.

But that any one, not compelled to do it for a living, should paint the
face or dye the hair is to me unintelligible. It is like attempting to pass
off a counterfeit coin. It is either a confession that one is so ashamed of
one's face that one dare not let it be seen in public, or it is an attempt
to deceive the world into accepting you as something other than you are. It
has the same effect on the observer that those sham oak beams and uprights
that are so popular on the front of suburban houses have. They are not real
beams or uprights. They do not support anything, or fill any useful
function. They are only a thin veneer of oak stuck on to pretend that they
are the real thing. They are a detestable pretence, and I would rather live
in a hovel than in a house tricked out with such vulgar deceits that do not
deceive.

And in the same way the paint on the face and the dye on the hair never
really achieve their object. If they did they would not cease to be a sham,
but at least they would not be a transparent sham. There are, of course,
degrees of failure. Mrs. Gamp's curls were so obviously false that they
could not be said to be intended to deceive. On the other hand, the great
lady who employs the most scientific face-makers in order to defeat the
encroachments of Time does very nearly succeed. But her failure is really
more tragic than that of Mrs. Gamp. How tragic I realised one day when I
was introduced to a distinguished "society" woman, whose youthful beauty
was popularly supposed to have survived to old age. At a distance she did
indeed seem to be a miracle of girlish loveliness. But