322 1 WOMAN'S BEAUTY BOOK f This section will l)e a complete guide to the art of preserving and acquiring beauty. How wide will be its scope can he seen from the following summary of its contents B^- ail t if It I Women /;; History Treatment of the Hair The Beauty of Motherhood and Old Ai^e The Effect of Diet on Beauty Treckies, Sunburn Beauty Baths Manicure The Beautiful Baby llie Beautiftil Child Health' and Beauty Physical Culttire . How the Housewife may Preserve Her Good Looks . Beauty Foods Beauty Secrets Mothers ought to Teach their Datighters The Complexion The Teeth The Eyes The Ideal of Beatdy The Ideal Figure, etc.. etc. BEAUTIFUL WOMEN IM lfISTOR.Y THE DUCHESS OF GORDON A RELIGIOUS paper of 1865 remarked that the early history of the famous Duchess of Gordon was " painfully romantic." T his curious phrase can hardly have been meant to refer to the fact that, at the age of eight, the lady rode up Edinburgh High Street on a pig, her sister meanwhile whacking it behind. This was neither " romantic " nor "painful." but the effect on Edinburgh may be imagined. Jane Maxwell was born in a large second- floor fiat in Hyndford's Close, after her mother had separated from her father. Sir James Maxwell of Monreith. Lady Maxwell and her husband did not get on well together, and. finally, with two little girls and one shortly to be born, in 1 749, she took up her residence at Edinburgh, and began that struggle to educate her children which is th.e portion of those w^ho have but a small income and no means of making money. However, the children grew up pretty, high- spirited, and full of pranks. When they were too old to ride upon pigs, they took the next best thing. And Jane on one occasion boarded a curricle which w^as standing in the High Street simply because it looked as though the horse was mettle- some. It was ! After a mad career up High Street, the adventure ended in an over- turned curricle and a much-damaged Jennie, who, as a result of this little prank, lost the first finger of her left hand. There is still in existence the ebony model finger with Youthful Days in Poverty Such was their poverty that the three girls did their own washing, and it is recorded of them that they put their pretty fal-lals upon a screen to dry, thereby hiding the more work-a-day portion of the washing from neighbourly— or, rather, unneighbourly — criticism. However, three girls of good family, possessed' of wit and beauty, were not likely to pass unnoticed. In Jane's face, in particular, there was a" look of great mental power, allied to features and colouring which in later years attracted the brush of such artists as Romney and Reynolds. When she was seventeen her eldest sister married Fordyce, the Receiver of the Land Tax for Scotland, and, being now affluent, floated her two sisters in society. "The Flower of Galloway" Jane at this time was of such attractions that a song, called " Jennie of Monreith," w^as composed to celebrate her charms, and her nickname in Edinburgh society was " The Flower of Galloway." Among others, it seems, she met a gallant young officer, who succeeded in making a deep impression on her; but he was sent away on foreign ser- vice, and the next thing she heard of him was that he had been killed. A kind of reckless indifference seems to have descended on Jane when this blow cut short all her hopes; the fond hopes that any girl newly engaged to the man she loves, cherishes in her innermost heart. At this time there came along the dashing young Duke of Gordon, the head of a clan of fighters and gallants, unusually good-looking well-off, young, and much in love with " The Flower of Galloway." The one man for her being dead, and her mother and unmarried sister still very poor, and, besides, not being averse by nature to a high position and the attractions of a brilliant life, Jane Maxwell, within a year from her sister's marriage, became the Duchess of Gordon.
