"At the age of twenty-seven," Austen writes, "without having ever been handsome, she felt all the good luck of it".
"The fair maid who, the first of May Goes to the fields at break of day And washes in dew from the hawthorn tree Will ever after handsome be".
May all the children who attended the NFL's Play 60 Youth Football Festival learned the wonderful lessons that First Lady Michelle Obama, Roger Goodell, Rodney Harrison, Derrick Brooks, Deuce McAlister, and the ever-so-handsome Eddie George imparted regarding good health and exercise.
This did not mean that Elsie or her husband Paul Hervey Fox - a minor novelist and Hollywood screenwriter ( The Last Train to Madrid, said Graham Greene, is "the worst movie I ever saw"), ruinously handsome and an alcoholic in thrall to his wife - ignored Paula's existence.
Sadly, Hugh Grant's über-cad Daniel Cleaver is no longer with us, but Colin Firth's uptight Darcy is still a droll turn - he seems to be channelling his royal hauteur as George VI even more than ever, still super handsome and distinguished, but his head and neck slightly etiolated, like a very posh tortoise.
Upstairs, the contestants in the country's first ever Gay Mr. Handsome pageant are strutting off-beat towards the front of the room, posing awkwardly, and pouting to an imaginary audience.
The map is as handsome as ever.
'Still as handsome as ever,' he says.
Active and handsome as ever, Butterfield is a splendid advertisement for the southern California climate.
