Part 40

Form without colour is form without expression. But form without expression soon ceases to fascinate, for we constantly crave novelty and variety; and form is one, while expression is infinitely varied and ever new. Herein lies the extreme importance of expression as a test of Beauty. Colour, of course, is only one phase of expression. The soul not only changes the tints of the complexion, but liquifies the facial muscles so that they can be readily moulded into forms characteristic of joy, sadness, hope, fear, adoration, hatred, anger, affection, etc.

Why is the portrait-painter so infinitely superior to the photographer? Because the photographer—paradoxical as this may seem—gives you a less realistic picture of yourself than the artist. He only gives you the fixed form, or at most a transient expression which, being fixed permanently, loses its essence, which is motion—and thus becomes a caricature—an exaggeration in duration. But the artist studies you by the hour, makes you talk, notes the habitual forms of expression most characteristic of your individuality; and, blending these into a sort of “typical portrait” of your various individual traits, makes a picture which reveals all the advantages of art over mere solar mechanism or photography.

This explains why some of the most charming persons we know never appear well in a photograph, while others much less charming do. The beauty of the latter lies in form, of the former in expression. But expression is much more potent to inspire admiration and Love than mere beauty of features; and not without reason, for beautiful features, being a lucky inheritance, may be conjoined with unamiable individual traits, whereas beautiful expression is the infallible index of a beautiful mind and character; and promises, moreover, beautiful sons and daughters, because “expression is feature in the making.” It is by such subtle signs and promises that Love is unconsciously and instinctively guided in its choice.

Formal Beauty alone is external and cold. It is those slight variations in Beauty and expression which we call individuality and character that excite emotion: so much so that Love, as we have seen, is dependent on individuality, and a man who warmly admires all beautiful women is in love with none.

Speaking of the Greeks, Sir Charles Bell says: “In high art it appears to have been the rule of the sculptor to divest the form of expression.... In the Venus, the form is exquisite and the face perfect, but there is _no expression_ there; it has no human softness, _nothing to love_.” “All individuality was studiously avoided by the ancient sculptors in the representation of divinity; they maintained the beauty of form and proportion, but without expression, which, in their system, belonged exclusively to humanity.”

But inasmuch as the Greeks attributed to their deities all the various emotions which agitate man, why did they refuse them the signs of expression? One cannot but suspect that the Greeks did not sufficiently appreciate the beauty of expression. Had they valued it more they would not have allowed their women to vegetate in ignorance like flowers, one like the other, but would have educated them and given them the individuality and expression which alone can inspire Love.

Again, if the Greeks had been susceptible to the superior charms of emotional expression, is it likely that they would have been so completely absorbed in the two least expressive and emotional of the arts—architecture and sculpture?

We cannot avoid the conclusion that the Greeks were as indifferent to the charms of individual expression as to Romantic Love, which is dependent on it. In their statues, as Dr. Max Schasler remarks, a mouth or eye has no more significance as a mark of beauty than a well-shaped leg. Whereas in modern, and even sometimes in mediæval art, what a world of expression in a mouth, a pair of eyes!

Leaving individual exceptions (like Homer) aside, it may be said that the arts have been successively developed to a climax in the order of their capacity for emotional expression, viz.—Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Poetry, and Music. Poetry precedes music, because though its emotional scope is wider, it is less intense. To-day music is the most popular and universal of all the arts because it stirs most deeply our feelings. And just as the discovery of harmony, by individualising the melodies, has increased the power and variety of music a thousandfold; so the individualisation of Beauty and character through modern culture has made Romantic Love a blessing accessible to all—the most prevalent form of modern affection.

Individuality is of such extreme importance in Love that a slight blemish is not only pardoned but actually adored if it increases the individuality. Bacon evidently had this in his mind when he said that “there is no excellent beauty which has not some strangeness in its proportion.” Seneca, as well as Ovid, noted the attractiveness of slight short-comings; and the following anecdote shows that though the Persians, as a nation, have ever been strangers to Romantic Love, their greatest poet, Háfiz, understood the psychology of the subject in its subtlest details:—

“One day Timur (fourteenth century) sent for Háfiz and asked angrily: ‘Art thou he who was so bold as to offer my two great cities Samarkand and Bokhara for the black mole on thy mistress’s cheek?’ alluding to a well-known verse in one of his odes. ‘Yes, sire,’ replied Háfiz, ‘and it is by such acts of generosity that I have brought myself to such a state of destitution that I have now to solicit your bounty.’ Timur was so pleased with the ready wit displayed in this answer that he dismissed the poet with a handsome present.”

To sum up: the reason why

“The rose that lives its little hour Is prized beyond the sculptured flower”

is not, as Bryant implies, the transitoriness of the rose, but the fact that the marble flower, like the wax-flower, is dead and unchangeable, while the short-lived rose beams with the expression of happy vitality after a shower, or sadly droops and hangs its head in a drouth. It has life and expression, subtle gradations of colour, and light and shade, which are the signs of its vitality and moods, varying every day, every hour. And so with all the higher forms of life, those always being most beautiful and highly prized which are most capable of expressing subtle variations of health, happiness, and mental refinement.

There is no part of the human body which does not serve as a mark of expression—

“In many’s looks the false heart’s history Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange.”

“There’s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, _Nay, her foot speaks_.”—SHAKSPERE.

It will not do, therefore, to neglect any part of the body. As it is the last straw which breaks the camel’s back, so Cupid’s capricious choice is often determined by some minor point of perfection, when the balance is otherwise equal. Suppose there are two sisters whose faces, figures, and mental attractions are about equal; then it is possible that one of them will die an old maid simply because the other had a smaller foot, a more graceful gait, or longer eyelashes.

But though every organ has its own beauty, there is an æsthetic scale of lower and higher which corresponds pretty accurately with the physical scale from down upwards—from the foot to the eye and forehead. It is in this order, accordingly, that we shall now proceed to consider the various parts of the human form, and those peculiarities in them which are considered most beautiful and most liable to inspire Romantic Love.

THE FEET

SIZE

There is hardly anything concerning which vain people are so sensitive as their feet. To have large feet is considered one of the greatest misfortunes that can befall a woman. Mathematically stated, the length of a woman’s skirts is directly proportional to the size of her feet; and women with large feet are always shocked at the frivolity of those who have neat ankles and coquettishly allow them to be seen on occasion; nor do they see any beauty in Sir John Suckling’s lines—

“Her feet beneath her petticoat Like little mice stole in and out, As if they feared the light.”

Nor are men, as a rule, sufficiently free from pedal vanity to pose as satirists. Byron found a mark of aristocracy in small feet, and he was rendered almost as miserable by the morbid consciousness of his own defects as Mme. de Staël (who had very ugly feet, yet once ventured to assume the _rôle_, in private theatricals, of a statue) was offended by Talleyrand’s witticism, that he recognised her by the _pied de Staël_.

There is a _ben trovato_, if not true, story of a clever wife who objected to her husband’s habit of spending his evenings away from home, and who reformed him by utilising his vanity. By insisting that his boots were too large, she repeatedly induced him to buy smaller ones, which finally tortured him so much that he was only too glad to stay at home and wear his slippers.

FASHIONABLE UGLINESS

How universal is the desire to have, or appear to have, small feet is shown by the fact that everybody blackens his shoes or boots; for, owing to a peculiar optical delusion, black objects always appear smaller than white ones; which is also the reason why too slim and delicate ladies never appear to such advantage in winter as they do in summer, when they exchange their dark for light dresses.

To a certain point the admiration of small feet is in accordance with the canons of good Taste, as will be presently shown. But Taste has a disease which is called Fashion. It is a sort of microbe which has the effect of distorting and _exaggerating_ everything it takes hold of. Fashion is not satisfied with small feet; it wants them _very_ small, unnaturally small, at the cost of beauty, health, grace, comfort, and happiness. Hence for many generations shoemakers have been compelled to manufacture instruments of torture so ruinous to the constitution of man and woman, that an Austrian military surgeon has seriously counselled the enactment of legal fines to be imposed on the makers of noxiously-shaped shoes, similar to those imposed on food-adulterators.

Most ugly and vulgar fashions come from France; but as regards crippled feet the first prize has to be yielded to the Chinese, even by the Parisians. The normal size of the human foot varies, for men, from 9½ to 13; for women, from 5½ to 9 inches, man’s feet being longer proportionately to the greater length of his lower limbs. In China the men value the normal healthy condition of their own feet enough to have introduced certain features of elasticity in their shoes which we might copy with advantage; but the women are treated very differently. “The fashionable length for a Chinese foot,” says Dr. Jamieson, “is between 3½ and 4 inches, but comparatively few parents succeed in arresting growth so completely.” When girls are five years old their feet are tightly wrapped up in bandages, which on successive occasions are tightened more and more, till the surface ulcerates, and some of the flesh, skin, and sometimes even a toe or two come off. “During the first year,” says Professor Flower, “the pain is so intense that the sufferer can do nothing but lie and cry and moan. For about two years the foot aches continually, and is subject to a constant pain, like the pricking of sharp needles.” Finally the foot becomes reduced to a shapeless mass, void of sensibility, which “has now the appearance of the hoof of some animal rather than a human foot, and affords a very insufficient organ of support, as the peculiar tottering gait of those possessing it clearly shows.”

The difference between the Chinese belle and the Parisian is one of degree merely. The former has her torturing done once for all while a child, whereas the latter allows her tight, high-heeled shoes to torture her throughout life. The English are the only nation that have recognised the injuriousness and vulgarity of the French shoe, and substituted one made on hygienic principles; and as England has in almost everything else displaced France as the leader in modern fashion, it is reasonable to hope that ere long other nations will follow her in this reform. American girls are, as a rule, much less sensible in this matter than their English sisters; one need only ask a clerk in a shoe store to find out how most of them endeavour to squeeze their small feet into shoes too small by a number.

Fashions are always followed blindly, without deliberation. But would it not be worth while for French, American, and German women—and many men too—to ask themselves what they gain and what they lose by trying to make their feet appear smaller than they are? The disadvantages outweigh the advantages to an almost ludicrous extent.

On the one side there is absolutely nothing but the gratification of vanity derived from the fact that a few acquaintances admire one’s “pretty feet”; and even this advantage is problematical, because a person who wears too tight shoes can hardly conceal them from an observer, and is therefore apt to get pity for her vain weakness in place of admiration.

On the other hand are the following disadvantages:—

(1) The constant torture of pressure (not to mention the resulting corns and bunions), which alone must surely outweigh a hundred times the pleasure of gratified vanity at having a Chinese foot.

(2) The unconscious distortion of the features and furrowing of the forehead in the effort to endure and repress the pain,—and wrinkles, be it remembered, when once formed are ineradicable.

(3) The discouragement of walking and other exercise, involving a general lowering of vitality, sickly pallor and premature loss of the bloom of youth.

(4) The wasting of the calf of the leg to dimensions characteristic of savagedom, disease, and old age, not to speak of the numerous maladies resulting to women from the use of hard high heels of fashionable shoes, every contact of which with the ground sends a shock through the spinal column to the brain and produces obscure disorders in various parts of the organism.

(5) The mutilation of one of the most beautiful and characteristically human parts of the body. As the author of Harper’s _Ugly Girl Papers_ remarks: “One’s foot is as proper an object of pride and complacency as a shapely hand. But where in a thousand would a sculptor find one that was a pleasure to contemplate like that of the Princess Pauline Bonaparte, whose lovely foot was modelled in marble for the delight of all the world who have seen it?”

(6) Finally, and most important of all, the loss of a graceful gait, of the poetry of motion, which is a thousand times more calculated to inspire admiration—æsthetic or erotic—than a small foot.

Man is said to be a reasoning animal; and man embraces woman. But surely in matters of fashion woman is not a reasoning being. Very large feet being properly regarded as ugly, she draws the inference that the smaller they can be made the more will they be beautiful; forgetting that Beauty is a matter of proportion, not of absolute size. A foot may, like a waist, as easily appear ugly from being too small as from being too large. A large woman with very small feet cannot but make a disagreeable impression, like a bust on an insecure pedestal or a leaning tower.

TESTS OF BEAUTY

According to Schopenhauer, the great value which all attach to small feet “depends on the fact that small feet are an essentially human characteristic, since in no animal are the tarsus and metatarsus together so small as in man, which peculiarity is connected with his erect attitude: he is a plantigrade.” But it is difficult to see any force in this reasoning, since not one person in a hundred thousand knows what the bones called tarsus and metatarsus are, nor cares whether they are larger in man or in animals; while, as regards the upright position, large feet would appear more suitable for maintaining it than small ones.

If smallness were the test of beauty in man, why should we not feel ashamed to have larger heads than animals, or envy the elephant, who, for his size, has the smallest foot of all animals?

Those who believe that human beauty consists in the degree of remoteness from animal types, will derive satisfaction from the fact that apes have feet that are larger than ours. Topinard gives these figures showing the relative sizes: man, 16·96; gorilla, 20·69; chimpanzee, 21·00; orang, 25. But why should man feel a special pride in the fact that his feet are somewhat smaller than those of his nearest relatives, whom, until recently, he did not even acknowledge as such?

It is, moreover, unscientific to compare man’s foot with the ape’s too closely, because they have different functions—being used by man for walking, by the ape for climbing—and therefore require different characteristics. It is only in those organs that have a like function—as the jaws, teeth, nose, eyes, and forehead—that a direct comparison is permissible, and a progress noted in our favour.

Again, as M. Topinard tells us, “The hand and the foot of man, although shorter than those of the anthropoid ape, do not vary among races according to their order of superiority, as we should have supposed. _A long hand or foot is not a characteristic of inferiority._”

The same is true among individuals of the same race. Mme. de Staël was one of the most intelligent women the world has ever seen, yet her feet were very large; and conversely, some of our silliest girls have the smallest feet.

Since, then, there is no obvious connection between small feet and superior culture, it follows that the beauty of a foot is not to be determined by so simple a matter as its length. There are other peculiarities, of greater importance, in which the laws of Beauty manifest themselves. First, in the arched instep, which is not only attractive because it introduces the beauty-curve in place of the straight, flat line of the sole, but which is of the utmost importance in increasing the foot’s capacity for carrying its burden, just as architects build arches under bridges, etc., for the sake of the greater strength and more equable distribution of pressure thus obtained. Secondly, in the symmetrical correspondence of the toes and contours of one foot with those of its partner; in the gradation of the regularly shortened toes, from the first to the fifth; in the delicate tints of the skin which, moreover, is smooth and not (as in apes) covered with straggling hairs and deep furrows, which would have concealed the delicate veins that variegate the surface, and give it the colour of life.

Professor Carl Vogt, in his _Lectures on Man_, vividly illustrates the principles on which our judgment regarding beauty in feet is based, by comparing a negro’s foot with that of civilised man: “The foot of the negro, says Burmeister, produces a disagreeable impression. Everything in it is ugly; the flatness, the projecting heel, the thick, fatty cushion in the inner cavity, the spreading toes.... The character of the human foot lies mainly in its arched structure, in the predominance of the metatarsus, the shortening and equal direction of the toes, among which the great toe is remarkably long, but not, like the thumb, opposable.... The toes in standing leave no mark, but do so in progression. The whole middle part of the foot does not touch the ground. Persons with flat feet, in whom the middle of the sole touches ground, are bad pedestrians, and are rejected as recruits.... The negro is a decided flat foot ... the fat cushion on the sole not only fills up the whole cavity, but projects beyond the surface.”

Inasmuch as it is the custom among all civilised peoples to cover the foot entirely, many of its aspects of beauty are rendered invisible permanently, so that it is perhaps not to be wondered at that in their absence Fashion should have so eagerly fixed on the two visible features—size and arched instep—and endeavoured to exaggerate them by Procrustean dimensions and stilt-like high heels. Yet in this matter even modern Parisians represent a progress over the mediæval Venetian ladies, who, according to Marinello, at one time wore soles and heels over a foot in height, so that on going out they had to be accompanied by several servants to prevent them from falling. _Mais que voulez vous?_ Fashion is fashion, and women are women.

By the ancient Greeks the feet were frequently exposed to view; hence, says Winckelmann, “in descriptions of beautiful persons, as Polyxena and Aspasia, even their beautiful feet are mentioned.” Possibly in some future age, when Health and Beauty will be more worshipped than vulgar Fashion fetishes, a clever Yankee will invent an elastic, tough, and leathery, but transparent substance that will protect the foot while fitting it like a glove and showing its outlines. This would put an end to the mutilations resorted to from vanity, guided by bad taste, and would add one more feature to Personal Beauty. And the foot, as Burmeister insists, has one advantage over every other part of the body. Beauty in all these other features depends on health and a certain muscular roundness. But the foot’s beauty is independent of such variations, as it lies mainly in its permanent bony contours and in its fat cushion, which alone of all adipose layers resists the ravages of disease and old age. Hence a beautiful foot is a thing of beauty and a joy for ever, long after all other youthful charms have faded and fled.

A GRACEFUL GAIT

So long as the foot remains entirely covered, its beauty is, on the whole, of less importance than the grace of its movements. Grace, under all circumstances, is as potent a love-charm as Beauty itself—of which, in fact, it is only a phase; and if young men and women could be made to realise how much they could add to their fascinations by cultivating a graceful gait and attitudes, hygienic shoemakers, dancing-masters, and gymnasiums would enjoy as great and sudden a popularity as skating-rinks, and a much more permanent popularity too.

It is the laws of Grace that chiefly determine the most admirable characteristics of the foot. The arched instep is beautiful because of its curved outlines; but its greatest value lies in the superior elasticity and grace it imparts to the gait. The habitual carrying of heavy loads tends to make the feet flat and to ruin Grace; hence the clumsy gait of most working people, and, on the other hand, the graceful walk of the “aristocratic” classes.

The proper size of the foot, again, is most easily determined with reference to the principles of Grace. Motion is graceful when it does not involve any waste of energy, and when it is in accordance with the lines of Beauty. There must be no disproportion between the machinery and the work done—no locomotive to pull a baby-carriage. Too large feet are ugly because they appear to have been made for carrying a giant; too small ones are ugly because seemingly belonging to a dwarf. What are the exact proportions lying between “too large” and “too small” can only be determined by those who have educated their taste by the study of the laws of Beauty and Grace throughout Nature.

From this point of view Grace is synonymous with _functional fitness_. A monkey’s foot is less beautiful than a man’s, but in _climbing_ it is more graceful; whereas in _walking_ man’s is infinitely more graceful. Apes rarely assume an erect position, and when they do so they never walk on the flat sole. “When the orang-outang takes to the ground,” says Mr. E. B. Tylor, “he shambles _clumsily_ along, generally putting down the outer edge of the foot and the bent knuckles of the hand.”