Part 50

The admission which I have just made that there may be a sort of æsthetic selection independent of real Romantic Love, does not militate against the general thesis of this book: that Love is the cause of Beauty, as Beauty is the cause of Love. For though the Greek artists knew what the shape and size of a beautiful nose should be, there are cogent reasons for believing that “Greek noses” were rare even among the ancient Greeks, thanks to their habit of sacrificing Romantic Love to the dragon chaperon. Hear what Ruskin has to say, in his _Aratra Pentelici_, about the Greek features in general: “Will you look again at the series of coins of the best time of Greek art which I have just set before you? Are any of these goddesses or nymphs very beautiful? Certainly the Junos are not. Certainly the Demeters are not. The Siren and Arethusa have well-formed and regular features; but I am quite sure that if you look at them without prejudice, you will think neither reaches even the average standard of pretty English girls. The Venus Urania suggests at first the idea of a very charming person, but you will find there is no real depth nor sweetness in the contours, looked at closely. And remember, these are chosen examples; the best I can find of art current in Greece at the great time; and even if I were to take the celebrated statues, of which only two or three are extant, not one of them excels the Venus of Melos; and she, as I have already asserted in _The Queen of the Air_, has nothing notable in feature except dignity and simplicity. Of Athena I do not know one authentic type of great beauty; but the intense ugliness which the Greeks could tolerate in their symbolism of her will be convincingly proved to you by the coin represented in Plate VI. You need only look at two or three vases of the best time to assure yourselves that beauty of feature was, in popular art, not only unattained, but unattempted; and finally—and this you may accept as a conclusive proof of the Greek insensitiveness to the most subtle beauty—there is little evidence, even in their literature, and none in their art, of their having ever perceived any beauty in infancy or early childhood.”

Nevertheless, it was to the contours of childhood that the Greek artists apparently went for their ideal of the divine nose. Greek beauty was youthful masculine beauty; and the “Greek nose” is one which not only is straight in itself, but forms a straight line with the forehead. In other words, there is no hollow at the root of the nose, where it meets the forehead. Now the absence of this cavity is characteristic of youth, and is owing to the imperfect development of the brain cavities. Later in life these cavities bulge forwards and produce the hollow, which, therefore, is an indication of superior cranial development and higher intellectual powers. Hence, as Professor Kollmann suggests, the object of the Greek artists in making the nose of their deities form a straight line with the forehead, was probably to give them the stamp of eternal youth; which would thus appear to have been considered a more important attribute even than the expression of superior _masculine_ intellectual power, which we associate with the hollow at the junction of nose and forehead, and for which reason we do not admire it in women if too pronounced. Nevertheless, even in women the cosmic laws of Beauty call for a gentle curve instead of a perfectly straight line; but the more subtle the curve the greater is its beauty; whereas the nose itself may be perfectly straight on its upper edge, because it forms a dividing line of the face into two symmetric halves, and by its contrasting straightness heightens the beauty of the surrounding facial curves.

To sum up: the Greeks admiration of such features as are naturally associated with youthful masculine beauty no doubt led him, in choosing a wife, to give the preference to similar features, including the “Greek” nose. Yet in the absence of opportunities for courtship, Sexual Selection could not operate very extensively; hence it is probable that ungainly noses, though not so extravagant as among the Semitic races, were common enough in Greece as in Rome. In the Dark Ages hideous noses must have prevailed everywhere, as might be inferred from the facts that Romantic Love was unknown, and physical beauty looked on as a sinful possession, even if the painted and sculptured portraits did not prove it to our eyes in most instances.

Regarding modern noses it may be said that the nose is such a prominent feature that more has been done for its improvement, through the agency of Love or Sexual Selection, than for the mouth or any other feature, excepting the eye. The average Englishman’s nose of to-day, for example, is a tolerably shapely organ, and yet his ancestors were not exactly distinguished for nasal beauty, according to a close observer and student of portraiture, Mr. G. A. Simcox, who remarks that “sometimes both Danes and Saxons had their fair proportions of snub-noses and pug-noses, but when they escaped that catastrophe the Danish nose tended to be a beak (rather a hawk’s beak than an eagle’s), while the Saxon nose tends to be a proboscis.”

Yet even at this date perfect noses are rare, and it is easy to see why. In the first place, it takes many generations to wipe out entirely the ugliness inherited from our unæsthetic ancestors; secondly, Romantic Love, based on æsthetic admiration, is still very commonly ignored in the marriage market in favour of considerations of rank and wealth; and thirdly, a lover, infatuated by his sweetheart’s fascinating eyes, is apt to overlook her large nose or mouth—till after the honeymoon.

FASHION AND COSMETIC SURGERY

Inasmuch as the civilised races of Europe have so long been indifferent to their ugly noses, we can hardly wonder that barbarians should not only disregard their nasal caricatures, but even exaggerate their grotesqueness deliberately. We have already seen how certain tribes habitually flatten their already flat noses. Moreover, “in all quarters of the world the septum, and more rarely the wings, of the nose are pierced; rings, sticks, feathers, and other ornaments being inserted into the holes.” “In Persia one still finds the nose-ring through one side of a woman’s nostril;” and Professor Flower states that such rings are often worn by female servants who accompany English families returning from India.

Captain Cook, in the account of his first voyage, says of the east-coast Australians: “Their principal ornament is the bone which they thrust through the cartilage which divides the nostrils from each other.... As this bone is as thick as a man’s finger, and between five and six inches long, it reaches quite across the face, and so effectually stops up both the nostrils that they are forced to keep their mouths wide open for breath, and snuffle so when they attempt to speak that they are scarcely intelligible even to each other.”

This last sentence bears out our assertion regarding the philological or conversational importance of the nose. And there is another lesson to be learned from these barbarian mutilations of the nose. If Huns, Tahitians, and Hottentots are able to make their noses as delightfully ugly as they please, why should not we utilise the plastic character of the nasal cartilages for beautifying ourselves? Says a specialist: “Much can be done by an ingenious surgeon in restoration and improvement. A nose that is too flat can be raised, one with unequal apertures can be modified, one too thin can be expanded. Cosmetic surgery is rich in devices here, all of which are very available in children and young persons, less so when years have hardened and stiffened the cartilages and bones.”

Thus may Cupid employ a medical artist as an assistant in his efforts at improving the physical beauty of mankind. Needless to add that only a first-class surgeon should ever be allowed to meddle with the features.

Cosmetic surgery has already reached such perfection that it can even make “a good, living, fleshly nose. It will transplant you one from the arm or the forehead, Roman or Grecian, _à volonté_; it will graft it adroitly into the middle of the face, with two regular nostrils and a handsome bridge; and it will almost challenge Nature herself to improve on the model” (Brinton and Napheys).

Medical men are daily complaining in a more clamorous chorus that their profession is overcrowded. Why don’t some of them in every city and town make a specialty of cosmetic surgery and hygienic advice? Why leave this remunerative field entirely in the hands of dangerous quacks who alone have enterprise and sense enough to advertise?

As illustrations of what may be done in this direction, two points may be noted. A French surgeon, Dr. Cid, noticed that persons who wear eyeglasses are apt to have long and thin noses. The thought occurred to him that this might be due to the compression of the arteries which carry blood to the nose, by the springs of the glasses; so he constructed a special apparatus for compressing these arteries, and by attaching it to a young girl’s large and fleshy nose, succeeded in reducing its size. Why should people worry themselves and frighten others with ugly noses when they can be so easily improved?

The second point is still more simple. It is important that the nose should occupy exactly the middle of the face, so as to secure bilateral symmetry. Yet Welcker, who made a number of accurate observations on skulls, plaster casts of the dead, as well as on the living countenance, noted that perfect symmetry is very rarely found. The obliqueness is sometimes at the root, sometimes at the tip of the nose, and the cause of the deviation from a straight line is attributed to the habit most persons have of sleeping exclusively on one side,—a practice which is also objectionable on other grounds. Mantegazza, however, suggests that, as he has found the deviation almost always toward the right side, it may be due to our habit of always taking our handkerchief in the right hand; and the same view is held by Drs. Brinton and Napheys. So that we have here an additional argument in favour of ambidexterity.

The New York _Medical and Surgical Reporter_ for November 1, 1884, prints a lecture by Dr. J. B. Roberts on “The Cure of Crooked Noses by a New Method,” which, as it is not conspicuous and hardly leaves a scar, may be commended to the attention of those afflicted with nasal deformities. The pin method, he says, is applicable “even to those slight deformities whose chief annoyance is an æsthetic and cosmetic one. I leave the pins in position for about two weeks.”

Red noses, if due to exposure, can be readily whitened by one of the methods to be discussed in the chapter on the complexion. If due to disease, they call for medical treatment; if to intemperance or tight lacing, moral and æsthetic reform is the only possible cure.

NOSE-BREATHING AND HEALTH

Owing to its tendency toward unsightly redness and malformation, the nose is very apt to be looked at from a comic point of view. Wits and caricaturists fix on it habitually for their nefarious purposes, as if it were a sort of facial clown. Indeed, ninety-nine persons in a hundred, if questioned regarding the functions of the nose, would know no answer but this: that it is sometimes ornamental, and is remotely connected with the “almost useless” sense of smell.

We have seen, however, that besides being ornamental _per se_, the nose plays a most important æsthetic—as well as utilitarian—_rôle_ in giving sonority and variety to human speech; and that it is, further, of great use as an apparatus for warming, moistening, and filtering the air before it enters the lungs. Hence the importance of nose-breathing. Professor Reclam states that city people at the age of thirty usually have _a whole gramme of calcareous dust in their lungs_, which they can never again get rid of, and which may at any time engender dangerous disease. This is one of the bad results of mouth-breathing, but by no means the only one. “The continued irritation from dry, cold, and unfiltered air upon the mucous membrane of the upper air tract soon results,” says Dr. T. R. French, “in the establishment of catarrhal inflammation, the parts most affected being the tongue, pharynx, and larynx.... The habit of breathing through the mouth interferes with general nutrition. The subjects of this habit are usually anæmic, spare, and dyspeptic.”

That mouth-breathing at night leaves a disagreeable taste in the mouth and leads to snoring, thus interfering with refreshing sleep, has already been stated. It also injures the teeth and gums by exposing them all night to the dry air. And in the daytime it compels one to keep the mouth wide open, which imparts a rustic if not semi-idiotic expression to the face. Moreover, think of the filthy dust you swallow in walking along the street with your mouth open. However, it is useless to advise people on such matters. An attempt is made for a day or two to reform, and then—the whole matter is forgotten. These points are therefore noted here not with any missionary intentions, but merely for their scientific interest.

COSMETIC VALUE OF ODOURS

We come now to the fourth important function of the nose—the sense of smell. What has this to do with Personal Beauty? A great deal. In the first place, is not the flower-like fragrance of a lovely maiden a personal charm that has been sung of by a thousand poets, of all times? “The fragrant bosom of Andromache and of Aphrodite finds a place in Homer’s poetry,” as Professor Bain remarks; and an eccentric German professor, Dr. Jäger of Stuttgart, even wrote a book a few years ago on the _Discovery of the Soul_, in which he endeavoured to prove that the whole mystery of Love lies in the intoxicating personal perfumes.

It is not with such fancies, however, that we are concerned here. It can be shown on purely scientific grounds that the cause of Personal Beauty would gain an immense advantage if people would train and refine their olfactory nerves systematically, as they do their eyes and ears. Unfortunately, Kant’s absurd notion, expressed a century ago, that it is not worth while to cultivate the sense of smell, has been countenanced to the present day by the erroneous views held by the leading men of science, including Darwin, who wrote that “the sense of smell is of extremely slight service” to man.

In an article on the “Gastronomic Value of Odours,” which appeared in the _Contemporary Review_ for November 1886, I pointed out that this under-valuation of the sense of smell is explained by the fact that the sense of taste has hitherto been credited with all the countless flavours inherent in food, whereas, in fact, taste includes only four sensations of gastronomic value—sweet, sour, bitter, and saline, all other “flavours” being in reality odours; as is proved by the fact that by clasping the nose we cannot distinguish between a lime and a lemon, different kinds of confectionery, of cheese, of nuts, of meat, etc.

Now it is well known that most people show a most amazing tolerance to insipid, badly-cooked food, gulping it down as rapidly as possible; and why? Simply because they do not know that in order to enjoy our meals we must eat slowly, and, while masticating, _continually exhale the aroma-laden air through the nose_ (mind, not inhale but _exhale_). This is what epicures do unconsciously; and look at the results! No dyspepsia, no anæmia and sickly pallor, no walking skeletons;—and surely a slight _embonpoint_ is preferable to leanness from the point of view of Personal Beauty.

If this gastronomic secret were generally known, people would insist on having better cooked food; dyspepsia, and leanness, and a thousand infirmities hostile to Beauty would disappear, and in course of time everybody would be as sleek and handsome and rosy-cheeked as a professional epicure.

Nor is this the only way in which refinement of the sense of smell would benefit Personal Beauty. In consequence of the criminally superstitious dread of night air, the atmosphere in most bedrooms is as foul, compared to fresh air, as a street puddle after a shower compared to a mountain brook. I have seen well-dressed persons in America and Italy take into their mouths the shamefully filthy and disease-soaked banknotes current in those countries; and I have seen others shudder at this sight who, if their smell were as refined as their sight, would have shuddered equally at the foul air in their bedrooms, which diminishes their vital energy and working power by one-half. Architects, of course, will make no provision for proper ventilation as long as they are not compelled to do so. Why should they? They don’t even care, in building a theatre, how many hundreds of people will some day be burnt in it, in consequence of their neglect of the simplest precautions for exit.

One more important consideration. When you leave the city for a few weeks everybody will exclaim on your return, “Why, how well you look! where have you been?” But wherein lies this cosmetic magic of country air? Not in its oxygen, for it has been proved, by accurate chemical tests, that in regard to the quantity of oxygen there is not the slightest difference between city and country air. What, then, is the secret?

I am convinced, from numerous experiments, that the value of country air lies partly in its tonic fragrance, partly in the _absence of depressing, foul odours_. The great cosmetic and hygienic value of deep-breathing has been proved in the chapter on the Chest. Now the tonic value of fragrant meadow or forest air lies in this—that it causes us involuntarily to breathe deeply, in order to drink in as many mouthfuls of this luscious aerial Tokay as possible: whereas in the city the air is—well, say unfragrant and uninviting; and the constant fear of gulping down a pint of deadly sewer gas discourages deep breathing. The general pallor and nervousness of New York people have often been noted. The cause is obvious. New York has the dirtiest streets of any city in the world, except Constantinople and Canton; and, moreover, it is surrounded by oil-refineries, which sometimes for days poison the whole city with the stifling fumes of petroleum, so that one hardly dares to breathe at all. No wonder that, by universal consent, there is more Fashion than Beauty in New York. And no wonder that it is becoming more and more customary, for all who can afford it, to spend six to eight months of the year in the country.

THE FOREHEAD

BEAUTY AND BRAIN

It has been stated already that, anatomically considered, the forehead is not a part of the face but of the cranium. From an artistic and popular point of view, however, the forehead is a part of the face, and a most important one. Modern taste fully endorses the ancient law of facial proportion, which makes the height of the forehead equal to the length of the nose, and to the distance from the tip of the nose to the tip of the chin. “Foreheads villainous low” are objectionable, because associated with a vulgar unintellectual type of man, and too vividly suggestive of our simian ancestors. Foreheads abnormally high, though preferable to the other extreme, displease, because they violate the law of facial proportion. We excuse them in men, because they are commonly expressive of intellectual power. But in women a high forehead is always objectionable, because it gives them a masculine appearance. Hence Romantic Love, which cannot exist without sexual contrasts, and which aims at making woman a perfect embodiment of the laws of Beauty, eliminates girls with too high foreheads. Yet at the command of Fashion thousands of maidens deliberately prevent men from falling in love with them by combing back their hair and giving their foreheads a masculine appearance, instead of coyly hiding it under a fringe or “bang.”

The fact that the feminine forehead, though more perpendicular than the masculine at the lower part, slants backward in its upper part in a more pronounced angle, is another reason why women should cover up this part of their forehead, which Sexual Selection has not yet succeeded in moulding into perfect shape. For the receding forehead is universally recognised as a sign of inferior culture. Everybody knows what is meant by Camper’s facial angle, which is formed by a horizontal line drawn from the opening of the ear to the nasal spine, and a perpendicular line touching the most prominent parts of the forehead and front teeth. In adult Europeans Camper’s angle rarely exceeds 85 degrees. The average in the Caucasian race is 80°; in the yellow races 75°; in the negro 60° to 70°; in the gorilla 31°. In antique Greek heads the angle is sometimes over 90°. Says Camper: “If I cause the facial line to fall in front, I have an antique head; if I incline it backwards, I have the head of a negro; if I cause it to incline still further, I have the head of a monkey; inclined still more, I have that of a dog, and, lastly, that of a goose.”

It appears, however, that this angle has more value as a test of beauty than as an absolute gauge of intellect. Generally speaking, there is no doubt a correlation between a bulging forehead and a superior intellect; but individual exceptions to this rule are not infrequent. Nor is it at all difficult to account for them. For intellectual power does not depend so much on the size and shape of the skull as on the convoluted structure of the brain.

Our brain consists of two kinds of matter—the white, which is inside, and the gray, which covers it. The white substance is a complicated telegraphic network for conveying messages which are sent from the external gray cells. It has been proved, by comparing the brains of man and various animals, that the amount of intelligence depends not so much on the absolute size of the brain, as on the abundance of this gray matter. And, what is of extreme importance from a cosmetic point of view, the gray cells are increased in number, not by an addition to the absolute size or circumference of the brain, but by a system of furrows and convolutions which increase the surface lining of the brain without enlarging its visible mass. For the benefit of those who have never seen a human brain, it may be very roughly compared to the convoluted kernel of an English walnut.

Wherein lies the æsthetic significance of this mode of cerebral evolution? It prevents our head from becoming too large. Have you ever considered why infants appear so ugly to every one but their mothers? One of the principal reasons is that their heads are twice as large in proportion to the rest of the body as those of adults. A child’s stature is equal to four times the height of its head, an adult’s to eight heads. If our heads continued to grow larger as our minds expanded, from generation to generation, all the proportions of human stature would ultimately be violated. But thanks to the peculiar mode of cerebral evolution just described, Romantic Love may continue to “select” in accordance with our present standards of beauty, without thereby favouring the survival of lower intellectual types.

This view of the question also solves a difficulty which has staggered even such a leading evolutionist as Mr. Wallace, viz., the fact that the oldest prehistoric skulls that have been found “surpass the average of modern European skulls in capacity.” But if it is the easiest thing in the world to find an ordinary stupid man in our streets with a larger skull than that of many a clever brain-worker, why should we attach so much importance to those prehistoric skulls? Had their brains been examined, they would doubtless have been found as scantily furrowed as those of a big-headed modern anarchist.

FASHIONABLE DEFORMITY