“From the presence of the woolly hair or lanugo on the human fœtus, and of rudimentary hairs scattered over the body during maturity,” Darwin inferred that “man is descended from some animal which was born hairy and remained so during life.” He believed that “the loss of hair is an inconvenience and probably an injury to man, even in a hot climate, for he is thus exposed to the scorching in the sun, and to sudden chills, especially during wet weather. As Mr. Wallace remarks, the natives in all countries are glad to protect their naked backs and shoulders with some slight covering. No one supposes that the nakedness of the skin is any direct advantage to man; his body, therefore, cannot have been divested of hair through Natural Selection.” Accordingly, he concludes that man lost his hairy covering through Sexual Selection, for ornamental purposes.
But if it can be shown that the nakedness of his skin is in some way of advantage to man, this argument falls to the ground. There are sufficient reasons, I think, for believing that Natural Selection aided Sexual Selection in divesting man of his hairy coat.
With his usual candour Darwin noticed the evidence which seemed to tell against his view. Mr. Belt, he says, “believes that within the tropics it is an advantage to man to be destitute of hair, as he is thus enabled to free himself of the multitude of ticks (acari) and other parasites with which he is often infested, and which sometimes cause ulceration.” Darwin doubts, however, whether this evil is of sufficient magnitude to have led to the denudation of the body through Natural Selection, “since none of the many quadrupeds inhabiting the tropics have, as far as I know, acquired any specialised means of relief.” But as primitive man’s habits of cleanliness are much inferior to those of animals, this objection loses its force; and it is, moreover, weakened by the testimony of Sir W. Denison that “it is said to be a practice with the Australians, when the vermin get troublesome, to singe themselves.” We also know that the ancient EgyptiansEgyptians shaved off their hair from motives of cleanliness.
However, it is not likely that the superior advantages of cleanliness and freedom from parasites would alone have sufficed to produce so great a change in man as the loss of his hair. It is more probable that the sun was the chief agent in accomplishing this transformation. I fail to see the force of Darwin’s contention that the fact that “the other members of the order of Primates, to which man belongs, although inhabiting various hot regions, are well clothed with hair, generally thickest on the upper surface, is opposed to the supposition that man became naked through the action of the sun.” For these animals commonly live in forests and on trees, where they are protected from the rays of the sun, which is not the case with man.
Furthermore, Darwin himself mentions some circumstances which point to the conclusion that the sun is the cause of man’s nudity. He says, for instance, that “elephants and rhinoceroses are almost hairless; and as certain extinct species which formerly lived under an arctic climate were covered with long wool or hair, it would almost appear as if the existing species of both genera had lost their hairy covering from exposure to heat. This appears the more probable as the elephants in India which live on elevated and cool districts are more hairy than those on the lowlands.”
Bearing in mind what was said in the chapter on the Complexion regarding the negro’s skin, there is no difficulty in understanding why Natural Selection should eliminate the hairy covering of the skin while favouring a dark complexion. Hair not only absorbs the sun’s heat, but retains that of the body; hence a hairy man not living on trees would be very uncomfortable in Africa, and likely to succumb to the enervating effects of high temperature. The negro’s naked skin, on the other hand, is, as we have seen, specially devised as a body-cooler. The black pigment protects the underlying nerves of temperature, while the solar heat absorbed by this pigment is immediately radiated in the form of perspiration. Now we can see not only why the negro’s skin is more velvety, smooth, and hairless than our own, but why its sweat-pores are larger and more numerous than in our skin.
At a later stage of evolution Sexual Selection probably came in to aid in this process of denudation. We may infer this, in the first place, from the analogous case of apes who have denuded and variously-coloured patches on the head and elsewhere, which they use for purposes of display, to attract the notice of the opposite sex; in the second place, from the fact that there are not a few tribes who pluck out their hairs. “The Fuegians threatened a young missionary, who was left for a time with them, to strip him naked, and pluck the hairs from his face and body, yet he was far from being a hairy man;” and “throughout the world the races which are almost completely destitute of a beard, dislike hairs on the face and body, and take pains to eradicate them.” Darwin also notes some facts which, by analogy, seem to make it probable that “the long-continued habit of eradicating the hair may have produced an inherited effect.”
In the case of the white race we cannot rely so much on the action of the sun as accounting for the absence of hair, but must place more especial emphasis on Sexual Selection. We are warranted in doing this by the consideration that Taste for Beauty is more developed in the white race, and therefore has more influence in controlling the choice of a mate. “As the body in woman is less hairy than in man, and as this character is common to all races, we may conclude” with Darwin “that it was our female semi-human ancestors who were first divested of hair,” this character being then transmitted by the mothers to their children of both sexes.
The two universal traits of Beauty which chiefly guided man in the preference of a hairless skin were evidently Smoothness and Colour. One need only compare for a moment the face of a female chimpanzee, its leathery folded skin and straggling hairs, with the smooth and rosy complexion of a European damsel, to understand that, leaving touch out of consideration, sight alone would have sufficed to give the preference to the hairless skin. But since we derive less direct advantage than the tropical races from such a skin, cases of reversion to the hairy type are more common among us than with them, and our bodies in general are more hairy.
The elimination of hair from those parts of the body where it is less beautiful than a nude skin, is only one of the functions of Sexual Selection. Another equally important function is the preservation and elongation of the hair in a few places for ornamental purposes.
“We know from Eschricht,” says Darwin, “that with mankind the female as well as the male fœtus is furnished with much hair on the face, especially round the mouth; and this indicates that we are descended from progenitors of whom both sexes were bearded. It appears, therefore, at first sight, probable that man has retained his beard from a very early period, whilst woman lost her beard at the same time that her body became almost completely divested of hair.”
A long beard serves, to some extent, to protect the throat, but a moustache serves no such use, and it seems therefore more probable that beards as well as moustaches were developed in man for ornamental purposes, as in many monkeys (see, for some very curious pictures of bearded monkeys, Descent of Man, chap. xviii.) But why should women have lost their beards while men retained theirs? Because of the importance of emphasising the secondary sexual differences between man and woman, on which the degree of amorous infatuation depends. The tendency of evolution, as we have seen, has been to make the sexes more and more different in appearance; and as man chooses his mate chiefly on æsthetic grounds, he habitually gave the preference to smooth-faced women, whereas woman’s choice, being largely based on dynamic grounds, fell on the bearded and moustached men, since a luxurious growth of hair is commonly a sign of physical vigour. Hence the humiliation of the young man who cannot raise a moustache, and the reciprocal horror of the young lady who finds the germs of one on her lip. Both are instinctively afraid of being “boycotted” by Cupid, and for ever debarred from the pleasures of mutual Romantic Love.
Women are quite right in dreading hair in the face as a blemish, for it is not only objectionable as a masculine trait, but also as a characteristic of old age, a hairy face being quite a common attribute of aged females. But with men the case is different. Though women may still be often influenced in their amorous choice by a beard, it is not, as just pointed out, on æsthetic grounds; and it is indeed very dubious if the beard can be accepted as a real personal ornament. True, the ancient Greeks respected a beard as an attribute of maturity and manhood, but their ideal of supreme beauty was nevertheless an unbearded youth: Apollo has neither beard nor moustache. The ancient Egyptians had a horror of the bearded and long-haired Greeks. “No Egyptian of either sex would on any account kiss the lips of a Greek,” and whenever the Egyptians “intended to convey the idea of a man of low condition, or a slovenly person, the artists represented him with a beard” (Wilkinson). Similarly, in the second edition of his Anatomy of Expression (1824), Sir Charles Bell wrote that “When those essays were first written there was not a beard to be seen in England unless joined with squalor and neglect, and I had the conviction that this appendage concealed the finest features. Being in Rome, however, during the procession of the Corpus Domini, I saw that the expression was not injured by the beard, but that it added to the dignity and character of years.”
These two sentences contain the whole philosophy of beards. The expression of character is not injured, but rather increased by a beard; but if it conceals the fine features of youth it is objectionable. There are men whose faces are too wide, and whose appearance is therefore improved by a chin-beard; and there are others whose faces are too narrow, and who consequently look better with side-whiskers. But in a well-shaped youthful masculine face a beard is as great a superfluity, if not a blemish, as in a woman’s face.
Now, since the faces of civilised races are undoubtedly becoming more beautiful as time advances, it is comforting to know that, notwithstanding female selection, the beard is gradually disappearing. Very few men are able to raise a fine beard to-day, even with the artificial stimulus of several years’ daily shaving; and the time, no doubt, is not very distant when men will go to the cosmetic electrician to have their straggling hairbulbs in the chin killed. This may produce an inherited effect on their children; and the always smooth-faced mother, too, cannot but exert some hereditary influence on her sons as well as her daughters. The women, in turn, will inherit some of the superior æsthetic Taste of the men, and begin to see that there is more charm in a smooth than in a bearded face; while there will still be room enough for those sexual differences in facial Beauty which feed the flame of Love.
The following newspaper paragraph, though it may be a mere jeu d’esprit, is amusing and suggestive: “A Frenchman sent a circular to all his friends asking why they cultivated a beard. Among the answers 9 stated, ‘Because I wish to avoid shaving’; 12 ‘Because I do not wish to catch cold’; 5 ‘Because I wish to conceal bad teeth’; ‘Because I wish to conceal the length of my nose’; 6 ‘Because I am a soldier’; 21 ‘Because I was a soldier’; 65 ‘Because my wife likes it’; 28 ‘Because my love likes it’; 15 answered that they wore no beards.”
Moustaches are much more common to-day than beards, and it is barely possible that they may escape æsthetic condemnation, and survive to the millennium. Persons with very short upper lips or flat noses, it is true, only emphasise their shortcomings by wearing a moustache; but in broad faces with prominent noses a well-shaped, not too drooping, moustache is no doubt an ornament, relieving the gravity of the masculine features and adding to their expression. As Bell remarks: “Although the hair of the upper lip does conceal the finer modulations of the mouth, as in woman, it adds to the character of the stronger and harsher emotions.” “I was led to attend more particularly to the moustache as a feature of expression,” he says, “in meeting a handsome young French soldier coming up a long ascent in the Côte d’Or, and breathing hard, although with a good-humoured, innocent expression. His sharp-pointed black moustache rose and fell with a catamount look that set me to think on the cause.”
Young men may find in Bell’s remarks a suggestion as to how they may make the moustache a permanent ornament of the human race. The movements of the moustache are dependent on the muscle called depressor alæ nasi. By specially cultivating this muscle men might in course of time make the movements of the moustaches subject to voluntary control. Just think what a capacity for emotional expression lies in such a simple organ as the dog’s caudal appendage, aptly called the “psychographic tail” by Vischer: and moustaches are double, and therefore equal to two psychographic appendages!
Sexual Selection would not fail to seize on this “new departure” in moustaches immediately in order to emphasise the sexual differences of expression in the face, and thus increase the ardour of romantic passion. A few days ago I came across an attempt in a German paper to explain the meaning of the word Flirtation. The writer derives the word from an old expression meaning to toss or cast about. This he refers to the eyes, and thinks that the proper translation of Flirtation is äugeln, i.e. to “make eyes.” We, of course, know that flirting is a fine art which includes a vast deal besides äugeln; but “making eyes” is certainly one of its tricks. Now, is it not probable that by and by, when young men will have properly trained their depressor alæ nasi, they will look upon the making of eyes as a feminine attribute, and, instead of winking at their sweethearts, express their admiration by some subtle and graceful movement of the moustaches? This would obliterate Darwin’s assertion that Love has no special means of expression.
Superficial students of Darwinism are constantly making owlish predictions that ere many generations will have passed bald heads will be the normal aspect of man. But, as we have just seen in the case of beards, it is not utility or Natural Selection so much as Sexual, Æsthetico-Amorous Selection on which the evolution of Personal Beauty depends. If Natural Selection were at work alone we should, indeed, ultimately become bald; for as soon as man begins to cover his head with a cap or hat, he takes away the chief function of the hair on the top of the head, where it serves as a protection against wind and weather. But Sexual Selection now steps in and says that the hair must remain, because without it the head looks decidedly ugly, whatever its shape.
“Eschricht states that in the human fœtus the hair on the face during the fifth month is longer than that on the head; and this indicates that our semi-human progenitors were not furnished with long tresses, which must therefore have been a late acquisition. This is likewise indicated by the extraordinary difference in the length of the hair in the different races: in the negro the hair forms a mere curly mat; with us it is of great length, and with the American natives it not rarely reaches to the ground. Some species of Semnopithecus have their head covered with moderately long hair, and this probably serves as an ornament, and was acquired through sexual selection. The same view may perhaps be extended to mankind, for we know that long tresses are now and were formerly much admired, as may be observed in the works of almost every poet; St. Paul says, ‘If a woman have long hair it is a glory to her;’ and we have seen that in North America a chief was elected solely from the length of his hair” (Darwin).
Inasmuch as Sexual Selection or Love is impeded in its action not only by pecuniary and social considerations, but by the fact that it cannot be guided by any particular feature alone, its action is slow and sometimes uncertain. Hence the increase of bald heads. It is therefore necessary to supplement the beautifying results of Sexual Selection by means of hygienic precautions, such as avoiding air-tight, warm, high hats, badly ventilated rooms, intemperate habits, and other causes of baldness. Hereditary baldness is difficult to arrest in its course; but even in such cases much may be accomplished by beginning in childhood to take proper care of the hair. Most persons—especially men—seem to imagine that combs and brushes are made solely for the purpose of arranging the hair in some approved fashion; whereas, if properly used, a brush adds as much to the sensuous beauty of the hair as to its formal appearance. To remove all the dust from the hair, and give it gloss and healthy colour, about fifty daily strokes, or more even, are recommended. Avoid irritating the scalp with fine combs or hard bristles, and wash it once or twice a week with a weak solution of ammonia or borax. Hair that is properly brushed is always glossy with its natural oil, and needs no vulgar ointment, offensive to the smell and suggestive of uncleanliness. If with these hygienic precautions the hair refuses to become beautiful, it is time to get medical advice; for the dull colour and dryness of the hair which lead to baldness are often due to constitutional disease.
Powdering the hair is fortunately no longer in vogue as it was formerly. It is a most unæsthetic habit, not only because white or gray hair is naturally suggestive of old age, grief, and decrepitude, but because the flour forms with the perspiration and with the oil of the hair a nasty compound. William Pitt “estimated, in 1795, that the amount of flour annually consumed for this purpose in the United Kingdom represented the enormous and incredible value of six million dollars.”
It is estimated that the average number of hairs on the head is 120,000. This allows one to look with considerable indifference on the loss of a few hundred, all the more as in ordinary cases, even after illness, every hair lost is replaced by another. But when the papilla at the base of the hair cavity is destroyed, then baldness is inevitable. It follows from this that the only certain way of removing hair permanently from places where it is not desired is to destroy this papilla. “Plucking hair out by the root” does not destroy it. “If they are pulled out with the tweezers there is a still greater stimulus given,” says Dr. Bulkley (The Skin in Health and Disease), “and the hairs return yet more coarse and obtrusive.” The various Oriental and Occidental pastes for removing the hair have no more permanent effect than shaving. “Superfluous hairs can be removed either by the introduction of an irregularly-shaped needle into the follicle (after the extraction of the hair), which is then twisted so as to break up the papilla and produce a little inflammation, which closes the follicle; or a needle can be inserted, and a current from a battery be turned on, when the follicle is destroyed by what is known as electrolysis. These procedures could be done only by a physician.”
Concerning electrolysis Dr. S. E. Woody says in the American Practitioner and News that the number of hairs to return and demand a second removal will decrease with the skill of the operator and the thoroughness of the operation. He usually expects the return of about 5 per cent, but when these are in turn removed the cure is complete. “You should have the patient come only on bright days, for good light is necessary.”
ÆSTHETIC VALUE OF HAIR
If not the most beautiful part of the head, hair certainly is the most beautifying. To improve the shape of mouth, nose, chin, or eyes requires time and patience, but the arrangement of the hair can be altered in a minute, not only to its own advantage, but so as to enhance the beauty of the whole face. By clever manipulation of her long tresses, a woman can alter her appearance almost as completely as a man can by shaving off his long beard or moustache.
But, alas! If the prevalence of the bustle and wasp-waist allowed any doubt to remain as to the woful rarity of æsthetic taste among women, it would be found in the arrangement of the hair and the kind of head-dresses they commonly adopt at the behest of Fashion. “Because women as a rule do not know what beauty means,” says Mrs. Haweis (The Art of Beauty), “therefore they catch at whatever presents itself as a novelty.... They do not pause to consider whether the old fashion became them better—whether the new one reveals more clearly the slight shrinking of the jaw, or spoils the pretty colour still blooming in the cheek.”
The latest head-dress foisted on the feminine world by Parisian Fashion shows most strikingly how Fashion is the Handmaid of Vulgarity as well as of Ugliness. Heaven knows, the high silk hats worn by men are bad enough, on hygienic as well as æsthetic grounds. They promote baldness and destroy all the artistic proportions of stature, making the head look by one half too high. But silk hats are a harmless trifle compared with the shapeless straw-towers, ornamented with bird-corpses, that have been worn of late by almost all women in countries which slavishly follow Parisian example. And there is this great difference between man’s silk hat and woman’s bird-sarcophagus—the former only results in ugliness, the second is also evidence of heartlessness, and leads to vulgarity. For what is it but vulgarity if women continue to go to the theatre for two winters with hats which make it quite impossible for those sitting behind them to see the scenery and enjoy the play—and all this in spite of innumerable sarcastic and angry protests in the journals? Is not the first rule of etiquette and good manners regard for the feelings and pleasures of others?
What would women say to a man who kept on his tall hat in a theatre until the ushers threw him out? Would they not all pronounce him either intoxicated or ineffably vulgar? Would not Schopenhauer, if he could go to an American theatre to-day, be justified in saying that women are not only the “unæsthetic sex,” but also the “ill-bred sex”? And can the women who are so devoid of courtesy towards the men wonder that masculine gallantry towards women on street-cars and elsewhere seems to be on the wane?
Although there are no two heads in which the most pleasing effect is secured by precisely the same arrangement of the hair and the same style of hat, it may be laid down as a universal rule that a very high hat or arrangement of the hair is becoming to no one, for the reason above indicated. Let it be observed, says Mr. Buskin, “that in spite of all custom, an Englishman instantly acknowledges, and at first sight, the superiority of the turban to the hat.” “Guido,” says Mrs. Haweis, “probably felt the peculiar charm of the turban when he placed one upon the quiet melancholy head of Beatrice Cenci.” For full and bright young faces the Tam o’ Shanter is the loveliest of all head-dresses. But this subject is too large to be discussed in a paragraph. In Mrs. Haweis’s Art of Beauty may be found some elegant illustrations of head-dresses placed near fashionable monstrosities; and young ladies would do well to devote an hour a day for a year or two to the study of some history of costume. Nothing awakens the sense of Beauty so rapidly as good models and comparisons.
Concerning the arrangement of the hair two more points may be noted. Is it not about time to do away with the venerable absurdity of parting the hair? If entire baldness is voted ugly, why should partial baldness be courted? The hair should be allowed to remain in its natural direction of growth. It does not part itself naturally, nor again—and this is a much more important point—does it grow backward from the forehead. The Chinese coiffure disfigures every woman who adopts it; and the habit of combing back the hair tightly from the forehead, moreover, often causes neuralgic headache, the cause of which is unsuspected; not to speak of the fact that such a coiffure raises the eyebrows, and thus gives a fixed expression of amazed stupefaction. The hair naturally falls over the forehead, and fringes it as beautifully as a grove does a lake.
The ancient Greek notions on this subject are worthy of attentive consideration. “Women who had a high forehead placed a band over it, with the design of making it thereby seem lower,” says Winckelmann. Not only in women but in mature men the hair was so arranged as to cover up “the receding bare corners over the temples, which usually enlarge as life advances beyond that age when the forehead is naturally high.” The modern fringe or “bang” is, however, an improvement even on the Greek curve of the hair over the temples. It improves the appearance of all women except those whose forehead is very low naturally; but in all cases exaggeration must be avoided.
A writer in the London Evening Standard thinks it is strange that the English, “who have the poorest hair in Europe, make the least attempt to show what they have,” and that it has now “come to such a pass that a maiden of twenty thinks it almost indecent to wear her hair loose.” He traces this to the tyranny of Fashion—the ugly majority having compelled the beautiful minority to conceal their charms. But we may be sure that ere long Beauty will revolt against Fashion. It will be another French revolution, practically,—an emphatic protest against Parisian dictation and vulgarity.
Becker tells us that among the ancient Greeks “black was probably the prevailing colour of the hair, though blond is frequently mentioned”; and he adds that both men and women used dyes, and “the blond or yellow hair was much admired.” Mr. Gladstone, in his work on Homer, remarks that “dark hair is a note of the foreigner and of Southern extraction.... I have been assured that, in the Greece of to-day, light hair is still held as indicating the purest Hellenic blood.” According to Winckelmann, “Homer does not even once mention hair of a black colour”; and again: "Flaxen, ξανθὴ hair has always been considered the most beautiful; and hair of this colour has been attributed to the most beautiful of the gods, as Apollo and Bacchus, not less than to the heroes; even Alexander had flaxen hair."
That the Romans agreed with the Greeks in giving the preference to light hair seems probable from the extensive importations of yellow German hair for the Roman ladies, as also from the fact that “Lucretius, when speaking of the false flatteries addressed to women, quotes one in illustration, namely, that a maiden with black hair is μελίχροος (honey-coloured)—thus ascribing to her a beauty which she does not possess.”
When the fair-haired Teuton overran the South a new motive for preferring blond hair arose, as a writer in the London Standard remarks: “Whatever the feeling of the men, we may be sure that the dark beauties of those climes felt a natural inclination to resemble the wives and daughters of the conqueror, and when we perceive their likenesses again, at the revival of art in Italy, not a black tress is to be seen. Is there a single Madonna not blond?—or ten portraits of women by the great masters? In all the gallery of Titian, we think only of a figure, naked to the waist, in the Uffizi, described as one of his mistresses.... But we know that the blond tint was artificial in a majority of cases—the deep black of eye and brow would show it if no evidence were forthcoming. But evidence turns up at every side ... a hundred recipes are found in memoirs, correspondence, and treatises of the time.”
Hear another witness: “Southern Europe,” says Mr. R. G. White, “is peopled with dark-skinned, dark-haired races, and the superior beauty of the blond type was recognised by the painters, who always, from the earliest days, represented angels as of that type. The Devil was painted black so much as a matter of course that his pictured appearance gave rise to a well-known proverb; ordinary mortals were represented as more or less dark; celestial people were white and golden-haired: whence the epithet ‘divinely fair.’”
And the poets were quite as partial as the artists to the light type. Petrarch’s sonnets are addressed to a blue-eyed Laura. Krimhild of the Nibelungenlied is blue-eyed, like Fricka, the Northern Juno, and Ingeborg of the Frithjof’s Saga, and the Danish princess Iolanthe, as Dr. Magnus points out; and in the French folk-songs “the girls are almost as invariably blond as in the songs of Heine,” as a writer in the Saturday Review (1878) remarks, adding that “there is even such an expression as aller en blonde, ‘to go a-wooing,’ which proves the universality of the belief in fair beauties.”
Concerning England, a writer in the Quarterly Review declares that Shakspere mentions black hair only twice throughout his plays; and that in the National Gallery of that date (1853) there was not a single female head with black hair.
Thus we have evidence showing that during the epoch preceding the general prevalence of Romantic Love, the blond type was considered the ideal of beauty throughout Europe—in Greece and Italy as well as in Germany, Scandinavia, France, and England. And where the hair was not naturally blond, artificial means were used to make it so.
But as soon as Love appears on the scene and sharpens the æsthetic sense, we find a reaction in favour of brunettes. There can be no doubt of this, for it is attested not only by personal opinions and observations, but by accurate statistics. The Quarterly Review just referred to believed that blondes were gradually decreasing in England, and the Saturday Review asserts that “some years ago Mr. Gladstone, whom nothing escapes, declared that light-haired people were far less numerous than in his youth. Many middle-aged persons will probably agree with him.” “The time was,” the writer adds, “when the black-haired, black-eyed girl of fiction was as dark of soul as of tresses, while the blue-eyed maiden’s character was of ‘heaven’s own colour.’ Thackeray damaged this tradition by invariably making his dark heroines nice, his fair heroines treacherous sirens.” Byron, we may add, also showed a passionate preference for brunettes; and does not another great love-poet, Moore, speak of “eyes of unholy blue”?
Speaking of the Germans, the anthropologist Waitz remarks that “the blond and red hair, the blue eyes and light complexion, which most of them had at the period of the Roman wars, have not disappeared, it is true, but certainly diminished greatly in frequency. In Jarrold we find the analogous statement that as late as the time of Henry VIII. red hair predominated in England, and that at the beginning of the fifteenth century gray eyes were more common, dark eyes and dark hair less common, than now.” As this change is correlated in both these countries with a gradual refinement of the features, does it not indicate that modern æsthetico-amorous selection favours the brunette type?
Waitz’s assertion regarding the gradual decrease in the number of blondes in Germany is strikingly confirmed by the results of a series of statistical investigations undertaken under the supervision of Professor Virchow. Almost eleven million school children were examined in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Belgium, and the results showed that Switzerland has only 11·10, Austria 19·79, and Germany 31·80 per cent of pure blondes. Thus the very country which, since the days of ancient Rome has been proverbially known as the home of yellow hair and blue eyes, has to-day only 32 pure blondes in a hundred; while the average of pure brunettes is already 14·05 per cent (and in some regions as high as 25 per cent). The 53·15 per cent of the mixed type are evidently being slowly transformed into pure brunettes, thanks to intermarriages with the neighbours who are of the dark variety east and west, as well as south of Germany.
In England Dr. Beddoe has collected a number of statistics which also bear out the theory that brunettes are gaining on blondes. Among 726 women examined he found 369 brunettes and 357 blondes. Of the brunettes he found that 78·5 per cent were married, while of the blondes only 68 per cent were married. Thus it would seem that a brunette has ten chances of getting married in England to a blonde’s nine. Hence Dr. Beddoe reasons that the English are becoming darker because the men persist in selecting the darker-haired women as wives.
In France a similar view has been put forth by M. Adolphe de Candolle in the Archives des Sciences. He found that when both parents have eyes of the same colour 88·4 per cent inherit this colour. "But the curious fact comes out that more females than males have black or brown eyes, in the proportion, say, of 49 to 45 or of 41 to 39. Next, it appears that with different coloured eyes in the two parents, 53·09 per cent of the progeny followed the fathers in being dark-eyed, and 55·09 per cent followed their mothers in being dark-eyed. An increase of 5 per cent of dark-eyed in each generation of discolorous unions must tell heavily in the course of time. It would seem," adds Science, to which I owe this summary of De Candolle’s views, “that, unless specially bred by concolorous marriages, blue-eyed belles will be scarce in the millennium.”
How are we to account for this undeniable change in favour of brunettes? Is it merely a matter of Taste and Fashion? Are we simply going through a period of brunette-worship which in turn will be followed by a century or two of blonde-worship, and so on ad infinitum? or are there reasons for believing that Cupid will abide by his present decision, and continue to eliminate blondes? There are several such reasons, which may best be discussed separately, under the heads of Complexion, Hair, and Eyes.
(1) Complexion.—The dark skin is more soft and velvety than the light skin, and therefore more agreeable to the touch; hence, as Winckelmann remarks, “he who prefers dark to fair beauty is not on that account to be censured; indeed, one might approve his choice, if he is attracted less by sight than by the touch.” But the eye, too, is likely to be more pleased by a brunette than a pure blond complexion. In the dark skin the pigmentary matter tones down the too vivid red of the translucent blood, wherefore the brunette complexion appears more mellow and delicate in its tints than the Scandinavian blonde, in which a blush suggests a hectic flush, and its normal whiteness the pallor of ill-health or a lack of invigorating and beautifying sunshine.
The brunette complexion, in a word, suggests to the mind the idea of stored-up sunshine, i.e. Health; and as Health is what primarily attracts Cupid, this, combined with his taste for delicate tints and veiled blushes, partly accounts for his preference of the dark type. Youthful freshness is another bait which tempts Cupid; and it is well known that the dark complexion does not, as a rule, fade so soon as the blond.
That the brownish skin is commonly healthier than the white is also shown by its being less subject to the irregularity in the secretion of pigmentary matter which causes freckles. These blemishes, like smallpox marks, are much rarer among the dark than among blond races and individuals.
The skin of blondes who are exposed to a hot sun and raw weather becomes red, inflamed, and decidedly unbeautiful, while a brunette’s complexion only becomes a shade darker, and possibly all the more attractive. This suggests another reason why the brunettes have an advantage over blondes in the country, where love-making is chiefly carried on in summer. Yet it will not do for the blondes to avoid the sunshine on this account, for that will make them anæmic and prematurely old.
There is a class of extreme blondes to whom sunlight is not only irritating, but positively painful. They are called albinos, because there is no brown pigment whatever in any part of their body—skin, hair, or iris. The Dutch call them Kakerlaken or cockroaches, because, like these animals, they avoid the light. Such anomalous individuals occur also among animals; and Darwin has noted regarding birds that albinos do not pair, apparently because they are rejected by their normally-coloured comrades. This fact has a remote bearing on our argument, for blondes are intermediate between albinos and brunettes.
It would appear, indeed, as if not only the complexion but the general constitution of the dark type were superior to that of the blond type. In the chapter on the Complexion it was stated that a dark hue is regarded in Australia and elsewhere as evidence of superior strength. The ancient Greeks, Winckelmann tells us, although they called the young with fair complexions “children of the gods,” looked upon a brown complexion in boys as an indication of courage. Professor Topinard states that “the fair races are especially adapted to temperate and cool regions, and the South is looked upon as almost forbidden ground. The brown races, on the contrary, have a remarkable power of becoming acclimatised.” Several writers have even endeavoured to account for the gradual increase in the proportion of brunettes by connecting it with the modern tendency towards centralisation of the population in large cities, where the blondes, being unable to resist their unsanitary surroundings, are eliminated, while the more vigorous and fertile brunettes survive and multiply.
One reason why tourists are more impressed by the prevalence of beauty in southern than in northern regions, is because the working classes are more beautiful in the South than in the North; and the working classes, of course, constitute the vast majority of the population everywhere. “In northern countries,” says Mr. Lecky, “the prevailing cast of beauty depends rather on colour than on form. It consists chiefly of a freshness and delicacy of complexion which severe labour and constant exposure necessarily destroy, and which is therefore rarely found in the highest perfection among the very poor. But the southern type is essentially democratic. The fierce rays of the sun only mellow and mature its charms. Its most perfect examples may be found in the hovel as in the palace, and the effects of this diffusion of beauty may be traced both in the manners and the morals of the people.”
Another advantage to the study and development of Personal Beauty lies in the fact, noted by Ruskin, “that in climates where the body can be more openly and frequently visited by sun and weather, the nude both comes to be regarded in a way more grand and pure, as not of necessity awakening ideas of base kind (as pre-eminently with the Greeks), and also from that exposure receives a firmness and sunny elasticity very different from the silky softness of the clothed nations of the North.”
(2) Hair.—"That noble beauty," says Winckelmann, “which consists not merely in a soft skin, a brilliant complexion, wanton or languishing eyes, but in the shape or form, is found more frequently in countries which enjoy a uniform mildness of climate.” “This difference shows itself even in the hair of the head and of the beard, and both in warm climates have a more beautiful growth even from childhood, so that the greater number of children in Italy are born with fine curling hair, which loses none of its beauty with increasing years. All the beards, also, are curly, ample, and finely shaped; whereas those of the pilgrims who come to Rome from the other side of the Alps are generally, like the hair of their heads, stiff, bristly, straight, and pointed.”
Nevertheless, the hair is the blonde’s one feature in which, so far as the head itself is concerned, she may dispute the supremacy with the brunette. Light hair is finer than dark hair, and there is more of it to the square inch; and as for the colour, who will say that a girl with “golden locks which make such wanton gambols” is inferior in beauty to one who is “robed in the long night of her deep hair”?
But if the positive tests of Beauty—Colour, Lustre, Smoothness, Delicacy, etc.—do not permit us to give the preference to dark hair, it is otherwise when we come to the negative tests. A fine head of blond hair may be as beautiful as a head of brown hair, but it is not so apt to be beautiful; it has a tendency to become “stiff, bristly, straight, and pointed.” There are various reasons for believing that light hair as a rule is not so healthy, not so well-nourished, as dark hair. Every reader must have noticed among his friends that the blondes are much more likely than the brunettes to complain of dry and refractory hairs, and difficulty in keeping them in shape.
“The end of long hair is usually lighter in colour than its beginning,” as Professor Kollmann remarks: “at a distance from the skin the hairs lose their natural oil as well as the nourishing sap which comes from their roots.” This implies that the colour of the hair becomes darker with increasing vigour and vitality. We have seen that the same is true of the colour of animals in general, the healthiest being the most vividly coloured, and the males commonly darker than the less vigorous females; and as for plants, who has not noticed how easy it is to trace the course of an invisible brooklet in a meadow, not only by the greater luxuriance, but the much darker colour of the grass which lines its banks?
Once more, we know that old age, great sorrow, terror, headaches, or insanity, diminish the pigmentary matter in the hair and make it lighter—gray or white; and that by frequently brushing blond hair we not only make it more glossy and shapely, but at the same time darker.
Red hair is probably an abnormal variety of blond hair, since it does not occur among the darker races. It is disliked not only because it is so often associated with freckles, but because it is commonly dry, coarse, and bristly. The Brahmins were forbidden to marry a red-haired woman; and the populace of most countries, confounding moral with æsthetic impressions, accuses red-haired people of various shortcomings. “Sandy hair, when well brushed and kept glossy with the natural oil of the scalp, changes to a warm golden tinge. I have seen,” says the author of the Ugly Girl Papers, “a most obnoxious head of colour so changed by a few years’ care that it became the admiration of the owner’s friends, and could hardly be recognised as the withered, fiery locks once worn.”
An American newspaper paragraph, for the truthfulness of which I cannot vouch, recently stated that twenty-one men in Cincinnati, who had married red-haired women, were found to be colour-blind. A person who is colour-blind mistakes red for black.
(3) Eyes.—But it is when we leave the scalp that the superiority of dark over light hair becomes most manifest. That black eyelashes and eyebrows are infinitely more beautiful than light-coloured ones, is admitted without a dissentient voice; and it is needless to add that brunettes, whether gray or black-eyed, are almost certain to have dark eyelashes, while blondes are almost certain not to have them. Hence the painting of light eyelashes has been a common artifice among all nations and at all times; and Mrs. Haweis goes so far as to sanction the use of nasty gray hair powder because it “makes the eyebrows and eyelashes appear much darker than they really are.” I have, however, seen black eyelashes on several young ladies who could hardly be classed as brunettes, and who assured me on their conscience that they had not dyed them. Can it be possible that Sexual Selection (i.e. the æsthetic overtone in Romantic Love) is endeavouring to evolve a type of Beauty in which golden locks will be allowed to remain, while the eyelashes will be changed to black? The only objection to this surmise is that the hair in other parts of the face (chin and upper lip), though rarely of the same colour as that on the scalp, is almost always lighter in hue. But, whether or not Love can accomplish the miracle of making black lashes universal, the fact remains that they are in all cases a thousand times more charming than yellow or red lashes, and also more apt to be long and delicately curved, coyly veiling the mysterious lustre and fire of the iris.
Concerning the iris, in turn, it cannot be denied that it is most beautiful when black (dark brown), or so deeply blue or violet as to be easily taken for black. This superiority of the dark hue is due partly to the fact that a brown eye is commonly more lustrous than a light eye, and partly to the law of contrast; for a light-coloured iris obviously does not present such a vivid contrast to the white of the eye as a brown iris, and is therefore apt to seem vague, watery, and superficial in expression. The light blue or gray eye appears shallow. All its beauty seems to be on the surface, whereas the “soul-deep eyes of darkest night” appear unfathomable through their bewitching glamour.
What is the etymology of the word bella donna? Was it given to the plant on account of the beauty of its cherry-like berries? or was it not rather chosen by some poet who noted the wondrous effect of these poisonous berries in changing all eyes into black eyes by enlarging the pupils, thus making every donna a bella donna, or “beautiful lady”? Great, indeed, must be the fascination of a large pupil, since so many women have braved the danger to health, and the certainty of impairment of vision, which follow the use of this poison as a cosmetic.
It was noted in an earlier part of this volume that young men are led to propose chiefly in the evening, because the twilight enlarges the pupil, thus not only beautifying her eyes, but enabling him to see his own divine image reflected in them, proving his Monopoly of her soul. A brunette’s dark eyes on such an occasion appear to be all pupil: how, then, can you wonder that brunettes are gaining on blondes?
However, let not the blondes despair. As they become scarcer they will for that very reason be valued the more as curiosities, and the last of them, should she fail to find a husband, will be able to command a handsome salary in a museum or as a comic opera singer.
Moreover, there is no reason why physiologists should not ere long discover the secret of changing the tint of the skin, hair, and iris to suit one’s taste. All children are born with light eyes, but a great many exchange them for dark eyes as soon as they realise their mistake. We also know that ill-health temporarily changes the colour of the hair. According to the Popular Science Monthly, “Prentiss records a case of a patient to whom muriate of pilocarpine was administered hypodermically, and whose hair was changed from light blond to nearly jet black, and his eyes from light blue to dark blue.” The eating of sorghum is also said to favour the evolution of a brunette colour. But it is to the electricians that we must look for a harmless and efficient method of stimulating the secretion of pigmentary matter in the iris, skin, and hair. The man who first discovers how to change blondes to brunettes will acquire a fame as great as Newton’s or Shakspere’s, and when he dies Cupid will appoint him his private secretary.
“John,” we can hear a woman say to her husband twenty years hence—"John, Laura is now five years old. Don’t you think it is time to send her over to Dr. Electrode? I don’t object to her yellow hair, but I do think her complexion, iris, and eyelashes should be made several shades darker. She will then stand a better chance in the marriage-market when she gets older."