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—

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.”

I have italicised the word “clumsily” because it touches the vital point of the question. Man owes his intellectual superiority largely to the fact that he does not need his hands for walking or climbing, but uses them as organs of delicate touch and as tools. To acquire this independence of the hands he needed feet, which enabled him to stand erect and walk along, not “clumsily,” but firmly, naturally, and therefore gracefully. Hence in course of time, through the effects of constant use, there was developed the callous cushion of the heel and toes; while, through discontinuance of the habit of climbing, the toes became reduced in size. In the ape’s foot, it is well known, the toes are almost as long as the fingers of the hand: a fact which led Blumenbach and Cuvier to classify apes as quadrumana or four-handed animals. But Professor Huxley showed that this classification was based on erroneous reasoning. The resemblance between the hands and feet of apes is merely physiological or functional—because hands and feet are used alike for climbing. But anatomically, in its bones and muscles, etc., the monkey’s apparent hind “hand” is a true foot no less than man’s. If the physiological function, i.e. the opposability of the thumb to the other fingers, were taken as a ground of classification, then birds, who have such toes, would have no feet at all but only wings and hands.

There is a limit, however, beyond which the size of man’s toe’s cannot be reduced without injuring the foot’s usefulness and the grace of gait. The front part of the foot is distinguished for its yielding or elastic character. Hence, says Professor Humphrey, “in descending from a height, as from a chair or in walking downstairs, we alight upon the balls of the toes. If we alight upon the heels—for instance, if we walk downstairs on the heels—we find it an uncomfortable and rather jarring procedure. In walking and jumping, it is true, the heels come first in contact with the ground, but the weight then falls obliquely upon them, and is not fully borne by the foot till the toes also are upon the ground.”

One of the reasons why Grace is more rare even than Beauty on this planet is that the toes are cramped or even turned out of their natural position by tight, pointed, fashionable shoes, and are thus prevented from giving elasticity to the step. Instances are not rare (and by no means only in China) where the great toe is almost at right angles to the length of the foot. In walking, says Professor Flower, “the heel is first lifted from the ground, and the weight of the body gradually transferred through the middle to the anterior end of the foot, and the final push or impulse given with the great toe. It is necessary then that all these parts should be in a straight line with one another.”

It is a mooted question whether the toes should be slightly turned outward, as dancing-masters insist, or placed in straight parallel lines, as some physiologists hold. For the reason indicated in the last paragraph, physiologists are clearly right. With parallel or almost parallel great toes, a graceful walk is more easily attained than by turning out the toes. Even in standing, Dr. T. S. Ellis argues, the parallel position is preferable: “When a body stands on four points I know of no reason why it should stand more firmly if those points be unequally disposed. The tendency to fall forwards would seem to be even increased by widening the distance between the points in front, and it is in this direction that falls most commonly occur.”

EVOLUTION OF THE GREAT TOE

Perhaps the most striking difference between the feet of men and apes lies in the relative size of the first and second toes. In the ape’s foot the second toe is longer than the first, whereas in modern civilised man’s foot the first or great toe is almost always the longer. Not so, however, with savages, who are intermediate in this as in other respects between man and ape; and there are various other facts which seem to indicate that the evolution of the great toe, like that of the other extreme of the body—the head and brain—is still in progress.

There is a notion very prevalent among artists that the second toe should be longer than the first. This idea, Professor Flower thinks, is derived from the Greek canon, which in its turn was copied from the Egyptian, and probably originally derived from the negro. It certainly does not represent what is most usual in our race and time. “Among hundreds of bare, and therefore undeformed, feet of children I lately examined in Perthshire, I was not able to find one in which the second toe was the longest. Since in all apes—in fact, in all other animals—the first toe is considerably shorter than the second, a long first toe is a specially human attribute; and instead of being despised by artists, it should be looked upon as a mark of elevation in the scale of organised beings.”

Mr. J. P. Harrison, after a careful examination of the unrestored feet of Greek and Roman statues in various museums and art galleries, wrote an article in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain (vol. xiii. 1884), in which he states that he was “led to the conviction that it was from Italy and not Greece that the long second toe affected by many English artists had been imported.” Among the Italians a longer second toe is common, as also among Alsatians; in England so rarely that its occurrence probably indicates foreign blood. Professor Flower, as we have seen, found no cases at all; Paget examined twenty-seven English males, in twenty-four of whom the great toe was the longer. “In the case of the female feet, in ten out of twenty-three subjects the first or great toe was longest, and in ten females it was shorter than the second toe. In the remaining three instances the first and second toes were of equal length.”

Bear these last sentences in mind a moment, till we have seen what is the case with savages. Says Dr. Bruner: “A slight shortening of the great toe undoubtedly exists, not merely amongst the Negro tribes, but also in ancient and modern Egyptians, and even in some of the most beautiful races of Caucasian females.” And Mr. Harrison found this to be, with a few exceptions, a general trait of savages. The great toe was shorter than the second in skeletons of Peruvians, Tahitians, New Hebrideans, Savage islanders, Ainos, New Caledonians.

Must we therefore agree with Carl Vogt when he says, “We may be sure that, whenever we perceive an approach to the animal type, the female is nearer to it than the male”?

Perhaps, however, we can find a solution of the problem somewhat less insulting to women than this statement of the ungallant German professor.

It is Fashion, the handmaid of ugliness, that has thus apparently caused almost half the women to approximate the simian type of the foot; Fashion, which, by inducing women for centuries to thrust their tender feet into Spanish boots of torture, has taken from their toes the freedom of action requisite for that free development and growth which is to be noticed in almost all the men.

Considering the great difference between the left and the right foot, it appears almost incredible, but is a sober fact, that until about half a century ago “rights and lefts” were not made even for the men, who now always wear them. But even to-day “they are not, it is believed, made use of by women, except in a shape that is little efficacious,” says Mr. Harrison; and concerning the Austrians Dr. Schaffer remarks, similarly, that “the like shoe for the left and right foot is still in use in the vast majority of cases.” No wonder women are so averse to taking exercise, and therefore lose their beauty at a time when it ought to be still in full bloom. For to walk in such shoes must be a torture forbidding all unnecessary movement.

Once more be it said—it is Fashion, the handmaid of ugliness, that is responsible for the inferior beauty of the average female foot, by preventing the free development and play of the toes which are absolutely necessary for a graceful walk.

To what an extent the woful rarity of a graceful gait is due to the shape of “fashionable” shoes is vividly brought out in a passage concerning the natives of Martinique, which appeared in a letter in the New York Evening Post: “Many of the quadroons are handsome, even beautiful, in their youth, and all the women of pure black and mixed blood walk with a lightness of step and a graceful freedom of motion that is very noticeable and pleasant to see. I say all the women; but I must confine this description to those who go shoeless, for when a negress crams her feet into even the best-fitting pair of shoes her gait becomes as awkward as the waddle of an Indian squaw, or of a black swan on dry land, and she minces and totters in such danger of falling forward that one feels constrained to go to her and say, ‘Mam’selle EbÈne or Noirette, do, I beseech you, put your shoes where you carry everything else, namely, on the top of your well-balanced head, and do let me see you walk barefoot again, for I do assure you that neither your Chinese cousins nor your European mistresses can ever hope to imitate your goddess-like gait until they practise the art of walking with their high-heeled, tiny boots nicely balanced on their heads, as you so often are pleased to do.’”

There is another lesson to be learned from this discussion, namely, that in trying to establish the principles of Beauty, it is better to follow one’s own taste than adhere blindly to Greek canons, and what are supposed to be Greek canons. The longer second toe, as we have seen, is not a characteristic of Greek art, but due apparently to restorations made in Italy where this peculiarity prevails. The Greeks, indeed, never hesitated to idealise and improve Nature if caught napping; and there can be little doubt that if in their own feet the first toe had been shorter than the second, they would have made it longer all the same in their statues, following the laws of gradation and curvature which a longer second toe would interrupt. For it is undeniable that, as Mr. Harrison remarks, “a model foot, according to Flaxman, is one in which the toes follow each other imperceptibly in a graceful curve from the first or great toe to the fifth.”

NATIONAL DIFFERENCES

The statement made above regarding the prevalence among Italians of a longer second toe enables us also to qualify the remark made in the Westminster Review (1884), that “Even at the present day it is a fact well known to all sculptors that Italy possesses the finest models as regards the female hands and feet in any part of Europe; and that to the eye of an Italian the wrists and ankles of most English women would not serve as a study even for those revivalisms of the antique which are to be purchased in our streets for a few shillings.” Whatever may be true of wrists and ankles, the toes must be excepted, at least if a larger percentage of Italian than of English women have the second toe longer.

Although in matters where so many individual differences exist it is hazardous to generalise, the following remarks on national peculiarities in feet, made by a reviewer of Zachariae’s Diseases of the Human Foot, may be cited for what they are worth: “The French foot is meagre, narrow, and bony; the Spanish foot is small and elegantly curved, thanks to its Moorish blood.... The Arab foot is proverbial for its high arch; ‘a stream can run under his foot,’ is a description of its form. The foot of the Scotch is large and thick—that of the Irish flat and square—the English short and fleshy. The American foot is apt to be disproportionately small.”

BEAUTIFYING HYGIENE

Walking, running, and dancing are the most potent cosmetics for producing a foot beautiful in form and graceful in movement. It is possible that much walking does slightly increase the size of the foot, but not enough to become perceptible in the life of an individual; and it has been sufficiently shown that the standard of Beauty in a foot is not smallness but curved outlines, litheness, and grace of gait, these qualities being a thousand times more powerful “love-charms” than the smallest Chinese foot. Moreover, it is probable that graceful walking has no tendency to enlarge the foot as a whole, but only the great toe; and a well-developed great toe is a distinctive sign of higher evolution.

It is useless for any one to try to walk or dance gracefully in shoes which do not allow the toes to spread and act like two sets of elastic springs. One of the most curious aberrations of modern taste is the notion that the shape of the natural foot is not beautiful—that it will look better if made narrowest in front instead of widest. Even were this so, it would not pay to sacrifice all grace to a slight gain in Beauty. But it is not so. It is only habit, which blunts perception, that makes us indifferent to the ugliness of the pointed shoes in our shop-windows, or even in many cases prefer them to naturally-shaped shoes. Were we once accustomed to properly-shaped hygienic boots, in which no part of the foot is cramped, our present shoes, with their unnatural curves where there should be none, and the absence of curves where they should be (“rights and lefts”), would seem as “awful” and “horrid” as the old crinoline does to the eyes of the present generation. As Professor Flower remarks: “The fact that the excessively pointed, elongated toes of the time of Richard II., for instance, were superseded by the broad, round-toed, almost elephantine, but most comfortable shoes seen in the portraits of Henry VIII. and his contemporaries, shows that there is nothing in the former essential to the gratification of the Æsthetic instincts of mankind. Each form was, doubtless, equally admired in the time of its prevalence.”

The Germans claim that it was one of their countrymen, Petrus Camper, who first called attention, about a hundred years ago, to another objectionable peculiarity of the modern shoe—its high heels—ruinous alike to comfort, grace, and health (a number of female diseases being caused by them); yet they admit that Camper’s advice was hardly heeded by the Germans, and that it therefore serves them right that quite recently the modern hygienic shoe, with low, broad heels, has been introduced in Germany as the “English form,” the English having proved themselves less obtuse and conservative in this matter.

The heel is, however, capable of still further improvement. It is not elastic like the cushion of the heel, after which it should be modelled; and Dr. Schaffer’s suggestion that an elastic mechanism should be introduced in the heel is certainly worthy of trial. Everybody knows how much more lightly, gracefully, as well as noiselessly, he can walk in rubbers than in leather shoes; and this gain is owing to the superior elasticity of the heel and the middle part of the shoe, covering the arch, which should be especially elastic. It is pleasanter to walk in a meadow than on a stone pavement; but if we wear soles that are both soft and elastic we need never walk on a hard surface; for then, as Dr. Schaffer remarks, “we have the meadow in our boots.”

As the left foot always differs considerably from the right, it is not sufficient to have one measure taken. The fact that shoemakers do take but one measure shows what clumsy bunglers most of them are. As a rule, it is easier to get a fit from a large stock of ready-made boots than at a shoemaker’s.

The stockings, as well as the shoes, often cramp and deform the foot; and Professor Flower suggests that they should never be made with pointed toes, or similar forms for both sides. Digitated stockings, however, are a nuisance, for they hamper the free and elastic action of the toes. Woollen stockings are the best both for summer and winter use. No one who has ever experienced the comfort of wearing woollen socks (and underclothes in general), will ever dream of reverting to silk, cotton, or any other material.

Soaking the feet in water in which a handful of salt has been dissolved, several times a week, is an excellent way of keeping the skin in sound condition. For perfect cleanliness it does not suffice to change the socks frequently. As the author of the Ugly Girl Papers remarks, “The time will come when we will find it as shocking to our ideas to wear out a pair of boots without putting in new lining as we think the habits of George the First’s time, when maids of honour went without washing their faces for a week, and people wore out their linen without the aid of a laundress.”

DANCING AND GRACE

Among the ancients dancing included graceful gestures and poses of all parts of the body, as well as facial expression. In Oriental dancing of the present day, likewise, graceful movements of the arms and upper part of the body play a more important rÔle than the lower limbs. Modern dancing, on the contrary, is chiefly an affair of the lower extremities. It is pre-eminently an exercise of the toes; and herein lies its hygienic and beautifying value, for, as we have seen, grace of gait depends chiefly on the firm litheness and springiness of the toes, especially the great toe. By their grace of gait one can almost always distinguish persons who have enjoyed the privilege of dancing-lessons, which have strengthened their toes and, by implication, many other muscles, not forgetting those of the arm, which has to hold the partner.

There are thousands of young women who have no opportunities for prolonged and exhilarating exercise except in ballrooms. In the majority of cases, unfortunately, Fashion, the handmaid of Ugliness and Disease, frustrates the advantages which would result from dancing by prescribing for ballrooms not only the smallest shoes, but the tightest corsets and the lowest dresses, which render it impossible or imprudent to breathe fresh air, without which exercise is of no hygienic value, and may even be injurious. But what are such trifling sacrifices as Health, Beauty, and Grace compared to the glorious consciousness of being fashionable!

The ballroom is Cupid’s camping ground, not only because it facilitates the acquisition of that grace by which he is so easily enamoured, but because it affords such excellent opportunities for Courtship and Sexual Selection. And this applies not only to the era of modern Romantic Love, but, from its most primitive manifestations in the animal world, dancing, like song, has been connected with love and courtship.

Darwin devotes several pages to a description of the love-antics and dances of birds. Some of them, as the black African weaver, perform their love-antics on the wing, “gliding through the air with quivering wings, which make a rapid whirring sound like a child’s rattle;” others remain on the ground, like the English white-throat, which “flutters with a fitful and fantastic motion;” or the English bustard, who “throws himself into indescribably odd attitudes whilst courting the female;” and a third class, the famous Bower-birds, perform their love-antics in bowers specially constructed and adorned with leaves, shells, and feathers. These are the earliest ballrooms known in natural history; and it is quite proper to call them so, for, as Darwin remarks, they “are built on the ground for the sole purpose of courtship, for their nests are formed in trees.”

Passing on to primitive man, we again find him inferior to animals in not knowing that the sole proper function of dancing is in the service of Love, courtship, and grace. Savages have three classes of dance, two being performed by the men alone, the third by men and women. First come the war-dances, in which the grotesquely-painted warriors brandish their spears and utter unearthly howls, to excite themselves for an approaching contest. Second, the Hunter’s Dances, in which the game is impersonated by some of the men and chased about, which leads to many comic scenes; though there is a serious undercurrent of superstition, for they believe that such dances—a sort of saltatorial prayer—bring on good luck in the subsequent real chase. Third, the dance of Love, practised e.g. by the Brazilian Indians, with whom “men and women dance a rude courting dance, advancing in lines with a kind of primitive polka step” (Tylor.) That there is as little refinement and idealism in the savage’s dances as in his love-affairs in general is self-evident.

The civilised nations of antiquity, as we have seen, had no prolonged Courtship, and therefore no Romantic Love. Since young men and women were not allowed to meet freely, dancing was of course not esteemed as a high social accomplishment. It was therefore commonly relegated to a special class of women (or slaves), such as the Bayaderes of India and the Greek flute girls. Notwithstanding that even the Greek gods are sometimes represented as dancing, yet this art came to be considered a sign of effeminacy in men who indulged in it; and as for the Romans, their view is indicated in Cicero’s anathema: “No man who is sober dances, unless he is out of his mind, either when alone or in decent society, for dancing is the companion of wanton conviviality, dissoluteness, and luxury.”

In ancient Egypt, too, the upper classes were not allowed to learn dancing. And herein, as in so many things in which women are concerned, the modern Oriental is the direct descendant of the ancients. “In the eyes of the Chinese,” says M. Letourneau, “dancing is a ridiculous amusement by which a man compromises his dignity.”

Plato appears to have been the first who recognised the importance of dancing as affording opportunities for Courtship and pre-matrimonial acquaintance. But his advice remained unheeded by his countrymen. A view regarding dancing similar to Plato’s was announced by an uncommonly liberal theologian of the sixteenth century in the words, as quoted by Scherr, that “Dancing had been originally arranged and permitted with the respectable purpose of teaching manners to the young in the presence of many people, and enabling young men and maidens to form honest attachments. For in the dance it was easy to observe and note the habits and peculiarities of the young.”

Thus we see that, with the exception of the savage’s war-dances and hunting pantomimes, the art of dancing has at all times and everywhere been born of love; even the ancient religious dances having commonly been but a veil concealing other purposes, as among the Greeks. But all ceremonial dancing, like ceremonial kissing, has been from the beginning doomed to be absorbed and annihilated by the all-engrossing modern passion of Romantic Love.

True, as a miser mistakes the means for the end and loves gold for its own sake, so we sometimes see girls dance alone—possibly with a vaguely coy intention of giving the men to understand that they can get along without them. But their heart is not in it, and they never do it when there are men enough to go round. As for the men, they are too open and frank ever to veil their sentiments. They never dance except with a woman.

To-day our fashion and society papers are eternally complaining of the fact that the young men—especially the desirable young men—seem to have lost all interest in dancing. But who is to blame for this? Certainly not the men. It is Fashion again, and the mothers who sacrifice the matrimonial prospects of their daughters—as well as their Health, Beauty, and Individuality—to this hideous fetish. It is the late hours of the dance, prescribed by Fashion, that are responsible for the apparent loss of masculine interest in this art. Formerly, when aristocracy meant laziness and stupidity, the habit of turning night into day was harmless or even useful, because it helped to rid the world prematurely of a lot of fools. But to-day the leading men of the community are also the busiest. Aristocracy implies activity, intellectual and otherwise. Hence there are few men in the higher ranks who have not their regular work to do during the day. To ask them after a day’s hard labour to go to a dance beginning at midnight and ending at four or five is to ask them to commit suicide. Sensible men do not believe in slow suicide, hence they avoid dancing-parties as if such parties were held in small-pox hospitals.

Let society women throw their stupid conservatism to the winds. Let them arrange balls to begin at eight or nine and end at midnight or one, and “desirable” men will be only too eager to flock to assemblies which they now shun. The result will be a sudden and startling diminution in the number of old maids and bachelors.

It is the moral duty of mothers who have marriageable daughters to encourage this reform. Maternal love does not merely imply solicitude for the first twenty years of a daughter’s life, but careful provision for the remainder of her life, covering twice that period, by enabling her to meet and choose a husband after her own heart

EVOLUTION OF DANCE MUSIC

Did space permit, it would be interesting to study in detail the dances of various epochs and countries, coloured, like the Love which originated them, by national peculiarities—the Polish mazourka and polonaise, the Spanish fandango, the Viennese waltz, the Parisian cancan, etc. Suffice it to note the great difference between the dances of a few generations ago and those of to-day, as shown most vividly in the evolution of dance-music.

The earliest dance-tunes are vocal, and were sung by the (professional) dancers themselves, in the days when the young were not yet allowed to meet, converse, and flirt and dance. Subsequently, the transference of dance-music to instruments played by others gave the dancers opportunity to perform more complicated figures, and made it possible to converse. But even as late as the eighteenth century dancing and dance-music were characterised by a stately reserve, slowness, and pompous dignity which showed at once that they had nothing to do with Romantic Love. It was not the fiery, passionate youths who danced these solemnly stupid minuets, gavottes, sarabandes, and allemandes, but the older folks, whose perruques, and collars, and frills, and bloated clothes would not have enabled them to execute rapid movements even if the warm blood of youth had coursed in their veins.

How all this artificiality and snail-like pomp has been brushed away by triumphant Romantic Love, which has secured for modern lovers the privilege of dancing together before they are married and cease to care for it! True, we still have the monotonous soporific quadrille, as if to remind us of bygone times; but the true modern dance is the round dance, which differs from the stately mediÆval dance as a jolly rural picnic does from a formal morning call.

The difference between the mediÆval and the modern dance is thus indicated by F. Bremer:—

“Peculiar to modern dance-music is the round dance, especially the waltz; and it is in consequence warmer than the older dance-music, more passionate in expression, in rhythm and modulation more sharply accented. As its creator we must regard Carl Maria von Weber, who, in his Invitation to Dance, struck the keynote through which subsequently, in the music of Chopin, Lanner, Strauss, Musard, etc., utterance was given to the whole gamut of dreamy, languishing, sentimental, ardent passion. The consequence was the displacement of the stately, measured dances by impetuous, chivalrous forms; and in place of the former naÏve sentimentality and childish mirth, it is the rapture of Love that constitutes the spirit of modern dance-music.”

Not to speak of more primitive dance-tunes, what a difference there is between the slow and dreary monotony of eighteenth century dances and a Viennese waltz of to-day! The vast superiority of a Strauss waltz lies in this—that it is no longer a mere rhythmic noise calculated to guide the steps, and skips, and bows, and evolutions of the dancers, but the symphonic accompaniment to the first act in the drama of Romantic Love. It recognises the fact that Courtship is the prime object of the dance. Hence, though still bound by the inevitable dance rhythm, Strauss is ever trying to break loose from it, to secure that freedom and variety of rhythm which is needed to give full utterance to passion. Note the slow, pathetic introductions; the signs in the score indicating an accelerated or retarded tempo when the waltz is played at a concert, where the uniformity of ballroom movement is not called for; note what subtle use he makes of all the other means of expressing amorous feeling—the wide melodic intervals, the piquant, stirring harmonies, the exquisitely melancholy flashes of instrumental colouring, alternating with cheerful moments, showing a subtle psychologic art of translating the Mixed Moods of Love into the language of tones.

In the waltzes, mazourkas, and polonaises of Chopin we see still more strikingly that the true function of dance-music is amorous. Even as Dante’s Love for Beatrice was too super-sensual, too ethereal for this world, so Chopin’s dance-pieces are too subtle, too full of delicate nuances of tempo and Love episodes, to be adapted to a ballroom with ordinary mortals. Graceful fairies alone could dance a Chopin waltz; mortals are too heavy, too clumsy. They can follow an amorous Chopin waltz with the imagination alone, which is the abode of Romantic Love. To a Strauss waltz a hundred couples may make love at once, hence he writes for the orchestra; but Chopin wrote for the parlour piano, because the feelings he utters are too deep to be realised by more than two at a time—one who plays and one who listens, till their souls dance together in an ecstatic embrace of Mutual Sympathy.

THE DANCE OF LOVE

It is at Vienna, which has more feminine grace and beauty to the square mile than any other city in the world, that the art of dancing is to be seen in its greatest perfection. No wonder that it is the home of the Waltz-King, Johann Strauss; and that a Viennese feuilletonist has shown the deepest insight into the psychology of the dance in an article from which the following excerpts are taken:—

"The waltz has a creative, a rejuvenating power, which no other dance possesses. The skipping polka is characterised by a certain stiffness and angularity, a rhythm rather sober and old-fashioned. The galop is a wild hurricane, which moves along rudely and threatens to blow over everything that comes in its way; it is the most brutal of all dances, an enemy of all tender and refined feelings, a bacchanalian rushing up and down....

"The waltz, therefore, remains as the only true and real dance. Waltzing is not walking, skipping, jumping, rushing, raving; it is a gentle floating and flying; from the heaviest men it seems to take away some of their materiality, to raise the most massive women from the ground into the air. True, the Viennese alone know how to dance it, as they alone know how to play it....

“The waltz insists on a personal monopoly, on being loved for its own sake, and permits no vapid side-remarks regarding the fine weather, the hot room, the toilets of the ladies; the couple glide along hardly speaking a word; except that she may beg for a pause, or he, indefatigable, insatiable, intoxicated by the music and motion, the fragrance of flowers and ladies, invites her to a new flight around the hall. And yet is this mute dance the most eloquent, the most expressive and emotional, the most sensuous that could be imagined; and if the dancer has anything to say to his partner, let him mutely confide it to her in the sweet whirl of a waltz, for then the music is his advocate, then every bar pleads for him, every note is a billet-doux, every breath a declaration of love. Jealous husbands do not allow their wives to waltz with another man. They are right, for the waltz is the Dance of Love.”

BALLET-DANCING

There is one more form of dancing which may be briefly alluded to, because it illustrates the hypocrisy of the average mortal as well as the rarity of true Æsthetic taste. Solo ballet-dancing is admired not only by the bald-headed old men in the parquet, but there are critics who seriously discuss such dancing as if it were a fine art; generally lamenting the good old times of the great and graceful ballet-dancers. The truth is that ballet-dancing never can be graceful, as now practised. To secure graceful movement it is absolutely necessary to make use of the elasticity of the toes—to touch the ground at the place where the toes articulate with the middle foot, and to give the last push with the yielding great toe. Ballet-dancers, however, walk on the tips of their stiffened toes, the result of which is, as the anatomist, Professor Kollmann, remarks, that “their gait is deprived of all elasticity and becomes stiff, as in going on stilts.”

It speaks well for the growing sensibility of mankind that this form of dancing is gradually losing favour. Like the vocal tight-rope dancing of the operatic prime donne with whom ballet-dancers are associated, their art is a mere circus-trick, gaped at as a difficult tour de force, but appealing in no sense to Æsthetic sentiments.

These strictures, of course, apply merely to solo-dancing on tiptoe. The spectacular ballet, which delights the eye with kaleidoscopic colours and groupings, is quite another thing, and may be made highly artistic.