MUSCULAR DEVELOPMENT

The assumption by man of an erect attitude has modified and improved the appearance of his leg and thigh quite as marvellously as his feet. “In walking,” says Professor Kollmann, “the weight of the body is alternately transferred from one foot to the other. Each one is obliged in locomotion to take its turn in supporting the whole body, which explains the great size of the muscles which make up man’s calf. The ape’s calf is smaller for the reason that these animals commonly go on all fours.” Professor Carl Vogt gives these details: “No ape has such a cylindrical, gradually diminishing thigh; and we are justified in saying that man alone possesses thighs. The muscles of the leg are in man so accumulated as to form a calf, while in the ape they are more equally distributed; still, transitions are not wanting, since one of the greatest characteristics of the negro consists in his calfless leg.” And again: “Man possesses, as contrasted with the ape, a distinctive character in the strength, rotundity, and length of the lower limb; especially in the thighs, which in most animals are shortened in proportion to the leg.”

The words here italicised call attention to two of the qualities of Beauty—gradation and the curve of rotundity—which the lower limbs in their evolution are thus seen to be gradually approximating. Other improvements are seen in the greater smoothness, the more graceful and expressive gait resulting from the rounded but straight knee, etc.

The implication that savages are in the muscular development of their limbs intermediate between apes and civilised men calls for further testimony and explanation. Waitz states that “in regard to muscular power Indians are commonly inferior to Europeans”; and Mr. Herbert Spencer has collected much evidence of a similar nature. The Ostyaks have “thin and slender legs”; the Kamtchadales “short and slender legs”; those of the Chinooks are “small and crooked”; and the African Akka have “short and bandy legs.” The legs of Australians are “inferior in mass of muscle”; the gigantic Patagonians have limbs “neither so muscular nor so large-boned as their height and apparent bulk would induce one to suppose.” Spencer likewise calls attention to the fact that relatively-inferior legs are “a trait which, remotely simian, is also repeated by the child of the civilised man”—which thus individually passes through the several stages of development that have successively characterised its ancestors.

Numerous exceptions are of course to be found to the rule that the muscular rotundity and plumpness of the limbs increases with civilisation. The lank shins which may be seen by the hundred among the bathers at our sea-coast resorts contrast disadvantageously with many photographs of savages; and tourists in Africa and among South American Indians and elsewhere have often enough noted the occurrence of individuals and tribes who would have furnished admirable models for sculptors. But this only proves, on the one hand, that “civilised” persons who are uncivilised in their neglect of the laws of Health, inevitably lose certain traits of Beauty which exercise alone can give; while, on the other hand, those “savages” who lead an active and healthy life are in so far civilised, and therefore enjoy the superior attractions bestowed by civilisation. Moreover, as Mr. Spencer suggests, “In combat, the power exercised by arm and trunk is limited by the power of the legs to withstand the strain thrown on them. Hence, apart from advantages in locomotion, the stronger-legged nations have tended to become, other things equal, dominant races.”

“Rengger,” says Darwin, “attributes the thin legs and thick arms of the Payaguas Indians to successive generations having passed nearly their whole lives in canoes, with their lower extremities motionless. Other writers have come to a similar conclusion in analogous cases.”

Although savages have to hunt for a living and occasionally go to war, they are essentially a lazy crew, taking no more exercise than necessary; which accounts for the fact that, with the exceptions noted, their muscular development is inferior to that of higher races.

BEAUTIFYING EXERCISE

One of the most discouraging aspects of modern life is the growing tendency toward concentration of the population in large cities. Not only is the air less salubrious in cities than in the country, but the numerous cheap facilities for riding discourage the habit of walking. London is one of the healthiest cities, and the English the most vigorous race, in the world; yet it is said that it is difficult to trace a London family down through five generations. Few Paris families can, it is said, be traced even through three generations. Without constant rural accessions cities would tend to become depopulated.

The enormous importance of exercise for Health and Beauty, which are impossible without it, is vividly brought out in this statement of Kollmann’s: “Muscles which are thoroughly exercised do not only retain their strength, but increase in circumference and power, in man as in animals. The flesh is then firm, and coloured intensely red. In a paralysed arm the muscles are degenerated, and have lost a portion of one of their most important constituents—albumen. Repeated contractions strengthen a muscle, because motion accelerates the circulation of the blood and the nutrition of the tissues. What a great influence this has on the whole body may be inferred from the fact that the organs of locomotion—the skeleton and muscles—make up more than 82 per cent of the substance of the body. With this enormous proportion of bone and muscle, it is obvious that exercise is essential to bodily health.”

Exercise in a gymnasium is useful but monotonous; and too often the benefits are neutralised by the insufficient provision for fresh air, without which exercise is worse than useless. Hence the superiority of open-air games—base-ball, tennis, rowing, riding, swimming, etc., to the addiction to which the English owe so much of their superior physique. Tourists in Canada invariably notice the wonderful figures of the women, which they owe largely to their fondness for skating. “Beyond question,” says the Lancet, “skating is one of the finest sports, especially for ladies. It is graceful, healthy, stimulating to the muscles, and it develops in a very high degree the important faculty of balancing the body and preserving perfect control over the whole of the muscular system, while bringing certain muscles into action at will. Moreover, there is this about it which is of especial value: it trains by exercise the power of intentionally inducing and maintaining a continuous contraction of the muscles of the lower extremity. The joints, hip, knee, and ankle are firmly fixed or rather kept steadily under control, while the limbs are so set by their muscular apparatus that they form, as it were, part of the skate that glides over the smooth surface. To skate well and gracefully is a very high accomplishment indeed, and perhaps one of the very best exercises in which young women and girls can engage with a view to healthful development.”

For the acquisition of a graceful gait women need such exercise more even than men; and while engaged in it they should pay especial attention to exercising the left side of the body. On this point Sir Charles Bell has made the following suggestive remarks:—

“We see that opera-dancers execute their more difficult feats on the right foot, but their preparatory exercises better evince the natural weakness of the left limb; in order to avoid awkwardness in the public exhibitions, they are obliged to give double practice to the left leg; and if they neglect to do so an ungraceful preference to the right side will be remarked. In walking behind a person we seldom see an equalised motion of the body; the tread is not so firm upon the left foot, the toe is not so much turned out, and a greater push is made with the right. From the peculiar form of woman, and from the elasticity of her step, resulting from the motion of the ankle rather than of the haunches, the defect of the left foot, when it exists, is more apparent in her gait.”

Those who wish to acquire a graceful gait will find several useful hints in this extract from Professor Kollmann’s Plastische Anatomie, p. 506:—

“Human gait, it is well known, is subject to individual variations. Differences are to be noted not only in rapidity of motion, but as regards the position of the trunk and the movements of the limbs, within certain limits. For instance, the gait of very fat persons is somewhat vacillating; other persons acquire a certain dignity of gait by bending and stretching their limbs as little as possible while taking long steps; and others still bend their knees very much, which gives a slovenly character to their gait. And as regards the attitude of the trunk, a different effect is given according as it is inclined backwards or forwards, or executes superfluous movements in the same direction or to the sides. All these peculiarities make an impression on our eyes, while our ears are impressed at the same time by the differences in rapidity of movement, so that we learn to recognise our friends by the sound of their walk as we do by the quality of their voice.”

Bell states that “upwards of fifty muscles of the arm and hand may be demonstrated, which must all consent to the simplest action.” Walking is a no less complicated affair, to which the attention of men of science has been only quite recently directed. The new process of instantaneous photography has been found very useful, but much remains to be done before the mystery of a graceful gait can be considered solved. If some skilled photographer would go to Spain and take a number of instantaneous pictures of Andalusian girls, the most graceful beings in the world, in every variety of attitude and motion, he might render most valuable service to the cause of personal Æsthetics.

The time will come, no doubt, when dancing masters and mistresses will consider the teaching of the waltz and the lancers only the crudest and easiest part of their work, and when they will have advanced classes who will be instructed in the refinements of movement as carefully and as intelligently as professors of music teach their pupils the proper use of the parts and muscles of the hand, to attain a delicate and varied touch. The majority of women might make much more progress in the art of gracefulness than they ever will in music; and is not the poetry of motion as noble and desirable an object of study as any other fine art?

FASHIONABLE UGLINESS

It is the essence of fashion to exaggerate everything to the point of ugliness. Instead of trying to remedy the disadvantages to their gait resulting from anatomical peculiarities (just referred to in a quotation from Bell), women frequently take pains to deliberately exaggerate them. As Alexander Walker remarks: “The largeness of the pelvis and the approximation of the knees influence the gait of woman, and render it vacillating and unsteady. Conscious of this, women, in countries where the nutritive system in general and the pelvis in particular are large, affect a greater degree of this vacillating unsteadiness. An example of this is seen in the lateral and rotatory motion which is given to the pelvis in walking by certain classes of the women in London.”

The Egyptians and Arabians consider this ludicrous rotatory motion a great fascination, and have a special name for it—Ghung.

But Fashion, the handmaid of ugliness, is not content with aping the bad taste of Arabians and Egyptians. It goes several steps lower than that, down to the Hottentots. The latest hideous craze of Fashion, against which not one woman in a hundred had taste or courage enough to revolt—the bustle or “dress-improver” (!)—was simply the milliner’s substitute for an anatomical peculiarity natural to some African savages.

“It is well known,” says Darwin, “that with many Hottentot women the posterior part of the body projects in a wonderful manner; they are steatopygous; and Sir Andrew Smith is certain that this peculiarity is greatly admired by the men. He once saw a woman who was considered a beauty, and she was so immensely developed behind, that when seated on level ground she could not rise, and had to push herself along until she came to a slope. Some of the women in various negro tribes have the same peculiarity; and, according to Burton, the Somal men ‘are said to choose their wives by ranging them in a line, and by picking her out who projects farthest a tergo. Nothing can be more hateful to a negro than the opposite form.’”

Evidently “civilised” and savage women do not differ as regards Fashion, the handmaid of ugliness. But the men do. While the male Hottentots admire the natural steatopyga of their women, civilised men, without exception, detest the artificial imitation of it, which makes a woman look and walk like a deformed dromedary.

THE CRINOLINE CRAZE

The bustle is not only objectionable in itself as a hideous deformity and a revival of Hottentot taste, but still more as a probable forerunner of that most unutterably vulgar article of dress ever invented by Fashion—the crinoline. For we read that when, in 1856, the crinoline came in again, it was preceded by the “inelegant bustle in the upper part of the skirt”; and it is a notorious fact that cunning milliners are making strenuous efforts every year to reintroduce the crinoline.

In their abhorrence of the crinoline men do not stand alone. There are several refined women to-day who would absolutely refuse to submit to the tyranny of Fashion if it should again prescribe the crinoline. One of these is evidently Mrs. Haweis, who in The Art of Beauty remarks that “The crinoline superseded all our attention to posture; whilst our long trains, which can hardly look inelegant [?] even on clumsy persons, make small ankles or thick ones a matter of little moment. We have become inexpressibly slovenly. We no longer study how to walk, perhaps the most difficult of all actions to do gracefully. Our fashionable women stride and loll in open defiance of elegance,” etc. And again: “This gown in outline simply looks like a very ill-shaped wine-glass upside down. The wide crinoline entirely conceals every natural grace of attitude.”

Another lady, writing in the Atlantic Monthly (1859), remarks concerning the crinoline: “A woman in this rig hangs in her skirts like a clapper in a bell; and I never meet one without being tempted to take her by the neck and ring her.”

About 1710, says a writer in the EncyclopÆdia Britannica, “as if resolved that their figures should rival their heads in extravagance, they introduced the hooped petticoat, at first worn in such a manner as to give to the person of the wearer below her very tightly-laced waist a contour resembling the letter V inverted—?. The hooped dresses, thus introduced, about 1740 attained to an enormous expansion; and being worn at their full circumference immediately below the waist, they in many ways emulated the most outrageous of the fardingales of the Elizabethan period.”

“About 1744 hoops are mentioned as so extravagant,” says Chambers’s EncyclopÆdia, “that a woman occupied the space of six men.” George IV. had the good taste to abolish them by royal command, but they were revived in 1856. The newspapers of two decades ago daily contained accounts of accidents due to the idiotic crinoline. “The Spectator dealt out much cutting, though playful, raillery at the hoops of his day, but apparently with little effect; and equally unavailing are the satires of Punch and other caricaturists of the present time against the hideous fashion of crinoline.... Owing to its prevalence, church-pews that formerly held seven are now let for six, and yet feel rather crowded. The hoops are sometimes made with a circumference of four or even five yards.”

It is universally admitted that the human form, in its perfection, is Nature’s chef d’oeuvre—the most finished specimen of her workmanship. Yet the accounts of savage taste given by travellers and anthropologists show that the savage is never satisfied with the human outlines as God made them, but constantly mars and mutilates them by altering the shape of the head, piercing the nose, filing or colouring the teeth, enlarging the lips to enormous dimensions, favouring an adipose bustle, etc. This is precisely what modern Fashion, the handmaid of ugliness, does. We have just seen how fashionable women, unable to comprehend the beauty of the human form, have for several generations endeavoured to give it the shape of “a very ill-shaped wine-glass, upside down,” “a clapper in a bell,” or “the letter V inverted.” And concerning Queen Elizabeth the Atlantic writer already quoted says very pithily: “What with stomachers and pointed waist and fardingale, and sticking in here and sticking out there, and ruffs and cuffs, and ouches and jewels and puckers, she looks like a hideous flying insect with expanded wings, seen through a microscope—not at all like a woman.”

Fortunately, for the moment, the crinoline, like the fardingale, is not “in fashion.” But, as already stated, there is considerable danger of a new invasion every year; and, should Fashion proclaim its edict, no doubt the vast majority of women would follow, as they did a decade or two ago. In the interest of good taste, as of common sense, it is therefore necessary to speak with brutal frankness on this subject. There is good evidence to show that the crinoline originated in the desire of an aristocratic dame of low moral principles to conceal the evidences of a crime. Hence the original French name for the crinoline—Cache-BÂtard. Will respectable and refined women consent once more to have the fashion set for them by a courtesan?