Diogenes of London (collection)/Neaera's Hair
NEÆRA'S HAIR
VIEWED with a quiet judgment, as it were in the placid observation of art, I cannot affect a genuine passion for her hair. Its intrinsic worth is of the highest, I acknowledge, and it would go upon the market at a notable price. But, to be honest, I have never taken fire save at the touch of something very human, and the absolute or the ideal, however consummate, I have always reckoned in the very coldest values. The sheer perfection of a form or colour, the exquisite achievement of some independent and impersonal beauty, has always seemed to me desolate and uninspiring. It is the easiest affair to execute marmoreal contours, and to follow them with the eye is to get only the integral interpretations of sense; but relate them to a human soul, and the very devil is in your emotions. Of themselves the tresses of a woman's hair discover no particular charm, but may be simulated in a score of factories. There is, to be sure, a certain distinction in colours, as there are also degrees of fineness and variations of abundance; but properties of this sort away from the human subject are ineloquent and ineffectual. Were it not for her own rare beauty and the individual framework of her sex, I fear Neæra's hair would be of little moment in my life; whereas it is now the supreme end and finish of her loveliness, for which I profess a taste something unwarrantable and very inordinate.
'God,' I have said, while riveted upon the confusion of her face, 'contrived three wonders in this creature, woman: the one her eyes; her long and slender outline for the second; and—to crown all—her hair. The rest, maybe. He rendered by some deputy.' The thought is a superfluous blasphemy, the merest ecstasy of contemplation, in no wise the issue of my calmer moments. As at a sober distance from her presence I resolve within myself the complex riddle of my feelings for her, I can see now how unessential, how immaterial, is that one grace of hers that takes me to the upper heights of passion. Her hair is the most idle accident of her composition, an after-thought in her design, a supererogant fancy, nothing warm nor intimate, imposed upon the full, rich body of her breathing humanity. All other parts of her have part in her; her hair alone is distressingly exterior. I can hardly imagine there is one freer than herself to the mercy of tempestuous and aëry humours. I suppose she is more supremely sensitive to her own thoughts than any of her sex since Eve: the slightest flutter of her heart flashes on the instant in her eyes, and thrills through her delicate flesh. More sensations flit over her changing features than you would credit to the feelings of an hour. Her expressions are her soul, and she herself is an oblation to the visual passions. But in all those outward offices her hair has no part; the passions in full cry sweep through her, leaving it unruffled. It is extrinsic and imparticular, the veriest appanage to an unerring mirror of her inner self, of a cold essential beauty, changeless, subservient, gestureless, and dead. There is no fancy nor mood in her soul but twinkles a moment in her eyes, which are a record surer than might be devised of science. Each mute thought, demure or wild, rebellious or serene, leaps in a dart to the surface of that blue, flashes and drowns in those deep and silent wells. Nor is there a strenuous emotion that spares her slender frame. I have seen Fear break from her eyes, pass, and run trembling down her body. Disdain has gleamed through those enchanted windows, and quivered on her fastidious shoulders. From those clear deeps Anger has sprung forth upon me, and her bosom has rocked to its frail foundations. And there too I have watched Love circling as the great lights dancing on a summer sea. There never lived on earth a creature of such rare poise.
And her long tresses sleep quietly upon her head. From all these fascinating exhibitions of herself they stand apart, dumb sentinels on her loveliness. I could admit no glory in them separate from her, and of God's three gifts they are the least of note. And yet they stir me as though they were the prime factors in her beauty. To gaze upon her hair is to break the last bonds of my senses, and to set my heart crying in the night. The lustrous brown, with its swift passages of gold, sits demure upon a dainty brow, soft, wreathing, and all-fragrant. Ten thousand wavering threads go in and out together, burning and shining and flickering on her head. Her hair caresses her; it runs in a company of myriads, it curves in innumerable tiny arcs, it droops in a multitude of intertwined festoons; it rises in slow curls, it falls in minute and tremulous cascades; it is of infinite complexity, of manifold audacity. And on a day when the warm summer gusts are chasing through the woods I have seen it, free of its catches, stirring in the wind, a stream of fire in the sun's eye. At such a time it wakes into life and blows to the air. It is as vital then as the gay features of her face; at each breath it swerves, and it tosses; it riots with the wind; it runs atremble down the breezes. It keeps high holiday against heaven, and leaps, a merry frolic, to the sky. Ah, then is it instinct with life and light. Then is she bound with a cowl of gold: a hood of motley gold—gold upon her head and gold upon her shoulders, dancing gold about her arms and bosom.
One confidence contents me in Neæra's hair. So tranquilly it rests on her pretty head, that it will suffer no thought of change. It shall abide against the press of Time, when all else fails. Years shall not touch it, nor filch any fragrance from those coils. In the face of Death shall this fine grace be left her: change shall bereave her of her eloquent form; the eyes shall narrow and grow dim; but untarnished, unimpaired, surely that golden hair shall abide through all decay.