Littell's Living Age/Volume 146/Issue 1893/Why our Poor are Ugly

Why our Poor are Ugly

Mr. Darwin believes that the general beauty of the English upper class, and especially of the titled aristocracy — a beauty which even a hardened radical like the present writer must frankly admit that they possess in an unusual degree — is probably due to their constant selection of the most beautiful women of all classes (peeresses, actresses, or wealthy bourgeoisie) as wives through an immense number of generations. The regular features and fine complexions of the mothers are naturally handed down by heredity to their descendants. Similarly it would seem that we must account for the high average of personal beauty amongst the ancient Greeks and the modern Italians by the high average of general taste, the strong love for the beautiful, diffused amongst all classes in both those races. The prettier women and the handsomer men would thus stand a better chance of marrying, other things equal, and of handing down their own refined type of face and figure to their children. If this be so — and evolutionists at least can hardly doubt it —then we should expect everywhere to find the general level of personal beauty highest where there was the widest diffusion of æsthetic taste. Now, our own squalid poor are noticeable, as a rule, for their absolute and repulsive ugliness, even when compared with those of other European countries. "La laideur," says M. Tame with truth, in his "Notes sur l'Angleterre," "est plus laide que chez nous." Gaunt, hard-faced women, low-browed, bull-dog-looking men, sickly, shapeless children people the back slums of our manufacturing towns. Their painful ugliness cannot all be due to their physical circumstances alone; for the lazzaroni who hang about the streets of Naples must lead lives of about equal hardship and discomfort; yet many of them, both men and women, are beautiful enough to sit as models for a Leonardo. On the other hand, every traveller speaks in high admiration of the beauty and gracefulness displayed by young and old amongst the æsthetic Polynesians; while in many like cases I note that Europeans who have once become accustomed to the local type find decidedly pretty faces extremely common in several savage races whose primitive works of art show them in other ways to possess considerable æsthetic taste. In India, where artistic feeling is universal, almost every man or woman is handsome. On the whole, it seems to me fairly proved that the average personal beauty everywhere roughly corresponds to the average general love for beauty in the abstract.

If we compare the savage hut and its contents with the modern workman's cottage, the contrast becomes even more striking. Here our judgment is not disturbed by those wide fluctuations of fashion which make it difficult for us to appreciate the æsthetic intent of a tattooed New Zealand nose or a parti-colored Ojibway forehead. The more a man studies savage art, the more is he struck by the almost universal good taste which it displays. Every chair, stool, or bench is prettily shaped and neatly carved. Every club, paddle, or staff is covered with intricate tracery which puts to shame our European handicraft. Every calabash or gourd is richly wrought with geometrical patterns or conventionalized floral and animal designs. The most primitive pottery is graceful in form and irreproachable in its simple ornament of stringcourses or bead-work. Central African bowls and drinking-cups almost rival Etruscan or Hellenic shapes. Prehistoric vases from the barrows or lake dwellings are not less lovely than the Trojan or Mycenæan models which are now teaching our modern potters a long-forgotten secret of taste. Even the stone hatchets and arrow-heads of the very earliest age show a decided striving after æsthetic effect. And when we remember that these exquisite carvings and these polished jade implements are produced with miserably inefficient tools and appliances — when we recollect the instances quoted by Sir John Lubbock where whole years are spent in the perfecting of a single art-product, in grinding smooth a jasper hatchet or polishing a crystal ear-drop — we cannot fail to wonder at the æsthetic fervor of these unsophisticated artists. There is positively no object, however insignificant, in the ordinary savage hut, on which immense pains have not been expended for purely ornamental purposes.

Look, by way of contrast, at our English laborer's cottage. A few painted deal chairs, a square, white table, an iron bedstead, half a dozen plain Delft cups and saucers, a little coarse table linen, and a pile of bedclothes — these constitute almost the whole furniture of nine out of ten English households. We must not be led away by thinking of a stray cottage or so in the country, of a few model workmen's houses in the outskirts of our towns, where gay flowers and bits of ornamental pottery add a touch of grace to the little home. Such homes are really quite exceptional, and by far the larger number of our people seem wholly destitute of æsthetic surroundings in any shape. We must never forget that the vast majority of Englishmen live and die either in the stifling dens of our great towns or in the cheerless little stone-floored cottages of our country, whose thatched eaves look so picturesque without and whose bare walls chill the eye with their cold reception within. Why is it that civilization has done so little to raise, or rather so much to lower, their æsthetic sensibilities?