THE FEET.
The same bad taste which insists upon a small waist, let the height
and proportions of the figure be what they will, decrees that a small
foot is essential to beauty.
Size is considered of more importance than form; and justly so if it
is a _sine qua non_ that the foot must be small, because the efforts
that are made to diminish its size generally render it deformed. We
have before mentioned that to endeavor to diminish the size of the
human body in a particular part, is like tying a string round the
middle of a pillow; it only makes it larger at the extremities. It
is so with the waist, it is so with the foot. If it be crippled in
length, or in width across the toes, it spreads over the instep and
sides. The Italians and other nations of the south of Europe have
smaller hands and feet than the Anglo-Saxons; and as this fact is
generally known, it is astonishing that people of sense should persist
in crippling themselves merely for the reputation of having small
feet. Here again we have to complain of poets and romance writers;
ladies would not have pinched their feet into small shoes, if these
worthies had not sung the praises of "tiny feet."
"Her feet, beneath her petticoat,
Like little mice, stole in and out,
As if they feared the light."
Nor are painters--portrait painters, we mean, and living ones too--it
is needless however, to mention names--entirely free from blame for
thus ministering to vanity and false taste. They have sacrificed truth
to fashion in painting the feet smaller than they could possibly be in
nature.
But it is not only with the endeavor to cripple their dimensions that
we are inclined to quarrel. We object _in toto_ to the shape of the
shoe, which bears but little resemblance to that of the foot. We have
heard persons say that they could never see any beauty in a foot. No
wonder, when they saw none but those that were deformed by corns and
bunions. How unlike is such a foot to the beautiful little--for little
it really is in this case--fat foot of a child, before its beauty has
been spoiled by shoes, or even to those of the barefooted children one
sees so frequently in the street. Were it not for these opportunities
of seeing nature we, in this country, should have but little idea of
the true shape of the human foot, except what we learn from statues.
According to a recent traveller, we must go to Egypt to see beautiful
feet. It is impossible, he says, to see any thing more exquisite than
the feet and hands of the female peasants. The same beauty is
conspicuous in the Hindoo women.
Let us compare now the shape of the foot with that of the sole of a
shoe. When the foot is placed on the ground, the toes spread out, the
great toe is in a straight line with the inner side of the foot, and
there is an opening between this and the second toe. The ancients
availed themselves of this opening to pass through it one of the
straps that suspended the sandal.
The moderns on the contrary press the toes closely together, in order
to confine them within the limits of the shoe; the consequence is,
that the end of the great toe is pressed towards the others, and out
of the straight line, the joint becomes enlarged, and thus the
foundation is laid for a bunion; while the toes, forced one upon
another, become distorted and covered with corns.
One of the consequences of this imprisonment of our toes is, that,
from being squeezed so closely together, they become useless. Let any
one try the experiment of walking barefooted across the room, and
while so doing look at the foot. The toes, when unfettered by the
shoes, spread out and divide from one another, and the body rests on a
wider and firmer base. We begin to find we have some movement in our
toes; yet, how feeble is their muscular power, compared with that of
persons who are unaccustomed to the use of shoes!
The Hindoo uses his toes in weaving; the Australian savage is as
handy (if the term can be applied to feet) with this member, as
another man is with his hands; it is the unsuspected instrument with
which he executes his thefts. The country boy, who runs over the roof
of a house like a cat, takes off his shoes before he attempts the
hazardous experiment; he has a surer hold with his foot on the smooth
slates and sloping roof. The exercise of the muscles of the foot has
the effect of increasing the power of those of the calf of the leg;
and the thinner the sole, and the more pliant the materials of which
the shoe is made, the more the power is developed.
Dancing masters, who habitually wear thin shoes, have the muscles of
the leg well developed, while ploughmen, who wear shoes with soles an
inch thick, have very little calf to their leg. The French sabot is,
we consider, better than the closely fitting shoe of our country
people; because it is so large, that it requires some muscular
exertion to keep it in its place. We have frequently seen French boys
running in sabots, the foot rising at every step almost out of the
unyielding wooden shoe. Wooden clogs and pattens are as bad as the
thick shoes of the country people. When clogs are necessary, the sole
should be made of materials which will yield to the motion of the
foot. The American Indian's moccasins are a much better covering for
the foot than our shoes.
If thick soles are objectionable by impeding the free movement of the
limb, what shall we say to the high heel which was once so popular,
and which threatens again to come into fashion? It is to be hoped,
however, when the effects of wearing high heels are duly considered,
that this pernicious custom will not make progress. It is well for
their poor unfortunate votaries, that the introduction of certain
fashions is gradual; that both mind and body--perhaps we should be
more correct in saying the person of the wearer and the eye of the
spectator--are, step by step, prepared for the extreme point which
certain fashions attain; they have their rise, their culminating
point, and their decline. The attempt to exchange the short waists,
worn some thirty or forty years ago, for the very long waists seen
during the past year, would have been unsuccessful; the transition
would have been too great--too violent; the change was effected, but
it was the work of many years. The same thing took place with regard
to the high head-dresses which were so deservedly ridiculed by
Addison, and in an equally marked degree with respect to high heels.
The shoes in the cut, after Gainsborough, (Fig. 71,) are fair
specimens of what were in fashion in his time. Let the reader compare
the line of the sole with that of the human foot placed, as nature
intended it, flat on the ground. The heel was in some cases four and a
half inches high; the line, therefore, must have been in this case, a
highly inclined plane, undulating in its surface, like the "line of
beauty" of Hogarth. The position of the foot is that of a dancer
resting on the toes, excepting that the heel is supported, and the
strain over the instep and contraction of the muscles of the back of
the leg and heel must be considerable; so much so we are told, that
the contraction of the latter becomes habitual; consequently, those
persons who have accustomed themselves to the use of high heels, are
never afterwards able to do without them. It is said that "pride never
feels pain;" we should think the proverb was made for those who wear
high heels, for we are told, although we cannot speak from personal
experience, that the pain on first wearing shoes of this kind, in
which the whole weight of the body seems to thrust the toes forward
into the shoe, is excruciating; nothing but fashion could reconcile
one to such voluntary suffering. The peas in the shoes of the pilgrims
could scarcely be more painful.
[Illustration: Pl. 9.
Figure 66. From Rubens's "Descent from the Cross."
71. From a drawing by Gainsborough.
72. Woman of Myconia.
74. Queen Anne.
]
It was with some surprise that we found among M. Stackelberg's
graceful costumes of modern Greece a pair of high-heeled shoes,
(Fig. 72,) which might rival in ugliness and inconvenience any
of those worn in England.
We have known an instance where the lady's heels were never less than
an inch and a half high. We were sorry to observe some of these
high-heeled shoes in the great exhibition, and still more so, to see
that shoes with heels an inch high are likely to be fashionable
this season. Could we look forward to this height as the limit of the
fashion, we might reconcile ourselves to it for a time; but, judging
from past experience, there is reason to fear that the heel will
become continually higher, until it attains the elevation of former
years. Not content with imprisoning our feet in tight shoes, and
thereby distorting their form and weakening their muscular power, we
are guilty of another violence towards nature. Nature has made our
toes to turn inwards; when man is left to himself the toes naturally
take this direction, though in a much less degree than in the infant.
The American Indian will trace a European by his footprints, which he
detects by the turning out of the toes; a lesson we are taught in our
childhood, and especially by our dancing master. Sir Joshua Reynolds
used to say, "The gestures of children, being all dictated by nature,
are graceful; affectation and distortion come in with the dancing
master." Now, observe the consequence of turning out the toes. The
inner ankle is bent downwards towards the ground, and the knees are
drawn inwards, producing the deformity called knock-kneed; thus the
whole limb is distorted, and consequently weakened; there is always a
want of muscular power in the legs of those who turn their toes very
much outwards. It must be remarked, however, that women, from the
greater breadth of the frame at the hips, naturally turn the toes
out more than men. In this point also, statues may be studied with
advantage. Where form only is considered, it is generally safer to
refer to examples of sculpture than painting; because in the latter,
the artist is apt to lose sight of this primary object in his
attention to color and form; besides, it is the sculptor only, who
makes an exact image of a figure which is equally perfect, seen from
all points of view. The painter makes only a pictorial or perspective
representation of nature, as seen from one point of view only.
What pains we take to distort and disfigure the beautiful form that
nature has bestowed upon the human race! Now building a tower on the
head, then raising the heel at the expense of the toe; at one time
confining the body in a case of whalebone, and compressing it at the
waist like an hour glass; at another, surrounding it with the enormous
and ungraceful hoop, till the outline of the figure is so altered,
that a person can scarcely recognize her own shadow as that of a human
being.