In my search for the curious, which I hope that nothing will ever
satiate, I came recently upon this advertisement at the end of a not
too respectable comic paper:--
HANDSOME MEN are slightly sun-burnt. “Sunbronze” gives this tint.
Harmless. Detection impossible. Makes men really handsome. Society
Lady writes:--“Sunbronze is wonderful, charming, and genuine.” 1s.
1½d., etc.
When I read it first I laughed. Then I cut it out. Then I began not to
laugh; and I am not sure now that one ought not to weep....
We were considering earlier in this volume a certain kind of fool’s
paradise--the paradise which surrounds the collector-fool who genuinely
believes his geese to be swans. That amiable simpleton deceived no one;
he was merely soothingly and caressingly self-deceived to the top of
his bent through a heaven-sent want of true taste. Compared with him
the man who deliberately rubs a mixture on his face in order to induce
his friends to believe that he has been much in the sun when he has
not is complex indeed--for he is deceiving every one else without for
an instant deceiving himself at all. For that is my reading of that
advertisement. I do not accept its face value; I do not believe that
it is bought by men in order to render themselves more attractive to
the fair. My reading is that it is bought by men (and perhaps by women
too: you observe the testimony of the Society Lady?) in order that it
may lend colour to their assertion that they have been fashionably or
expensively holiday-making when they have not.
But why pretend? you say. Ah! you are perhaps well-to-do. Nothing keeps
you at home; or even if it did, it would not cause you shame. But can
you not believe that there are others?...