A hundred years ago the Books of Beauty had line engravings by Charles
Heath, and long-necked, ringleted ladies looked wistfully or simperingly
at you. I have several examples: _Caskets_, _Albums_, _Keepsakes_. The
new Book of Beauty has a very different title. It is called _The
Pekingese_, and is the revised edition for 1914.
The book is different in other ways too. The steel engravers having long
since all died of starvation, here are photographs only, in large
numbers, and (strange innovation!) there are more of gentlemen than of
ladies. For this preponderance there is a good commercial reason, as any
student of the work will quickly discover, for we are now entering a
sphere of life where the beauty of the sterner sex (if so severe a word
can be applied to such sublimation of everything that is soft and
voluptuous and endearing) is more considered than that of the other.
Beautiful ladies are here in some profusion, but the first place is for
beautiful and guinea-earning gentlemen.
In the old Books of Beauty one could make a choice. There was always one
lady supremely longer-necked, more wistful or more simpering than the
others. But in this new Book of Beauty one turns the pages only to be
more perplexed. The embarrassment of riches is too embarrassing. I have
been through the work a score of times and am still wondering on whom my
affections and admiration are most firmly fixed.
How to play the part of Paris where all the competitors have some
irresistibility, as all have of either sex? Once I thought that Wee Mo
of Westwood was my heart's chiefest delight, "a flame-red little dog
with black mask and ear-fringes, profuse coat and featherings, flat wide
skull, short flat face, short bowed legs and well-shaped body." But then
I turned back to Broadoak Beetle and on to Broadoak Cirawanzi, and
Young Beetle, and Nanking Fo, and Ta Fo of Greystones, and Petshé Ah
Wei, and Hay Ch'ah of Toddington, and that superb Sultanic creature,
King Rudolph of Ruritania, and Champion Howbury Ming, and Su Eh of
Newnham, and King Beetle of Minden, and Champion Hu Hi, and Mo Sho, and
that rich red dog, Buddha of Burford. And having chosen these I might
just as well scratch out their names and write others, for every male
face in this book is a poem.
The ladies, as I have said, are in the minority, for the obvious reason
that these little disdainful distinguished gentlemen figure here as
potential fathers, with their fees somewhat indelicately named: since
there's husbandry on earth as well as in heaven.
Such ladies as are here are here for their beauty alone and are beyond
price. Among them I note with especial joy Yiptse of Chinatown, Mandarin
Marvel, who "inherits the beautiful front of her sire, Broadoak Beetle";
Lavender of Burton-on-Dee, "fawn, with black mask"; Chi-Fa of
Alderbourne, "a most charming and devoted little companion"; Yeng Loo of
Ipsley; Detlong Mo-li of Alderbourne, one of the "beautiful red
daughters of Wong-ti of Alderbourne," Champion Chaou Chingur, of whom
her owner says that "in quaintness and individuality and in loving
disposition she is unequalled," and is also "quite a 'woman of the
world,' very _blasée_ and also very punctilious in trifles"; Pearl of
Cotehele, "bright red, with beautiful back"; E-Wo Tu T'su; Berylune Tzu
Hsi Chu; Ko-ki of Radbourne and Siddington Fi-fi.
Every now and then there is an article in the papers asking and
answering the question, What is the greatest benefit that has come to
mankind in the past half-century? The answer is usually the camera, or
matches, or the Marconi system, or the cinema, or the pianola, or the
turbine, or the Röntgen rays, or the telephone, or the bicycle, or Lord
Northcliffe, or the motor-car. Always something utilitarian or
scientific. But why should we not say at once that it was the
introduction of Pekingese spaniels into England from China? Because that
is the truth.