There is hardly anything concerning which vain people are so sensitive
as their feet. To have large feet is considered one of the greatest
misfortunes that can befall a woman. Mathematically stated, the length
of a woman’s skirts is directly proportional to the size of her feet;
and women with large feet are always shocked at the frivolity of those
who have neat ankles and coquettishly allow them to be seen on occasion;
nor do they see any beauty in Sir John Suckling’s lines—
“Her feet beneath her petticoat
Like little mice stole in and out,
As if they feared the light.”
Nor are men, as a rule, sufficiently free from pedal vanity to pose as
satirists. Byron found a mark of aristocracy in small feet, and he was
rendered almost as miserable by the morbid consciousness of his own
defects as Mme. de Staël (who had very ugly feet, yet once ventured to
assume the _rôle_, in private theatricals, of a statue) was offended by
Talleyrand’s witticism, that he recognised her by the _pied de Staël_.
There is a _ben trovato_, if not true, story of a clever wife who
objected to her husband’s habit of spending his evenings away from home,
and who reformed him by utilising his vanity. By insisting that his
boots were too large, she repeatedly induced him to buy smaller ones,
which finally tortured him so much that he was only too glad to stay at
home and wear his slippers.