Thus we have evidence showing that during the epoch preceding the
general prevalence of Romantic Love, the blond type was considered the
ideal of beauty throughout Europe—in Greece and Italy as well as in
Germany, Scandinavia, France, and England. And where the hair was not
naturally blond, artificial means were used to make it so.
But as soon as Love appears on the scene and sharpens the æsthetic
sense, we find a reaction in favour of brunettes. There can be no doubt
of this, for it is attested not only by personal opinions and
observations, but by accurate statistics. The _Quarterly Review_ just
referred to believed that blondes were gradually decreasing in England,
and the _Saturday Review_ asserts that “some years ago Mr. Gladstone,
whom nothing escapes, declared that light-haired people were far less
numerous than in his youth. Many middle-aged persons will probably agree
with him.” “The time was,” the writer adds, “when the black-haired,
black-eyed girl of fiction was as dark of soul as of tresses, while the
blue-eyed maiden’s character was of ‘heaven’s own colour.’ Thackeray
damaged this tradition by invariably making his dark heroines nice, his
fair heroines treacherous sirens.” Byron, we may add, also showed a
passionate preference for brunettes; and does not another great
love-poet, Moore, speak of “eyes of unholy blue”?
Speaking of the Germans, the anthropologist Waitz remarks that “the
blond and red hair, the blue eyes and light complexion, which most of
them had at the period of the Roman wars, have not disappeared, it is
true, but certainly diminished greatly in frequency. In Jarrold we find
the analogous statement that as late as the time of Henry VIII. red hair
predominated in England, and that at the beginning of the fifteenth
century gray eyes were more common, dark eyes and dark hair less common,
than now.” As this change is correlated in both these countries with a
gradual refinement of the features, does it not indicate that modern
æsthetico-amorous selection favours the brunette type?
Waitz’s assertion regarding the gradual decrease in the number of
blondes in Germany is strikingly confirmed by the results of a series of
statistical investigations undertaken under the supervision of Professor
Virchow. Almost eleven million school children were examined in Germany,
Austria, Switzerland, and Belgium, and the results showed that
Switzerland has only 11·10, Austria 19·79, and Germany 31·80 per cent of
pure blondes. Thus the very country which, since the days of ancient
Rome has been proverbially known as the home of yellow hair and blue
eyes, has to-day only 32 pure blondes in a hundred; while the average of
pure brunettes is already 14·05 per cent (and in some regions as high as
25 per cent). The 53·15 per cent of the mixed type are evidently being
slowly transformed into pure brunettes, thanks to intermarriages with
the neighbours who are of the dark variety east and west, as well as
south of Germany.
In England Dr. Beddoe has collected a number of statistics which also
bear out the theory that brunettes are gaining on blondes. Among 726
women examined he found 369 brunettes and 357 blondes. Of the brunettes
he found that 78·5 per cent were married, while of the blondes only 68
per cent were married. Thus it would seem that a brunette has ten
chances of getting married in England to a blonde’s nine. Hence Dr.
Beddoe reasons that the English are becoming darker because the men
persist in selecting the darker-haired women as wives.
In France a similar view has been put forth by M. Adolphe de Candolle in
the _Archives des Sciences_. He found that when both parents have eyes
of the same colour 88·4 per cent inherit this colour. "But the curious
fact comes out that more females than males have black or brown eyes, in
the proportion, say, of 49 to 45 or of 41 to 39. Next, it appears that
with different coloured eyes in the two parents, 53·09 per cent of the
progeny followed the fathers in being dark-eyed, and 55·09 per cent
followed their mothers in being dark-eyed. An increase of 5 per cent of
dark-eyed in each generation of discolorous unions must tell heavily in
the course of time. It would seem," adds _Science_, to which I owe this
summary of De Candolle’s views, “that, unless specially bred by
concolorous marriages, blue-eyed belles will be scarce in the
millennium.”