There is a notion, that air spoils the complexion. It is possible, that
an exposure to all weathers might do so; though if a gipsy beauty is to
be said to have a bad complexion, it is one we are very much inclined to
be in love with. A russeton apple has its beauty as well as a peach. At
all events, a spoilt complexion of this sort is accompanied with none of
the melancholy attending the bad complexions that arise from late hours,
and spleen, and plodding, and indolence, and indigestion. Fresh air puts
a wine in the blood that lasts from morning to night, and not merely for
an hour or two after dinner. If ladies would not carry buttered toast in
their cheeks, instead of roses, they must shake the blood in their
veins, till it spins clear. Cheerfulness itself helps to make good
blood; and air and exercise make cheerfulness. When it is said, that air
spoils the complexion, it is not meant that breathing it does so, but
exposure to it. We are convinced it is altogether a fallacy, and that
nothing but a constant exposure to the extremes of heat and cold has any
such effect. The not breathing the fresh air is confessedly injurious;
and this might be done much oftener than is supposed. People might
oftener throw up their windows, or admit the air partially, and with an
effect sensible only to the general feelings. We find, by repeated
experiments, that we can write better and longer with the admission of
air into our study. We have learnt also, by the same experience, to
prefer a large study to a small one; and here the rich, it must be
confessed, have another advantage over us. They pass their days in large
airy rooms--in apartments that are field and champain, compared to the
closets that we dignify with the name of parlours and drawing-rooms. A
gipsy and they are in this respect, and in many others, more on a
footing; and the gipsy beauty and the park beauty enjoy themselves
accordingly. Can we look at that extraordinary race of persons--we mean
the gipsies--and not recognise the wonderful physical perfection to
which they are brought, solely by their exemption from some of our most
inveterate notions, and by dint of living constantly in the fresh air?
Read any of the accounts that are given of them, even by writers the
most opposed to their way of life, and you will find these very writers
refuting themselves and their proposed ameliorations by confessing that
no human beings can be better formed, or healthier, or happier than the
gipsies, so long as they are kept out of the way of towns and their
sophistications. A suicide is not known among them. They are as merry as
the larks with which they rise; have the use of their limbs to a degree
unknown among us, except by our new friends the gymnasts; and are as
sharp in their faculties as the perfection of their frames can render
them. A glass of brandy puts them into a state of unbearable transport.
It is a superfluous bliss; wine added to wine: and the old learn to do
themselves mischief with it, and level their condition with stockbrokers
and politicians. Yet these are the people whom some wiseacres are for
turning into bigots and manufacturers. They had much better take them
for what they are, and for what Providence seems to have intended
them--a memorandum to keep alive among us the belief in nature, and a
proof to what a physical state of perfection the human being can be
brought, solely by inhaling her glorious breath, and being exempt from
our laborious mistakes. If the intelligent and the gipsy life could ever
be brought more together, by any rational compromise, (and we do not
despair of it, when we see that calculators begin to philosophize,) men
might attain the greatest perfection of which they are capable.
Meanwhile the gipsies have the advantage of it, if faces are any index
of health and comfort. A gipsy with an eye fit for a genius, it is not
difficult to meet with; but where shall we find a genius, or even a
fundholder, with the cheek and health of a gipsy?
There is a fact well known to physicians, which settles at once the
importance of fresh air to beauty, as well as health. It is, that in
proportion as people stay at home, and do not set their lungs playing as
they ought, the blood becomes dark, and lags in its current; whereas the
habit of inhaling the air out of doors reddens it like a ruby, and makes
it clear and brisk. Now the darker the blood, the more melancholy the
sensations, and the worse the complexion.
It is common with persons who inherit a good stock of health from their
ancestors, to argue that they take no particular pains to preserve it,
and yet are well. This may be true; and it is also true, that there is a
painstaking to that effect, which is superfluous and morbid, and helps
to do more harm than good. But it does not follow from either of these
truths, that a neglect of the rational means of retaining health will
ultimately be good for any body. Healthy people may live a good while
upon their stock. Children are in the habit of doing it. But healthy
children, especially those who are foolishly treated upon an assumption
that health consists in being highly fed, and having great beef-eating
cheeks, very often turn out sickly at last; and grown-up people, for the
most part, at least in great towns, have as little really good health,
as children in general are given credit for the reverse. Nature does
indeed provide liberally for abuses; but the abuse will be felt at last.
It is generally felt a long while before it is acknowledged. Then comes
age, with all its train of regrets and superstitions; and the beauty and
the man, besides a world perhaps of idle remorse, which they would not
feel but for their perverted blood, could eat their hearts out for
having been such fools as not to secure a continuance of good looks and
manly feelings, for want of a little handsome energy.
The ill taste of existence that is so apt to come upon people in middle
life, is too often attributed to moral causes. Moral they are, but very
often not in the sense imagined. Whatever causes be mixed up with them,
the greatest of all is, in ninety-nine instances out of a hundred, no
better or grander than a non-performance of the common duties of health.
Many a fine lady takes a surfeit for a tender distress; and many a real
sufferer, who is haunted by a regret, or takes himself for the most
ill-used of bilious old gentlemen, might trace the loftiest of his woes
to no better origin than a series of ham-pies, or a want of proper use
of his boots and umbrella.[52]
[52] New Monthly Magazine.
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