In France and other northern countries the admiration for very fair hair is just as marked as in Italy, and dates back to the earliest ages of which we have a record. "Even before the thirteenth century," remarks Houdoy, in his very interesting study of feminine beauty in northern France during mediæval times, "and for men as well as for women, fair hair was an essential condition of beauty; gold is the term of comparison almost exclusively used."[[159]] He mentions that in the Acta Sanctorum it is stated that Saint Godelive of Bruges, though otherwise beautiful, had black hair and eyebrows and was hence contemptuously called a crow. In the Chanson de Roland and all the French mediæval poems the eyes are invariably vairs. This epithet is somewhat vague. It comes from varius, and signifies mixed, which Houdoy regards as showing various irradiations, the same quality which later gave rise to the term iris to describe the pupillary membrane.[[160]] Vair would thus describe not so much the color of the eye as its brilliant and sparkling quality. While Houdoy may have been correct, it still seems probable that the eye described as vair was usually assumed to be "various" in color also, of the kind we commonly call gray, which is usually applied to blue eyes encircled with a ring of faintly sprinkled brown pigment. Such eyes are fairly typical of northern France and frequently beautiful. That this was the case seems to be clearly indicated by the fact that, as Houdoy himself points out, a few centuries later the vair eye was regarded as vert, and green eyes were celebrated as the most beautiful.[[161]] The etymology was false, but a false etymology will hardly suffice to change an ideal. At the Renaissance Jehan Lemaire, when describing Venus as the type of beauty, speaks of her green eyes, and Ronsard, a little later, sang:
"Noir je veux l'œil et brun le teint,
Bien que l'œil verd toute la France adore."
Early in the sixteenth century Brantôme quotes some lines current in France, Spain, and Italy according to which a woman should have a white skin, but black eyes and eyebrows, and adds that personally he agrees with the Spaniard that "a brunette is sometimes equal to a blonde,"[[162]] but there is also a marked admiration for green eyes in Spanish literature; not only in the typical description of a Spanish beauty in the Celestina (Act. I) are the eyes green, but Cervantes, for example, when referring to the beautiful eyes of a woman, frequently speaks of them as green.
It would thus appear that in Continental Europe generally, from south to north, there is a fair uniformity of opinion as regards the pigmentary type of feminine beauty. Such variation as exists seemingly involves a somewhat greater degree of darkness for the southern beauty in harmony with the greater racial darkness of the southerner, but the variations fluctuate within a narrow range; the extremely dark type is always excluded, and so it would seem probable is the extremely fair type, for blue eyes have not, on the whole, been considered to form part of the admired type.
If we turn to England no serious modification of this conclusion is called for. Beauty is still fair. Indeed, the very word "fair" in England itself means beautiful. That in the seventeenth century it was generally held essential that beauty should be blonde is indicated by a passage in the Anatomy of Melancholy, where Burton argues that "golden hair was ever in great account," and quotes many examples from classic and more modern literature.[[163]] That this remains the case is sufficiently evidenced by the fact that the ballet and chorus on the English stage wear yellow wigs, and the heroine of the stage is blonde, while the female villain of melodrama is a brunette.
While, however, this admiration of fairness as a mark of beauty unquestionably prevails in England, I do not think it can be said—as it probably can be said of the neighboring and closely allied country of France—that the most beautiful women belong to the fairest group of the community. In most parts of Europe the coarse and unbeautiful plebeian type tends to be very dark; in England it tends to be very fair. England is, however, somewhat fairer generally than most parts of Europe; so that, while it may be said that a very beautiful woman in France or in Spain may belong to the blondest section of the community, a very beautiful woman in England, even though of the same degree of blondness as her Continental sister, will not belong to the extremely blonde section of the English community. It thus comes about that when we are in northern France we find that gray eyes, a very fair but yet unfreckled complexion, brown hair, finely molded features, and highly sensitive facial expression combine to constitute a type which is more beautiful than any other we meet in France, and it belongs to the fairest section of the French population. When we cross over to England, however, unless we go to a so-called "Celtic" district, it is hopeless to seek among the blondest section of the community for any such beautiful and refined type. The English beautiful woman, though she may still be fair, is by no means very fair, and from the English standpoint she may even sometimes appear somewhat dark:[[164]] In determining what I call the index of pigmentation—or degree of darkness of the eyes and hair—of different groups in the National Portrait Gallery I found that the "famous beauties" (my own personal criterion of beauty not being taken into account) was somewhat nearer to the dark than to the light end of the scale.[[165]] If we consider, at random, individual instances of famous English beauties they are not extremely fair. Lady Venetia Stanley, in the early seventeenth century, who became the wife of Sir Kenelm Digby, was somewhat dark, with brown hair and eyebrows. Mrs. Overall, a little later in the same century, a Lancashire woman, the wife of the Dean of St. Paul's, was, says Aubrey, "the greatest beauty in her time in England," though very wanton, with "the loveliest eyes that were ever seen"; if we may trust a ballad given by Aubrey she was dark with black hair. The Gunnings, the famous beauties of the eighteenth century, were not extremely fair, and Lady Hamilton, the most characteristic type of English beauty, had blue, brown-flecked eyes and dark chestnut hair. Coloration is only one of the elements of beauty, though an important one. Other things being equal, the most blonde is most beautiful; but it so happens that among the races of Great Britain the other things are very frequently not equal, and that, notwithstanding a conviction ingrained in the language, with us the fairest of women is not always the "fairest." So magical, however, is the effect of brilliant coloring that it serves to keep alive in popular opinion an unqualified belief in the universal European creed of the beauty of blondness.
We have seen that underlying the conception of beauty, more especially as it manifests itself in woman to man, are to be found at least three fundamental elements: First there is the general beauty of the species as it tends to culminate in the white peoples of European origin; then there is the beauty due to the full development or even exaggeration of the sexual and more especially the secondary sexual characters; and last there is the beauty due to the complete embodiment of the particular racial or national type. To make the analysis fairly complete must be added at least one other factor: the influence of individual taste. Every individual, at all events in civilization, within certain narrow limits, builds up a feminine ideal of his own, in part on the basis of his own special organization and its demands, in part on the actual accidental attractions he has experienced. It is unnecessary to emphasize the existence of this factor, which has always to be taken into account in every consideration of sexual selection in civilized man. But its variations are numerous and in impassioned lovers it may even lead to the idealization of features which are in reality the reverse of beautiful. It may be said of many a man, as d'Annunzio says of the hero of his Trionfo della Morte in relation to the woman he loved, that "he felt himself bound to her by the real qualities of her body, and not only by those which were most beautiful, but specially by those which were least beautiful" (the novelist italicizes these words), so that his attention was fixed upon her defects, and emphasized them, thus arousing within himself an impetuous state of desire. Without invoking defects, however, there are endless personal variations which may all be said to come within the limits of possible beauty or charm. "There are no two women," as Stratz remarks, "who in exactly the same way stroke back a rebellious lock from their brows, no two who hold the hand in greeting in exactly the same way, no two who gather up their skirts as they walk with exactly the same movement."[[166]] Among the multitude of minute differences—which yet can be seen and felt—the beholder is variously attracted or repelled according to his own individual idiosyncrasy, and the operations of sexual selection are effected accordingly.
Another factor in the constitution of the ideal of beauty, but one perhaps exclusively found under civilized conditions, is the love of the unusual, the remote, the exotic. It is commonly stated that rarity is admired in beauty. This is not strictly true, except as regards combinations and characters which vary only in a very slight degree from the generally admired type. "Jucundum nihil est quod non reficit variatas," according to the saying of Publilius Syrus. The greater nervous restlessness and sensibility of civilization heightens this tendency, which is not infrequently found also among men of artistic genius. One may refer, for instance, to Baudelaire's profound admiration for the mulatto type of beauty.[[167]] In every great centre of civilization the national ideal of beauty tends to be somewhat modified in exotic directions, and foreign ideals, as well as foreign fashions, become preferred to those that are native. It is significant of this tendency that when, a few years since, an enterprising Parisian journal hung in its salle the portraits of one hundred and thirty-one actresses, etc., and invited the votes of the public by ballot as to the most beautiful of them, not one of the three women who came out at the head of the poll was French. A dancer of Belgian origin (Cléo de Merode) was by far at the head with over 3000 votes, followed by an American from San Francisco (Sybil Sanderson), and then a Polish woman.