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.”
WHY CUPID FAVOURS BRUNETTES
How are we to account for this undeniable change in favour of brunettes? Is it merely a matter of Taste and Fashion? Are we simply going through a period of brunette-worship which in turn will be followed by a century or two of blonde-worship, and so on ad infinitum? or are there reasons for believing that Cupid will abide by his present decision, and continue to eliminate blondes? There are several such reasons, which may best be discussed separately, under the heads of Complexion, Hair, and Eyes.
(1) Complexion.—The dark skin is more soft and velvety than the light skin, and therefore more agreeable to the touch; hence, as Winckelmann remarks, “he who prefers dark to fair beauty is not on that account to be censured; indeed, one might approve his choice, if he is attracted less by sight than by the touch.” But the eye, too, is likely to be more pleased by a brunette than a pure blond complexion. In the dark skin the pigmentary matter tones down the too vivid red of the translucent blood, wherefore the brunette complexion appears more mellow and delicate in its tints than the Scandinavian blonde, in which a blush suggests a hectic flush, and its normal whiteness the pallor of ill-health or a lack of invigorating and beautifying sunshine.
The brunette complexion, in a word, suggests to the mind the idea of stored-up sunshine, i.e. Health; and as Health is what primarily attracts Cupid, this, combined with his taste for delicate tints and veiled blushes, partly accounts for his preference of the dark type. Youthful freshness is another bait which tempts Cupid; and it is well known that the dark complexion does not, as a rule, fade so soon as the blond.
That the brownish skin is commonly healthier than the white is also shown by its being less subject to the irregularity in the secretion of pigmentary matter which causes freckles. These blemishes, like smallpox marks, are much rarer among the dark than among blond races and individuals.
The skin of blondes who are exposed to a hot sun and raw weather becomes red, inflamed, and decidedly unbeautiful, while a brunette’s complexion only becomes a shade darker, and possibly all the more attractive. This suggests another reason why the brunettes have an advantage over blondes in the country, where love-making is chiefly carried on in summer. Yet it will not do for the blondes to avoid the sunshine on this account, for that will make them anæmic and prematurely old.
There is a class of extreme blondes to whom sunlight is not only irritating, but positively painful. They are called albinos, because there is no brown pigment whatever in any part of their body—skin, hair, or iris. The Dutch call them Kakerlaken or cockroaches, because, like these animals, they avoid the light. Such anomalous individuals occur also among animals; and Darwin has noted regarding birds that albinos do not pair, apparently because they are rejected by their normally-coloured comrades. This fact has a remote bearing on our argument, for blondes are intermediate between albinos and brunettes.
It would appear, indeed, as if not only the complexion but the general constitution of the dark type were superior to that of the blond type. In the chapter on the Complexion it was stated that a dark hue is regarded in Australia and elsewhere as evidence of superior strength. The ancient Greeks, Winckelmann tells us, although they called the young with fair complexions “children of the gods,” looked upon a brown complexion in boys as an indication of courage. Professor Topinard states that “the fair races are especially adapted to temperate and cool regions, and the South is looked upon as almost forbidden ground. The brown races, on the contrary, have a remarkable power of becoming acclimatised.” Several writers have even endeavoured to account for the gradual increase in the proportion of brunettes by connecting it with the modern tendency towards centralisation of the population in large cities, where the blondes, being unable to resist their unsanitary surroundings, are eliminated, while the more vigorous and fertile brunettes survive and multiply.