“The study of drapery has benefited at the expense of what it encases, and plays a certain part even in the expression of the emotions.”
I must pause right here, much as I admire his work, and much as I owe him, to quarrel with Mr. Lowell, who says that the people of the East, of the Far East at least, have never been led to regard the body as beautiful.
Is it possible that Mr. Lowell is unfamiliar with, or unappreciative of, the literature of Hindostan, the dramas of China, and the poems of Japan?
CHAPTER VI.
KOREAN WOMEN—(continued).
Slight as is the visible part played by woman in Korea, yet there are an almost endless number of facts concerning her which are either significant or in themselves interesting. To me at least, woman, and the conditions of her life, together form the most interesting branch of the study of Korea. And even to those who take no deep interest in burning social questions, and whose interest in far-away lands scarcely exceeds an intelligent curiosity, any facts about Korean women must be especially interesting, I fancy, because those facts are less generally known, less easily known than almost any other facts connected with this wonderful peninsula, and its wonderful people. So I do not hesitate to devote another of my very limited number of chapters to the women of Korea.
Cosmetics are not, it is gratifying to say, a product of our Western civilization. They are greatly used all over the Orient. But in two particulars there is less to be said against the face-painting of Eastern women than there is to be said against the face-painting of the women of the West. In Asia, hair-oil, rouge, powder, kohl for the eyes and eyebrows, and brilliant pigments for the lips, are put on frankly, and are as avowedly, and as sincerely, a seemly and decent adornment, and as much an item of being “dressed up,” as is a silken petticoat or a jewelled necklet. Ladies of Asia “make up” more brazenly than the ladies of Europe, and their ugly, painted imitation is still less like the loveliness of nature than is the painted ugliness of ourselves when we do not feel that we have sufficient beauty of face to leave it unadorned. But the Eastern woman who “makes up” her face has no thought of deceiving anyone, or of obtaining masculine admiration or feminine envy under false pretences. Her painting is as much a matter of convention as is the Chinaman’s wearing of his queue; and she lays on the thick layers of brilliant red and ghastly white as devoutly and as dutifully as she says her prayers. The other good word I have to say for the cosmetics of the Orient is this—they are infinitely less harmful than the cosmetics we are wont to use in Europe. I know that. For, on the stage I have tried both very thoroughly.
A well-to-do Korean woman usually has a very interesting collection of hair-pins. They are long, heavily ornamented, made of silver, of gold, or of copper; more usually of silver. Some of them are very beautiful, and some that I have seen reminded me very much of the long silver pins that are thrust through the braids of Italian peasant women.
The well-to-do women, especially in the capital, now very generally wear European under-clothing. They invariably wear a pouch which is fastened by cords to their girdle. This is their pocket, the only pocket they have, except their sleeves, and in it they carry a tiger’s claw for luck, a small cushion of sachet, or a bottle of thick, rich perfume, some of their favourite pieces of jewellery, scissors usually, or a knife, two or three of their most frequently used toilet implements, and almost invariably a small Korean chess-board and chess-men. The board and the pieces are often made of silver or even of gold. Chess is, perhaps, the most popular of all Korea’s many games, and the Korean women of the leisure class play it incessantly. The pocket also contains, more likely than not, the official book of female politeness; a book which every Korean lady studies assiduously. But whatever this pocket contains or does not contain, it must by no means be without several charms, charms for good luck, charms for health, charms for wealth, and for any or every other good desirable under the Korean sun. Of its charms the most valuable is the tiger’s claw. Mr. Griffis says, “Nor can the hardy mountaineer put into the hand of his bride a more eloquent proof of his valour than one of those weapons of a man-eater. It means even more than the edelweiss of other mountain lands.” The tiger is probably the most dreaded foe of the Koreans. They fear it more than they fear China; hate it more than they hate Japan. The Chinese have a saying which so vividly pictures the tiger-Korean situation that I must quote it, though it has, I believe, already been quoted by every other European and the majority of Orientals who have ever written on Korea. It is this: “The Korean spends one half of the year hunting the tiger, and the other half in being hunted by him.”
The hands of a Korean lady are always exquisitely kept, and usually loaded with rings, often with rings of very great value.