As we have had recently, among us, some half a dozen visitors, male and female, from the Celestial Empire, I am strongly tempted to turn from the dead, to the living.
I have repeatedly attended the morning levees of Miss Pwan Yekoo, who was exhibited with her serving-maid, Lum Akum, Mr. Soo Chune, the musical professor, his son and daughter, Mun Chung and Amoon, and Mr. Aleet Mong, the interpreter. This was certainly a very interesting group; such as never before has been presented in this city, and will not be again, I presume, for many years.
Miss Yekoo is said to be seventeen, which appears to be her age. With the costume of the Chinese, which, in our eyes, is superlatively graceless, we have become sufficiently familiar, by the exhibition of the living males and the stuffed females, in our Chinese Museums. Of their music, we had an interesting specimen, a few years since. Being fortunately deaf, I can say nothing of the performances of Miss Yekoo and Professor Chune. Their features and complexions are Chinese, of course, and cannot be better described than in the words of Sir John Barrow, as applicable to the race: “The narrow, elongated, half-closed eye; the linear and highly-arched eyebrow; the broad root of the nose; the projection of the upper jaw a little beyond the lower; the thin, straggling beard, and the body generally free from hair; a high, conical head, and triangular face: and these are the peculiar characteristics which obtained for them, in the Systema Naturæ of Linnæus, a place among the varieties of the species, distinguished by the name of homines monstrosi.”
Apart from these and other considerations, it was well for all, who had it in their power, to avail themselves of an opportunity, which is not likely to be presented again, for years, and examine, with their own eyes, those “golden lilies,” for the production of which this little Chinese spinster, Miss Pwan Yeekoo has been severely tortured, from her cradle. She is neither very large, nor very small, for a girl of seventeen, and her feet are precisely two inches and a half in length. A small female foot, as it came from the hand of the great Creator, has ever been accounted a great beauty, since Eve was born. But, to the eyes of all beholders, on this side of the Yellow Sea, no more disgusting objects were ever presented, than the horribly contracted and crippled deformities, upon the ends of Miss Yekoo’s little trotters.
The bare feet are not exhibited; but a model of the foot, two inches and a half in length, on which is a shoe, which is taken off, by the exhibitor, and put upon the real foot of Miss Yekoo, over a shoe, already there. This model is affirmed to be exact. As it is presented in front, the great toe nail alone is visible, forming a central apex, for the foot. On being turned up, the four smaller toes are seen, closely compacted, and inverted upon the sole. It is not possible to walk, with the weight of the body upon the inverted toes, without pain. Miss Yekoo, like all other Chinese girls, with these crippled feet, walks, with manifest uneasiness and awkwardness, upon her heels. The os calcis receives the whole weight of the body.
To sustain the statement, that Miss Yekoo is a “Chinese lady,” it is said, that these crippled feet are signs of aristocracy. Not infallible, I conceive:—not more so, than crippled ribs, occasioned by tight lacing, which may originate in the upper circles, but find hosts of imitators, among the lower orders. “We may add,” says Mr. Davis, writing of this practice, “that this odious custom extends lower down, in the scale of society, than might have been expected, from its disabling effect, upon those, who have to labor for their subsistence. If the custom were first imposed, by the tyranny of the men, the women are fully revenged, in the diminution of their charms and domestic usefulness.”
Mr. Davis evidently supposes, that the custom had its rise in jealousy, and a desire to prevent the ambulatory sex, from gadding about. Various causes have been assigned, for this disgusting practice. Sir John Barrow, after expressing his surprise, at the silence of Marco Polo, on the subject of crippled feet, which were, doubtless, common in his time, observes—“Of the origin of this unnatural custom, the Chinese relate twenty different accounts, all absurd. Europeans suppose it to have originated in the jealousy of the men, determined, says M. de Pauw, to keep them ‘si etroit qu’on ne peut comparer l’exactitude avec laquelle on les gouverne.’”
A practice, which, at its very birth, and during its infancy, required the assignment of some plausible reason, for its existence and support—when it grows up to be a custom, lives on and thrives, irrespectively of its origin, and, frequently, in spite of its absurdity. The blackened teeth of the Japanese—the goitres of the Swiss, in the valley of Chamouni—the flattened heads of certain Indian races—the crippled feet of the Chinese are illustrations of this truth, in the admiration which they still continue to receive. “Whatever,” says Sir John Barrow, “may have been the cause, the continuance may more easily be explained: as long as the men will marry none but such as have crippled feet, crippled feet must forever remain in fashion among Chinese ladies.”
M. De Pauw, in his Philosophical Dissertations, alludes to this practice, in connection with that, formerly employed by the Egyptians, and which he calls—“the method of confining the women anciently, in Egypt, by depriving them, in some measure, of the use of their feet.”
Plutarch, in his Precepta Connub, says, that shoes were entirely forbidden to women, by the Egyptians. “Afterwards,” says De Pauw, “they imagined it to be inconsistent with decency, that they should appear in public, with the feet naked, and, of course, they remained at home.”