There is no doubt that our over-civilisation deteriorates our teeth, which is proved whenever prehistoric remains are discovered. The last were, I believe, found in Cornwall by a lucky man who bought a strip of land, or, properly, sand, on which to build himself a cottage, and, on proceeding to dig a cellar, found it already occupied by the remains of prehistoric human beings. Some of the skeletons were still in the same curious attitude in which they had been buried, and the superior ones among them (socially!) had the right sides of their skulls smashed in to prevent the restless spirit from seeking re-admittance.
It was the most melancholy sight in the world, these bones which even the alchemy of thousands of years had not resolved into merciful dust. The immortal skeleton was there nearly intact, while brilliant, as if brushed that very morning, grinned those splendid prehistoric teeth, white as the kernel of a nut, impervious to decay.
A big glass case against the wall of the little museum, which has been built on the spot by the fortunate discoverer of the "bones," was full of carefully preserved teeth which had been found there, and their beauty and perfection would have rejoiced the heart of that artist in teeth par excellence, the American dentist.
The room was crowded by middle-class excursionists, who, with a middle-class joy of horrors, even if prehistoric, in default of anything fresher, stared round-eyed at the skeletons, skulls, shinbones and other impedimenta of decease, and I was struck by the solemnity and dignity of those poor old bones compared to the commonplaceness of the empty faces gazing at them.
"Oh, I say, don't you wish you had them teeth," I heard a young thing in a scarlet tam o'shanter and a fringe giggle to the youth by her side, with an imitation panama tilted back from his receding forehead. I understood the gentle innuendo, as he promptly stuck his cane into his mouth and sucked.
There was something very magnificent and tragic in those lonely graves of a humanity, already extinct when ancient history began, resting under the roll of the Cornish sand dunes, where the sullen cliffs stand sentinels against the seas. Until the twentieth century they had rested forgotten, and then an undignified chance betrayed them.
It was a gold mine for the enterprising proprietor, whose moderate charge for a sight is only threepence a head. He is a man of engaging humour, and he is not only on intimate terms with his "bones," but with the eminent scientists who still wage a bitter but bloodless feud over the remains, whose biography so far is only written in sand.
That he is not only a cheerful but a witty man is greatly to his credit, for he lives a lonely life on his sand hills, with only the cliffs as his neighbours and the roar of the ocean and the whistle of the wind to break the silence. For labour he excavates his graveyard, and for relaxation he catalogues his bones. His free and easy comments on his subject (or subjects, rather) are really very exhilarating to the philosophic tourist, and indeed it was he who first drew my attention to the deterioration of English teeth.
The eccentricity of the Early Victorian teeth was for decades the pet subject of the Continental caricaturist, the peculiarity being generally ascribed to the British female, her male companion merely rejoicing in hideous plaids, abnormal side-whiskers, and a fearful helmet decorated with a flowing puggaree. Times have changed. The British teeth have ceased to protrude, and, indeed, they now veer around to the other extreme, and instead of prominent front teeth the Englishman now often rejoices in no front teeth at all, or between none and the ordinary number nature intends there are countless variations.
I have been waiting for a genial caricaturist to seize on this simple and unostentatious national trait. If bad teeth are a common sign of ill-health, then alas for the English masses who form the strength of the nation, for their neglected teeth are a menace and a warning.