The doctor soliloquised as he walked.
'Strange metamorphosis of the old tower. A good dining-room. A good library. A bedroom between them: he did not show it me. Good wine: excellent. Pretty waiting-maids, exceedingly pretty. Two of seven Vestals, who maintain the domestic fire on the hearth of the young Numa. By the way, they had something of the Vestal costume: white dresses with purple borders. But they had nothing on their heads but their own hair, very gracefully arranged. The Vestals had head-dresses, which hid their hair, if they had any. They were shaved on admission. Perhaps the hair was allowed to grow again. Perhaps not. I must look into the point. If not, it was a wise precaution. "Hair, the only grace of form,"{1} says the Arbiter elegantiarum, who compares a bald head to a fungus.{2} A head without hair, says Ovid, is as a field without grass, and a shrub without leaves.{3} Venus herself, if she had appeared with a bald head, would not have tempted Apuleius: {4} and I am of his mind. A husband, in Menander, in a fit of jealous madness, shaves his wife's head; and when he sees what he has made of her, rolls at her feet in a paroxysm of remorse. He was at any rate safe from jealousy till it grew again. And here is a subtlety of Euripides, which none of his commentators have seen into. Ægisthus has married Electra to a young farmer, who cultivates his own land. He respects the Princess from magnanimity, and restores her a pure virgin to her brother Orestes. "Not probable," say some critics. But I say highly probable: for she comes on with her head shaved. There is the talisman, and the consummate artifice of the great poet. It is ostensibly a symbol of grief; but not the less a most efficient ally of the aforesaid magnanimity. "In mourning," says Aristotle, "sympathising with the dead, we deform ourselves by cutting off our hair." And truly, it is.
1 Quod solum formse decus est, cecidere capilli.—Petronius,
c. 109.
2. .. laevior. . . rotundo Horti tubere, quod creavit unda.
Ibid.
'A head, to speak in the gardener's style, is a bulbous
excrescence, growing up between the shoulders. '—G. A.
Steevens: Lecture on Heads.
3 Turpe pecus mutilum; turpe est sine gramme campus; Et sine
fronde frutex; et sine crine caput.
Ovid: Arks Amatorio, iii. 249.
4 At vero, quod nefas dicere, neque sit ullum hujus rei tam
dirum exemplum: si cujuslibet eximiae pulcherrimaeque
fominae caput capillo exspoliaveris, et faciem nativa specie
nudaveris, licet ilia coelo dejecta, mari édita, fluctibus
educata, licet, inquam, Venus ipsa fuerit, licet omni
Gratiarum choro stipata, et toto Cupidinum populo comitata,
et balteo suo cincta, cinnama fragrans, et balsama rorans,
calva processerit, placere non potent nee Vulcano suo.—
Apuleius: Metamorph. ii. 25.
But, indeed, what it is profanation to speak, nor let there be hereof any so dire example, if you despoil of its hair the head of any most transcendent and perfectly beautiful woman, and present her face thus denuded of its native loveliness, though it were even she, the descended from heaven, the born of the sea, the educated in the waves, though, I say, it were Venus herself, attended by the Graces, surrounded by the Loves, cinctured with her girdle, fragrant with spices, and dewy with balsams, yet, if she appeared with a bald head, she could not please even her own Vulcan. A woman's head shaved is a step towards a death's head. As a symbol of grief it was not necessary to the case of Electra; for in the sister tragedies of Æschylus and Sophocles her grief is equally great, and she appears with flowing hair; but in them she is an unmarried maid, and there is no dramatic necessity for so conspicuous an antidote to her other charms. Neither is it according to custom; for in recent grief the whole hair was sacrificed, but in the memory of an old sorrow only one or two curls were cut off.{1} Therefore, it was the dramatic necessity of a counter-charm that influenced Euripides. Helen knew better than to shave her head in a case where custom required it. Euripides makes Electra reproach Helen for thus preserving her beauty;{2} which further illustrates his purpose in shaving the head of Electra where custom did not require it. And Terence showed his taste in not shaving the head of his heroine in the Phormio, though the severity of Athenian custom would have required it. Her beauty shone through her dishevelled hair, but with no hair at all she would not have touched the heart of Antipho.
1 Sophocles: Electra, v. 449.
2 Euripides: Orestes, v. 128.
But wherefore does my mind discourse these things to me, suspending dismal images on lovely realities? for the luxuriant hair of these young girls is of no ordinary beauty. Their tresses have not been deposited under the shadow of the sacred lotus, as Pliny tells us those of the Vestals were. Well, this young gentleman's establishment may be perfectly moral, strictly correct, but in one sense it is morality thrown away: the world will give him no credit for it. I am sure Mrs. Opimian will not. If he were married it would be different. But I think, if he were to marry now, there would be a fiercer fire than Vesta's among his Lares. The temple would be too hot for the seven virgins. I suppose, as he is so resolute against change, he does not mean to marry. Then he talks about anticipated disappointment in some unrealisable ideality, leading him to live like Lord Noirmont, whom I never heard of before. He is far enough off from that while he lunches and walks as he does, and no doubt dines in accordance. He will not break his heart for any moon in the water, if his cooks are as good as his waiting-maids, and the wine which he gave me is a fair specimen of his cellar. He is learned too. Greek seems to be the strongest chord in his sympathies. If it had not been for the singular accident of his overhearing me repeat half a dozen lines of Homer, I should not have been asked to walk in. I might have leaned over the gate till sunset, and have had no more notice taken of me than if I had been a crow.'
At dinner the doctor narrated his morning adventure to Mrs. Opimian, and found her, as he had anticipated, most virtuously uncharitable with respect to the seven sisters. She did not depart from her usual serenity, but said, with equal calmness and decision, that she had no belief in the virtue of young men.
'My dear,' said the doctor, 'it has been observed, though I forget by whom, that there is in every man's life a page which is usually doubled down. Perhaps there is such a page in the life of our young friend; but if there be, the volume which contains it is not in the same house with the seven sisters.'