TATTOOING
By WILLIAM PLOMER
"THE universality of this practice," said Captain Cook of tattooing, " is a curious subject of speculation." It is indeed, and from time to time it has engaged the attention of anthropologists and other learned persons. Lombroso put it down to atavism, and it has inter- mittently been regarded, from ancient times until the present day, as a barbarous thing to wear pictures on one's skin by choice, and an ignominious thing to wear them by compulsion, for tattooing has sometimes been used as a method of branding criminals, and cases have been known where they have been sentenced to proceed on their life's journey wearing satirical verses about their own misdemeanours.
It has often been and still is in many places a matter of tribal custom, sometimes crudely and to our tastes repulsively executed, especially where it results in deformation of the surface of the body, but among various races it has been done with great skill, as among the Maoris, who covered their faces with formal curves and spirals, or with a curious neatness, as among the Gilbert Islanders, some of whom go about covered from head to foot with a quiet herring-bone pattern in navy blue. The Japanese, who excel at applied arts, attained a wonderful technique in this one, but tended to go in for drearily elaborate conventional designs resembling those on some of their cheap printed stuffs. at the present day, which produce the effect of a too heavily flowered cretonne. In the extreme north of Japan one can still see Ainu women who have assumed on marriage not a wedding-ring but a tattooed blue moustache of the arrogant shape once favoured by the ex-Kaiser.
It would be a mistake to suppose that tattooing is only to the taste of primitive people or that it has been confined in Europe to criminals, prostitutes, soldiers, sailors and workmen, for towards the end of the last century, in the heyday of prosperity and imperialism, it became popular amongst people of wealth and position, and there is reason to believe that some very important individuals still carry on their persons the jingoistic emblems which enthusiasm for the Boer War induced them to select, to say nothing of snakes, daggers, butter- flies, dragons, roses, mermaids, curly monograms and so forth, at prices varying from five shillings to ten pounds. In 1903 there was an article in the Tatter entitled " The Gentle Art of Tattooing : The Fashionable Craze of Today," and in the Spanish monograph on the subject by R. Salillas (1908) we learn of a Mr. Macdonald that "en su estudio de Jermyn-Street ha recibido la visits de individuos de la etas alta aristocracia, de principes de la sangre y de duques."
Often people have tattooed or been tattooed for no particular reason, because they have had nothing better to do, or have been confined in a narrow space, exiled, isolated, or driven in upon themselves, or have been bored and in need of amusement. This partly accounts for the frequency of tattooing, especially in the past. upon sailors, soldiers, legionaries and various sorts of vagabonds, prisoners and criminals. Custom, fashion, imitativeness, or some herd or group instinct have often been reasons for tattooing, and so has vanity, as in a recorded case of a master mariner who had his official certificate reproduced in bold lettering on his facade. But the most interesting motives of all are emotional or psychological ones, and the most interesting tattooings are those which express in a symbolical form some strong feeling, religious, patriotic, or personal, and which reflect the private thoughts, moral sentiments, or images most dear to the wearers. Thus Lacassagne and Ver- vaeck, two authorities on the subject, give us examples of religious men being marked not only with such emblems as crosses, hearts and anchors, but with elaborate crucifixion scenes with attendant angels, or altars bearing the sacramental vessels.
Patriotic enthusiasm is expressed not only in 'national flags, trophies and heraldic emblems, but has been known to trace itself in portraits of various celebrities from.Joan. of Arc to Garibaldi, and reached a climax in the indelible likeness of Bismarck with which a French soldier once chose to decorate his posterior. Another managed to combine a sentiment of loyalty to his country with a-hint at his tastes as a gourmet in the phrase, " Vive la France et lee pommes de terre (rites." Political passion gives us such mottoes as " Mort aux bourgeois," " Vive r anarchie," and other equivalents of " Up the rebels." A lawless man proclaims the fact in the words " Ni Dieu ni maitre," or in some hint of vengeance, and a travelled and adventurous German is known to have chosen a baroque composition called " Liiwenabenteuer in Palmen- landschaft." Another German, more hedonistic, was tattooed with the couplet :
" Wer nicht liebt vein, Weib, Gesang, Der hleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang."
Sometimes an impulse towards autobiography finds an outlet, as in "Enfant de la gaiete" or " Le passe m'a trompe, is present me tourmente, l'avenir epouvante," and there is on record the case of a French murderer on whose forearm was written " /Ve sous mauvaise etoile" : this slogan so impressed one of his intended victims that she was able to identify him by it, a circumstance which helped to convict him. It may also be recalled that the question of tattooed markings played some part in the Tichborne case.
As an instance of tattooing being used to express a personal taste, I know of an English sportsman of the upper classes who had his torso covered with pheasants, grouse, partridges, shotguns and sporting dogs. In Belgium a drunkard was tattooed with a picture of a man sitting on an enormous bottle of gin, and gamblers have chosen dice, playing cards, fighting cocks, or the numbers of lottery tickets. Sometimes the wearer's trade or profession is indicated : for soldiers, bugles, lances, military badges, or the heads of horses ; for sailors, mermaids, lighthouses, anchors, ships, or coils of rope ; keys for a locksmith ; a lyre for a musician ; a pick and shovel for a miner ; a tree for a gardener ; a boot for a shoemaker ; or a hammer and anvil for a blacksmith. But nowadays, when people have mechanised jobs or no jobs at all,-or change their jobs frequently, such occupa- tional signs are getting rare.
It is natural that love, lust, or vague amorous leanings should be among the most frequent feelings recorded by the tattooer's needle. Thus we get portraits, names, or initials of persons beloved, clasped hands, hearts pierced by arrows, and symbolic flowers like roses or pansies, with suitable mottoes, " True love," and so on. Filial love is shown by a single word like " Mother," or by clasped hands holding a flower and surrounded by the initials of the bearer and both parents, or by crosses bearing the initials of the dead. For simple wish-fulfil- ments a dove or swallow will do, carrying in its beak a letter, perhaps marked " Good News " ; or else alluring figures of ballet-dancers, circus-riders or acrobats; and sometimes, of course, the wearer's most personal inclina- tions are advertised suggestively or with frank porno- graphy. One of the most celebrated examples of purely ornamental tattooing was that of George Constantine, a well-built Greek who took part in a French expedition to Cochin-China, got himself finely and elaborately tattooed in Burma, and afterwards travelled with Barnum's circus. The work, which took nearly three months to do and consisted of nearly four hundred designs, covered almost the entire surface of his body : on his chest alone he exhibited two sphinxes, two serpents, two elephants, two swans, and a horned owl.
The aesthetic merits of tattooing are debatable, but it should not be condemned out of hand as a debased practice. It is no more barbarous than other processes that lead to .personal adornment, such as painting the nails and mouth red, or catching wild animals in cruel traps for the sake of their fur. At its worst it reveals a lack of taste, a fault which is very common and often far more blatantly and publicly expressed ; at its best it may have a decorative or sentimental value, it may be a chic to character, and it may have even more than the poetical significance of the words and pictures written up by prisoners on the walls of cells, for it is inscribed on the outer wall of the prison that contains the soul.
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