MARGINAL COMMENTS
By CHRISTOPHER SYKES
RECENTLY I spoke with an inhabitant of one of the great squares upon the agitation to remove the railings. He deplored the movement. He said that he felt very strongly about it, and he rejoiced that his feelings were shared by many of his fellows in the square, some of them influential men. I asked him why he so felt. He replied that if the railings were removed he would have nowhere to exercise his dogs. I said I did not follow him. He explained that the children of the poor would play under the trees where hitherto his dogs had enjoyed seclusion. I said that I thought that the children of the poor were more valuable and important than his dogs. He brushed aside this allegation and said that there was another reason for preserving the railings, more significant than those he had mentioned, but he added that he hardly like to broach the topic which this involved. I besought him, and after much business he told me that, if the railings were removed, the adult poor might make love to one another under the trees, and than this he could imagine nothing more vile.
Now, my comments this week are not going to be on the squares or their trees but on the human face. My point is this : that story is only credible to one who has seen its hero : imagine the words in his smug brown face and they are inevitable. Very well, you object, insert a photograph. But The Spectator is not The Tatler, I answer, and moreover I fear the law. Well then, you reply, about your job and describe the face. That - takes me immediately to my point : the human face cannot be and never has been described. I will present a sum of money to anyone who will find me a passage in the literature of the world in which the human face is described, successfully, as methodically, feature by feature, as a building can be successfully described. Come, readers, fall into my trap !
Of evocation there is plenty. Homer is full of it. And when Shakespeare's Ulysses says of Cressida " There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, Nay, her foot speaks " we have seen her. But can this be called strict definitive description ? Most of the European masters, Shakespeare among them, have relied on the power to evoke a presence by a strict respect of its secret, by a splendid beating about the bush. While Oriental literature ran wantonly after the great temptation (which had swallowed up the author of the Song of Solomon) and developed conventions and symbols which startle us where nothing startling is intended, European literature, at its best, left the human face to itself. But the less glorious samples of our old literature abound with grotesque absurdities. However, the increasing sobriety of our language brought an increased hesitation in this sphere. Inevitably, the human face was " discovered " again and our literature swarmed with ogres. Dickens and Carlyle were destroyers, I think, of the old facial rules.
The present masters of letters show no wish to retreat from the present facial licence. " Huge swollen lips " " blue lips " " twitching scalps " " working nostrils " " veins standing out " " large fleshy pouches under the eyes/corners of mouth "—you can read about all these things which, in real life, you must pay five shillings each time to see at a sideshow. The great Domford Yates has an original method. He catalogues the features, quotes Rue de Rivoli market price, and tots up the total. It runs into millions. The august Huxley has specialised lately in interior facial views. The thing is cut up on a dissecting table. There is a man in his Gaza book whose face falls to pieces every time he moves it— indeed that man is the most terrifying waxwork in the whole Huxley Chamber of Horrors. Even the discipline and modesty of Mr. Somerset Maugham's manner allows him immense facial liberties. The heroine of one of his stories has a complexion " like a field of waving corn." Now why in the world didn't she shave ?
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