THE PEERAGE AND ITS CORNS.
IT is a remarkable fact, that every corn-cutter of any eminence who appears above the horizon can display testimonials from a number of Peers and other persons of distinction. Mr. Eisen- berg has long been celebrated for parading a lengthened list of lordly names ; he was elected King of the Corn-cutters by a sort of universal suffrage of the aristocracy : Mr. Levi also appears with a goodly and right honourable retinue. The landed gentry grows corn in two senses, the noble toe rivalling the plain of Ceres. The testimonials are sometimes amusing, and might fur- nish a clinical lecture on syntax. "I certify that Mr. Levi has completely cured my corns. CLEVELAND." "I consider that Mr. Levi is a very clever operator for corns; as he has ex- tracted several very painful for me this morning, without the smallest pain.
"LEEDS.'
"I certify that Mr:Levi extracted the corns which were in my feet without
giving me any pain. Jonis. G. AnactGx." "Mr. N. Levi extracted a corn from me with perfect facility and success.
" LANSDOWNE."
"I certify that Mr. Levi has extracted corns from my feet without the least pain. Mama." Lord Sidney certifies that Mr. Levi has extracted a corn from his foot with
great skill and without pain. SIDNEY." I certify that Mr. Levi eradicated several corns and a very troublesome bunion for me twelve months since ; from all which I continue to be entirely free and without pain. C. M. BURRELL."
Cleveland is as concise as Cresar. Leeds insinuates a sound reason for the imputed cleverness in the conjuring. conjunction of the painful with the painless. The Archbishop is scholastically particular in his tense. The signature of the Earl—" March" —is an appropriate sequel to the restoration of his feet. Lord Sidney seems to certify that Mr. Levi suffered no pain in the operation ; Sir Charles Burrell, that he is quite free from those corns and that bunion which were extracted several months ago.
But the notable lesson to be drawn from these standing adver- tisements is that corns are a prevailing infliction with all classes, and especially with our Peers. Those "pillars of the state" are all damaged at the base. It is a corned aristocracy. Now wherefore? For what all-sufficient reason do our patrician classes consent to be marked by a never-failing callosity, like so many
camels—to bear that badge of deterioration and bondage Be- cause noble lords and honourable gentlemen consent to wear a kind of boot or shoe made to an arbitrary mould, at the fancy of boot and shoe maker, and not one moulded according to the foot of human nature.
" Oh l" you cry, "my boots, I assure you, are not tight. I have outgrown that absurdity." True, my dear sir, your foot having been squeezed in your youth and prime, your stiffened cartilages slowly relax as you broaden into a "square-toes ": the mischief was half done, once for all, when you placed yourself, like a Chi- nese girl, at the mercy of your bootmaker. Besides, mere loose- ness or tightness is not the point : in the extreme measure your boot may be long enough and wide enough, and yet not conform at the outer curve of its front to the natural curve described by the end of your toes. It is not only length and width, but shape which determines the proper ease of a shoe. The cause of corns is the rubbing of the skin against the leather : that is mostly brought about, in boots that do not positively squeeze them up- wards, by the retractation of the toes ; and that again is produced by any unfitness of form which presses the toes out of place or makes them shrink, as they often will do without actual com- pression. It was said of the late Mr. Haydon, that he used to stamp his naked foot upon a board, draw boldly round it with a piece of chalk, and hand the outline as a design for the sole of his boot. That were a caricature of common sense, as probably the tale is a caricature of the fact. But, no doubt, the naked foot, unconstrained, should furnish the model for the boot. The boot- maker cannot improve upon nature. If he tries he will make you limp for it. And does not our aristocracy proclaim his handiworks in these thanksgivings to the corn-cutter ? The corn-cutter is the complement to the bootmaker, as the vulture is to the army. Ease is all very well, but you want grace to boot : witness the sacrifice of toe which has been made by his Grace of Cleveland— or the venerable President of the Council. But it was bootmaker's grace—a hoof not cloven, in lieu of a foot. The eye must be as much warped and crippled as the foot when it accepts that kind of black pedal as a graceful version of the extremities which complete an Apollo Belvidere or a Venus de Medicis. True grace and cornless ease are not incompatible, but almost indivisible. A boot or shoe should be a generalized version of the natural foot—a diagram of its general forms, details submerged. Now a diagram outline of the foot of the Venus or Apollo is as graceful an object as the most perfect Hoby—more graceful. And the gait of an Apollo or a Venus is only seen when the tread is made by an unwarped, uncontracted, uncorned foot. But then, to achieve such a model of perfection, bootmaking awaits its Leonardo da Vinci ; for the bootmaker ought to be a true artist. Fashion strives for grace in mechanical forms, or for agacerie in forms outré; art renews the grace of unspoiled nature. All ar- ticles of costume should be disposed in forms beautiful in them- selves and suitable to the texture of the material, or in forms suitable to cover the natural form enclosed. But to design such forms, the maker of costume—the bootmaker, or the tailor—should be an anatomist learned in the shape and play of the form to be clothed, and capable of conceiving the graceful expression of that form generalized. In other words, our bootmakers and tailors— at least those who "set the fashions "—should study under artists and be artists themselves. Our aristocracy might then rejoice in a finer outward grace, and might be relieved of their badge of deterioration without the help of Eisenberg or Levi ; officers at present as indispensable to the proceedings of the noble Peers and honourable Members as Black Rod or Sergeant at Arms. However, we are decidedly advancing. Peruques have gone out of use ; hoops have disappeared ; "fronts" have vanished— our matrons consenting to look more engaging in the grey hair which lends so gentle a grace to declining years; stays are losing that veneration which once exalted them into a social institution; and as even Austria has learned to grow constitutional, our pa- tricians may one day learn to know grace from deformity, and consent to relinquish corns as an article of dress.
Previous page
