Pencillings by the Way: Written During Some Years of Residence and Travel in EuropeWillis, Nathaniel Parker
General
Pencillings by the Way: Written During Some Years of Residence and Travel in Europe
Willis, Nathaniel Parker
Europe -- Description and travel
I was there again at twelve, the morning after, and found De Potter
(the Belgian patriot) and Dr. Bowring, with the phrenologist, waiting
to undergo the same operation. The preparations looked very
formidable, A frame, of the length of the human body, lay in the
middle of the room, with a wooden bowl to receive the head, a
mattress, and a long white dress to prevent stain to the clothes. As I
was the youngest, I took my turn first. It was very like a preparation
for being beheaded. My neck was bared, my hair cut, and the long white
dress put on. The back of the head is taken first; and, as I was only
immersed up to the ears in the liquid plaster, this was not very
alarming. The second part, however, demanded more patience. My head
was put once more into the stiffened mould of the first half, and as
soon as I could get my features composed I was ordered to shut my
eyes; my hair was oiled and laid smooth, and the liquid plaster poured
slowly over my mouth, eyes, and forehead, till I was cased completely
in a stiffening mask. The material was then poured on thickly, till
the mask was two or three inches thick, and the voices of those
standing over me were scarcely audible. I breathed pretty freely
through the orifices at my nose; but the dangerous experiment of
Mademoiselle Sontag, who was nearly smothered in the same operation,
came across my mind rather vividly; and it seemed to me that the
doctor handled the plaster quite too ungingerly, when he came to mould
about my nostrils. After a half hour's imprisonment, the plaster
became sufficiently hardened, and the thread which was laid upon my
face was drawn through, dividing the mask into two parts. It was then
gradually removed, pulling very tenaciously upon my eyelashes and
eyebrows, and leaving all the cavities of my face filled with
particles of lime. The process is a tribute to vanity, which one would
not be willing to pay very often.
I looked on at Dr. Bowring's incarceration with no great feeling of
relief. It is rather worse to see than to experience, I think. The
poet is a nervous man; and as long as the muscles of his face were
visible, his lips, eyelids, and mouth, were quivering so violently
that I scarcely believed it would be possible to get an impression of
them. He has a beautiful face for a scholar--clear, well-cut, finished
features, expressive of great purity of thought; and a forehead of
noble amplitude, white and polished as marble. His hair is black and
curling (indicating in most cases, as Dr. Spurzheim remarked, activity
of mind), and forms a classical relief to his handsome temples.
Altogether, his head would look well in a picture, though his ordinary
and ungraceful dress, and quick, bustling manner, rather destroy the
effect of it in society.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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