Country life; London (England) -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Outdoor books
A large white arm, bare, in the sunshine, to the shoulder, carelessly
leant against a low red wall, lingers in my memory. There was a house
roofed with old grey stone slates in the background, and peaches
trained up by the window. The low garden wall of red brick--ancient red
brick, not the pale, dusty blocks of these days--was streaked with dry
mosses hiding the mortar. Clear and brilliant, the gaudy sun of morning
shone down upon her as she stood in the gateway, resting her arm on the
red wall, and pressing on the mosses which the heat had dried. Her face
I do not remember, only the arm. She had come out from dairy work,
which needs bare arms, and stood facing the bold sun. It was very
large--some might have called it immense--and yet natural and justly
proportioned to the woman, her work, and her physique. So immense an
arm was like a revelation of the vast physical proportions which our
race is capable of attaining under favourable conditions. Perfectly
white--white as the milk in which it was often plunged--smooth and
pleasant in the texture of the skin, it was entirely removed from
coarseness. The might of its size was chiefly by the shoulder; the
wrist was not large, nor the hand. Colossal, white, sunlit, bare--among
the trees and the meads around it was a living embodiment of the limbs
we attribute to the first dwellers on earth.
IV--LIPS
The mouth is the centre of woman's beauty. To the lips the glance is
attracted the moment she approaches, and their shape remains in the
memory longest. Curve, colour, and substance are the three essentials
of the lips, but these are nothing without mobility, the soul of the
mouth. If neither sculpture, nor the palette with its varied resources,
can convey the spell of perfect lips, how can it be done in black
letters of ink only? Nothing is so difficult, nothing so beautiful.
There are lips which have an elongated curve (of the upper one), ending
with a slight curl, like a ringlet at the end of a tress, like those
tiny wavelets on a level sand which float in before the tide, or like a
frond of fern unrolling. In this curl there lurks a smile, so that she
can scarcely open her mouth without a laugh, or the look of one. These
upper lips are drawn with parallel lines, the verge is defined by two
lines near together, enclosing the narrowest space possible, which is
ever so faintly less coloured than the substance of the lip. This makes
the mouth appear larger than it really is; the bow, too, is more
flattened than in the pure Greek lip. It is beautiful, but not perfect,
tempting, mischievous, not retiring, and belongs to a woman who is
never long alone. To describe it first is natural, because this mouth
is itself the face, and the rest of the features are grouped to it. If
you think of her you think of her mouth only--the face appears as
memory acts, but the mouth is distinct, the remainder uncertain. She
laughs and the curl runs upwards, so that you must laugh too, you
cannot help it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account