TRILBY FEET

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 286, 31 October 1934, Page 5

TRILBY FEET

The London Times says:—Early in “Westward Hoi” Amyas Leigh bends down and kisses, again and again, his mother’s bare feet. “Yon have such pretty feet, mother!” says he; and she, “instantly, with a woman’s instanct,” hides them. That must all sound very odd to the youth of today—odd, first of all, that the beauty of Mrs Leigh’s feet should not have been ruined by Mrs Leigh’s shoes, and odder still that, being a youngish woman and a pretty one, she should instinctively have tried to hide them. Kingsley may have been right in the fact, but he was obviously wrong in the motive. Mrs Leigh hid her foot, not because she was too modest to let them be seen, but because it was early morning and sho had not had time to make them up. Give her ten minutes, and the nails should be crimson, or maroon, or whatever it might be, and all the world welcome to come and look. Historians would plead in vain that the Elizabethan shoe was a (literally) square-toed thing with not a very high heel, and that the women of those days cherished some anti-ex-hibitionist phobias, or whatever the ‘new name for modesty may be. Such pleas would mean nothing to a generation which, like a jerry-builder, thinks a coat of paint the proper remedy for every flaw. There lies the main difficulty in an admirable suggestion made by a correspondent in these columns. Mr Hodder must first find his feet. If the candidates for the prize were all children under ten, the exhibition would be enormous and the judges distracted. From the middle-aged Swinburne’s “rhymes on a baby’s toes” to the private musings of the mother who hoards the shoes (she does not know why it should be the shoes) of her child with whom sho can play “This little pig” no longer, the world is all ready to bear witness to the beauty —a beauty not wholly explicable in terms of aesthetics —of the feet of children. But beautiful feet, even undistorted feet, are so rare in grown-up men and women that the feet of a Trilby are blessings to make a fuss about;. and in general the poor foot, with its accretions and disfigurements, has become, more than any other part of the body, a low comedian’s joke. Exercise and right feeding, as our correspondent remarked, have done much to improve the shape of the leg; and beyond question (female nature j being what it is) the necessity of showing a leg has played its part in improving the leg to be shown. The restoration of beauty to the foot will be more difficult. Right feeding may strengthen the arch and perhaps prevent the enlargement of the joints; but it must not be taken for granted that the violent exercise now usual is not as dangerous to the beauty of the foot as professional dancing -is said to be. It is hard to know what is the best way.to provide Mr Hodder with worthy prize-winners. The Huntress.of whom Meredith sang had Legs like plaited lyre-chords, feet Songs to see, past pitch of sweet;

and once more the foot is seen by a poet to have a beauty that transcends expression. But did his Artemis hunt barefoot or in sandals? If we all took to going about barefoot, or at any rate heelless, should we beautify our

feet at the expense of the noble curves of our calves, and become, as the barefoot peoples are said to do, tliickankled and spindle-shanked —and perhaps flat-flooted as well ? The path is beset with difficulties, and our feet must be planted firmly and warily. But all this modern display, in the Strand and by the sea shore, of bare legs and half-bare feet may bring pretty feet into fashion; and a few more fine summers may reveal as many Trilby feet under women as there are Trilby hats over men.