Brunette Versus Blonde
Thus we have evidence showing that during the epoch preceding the general prevalence of Romantic Love, the blond type was considered the ideal of beauty throughout Europe—in Greece and Italy as well as in Germany, Scandinavia, France, and England. And where the hair was not naturally blond, artificial means were used to make it so.
But as soon as Love appears on the scene and sharpens the æsthetic sense, we find a reaction in favour of brunettes. There can be no doubt of this, for it is attested not only by personal opinions and observations, but by accurate statistics. The Quarterly Review just referred to believed that blondes were gradually decreasing in England, and the Saturday Review asserts that “some years ago Mr. Gladstone, whom nothing escapes, declared that light-haired people were far less numerous than in his youth. Many middle-aged persons will probably agree with him.” “The time was,” the writer adds, “when the black-haired, black-eyed girl of fiction was as dark of soul as of tresses, while the blue-eyed maiden’s character was of ‘heaven’s own colour.’ Thackeray damaged this tradition by invariably making his dark heroines nice, his fair heroines treacherous sirens.” Byron, we may add, also showed a passionate preference for brunettes; and does not another great love-poet, Moore, speak of “eyes of unholy blue”?
Speaking of the Germans, the anthropologist Waitz remarks that “the blond and red hair, the blue eyes and light complexion, which most of them had at the period of the Roman wars, have not disappeared, it is true, but certainly diminished greatly in frequency. In Jarrold we find the analogous statement that as late as the time of Henry VIII. red hair predominated in England, and that at the beginning of the fifteenth century gray eyes were more common, dark eyes and dark hair less common, than now.” As this change is correlated in both these countries with a gradual refinement of the features, does it not indicate that modern æsthetico-amorous selection favours the brunette type?
Waitz’s assertion regarding the gradual decrease in the number of blondes in Germany is strikingly confirmed by the results of a series of statistical investigations undertaken under the supervision of Professor Virchow. Almost eleven million school children were examined in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Belgium, and the results showed that Switzerland has only 11·10, Austria 19·79, and Germany 31·80 per cent of pure blondes. Thus the very country which, since the days of ancient Rome has been proverbially known as the home of yellow hair and blue eyes, has to-day only 32 pure blondes in a hundred; while the average of pure brunettes is already 14·05 per cent (and in some regions as high as 25 per cent). The 53·15 per cent of the mixed type are evidently being slowly transformed into pure brunettes, thanks to intermarriages with the neighbours who are of the dark variety east and west, as well as south of Germany.
In England Dr. Beddoe has collected a number of statistics which also bear out the theory that brunettes are gaining on blondes. Among 726 women examined he found 369 brunettes and 357 blondes. Of the brunettes he found that 78·5 per cent were married, while of the blondes only 68 per cent were married. Thus it would seem that a brunette has ten chances of getting married in England to a blonde’s nine. Hence Dr. Beddoe reasons that the English are becoming darker because the men persist in selecting the darker-haired women as wives.
In France a similar view has been put forth by M. Adolphe de Candolle in the Archives des Sciences. He found that when both parents have eyes of the same colour 88·4 per cent inherit this colour. “But the curious fact comes out that more females than males have black or brown eyes, in the proportion, say, of 49 to 45 or of 41 to 39. Next, it appears that with different coloured eyes in the two parents, 53·09 per cent of the progeny followed the fathers in being dark-eyed, and 55·09 per cent followed their mothers in being dark-eyed. An increase of 5 per cent of dark-eyed in each generation of discolorous unions must tell heavily in the course of time. It would seem,” adds Science, to which I owe this summary of De Candolle’s views, “that, unless specially bred by concolorous marriages, blue-eyed belles will be scarce in the millennium.”