The choice of a mate.

  • Anthony Ludovici
Date:
[1935]
Catalogue details
    498/546 (page 468)
    like a man’s, nor should it in youth show any hard lines, parti cularly about the mouth and nose. The nose should not be very prominent or thin, the forehead should be vertical and never slanting, 1 the expression mild, i.e. neither truculent nor stern, the lips slightly everted, and the angle of the face may reveal slight prognathism without marring beauty. The eyebrows should be neither heavy nor straight, 2 and should not meet over the root of the nose. A curved pencil line broad ening as it approaches the root of the nose is the ideal feminine eyebrow. Have nothing to do with girls whose eyebrows terminate half-way across the supra-orbital arch. 3 A large mouth does not disfigure, and is better than a small one. The eyes should be doe-like and not too far from the nose. Small, very round-looking eyes are, as we have seen, a stigma of sexual undesirability. The jaw should be neither too heavy nor too square. Avoid the girl the points of whose jaw form the widest part of her mask. She will be brutal, masculoid and ruthless. For the rest appeal to former chapters. Finance. I need add only the following to the equivalent section in the last chapter : The belief that love flies out of the window when poverty comes in at the door is, to some extent, a purely middle-class superstition. But it is as old as Shakespeare, 4 and we must assume that in his time, as at present (though probably now more than ever), women, owing to the primary female instinct for good provisions for the brood, have always had difficulty in becoming attached to an impecunious man. If this instinctive inability to regard or admire the impecunious man gets magnified to a high power, as in the middle classes in an Age of luxury, by the fashion for display and smartness, it easily develops into a love of wealth as such. Hence the modern woman’s inability to respect an impecunious father, or relative of any kind, and her corresponding inability to see any faults in a wealthy one. This explains why plutocratic Ages are generally feminist, and why the tendency to judge wholly according to money values prevails where women gain influence. Gifts. Remember that nothing can be done with a stupid 1 This has been established in earlier chapters, and is confirmed by Stratz (D.S.W.K., p. 160). 2 A.R., p. xi6. Men are cautioned against girls “ dont les sourcils sotit droits ”, other authorities have been given in former chapters. 3 This will be explained under Make-up. 4 Winter’s Tale, IV, 4. “ Prosperity’s the very bond of love.”