A history of English sexual morals / by Ivan Bloch ; translated by William H. Forstern.

  • Iwan Bloch
Date:
1936
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A history of English sexual morals / by Ivan Bloch ; translated by William H. Forstern. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    50/700 (page 20)
    down a line of English soldiers on parade, you would be amazed at their regular features, their beautiful eyes, their fresh complexions, the predominating oval faces, and finally at the slender disciplined build of their bodies. And what manhood! Irish and Highland soldiers are even taller; they have, too, a wild look in the eye which somehow suits their height extraordinarily well. But better-looking men nobody could hope to see than those of the London Volunteer Corps. True, they are the fine flower of the capital: artists, merchants, rich shop-keepers, townsfolk, all born and bred in the lap of luxury for the arts of peace. This fine appearance, this admirable build, can be seen too in other companies of men in London. For example, firemen in green uniforms with large silver breast-plates march through the streets on certain days, with the band playing. What a lot of fine manly-looking fellows! In truth, there is hardly a man among them underdeveloped or misshaped. Take the sailors on the Thames, the workmen in the large London factories and workshops, the numerous porters and draymen; have a look at the boys at Westminster, at Christ's Hospital, at Charterhouse, at the schools of the London parishes, at Eton, etc.; everywhere you will find that, with the possible exception of Turkey, nowhere in Europe can so many good looking men be seen as in England. Accordingly the beauty of women, which reduces men to slaves on the continent, does not produce anything like the same effect in England. The witchery of women is rendered practically ineffective by the same magic at work in the good looks of men: and more than that—as the truth is that the effect of male beauty on women is more powerful, swifter and more lasting than that of women's beauty upon men. So no one need be surprised that English girls, at least many of them, pay rather open homage to men; that they not only cast invisible nets for the hearts of men like our own lovely [20]