Physiognomy in the European Novel: Faces and Fortunes [Course Book ed.] 9781400857265

Citation preview

PHYSIOGNOMY IN THE EUROPEAN NOVEL

Lavater in his study, with part of his physiognomical collection on the table.

Physiognomy in the European Novel FACES AND FORTUNES BY

GRAEME TYTLER

Princeton University Press Princeton, New Jersey

Copyright © 1982 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street. Princeton, New Jersey In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Guildford, Surrey All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will be found on the last printed page of this book Publication of this book has been aided by the Paul Mellon Fimd of Princeton University Press This book has been composed in CRT Caledonia Clothbound editions of Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and binding materials are chosen for strength and durability Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey

IN MEMORY OF

M.C.T.

Il y a a parier que toute idee publique, toute convention Γβςυβ, est une sottise, car elle a convenu au plus grand nombre. Chamfort Sich nur auf die Literatur einer gewissen Zeit oder einer Nation einschranken zu wollen, geht gar nicht an, weil eine immer auf die andere zuriickfiihrt und alle Literatur nicht allein vor-und nacheinander, sondern auch nebeneinander innig zusammenhangend ein grosses Ganzes bildet. Literatur ist nur im Ganzen verstandlich. Friedrich Schlegel "What is your fortune, my pretty maid?" "My face is my fortune, sir," she said. English Nursery Rhyme

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

X xii

PREFACE

Xlii

PART ONE

The Historical Background I II III

Introductory

3

Lavater and the Fhysiognomische Fragmente

35

Physiognomy in Nineteenth-Century European Letters

82

PART TWO

The Literary Foreground IV V VI VII

Physiognomy in the Modem European Novel before 1800

123

Lavater and the Composite Portrait in the Nineteenth-Century Novel

166

Aspects of Lavaterian Physiognomy in Nineteenth-Century Literary Portraiture

208

Physiognomical Awareness in the NineteenthCentury European Novel

260

CONCLUSION NOTES SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX

316 323 393 421

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece. Lavater in his study in 1790, by Heinrich Lips Figure 1. Lavater, Heinrich Fussli and Felix Hess' visit to Spalding in spring 1763, by Heinrich Fussli (Henry Fuseli) Figure 2. Human and animal heads from Porta's De humana physiognomia, reproduced in Lavater's Phy-

siognomische Fragfnente

ii

23

42

Figure 3. A sure and convenient machine for drawing silhouettes, from Lavater's Physiognomische Frag-

mente Figure 4. Silhouettes of Moses Mendelssohn, Spalding, Rochow, and Nicolai, from Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente Figure 5. A profile of Goethe, from Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente Figure 6. A profile of Diderot, from Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente Figure 7. A Hogarth print of dissolute revelers, from Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente Figure 8. Four faces by Le Brun and Chodowiecki, from Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente Figure 9. A phrenological lecture in Britain Figure 10. Punch's "Stomachology," from Punch II (1842) Figtire 11. The frontispiece of Thomas Cogan's John Buncle, Junior, Gentleman (1776-78) Figure 12. A portrait of Kleinjogg by Heinrich Lips, from Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente

58

59

62 63 69 73 93 94 152 184

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 13. A portrait of Socrates by Heinrich Lips after Rubens, from Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente Figure 14. Engravings of eyes, from Lavater's Phystognomische Fragmente Figure 15. Engravings of noses, from Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente Figure 16. Engravings of hands, from Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente Figure 17. National physiognomies by Chodowiecki, from Lavater's Phystognomische Fragmente Figure 18. The Physiognomist, by G. Spratt, ca. 1830

185 209 209 216 235 314

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

FOR KIND PERMISSION to reproduce engravings, the author

wishes to thank the following institutions: The Library of the University of Basle (Lips' painting of Lavater); the Zentralbibliothek, Zurich (Fuseli's engraving of Lavater's visit to Spalding); and the Bodleian Library, Oxford (engravings from Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente and Essays on Physiog­ nomy, and the cartoon from Punch).

PREFACE

PHYSIOGNOMY is a word seldom used nowadays in ordinary discourse; indeed, such is its rarity that even academics, on hearing it mentioned, tend to be unsure of its meaning. Yet we all know what physiognomy entails, and many of us might pretend to some capacity for judging character by appear­ ances, be it based on little more than proverbial interpreta­ tions of thin mouths, small eyes, high foreheads, prominent chins, red hair, and the like. Such a claim might be justly made by film directors, some of whom display unusual powers of observation in their casting. A keen physiognomical sense is evident, too, in certain modern philosophers and cultural historians, notably Spengler, Jaspers, Ortega y Gasset, Unamuno, Polanyi, Klages, Kassner, and Picard, the last three of whom, in particular, deserve to be better known for their essays on physiognomy as related to modern culture. But, otherwise, gifted physiognomists seem to be now as excep­ tional as the use of the word physiognomy; for, unlike our nineteenth-century forebears, who took this science seriously enough to keep physiognomical books in their libraries, we are hardly more proficient at telling character or predicting behavior from a consideration of the outward man than we are at forecasting the weather from a glance at cloud forma­ tions. It is true that every year sees the publication of commend­ able books on physiognomy, and that names like Sheldon, Hellpach, Corman, Fraenger, Lersch, Brednow, Buttkus, and Baumgartner, not to mention the Gestalt theorists, have helped to give physiognomy a certain respectability in the world of learning. But all this is of little interest to the general public; and the present-day cult of physiognomy, such as is fostered by the popular press with homely instructions on the art of reading the face, has much the same mediocrity as the cult of astrology, with which it has so often been traditionally

PREFACE

associated. In any case, it is tacitly assumed by some so-called right-thinking people that physiognomy has long been dis­ credited as a science, at least to judge by the pronouncements of Paterson, Hollingworth, and Goring. And for the time being, science appears to have the last word on the subject. But if scientists are perhaps most conscious of the indiffer­ ence to physiognomy in our day, then students of literature may become indirectly so through the abundance of refer­ ences to physiognomy and physiognomists to be found in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European (and Ameri­ can) fiction. Whether the same students will be already con­ versant with the historical background to such references is, in most cases, doubtful; certainly, it would be unusual to find physiognomy mentioned in histories of literature. Hence, in part, the writing of this book. My main purpose, however, is to suggest how far the nineteenth-century European novel— and here I would also include the Italian, Spanish, and Rus­ sian novel, which of necessity I have had to leave almost en­ tirely out of consideration—may be regarded in some mea­ sure as an expression of that phase in the history of Western physiognomy which, beginning in the early 1770s and ending roughly in the 1880s, may be called essentially "Lavaterian." But while postulating this connection between Lavater and the novel, I am, of course, well aware that physiognomy was by no means a new thing in his time: that people have been studying one another's faces since Adam and Eve is for me no less certain than that physiognomy has always been more or less present in fiction. Nevertheless, even though earlier physiognomical vogues have been reflected to some extent in literature, the relationship between physiognomy and the novel was at its closest during the period mentioned above. That is why I have paid a good deal of attention here to Lavater, who is scarcely more than a name to most literary scholars; for his writings, however little read today, tell us much about the man and the age in which he lived. This con­ centration on Lavater has perforce meant dealing more sum­ marily with earlier physiognomical eras than might have

PREFACE

been acceptable had I been writing a comprehensive history of Western physiognomy. But in providing only a compen­ dious survey of earlier periods of physiognomy, such as would be sufficient to enable the reader to see Lavater's achieve­ ment in some historical perspective, I was guided by two con­ siderations: first, that the essence of earlier physiognomical thought is contained in Lavater, and, secondly, that Lavater's theories (and those of his successors) have a more obvious rel­ evance to the development of modern literary portraiture than does much physiognomical theory of the classical, medi­ eval, and Renaissance eras. Yet it might be asked why I was not more speculative about the development and sustenance of popular interest in physi­ ognomy from Lavater's time onward. I have, in fact, tried to show how far the revival of physiognomy in the eighteenth century and its sustenance in the nineteenth were determined by various cultural forces. But in doing so, I decided to point to certain obvious influences rather than to hazard bold hy­ potheses, bearing in mind Lovejoy's wise words that, "pre­ cisely because [the study of the history of ideas] aims at inter­ pretation and unification, and seeks to correlate things which often are not on the surface connected, it can easily degener­ ate into a species of merely historical generalization...." Much speculative thinking of this kind is, of course, based on common sense, although it is probably easier to account for the rise of a particular vogue than for its decline. Certainly, I have said practically nothing about the decline of physiog­ nomy since the last century. Most vogues simply die of ex­ haustion, and this has been as true of physiognomy as of any other. But the demise of Lavaterian physiognomy was no doubt hastened, if not caused, by the general disillusionment with its sister science, phrenology—a disillusionment that had already set in by the 1860s and 1870s, and that was ex­ pressive of that mixture of rationalism and empiricism which has colored science, philosophy, and literature down to the present. And nothing better confirms the decline of physiog­ nomy and phrenology after mid-century than a study of popu-

PREFACE

Iar writings on both sciences published between 1880 and 1910, in which strong assertions are made as to their future possibilities and earlier generations deplored for failing to understand their proper uses. That the decline of interest in physiognomy (and phrenol­ ogy) should have been paralleled by a corresponding decline of interest in literary portraiture is hardly surprising. At the same time, critics are inclined to speak too readily of the ab­ sence of character description in the modern novel; for, even apart from the minor novelists, who clung as tenaciously to physiognomical descriptions as popular physiognomists and phrenologists continued to vouch for the usefulness of their respective sciences, physiognomy persisted in the novel long after it had ceased to be a universal vogue. We see this clearly enough in Zola and the naturalists as well as in Hardy and Henry James. It is true that there has been a marked diminu­ tion of interest in the outward man in fiction published this century; but, for all that, it is still only a relative diminution, evident mainly in writers who have rejected the codes and canons of realism and naturalism—to wit, the interior monologuists, the symbolists, the surrealists, the nouveaux romanciers, and so on. Indeed, one has only to read Arnold Bennett, Proust, Galsworthy, Wells, Thomas Mann, Aldous Huxley, Somerset Maugham, Joyce Cary, V. S. Pritchett, D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Isherwood, Mauriac, Duhamel, Moravia, Scott Fitzgerald, Heller, Andersch, and many others to note the extent to which nineteenth-century tech­ niques of character description have been maintained and even elaborated in both novel and short story. And since all these writers are in many ways indebted to their nineteenthcentury predecessors for their treatment of outward man, I felt it unnecessary to pursue discussions on the novel beyond the delimited period. The idea of making a broad study of the European novel in the light of Lavaterian physiognomy seemed possible in view of previous research on the subject, though it was not easy to decide on the approach to be adopted. To be sure, there are XVl

PREFACE

several cases where one can perceive a telling relationship between a particular treatment of physiognomy in a novel and the fact that its author had some acquaintance with Lavater: a good deal of research on this subject has been done essentially from this point of view. But I wanted to enlarge this scope by including novelists who appear to have made no mention of Lavater in their writings and who probably never read him. In other words, I wanted partly to show how physi­ ognomy permeated nineteenth-century literary culture in ways suggesting that writers were not necessarily altogether conscious of the source of their physiognomical thinking. Here again let me quote a passage from Lovejoy's Great Chain of Being, which I came across long after completing this book: '"There are ... implicit or incompletely explicit assumptions, or more or less unconscious mental habits, operating in the thought of an individual or a generation." Yet while taking Lavater as the fulcrum of my comparative analyses, I do not mean to suggest that he had a direct influ­ ence on every novelist who brought physiognomy into his fic­ tion during the period of question. What I am concerned to do here is to show, on the one hand, that despite the numer­ ous sources to which it would be possible to trace a writer's physiognomical ideas, one may find definite analogies be­ tween Lavater's theories and certain methods of nineteenthcentury literary portraiture, and, on the other hand, that the development of the latter is to be ascribed generally to the nature of the physiognomical character of the period. Thus, I have shifted my focus to and fro between the general and the particular, which means that, although Lavater is by no means mentioned in every context, what is being discussed for its physiognomical interest may still be assumed to be none the less Lavaterian. Despite my primary concern with the nineteenth-century European novel (making occasional reference to American fiction to show the span of the phy­ siognomical climate), I also examined earlier periods of fic­ tion in order to corroborate my central argument, with the result that my findings taken all together may be seen as con-

PREFACE

stituting a kind of history, however inadequate, of physiog­ nomy in the modern novel. Nevertheless, as already stated, my concern is with the novel after 1800, and to this end I have brought in much as evidence as deserves the reader's at­ tention, quoting now and again from works which, but for their documentary interest, would otherwise scarcely merit analysis today. As Professor Palmer (quoted by Lovejoy) has aptly remarked, "The tendency of an age appears more dis­ tinctly in the writers of inferior rank than in those of com­ manding genius." Indeed, it is vital to survey such manifesta­ tions of particular influences the better to understand major literary texts, in which, by virtue of aesthetic ingenuity, the evidence of extrinsic efiFects tends to remain obscure to the general reader. We shall also see how some great novelists de­ veloped the aesthetics of the novel by using physiognomy as a means of delineating the psychology of both observer and ob­ served. Not the least important outcome of this study is the evidence of close links among the literatures of the last cen­ tury; and so for the benefit of readers unfamiliar with some European literatures in the original language, all but the most readily understandable foreign quotations are supplemented by English translations. It would, however, be ungracious of me to give the im­ pression that I was prompted to all this by discovering a refer­ ence to Lavater in a novel, or even by divine afflatus. Admit­ tedly, I knew about Lavater through reading Goethe's poetry and Balzac's fiction as an undergraduate; but I would have otherwise remained unaware of his significance for the Euro­ pean novel had it not been for my doctoral supervisor at the University of Illinois (Urbana), Professor Frangois Jost, who suggested that in my search for a thesis topic, I might con­ sider the literary portrait in relation to Lavaterian physiog­ nomy. Moreover, Professor Jost confessed that, had he had "but world enough and time," he would have been glad to perform this task himself. (He has in the meantime published an article on Lavater and George Sand.) That his approach might have differed somewhat from mine occurred to me

PREFACE

when, in the true spirit of the comparatist, he said that Lavater could be aptly compared with novelists of any national­ ity and any period of literature. But I played safe, though I am partly indebted to Frangois Jost for having been able to do so. I should also like to thank Professor Bob Maguire of Co­ lumbia University for this constant interest in my research; Professor Theodore Ziolkowski of Princeton University and Professor Joseph Bauke of Columbia University for reading the manuscript and making many helpful suggestions; Frau Franziska von Zuccari and Mr. Hans Werner Cale for advice in matters of translation; and Mrs. Arthur Sherwood and Mr. William Hively of Princeton University Press for their invalu­ able editing both just before the manuscript was accepted and while the present version was being prepared. My thanks are also due to Delia Twamley for typing the manuscript so efficiently and for handling corrections and revisions with professional aptitude. Finally, I am deeply grateful to M.C.T. for the tremendous moral and material support she always gave me ever since I first started research on Lavater; to her memory I dedicate this book. Oxford, 16 May 1981

PART ONE

The Historical Background

Introductory THE TREATMENT of outward man in the epic genre, which is

most commonly designated as "character description" or "the literary portrait," has long been thought a proper subject for critical analysis, and interest in this subject has in recent years become almost as intense as it was in the early decades of this century.1 At the same time, however, there can be little doubt that character description has otherwise been taken far less earnestly than it used to be, and that even where it continues to be discussed in studies on fictional theory and practice it tends to receive little more than perfunctory attention. One reason for this may be that, having once been virtually an in­ dispensable matter of consideration in fictional analyses, character description is now widely felt to have become, if not altogether a closed subject, at least a somewhat unfash­ ionable one. Another reason may be the fact that the novelist himself no longer seems to regard character description as being the self-evident obligation it used to be.2 Indeed, some novelists such as Gide have gone so far as to question its as­ sumed necessity in the novel.3 Nevertheless, it remains the kind of subject which, apparently requiring no specialized knowledge in order to be grasped, has elicited and will con­ tinue to elicit comments from critics concerned with the novel, whatever their particular field of interest. For most students of literature, character description means composite portraits, leitmotifs, symbolic physical fea­ tures, and so on. Some critics, however, object to character description: they point to the tediousness of the long drawnout portrait,4 or they complain of the difficulty of visualizing a person that has been described.5 We find, too, that novelists are sometimes classified as those who concentrate on the out-

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

ward man and those who prefer to deal with his inner self.6 When a novel is analyzed, the critic's concern with character description has to do with quantity or concreteness of detail or its absence;7 and unless a novelist makes abundant use of physical features, his treatment of character description is likely to be ignored. Indeed, physiognomy in the novel seems to have become associated mainly with those novelists whose descriptions are too conspicuous to be missed. Thus Scott is well known for introducing his characters with detailed in­ ventories of their appearance and setting, Dickens for the palpability of his characters, Balzac for the vast gallery of portraits in the Comedie Humaine, and so on. There have also been attempts to relate character description to the portrait painting, the caricature, and the drama. In some cases, a nov­ elist's descriptive technique is traced back to that of an ear­ lier novelist. For instance, Dickens' method of physical char­ acterization is said to have been borrowed from Smollett and Sterne, and the nineteenth-century composite portrait is gen­ erally assumed to be the brainchild of Scott.8 As for the enor­ mous increase in character description in the same period, this is sometimes attributed to social change, the Romantic concept of the individual, or the growth of realism and natu­ ralism in fiction.9 Few critics, however, have noted the apparent relationship between character description and physiognomical theory. One of the first to do so was Robert Riemann, who in his book Goethes Romantechntk shows how portraits in German novels and biographies of the last quarter of the eighteenth century were influenced by Lavater's theories.10 Fernand Baldensperger, too, has discussed Lavater's impact on nineteenthcentury French novelists such as Balzac, of whom he writes: "Balzac est, de toute la generation de 1830, l'ecrivain qui a coordonne Ie plus rigoureusement—en y ajoutant—Ies donnees lavateriennes."11 Baldensperger's concern here is to Balzac ... lavateriennes: Of all the 1830 generation, Balzac is the one writer to have most rigorously systematized Lavater's ideas, while contri­ buting something of his own.

INTRODUCTORY

draw parallels between Balzac's use of various physical fea­ tures for characterization and Lavater's theories. He also refers to Lavaterian ideas in the novels of George Sand, Vigny, Bourget, Barres, and the like. It is possibly owing to Riemann and Baldensperger that other critics have been turning their attention during the past thirty years to physiog­ nomy in the novel, concentrating mainly on the nineteenthcentury novel and taking due account of Lavater's influ­ ence.12 Such criticism has opened up an interesting new vista for research, and there is still much territory to explore, espe­ cially in respect of the possible connection between Lavater and the novel of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Comparative studies of this kind are, however, best done tentatively, not so much because novelists may have derived their physiognomical ideas from any number of sources as because character description in the novel is, and always has been, by definition physiognomical. Lavater himself suggests this in the Physiognomische Fragmente when he bids the would-be physiognomist study "die physiognomischen Dichter und Dramatisten," and again when, in his vindication of physiognomy, he points to "die Menge physiognomischer Zuge, Charaktere, Beschreibungen, die man in den grossten Dichtern so haufig findet."13 Dryden, too, was aware of the relationship between physiognomy and the literary portrait when discussing Chaucer's characterization of his pilgrims thus: "All his pilgrims are severally distinguished from each other; and not only in their inclinations, but in their very physiognomies and persons. Baptista Porta could not have described their natures better, than by the masks the poet gives them."14 Nevertheless, there is good reason for confin­ ing our study to post-1775 literature:15 first, because the de­ velopment of interest in physiognomy after 1775 is conspicu­ ously paralleled by corresponding changes in literary portraiture; secondly, because European culture in general die Menge ... findet: the host of physiognomized descriptions of physi­ cal features and characteristics one so often finds in the greatest writers.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

appears to have been dominated by what may be aptly de­ scribed as the Lavaterian physiognomical climate. It is curious to reflect that Lavater's fame in the eighteenth and nineteenth centimes should have been relatively forgot­ ten in our own day. Although Lavater's popularity has never really been measured, it would be scarcely an exaggeration to say that his name was once a household word and that he en­ joyed the kind of adulation nowadays bestowed on film stars and "pop" idols. In sundry literary works published between 1775 and 1900, it is common to find Lavater's name men­ tioned or alluded to, very often in emotive terms; and to compare the different epithets or nouns applied to him is to gain some idea of his extraordinary reputation. In this con­ nection, a few phrases may be worth quoting: "cet homme c6I£bre" (Madame Roland), "le celebre Lavater" (Madame Charriere), "notre celebre Lavater" (J-H. Meister), "den grossen Mann Lavater" (Riegger), "den grossen Mann" (Klinger), "dem redlichen Lavater" (F.H. Jacobi), "diesen gutmiithigen Schwarmer" (Lichtenberg), "des eiteln selbstsiichtigen Narren" (Voss), "der espiegle de Ziirch" (Jean Paul), "the amiable and excellent Lavater" (Crabb Robinson), "Worthy, wonderful Lavater" (Carlyle), "der wohlmeinende Lavater" (Clemens Brentano), "l'honnete Lavater" (SainteBeuve), "cet homme angelique" (Baudelaire). Lavater's effect on the literary world was so profound that it was difficult not to react to him emotionally. There were those who detested him, were jealous of him, considered him a charlatan and a vain man of limited intellect; and there were others who would not hear a word against him and who looked upon him as a prophet, saint, and demi-god. But whatever people felt about the Swiss pastor, whether through his writings or through personal encounters, it was difficult to deny his mag­ netic, warm-hearted personality. Lavater was well known as a theologian in the Germanspeaking world, in which he cut a unique figure on account of his highly personal commitment to Christ and his experi­ ments with the supernatural. But his European reputation β

INTRODUCTORY

was based essentially on his physiognomical writings and ac­ tivities; indeed, he was so famous as a physiognomist that even today he is mistakenly designated here and there as the inventor of physiognomy.16 All this is something of an irony, since Lavater looked upon his physiognomical interests as a secondary aspect of his life's work. Before going further into Lavater's life, it would be useful briefly to discuss certain aspects of the cultural climate of his day as relevant to his historical significance. The first aspect to consider is the general religious background against which he stands out so conspicuously as a pastor of the Swiss Re­ formed church. Although Switzerland and Germany were af­ fected in various ways by the expansion of secular and scien­ tific thought in the Age of Enlightenment, if less so than some other northern European nations, the intellectual climate of both countries may be said, broadly speaking, to have been determined throughout much of the eighteenth century by the philosophy of Leibniz. Until Leibniz came on the scene, Germanic cultural life was very largely in the hands of the theologians, if not under the influence of the French grand Steele, and secularization as such had been a halting process. With the advent of Leibniz, however, German culture began to move more freely again in the secular direction while re­ taining its allegiance to the Church. Leibniz taught that God is the highest manifestation of Reason, Wisdom, and Good­ ness, that this world is the best of all possible worlds, and that man himself is a microcosm capable of infinite self-develop­ ment. This philosophy, which became known as monadology, did much to determine eighteenth-century philosophical op­ timism and to pave the way for a German culture in which theological and secular ideas were happily blended. Leibniz' writings were, however, limited to a small reader­ ship until the mid-eighteenth century, and it was largely owing to Christian Wolff (1659-1754) that his main ideas came to be known any earlier. But although Wolff has long been regarded as the popularizer of Leibnizian thought, he disagreed with Leibniz over several points of doctrine, and he

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

is known to have declared monadology "an unsolved riddle." Wolff adopted a much more pragmatic approach than Leib­ niz in the separation of philosophical analysis from theology, and for this reason he has rightly been evaluated on his own merits as a philosopher.17 Hegel spoke of Wolff as "the edu­ cator of the Germans," and Kant had the highest opinion of his clarity of exposition. Certainly, after the death of Leibniz in 1716, and until Kant appeared, Wolff was looked up to as the leading German philosopher. The fascination of Wolffs teachings lay in the new philosophical freedom they offered. Instead of the old authoritarian approach to knowledge, there was now a concern for the pursuit of truth for its own sake, without the shackles of dogma or obscurantism. It is, never­ theless, noteworthy that, although Wolff was concerned to give philosophy its due, he was in no sense a freethinker. In fact, he deplored the influence of the English deists and the French philosophes, and had no use for German neologists such as Semler, Ernesti, Mosheim, Eberhard, Edelmann, Sack, Teller, Steinbart, Reimarus, and others who had been influenced by Locke, Spinoza, Toland, Tindal, Collins, and the like.18 Wolff was, in fact, a typical German Rationalist in the way he managed to steer a safe course between the reli­ gious and the worldly, the rational and the irrational, the metaphysical and the logical.19 Moreover, many Wolffian Ra­ tionalists, whilst rejecting orthodoxy, were concerned with preserving what they regarded as the reasonable truths and codes of Christianity. Thus, they wanted to reduce the impor­ tance given to the supernatural and the mystical, to confine themselves to what they described as the sensible truths of the Bible, to minimize the divinity of Christ by regarding him as a moral teacher in the Socratic tradition, to argue the existence of God by pointing to the wonders of nature, to treat religion as a kind of ethics, and so on. The religious climate in Germany during the first seventy years of the eighteenth century was, then, as one historian has put it, "a combination of tame Christian Rationalism with a vigorous dash of English deism."20 At the same time, there

INTRODUCTORY

were also separatists and sectarians in abundance: apart from the Calvinists and Lutherans, who seemed to be in perpetual conflict with one another,21 there were the Freemasons, the Illuminati, and, of particular importance for German literary history, the Pietists, a sect which had been founded at Frank­ furt in 1670 by Philipp Jakob Spener (1635-1705) and which, consisting of those who had repudiated the orthodox Church and abolished all ceremonial practices, made religion utterly introspective. One notable Pietistic group were the illuministes, who thrived in Berne under the leadership of Niklaus Anton Kirchberger (1739-99). The Uluministes were highly mystical and tended to exceed the limits of traditional reli­ gious observances. Kirchberger, for example, sought direct communion with supernatural forces, the recovery of the gift of healing, and the interpretation of signs and numbers.22 Al­ though these sects were a standing reproach to the orthodox Church, they also have to be seen, apart from representing a fanatical quest to bring about a new Golden Age, as an ex­ pression of the widespread superstition which obtained dur­ ing that period.23 This general preoccupation with the super­ natural and the mystical may seem somewhat anomalous in an age noted for its enlightened thinking; yet one has only to read Bayle, Locke, Shaftesbury, Addison, Hume, Voltaire, Diderot, and Lessing to gain some idea of the obstacles phi­ losophers had to face in their attempts to combat superstition. That superstition continued to prevail in numerous forms was most strikingly manifest when certain forms of occultism such as mesmerism, somnambulism, magnetism, and exorcism came into vogue during the latter part of the century, and, being ostensibly practiced for therapeutic purposes, attracted large numbers of adherents from all ranks of society.24 Nevertheless, if religious belief often seemed indistinguish­ able from superstition, it was vital for the development of the cult of sensibility in the eighteenth century. This cult had its roots partly in the seventeenth century, when "the head" and "the heart" were familiar metaphors for reason and senti­ ment, though it began in earnest with Shaftesbury's influen-

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

tial writings. It has been said that much eighteenth-century thought was determined by the writings of Shaftesbury and Locke, who were commonly regarded as being antithetical.25 Thus, whereas Locke's philosophy needed a cool, dispassion­ ate intellect for it to be understood, Shaftesbury's appealed directly to the heart and, accordingly, played no small part in the development of European pre-Romanticism. Shaftesbury was hardly less admired on the Continent than he was in England, and traces of his influence, deistic or otherwise, can be discerned in several writers of the period, notably Rous­ seau, Diderot, Gottsched, Spalding, Gellert, Herder, Lessing, and Moses Mendelssohn.26 Wieland, too, was a great admirer of Shaftesbury, and spent some sixteen years preparing a Ger­ man edition of his works 27 It is not difficult to understand why Shaftesbury's ideas should have had such an immediate appeal, for they still retain a certain freshness for the pre­ sent-day reader, particularly in their concern with man in his day-to-day relations with his fellow men. Whether advocat­ ing the cultivation of good manners, the adopting of a pleas­ ant tone in one's conversation, or the avoidance of a moody or cantankerous disposition, Shaftesbury's main concern was to put forward his concept of the ideal man, whom he saw as "not a Witch or a common Machine," but as a creature en­ dowed with innate moral feelings and good sense. What was also new about Shaftesbury's thought was his emphasis on good humor, which he deemed "not only the best Security against Enthusiasm but the best Fotindation of Piety and true Religion."28 For Shaftesbury as for many of his successors who learned so much from him—Addison, Hutcheson, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Young, Rousseau, Moses Mendelssohn—the heart was not only the safest guide to human conduct but the source of all goodness, virtue, and aesthetic creativity. As the apparent infallibility of reason came to be increasingly ques­ tioned after 1700, so the passions came to be understood more and more by philosophers as essential for all human cognition and volition. Hume, for example, reiterated throughout his writings that passion rather than reason governs human con-

INTRODUCTORY

duct; moreover, he felt that sentiment is always right, whereas reason is by no means always reliable.29 But while the philosophers were treating the question of the passions or feelings in the cause of empirical psychology, many writers in the tradition of Shaftesburyean sensibility were concerned with their possible benefits to society. In other words, they believed that it was not enough for an homme sensible merely to have strong passions and deep feelings, but that he should, above all, be generous-hearted and ever concerned for the well-being of his fellows. This is a central theme in the writ­ ings of Pope, whose deistic Essay on Man had a profound im­ pact on European literature, as it is in the novels of Fielding, who suggests time and again through his fictional characters how necessary it is to be good-hearted as against virtuous, and how much man is governed at his best and worst by the heart rather than the head. The heart was also the metaphorical organ of those gifted with genius, a subject that preoccupied the German literary world from the 1750s onward. Although concepts of genius varied considerably,30 it was associated mainly with aesthetic creativity. One of the most influential works on the literary genius was Young's Conjectures on Orig­ inal Composition (1759), in which the poet is exhorted to cease imitating his predecessors and, instead, to give full scope to that originality with which each of us is born.31 Young's arguments about the uniqueness of each human being—a uniqueness he confirmed by pointing to the fact that no two creatures look alike—were as expressive of pre-Romantic individuality and the Sturm und Drang ethos as was Rousseau's concept of the diversity of nature.32 Such ideas were utterly at variance with the principles of French neoclassicism and were, as we shall see, of direct relevance to Lavater's own writings, particularly his physiognomical theories. Another important element of the cultural climate is the major contribution that Switzerland made to eighteenth-cen­ tury German literature in its attempts to shrug off the domi­ nance of French culture. Since the seventeenth century,

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

when German literature, with few notable exceptions, scarcely rose above a mediocre level, France had been giving the main cultural lead. Indeed, in European eyes she was the quintessence of civilization, worldliness, and sophistication; and by virtue of her dramatists, moralists, philosophers, and orators, she had good reason to be imitated in the domain of letters, as she was not only in continental Europe but also to some extent to England. The influence of French culture was evidenced by the universal use of the French language amongst the aristocracy, the preference for French literature to all others, and the cultivation of salons wherein flourished good conversation, brilliant witticisms, and aesthetic delights. French society was long held up as the perfect setting in which a young gentleman might complete his education: Lord Chesterfield's famous letters to his son are often con­ cerned with the advantages of emulating the polished style and manners of the highborn French and studying the works of La Bruydre and La Rochefoucauld. Nevertheless, popular as French culture may have been in, say, Frederick the Great's Prussia, it was often felt to be essentially alien to the Germanic mind,33 and resistance to its all-pervasiveness was sometimes strong. A disenchantment with the excesses of French refinement and politeness was certainly evident in Switzerland, particularly in Johannes Grob's epigrams, Spazierwaldlein (1692), Haller's Der Mann nach der Welt (1733), and Spalding's Gedanken tiber die Bestimmung des Menschen (1748), not to mention numerous sermons and mystical writ­ ings.34 Spalding's Bestimmung des Menschen was, in fact, Switzerland's answer to the materialist arguments of La Mettrie's L'Homme Machine, as it was representative of the dis­ comfort with which the Germanic world in general was later to react to the writings of such philosophes as Helvetius and Holbach.35 Goethe himself refers in Dichtung und Wahrheit to the "Cimmerian gloom" of Holbach's Systeme de la nature (1770), which the young poet and his contemporaries found utterly unacceptable.36 By that time, of course, Rousseau's ideas had come into vogue; and even if the latter had not, in

INTRODUCTORY

fact, advocated a return to primitivism,37 he had criticized eighteenth-century French civilization, just as Sterne himself was to do to some extent in his Sentimental Journey (1768), where remarks that the French are polite "to an excess" and that "with all her materialism [France] would scarcely have called [the narrator] a machine" come across with a forcefully ironic humor.38 Sterne's narrator here admirably stands for that Shaftesburyean philosophy of the heart which came to mean so much to the German literary world during the eighteenth century and which was to counterbalance the French influ­ ence. It was Switzerland that first drew the attention of the German-speaking peoples to the delights of English litera­ ture. As one critic has pointed out, this had its historical im­ plications, for there had been very close cultural ties between England and Switzerland dating back to the sixteenth cen­ tury: not only were there frequent exchanges of students and teachers at the universities, but Protestantism, democratic ideals, and a hard-headed approach to life pointed to a cer­ tain similarity in national temperaments.39 This seemed to be confirmed by the publication of Beat de Muralt's Lettres sur Ies Anglais et sur Ies Franqais (1725), a work which was vir­ tually heretical at that time in so far as it praised English life and institutions and had little but disapproval of the French on account of their polite civilization, their indifference to freedom, and their stultifying neoclassicism.40 But the turning point had already occurred shortly after the Swiss literary critic Johann Jakob Bodmer (1698-1783) had decided, to­ gether with his colleague Johann Jakob Breitinger (1701-76), to found Die Discourse der Mahlem (1721-23), having already happened upon a copy of Addison and Steele's Spectator in 1718.41 Adhering to the Spectator in general design and con­ tent, the Discourse were concerned with literature and the fine arts, and sometimes included satirical sketches of Zurich society. Philosophical and pedagogical questions were also discussed, and advice was given on how to build a library, how to be a good spouse how to enjoy family life, and so on.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

But whether the articles dealt with literature or life, their fundamental purpose was, like Addison's Spectator, to combat artificiality and corruption of taste and to advocate a sensible moral outlook. The Discourse became the prototype for nu­ merous publications in Germany, including Gottsched's Vemiinftige Tadlerinnen (1725-26) and Der Biedermann (1727-29); and though none of these periodicals matched the quality of the Spectator, they were decisive for the develop­ ment of eighteenth-century German literature. These period­ icals were to be superseded by the popular philosophies and more sophisticated journals such as Bibliothek der schonen Wissenschaften (1757-65), Neue Bibliothek der schonen Wissenschaften und der freien Kiinste (1765-1806), and Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek (1765-92), all of which had played their part in propagating the main secular ideas of the period and in creating a fairly large literate public by the time Lavater's physiognomical essays appeared in the 1770s. Bodmer's interest in English literature should not, how­ ever, obscure the fact that he ever remained an admirer of Bayle, Fontenelle, Saint-Evremond, Dubos, and Batteux, as well as the moralists of the grand Steele, and that he also long regarded himself as the German Boileau, with a firm belief in "the rules." But unlike his rival Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700-66), who held court at Leipzig in the name of French neoclassicism, this disciple of Addison's had an eclectic taste, being one of the earliest on the European continent to appre­ ciate Milton's poetry. It was, in fact, Bodmer's German trans­ lation of Paradise Lost in 1732 that marked the beginning of his notorious conflict with Gottsched, who abhorred any po­ etry not founded on Boileau's precepts. In his consistent ad­ vocacy of Milton and all "poetry of the imagination," Bodmer proved to have been more prescient than Gottsched or any other literary figure who clung tenaciously to the principles of neoclassicism. Indeed, Bodmer's and Breitinger's critical writings were essential to the development of German preRomanticism; and it is noteworthy that Nicolai regarded both critics, together with Wolff, as having done most to turn the

INTRODUCTORY

unthinking German nation into a thinking one.42 In later years, however, Bodmer failed to understand the Sturm und Drang movement, and this has been regarded as a severe limi­ tation on his part. No doubt, the representatives of this move­ ment did not all deserve the designation "energetic fools" he gave them,43 just as his other nickname for them, "Lavater's armor-bearers," has been partly responsible for Lavater's being associated almost exclusively with the movement. Whether Lavater should be classified mainly as a Sturm und Drang protagonist is in some respects questionable, espe­ cially since, unlike most of the Stiirmer und Dranger, he re­ mained fully committed to Christianity throughout his life. In any event, Lavater's historical (and literary) significance lies not least in his having achieved fame in a period known for its widespread freethinking and for the erosion of traditional Christian beliefs and dogmas. Lavater's successes may be un­ derstood partly as the expression of a powerful Swiss Protes­ tant church, whose influence extended to practically every sphere of life in eighteenth-century Switzerland. Yet Lavater was by no means indifferent to the secular life of his age, and even responded for a time to the prevailing intellectual influ­ ences. For example, there was a period when he was a keen disciple of Wolff, as can be seen from a letter he wrote to Felix Hess (8 August 1761), in which he says, "Seine Vernunftlehre ist mein Handbuch."44 There is also a conspicu­ ously Rationalist quality about much of Lavater's early reli­ gious thinking, as when, for example, he gave Zimmermann the three reasons for believing in an afterlife as being "unsre eigene Natur, die Analogie, und vornehmlich die gottlichen Schriften."45 One critic's view of Lavater as a Gefiihlschrist (sentimental Christian) who occasionally lapsed into Ra­ tionalism is in many ways valid,46 for Lavater's approach to religion was utterly optimistic, not to say hedonistic, and rarely excluded a consideration of the physical world. In fact, Seine ... Handbuch: His Rationalist teachings are my handbook. unsre ... Schriften: our own nature, analogy, and, above all, the Holy Scriptures.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Lavater's theology was based on a kind of compromise be­ tween mysticism and natural religion. This explains why the Swiss pastor was fascinated by Bonnet's Contemplation de la nature (1764), for it sought to establish some link between the natural and the supernatural by postulating a continuous chain of cosmic beings from the lowest physical phenomenon to the highest spheres of the spirit.47 Moreover the idea of the resurrection of the body and its assuming a new physical form in the afterlife, as discussed in Bonnet's Palingenesie philosophique (1769), had such a profound impact on Lavater that he brought out his own German translation of it a year later. As we grow more familiar with Lavater, we realize that, as a literary figure he is unthinkable outside the context of Leib­ niz' attachment to variety of forms, Wolff s reconciliation be­ tween theology and secularism, Muralt's and Rousseau's re­ pudiation of French civilization, Bodmer's espousal of the poetry of the imagination, the Sturm und Drang resistance to Materialist philosophies, the pre-Romantic cult of genius, and so on. Lavater may also be regarded as a typical homme sen­ sible, not only because he was renowned for his kindness and good humor, but also because he believed that feeling was the true source of knowledge: "Jede Erkenntnis, insofern sie rein ist, ist Gefuhl, Beriihrtheit auf eine gewisse Weise, eine gewisse neue Seinsart."48 But although Lavater's mysticism ran counter to everything that Shaftesbury and the deists stood for in their rejection of religious enthusiasm, he never­ theless shared their interest in the sciences and arts, and their tendency to use literature for didactic aims. Yet for all his apparent eclecticism Lavater remained essentially an individualist with a highly personal philosophy of life. As he wrote in his Vermachtnis (1796): "... ich bin kein Anhanger irgend einer Philosophie; nicht der Wolffschen, nicht der Kant'schen. Ich habe meine eigene."49 No words could more J e d e . . . S e i n s a r t : Every act of cognition, in so far as it is pure, is feeling, and, in some measure, even emotion, a kind of new mode of being. i c h . . . e i g e n e : I am an adherent of no philosophy; not even Wolffs, nor Kant's; I have my own philosophy.

INTRODUCTORY

aptly convey the originality of Lavater's character and out­ look, or better suggest how injudicious it is to associate him too closely with the various trends in theology, philosophy, or literature current in his day. In our attempt to determine Lavater's role in German liter­ ature, it is necessary, first of all, to point to the close links that existed in Germany and Switzerland between literature and theology during the latter half of the eighteenth century. It is interesting to note, for example, what Herder, though a cler­ gyman by profession, achieved as a historian and anthropolo­ gist, just as it is to learn how much of the religious thinking of the period was done by laymen such as Friedrich Jacobi, Hamann, Claudius, and Jung-Stilling. We can see, too, how deeply German literature of the last thirty years of the eigh­ teenth century is imbued with religious sentiment, and how much the language of philosophy, science, and poetry informs the theological thought of that time. It is partly in this light that Lavater can be understood, for though intensely reli­ gious, he was very much in the literary world, if not exactly of it. A perusal of his correspondence shows how much he took an interest in contemporary literature and was in touch with all the leading writers of his day of the most diverse persua­ sions; and by studying Lavater's relations with these writers and their attitudes to him, we get a good idea of the various trends characterizing German culture at that time. One of Lavater's closest literary friends was the renowned court physician Johann Georg Zimmermann (1728-95), who won great acclaim in Europe for his two books, Von dem Nationalstolz (1758) and Uber die Einsamkeit (1784-85). Having first met at a reunion of the Helvetische Gesellschaft in 1766, Lavater and Zimmermann formed a friendship based on mu­ tual esteem and similarity of religious outlook—Lavater was to dedicate his Aussichten in die Ewigkeit to Zimmermann— and later strengthened by Zimmermann's historic role in the preparation and publication of the Fragmente. But despite Zimmermann's loyalty to the Swiss pastor, especially during the period he was defending the latter's physiognomical ideas

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

against Lichtenberg, their friendship was considerably un­ dermined soon after Lavater had begun to dabble in occult activities.50 Lavater's friendship with Herder also began on much the same footing; but though they both shared the same fervent religious outlook characteristic of the Sturm und Drang and genius movements as a whole, corresponded for some years on theological matters of common interest, and even collaborated on the Physiognomische Fragmente, Herder's development from his Messianic phase to a more pantheistic view of religion, as well as his more rigorously sci­ entific approach to ideas, made it difficult for him not to look askance at Lavater's persistent fanaticism and proselytizing, his excursions into the occult, and the rambling quality of his writings.51 Tragic, too, was Lavater's friendship with Goethe, for no relationship had seemed more promising at first. In the late summer of 1773 Goethe sent Lavater a copy of Goetz von Berlichingen,52 having recently heard from his publisher that the Swiss pastor had expressed admiration for his writings, no­ tably the anonymous Brief des Pastors zu "* an den neuen Pastor zu (1773), a Rousseauesque tract which, while ad­ vocating religious tolerance, was markedly Christian in con­ tent;53 and with Lavater's letter of thanks for this flattering gesture on Goethe's part began their long and often impas­ sioned correspondence, many of the earliest letters deriving their interest from Lavater's repeated requests for a drawing of Christ (whom he regarded as the physiognomical ideal) no less than for Goethe's tactful resistance to Lavater's attempts to persuade him of the necessity of embracing Christocentric Christianity. They met for the first time in June 1774, and there is no question that each was deeply impressed by the other.54 Goethe accompanied Lavater on his journey to Bad Ems (June-August 1774), which included visits to Basle, Colmar, Strasbourg, Karlsruhe, Cologne, Diisseldorf, Elbersfeld Hamburg, Hanau, Darmstadt, and Frankfurt, as well as the famous cruise down the Rhine immortalized in Goethe's poem Zwischen Lavater und Basedow (Diner zu Koblenz).

INTRODUCTORY

While Lavater was in Frankfurt, Goethe read extracts from his unpublished Werther,55 and Lavater discovered to his de­ light that his discussion on the evils of moodiness from his Predigten iiber das Buch Jonas (1773) had been used in the first part of the novel.56 Nevertheless, relations between the two great men gradu­ ally declined, mainly because Lavater, unlike Goethe, would not agree to differ on religious matters.57 Not that Goethe had ever been anti-Christian; on the contrary, his description of himself as a "decided non-Christian" should be seen as a mark of his extraordinary religious tolerance. Moreover, there can be little doubt that Goethe's affection and admiration for La­ vater originally had much to do with the sincerity and enthu­ siasm of the latter's faith. One reason why Goethe was unable to become a Christian was that he considered Christianity too restrictive for his particular spiritual needs; in any case, reli­ gion for him had to be firmly rooted in the visible world of nature and humanity. What Goethe deplored in Lavater was certainly not his Christianity, but the way in which his ob­ session with Christ seemed cultish, even narcissistic; nor did he care much for Lavater's theological subjectivity, which he found at its most blatant in the extraordinary interpretation of Pontius Pilate's role as having been pre-ordained by God. There was, in short, much in Lavater that seemed to Goethe barely distinguishable from the crassest superstition, as he made clear in letters to Charlotte von Stein and others in the early 1780s. Lavater, on the other hand, far from betraying a similar disaffection for Goethe, continued to cherish the highest opinion of his genius. Nor was he deterred by Goethe's increasingly caustic replies to his letters from his stubborn persistence in imputing him with a Christian out­ look, and even as late as 1786 went so far as to dedicate his Nathanael to him, adding that, like Nathanael, he (Goethe) would soon know when his divinely appointed hour had come. Goethe never answered the dedication, though the few aggressive comments he committed to paper while still in Italy make it plain that their friendship was by then irrevoca-

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

bly over.58 It is little wonder, therefore, that Goethe was either very distant with Lavater or avoided him altogether whenever one or the other was in Weimar or Zurich in later years.59 Nevertheless, Goethe gives a commendably objective account of his association with Lavater in Dichtung und Wahrheit, in which he has somewhat rehabilitated the Swiss pastor.60 What alienated Lavater's literary friends and ac­ quaintances was not so much his religious beliefs as what they considered eccentric and freakish behavior; and though Lavater long enjoyed the loyalty of those who shared his tem­ perament, there were few who were not offended or dis­ mayed by him at one time or another. Lavater's relations with his contemporaries are, of course, of immense interest to the literary historian, for they give a good idea of the ambiguities of the cultural atmosphere of late eighteenth-century Ger­ many and Switzerland, just as they provide a useful back­ ground for the Fragmente. But before considering these rela­ tions in further detail, let us give a brief account of the Swiss pastor's life. JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER was born in Zurich on 15 November 1741, the son of a doctor. Having sensed his future vocation already in his youth, during which his abnormal religious disposition tended to isolate him somewhat from his peers, Lavater decided to prepare for holy orders at the local Collegium Carolinum in the late 1750s. The theological at­ mosphere of the Carolinum was remarkably liberal in those days, being fostered to a large extent by the senior professor of theology, Johann Jakob Zimmermann, who as a true Rationalist was concerned in his teachings to simplify church doctrine according to the demands of ordinary life, to uphold personal religious convictions, and to adhere to the authority of the Bible. During his studies Lavater came to know and es­ teem the writings of, among others, Johann Joachim Spalding, Joseph Butler, and Martin Crugot. Crugot was, however, something of a controversial figure at that time, and many theologians, including those at the Carolinum, discounten-

INTRODUCTORY

anced his heterodox, Socinian ideas as manifest especially in his famous book, Der Christ in der Einsamkeit (1758). Lavater was, nevertheless, always ready to defend Crugot against ad­ verse criticism, conscious as he was that his essential impor­ tance derived from the way in which, unlike so many contem­ porary theologians, he gave Christ a central place in his writings. The importance which Lavater always attached to feeling in the enunciation of ideas also explains why it is nec­ essary here not to overlook the extraordinary influence which Bodmer and Breitinger also had on him as well as his fellow students, Heinrich Fussli and the brothers Johann Jakob and Felix Hess. Lavater, in fact, dedicated an ode to each of the two great critics in deep gratitude for what he had learnt from Breitinger in discussions with him on theological mat­ ters, and from Bodmer, who had introduced him not only to foreign literatures but, more importantly, to Klopstock's Messias (1748-73). The significance of this work for the devel­ opment of Lavater's Christocentric ethos can scarcely be overrated, at the same time as this fact alone amply illustrates how much eighteenth-century Germanic theology was shaped by the humanities. By the early 1760s Lavater had also become acquainted with the polemical writings of Rousseau, who was a favorite topic of discussion in Bodmer's circle; and though much of Rousseau's thought was utterly alien to Lavater's outlook, it is certain that the Genevan made him more conscious than ever of the social and political problems of his day. Indeed, shortly after completing his studies and being accepted as an ordinand in the Zurich Reformed Church in 1762, Lavater felt impelled, with Fussli, to take action against a certain Felix Grebel, the Landvogt (bailiff) of Griiningen and a member of the Zurich city council, who for some years already had been rumored to be perpetrating sundry malpractices. And so, having written Grebel an anonymous letter urging him to mend his ways, but in vain, Lavater sent the Zurich author­ ities a plaint entitled "Der ungerechte Landvogt, oder Klagen eines Patrioten" (The Unjust Bailiff, or a Patriot's Com-

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

plaints), in which he listed charges of fraud, blackmail, extor­ tion, and so on. Although Lavater and Fussli eventually achieved their aim in so far as Grebel was removed from of­ fice and ordered to make appropriate restitutions, they were both severely reprimanded for the untowardness of their ac­ tion at a hearing on 5 March 1763. On account of the scandal caused by the case, it was, then, convenient that, together with Felix Hess, they were able to set off on their travels to Germany only a few days later. This journey was to include a nine-month stay in Barth (Pomerania) with Spalding, whose theological books were greatly admired throughout the Ger­ manic world (figure 1). And just as Spalding proved to be the "philosophischer Christ" Lavater had long been seeking, so the younger man impressed his host by his exceptional good nature as well as a liveliness and enthusiam which as yet bore no trace of the Schwarmerei he was to deplore during the Swiss pastor's occult phase. To be sure, there were occasional differences of opinion in their many discussions on religion and philosophy: Spalding had only recently translated Shaftesbury's works into German and, perhaps inevitably, showed certain deistic leanings which Lavater could not ac­ cept. Nevertheless, Lavater noted in Spalding much the same commitment to Christ that had made Crugot's theology so appealing to him; and it is evident that, in describing his stay at Barth as the happiest period in his life, he looked upon Spalding, like Bodmer, as having been one of his most impor­ tant mentors. A year after his return to Zurich, Lavater founded, with Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, a journal called Der Erinnerer (1765-66), which consisted of short moral tracts, excerpts from diaries, character sketches, aphorisms, and so on, most of them contributed by Lavater himself. Although the life of the journal was soon cut short by censorship, it became a power­ ful organ in the campaign against materialism and corruption in Switzerland.61 The first literary work to turn Lavater into a celebrity, however, was the Schweizerlieder (1767), which, written in a tone and language that some Swiss authorities considered excessive, were calculated to arouse strong moral

INTRODUCTORY

Figure 1. Johann Joachim Spalding entertains Felix Hess, Lavater, and Heinrich Fussli (left to right at the table) at breakfast during their visit to Barth in the spring of 1763.

and patriotic feelings in his fellow-countrymen, who for too long had been subject to French influences. It is interesting to reflect here that Lavater actually regarded the poet as a kind of prophet; and even though one may trace in his books the literary, philosophical, and mystical influences of Gellert, Young, Klopstock, Kant, Fichte, Friedrich Jacobi, Bohme, Angelus Silesius, Swedenborg, and many others, it is neces­ sary to remember that what he wrote was almost always in­ tended to serve a mainly didactic and religious end.62 Indeed, Lavater regarded his literary creativity as important only to the extent that it served as a means of widening the bounds of his pastoral function. Having served as both deacon and pastor at the Waisenkirche since 1769, Lavater was elected deacon at Saint Peter's, Zurich, in 1778, and then became pastor in 1786, re-

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

maining there until his death in 1801. Lavater's capacity for work was quite astonishing, for apart from his many parochial duties, which included chaplaincies to the local orphanage, prison, and schools, he managed not only to write some 130 books, but also to carry on an unusually large correspon­ dence.63 Dviring these years Lavater established a virtually Emopean reputation as a preacher, and was known to capti­ vate vast congregations by the simple content and fervent rhetoric of his sermons.64 He also found time to entertain hun­ dreds of visitors from all walks of life, some of whom came to consult him about marital and emotional problems, notably Lili Schonemann of Goethe's Lilts Park, and Louise, wife of Karl August of Weimar; indeed, Karl August, thanks to his stay with Lavater in 1779, managed to avert the breakdown of the marriage.65 There were also visitors from other parts of Europe, espe­ cially France and England. Amongst those coming from France between 1784 and 1801 we may mention Baron de Frenilly, Madame Roland, Madame de Genlis, the painter Louis-Frangois Ramond, Sebastien Mercier, Jacques-Henri Meister, Herault de Sechelles, and Andre Chenier.66 Madame de Stael, too, visited Lavater in 1794, having been in corre­ spondence with him for some time already. Baron de StaelHolstein, whom Lavater had met in Copenhagen that year, hoped the Swiss pastor would convert his wife to illuminism, but his hopes were not to be fulfilled. Lavater's friendship with the author of Corinne was brief: the pastor found her too talkative, and it has been conjectured that she, in turn, grew weary of Lavater's naivetes and preachifying; which, how­ ever, did not prevent her from speaking warmly about him in De VAllemagne.67 The French Revolution also brought its share of refugees to Zurich, many of whom were aristocrats, priests and politicians. In this connection, Baldensperger re­ lates how, in spite of military dangers, people would stop at nothing to satisfy their quest for physiognomical knowl­ edge.68 In general, the visits to Lavater were pleasant occa­ sions, and most people gave glowing accounts of the Swiss

INTRODUCTORY

pastor's physiognomical skills or his dynamic personality, dif­ ferences of outlook being of minor consideration. Lavater could also number many prominent members of English society, including royalty, amongst his visitors. It was almost notorious that his greatest admirers were wellborn ladies; and one of these, Queen Charlotte, consort of George III, had a valuable watch delivered to him by her son Ed­ ward, Duke of Kent.69 Other famous English figures who met Lavater were Charles Fox and Thomas Pitt, nephew of Lord Chatham.70 The most interesting accounts of Lavater tend to be those of Continental travelers who, though of little impor­ tance in literary history, wrote entertaining books on Swit­ zerland. Thus we may refer to William Coxe's Travels in Switzerland (1789), Robert Gray's Letters during the Course of a Tour (1794), Helen Maria Williams' Tour of Switzerland (1798), and the Reverend Doctor Thomas Whalley's "Three Excursions in Savoy and France 1783,1784," published in his Journals and Correspondence. If some visitors objected to Lavater's excessive religious fervor,71 others like Helen Williams and Thomas Whalley were deeply impressed by the Swiss pastor. The former speaks of Lavater as being "Zurich's finest literary ornament" and gives a vivid description of his ap­ pearance, his conversation, his difficulties with the French tongue, his compound epithets, his mode of life, as well as a critical assessment of his ideas.72 Whalley's reactions to Lavater are curiously similar to those of Helen Williams as, for instance, when he speaks of the "look of melancholy" which would cloud his benevolent face in serious moments, or when he refers to the Swiss pastor's extraordinary capacity for hard work.73 Again, both authors were very much in favor of physi­ ognomy: Helen Williams discusses the pleasure of being able to analyze one's feelings about someone's appearance and de­ fends Lavater's theories against the charge of being "the fan­ tastic vision of a heated brain," and Whalley declares that his chat on physiognomy with Lavater, which is reported in striking detail, has left him with a burning desire to purchase a French edition of the Fragmente before departing from

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Zurich.74 It is in accounts like these, not to mention the many others which corroborate them, that Lavater's personality has been immortalized; and many years elapsed before Europe could forget Lavater the man, let alone the physiognomist. Nevertheless, Lavater was often a source of embarrassment to the ecclesiastical authorities on account of his extra-paro­ chial activities, not to speak of his highly individualistic Christianity. He was also at variance with the sectarian groups. The Pietists, for example, deplored his worldliness, and the Rationalists ridiculed his mysticism and his associa­ tion with occultists. The Swiss pastor, in turn, found it diffi­ cult to accept the religious doctrines prevalent in his day; for whether it was a question of Orthodoxy, Rationalism, freethinking, Pietism, Freemasonry, Sturm und Drang geniuses, quietism, or deism, in his eyes they all had glaring limitations because they reduced Christianity to a convenient code of ethics or a kind of sentimentalism. Lavater actually preferred the atheists, who seemed to him theologically more consistent than, say, the deists; indeed, he asserted that, unless Christ were the focal point of Christianity, one might as well be an atheist.75 Hence his objections to the sectarians for what he described as "das emporbrausende christusleere Christenthum" (the crescendo of Christless Christianity).76 At the same time, Lavater's own concept of Christ was far from sen­ timental; on the contrary, it was somewhat "existentialist" in the attempt to liberate him from system and dogma. Related to this was Lavater's advocacy of simple religious teaching based on select passages from the Bible, as well as his quest for a Christianity of love, understanding, and forgiveness. Although there was a certain conservatism about Lavater's Christocentric religion and his submission to the authority of the Bible, he was no religious doctrinaire; he was, for want of a better word, too "modern" to be doctrinaire. His modern outlook was not merely religious fervor and enthusiasm as against lip service and respectability, but an interpretation of religion as a living reality. At the same time, religion for Lavater was essentially a subjective, not a universal, experience;

INTRODUCTORY

an experience that could not be communicated at second hand. Hence the apparent paradox of this statement in NaIhanael: "Ich halte das Christenthum fiir die gewisseste und fiir die unerweislichste Sache."77 It has already been pointed out that Lavater made some use of Rationalist arguments in his early theological thinking. From earliest years he had been deeply conscious of the miracle of the Creation: "Lass dir also jeder Punkt der Welt unbegreiflich und ihr Schopfer unbegreiflicher sein—wenn du die Welt siehst, so glaube ihr Dasein, und wenn du ihren Werkmeister empfindest, so bete ihn an."78 Like the adherents of natural religion, Lavater saw the physical world as a symbol and manifestation of the God­ head, but with the difference that he postulated a real con­ nection between the physical and the spiritual, the natural and the supernatural. In this respect, he was, of course, close to Hamann, Herder, F. H. Jacobi, Matthias Claudius, Hemsterhuis, Kirchberger, and others who, though often divergent in their philosophies and in their struggle against the Ration­ alists, the Materialists, and the freethinkers, stressed the im­ portance of subjective feeling, intuition, imagination, and premonition, and made symbolic interpretations and deci­ pherings of the Bible, history, languages, and nature. In their writings, religion seems to be a compound of feeling and out­ ward signs, more like poetry and magic than theology proper. The same is true to some extent of Lavater, whose best-known theological works abound in the most unusual symbolic inter­ pretations. For example, in Pontius Pilot (1782-85), which consists of a number of brief and often highly poetic passages, Pilate is seen as an instrument predestined by God to carry out "die allerwichtigste, unvergleichbarste Gottes-und SaI c h . . . Sache: I consider Christianity to be at once the most certain and the most undemonstrable thing. Lass... an: Let each particle of the world be incomprehensible to you, and the Creator more incomprehensible; and when you contemplate the world, then believe in its existence; and if you feel the presence of its Maker, then worship Him. die allerwichtigste... kann: The most significant, the most unparalleled divine and diabolical deed that has ever been done, or could ever be done.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

tansthat, die je gethan ward und gethan werden kann."79 This unusual and interesting interpretation led Hamann, in a letter (29 August 1783) to Lavater, to call the work a "monumenturn perennis."80 Then there was something new about Lavater's Aussichten in die Ewigkeit (1768-73) in the specula­ tions about the physical perfection of man in the afterlife and the bodily return to Christ. Even Lavater's language was orig­ inal in the number of compound words he invented.81 Yet symbolic interpretation was not enough for Lavater; he wanted visible proofs of religion. This is what Kirchberger, himself no stranger to the most daring mysticism, disap­ proved in Lavater.82 Although Lavater claimed that religion is a matter of faith which no philosophy can help, and some­ times had grave doubts about the strength of his own faith,83 he was certain, especially in the 1770s and 1780s, that the va­ lidity of Christianity could be proved. For example, he ap­ pears to have been more concerned than most with the an­ swering of prayer. Unless Christ hears our prayers, Lavater maintained, then religious belief is sheer madness.84 Similarly, Lavater believed that faith can actually move mountains, and that it is for want of faith that supernatural events occur so seldom. He even went so far as to assert that religion is a kind of magic.85 Had Lavater confined himself to mysticism and lived in relative isolation, as some of his kindred minds did, it would be easy enough to place him in the same category as the mystics referred to above. In fact, Lavater took a much more "scientific" view of religion than did his fellow mystics. He believed that a study of parapsychological phenomena would help to provide the key to religious faith; and if reli­ gion could be justified by occult experiments, then they were as valuable in his eyes as any cogent theological argument. Thus began his dealings with some of the famous occultists and charlatans of his day, and it is evident that, without suc­ cumbing entirely to their influence, he looked upon them as divine agents. For instance, during the time the Catholic priest Gassner's exorcisms were causing a stir in Germany, Lavater temporarily fell under his spell.86 In a letter (25

INTRODUCTORY

March 1775) to the Landgraf von Hessen-Homburg he wrote: "Wenn Gassner die Kraft nicht von der Kraft hat, die ihm zugeschrieben wird, so kann ich keinem Menschen mehr glauben."87 There was a similar fascination in Cagliostro, whom Lavater described in a letter to Goethe (10 [?] February 1781) as "die personifizirte Kraft," and in a later one (3 March 1781) as "ein Parazelsischer Sternnarr, ein Hermetischer Philosoph, ein Arkanist, ein Antiphilosoph," even though Lavater later confessed that he and Cagliostro differed on fundamental principles.88 But while Cagliostro was everywhere perform­ ing his Egyptian rites and demonstrating their function in bringing about the physical and moral regeneration of man, animal magnetism was becoming all the rage in a number of European cities; and in 1785 Lavater attended magnetic cures in Berne and Geneva; he even mastered the skill well enough to alleviate one of his wife's illnesses and, after a re­ lapse, to maintain her for some time in a somnambulistic state. But the significance of magnetism for Lavater lay above all in its apparent similarity to those gifts of healing, tongues, and prophecy attributed to the Apostles and the early Church fathers. 9 Hence the judgment he made in a letter to Spalding (22 October 1785): "Ich verehre diese neu sich zeigende Kraft als einen wohltatigen Strahl der Gottheit... .',90 Yet for all Lavater's determination to promote the cause of magnetism, many right-thinking contemporaries found its therapeutic methods dubious, and some even declared them immoral. This, added to the fact that Lavater had already gone far enough with his fanatical and proselytizing tendencies, ex­ plains the nonplussed reactions not only of Goethe, Herder, and Zimmermann, but also of fellow mystics such as the Swiss popular philosopher Isaak Iselin and Julie Bondeli, not to Wenn ... glauben: If Gassner does not have the great power he has been attributed with, then I can no longer have faith in anybody. ein Parazelsischer... Antiphilosoph: a Paracelsian seer, a hermetic phi­ losopher, an arcane scientist, an antiphilosopher. I c h . . . G o t t h e i t : I venerate this newly discovered energy as a beneficent ray of Divine light.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

mention the falling away, especially in 1785 and 1786, of a number of close friends and supporters—Stolz, J. J. Hess, Princess Louise of Dessau, even Karl August's Louise—and, perhaps inevitably, some like Elsa von der Recke went over to the Rationalist camp in their disappointment with Lavater.91 But none were more bitterly opposed to his occult practices than the Rationalists themselves. The Rationalists had already shown their disapproval of Lavater often enough during the 1760s on account of his stubborn quest to win converts to Christianity, particularly when it became known that the proselytizing was being ex­ tended to people well outside the Christian fold, such as Moses Mendelssohn. Lavater had first met the latter in 1763, and, being impressed by his human qualities and his writ­ ings, notably Phadon (1767), with its heartfelt arguments about immortality, had come increasingly to look upon him as a would-be Christian. Perhaps the most extraordinary inci­ dent in this relationship occurred when Lavater sent Men­ delssohn a copy of his translation of Bonnet's Palingenesie philosophique, for it contained a dedication to him ending with a challenge either to refute Bonnet's Christian argu­ mentation or to convert to Christianity. Despite his feelings of outrage, Mendelssohn answered the dedication with a dip­ lomatically worded open letter to Lavater, in which, apart from questioning Bonnet's reasoning, he expressed his reluc­ tance to enter into religious disputes and reaffirmed his com­ mitment to Judaism. It was this incident that elicited some of the most hostile comments the Rationalists had ever heaped upon Lavater. Lessing, for example, was utterly astonished at Lavater's attitude, and not only sent letters of sympathy to Mendelssohn but expressed his dismay in a letter to Nicolai (2 January 1770): "Lavater ist ein Schwarmer, als nur einer des Tollhauses wert gewesen."92 There were similar comments in later years on Lavater's mystical activities, and none could have been more virulent than those of the idyllic poet and Lavater... gewesen: Lavater is a raving lunatic if ever there was one, fit only for a madhouse.

INTRODUCTORY

Homeric scholar, Johann Heinrich Voss (1751-1826) who, as a convinced Rationalist, discountenanced such practices as being contrary to true human dignity.93 Voss was especially contemptuous of Lavater's Reise nach Kopenhagen (1793), with its account of his participation in the mystical seances of a group of people who believed, amongst other things, that Saint John the Apostle had returned to earth.94 No less repre­ hensible in the eyes of the Rationalists was Lavater's associa­ tion with the Catholic church. Since the 1760s the power of Catholicism had begun to decline considerably in Europe, as confirmed partly by the massive expulsion of Jesuits from Portugal, Spain, France, and so on.95 For the Rationalists this was an obvious blessing, since it meant a much freer atmo­ sphere for the pursuit of philosophical and scientific inquiry. Yet the fear of a strong Catholic revival, indeed, of a Jesuit one, still lurked in many people's minds, especially when it was known that some ex-Jesuits were forming secret societies like the Rosicrucians and the Illuminati in order to continue their campaign against the Rationalists.96 But the problem came to a head when it was discovered that Lavater had befriended the Catholic bishop Michael Sailer and was recommending the use of the latter's prayer book to Protestants. Since Lavater had little difficulty in at­ tracting admirers and followers, this gesture of his was seen as adding immeasurably to the existing dangers. What the Rationalists failed to realize, however, was that Sailer was anything but a militant Catholic; in fact, he was very close in spirit to the mystical thinking of the Pietists.97 Unfortunately, Lavater's friendship with Sailer was seen largely in a political light, especially by the popular press.98 The main force be­ hind the attacks on Lavater in journals such as the Berlinische Monatsschrift, the Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek, and der teutsche Merkur, which had long been ridiculing Lavater for his various eccentricities, was the Berlin Rationalist Friedrich Nicolai (1733-1811), whose morbid fear of Catholicism, as evident from his fierce diatribes against Jesuit schools and universities,99 often reached paranoid proportions. Even

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Lichtenberg, who was no less critical of Lavater's quirks of behavior, felt that Nicolai had been unduly vituperative of the Swiss pastor over the Sailer affair.100 In fact, few of the accusations made against Lavater had any real foundation, and people soon grew weary of the attacks on Lavater by the Jesuitenriecher, a term applied to literary figures such as Mirabeau, Voss, and Leuchsenring, who did their utmost to expose Lavater as a Jesuit.101 Sailer himself was quick to point out that Lavater was still a devout Protestant at heart, which was later borne out by the latter's Rechenschaft an meine Freunde (1786), in which he explained his refusal to convert to Catholicism on account of its intolerance and authoritari„ 102 anism. There was, however, no lack of defenders against the Jesui­ tenriecher, including Count Friedrich Stolberg, the Landgraf von Hessen-Homburg, J. G. Schlosser, and the composer Johann Friedrich Reichardt.103 Stolberg, for instance, answered Mirabeau's famous screed against Lavater by asserting not only that the latter was a true Protestant but also that Gassner, Cagliostro, and other occultists had in no way un­ dermined Lavater's Christian beliefs.104 The irony of Stolberg's defense is that, although he shared Lavater's dislike of Jesuitry at that time, he eventually joined the mass of con­ verts to Catholicism, once he had become disillusioned with the outcome of the French Revolution, on which he had placed high hopes.105 It is also ironic that at a time when German Rationalism was becoming notorious for the trivi­ ality of its concerns (a triviality that gave rise to the term Trivialaufklarung and became the butt of Goethe and Schiller's satires in their Xenieri), Lavater became something of a hero in Switzerland through his bold resistance to the ideals of the Jacobins. Lavater's heroism in the last decade of the eigh­ teenth century could be regarded as a fine example of Chris­ tian conduct. His bravery in the face of the occupying revolu­ tionary armies, his numerous outspoken letters to the Directory in Berne in the name of justice and freedom, his exhortations to his compatriots to keep up their spirits and to

INTRODUCTORY

his fellow clergy to continue quietly with their parochial work—all these are important aspects in an assessment of Lavater's character.106 The last two years of his life, during which he lived in intermittent physical pain caused by an ab­ dominal wound, were remarkable for his courage and endur­ ance; and when the end came in January 1801, there was lit­ tle doubt that, on the day the citizens of Zurich turned out in their thousands to attend his funeral, Lavater had never been so well loved. THE ADVANTAGE of a detailed account of Lavater's life is that,

apart from its intrinsically dramatic interest, it enables the lit­ erary historian to gain some idea of the ambiguities of the cul­ tural atmosphere in Switzerland and Germany during the sec­ ond half of the eighteenth century. The task of finding a place for Lavater in literary history is, however, not easy. To be sure, he belongs, with his mysticism, enthusiasm, and intui­ tion, to the Sturm und Drang movement, as he does to the Age of Enlightenment with his inveterate optimism, his inter­ est in the arts and sciences, and the didacticism of his writ­ ings. But as our biographical sketch has suggested, Lavater's very originality seems to defy the definitions that literary his­ torians are prone to making.107 Nevertheless, there are grounds for describing Lavater essentially as a pre-Romantic in so far as he, like the Goethe of Werther, represents a kind of culmination of that phase in German literature which, begin­ ning virtually with Leibniz, continuing with Bodmer and Breitinger, and being shaped by the literature of the heart and the imagination we associate with Shaftesbury, Addison, Milton, Fielding, Rousseau, Young, Sterne, and the like, leads on to nineteenth-century Romanticism. At the same time, Lavater would appear to be of greater interest to the cultural historian than to the literary critic, if only because his writ­ ings attract little attention nowadays. It is this that explains why mistakes are occasionally made as to his contributions to literature. Disregarding those who refer to Lavater as a phi­ losopher or a physiologist, there are some who think that he

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

was a phrenologist, thus confusing him with the so-called in­ ventor of phrenology, Franz Joseph Gall.108 One reason for this confusion is that physiognomy and phrenology came to be very closely linked in the nineteenth century, and were sometimes indistinguishable.109 This is reflected, for instance, in War and Peace when one character attributes a phrenolog­ ical idea to Lavater,110 which suggests that Lavater's fame has rested on hearsay rather than on acquaintance with his writ­ ings. Yet there is a case now for rereading at least his phy­ siognomical essays, not simply because physiognomy came to be connected almost exclusively with his name for well over a hundred years, but because nineteenth-century European lit­ erature as a whole, and most particularly the novel, with its detailed descriptions and analyses of human beings, land­ scapes, house interiors, and inanimate objects, is in many ways an expression of that physiognomical atmosphere whose beginnings can be traced primarily to the Physiognomische Fragmente.

Lavater and the Physiognomische Fragmente IT IS EASY to understand why Lavater's great reputation as a

physiognomist should have sometimes led to the assumption that he even invented physiognomy. In fact, physiognomy has a long and illustrious history stretching back to classical an­ tiquity as well as the ancient cultures of Egypt, Chaldea, Arabia, and China.1 Histories of physiognomy are, however, hard to come by, though one such that deserves mention for its compendious account of the science from the antique era down to the end of the eighteenth century is Georg Gustav Fulleborn's "Abriss einer Geschichte und Litteratur von der Physiognomik," which was published in 1797, by which time Lavater's theories were, ironically enough, far less fashion­ able in the Germanic world than elsewhere in Europe.2 In his introduction, Fiilleborn discusses the problem of writing a useful history of physiognomy, for, apart from physiognomi­ cal treatises, one has to decide on the historical significance of physiognomical statements to be found in all manner of liter­ ary contexts.3 The Bible, for example, contains several pas­ sages of physiognomical interest, some of which are quoted by Lavater in support of his main arguments. Yet the diffi­ culty of tracing the origin of many such passages inevitably limits their usefulness to the historian, except in so far as they suggest, as do physiognomical proverbs and metaphors, that physiognomy had probably been an integral part of most cul­ tures long before it became a formal branch of study. The etymology of the word physiognomy is enough to in­ dicate the importance of the science for the ancient Greeks and Romans; and Fiilleborn shows how practically all the

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

well-known classical figures, from Plato to Plotinus, wrote or uttered remarks of physiognomical interest. The formal study of physiognomy is said to have begun with Pythagoras, though Galen asserted that Hippocrates was the first to es­ tablish it as a science.4 The fact that both Pythagoras and Hippocrates owe their fame to a few general comments they made on the necessity of physiognomy would suggest how customary the science was for the ancients. This is confirmed in some measure by a few anecdotes handed down from that era. Thus, according to Fulleborn, Pythagoras was reported never to befriend someone or take him on as a pupil without first being satisfied with his physiognomy.5 There is also an anecdote told by Aristotle of an unfavorable reading of Hip­ pocrates' face,6 which is somewhat similar to the even more famous one, recorded in Cicero's De Fato and Tusculans, about the Egyptian physiognomist Zopyrus' judgment that Socrates was "stupid and thick-witted because he had not got hollows on the neck above the collar-bone" and that he was "addicted to women"—a judgment which, despite the con­ sternation of his disciples, Socrates accepted, for, as he said, he had learnt to control his vices by means of reason.7 Plato himself regarded physical beauty as a sign of the beauty of the soul, and it was in this spirit that Socrates was certain of the connection between vice and ugliness; indeed, he would ad­ vise youths to look in their mirrors every morning to note what progress they were making along the path of virtue.8 The most important historical figure in classical physiog­ nomy is, of course, Aristotle. That he was by no means the first to write a treatise on the subject is evident from his refer­ ence to predecessors in the Physiognomonica.9 Aristotle's concern with physiognomy can also be seen in other writings of his, particularly Analytica priora, De anima, Historia animalium, and De partibus animalium.10 Almost as important as Aristotle are the physiognomists Loxus and Polemo; and though the identity of the last two is uncertain, a treatise on physiognomy by all three authors exists in Latin translation and is known to have enjoyed much fame in the Middle

LAVATER a n d t h e

FRAGMENTE

Ages.11 Another major classical physiognomist is Adamantius, whose physiognomical writings were markedly influenced by Aristotle, especially on the similarities between men and ani­ mals, and by Polemo, whose detailed discussions on the eyes and much else besides Adamantius acknowledged having borrowed for his own handbook on physiognomy.12 In this connection, it is noteworthy how popular such books were down to the fourth century A.D.; and it has been shown that descriptions of emperors and generals in the histories and biographies of Tacitus, Livy, Pliny the Elder, Ammianus Marcellinus, and Suetonius embody the ideas contained in those handbooks.13 Subsequent developments in the history of physiognomy were determined largely by the Physiognonwnica, whose au­ thorship has, rightly or wrongly, been ascribed to Aristotle. Postulating at the outset a close relationship between body and soul, the author goes on to consider particular types of physical appearance and the moral dispositions they sig­ nify—strength, weakness, genius, stupidity, gentleness, im­ petuosity, and the like, with particular emphasis being laid throughout on symmetry and proportion of body and features as expressions of the golden mean. With its systematic tabula­ tion of physiognomical features, the treatise must have given an impression of scientific solidity; and there are passages that still make good sense, as, for example, those in which the au­ thor bids the physiognomist to make repeated observations, to avoid confusing general with particular characteristics, to notice the envy that commonly underlies an expression of anger, and so on. At the same time, some physiognomical judgments, however carefully based on observation, now seem quaint, notably the moral parallels drawn between human and animal nature and the famous anthropomorphic comparison of the lion (masculinity) with the panther (femi­ ninity). For the modern reader, such ideas may seem more like poetry than physiognomy; and poetry they certainly were, to some extent, for they exercised much influence on the medieval beast-epic as well as on the development of ani-

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

mal imagery and symbolism. Nevertheless, for our purposes, the importance of Aristotle's treatise lies in its having been chiefly instrumental in the revival of physiognomy during that period;14 and until the time of Lavater, it was the stan­ dard work on physiognomy, being ever quoted, criticized, and commented on, as well as having its authenticity asserted or questioned.15 A study of European physiognomy between the eleventh and eighteenth centuries shows how closely the science was bound up with the main branches of learning, especially med­ icine and physiology. Several physiognomical treatises, in­ cluding one or two important ones handed down from antiq­ uity, have, in fact, been written by men who were physicians by profession—Galen, Loxus, Gratarolus, Jan Friedrich Helvetius, Jean Cecile Frey, Philippe Mey, La Chambre, not to mention Rhazes, a name which, together with those of Averroes, Avicenna, and Zacharias, should remind us of the historical achievement of the Arab philosophers both as translators and expounders of Aristotle's treatises and as dis­ seminators of physiognomical ideas in medieval Europe.16 The link between physiognomy and medicine is most evident in the medieval concept of the complexio (the totality of the physical makeup), a proper understanding of which depended on a sound knowledge of physiognomy as well as the tradi­ tional four temperaments, if medical treatment was to prove effective.17 Physiognomy was also an integral part of the hu­ manistic disciplines, and it is well known that the most fa­ mous treatises published in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were written by men noted for their achievements in philosophy—Michael Savonarola's Speculum physionomiae, Albertus Magnus' De animalibus, Pietro d'Abano's Concilator diffentiarum and Michael Scot's De secretis na­ turae. But for all their concern with the moral significance of the human body and of the individual physical features, most physiognomical treatises, including the aforementioned, lay heavily under the influence of astrological thought, which

LAVATER AND THE FRAGMENTE permeated philosophy and science at that time. The idea that the planets influenced different parts of the human organism, particularly the lines on the forehead and the "mountains" in the hand, informed the writings of numerous physiognomists who, flourishing mainly in Germany, Italy, and France, are now all but forgotten—Johann Rothmann, Paul Nagel, Antiochus Tibertus, Angelus Blondus, Jean Belot, Scipio Chiaramonte, Jean Taxil, Maurice Froger, Adrian Sicler, Hippolytus Obicius, Hieronymus Zanchius, Johann Hoping, Rodolphus Goclenius, Julius Caesar Scaligar, Nicolas Pompeius, Robert Fludd, Johann Praetorius, and many others.18 Almost all these physiognomists were practitioners of chiromancy; and for a time this science was taken seriously enough to be taught at colleges and universities and to be thought a suitable topic for many a seventeenth-century German dissertation.19 Treatises in chiromancy were, like almost all physiognomical books, usually written in Latin; and it was a testimony to their popu­ larity when they were translated into the main European lan­ guages. One such work is John ab Indagine's Introductiones apotelesmaticae (1522). Another is Chiromantia ac physionomia Anastasis (1504) by Bartolommeo della Rocca, known as Codes, who made no bones about his importance as a physi­ ognomist and who considered himself superior even to Aris­ totle, Albertus Magnus, and Savonarola. Although Codes deals here generally with physiognomy, and provides detailed analyses of every feature, he clearly deemed chiromancy more reliable than physiognomy, and he thought a knowledge of astronomy and medicine indispensable for the physiogno­ mist.20 Both Codes and Indagine were, despite their notori­ ety as astrological physiognomists, none the less deeply con­ versant with what we would call "normal" physiognomy. Codes' Anastasis was translated into English by Thomas Hyll, who in his own Contemplation of Mankind (1571) de­ clared physiognomy "a necessarie and lawdable science, see­ ing by the same a man may so readily pronounce and foretell the naturall aptnesse unto the affections, and conditions in men, by the outwarde notes of the bodye."21 Hyll's apology

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

for physiognomy need not surprise us, for, as we shall see, physiognomy, especially chiromancy, had numerous enemies. The same was hardly less true of metoposcopy, which, though familiar enough in the ancient world, achieved prominence in the seventeenth century, first in Germany and later in Italy.22 The most famous metoposcopists of that period were Samuel Fuchs, Rodolphus Goclenius, and Ciro Spontone, whose Metoposcopia overa commensuratione delle linee delle fronte went into several editions between 1626 and 1654. Also worth mentioning here is Filippo Finella, who in one of his many physiognomical books claimed to have studied 1,300 heads in thirty years, and used woodcuts to illustrate his arguments.23 Most physiognomists, however, dealt with several branches of physiognomy in one and the same book. For instance, the Spaniard Geronomino Cortes' Phisonomia y varies secretes de naturaleza (1604), which enjoyed several editions in the early seventeenth century, includes interpretations of black and white marks on the fingernails. There were also treatises con­ cerned with the moral and metaphysical significance of moles, warts, and freckles, and with the influence exerted on them by the planets and fixed stars. Finella himself analyzed moles, as did Ludovico Settala, whose De naevis (1628) roundly condemns the frivolous attitude of his contem­ poraries toward the physiognomy of this feature.24 There were also separate studies on the physiognomy of laughter (gelotoscopy), handwriting, the foot, the thumb, and, as in the Lavaterian era, of horses and even plants. One notable publi­ cation of this period was Richard Sanders' Physiognomie and Chiromancie (1653), which, apart from giving astrological in­ terpretations of moles and birthmarks, has a long section on "oneirocracie," that is, the physiognomy of dreams. The more physiognomy branched out, whether for medical or aesthetic reasons, the more it assumed new designations; but most of them—anthroposcopy, ophthalmoscopy, podoscopy— are as forgotten as the names of those who used them.25 The only truly memorable name from that period is the Italian Giambattista della Porta (1535P-1615), whose De humana

LAVATER AND THE FRAGMENTE physiognomonia (1586) achieved a remarkable European rep­ utation; by 1655 it had reached some twenty editions, having been translated into several languages.26 In detailed analyses of each and every part of the human body, Porta now and then refers to the physiognomies of Aristotle, Polemo, Trogus, Philo of Lacedaemonia, Galen, Hippocrates, and Vir­ gil, as well as to the medieval philosophers Savonarola and Albertus Magnus. In particular, Porta continues the Aristote­ lian tradition of comparing human and animal physiogno­ mies, the animals being somewhat endued with those curiously human expressions to be found in similar engravings in the Fragmente (figure 2). Lavater, incidentally, had the highest opinion of Porta and recommended his book to all physiognomists.27 Eminent though he was, Porta did not escape criticism any more than did the crudest astrological physiognomist; and this critical attention points up the prominence of physiog­ nomy in European cultural life before Lavater's time. Nor was physiognomy without some honor, to judge by Rizza Casa's dedication of La Fisionomia (1588) to Elizabeth I of England, and Domenico de Rubeis' Tabulae physiognomicae (1639) to Richelieu 28 It was quite usual for men of learning to discourse on the nature and function of physiognomy, its pos­ sibilities, and even its dangers. There were also frequent at­ tempts to separate "normal" or "natural" physiognomy from its astrological varieties. For example, in his Physiognomia humana (1648), the French Jesuit theologian Honorat Nicquet no doubt believed he was removing the accumulated taints on physiognomy by condemning the astrologists.29 On the other hand, there were others, less radical, who were anx­ ious to distinguish between so-called natural astrology and its debased, fortune-telling forms. This is evident in G. B. Grassetti's Vera e falsa astrologia (1683), which contains an im­ portant subsection on true and false chiromancy, and in Francesco Torreblanca's Daemonologia (1623), which, though condemning chiromancy, nevertheless acknowledges the in­ fluence of the planets on the human body.30 Others, however, made no such nice distinctions in their recommendation that

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Figure 2. Porta's human and animal heads. "It is common knowledge that Aristotle and Porta based their physiognomical theories largely on the resemblance between man and animals. Yet in this they were often quite mistaken, for they noted resemblances where none exist, and missed others that were plain to see" (Lavater).

all physiognomists be punished or expelled. This attitude is typified by Pierre Node's Declamation contre l'erreur execrable des maleficiers, sorciers, enchanteurs (1578).31 Most attacks on physiognomists were made on religious 42

LAVATER AND THE FRAGMENTE grounds. It was considered blasphemous to forestall Provi­ dence, as most chiromancers and metoposcopists did, by pre­ dicting future events in everyday life from sundry bodily signs; and this accounts for the widespread belief throughout those centuries that physiognomy was a kind of black magic. This view is evident in Jacques Ie Grand's Sopholegium (ca. 1405), as in Ludovicus Vives' Introduction to Wysdome (1540), in which physiognomy is said to be "inuented by the dewyll" and physiognomists are thought too evil not to be shunned since they "intreate and professe those thynges which god hath reserved unto himselfe alone, that is to say, the knowledge of thynges to come."32 A similar attitude is characteristic of John Gaule's Mag-Astro-Mancer (1652). Hence the constant campaign against astrology by the Holy Inquisition and the proscriptions against its exponents in the papal bulls of Paul IV in 1559 and of Sixtus V in 1586, whereby various forms of divination—necromancy, pyro­ mancy, oenomancy, neomancy, pedomancy, hydromancy, and geomancy, as well as physiognomy, chiromancy, and metoposcopy—were severely denounced.33 It is, moreover, interesting to note the effects of the bans on the literature of that period. Thus, there were attempts to save physiognomy by reading between the lines of blanket condemnations. Some physiognomists such as Pompeio Sarnelli interpreted the papal decrees as directed not against physiognomy per se but against Codes, John ab Indagine, Andreas Corvus, Tricasso, and Cardan, who were commonly singled out as the most no­ torious of the chiromancers.34 Even Savonarola and Michael Scot did not escape criticism for their astrological ideas. On the other hand, Jean Taxil, in his book L'Astrologie et physionomie en Ieur splendeur (1614), said Sixtus V's decree was intended only for "sorcerers," not "natural" chiromancers.35 Nevertheless, the bans instilled enough fear to elicit several disavowals of astrology such as we find, for instance, in Porta's Coelestis physiognomia (1603), which obtained the imprima­ tur everywhere save in Rome.36 The condemnation of astro­ logical physiognomy for its excesses in Giovanni Ingegnesi's

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Fisionomia naturale (1615) was probably made for the same reasons.37 But despite the bans, or perhaps because of them, physiog­ nomy continued to flourish in a variety of forms; and by the end of the seventeenth century it had already begun to emerge in more "scientific" forms. For example, Heinrich Herfeld's Philosophia hominis de corporis humani (1687) fore­ shadows the Lavaterian era of physiognomy in its concern with the conformation of the head. Noteworthy, too, is a physiognomical treatise Bayle included in his Dissertationes physicae (1677), in which he gives an elaborate scientific dis­ cussion of the physiognomy of the foetus, while subscribing oddly enough to the idea, often acknowledged from the an­ cients down to Lavater, that foetal development can be de­ termined by the imagination of the pregnant mother.38 One work evidently affected by the philosophical climate of the grand Steele is Claude de La Belliere's Physionomie raisonnee (1664), which, despite its astrological elements, deals with the physiognomical significance of speaking, walking, and laugh­ ing. This book was much admired by La Chambre,39 who is himself a major figure in the history of physiognomy. Like his contemporaries, La Chambre was to some extent imbued with astrological notions, as we note in his Discours sur Ies prineipes de la chiromance (1653); but his reputation as a physiognomist rests on L'Art de connoistre Ies hommes (1660) and Les Caracteres des passions (1648-59), the latter being influenced by Descartes' Traite des passions de I'dme (1649), whose historical importance derives from its having largely determined the psycho-physiological approach to the theory of expression as advocated by painter-theorists of the Acad­ emy in the late seventeenth century.40 Another notable Car­ tesian treatise concerned with the effects of emotional stimuli on the human appearance is Le Brun's Conference sur I'impression des differents caracteres des passions (1667), engrav­ ings from which were to be reproduced in the Fragmente. An awareness of the connection between physiognomy and aesthetic theory is essential for a proper understanding of

LAVATER AND THE FRAGMENTE the evolution of physiognomy in the modern period. During the Middle Ages, the connection hardly existed, it seems, for the portrait painter was less concerned with individual like­ ness than with endowing his subject's countenance with that almost universal expression of piety which is familiar to mu­ seum visitors. The importance of physiognomy for painters and sculptors, though acknowledged to some extent in an­ cient Greece, was first asserted during the Renaissance.41 That recognition of this importance was slow to come is well illustrated by Alberti, who, committed as he was to principles or decorum, was concerned primarily with movement and gesture, and regarded facial expression, except where it showed weeping or laughter, as utterly problematic.42 By the end of the sixteenth century, however, it is evident from such aesthetic treatises as Pomponius Gauricus' De sculptura (1540?), Paolo Pino's Dialogo di pittura (1548), Francisco de Hollanda's Tractato de pinture antique (1548), Giovanni Lomazzo's Trattato dell arte della pittura (1584), and Francesco Bocchi's Eccellenze della Statua del San Giorgio di Donatella (1584) that physiognomy was beginning to play an implicit part in discussions of facial types and facial expression.43 The inspiration for such developments probably came from Leo­ nardo da Vinci, whose own comments on portrait painting are conspicuously physiognomical.44 How far Leonardo was familiar with contemporary physiognomy is not certain; but that he was aware of its limitations is suggested by a comment of his on "false physiognomy and chiromancy."45 In any event, there is much of essentially physiognomical interest in his Treatise on Painting, particularly his discussion "Of the Variety of Faces," in which he makes the virtually revolu­ tionary statement that "the attitude, and all members [of the body], ought to correspond with the sentiments expressed in the face."46 Of similar physiognomical interest are Leonardo's caricatures, which are said to have influenced Durer, whose Vier Biicher von menschlichen Proportionen (1528) include not only geometrical analyses of the human body but also dis­ cussions of contrasted profiles and abnormal faces.47 That all

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

this pointed forward to Lavater's Fragmente will be seen later in this chapter. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, physiognomy bid fair to benefit by the growth of experimental science and empirical philosophy, not to mention new advances in aes­ thetic theory. To be sure, astrological physiognomy still con­ tinued to stimulate interest, surviving at least as late as 1769, when Christian Peuschel published his Abhandlung der Physiognomie, Metoposkopie und Chiromantie; but its influ­ ence had otherwise largely declined.48 Moreover, the way to a more scientific era of physiognomy had already been indi­ cated by Jacques Pernetti's Lettres philosophiques sur Ies physionomies (1746), which were translated into English in 1751. It is interesting to note how Pernetti sets out by de­ scribing himself as "an Enemy to all Divination" and by de­ ploring all forms of astrological physiognomy. The Lettres in­ clude a number of quotations from Aristotle as well as a favorable reference to Porta, whose work is considered the only modern publication of its kind with "any shew of Ratio­ cination." There is much common sense and even irony un­ derlying Pernetti's Lettres, and in their rejection of astrologi­ cal physiognomy as well as their claim that "the Talent of Physiognomy very often promotes Humanity" they already foreshadow Lavater.49 Pernetti's book made a strong im­ pression on La Mettrie, who used the notion of physiognomy to support his materialist arguments in L'Homme machine (1747).50 Another major eighteenth-century physiognomist— not to be confused with Pernetti—was Antoine Joseph Pernety. Lavater mentions Pernety together with Peuschel in the Fragmente, granting them due recognition for their contribu­ tions to the science.51 Pernety's pre-Lavaterian publications include Dictionnnaire portatif de peinture, sculpture et gravure (1757) and Discours sur la physionomie et Ies avantages des connoissances physionomiques (1769), the latter being based on a series of lectures which the author had given at the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1768-69, partly in response to a prominent member of the academy, Heinrich de Catt, who

LAVATER AND THE FRAGMENTE had not only questioned the validity of physiognomy but also virtually condemned it as a social evil.52 This latter attitude to physiognomy was, as we have seen, by no means unusual, even in England, where a law was passed toward the end of Elizabeth I's reign to the effect that anyone professing a "knowledge of phisnognomie" was liable to be "openly whipped untill his body be bloudye."53 George II, too, was to impose a severe ban on all practicing physiognomists, con­ demning them as "rogues and vagabonds."54 Yet it was not long afterward that England saw the emer­ gence of one of the most original physiognomists of the pe­ riod, James Parsons (1705-70). Parsons gave a series of lec­ tures to the Royal Society in the 1740s, publishing them as Crounian Lectures on Muscular Motion (1745-47). In Parsons' view, the trite and all-pervasive phrase fronti nulla fides could be exploded by a proper study of the facial muscles, which, he felt, had been neglected by all prominent physiog­ nomists including Aristotle and Porta. Thus, in his preface, he declares with almost Lavaterian authority: "Not one Phy­ siognomist hitherto has dealt with what regards the proper Actions of the Muscles of the Face and their particular Obe­ dience to the Influence of the Mind." Parsons' aim was to build "this Part of the physiological System" on a strictly ana­ tomical foundation as one way of answering "all the Phaenomena of Metoposcopy."55 The Crounian Lectures enjoyed a high reputation in scientific circles, being referred to by Buffon and Fiilleborn, and respectfully quoted by Haller in his fa­ mous physiological studies.56 Parsons' theory of muscular mo­ tion forms an important bridge between the Cartesians and nineteenth-century theorists of expression, just as it is a wor­ thy harbinger of the Fragmente. To be sure, Lavater regretted Parsons' neglect of the solid parts of the human body, but otherwise regarded him as "the most classical and readable" of writers on the subject.57 How far the Swiss physiognomist was indebted to Parsons is a question that need not detain us; but though it is certain that the Fragmente necessarily devel­ oped out of earlier physiognomical theory, it is none the less

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

certain that their timeliness was enhanced by specific devel­ opments in the sciences, philosophy, and aesthetics since the beginning of the century. Let us now consider these develop­ ments in some detail. ONE DECISIVE INFLUENCE on

Lavater's physiognomical theories was the extraordinary development of aesthetics in the eighteenth century. Like physiognomy, aesthetics already had a long history, dating back to Aristotle and Horace. The grand Steele, however, was in many ways a harsh period for aesthetics, partly because philosophers such as Descartes, Locke, and Leibniz tended to look askance at artistic creativ­ ity, and partly because excessive emphasis was laid on the "rules," the "unities," "decorum," and the like. In fact, the idea of "pleasing according to the rules" was all-pervasive until well into the mid-eighteenth century: Pope himself was a faithful adherent of the tenets of Boileau's Art poetique, and Sir Joshua Reynolds' famous Discourses on Art, not to men­ tion the founding of the Royal Academy in 1768, were prime expressions of an aesthetic based on definite rules and canons of taste. Nevertheless, in spite of the continuing influence of neoclassicism, there were theorists in England and France such as Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Home, Batteux, Dubos, pere Andre, Crousaz, and numerous others who went well beyond neoclassical criteria in their attempts to analyze the nature and function of the fine arts, the problem of taste, the psy­ chology of the artist, the nature of the aesthetic experience, the role of the imagination and the feelings, and, above all, the concept of beauty. If France and England, and to some extent Italy, provided the main exponents of aesthetic theory during the first half of the eighteenth century, it was Germany that was to make the most important contributions from the 1750s onward, and was to continue to do so for another hundred and fifty years to come. Indeed the very term "aesthetics" was the invention of Germany's first important aesthetic theorist, Alexander Baumgarten (1714-62) whose Aesthetica (1750-58), written

LAVATER AND THE FRAGMENTE largely in the spirit of Bodmer and Breitinger, made the bold claim that the imagination, intuition, and the sensual faculties were essential bases for artistic activity and appreciation and, accordingly, deserved to be ranked as no inferior to the socalled higher cognitive faculties such as reason, which alone had found favor with Leibniz and Wolff. Between the appear­ ance of the Aesthetica and the end of the century, Germany and Switzerland saw the publication of a number of influen­ tial books on aesthetics such as Mendelssohn's Brtefe iiber die Empfindungen (1753) and Betrachtungen iiber die Quellen und Verbindungen der schonen Kiinste und Wissenschaflen (1757), Lessing's Laocoon: oder die Grenzen der Malerei und der Poesie (1766), Sulzer's Allgemeine Theorie der schonen Kiinste (1776), Schiller's Briefe iiber die aesthetische Erziehung (1793-94) and Hber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung (1795), and, of course, Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790), which constitutes the grand climax of eighteenth-cen­ tury aesthetic theory in its brilliant attempt to reconcile the rational and intellectual approaches to aesthetics with the in­ tuitive and sensualist ones, and in its assertion that art is "pur­ poseless purposiveness," and art appreciation "disinterested satisfaction."58 Although German aesthetic theorists owed something to the French neoclassicists as well as the Dubos and Batteux, it is clear that by the 1750s, with considerable encouragement from Bodmer and Baumgarten, they were shifting their inter­ est more and more toward English aesthetics, mainly because of the attractive emphasis on the imagination and the feel­ ings—all of which was a portent for Lavater's own intuitive approach to physiognomy. Even more relevant to Lavater's theories were the many fascinating discussions of the nature of beauty to be found in the writings of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hogarth, Burke, Home, and so on, German translations of whose works appeared in the 1750s and 1760s.59 In some works, notably Hogarth's and Hutcheson's, there are discus­ sions of the importance of form, rhythm, movement, sym­ metry, balance, shape, proportion of parts, and so on. Thus it

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

is asserted, for example, that the curve is aesthetically supe­ rior to the straight line, the circle to the square, and the com­ plex pattern to the simple one, though due importance is at­ tached to the age-old principle of unity in variety. That all this had a distinct bearing on Lavater's physiognomical theories may be seen in his discussions concerning proportion and homogeneity, and in the geometrical methods he uses for determining physiognomical proportions. Just as pertinent to Lavater were the ideas of the English theorists concerning the relationship between physical beauty and the inner man. Shaftesbury, for example, adum­ brated a central idea in the Fragmente when, in the tradition of Plato and Plotinus, he correlated beauty with goodness and truth. Thus he wrote that "... the most natural Beauty in the world is Honesty and moral Truth. For all Beauty is Truth. True Features make the Beauty of a Face... ." For Shaftes­ bury, beauty and goodness were one and the same, and he was adamant when he said that the body "can no-wise be the cause of Beauty to itself. .. ."ω Indeed, many of the purely physiognomical remarks to be found in later aesthetic works are often but an elaboration of this principle. For example, Hutcheson, describing the power of the inner life over the fa­ cial features, wrote that "... it is certain almost all habitual Dispositions of Mind form the Countenance in such a Man­ ner, as to give some Indication of them to the Spectator," though in another passage he accepted that moral qualities can still be seen in an otherwise irregular face. Hutcheson was also particularly interested in first impressions, and went into the problem of why we dislike some faces at first sight. One reason he gave for this is that unpleasant faces bear "some natural Indication of morally bad Dispositions, which we all acquire a Faculty of discerning in Countenances, Airs and Gestures. . . ."61 This idea is practically echoed in Gerard's Essay on Taste (1759): ". .. the structure of the human face often indicates good mental dispositions, which are not only themselves approved as virtues, but, by being approved, dif-

LAVATER AND THE F R A G M E N T E

fuse a beauty over the countenance on which they are im­ printed: but bad affections, expressed at their worst, throw deformity upon the finest features."62 References were also made occasionally to the physiog­ nomical interpretation of faces. For instance, Hogarth's Anal­ ysis of Beauty (1753), which was written in order to fix fluc­ tuating ideas of taste and to found the idea of beauty on the principle of the curve, has a chapter called "Of the Face," in which the author acknowledges the proposition "the face is the index of the mind" to be deeply rooted in people's minds. However, Hogarth felt that the human appearance is the re­ sult of too many factors, and thought it doubtful whether physiognomical theory could ever be reliable.63 Again, in Henry Home's Elements of Criticism (1762-65) there is a chapter called "External Signs of Emotions and Passions," in which it is claimed that external appearances are "a natural language" and that "we can read the character of a man in his face." It is further claimed that we are all, if not skilled phy­ siognomists, at least equipped with enough physiognomy "for the ordinary events of life," and that "it is surprising how quickly, and for the most part how correctly, we judge of character from external appearances." Home was, however, hardly a Lavaterian, for he actually rejected the notion that beauty has anything to do with regular features; instead, he concurred with most of his fellow theorists that beauty is made up of good nature, good sense, and other virtuous quali­ ties.64 But if these theorists believed in the influence of the inner life on the outer, they certainly did not see a necessary link between the physical and the moral—a link which was absolute for Lavater. Furthermore, Lavater differed mark­ edly from his predecessors by taking physical appearance as the starting point and deducing moral character from that, rather than the other way round. No less influential on the Fragmente were Winckelmann's ideas concerning Greek art and sculpture, as well as the uni­ versal concern with the relationship between art and nature.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Winckelmann's notion of the "noble simplicity and tranquil grandeur" of Greek statues had become a commonplace by the 1770s and given rise to a vogue whereby men of letters, painters, and sculptors, especially in Germany, came to re­ gard the ancient Greeks as being physically, mentally, and morally superior to the moderns. Lavater himself mentions in the Fragmente his own admiration for the Greeks, and also quotes Winckelmann's physiognomical ideas on facial expres­ sion and the shape and color of the eyes.65 Just as important for Lavaterian physiognomy was a principle which, cherished by the ancient Greek theorists and by Renaissance painters, lived on almost to the end of the century, namely, that art should imitate nature. Although a number of eighteenth-cen­ tury theorists repudiated this principle, maintaining that art should go well beyond nature, or as Batteux believed, should be an expression of "la belle nature," the classical principle generally held good.66 Bodmer's Discourse der Mahlern ever reiterate that the poet, the dramatist, and the painter can achieve little unless they observe this ancient criterion. Even Young, for all his emphasis on originality, maintained that the creative genius is bound to obey the laws of nature;67 and Baumgarten regarded the artist's faithful imitation of nature as the revelation of perfection.68 Yet it is by no means clear what exactly aestheticians meant by nature; in fact, defini­ tions are in many cases vague, or not given.89 The French theorists, for example, appear to have equated nature with truth in the highest philosophical sense, or with the ability to adhere to the golden mean. After 1750, however, the idea of the "imitation of nature" seems to have changed to that of "truth to nature." In Diderot's aesthetic writings, for exam­ ple, the observance of nature has to do essentially with resist­ ing stuffy convention in art and doing away with the rules of neoclassicism.70 Truth to nature also came to be equated with accurate observation of the natural world, and most particu­ larly so in the scientific writings of Buffon, who advocated that a concern with facts and data should replace the hitherto

LAVATER AND THE FRAGMENTE respectable methods of Cartesian deduction. That Buffon's scientific thinking lay behind Lavater's injunction to the physiognomist to develop his powers of observation is a rea­ sonable supposition, even though it is just as reasonable to in­ terpret the Swiss pastor's acknowledgment of the principle of imitating nature as a good disciple's homage to Bodmer and Baumgarten. But whatever Lavater's understanding of the concept "na­ ture," it is clear that the Fragmente reflect the development of scientific thought in the eighteenth century. It is important to point out, however, that, although a number of eighteenthcentury scientists went well beyond purely deductive princi­ ples and, in the wake of Newton and Buffon, concerned themselves with direct observation and experimentation, sci­ ence itself maintained close ties with theological and meta­ physical thought, as did many other branches of learning.71 There were even instances of science and religion entering into an almost holy alliance, as was true, for example, of English scientists such as Hartley and Priestley, who, far from separating their scientific activities from their religious be­ liefs, saw them as necessary expressions of one another. Hart­ ley and Priestley were in a certain sense still in the tradition of natural religion, whose adherents interpreted the physical world on teleological assumptions. Thus we may refer to such physico-theological works as John Ray's Wisdom of God in the Creation (1691) and William Derham's Physico-Theology, or a Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God from his Works of Creation (1713), in which scientific ardor and re­ ligious certainty are quite happily blended together.72 Similar arguments are to be found in Bernard Nieuwentyt's Existence de Dieu demontree par Ies merveilles de la nature (1725), in the abbe Pluche's Spectacle de la nature (1732), whose ex­ traordinary popularity in its day derived, no doubt, from its curious combination of scholarship and piety, and, later, in Bonnet's Palingenesie philosophique (1769), in which the fol­ lowing statement is typical of much eighteenth-century scien-

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

tific thought: "L'Univers est done la Somme de toutes Ies Perfections reunies et combinees et Ie Signe representatif de la Perfection souveraine."73 Many so-called scientists also took it for granted that man was the central purpose of Crea­ tion. This was more or less true of Herder, who, amid essen­ tially sound anthropological thinking in his Ideen zur Philoso­ phic der Geschichte der Mensehheit (1784-85), postulates that man is the king of Creation.74 Moreover, only in the third vol­ ume did Herder abandon his idea of Providence as the mov­ ing force behind history. It was, then, a rare scientist in those days who did not mix religion and metaphysics with his science, which may in part explain why Lavater was able successfully to put forward his physiognomical theories by blending theology and science. Indeed, the success of the Fragmente probably derived from the metaphysical and religious adornment of their scientific content. Lavater was none the less convinced that physiog­ nomy was basically a science and that it would eventually enjoy the same status as mathematics. If this seems in retro­ spect to have been an unduly bold claim, it is none the less certain that, by reflecting some of the main trends in eigh­ teenth-century European thought we have referred to, nota­ bly the preoccupation with experimental science, physiology, anatomy, and aesthetics, Lavater's Fragmente were more "scientific" than any physiognomical work had been hith­ erto.75 LAVATER'S PHYSIOGNOMICAL GIFTS were evident from his ear­ liest years. In some of his first letters and publications we can find remarks on the physicality of man, the uniqueness of each human body, the significance of the different features, the capacity of the body for endless beautification, and so on, as well as occasional character sketches of friends and literary figures—all of which foreshadows the future physiognomist.76 Lavater's powers of observation were remarked on as early as L'Univers . . . souveraine: The universe is the sum of all perfections combined in one symbol of supreme perfection.

LAVATER AND THE FRAGMENTE 1764 by Julie Bondeli in a letter to Zimmermann, in which she relates how much she enjoyed Lavater's visit to her, "besonders wegen seiner feinen Beobachtungen uber Charaktere und Physiognomien."77 During the 1760s Lavater discussed physiognomy in some letters to Kirchberger1 and in one of these he made the interesting remark that man is the creator of his own body.78 Much of Lavater's physiognomical think­ ing was undoubtedly shaped by his reading of Bonnet's mysti­ cal writings. Bonnet postulated that the body contains a germ or a seed which constitutes the essence of the human being; this germ determines the form not only of the earthly body but also of the body to be assumed in the afterlife. This idea fascinated Lavater to the extent that he gave it a prominent place in his Aussichten in die Ewigkeit.79 For Lavater, the human body was not merely a temporary earthly frame for the spirit, to be discarded after death, but a form capable of regeneration and endless transformation in the next life, ac­ cording to the spiritual character and moral development of its owner.80 Together with mystics such as Kirchberger and Bonnet, Lavater cherished the idea of palingenesis, postulat­ ing, for example, that in the afterlife the bodies of Christ and the saints would consist of a kind of luminous substance. La­ vater also believed that the defects and deficiencies of the bodies of lesser mortals would be removed, and the senses would be infinitely more efficient than they were on earth.81 Such mystical interpretations of the human physique throw considerable light on the religious premisses of Lavater's Fragmente. In a very real sense, the human body was nothing but materialized spirit, in Lavater's eyes; and he regarded it in much the same way as he did other natural phenomena, that is to say, as a symbol and manifestation of Divine Being. To this extent, then, the Fragmente form an essential part of his religious writings. But for all that Lavater interpreted life ultimately as theolbesonders ... Physiognomien: especially for his subtle observations about character and physiognomy.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

ogy, he was not averse to the mundane uses of physiognomy. It would have been quite uncharacteristic of him, had it been otherwise. What Lavater needed was someone to encourage him to put his ideas into order, and the occasion for such en­ couragement came in the late 1760s when Zimmermann heard Lavater make a physiognomical judgment from the neck of a soldier marching on parade; it was clear to Zimmermann then that Lavater's flair for physiognomy was no or­ dinary one. Accordingly, on 22 January 1767 he wrote to Lavater, "Du musst absolut eine Physiognomik schreiben;"82 and five years later he published in the Hannoverisches Magazin of February and July 1772 the two lectures on physiog­ nomy which Lavater had given to the Zurich Science Society. As Lavater's physiognomical reputation widened, he began to receive all kinds of inquiries on the subject, and before long he was making a serious study of physiognomical theory down the ages. But not content with mere theory, Lavater made analyses of people in the flesh, in engravings, and in silhou­ ettes, bringing to his physiognomical studies a deep familiar­ ity with the great masters. The extent of this familiarity can be seen in a letter Merck wrote about a visit to Lavater's house in 1787: Ich fand eine sehr ansehnliche Sammlung der wichtigsten Gemalde von den beriihmtesten Meistern bey ihm: sogar einen wirklichen Raphael, 4 oder 6 Albrecht Diirer, Ie Brun, Nicholas Poussin, die schonste Rubens, kurz Schaze, deren Besitz einem Monarchen Ehre machen wiirde.83 It has long been recognized by scholars that the Fragmente were by no means the work of one man alone; indeed, the very word Fragmente is quite appropriate in view of the sevDu . . . schreiben: You've simply got to write a book on physiognomy. Ich ... wiirde: I found a quite remarkable collection of the best-known paintings by the great masters, including a genuine Raphael, half a dozen Diirers, a Le Brun, a Poussin, the best Rubenses; in a word, treasures whose possession would grace a monarch.

LAVATER AND THE FRAGMENTE eral passages quoted from predecessors and the contributions of Lavater's contemporaries, most of whom were established literary figures. As already stated, the main impetus behind this enterprise was Zimmermann, who, though unable to con­ tribute articles of his own, was responsible for the adminis­ trative side of the publication, procuring many subscribers for the highly expensive tomes. Goethe, too, played an important part by writing articles and supplying portraits, silhouettes, and engravings, some of them done by himself.84 Herder was another apt contributor to the Fragmente, having already published in Gelehrte Beitrage a Shaftesburyean essay entitled "1st die Schonheit des Korpers ein Bote von der Schonheit der Seele?" (1766); though, unlike Goethe, he was not to be coerced into doing more than submitting the first part of a work entitled Die alteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts (1774).85 Lavater also sought the help of other literary friends; and though only a few such as Merck, Sulzer, and Klockenbring could be persuaded to write articles for him, most were willing to send silhouettes and drawings. One early enthusiast for Lavater's work was Lenz, who in a letter to Lavater (18 June 1774), written jointly with Roderer, stated: "Physiognomik lehrt—Gott von Angesicht zu Angesicht schauen."86 Many of Lenz's letters to Lavater from the 1770s onward are concerned with the sending and receiving of silhouettes. The silhouette was, of course, the invention of Etienne de Sil­ houette (1709-69); it first became fashionable in aristocratic circles in the 1760s, but its popularity rose significantly after the publication of the Fragmente and continued into the midnineteenth century (figures 3 and 4). A study of German cor­ respondence during this period shows how people delighted in one another's silhouettes;87 and it is interesting to learn that Goethe actually fell in love with Charlotte von Stein through a silhouette of her which had been sent to him by Zimmermann.88 Silhouetting became such a serious form of portraiture that it was soon possible to make a living by it, as Physiognomik .. . schauen: Physiognomy teaches us to see God face to face.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Figure 3. A sure and convenient machine for drawing silhouettes.

Nicolai noted during his travels in Austria in the 1780s: "Diese allgemeine Mode hat in sehr vielen Stadten eine Anzahl von Menschen hervorgebracht, welche das Sehattenbildmachen als ein Gewerbe betreiben."89 Diese .. . betreiben: In many towns and cities this universal vogue has brought forth a number of people who make their living by silhouetting.

LAVATER AND THE FRAGMENTE

Figure 4. Silhouettes from Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente. "The profiles of four distinguished men: the superiority of their talents is well known, and it comes out again in their silhouettes. . .. Let us admit it, no one would dare call them stupid from these profiles; and if anyone would hesitate to do justice to no. 4, that is for want of studying his forehead" (Lavater).

Another popular form of portraiture that Lavater made good use of in the Fragmente was the engraving. Lavater was fortunate in obtaining the help of a number of artists, some of whom traveled to different parts of Germany and Switzerland in order to do portraits of various celebrites. These artists in­ cluded Schellenberg, Pfenninger, Cotta, and Granicher, as well as the better-known Lips, Tischbein, Fuseli, and Chodowiecki. The painter earliest associated with Lavater was Heinrich Fussli, who, having settled in London in March 1764, changed his name to Fuseli and remained in England for the rest of his life, establishing there a great reputation with his somewhat Romantic canvases. During the 1760s and 1770s Fuseli kept in constant touch with Lavater, and some of their letters are concerned with the preparation of the Frag­ mente. Curiously enough, Fuseli was unable to provide physiognomical portraits for the German edition because he felt Lavater's requirements were too restricting for his ex­ pansive method of portraiture; nor could he oblige Lavater with original portraits of Christ, preferring instead to send him engravings based on a head of Christ done by Verrocchio.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Fuseli also contributed engravings to the French edition, though he was disappointed to find many of them so botched as to bear little resemblance to the originals.90 He was, how­ ever, luckier with the English edition, whose preparation he partly supervised, for he managed to acquire the help of his friend William Blake.91 Finally, we should refer to the no less gifted Chodowiecki, whose famous illustrations adorned much German literature published during the last quarter of the eighteenth century; indeed, but for Chodowiecki, Lavater's Fragmente might not have enjoyed quite the popular­ ity they did.92 Lavater's reputation as a physiognomist in person was hardly less great than the fame of the Fragmente. Wherever the Swiss pastor went on his many travels in Germany and Switzerland, he was besieged by people wanting to have their faces interpreted. In a letter (14 April 1777), Julie Bondeli told Leonhard Usteri how she kept Lavater's visit to her in Berne a secret "um nicht die ganze Stadt auf dem Halse zu haben wegen der Physiognomik."93 Some of Lavater's phys­ iognomical readings have been recorded (figure 5). For exam­ ple, when he saw the death mask of his former antagonist Mirabeau, he is said to have declared: "Ich hatte mir ihn so ungefahr, nur boser und geistreicher vorgestellt."94 Another famous reading is that of an engraving of Diderot as included in the Fragmente (figure 6). Admirers of the great French nov­ elist might, however, take exception to Lavater's view that the subject's forehead, though clearly belonging to an intelli­ gent and perceptive thinker, is "so zart, so ununternehmend."95 When Lavater analyzed Wilhelm von Humboldt's face he found in it sensibility, aesthetic sense, and acute powers of observation, though the forehead betrayed a defi­ nite stubbornness.96 Some readings went awry, as, for exam­ ple, when Lavater mistook a military cadet of commendable um .. . Physiognomik: so as not to have the entire local population round our necks asking for physiognomical readings. I c h . . . v o r g e s t e l l t : I had imagined him looking something like this, only more evil, more intelligent.

LAVATER AND THE FRAGMENTE character for a rascal, a misinterpretation which inspired Schiller to write his poem Grabschrift.97 Several judgments have been made about Lavater's charac­ ter and mentality, some of them interesting in so far as they reflect the controversies aroused by his physiognomical theories. There were, on the one hand, writers of an essen­ tially intellectual cast of mind such as Heinse and Wilhelm von Humboldt who, like the Rationalists in general, were not much impressed by Lavater as a thinker. For example, Heinse in a letter to F. H. Jacobi (8 December 1780), after acknow­ ledging Lavater's extraordinary powers of imagination and depth of feeling, went on to remark on his lack of that intel­ lectual ability to be found, say, in Lessing.98 Humboldt, too, felt that Lavater did not possess the necessary erudition or mental discipline to amount to anything significant in the world of letters." On the other hand, Zimmermann had no doubts about Lavater's great originality or his almost super­ human intellect.100 Even Lichtenberg, who was one of La­ vater's sternest critics, admitted in a letter to Ramberg (6 Au­ gust 1786) that, had he been taken in hand and his nonsensical ideas pointed out to him, he might have become truly great.101 Some people were astonished at Lavater's knowl­ edge and understanding of psychology, a fact that may partly explain his popularity with women, whom Lichtenberg de­ scribed as his staunchest supporters.102 In this connection, it is interesting to compare two testimonies to Lavater's intuitive powers. For example, after a meeting with Lavater at Waldshut on 26 July 1777, Emperor Joseph II wrote to him saying: "Sie sehen den Menschen ins Herz hinein; man muss wohl verwahrt seyn, wenn man Ihnen zu nahe kommt!"103 Goethe made a strikingly similar judgment of Lavater in Dichtung und Wahrheit (Book XIX): "Wirklich ging Lavaters Einsicht S i e . . . k o m m t : The fact that you can see into people's hearts puts one on one's guard when one comes too close to you. W i r k l i c h . . . h a t : There is no doubt that Lavater had a quite extraordi­ nary insight into human beings. It was amazing to hear him speak confi­ dentially about this or that person, nay, it was frightening to be in the

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Figure 5. Goethe. "How gentle, how utterly without awkardness, con­ straint, tension, or flabbiness! How effortlessly and harmoniously the con­ tour of the profile curves from the top of the forehead down to the collar" (Lavater).

in die einzelnen Menschen uber alle Begriffe hinaus, man erstaunte ihn zu horen, wenn man iiber diesen oder jenen vertraulich sprach, ja es war furchtbar in der Nahe des Mannes presence of a man to whom all the confines within which Nature has seen fit to place us appeared full of meaning.

LAVATER AND THE FRAGMENTE

Figure 6. Diderot. "Diderot's forehead is unmistakably that of a luminous, perspicacious mind, and yet one so gentle, so unenterprising" (Lavater).

zu leben, dem jede Grenze deutlich erschien, in welcher die Natur uns Individuen einzuschranken beliebt hat."104 Far from being a charitable gesture to make up for the past, Goethe's statement here is a fitting tribute to that intuition and perspicacity which characterize Lavater's unique genius. It is regrettable that Lavater's evident psychological gifts have not been immortalized so well as the memory of his charm and personality, let alone his limitations; for, interest-

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

ing as are the Fragmente as an expression of these gifts, they cannot be said to do justice to a man whose intuitive powers won the esteem of Goethe. Nevertheless, the Fragmente are a landmark in the history of physiognomy and, indeed, in the history of literature; and since they are to be the focal point of later discussions on the novel, let us now consider the work in some detail. LAVATER'S PURPOSE in writing the Fragmente was, he tells us,

not to provide entertainment or to teach a kind of black magic, but, as the full title reads, to help human beings to know and love one another.105 The moral tone of the work is unmistakable and, where there is criticism of the frivolities of eighteenth-century civilization, reminiscent of Rousseau. But, more importantly, the Fragmente are a kind of theology. As Lavater says, "Religion ist mir Physiognomik, und Physiognomik Religion."106 The premiss is taken from the Book of Genesis (I, xxvi): man is made in the image of God; and since man is a divine creature, it is the physiognomist's duty to look for the good in him, and to find excuses for the defects. Physiognomy, then, is a science of human understanding in the profoundest sense of the term. But, as Lavater says ingra­ tiatingly, we are all born physiognomists: physiognomy is the basis of everything we do; we make physiognomical judg­ ments all the time, whether of people or of objects; and we are all endowed with powers of observation, even though the spirit of observation is rare. When we meet someone for the first time, we usually make some kind of physiognomical judgment of him, even if we have never heard of the word "physiognomy." There is no creature, man or beast, without some physiognomical sense, and the finest physiognomists are simple-hearted, intelligent country folk, sturdy children, and, above all, women. In this connection, Lavater notes how im­ portant intuition is for physiognomical judgments, and how deeply rooted are the causes of attraction and repulsion to­ ward faces or voices. Thus we have an instinct for harmonious and disharmonious faces, just as we can judge character and

LAVATER AND THE FRAGMENTE intelligence directly, without the help of reasoning or ab­ straction. First impressions are particularly important, and he who gains a correct first impression can, indeed, be consid­ ered a true physiognomist. Yet for all that physiognomy is an instinctive activity, Lavater makes plain that it is essentially a science requiring great skill to be practiced. In fact, he deplores the bad name it has acquired over the years. Not only has much nonsense been written about physiognomy, but it has been confused with fortune-telling, chiromancy, and other kinds of astrol­ ogy. In accordance with his scientific outlook, Lavater lays down a set of exacting rules for the physiognomist. In the first place, he draws an important distinction between physiog­ nomy and pathognomy: "Physiognomik, in eingeschranktem Sinne des Wortes, Kraftdeutung, oder Wissenschaft der Zeichen der Krafte. Pathognomik, Leidenschaftsdeutung, oder Wissenschaft der Zeichen der Leidenschaften. Jene zeigt den stehenden—diese den bewegten Charakter."107 But even a person well acquainted with pathognomy is liable to be de­ ceived in his understanding of human nature, unless he is at the same time conversant with physiognomy. Indeed, Lavater looks upon the expression of the emotions, sentiments, and attitudes not as being of independent interest but as belong­ ing essentially to the study of physiognomy. That is why he states that physiognomy and pathognomy should be studied side by side; but, he adds, since everybody appears to know more about the latter than the former, he will concentrate more on physiognomy.108 Lavater then expects a great deal of those who would be considered physiognomists in the true sense of the word. To begin with, the ideal physiognomist should have a fine physique, acute senses, profound selfknowledge, and a highly associative intelligence. He should Physiognomik ... Charakter: "Physiognomy," in the strict sense of the word, is the art of interpreting mental powers, or the science of the signs of mental powers; "pathognomy" is the art of interpreting the passions, or the science of the passions. The former is concerned with the permanent features, the latter with the mobile characteristics.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

be a connoisseur of the world, even a cosmopolitan, with a fund of knowledge and culture as well as an excellent com­ mand of language. He should be well grounded in anatomy and physiology, know all about the nervous system, the tem­ peraments, and blood groups. He should also consort with the wisest and best people, and spend as much time as possible in the company of those who have good faces. The face is, of course, the basis of physiognomical study. As Lavater says, "Im engen Verstand ist Physiognomie die Gesichtsbildung und Physiognomik Kenntniss der Gesichtszuge."109 Apart from being encouraged to visit hospitals, pris­ ons, and lunatic asylums, where there will be opportunities to observe extremes in facial appearance, the physiognomist is advised to make a large collection of the most striking faces, to begin his studies with faces that are unusual in shape and character, to find out why some faces are superior to others, to compare faces that do not stand easy comparison, and to analyze the facial features in relation to one another. Equally important for the physiognomist is the study of the solid parts of the body. Lavater points out that he has paid much more attention to the skull than any of his predecessors, regarding it as the foundation of physiognomy simply because, like the skeleton in general, it is the most permanent part of the orga­ nism. Although Lavater claims that mental capacity can be estimated by measuring the skull, just as strength and weak­ ness of character can be determined by the strength or weak­ ness of the skull, he is much more concerned with the fore­ head. He classifies the many kinds, shapes, and sizes of foreheads as retreating, perpendicular, or prominent; and the use of a "frontometer" is recommended for measuring their lines and establishing their proportions. Physiognomy means studying the human body as a homo­ geneity. As Lavater points out, each part of the body contains the character and essence of the whole, and there is no inconI m . . . G e s i c h t s z t i g e : Strictly speaking, "physiognomy" means the facial conformation, and "physiognomies" the study of the facial features.

LAVATER AND THE FRAGMENTE gruity between the separate parts. This is confirmed by the unique physical appearance of each human being. This idea of the homogeneity of the human body is one aspect of Lavater's contention that there is nothing patchy about God's handiwork: "Gott und die Natur flicken nicht zusammen! Wie das Auge ist, so ist das Ohr ... Wie die Stirn, so jedes Harchen des Bartes."110 For Lavater, nature means order, proportion, purpose, and above all homogeneity; and the true physiognomist must needs have an instinct for this homogene­ ity. Admiring nature as he does, Lavater has no hesitation in placing it above art. Art is essentially heterogeneous, and art­ ists, including the great classical and modern painters, are not creators, but imitators of nature, that is, imitators who can never equal nature, let alone embellish it. Lavater's precepts on the relationship between art and na­ ture are matched by his criticisms of the drawings and illus­ trations included in the Fragmente. Thus he may question the accuracy of a series of silhouettes or find an incongruity be­ tween certain facial features. No less interesting is his rejec­ tion of various paintings of Christ for failing to do justice to him. He also criticizes a drawing of Judas Iscariot, maintain­ ing that Christ would never have chosen him as a disciple had he looked like that. Lavater even finds fault with the work of the great masters, though he praises some portrait painters; for he finds that not one artist, not even Poussin or Raphael, has studied the harmony of the human form. In other words, portrait painters do not pay sufficient heed to the laws of na­ ture. Even Rembrandt, Rubens, and Van Dyck are censured for having idealized their figures and shown indifference to the solid parts of the face. The mistake most painters make, as do most physiognomists, is to confine themselves to the mo­ bile, muscular parts of the face. Hence Lavater's injunction to artists to study anatomy and proportions. Lavater speaks of the close relationship between the G o t t . . . B a r t e s : God and Nature are not botchers: as the eye is, so the ear; as the forehead, so each hair of the head.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

painter and the physiognomist. Thus we can get a better idea of a person from an excellent portrait of him than by simply observing him at different times. Painting is, indeed, "die Mutter und Tochter der Physiognomik,"111 and the physiog­ nomist is advised to study and analyze portraits by the best painters. Drawing, too, is considered "die erste, die naturlichste, die sicherste Sprache der Physiognomik;"112 but though everybody has some talent for it, not one good drafts­ man can be found in ten thousand people. Lavater also shows a fondness for caricatures, though, in keeping with the spirit of the Fragment#, he feels we should adopt an attitude of love and understanding when looking at the physical defects and deformities depicted. He has a special affection for Hogarth and Rembrandt, whom he regards as the greatest masters in evil or battered faces, and praises Chodowiecki for his deep instinct for the homogeneous in caricatures. A number of caricatures are included in the Fragmente as illustrations of vice. Thus a drawing by Hogarth of a crowd of people with distorted faces and deformed bodies, participating in a drun­ ken brawl, leads to the admonition that parents should give their children about the harmful effects of vice on the appear­ ance (figure 7). Then Lavater stresses the importance of sil­ houettes, adding that, despite their limited uses, he has learnt more from them than from all other forms of portraiture, or even from the observation of nature. The best-known aspect of Lavater's physiognomical theories is the idea that man's outward appearance, whether taken as a whole or in parts, is a manifestation of his inner self. Physiognomy, in a word, is the art of knowing the inner man through the outer. The corollary of this is that beauty and ugliness are expressions of virtue and vice respectively. These correlations are central to Lavater's physiognomical outlook, or, as he puts it, the soul of his work. In this respect, he represents one of the leading preoccupations of the eighdie Mutter... Physiognomik: the mother and daughter of physiognomy. die erste ... Physiognomik: the principal, the most natural, and the surest language of physiognomy.

LAVATER AND THE FRAGMENTE Tab. IX.

l"«*

1/

Figure 7. A Hogarth print of dissolute revelers. "Pay heed, reader! And you, wise father and God-fearing mother, take your son and daughter by the hand and look at this engraving. And if, on seeing a tear come into your eye, they ask you why you are weeping, then show them this and say: 'Do you see? They have all sinned against their bodies and reduced the temple of the Holy Spirit to below the level of the lowest beast' " (Lavater).

teenth century. At the same time, Lavater is careful to point out that there are exceptions. Thus, genius can exist in a mis­ shapen body, just as an unprepossessing person may be vir­ tuous. Indeed, he is quick to correct those who believe that he

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

equates the highest virtue with the greatest beauty. Lavater does not actually say what he means by beauty; and though he appears to associate it with harmony, symmetry, and pro­ portion, he finds that it does not admit of easy definition, since it depends on historical, national, social, climatic, and similar factors. Just as the facial appearance is largely determined by vice or virtue, so it can be improved by a religious way of life or adversely affected by alcohol, tobacco, and immodest pas­ sions. Every thought, every mental state has its influence on our faces, and a constantly repeated facial expression may eventually become an essential part of our features. The prox­ imity of other people may also influence our appearance, in the same way as those who love each other or live in harmony together may come to bear a mutual resemblance in certain ways. Even the old wives' tale about the appearance of un­ born children being determined by the thoughts and attitudes of the mother is an actual truth for Lavater. What the author says about adults applies also to children, whose beauty or ugliness is dependent on their moral life. The interest of studying a child's features lies in what they tell us about the adult he will become, though an exact prediction of this kind is seldom fulfilled. These arguments relate to Lavater's remarks on the heredity of physical as well as moral characteristics. Accordingly, if moral decadence in a family is perpetuated from generation to generation, its members will become progressively uglier. Lavater also discusses the in­ heritance of physical qualities from one or other parent, from both parents, and from grandparents. As incontrovertible as the phenomenon of family physiognomies is that of national physiognomies, which are described as "einer der tiefsten unerschiitterlichsten, innigsten Griinde der Physiognomik,"113 to which topic Lavater has appended a number of excellent engravings illustrating the various national types. And just as there are national physiognomies, so each area—a country, a einer... Phystognomik: one of the profoundest, most unshakeable, most essential foundations of physiognomy.

LAVATER AND THE FRAGMENTE province, a town, a village—has its own peculiar physiog­ nomy as well as its own human physiognomies. When it comes to interpreting the appearance, the phys­ iognomist has a wide range of possibilities: "Alle Ziige, Umrisse, alle passive und active Bewegungen, alle Lagen und Stellungen des menschlichen Korpers; alles, wodurch er seine Person zeigt—ist der Gegenstand der Physiognomik."114 There is no feature or movement that is without some signifi­ cance or other: "Stimme, Gang, Stellung, Gebardung, Kleidung—alles an dem Menschen ist physiognomisch."115 But since Lavater's tendency is to treat the body as homogeneous, he is cautious when recommending a judgment based on one sign alone: "Ich sage nicht: der Physiognomist soli aus Einem Zeichen entscheidend urtheilen: ich sage nur—er kann's bisweilen."116 In making judgments it is important to choose sig­ nificant moments as well as unguarded ones; and much may also be gained by observing people who are asleep or who have just died. Lavater advises the physiognomist to make few judgments, adding that there are enemies waiting to scorn him for the slightest mistake. Having himself been so often deceived in his own analyses, the author is fully cogni­ zant of the many difficulties the physiognomist will come up against. Lavater's general physiognomical precepts take up little space in comparison with his own analyses and interpreta­ tions. We note, for instance, that he discusses the different fa­ cial features as well as most other parts of the body; and he has interesting things to say about stature, gait, gestures, colAlle ... Physiognomik: All features and contours, all passive and active movements, all postures and motions of the human body—in short, every­ thing whereby one reveals one's person is a matter of physiognomical in­ terest. Stimme ... physiognomisch: Voice, gait, posture, gestures, clothes— everything in man is physiognomical. Ich . .. bisweilen: I do not say that the physiognomist should make ca­ tegorical judgments from one sign alone; I only say he can do so occasion­ ally.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

oring, smiles, laughter, dress, style, handwriting, surround­ ings, and other matters of physiognomical relevance, includ­ ing moles. There are also ingenious analyses of faces and fa­ cial features as depicted in the included or supplementary engravings, many of these being of famous eighteenth-cen­ tury statesmen, soldiers, and men of letters. Such features as the forehead, eyes, eyebrows, nose, nostrils, mouth, chin, and profile are analyzed as to their lines, curves, contours, pro­ portions and moral significance. When, for example, Lavater has drawings by Le Brun and Chodowiecki in front of him, he makes brief moral judgments from summary assessments of the solid and mobile features depicted (figure 8). What aston­ ishes us is Lavater's remarkable capacity for interpretation, whether he reads intelligence in the shape or position of someone's eyebrows, notes goodness in the lower part of a nose, or detects genius in a half-closed eye. Even a skull can elicit a lengthy interpretation, as the following example shows: "Schadel von einem Mann, der weder Genie war, noch Tiefsinn besass. Kein Trotzkopf! Ein Weichling! aber auch kein fein empfindender Mann! vernunftig und geschwatzig. Beynah' alles dieses driickt sich mit ungleicher Bestimmtheit in dem blossen Schadel aus."117 It might be objected that Lavater reads too many moral qualities into a face, as in this analysis: "Kunstfertigkeit, Kunstsinn, Kunstadel, Kunstfleiss, Treue, Einfalt, Frommigkeit, sind im obern Gesichte ganz bestimmt gezeichnet."118 Indeed, interpretations of this kind laid their author open to criticism and satire, particularly since they were based on the dubious evidence provided by engravings and silhouettes. Schadel. . . aus: The skull of someone who was neither a genius nor a man of depth. Not a stubborn person; if anything, a weak one, though with little sensitivity. Level-headed and loquacious. Almost all these qualities are expressed in varying degrees on the skull. Kunstfertigjceit... gezeichnet: Artistic capacity, artistic sensitivity, ar­ tistic nobility, artistic diligence, loyalty, simplicity, and piety are quite clearly imprinted on the upper part of the face.

LAVATER AND THE FRAGMENTE

Figure 8. Four faces by Le Brun and Chodowiecki. 9. "The grimace of af­ fliction, mingled with contempt." 10. "The affliction and terror of a weak man." 11. "The expression of grief and terror on the face of an infant too much formed, and who announces no great fund of goodness." 12. "Dis­ traction, mildness, and hope have succeeded sorrow in this face, the lowest part of which announces at least weakness" (Lavater).

There are other things in the Fragmente that are bound to strike most modern readers as quaint or absurd, such as the claim that a poetic talent or a religious disposition can be physiognomically determined, or that women are incapable of thinking and are made for religion. Again, Lavater's notion that the ancient Greeks were better and finer looking than are the moderns would seem curious, were it not for the respect­ able currency it had enjoyed since Winckelmann first made it fashionable. And delightful and useful as are Lavater's com­ parisons of animal and human profiles, it may be objected that the animals sometimes look more human in the engrav­ ings than they do in real life. But these and similar limitations were hardly noticed by most readers, who were probably just as little dismayed by the Sturm und Drang style, the religious and teleological arguments, or the lack of organization in the essays, with their many digressions and undue repetitions. If the Fragmente may be considered unreadable today, it is not difficult to see why they should have held such a strong appeal for European readers of the eighteenth and nineteenth

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

centuries. First of all, Lavater made physiognomy attractive by his insistence on its scientific aspects. Indeed, his discus­ sions of the bone structure, heredity, and the analogies be­ tween man and animals are among the best parts of the work and in some ways anticipate evolutionary theories. Secondly, he inspired a certain confidence in the reader by showing a fa­ miliarity with important physiognomists down the ages, and by criticizing them with some authority. Thirdly, his art criti­ cisms, which still possess a certain interest for us today, were virtually unprecedented in physiognomical literature; and there is no question that the popularity of the work derived largely from the engravings. Fourthly, Lavater underlined the relevance of physiognomy to human life in general. As he says, it has its place in personal relations, just as it has its uses for professional men—statesmen, psychologists, priests, courtiers, doctors, merchants, and so on. In any event, to judge from the mass of editions, versions, and translations that flooded Europe from 1775 onward, all kinds of uses must have been found for the Fragmente. THE FIRST VOLUME of the Fragmente appeared in 1775. Not

only was it widely acclaimed in the German-speaking world, it was also discussed or mentioned in practically every Euro­ pean periodical, and there was talk of translations. For the lit­ erary world, the publication of the Fragmente was a supreme event. Wieland, writing in Der teutsche Merkur (1775), pronounced it "eines der wichtigsten Produkte unsers Jahrhunderts" and called it "ein klassisches Werk unserer Sprache."119 Lenz was so moved by his reading of volume I that he sent Lavater a letter of thanks in the form of a son­ net.120 Much of the popularity of the Fragmente derived, as Herder put it in his review of the first volume, from Lavater's ability "den Kopf durch das Herz zu gewinnen." The second volume, in fact, so filled Herder with inspiration that he eines .. . Jahrhunderts . .. ein ... Sprache: one of the most important works of this century .. . a German classic. d e n . . . g e w i n n e n : To win the heart by way of the head.

LAVATER AND THE FRAGMENTE

wanted to prostrate himself with joy and "Gott in jedem Menschen umarmen.121 For each succeeding volume there was great enthusiasm, especially among those who shared Lavater's mystical outlook. Hamann frequently mentioned the Fragmente in letters written in the 1770s, and shortly be­ fore volume IV came out, he wrote to Lavater saying, "Jeder Band ist ein Fest fur mich gewesen... ."122 F. H. Jacobi, in spite of his doubts as to the scientific value of the Fragmente, commended it as follows: ".. . ich halte Ihr Werk fur eins der herrlichsten und niitzlichsten... ."123 We can also find refer­ ences to the practical advantages of the Fragmente. For ex­ ample, Louise, Grand Duchess of Weimar, read them in order to become a physiognomist; Rektor Kleuker of Osnabriick deemed them "als Zweig des Baumes der Weisheit;" and Karoline Jagemann took comfort from them when sheltering in a cellar during the occupation of Mainz by the Napoleonic armies.124 Then there were the inevitable criticisms, many of which would be approved by modern readers. Sulzer deplored the declamatory style of the essays and felt that many of the ar­ guments had not been developed in sufficient detail.125 Merck was one of several readers who thought that the silhouettes had been botched, and that judgments on them were there­ fore invalid; and in a letter to Lessing (17 May 1778) he spoke of the questionable influence the Fragmente might have on inexperienced youth.126 Lessing thought that Lavater, more than any other physiognomist before him, had taken physiog­ nomy beyond its legitimate scope, and that he had dressed it up in such a manner as to win unreasonable acclaim for it.127 Even Lenz had his criticisms. For instance, he disliked La­ vater's habit of bringing into his essays so many royal personG o t t . . . u m a r m e n : to embrace God in every human being. Jeder ... gewesen: Each volume has been a feast for me. ich. .. niitzlichsten: I consider your books on physiognomy amongst the most magnificent and the most useful [of all books], als ... Weisheit: a branch of the tree of wisdom.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

ages, whom he prophetically described as "dieses Rathsel der Zeit, iiber das nun das folgende Jahrhundert entscheidet."128 Lavater's best-known critics were Nicolai and Lichtenberg, both of whom had long been interested in physiognomy and had even written or lectured on the subject.129 Nicolai, for example, had entered into correspondence with Lavater about physiognomy shortly after the latter's lectures Von der Physiognomik had been published; and when the first volume of the Fragmente appeared, Nicolai was busy gath­ ering material for his own Bandchen physiognomischer Betrachtungen, excerpts from which are included in volume IV of the Fragmente. But though Nicolai agreed with Lavater on certain basic principles of physiognomy, he none the less de­ plored the prominence given to religion at the expense of sci­ ence, as well as the effusive style of the essays. Nor could Nicolai have the same confidence in physiognomy as Lavater did; and in his review of the anonymous Physiognomisches Kabinett, published at Miinster in 1776, he regarded the sci­ ence as a narrow footbridge to knowledge that should be trodden only when all other ways were blocked or impracti­ cable. What Nicolai objected to most about physiognomy was its fundamental determinism; it seemed to make small allow­ ance for moral development. Unlike Lavater, Nicolai was much more in favor of a physiognomy founded on the mobile rather than the solid parts of the body.130 Nicolai's physiognomical outlook was shared to some ex­ tent by Lichtenberg, who had also given physiognomy every possible consideration. From his earliest years, this reputable physicist had been preoccupied with the science; indeed, when he gave some talks to the Gottingen Historical Society in 1765, much of what he had to say was of specifically phys­ iognomical interest; so that when Lavater's lectures Von der Physiognomik were first published, their authorship was

dieses . . . entscheidet: the enigma of our era, which the following cen­ tury is sure to solve.

LAVATER AND THE FRACMENTE attributed by one Gottingen academic to Lichtenberg him­ self.131 Lichtenberg's reputation as an observer of life was considerable, and it led Fiilleborn to describe him as "einer der scharfsinnigsten Menschenbeobachter und feinsten Pathognomen, die Deutschland aufzuweisen hat."132 Lichtenberg had a brilliant, disciplined mind and a keen eye for humbug, both of which, sharpened by intermittent sojourns in England in the early 1770s, caused him, he confessed, increasingly to distrust physiognomy.133 Lichtenberg had already poked fun at Lavater's physiognomical ideas in a work entitled Timorts (1773), which was published under the pseudonym Photorin (Greek for Lichtenberg).134 He also dismissed the Fragmente as "ein vierbeinigter Adler ohne Flugel," condemned La­ vater's premiss of man being created in the image of God, and impugned the correlation of beauty with virtue.135 But the essence of Lichtenberg's disagreement with Lavater is con­ tained in his famous book with the paradoxical title Uber Physiognomik wider die Physiognomen (For Physiognomy Against Physiognomists) (1776), which is written in the same vein as his satire on Hogarth's idea of the curve as the princi­ ple of beauty, Fragmente iiber Schwanzen (1773). Even Zimmermann admitted that Lichtenberg's criticisms of Lavater's principal ideas were often well founded.136 Like Nicolai, Lichtenberg placed more reliance in pathognomy than in physiognomy, and preferred experience and observation to formal rules. His central argument is that appearances are ex­ tremely deceptive, and that it is better to judge a man's char­ acter from his actions. In any case, the human face, says Lichtenberg, is the result of any number of influences—social background, climate, health, diet, and so on.137 This had also been the view of Julie Bondeli, which was one reason why she had found it impossible to help Lavater with his work.138 Such objections are in fact acknowledged in volume IV of the einer.. , hat: one of the most perspicacious of human observers as well as one of the foremost pathognomists Germany can boast. ein . . . Fltigel: a four-legged eagle without wings.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Fragmente, which Lichtenberg, according to his letter to Friedrich Stroth (6 July 1778), preferred to the other three volumes put together.139 It would be unfair to Lavater not to point out that the Fragmente do allow for exceptions to the rules, and that he shared much of the caution of his critics toward physiog­ nomy. Lavater actually welcomed criticism, and advised his readers to read not only anti-physiognomical diatribes but also attacks on his own "small achievements." Indeed, apart from commending Nicolai for what he describes as "viel Gutes und Prufenwerthes" (much that is good and solid) in his physiognomical writings, he refers the reader to everything Lichtenberg has written or will ever write. As he says, "Alle diese antiphysiognomischen Schriften sind nebenan sehr physiognomisch in Absicht auf den Kopf und das Herz und den Geschmack ihrer Verfasser."140 Although Lavater's tolerance of criticism may seem to be a clever way of propitiating his readers, it is none the less the expression of a man who was, despite deprecatory remarks, sure of his physiognomical gifts, and who, as the testimonies of Goethe and others suggest, had every reason to be. It was Lavater's intuitive powers that gave him the confidence to venture into fields which more disciplined minds were hesitant to enter. Moreover, under­ standable as are Nicolai and Lichtenberg's objections to Lavaterian physiognomy, they still betray a certain resentment toward the Swiss pastor, not merely for succeeding in a sci­ ence in which they were as competent as any, but for flouting the intellectual principles to which they were so fully com­ mitted. Lavater's ideas may have set some heads shaking, but that did not prevent them from giving rise to an extraordinary physiognomical cult. As Fiilleborn states: "Wie schnell .. . Alle . . . Verfasser: All these anti-physiognomical writings are, more­ over, very physiognomical in so far as they bespeak the intelligence, sensi­ tivity, and taste of their authors. W t e . . . d e r i k e n : How quickly Lavaterian ideas and language influenced literature as well as everyday life can be easily imagined.

LAVATER AND THE FRAGMENTE die Lavatersche Ideen sowohl, als dessen Sprache in Schriften und in das gemeine Leben iibergiengen, kann man leicht denken."141 Physiognomy, indeed, became a fashionable part of everyday life. As Heinrich Maier writes: "In Deutsehland wird es iiberall mit Begierde aufgegriffen, am meisten in den hochsten Kreisen. An den Hofen, in den Boudoirs elegantster Weltdamen dreht sich das Gesprach mit Vorliebe um den Ziircher Geistlichen, und es gehort zum guten Ton, auch praktisch Physiognomik zu treiben."142 Such was the impor­ tance of physiognomy that all those belonging to the Bavarian Illuminati were expected to have a sound knowledge of it.143 As we shall see, physiognomy also pervaded most genres of literature—the novel, the biography, the travel book, the drama, even poetry. And some literary figures wrote essays or articles on physiognomy. Thus we may mention Wezel's Versuch iiber die Kenntniss des Menschen (1784-85), in which the author states: "... fast Jedermann hat sein eignes physiognomisches Alfabet, wonach er das Thun und Wesen Andrer entziffert."144 But attitudes to physiognomy were generally cautious, as we can see, for example, in Schiller's Versuch iiber den Zusammenhang der tierischen Natur mit seiner geistigen (1780), particularly in a section entitled "Physiognomik der Empfindungen." Thus, while admitting that the emotions can exert a powerful influence on the body, Schiller not only seems to share Lichtenberg's preference for pathognomy, but claims that, in spite of Lavater's rhapsodic enthusiasm, it is still too early to say whether there is any­ thing to physiognomy.145 The idea that physiognomy was still in its infancy was commonly held in the late eighteenth century, and it may in I n . . . t r e i b e n : Physiognomy became very popular in Germany, and mostly so in aristocratic circles. Whether at court, or in the boudoirs of the most elegant society ladies, Lavater was a favorite topic of conversation, and it was considered the done thing to make physiognomical readings of one another. f a s t . . . e n t z i f f e r t : Almost everybody has his own physiognomical alpha­ bet, according to which he deciphers the nature and activities of his fellow men.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

part explain why Lavater has often been regarded as the in­ ventor of physiognomy. Julie Bondeli, for instance, calculated that it would need a good hundred years before it would be possible to develop "ein gutes System iiber Physiognomie;" and she thought Lavater had come on the scene too early.146 Nicolai said much the same thing in a letter to Lavater (12 June 1774): "Die Physiognomik ist iiberhaupt nur noch im ersten Anfange... ."147 Jean Paul virtually echoes these words in his essay "Was algemeines iiber Physiognomiren" (1780), in which he states: "Diese Wissenschaft ist vollig neu. Ware sie alter, so wtirde man mehr Worter dazu haben, und dann ware sie iiberhaupt viel leichter zu vervolkomnen." And the fol­ lowing year he wrote in Etwas "uber den Menschen (1781): "Die Physiognomik ist ein par Jahrhunderte zu spat oder zu friih gekommen," and regretted that Lavater had not waited a little longer before producing the Fragmente.148 Although many people in the 1780s and 1790s declared physiognomy to be still in its infancy, that was because it held out great promise. Lavater himself had predicted in the Fragmente that physiognomy would become an exact science, and in a letter to Emperor Joseph II he expressed the hope that someone would set up a physiognomical system in the nine­ teenth century.149 If all this was perhaps largely wishful thinking, it is none the less significant that it was done at a time when anthropology was gradually emerging as a major science and finding its main exponents in Germany and Hol­ land. Thus we may refer to Blumenbach's Geschichte und Besehreibung des menschlichen Korpers (1786), Sommering's Knochenlehre (1791), Grohmann's Ideen zu einer physiognomischen Anthropologie (1791), Camper's famous study on the facial angle, Dissertation physique sur Ies differences reelles Die Physiognomik . . . Anfange: Physiognomy is still in its infancy. Diese.. . vervolkomnen: This science is altogether new. If it were older, it would have more appropriate terminology, and then it would be so much easier to perfect. Die Fhysiognomik . . . gekommen: Physiognomy has appeared a few centuries too late or too early.

LAVATER AND THE FRAGMENTE que presentent Ies traits du visage chez Ies hommes de differents pays et de differents dges (1791), as well as the writ­ ings of such forgotten figures as Kielmeyer, Schneider, and Albers. Goethe himself became interested in the study of anatomy in the early 1780s and was, of course, to publish his famous essay on the maxillary bone in 1820. He was also in close communication with Herder in the winter of 1783-84 while the latter was writing his Ideen zu einer Geschichte der Menschheit.150 It is noteworthy how, in contrast to the Sturm und Drang enthusiasm of his original reaction to the Frag­ mente, Herder adopts in the Ideen an essentially anthropolog­ ical view of physiognomy. Thus he advocates that physiog­ nomical observation be extended to include all non-European races, just as he laments the lack of an "allgemeine Physiognomik der Volker aus ihren Sprachen."151 Much of Herder's approach to anthropology and history could be described as physiognomical, especially in so far as he came to understand epochs, cultures, and nations, like human beings, as entities, each with unique ideas, customs, language, dress, politics, arts, and so on. But the peculiar interest of the Ideen lies for us not least in their having been to some extent a springboard for another science that was shortly to fascinate Europeans and Americans for many years to come: Gall's theory of phre­ nology.152 How far the principles of Lavaterian physiognomy affected all these new developments is a question that need not detain us here. But there is little doubt that Lavater had at least inspired people to develop their powers of observa­ tion. Indeed, we may well wonder whether Herder was not paying homage to Lavater when he wrote that "in den neuesten Zeiten der edle Beobachtungsgeist auch fur unser Geschlecht wirklich schon erwacht ist."153 allgemeine . . . Sprachen: a universal physiognomy of nations from their languages. i n . . . i s t : In recent years we have seen a revival of the noble spirit of observation.

Ill

Physiognomy in Nineteenth-Century European Letters

THE POPULARITY of Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente ex­

tended well beyond Germanic frontiers, and by the early part of the nineteenth century the work had become a kind of Eu­ ropean phenomenon.1 As in Germany and Switzerland, there were mixed reactions to it in France and England, where each volume was reviewed in all the leading periodicals dur­ ing the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Thanks to some French and British periodicals that took an interest in foreign literatures in the original language, people came to know about Lavater long before they could read him in translation, and soon they were talking or writing about physiognomy ac­ cording to temperament and disposition. Most critics were inclined to point to the shortcomings of the work, if not to in­ dulge in personal opinions on the nature of physiognomy, and were seldom willing to give Lavater due credit for his achievements or take them seriously, especially in the midnineteenth century; but they almost invariably mentioned his name in their discussions of physiognomy.2 The physiognomi­ cal vogue was at its height between 1775 and about 1810, during which time the proportion of editions and translations of the Fragmente was greater than in the succeeding period. By 1810, sixteen German, fifteen French, two American, two Russian, one Dutch, one Italian, and no less than twenty English versions had been published. The popularity of the work was indicated, too, by the variety of editions specially prepared to appeal to all kinds of readers.3 Outside Germany and Switzerland, the physiognomical essays were best known in France and England; in fact, after

NINETEENTH-CENTURY LETTERS

1810 it would appear that, among the general reading public, they were more fashionable there than in Switzerland or Ger­ many. Lavater himself had already complained in the 1780s of the poor reception his essays were having with the Ger­ mans, who, he felt, had little understanding for intuition; and Kant in his essay "Von der Physiognomik" (1797) was to speak of a general indifference to Lavaterian physiognomy in the 1790s.4 By 1827, according to a Conversations-Lexikon pub­ lished that year, Lavater's Fragmente had long since fallen into oblivion because, notwithstanding the merits of the work, there were too many exceptions to the rules, and peo­ ple had grown tired of hasty physiognomical judgments.5 Nevertheless, German editions of Lavater continued to ap­ pear at reasonable intervals. For example, there was an abridged edition published at Vienna in 1829 and at Berlin in 1834, as well as an edition of Lavater's collected works pub­ lished at Augsburg and Lindau (1834-38). Then J. K. Orelli's two editions of Lavater's selected works, which included an abridged version of the Fragmente, were published at Zurich (1841-44), one in four volumes and the other in eight, further editions of which appeared in 1846, 1859, and 1860. The first French edition of the Fragmente, Essai sur la physionomie destine ά faire connoistre I'homme et ά Ie faire aimer, which was published at Paris and The Hague in four volumes (1781-1803), is in some respects more satisfactory than the German original, for, apart from being less prolix, it gives more details on the different physical features.6 Among later translations, we may refer to the excellent edition of Moreau de la Sarthe, published at Paris four times between 1805 and 1835 inclusive, as well as the H. Bacharach transla­ tion, published at Paris in 1827, 1841, and 1845. There was also a pocket Lavater, which appeared at Paris and Brussels in some seven editions between 1808 and 1826 inclusive. La­ vater's theories again became known through potpourri vol­ umes such as Physionomie portative d'apres Lavater, Ies Pernety, et plusieurs autres celebres physionomistes (1806) or in unusual versions such as Le Petit Lavater ou tablettes

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

mysterieuses (1801) and Le Lavater des dames, ou I'art de connaitre Ies femmes sur lew physionomie, the seventh edi­ tion of which was published in 1826. Finally, there were books about Lavater's theories such as L. J. M. Robert's Essai sur la Megalanthropogenesie (1801), Le Nouveau Lavater complet (1838), edited by Terry, Le Lavater des temperaments (1832?), edited by Morel de Rubempre, and Ν. T. Ottin's Precis analytique du systeme de Lavater sur Ies signes physiognomoniques, two editions of which were brought out at Brussels in 1834 and 1839. In England, Lavater's theories began to be known almost from the time the Monthly Review (1775) announced the publication of volume I of the original Fragmente, saying that it "has been expected with impatience by all who are ini­ tiated, or desirous of being so, in the secret of reading faces."7 A study of late eighteenth-century editions of the Encyclo­ paedia Britannica suggests that in England physiognomy had by then begun to assume an importance it had hardly had be­ fore the advent of Lavater. Thus, whereas the 1767-71 edi­ tion makes no mention whatever of physiognomy, the 1778-83 edition discusses Lavater for half a column in the two-column entry for "physiognomy," and that of 1797 de­ votes as many as ten columns to the subject. Almost all the English versions of the essays were translations from the French edition, the best-known being those of Dr. Henry Hunter and Thomas Holcroft;8 and though the highest pro­ portion of editions appeared between 1789 and 1810, there was certainly no lack of English publications afterward, prominent among them being Holcroft's translation: one London publisher, William Tegg, brought out at least eleven editions of this translation from 1840 to 1878, an average of one every three and a half years, as well as issuing three other editions in 1827, 1869, and 1876-77. There were also potted versions of Lavater's essays, including Lavater's Looking Glass, or Essays on the Face of Animated Nature from a Man to Plants (1800) and George Brewer's Juvenile Lavater (1812). Popular interest in physiognomy, though evidently fluctuat-

NINETEENTH-CENTURY LETTERS

ing, continued well into the 1870s, since when Lavater's works have been rarely published.9 The success of Lavater's physiognomical essays in nine­ teenth-century France and England may have been in part consequent upon the respect which German literature had begun to enjoy in Europe after 1800. Having for some two centuries been dismissed abroad as generally dull and cum­ bersome, German literature had already become a force to be reckoned with in the last three decades of the eighteenth century, during which time a number of Scottish writers such as Henry Mackenzie, Lord Woodhouselee, and Walter Scott drew attention to the literary merits of Goethe's Werther, Schiller's Rauber, Burger's Lenore, and so on. Interest in Ger­ man literature was further aroused at the turn of the century not only by the success of Kotzebue's plays in London and Paris but also by the appearance of numerous Gothic novels (commonly known as German diablerie) in European book­ shops.10 The arrant tastelessness of some of this fiction, however, temporarily led to a repudiation of all German literature, which, in any case, had been badly served by incompetent translations; and it was only with the publica­ tion of Madame de Stael's De VAllemagne (1810) and, to a lesser degree, A. W. Schlegel's Vorlesungen iiber die schone Litteratur und Kunst (1805) that both English and French men of letters started to take a more serious interest in Ger­ man culture, to the extent that such writers as Coleridge, Wordsworth, Crabb Robinson, Carlyle, Nerval, Musset, and Lamartine made literary pilgrimages to Germany.11 This was also the period when Goethe, Schiller, Jean Paul, Hoffmann, and other German writers were making their impact on English poetry and French drama, and when Germany's achievements in philosophy were gaining recognition, as Coleridge makes clear in a letter to a friend: ".. . I think the very best German works of speculative philosophy or psycho­ logic observation better than the best that has been produced in London... ."12 Moreover, some French and English peri­ odicals were devoted almost entirely to discussions of German

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

literature; and some writers, such as Carlyle and William Taylor of Norwich, went so far as to place German literature above all other European literatures.13 Yet the prestige of German literature at this time does not entirely explain the continuing popularity of the Fragmente; on the contrary, Lavater's cause was probably furthered by the development of what may be simply described as a "physiognomical culture." This culture was determined by a number of influences. One which was of fundamental importance for Lavater's theories was the tremendous revival of religion in the early decades of the nineteenth century, particularly in France and Germany, which had been through the upheavals of the Na­ poleonic wars. No less important was the violent reaction against Rationalism and Materialism on the part of the Ro­ mantics, who made a strong plea for idealism, subjectivity, and individualism, and who asserted the rights of feeling as against reason. There were also fascinating new develop­ ments in chemistry, physics, physiology, psychology, and an­ thropology, as well as experiments in magnetism and galva­ nism, all of which began to have a certain influence on literature. The scientific outlook seemed to be so assured of triumph that Bonald actually feared for the survival of litera­ ture. Thus, in 1797 he wrote: "Tout annonce ... la chute prochaine de la republique des lettres, et la domination universelle des sciences exactes et naturelles."14 Bonald's fears proved, of course, to be groundless; but there was no question that men of letters could no longer afford to be indifferent to the upsurge of new scientific ideas. In fact, many writers took a keen interest in the sciences, regularly attended lectures on them, and even became involved in scientific disputes.15 But what helped to sustain and perpetuate this physiog­ nomical culture was the way in which physiognomy itself developed more and more as a science in its own right, with a distinct bearing upon the fine arts, anatomy, physiology, psychology, anthropology, ethnology, criminology, endocriTout. .. naturelles: Everything points to the imminent collapse of the republic of letters and the universal hegemony of the exact and natural sciences.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY LETTERS

nology, and so on. Nor was there any lack of physiognomical books, some of which enjoyed a renown hardly less notable than Lavater's among people in science, philosophy, and the belles-lettres.16 Thus we may refer to the writings of Camper, Sir Charles Bell, Bichat, Cabanis, Pinel, Carus, Virchow, d'Arpentigny, Duchenne, Piderit, and Darwin, all of whom could be designated as "scientific" physiognomists. But whereas Carus and Virchow, as we shall see presently, still maintained the Lavaterian tradition in their primary concern with the bone structure, others, including Sir Charles Bell and Darwin, developed pathognomy to sophisticated extremes in their brilliant studies of facial expression.17 There were also books concerned with individual characteristics, such as Eden Warwick's Nosology; or Hints Towards a Classification of Noses (1848) and d'Arpentigny's Chirognomonie ou I'art de reconnaitre Ies tendances de Vintelligence d'apres Ies formes de la main (1843), which was admired, amongst others, by Barbey d'Aurevilly.18 D'Arpentigny's book became known in England through Richard Beamish's Psychonomy of the Hand; or the Hand an Index of Mental Development Accord­ ing to MM. d'Arpentigny and Desbarolles (1865), and, ap­ pearing in German translation, was the forerunner of Carus' IJber Grund und Bedeutung der verschiedenen Formen der Hand in verschiedenen Personen (1846). Carus had, in fact, been working on this project for some twenty years already, and he firmly believed that the hand was to the body what, for Cuvier, a fossil bone was to an entire biological struc­ ture.19 That it was possible to make summary physiognomical judgments on the basis of a single feature no doubt contrib­ uted to the popularity of these works. Even handwriting be­ came a major source of interest at this time, as Heinrich Steffens remarks in his autobiography, Was ich erlebte (1841-44); he also tells of the fondness for studying the handwriting of fa­ mous persons and for comparing it with portraits of them.20 No DISCUSSION of nineteenth-century physiognomy can be complete without reference to its close association with phre­ nology. It is true that phrenology owed much to physiog-

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

nomy, not least for an atmosphere in which to flourish, even though Lavaterian physiognomy benefited equally by phrenology. It was, moreover, common to mention both sci­ ences together and to discuss them in one and the same book;21 and in so far as both were concerned with moral and aesthetic interpretation, the tendency to confuse them was perhaps inevitable. Like physiognomists with their noses, mouths, and eyebrows, phrenologists attributed to each "bump" on the head a particular moral significance, and could assess the character and disposition of its owner by a careful survey of the skull's conformation. The princi­ ples of phrenology were commonly illustrated by means of a "phrenological skull," on which the various faculties—ideal­ ity, constructiveness, acquisitiveness, amativeness, secretiveness, and so on—were laid out in remarkably symmetrical fashion. The size of each faculty indicated its capacity; and if faculties were deficient or defective, they were said to be in­ demnified by a corresponding enlargement of other faculties. The proportionate relationship of faculties (or organs) to one another was, then, what determined human character. All this was, and still is, popular phrenology in a nutshell; and it is easy to see why it should have been thought to have an obvi­ ous kinship with physiognomy. Indeed, the Edinburgfi Re­ view (April 1803) felt that Gall, notwithstanding his objection to such a confusion, might just as well call his theory a "spe­ cies of physiognomy," an argument later endorsed by Carus, who regarded the localization of faculties on the skull as an essentially physiognomical activity.22 The confusion was added to by the frequent use of the word "physiognomy" in phrenological contexts. Thus, lectures were once given at Edinburgh on "craniological physiognomy";23 the book with which Henry Crabb Robinson introduced English readers to phrenology was entitled Some Account of Dr. Gall's Theory of Physiognomy; Spurzheim's well-known work on phrenology was called The Physiognomical System of Doctors Gall and Spurzheim, and so on.24 Moreover, as physiognomy itself be­ came more "scientific," especially when the skull became the

NINETEENTH-CENTURY LETTERS

focus of interpretation, so it was bound to encroach somewhat on the territory of phrenology. Hence the confusion that exists even today. It is noteworthy that two prominent German scientists, Carl Gustav Carus (1789-1869) and Rudolf Virchow (18211902), were equally at home in both sciences. As physiogno­ mists, they each elaborated the more scientific aspects of Lavaterian physiognomy and, though admitting that the Swiss pastor's theories were no longer adequate to contemporary needs, were not slow to acknowledge the value of his achiev­ ements, especially the attention he had given to the skull and bone structure. Carus was, in fact, quite Lavaterian in the way he looked upon physiognomy as a combination of art and science and in his teleological view of man, as stated in the introduction to Die Proportionslehre der menschlichen Gestalt (1854). Yet by the standards of his era Carus was, as a physiognomist, essentially a man of science, and regretted that Lavater had not had a proper scientific training: it was all very well to have the eye of a prophet, but, as Carus so­ lemnly states, "the workings of science are quite otherwise." It was with this attitude that he applied himself to his re­ nowned studies on phrenology, or cranioscopy, as he pre­ ferred to call it; and just as he rejected Lavater's phys­ iognomical approach to some extent, so he declared the theories of Gall and Blumenbach to be out of date. His aim was, as he says in his Atlas der Crantoscopie (1843-45), to es­ tablish a genuinely "physiological cranioscopy"; that is to say, he wanted to avoid Gall's oft-criticized method of localizing faculties on the skull by concentrating instead on the entire brain structure and the nervous system.25 That he was aiming high is, indeed, suggested by the very title of his most impor­ tant publication, Grundziige einer neuem und wissenschaflIich begriindeten Cranioscopie (Schadellehre) (Fundamentals of a Modern and Scientifically Based Cranioscopy [Craniology]) (1841). Carus' faith in phrenology lasted until the late 1860s, when he drew up a catalog of collections of phrenological heads.26 By that time, however, phrenology

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

had lost favor in the scientific world: even Virchow was to turn his attention away from phrenology toward anthropol­ ogy in the last decades of the century. But though both scien­ tists are now of minor consideration in the history of brain physiology, their attempts to synthesize physiognomy and phrenology are still germane to those concerned with under­ standing the Lavaterian physiognomical climate. Although it is convenient, then, to regard phrenology as an essential part of the Lavaterian era of physiognomy, this is not tantamount to saying that those who accepted phrenol­ ogy also subscribed to the principles of physiognomy, or viceversa. Phrenology had its own laws, its societies and its jour­ nals, and it was jealous for independence as a science in its own right. This independence was asserted by none more vehemently than its chief exponent, Franz Josef Gall (1758-1828), who objected to its being constantly confused with physiognomy and who, incidentally, had little to say in favor of Lavater and his followers.27 Gall first conceived the idea of phrenology as a schoolboy, when it occurred to him that fellow pupils with good memories tended to have promi­ nent eyes; but it was not until the 1790s that he began seriously to pursue his hypothesis of cerebral localization, gathering data by visiting hospitals, prisons, and lunatic asy­ lums, as Lavater had done for his physiognomical theories. The essence of Gall's phrenology was hinted at in his PhiIosophisch-Medicinische Untersuchungen iiber Natur und Kunst im kranken und gesunden Zustande des Menschen (1791) and first fully embodied in his Anatomie et physiologie du systeme nerveux en general et du cerveau en particulier (1810-19). That the division of the brain into sundry faculties was by no means an innovation at that time was made plain by Spurzheim, who refers to Albertus Magnus, Bonnet, Haller, Von Swieten, Mayer, Sommering, and others as fore­ runners.28 Yet very little was known about the brain at the end of the eighteenth century, the tendency being to divide it into three main faculties (reason, imagination, and memory), or to regard it as a tabula rasa, or, as Cabanis supposed, as an

NINETEENTH-CENTURY LETTERS

organ secreting thought. Gall's great achievement, amongst several others in brain physiology, was to show that, contrary to the current notion of its being a mere pulpy mass, the brain was truly fibrous, and that, by unrolling its convolutions, the places could be recognized "where the instincts, sentiments, penchants, talents, and, in general, the moral and intellectual forces are exercised."29 Thus Gall enunciated his famous principle of cerebral localization; and though it had been dis­ missed as a hypothesis in a dissertation published in Vienna in 1784,30 it was to exercise an extraordinary influence on nine­ teenth-century medicine. Gall's theory was also an implicit attack on contemporary psychological theory, which, he felt, lay too much under the influence of Condillac's sensationa­ lism#, not to mention German Idealist philosophy. He was eager to liberate psychology from metaphysics; and by mak­ ing it the special province of physiology, he hoped to turn it into a true science.31 When Gall first lectured on his new theories in Vienna, there were reactions of shock and dismay; indeed, the author­ ities declared them subversive, materialistic, and atheistic enough for an imperial decree to be issued on 24 December 1801 forbidding him to give further lectures. Gall then de­ cided to leave Austria, taking with him his associate and for­ mer pupil Johann Georg Spurzheim (1776-1832). For a num­ ber of years they traveled round Europe delivering lectures in several major cities. Their partnership ended in 1813: Gall stayed on in Paris, while Spurzheim went to Britain and, later, to America, remaining there until his death in 1832. Despite their names being closely associated at that time, Gall and Spurzheim differed on certain fundamentals. Thus, whereas Gall held a determinist and, hence, essentially pessi­ mistic view of human nature, Spurzheim maintained that "all faculties in themselves were good and given for a salutary end" and looked forward to "the perfection of mankind"; and it is this optimism no less than his ability to make remarkably accurate character assessments from skull analyses that ex­ plains his universal popularity.32 Spurzheim's achievements

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

in brain physiology are, however, of little account now, and his only conspicuous contribution to phrenological theory was to raise Gall's twenty-seven faculties to thirty-five. There were, of course, other phrenologists who achieved fame and prestige: Buchez, Azai's, and Broussais in France,33 Forster and Combe in Britain. George Combe (1788-1858), a lawyer by profession, regarded phrenology as "the greatest and most important discovery ever communicated to man­ kind," having been converted to the science after he had seen Spurzheim dissect a brain. Amongst his early achievements was his founding of The Phrenological Society in 1820 and The Phrenological Journal and Miscellany in 1823. The Edin­ burgh Review, which was noted for its constant attacks on phrenology, had a relatively high opinion of Combe, and in its review of his System of Phrenology (1826) wrote that "phre­ nology, in his hands, has assumed, for the first time, an aspect not absolutely ludicrous... ."u But whereas Gall and Spurzheim's phrenology was primarily physiological, Combe's was, by his own claim, "a moral science," which is plainly borne out by The Constitution of Man (1828), whose popularity cer­ tainly equaled that of Lavater's physiognomical essays.35 Combe was a figure much beloved by the British workingclasses, mainly because he urged improvements in their con­ dition and denounced existing political practices.36 But in his quest for a progressive secularization of society he was, inevi­ tably, frowned upon by the authorities, especially the clergy, who, in any case, felt that phrenology undermined certain tenets concerning Providence and free will. Nevertheless, it is quite evident from The Constitution of Man that Combe, like Gall and Spurzheim, was an avowed deist, just as it is doubtful whether phrenology, any more than physiognomy, could have succeeded with ordinary people had it not rested on certain religious assumptions.37 At any rate, there were already many sound reasons for the popularity of phrenology, since it seemed to make it easier than ever to determine such things as academic capacity, marital suitability, criminal tendencies, signs of insanity, and so on.38 But despite the serious uses to which phrenology was put,

NINETEENTH-CENTURY LETTERS

Figure 9. A phrenological lecture in Britain.

the general public tended to take an essentially aesthetic in­ terest in the science; and just as they sought the physiognom­ ical significance of the facial and bodily features, so they wanted to know what moral propensities were revealed by the "bumps" on their heads. One way in which people came to know the basic principles of phrenology was by attending lectures (figure 9). The popularity of these lectures was leg­ endary; indeed, in 1836 it was reported that in England "few lecturers . . . can draw such numerous audiences as do the phrenologists."39 Spurzheim himself was an exceedingly pop­ ular lecturer, and, as Frances Trollope suggests, there were few who could hold audiences as well as he did.40 First desig­ nated as cranioscopy and craniology, Gall's theory came to be known universally as phrenology—a term which he disapproved of—and, like physiognomy, it was soon a word on everyone's lips.41 In the early decades of the nineteenth century there was hardly a newspaper or periodical without an article on phrenology or a review of the numerous books it

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

•

,

I &φ£?·Η07·\

Figure 10. Punch's "Stomachology." "In my first lecture I endeavoured to establish an analogy between the function of the brain and the stomach, and to show how, as the prominences on the surface of the skull indicate the existence of certain mental qualities, the developments of the stomach should in like manner assign the locality of certain physical appetites . . ." (Punch, 1842).

inspired. Referring to the phrenological vogue in the France of 1820, Maine de Biran wrote: "... nos journaux Ies plus sa­ vants comme Ies plus frivoles donnent chaque jour un article de craniologie."42 It is the frivolous articles, however, which tend to make better reading now, especially one or two to be found in the early numbers of Punch, where phrenology is lampooned as "phrenotypics," "cramanology," "stomachol­ ogy," and the like (figure IO).43 nos. . . craniologie: our most serious as well as our most frivolous news­ papers have articles on craniology every day.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY LETTERS

The enthusiasm first engendered by phrenology was such as almost to exceed the limits of reason. In a letter to Southey (27 April 1800), William Taylor of Norwich deplores the ef­ fect phrenology is having on German cultural life: "Good sense has not thriven; physical and metaphysical quacks have usurped the theorists of reputation. Dr. Gall and Fichte are now more talked of than Soemmering and Martens."44 Phre­ nology was still flourishing in Germany in the 1840s, and, as Heinrich Steffens records, practically every household there had its phrenological skull45 In France, the science was at first skeptically received for the most part, only to become an accepted part of everyday life there 46 It was, however, not so much in Germany or France as in Britain, particularly Scot­ land, that phrenology was to find its most cherished abode in Europe.47 In the Gentleman's Magazine (1827) an article de­ clares phrenology now to be "the rage of the Scotch univer­ sity [Edinburgh]" and goes on to tell of eminent doctors and lawyers who "carry craniometers about in their pockets to measure heads with."48 It is noteworthy, too, that Glasgow University instituted a Chair of Phrenology in 1846, though Edinburgh University was unable to muster enough votes to do so. Phrenology was always and everywhere utterly contro­ versial, and the fanaticism of defenders and opponents made it seem almost like a religion in so far as those who at first were skeptical later became staunch converts to the science, and vice versa. This was especially true of the medical world, which was long divided over the science.49 The controversies aroused by phrenology are nowhere bet­ ter reflected than in nineteenth-century belles-lettres. Ger­ man literary correspondence between 1800 and 1810 is full of references and allusions to the new science and its impact on ordinary life.50 Autobiographies, too, have a similar documen­ tary interest. Thus, Heinrich Steffens, himself an avowed op­ ponent of phrenology, speaks of the stir caused by Gall's lec­ tures at Halle in 1805: "Es ist schwer, sich eine Vorstellimg zu machen von der Bewegung, die damals entstand."51 Part of E s . . . e n t s t a n d : It is hard to imagine the stir [phrenology] caused at that time.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

the enjoyment of the lectures for StefFens was to observe Goethe sitting between the Homeric scholar Friedrich Wolf and the composer Reichardt, listening to Gall with rapt at­ tention.52 According to Crabb Robinson, Goethe took phre­ nology so seriously at that time that he once would not allow a satire on it to be performed at Weimar.53 Others in the liter­ ary world had opinions ranging from fervent enthusiasm to outright skepticism. Such British men of letters as Lord Macaulay, Godwin, Coleridge, Bentham, Walter Scott, Carlyle, Dickens, and Thackeray reacted to phrenology with distaste, if not ironic humor, while Hazlitt in a number of essays made no bones about his scorn for the science. As he once put it, "One might as well quote the Koran to a Cossack, as truth to a phrenologist."54 On the other hand, Bulwer Lytton, Emer­ son, and Alexander Bain accepted phrenology, as did many French writers such as Balzac, Constant, George Sand, the Prince de Ligne, Proudhon, Alphonse Esquiros, and Les Jeunes France.55 It was also fashionable for literary figures to have their heads "phrenologized"—Goethe, Crabb Robinson, Mary Russell Mitford, George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Furst Piickler, Ida Hahn-Hahn, Whitman, Poe, Mark Twain, and many others.56 Herbert Spencer even went so far as to invent a "cephalograph" for measuring heads, though, like many of his generation, he, too, was to become quickly disillusioned with phrenology.57 The same was true of the positivists George Henry Lewes, George Eliot, and Harriet Martineau, whose original interest in the science had no doubt been stimulated in part by Comte's highly favorable comments on Gall.58 It took another positivist, Emile Littre, to point out where the master had gone astray.59 By the 1860s phrenology, though still a matter of great in­ terest to the man in the street, could count few serious sup­ porters in the world of the sciences and letters, having for many years already been attacked for numerous reasons: the seeming arbitrariness of localized faculties, the failure to ac­ count for the indemnification of impaired faculties by other parts of the brain, the equating of size of head with intellec­ tual capacity, the relative disregard of extraneous influences

NINETEENTH-CENTURY LETTERS

such as heredity, environment, and education, and so on. The first work to prove the undoing of phrenology was Examen de la phrenologie (1842) by Pierre Flourens, who is now regarded as the true pioneer of the experimental physiology of the ner­ vous system. Gall's chief limitation in Flourens' eyes lay in his failure to make sufficient use of experimental methods; no doubt, he had in mind the phrenologist's tendency to support his hypotheses at all costs, even to the extent of relying on anecdotes and analyses of busts. Certainly, Lewes made a valid point when he suggested that phrenologists would do better to cease looking for corroborative evidence and, in­ stead, to try to accumulate contradictory evidence.60 Not the least ironic aspect of the failure of phrenology was the fact that, having originally dealt a severe blow to speculative thinking on the brain, it had itself come to be seen as a du­ bious metaphysics. But, as already stated, even Gall's most outspoken critics, including Flourens and Lewes, were well aware that cerebral localization was, scientifically speaking, a step in the right direction;61 and it was possibly in this spirit that some still believed in the future of phrenology. Indeed, the evolutionist Alfred George Wallace, looking back in 1898 at "The Wonderful Century," saw its rejection of phrenology as the first and greatest of its errors, and predicted that the science would "assuredly gain general acceptance" in the twentieth century62 This has, of course, proved wishful thinking; for, though popular phrenology still continues, its demise as a science was practically confirmed in Europe when Claude Bernard made his famous speech (17 May 1869) on being elected to the French Academy—a speech which may be said to mark the dawn of the present scientific era.63 THE FOREGOING SUMMARY of the rise and decline of phrenol­ ogy is essential for a proper understanding of the way in which the literature of the period reflects the Lavaterian physiognomical climate. It was, as stated above, the close link between the two sciences and their tendency to overlap that led many people, including literary figures, to lump them to-

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

gether without distinction. The historian of ideas, however, is obliged to distinguish between them and, where possible, to specify the exact nature of the influence exerted by each; and where his concern is with fiction, he will discover that, broadly speaking, physiognomy tended to affect form, and phrenology content. In particular, he will see that the devel­ opment of literary portraiture, which is our concern here, was determined very largely by physiognomy, and only margin­ ally by phrenology. He will also note that the predilection for observation, which was characteristic of nineteenth-century European writers as a whole, had its roots in contemporary physiognomical thought and that, as Lovejoy has rightly sug­ gested, writers betraying the effects of such current ideas may not have been necessarily always conscious of their source.64 Nevertheless, there is plenty of evidence to indicate that peo­ ple were perfectly aware of the currency of physiognomy at that time and that they associated the science first and fore­ most with Lavater; and since references to a particular name constitute the main justification for postulating the diffusion of a particular idea, let us now select at random a number of nineteenth-century references made to Lavater and his theories. First of all, there were the inevitable criticisms. We note that Napoleon, according to Las Cases, was utterly skeptical about physiognomy and phrenology, and dismissed Lavater as "cet insigne charlatan."65 George Eliot in a letter to the Rev­ erend John Sibree (February 1846) tells of her failure to find refreshment in "Lavater's queer sketches of physiognomies and still queerer judgments on them."66 Gutzkow's criticism of physiognomy has to do with its morbid cultishness during the Geniezeit, as he sardonically refers to "das grosse physiognomische Kunstnetz, wo von den fatalsten Karpfen-und Forellenprofilen an jede unbedeutende Visage als ein Beitrag zu einer das Jahrhundert aus seinen Angeln hebenden Wisdas .. . wurde: the great physiognomical schema in which every insig­ nificant face, from the ugliest profiles of carp and trout upward, was re­ garded as an earth-shaking contribution to eighteenth-century science.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY LETTERS

senschaft angesehen wurde."67 EichendorfiF saw Lavater's physiognomy as inevitably leading to determinism and in sar­ castic vein agreed with Lichtenberg that you might as well, therefore, hang a child in advance, before its criminal ten­ dencies take it to the gallows.68 Physiognomy was criticized, of course, for its pretensions to scientific validity. Thus Wilhelm Waiblinger in his Tagebiicher (1821-26) made the fol­ lowing entry for 21 March 1823: "Lavaters Physiognomik ist ein ungeheurer Irrthum. Sie kann nicht zu einer Wissenschaft werden."69 Again, when Georg Biichner gave his lecture "liber Schadelnerven" (November 1836), whereby he quali­ fied as a Privatdozent, he asserted that any discussion of the facial features now had to be done on a physiological basis, underlining this with patronizing remarks on Lavater's theories: "Man sieht, es ist ein weiter Sprung von da bis zu dem Enthusiasmus, mit dem Lavater sich gliicklich preist, dass er von so was Gottlichem wie den Lippen reden diirfe."70 In stark contrast to these disparaging remarks was the en­ thusiasm with which Lavater's theories were welcomed by some of the French Romantics. Madame de Stael's favorable account of Lavater's personality in De I'Allemagne, where she also points out that his physiognomical books are better known in France than his theological ones, was representa­ tive of a feeling shared by her literary kindred spirits, many of whom had been converted to Christianity.71 For example, Chateaubriand (a recent convert himself) not only possessed copies of Lavater's physiognomical essays, but wrote in de­ fense of them in his "Essai sur Ies revolutions" (1797): "L'art Lavaters . .. werden: Lavater's physiognomies is a monstrous error; it cannot be regarded as a science. M a n . . . d i i r f e : One can see what a far cry this is from the enthusiasm with which Lavater regards himself as being fortunate enough to discuss something as divine as the lips. L ' a r t . . . i n c o n n u e : The art of physiognomy offers an excellent field of study to those interested in it. Our unduly rational century has been too disdainful of this inexhaustible fund of knowledge. The whole of antiquity believed this science to be true, and in our own time Lavater has devel­ oped it to unprecedented perfection.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

de physionomie offre d'excellentes etudes a qui voudrait s'y livrer. Notre siecle trop raisonneur a trop dedaigne cette source inepuisable destructions. Toute l'antiquite a cru a la verite de cette science, et Lavater l'a portee de nos jours a une perfection inconnue."72 Two other writers associated with Romanticism were also faithful disciples of Lavater: Balzac and George Sand. Baldensperger has shown how much the former was indebted to Lavater for his character descrip­ tions, and Pierre Abraham has estimated that Balzac men­ tions both Lavater and Gall "plus de cent fois" in the Comedie Humaine.73 George Sand was a lifelong admirer of Lavater's theories. Apart from owning the original French edition as well as a Lavater portatif, which «he gave to her granddaughter in 1875, she quotes, in her Histoire de ma vie, his ideas on the effects of vice and virtue on the appearance, and later in the same work tells of a trip she made to Bourges, where she stayed alone in a house "en compagnie de Lavater" and wrote something on the subject of physiognomy.74 At one time she sent a letter to Liszt deploring the neglect of La­ vater's theories and expressing her doubts whether the com­ poser would be lucky enough to procure "un des plus beaux livres de l'esprit humain."75 It is interesting to note how the differences between the French and German Romantics are underlined by their re­ spective attitudes to physiognomy and phrenology. Whereas French literary figures generally took a keen interest in phre­ nology, the German Romantics—and here we mean particu­ larly the Jena group—had almost nothing to say in its favor. Heinrich Steffens' three public lectures at Halle on Gall's theories, which were later published as Vorlesungen iiber Galls Schadellehre (1806), were a typical example of this atti­ tude.76 Hegel, too, rejected Gall's phrenology outright for its materialism and for turning the human spirit "zu einer blossen Schadelstatte" (to a mere golgotha).77 Again, G. H. von Schubert, whose Geschichte der Seele (1850) may be regarded un .. . humain: one of the finest products of the human mind.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY LETTERS

as one of the last bastions of German Romanticism, had strong doubts about the principles "des Systems jener Physiognomie des Schadels."78 Even Schopenhauer, though hostile to the Hegelian school of philosophy, declared that Gall's greatest error had been to regard the brain as the organ of moral quali­ ties, and went on to say that his entire philosophy was to some extent an attempt to refute this theory.79 Most of the German Romantics were, however, committed to physiognomy, though their physiognomical thinking as­ sumed a philosophical character that is scarcely to be found in the French Romantics, let alone their English counterparts. In this connection, it is interesting to note how close the Ger­ man Romantics were to Lavater, Hamann, Herder, and Hemsterhuis both in the struggle against Materialism and Ration­ alism and in the tendency to see the world as naturally con­ taining signs, symbols, fragments, or hieroglyphs.80 Nor could anything have been more Lavaterian than the Romantics' quest to end the age-old antinomy between body and spirit that had dogged philosophical thought since the time of De­ scartes. It is by now a commonplace that the German Ro­ mantics, philosophers and critics alike, were Leibnizians at heart, and took an essentially symbolic view of the human body.81 This view was based partly on Schelling's concept of nature as spiritualized matter, and of spirit as potential na­ ture. Schelling regarded man as "der Endzweck der organischen Schopfung" and as "das einzige Wesen, das Physiognomie hat"; and the essence of his philosophy is to be found in statements he made about the intimate relationship between the body and spirit or soul. Here is a typical one: "Alles Korperliche ist in der That schon ein vergeistigtes, ein verinnerlichtes Materielles. Bei dem Korperlichen spricht man des . . . Schadels: of the system of craniological physiognomy. der .. . Schopfung: the ultimate purpose of organic creation. das . . . hat: the only creature to have a physiognomy. Alles . .. lnnem: Everything corporeal is, in fact, merely spiritualized, interiorized matter. In the case of the body, one can readily speak of an inwardness.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

schon von einem Innern."82 Similar ideas exist in the writings of Schleiermacher, Novalis, SteflFens, and Hegel. This quest for a synthesis of nature and spirit, matter and spirit, body and spirit, is utterly characteristic of German Romantic thought, and is not only related to Lavaterian mysticism but is a kind of physiognomy at its most mystical. Of all the German Romantics, none could have been more steeped in Lavater's writings than Novalis. Novalis had turned to them for comfort after the death of his fiancee, So­ phie, and had found much that corresponded to his own out­ look. Amongst other things, Novalis was fascinated by Lavater's arguments about the life hereafter, particularly the idea of the perfectibility of the human body, the restoration of lost limbs, and the magical powers with which man would be endowed. Novalis certainly knew the Fragmented and appears to have given a great deal of thought to physiog­ nomy. Much of his thinking on the subject, however, exists only in odd statements or fragmentary notes, whose style and tone none the less betray the philosophical poet. Here is an example from his Philosophische Studien (1795-96): "Physiognomik. Beharrliches in jedem Gesicht—Ton des Gesichtes." That Novalis was a studious observer of faces is suggested by this passage from his Fragmente der letzten Jahre (1799-1800): "Religiositat der Physiognomie. Heilige, unerschopfliche Hieroglyphen jeder Menschengestalt. Schwierigkeit, Menschen wahrhaft zu sehen. Relativitat und Falschheit der BegrifiFe von schonen und hasslichen Menschen. Recht hassliche konnen unendlich schon sein. Oftere Betrachtung der Mienen. Einzelne OflFenbarungsmomente dieser HieroPhysiognomik . .. Gesichtes: Physiognomy. The permanent elements in each face—the tone of the face. Religiositat... Hieroglyphe: The religious essence of physiognomy. The divine and infinitely meaningful hieroglyphs of each human body. The dif­ ficulty of seeing people as they really are. The relativity and falseness of concepts of beauty and ugliness. Really ugly people can be infinitely beautiful. [Must make] more frequent observation of faces. The way in which these hieroglyphs have their occasional moments of revelation.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY LETTERS

glyphe." The importance of constant observation is stressed in another passage: "Langer Umgang Iehrt einem die Gesichtssprache verstehen. Die vollkommenste Physiognomie muss allgemein und absolut verstandlich sein." Finally, we may refer to Das allgemeine Brouillon (1798-99), where, under the heading "Physiologie," Novalis makes the follow­ ing Lavaterian statement: "Je geistvoller, gebildeter ein Mensch ist, desto personlicher sind seine Glieder, z.B. seine Augen, die Hand, seine Finger, u.s.w."84 Novalis' interest in physiognomy is, of course, typical of the German Romantics' concern with the uniqueness of individual forms, and of their attempt to re-establish the unity of the inner and outer world. In the examples given above, we have seen the extent to which attitudes to physiognomy and phrenology appear to be expressions of a philosophical outlook. To be sure, some phi­ losophers, such as the Scots James Beattie and Dugald Stewart, discuss both sciences somewhat perfunctorily in contexts of moral philosophy and psychology, with Beattie referring to Lavater as "the most eminent" of modern phys­ iognomists but deeming his theories quite unacceptable, and Stewart declining to say whether "the particular rules on [physiognomy] given by Lavater and others, have a solid foundation in experience."85 On the other hand, Hegel's and Schopenhauer's judgments on physiognomy and phrenology are an integral part of the philosophies they each propound. Schopenhauer, in fact, wrote an essay "Zur Physiognomik" in which, apart from offering some useful advice on the art of observation, he clearly shares Lavater's conviction that a man's outward appearance is a surer indication of his charac­ ter than are his words or behavior. For Schopenhauer, the uniqueness of each human appearance merely proves his the­ sis that character is immutable, just as the ugliness of the bulk Langer. ,. sein: Long acquaintance with the world teaches one the lan­ guage of faces. The most perfect physiognomy must, in a general and in an absolute sense, be easy to read. J e . . . u . s . w . : The more spiritual and the more cultured someone is, the more personal his physical features, e.g. his eyes, hand, fingers, etc.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

of humanity, which he now and then discusses in his writings, confirms his view that man is driven by the will rather than guided by the intellect.86 But whereas Schopenhauer's affir­ mation of physiognomy points up his pessimism about human nature, his rival, Hegel, who postulated the infinite potential of the human spirit, was evidently wary of a science which had determinist implications. To be sure, Hegel admits that we all possess "ein physiognomisches Ansehen" (a phys­ iognomical exterior) and that the eyes and the hand, for ex­ ample, are manifestations of "sichtbares Unsichtbares" (visi­ ble invisibleness); yet he doubts whether physiognomical theory is ultimately valid, and is quick to remark ironically that Lavaterian physiognomy has lost the respect it once en­ joyed. Not surprisingly, therefore, HegeI shows a preference for pathognomy, just as he reiterates throughout his writings a view held by Lichtenberg (with whose physiognomical out­ look he is clearly in sympathy) that a man's actions reveal his character much more than does his appearance.87 It is note­ worthy that Hegel's attitude to physiognomy is practically echoed by F. T. Vischer, whose discussion on physiognomy in the chapter entitled "Die menschliche Schonheit" in his Aesthetik (1847-48) was one of the last tributes paid in this period to the Lichtenbergian camp of physiognomists.88 Vischer's concern with physiognomy in his Aesthetik exem­ plifies the importance that the science came to assume for aestheticians as well as for painters and sculptors during the nineteenth century; and though the connection between physiognomy and the fine arts had been acknowledged well before Lavater's time, it was no doubt mainly due to him that it was once more affirmed. The usefulness of physiognomy was certainly being asserted by art critics in the last two dec­ ades of the eighteenth century. The Monthly Review (1801) declared Lavater's essays to be "destined peculiarly to the in­ struction of connoisseurs and artists,..." and, to reinforce this argument, quoted a passage from Fuseli's advertisement for the English edition of the Fragmente, specifically ad-

NINETEENTH-CENTURY LETTERS

dressed to "teachers of art who, whilst they admit Physiog­ nomy in the mass, refuse to acknowledge it in detail... ."89 Lavater's physiognomical advice may well have inspired Di­ derot to make the following comment in his Essai sur la peinture (1796): "un peintre qui n'est pas physionomiste est un pauvre peintre."90 Mercier, too, says in his Tableau de Paris (1781-82) that "un peintre, un poete sont nes physionomistes."91 Again, Wilhelm von Humboldt, though hardly fa­ vorable to physiognomy in his many anthropological writings, wrote two letters to Goethe, published as Mtisee des petits Augustins (1799), in which he not only constantly uses the word "Physiognomie" in analyses of paintings and sculpture (in the second letter) but also refers specifically to Lavater's criticism of painters for their physiognomical blunders. Like Lavater, Humboldt believed that the artist, together with the philosopher, would derive most benefit from physiognomy, though he made the following reservation: "Nicht also als moralische Hieroglyphen, sondern als reine Naturformen (mit oder ohne Bedeutung) muss man die Gesichtsbildung betrachten, wenn die Physiognomik dem Kiinstler brauchbar werden soil."92 Similar comments on the relationship be­ tween physiognomy and the fine arts, particularly in respect to portrait painting and sculpture, are to be found in the writings of A. W. Schlegel, Hegel, Carus, Virchow, Steffens, Ruskin, and Sully Prudhomme. Recognition of this relation­ ship was, moreover, confirmed by publications such as G. B. de Rubeis' Trattato dei ritratti ossia trattato per coglier Ie fisionomie. Trattato d'anatomia per uso dei pittori (Paris, 1809) and (anonymous) Studien fiir Kiinstler, Kunstfreunde und Physiognomiker (Stuttgart, 1853); and by mid-century the no­ tion of the painter as physiognomist had evidently struck u n . . . p e i n t r e : a painter who is no physiognomist is a poor painter. u n . . . p h y s i o n o m i s t e s : painters and poets are born physiognomists. Nicht... soil: The facial features should be studied, then, not as moral hieroglyphs, but as purely natural forms (with or without meaning), if physiognomy is to be of any use to the artist.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

deep roots, as may be surmised from Alcide Gaboriaux's Peinture reduite ά des principes simples et naturels (1861): "Le peintre qui veut exceller dans l'art du portrait doit necessairement etre physionomiste... ."93 Phrenology was also re­ garded as having its uses in this respect. For example, in The Gentleman's Magazine (February 1815), the reviewer of Ob­ servations on the New System of Physiognomical Expression of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim as Applied to the Arts (1815) states: "It seems to me that Artists will be much assisted by attending to particular forms of the head as will enable them better to draw from Nature."94 And it was no doubt in this spirit that George Combe wrote his Phrenology Applied to Painting and Sculpture (1855). No less useful were the find­ ings of those physiognomists concerned with facial expres­ sion; indeed, the French philosopher Ravaisson believed that Duchenne's studies of faces subjected to various types of electrical shock would be of great value to painters and sculptors alike.95 Some painters and sculptors did, indeed, become fully committed to physiognomy in one way or another at this time. One early example is the French painter Anne Louis Girodet-Trioson (1767-1824), who, apart from trying to put Lavater's ideas into practice in his own paintings, devoted a paregyric stanza to him in a long poem called Le Peintre. Moreover, it has been shown how much Lavater's ideas were instrumental in encouraging other painters of the Davidian school to lend a greater physiognomical interest to the faces they depicted.96 We may also mention Philarete Chasles, who, according to one critic, not only lists nine "extraits de Lavater" in his Manuscrits de jeunesse, but also betrays La­ vater's influence in his engravings and drawings.97 Nor is it without significance that during this period Dickens' illustra­ tor, Hablot K. Browne, should have adopted the pseudonym Phiz.98 Another artist to mention in this context is David Le peintre... physionomiste: The painter who wishes to excel in the art of portraiture must needs be a physiognomist.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY LETTERS

d'Angers. Thus, Champfleury relates in his Souvenirs that he frequently saw the great sculptor at anthropology classes in the Jardin des Plantes, adding that the sale of his library "prouve combien il se preoccupait des phrenologues, des physionomistes, des medecins philosophes."99 David d'Angers was, in fact, certain that phrenology would transform the art of sculpture and, moreover, that there would come a time when the artist, merely by reading the biography of a person whose portrait he was doing, would be able to bring out the moral qualities of that person without ever seeing him in the flesh. Much of David d'Angers' physiognomical thinking is to be found in his Cornets, where, for example, he quotes the au­ thority of Lavater when discussing the mouths of artists: "Selon la remarque judicieuse de Lavater, que Ton examine la bouche des artistes qui se sont distingues, et l'on verra qu'ils ont presque tous la bouche enfantine et gracieuse."100 The practice of judging painters by their physiognomical skills is common to much nineteenth-century art criticism. We note, for example, A. W. Schlegel's criterion for a good portrait: "Ein acht kunstlerisches Portrat kann nur dadurch zu Wege gebracht werden, dass die Physiognomie verstanden und von innen heraus in ihrer Einheit gleichsam reconstruirt wird."101 Another writer who looked for physiognomical ap­ titude in artists was Hazlitt, as we see in a review of Farrington's Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds, where he criticizes painters for not bringing out the individuality of their subjects and ad­ vises them, as Lavater might have done, to pay particular at­ tention to family physiognomies in order to achieve a true prouve ... philosophes: proves how much he was interested in phrenol­ ogists, physiognomists, and medical philosophers. Selon ... gracieuse: As Lavater has remarked perceptively, a study of the mouths of the great painters reveals that they all have the same charming, delicate quality of children's mouths. E i n . . . w i r d : A genuinely artistic portrait can only be done if the physi­ ognomy of the subject is understood, and its inner unity exactly repro­ duced outwardly.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

likeness.102 That physiognomical vision is the mark of a good portrait painter was evidently the view of Arsene Houssaye, who, in a letter to the director of the Revue de Paris, refers to a visit he has paid to a Royal Academy exhibition in London and expresses his preference for English portrait painters, especially Sir David Wilkie, "parce qu'il est profondement physionomiste."103 Many of Gautier's brilliant analyses of paintings also betray a distinctly physiognomical touch, and there is one occasion when he commends a painting by Kaulbach, which he has seen at Munich, for "des tetes etudiees avec une finesse et une profondeur physiognomoniques dignes de Lavater... ."104 Then Baudelaire's critique of a painting by Ingres at the Exposition Universelle of 1855 includes a Lavaterian interpretation of fingernails: "Voici une armee de doigts trop uniformement allonges en fuseaux et dont Ies extremites etroites oppriment Ies ongles que Lavater, a !'in­ spection de cette poitrine large et de cet avant-bras musculeux, de cet ensemble un peu viril, avait juges devoir etre carres, symptome d'un esprit porte aux occupations musculaires, a la symetrie et aux ordonnances de l'art."105 The Goncourts, too, were noticeably physiognomical in their analyses of paintings, and in L'Art du XVIIf Steele (1856-65) we find them praising the way La Tour paints heads: "II fait, en prodigieux physionomiste, Ie portrait du caractere dans Ie por­ trait de 1'homme. Les visages pensent, parlent, s'avouent, se livrent."106 One minor English literary figure, Anna Jameson, who played a useful role in Anglo-German cultural relations d e s . . . L a v a t e r : heads rendered with a physiognomical sensitivity and depth worthy of Lavater. V o i c i . . . l ' a r t : Here you see a cluster of fingers that are too uniformly tapering, and whose narrow extremities are an encumbrance to the finger­ nails—features which Lavater, on examining this broad-chested, some­ what virile figure with the muscular forearms, had assumed to be square, and which as such are characteristic of those given to manual occupations and submissive to the rules and regulations of art. I l . . . s e l i v r e n t : He is a quite amazing physiognomist in the way he brings out the essence of his subjects in his portraits of them. His faces think, speak, reveal themselves, and communicate.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY LETTERS

during the nineteenth century, was, like many of her col­ leagues, quite a connoisseur of sculpture and painting.107 For instance, in "Notes on Art" in her Commonplace Book of Thoughts (1858), Miss Jameson has a section called "Physiog­ nomy of Hands," in which she recounts an anecdote about Lavater's habit of observing people's hands when taking col­ lection in church. Her reference to Lavater occurs, appro­ priately, in the context of her criticism of Van Dyck for not abiding by the laws of physiognomical homogeneity. Thus she writes: What then shall we say of Van Dyck, who painted the hands of his men and women not from individual nature, but from a model hand—his own very often?—and every one who considers for a moment will see in Van Dyck's portraits, however well painted and elegant the hands, they in few instances harmonise with the personnalite; that the position is often affected, and as if intended for display—the display of what is in itself a positive fault and from which some little knowledge of comprehensive physiology would have saved him.108 On the other hand, Titian's portraits of Paul IV are lauded for the appropriateness of the latter's claw-like hands, which "belong to the face of the grasping old man, and could belong to no other."109 Then there is Merimee, who once or twice refers to Gall's authority in his art criticism, though not with­ out a touch of humor. For example, in a letter (15 November 1839) to Charles Lenormant, he expresses admiration for a bust of Julius Caesar which he has seen at Naples as follows: "Sa tete ferait Ie bonheur de Gall: toutes Ies preeminences bonnes et mauvaises." Again, in a letter to Thiers (24 Decem­ ber 1834) he describes the face of a reclining statue of Rich­ ard Coeur de Lion as one which "frapperait un disciple de Gall."110 In this connection, it is worth quoting what Pierre S a . . . m a u v a i s e s : Gall would be thrilled with his head: it has all the right and wrong "bumps." f r a p p e r a i t . . . G a l l : Would impress a disciple of Gall's.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Trahard has to say of Merimee's aesthetic outlook: "... une partie de l'esthetique de Merimee a son origine dans Ies etudes de Lavater et de Cabanis, que Gall est en train de completer."111 Some writers were interested enough in physi­ ognomy to write their own treatises on the subject, notable examples being Henri Meister's Traite sur la physionomie (1820), Rodolphe Topffer's Essai de physiognomonie (1845), and Nodier's Physiognomonie, of which only some ten frag­ ments have survived.112 Stendhal, too, once planned to write a Traite de la science des physionomies, which, though it came to nothing in the end, would have probably contained some of the Lavaterian ideas to be found in his Histoire de la peinture (1817) and Rome, Naples et Florence (1817).113 Bau­ delaire believed that physiognomy could be helpful when choosing a wife. As he says: "Votre maitresse, la femme de votre ciel, vous sera suffisamment indiquee par vos sym­ pathies naturelles, verifiees par Lavater, par la peinture et la statuaire"; but he felt unqualified to give all the physiognomi­ cal signs indicating the suitability of particular women for particular men.114 The universality of physiognomy in nineteenth-century Eu­ rope is further evidenced by the detailed descriptions of peo­ ple to be found in the travel books of the period. Heine is a particular case in point, whether he is relating in his Gemaldeausstellung in Paris (1831) how, through phys­ iognomical observation, he has derived his impressions of apa­ thy in Germany, or discerning the influence of religion on the physiognomies of Catholic and Protestant priests in Reise von Miinchen nach Genua (1828-29), or simply displaying a gen­ eral awareness of national physiognomies. Heine also briefly discusses physiognomy in Notizen auf einer Reise in allerlei deutschen Gebieten (2 October 1846), where, having exune partie ... completer: Part of Merimee's aesthetic derives from his study of Lavater and Cabanis, and is supplemented by his interest in Gall. Votre ... statuaire: You will know plainly enough that you have found your beloved, the girl of your dreams, by your mutual feelings of attrac­ tion, as confirmed by Lavater, by painters, and by sculptors.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY LETTERS

pressed the idea that in spite of the changeability of moods, each individual has one constant physiognomy, he states: In dieser Beziehung hat die Seele vollstandig ihre Iiebliche Abzeichnung oder Symbol im ausseren Antlitz. Dasselbe Gesicht sieht bald freundlicher, bald finsterer aus, und doch hat jede Physiognomie zugleich einen standigen Charakter, ist im ganzen schon, ernst, edel, oder das Gegentheil. Man konnte das Standige in der Seelenstimmung ihre Physiognomie nennen; vielleicht liesse sich auffinden, dass in dem Maasse, als die Physiognomie des Gesichts oft und stark sich verandert, bei demselben Individuum auch die Physiognomie der Seele sehr veranderlich ist.115 Another famous German traveler with a keen eye for national physiognomies was E. M. Arndt, whose Geist der Zeit (1808-18) contains long descriptions of Spanish and Russian physiognomies.116 Regional physiognomies, too, were some­ times noted, as we find, for example, in Annette von DrosteHulshofFs delightful Bilder aus Westfalen (1842).117 We may also mention Dumas pere's Impressions de voyage (1832), in which we are told how he was once mistaken for an Englishman by a Swiss landlord who, as the author adds iron­ ically, did not know "la science physiognomonique de son compatriote Lavater."118 That Lavater's name should occur in contexts of physiog­ nomical descriptions in letters and diaries need not surprise us here. But what is especially interesting about the following five examples, apart from their each mentioning Lavater, is I n . . . i s t : In this respect, the mind's best replica and symbol is the face. The same face will look now more or less friendly, now more or less for­ bidding, and yet each physiognomy has at the same time a permanent character; that is to say, it is, in general, beautiful, serious, noble, or the reverse. One might call the permanent aspects of a particular mentality its physiognomy; it might even be shown that, to the extent that the physiog­ nomy of an individual's face changes often and radically, the physiognomy of the mind is changeable too. Ill

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

that they span a period of some eighty years. Here, for in­ stance, is Ε. T. A. Hoffmann telling Hippel in a letter (18 July 1796) of a coach journey in which he saw a very lovely woman, "... eins von den feinsten Gesichtern aus dem Lavater—gegen die man gleich freundlich sein muss, wenn man nur einzigesmal einen Crayon zwischen den Fingern kunstmassig gehabt hat."119 Alexandre Soumet in a letter to Jules Resseguier (1820) describes the young Victor Hugo's head as follows; "Cet enfant a une tete bien remarquable, une veritable etude de Lavater."120 Anatole de Montesquiou writes to Madame de Genlis (22 September 1826) saying how a knowledge of Lavater has helped him to interpret the char­ acter of a cloth-merchant he met on a coach journey.121 Georg Weerth's description of the west coast of South America, in his letter to Heine from Buenos Aires (1 April 1855), contains an unusual, if not irrelevant, reference to Lavater: "Im iibrigen gefallt uns die Westkiiste durchaus nicht: hatte Lavater die Physiognomie dieser Kiiste studiert, so wiirde er gesagt haben, dass sie sehr trocken aussahe; und er hatte recht gehabt."122 Finally, we may quote C. F. Meyer's Lavaterian reaction to a photograph, as expressed in his letter to J. L. Rahn (1880): "... meinen freundlichen Dank fur deine Photographie, welche mir sehr gefallt a la Lavater zu reden: erstens ist es ein Gesicht! Forschende Aufmerksamkeit und Gute vermischt mit viel Gemiit—und ein Zug von Wehmuth."123 Even George Eliot, despite her apparent rejection eins ... hat: one of the finest faces you might find in Lavater's [Fragmente]—a face one is immediately fascinated by, that is, if one has ever held an artist's pencil between one's fingers. C e t , . . L a v a t e r : This young man has a remarkable head, a real subject for Lavater to study. I m . . . g e h a b t : Anyway, we do not like the west coast at all; had Lavater studied the physiognomy of this coast, he would have said it looked very dull—and he would have been right. meinen ... Wehmuth: my cordial thanks for your photograph, which appeals to me in a Lavaterian kind of way. To begin with, it is quite a face, showing intelligent alertness and goodness, combined with much sensibil­ ity—and a touch of melancholy.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY LETTERS

of Lavater's theories, usually drew physiognomical portraits of acquaintances in her letters. Here, for example, in a letter to Mr. and Mrs. Charles Bray (20 September 1849), is her de­ scription of a Mr. Forbes, whom she has met abroad: "Then there are the Forbeses—Mr. Forbes with a fine moral and in­ telligent head but spoiled by immense pride and vanity, which betray themselves in his thin affected-looking lips at the first glance."124 There are also physiognomical descrip­ tions in abundance in biographies and literary portraits, amongst which we may mention Mrs. Gaskell's portrait of Branwell Bronte in her Life of Charlotte Bronte (1857), or Heine's sketch of George Sand, which is interesting for his re­ marks on the physiognomy of the voice.125 Occasionally, too, we find phrenological descriptions, as in W. H. Prescott's portrait of Walter Scott in his Biographical and Critical Mis­ cellanies, or Fontane's of Bismarck, drawn as late as 1880, in which the author writes: "Die kahle Stirn, fur den Phrenologen ein Gegenstand der Bewunderung, ist von ganz ungewohnlichem Umfang."126 If the character portrait was inevitably the first literary de­ vice to be modified, if not inspired by the Lavaterian phy­ siognomical climate, it was not long before belles-lettres as a whole began to show the effects of this climate. Let us, for example, consider the essays of Hazlitt and Emerson. To be sure, Hazlitt was, as we have already seen, highly critical of phrenology. Physiognomy, on the other hand, clearly made sense to Hazlitt, for whom "the language of expression is as it were a kind of mother-tongue at which we learn to become more or less adept." It is worth mentioning here that Hazlitt edited and completed Thomas Holcroft's autobiography, published in 1816, after the latter's death, and was familiar with his translation of Lavater's physiognomical essays. Haz­ litt's acknowledgment of physiognomy is to be seen most par­ ticularly in his essay "On the Knowledge of Character" where he states: "The face, for the most part, tells us what we have Die kahle ... Umfang: The bare forehead, an object of admiration for the phrenologist, has a quite extraordinary breadth.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

thought and felt—the rest is nothing.... I cannot persuade myself that any one is a great man, who looks like a block­ head." More physiognomical ideas are to be found in Hazlitt's significantly entitled essay "On the Look of a Gentleman" and in "On the Regal Character," where he claims that kings, by virtue of their particular dealings with their subjects, gen­ erally prove to be the best physiognomists.127 Like Hazlitt, Emerson was utterly convinced of the truth of physiognomy, as we can see from a collection of essays he published under the title The Conduct of Life (1860), of which "Behavior," "Worship," and "Fate" contain several af­ firmations of both physiognomy and phrenology. There was, clearly, no question in Emerson's mind about the close rela­ tionship between the inner and outer man; and in his essay "Fate" there is an almost Lavaterian lyricism in the way he speaks of a man's physical appearance as revealing not only his destiny but also his entire family history. Indeed, as the following passage from the essay will show, Emerson exem­ plifies the extent to which nineteenth-century writers lay under the spell of physiognomical thought: The gross lines are legible to the dull: the cabman is phrenologist [sic] so far: he looks in your face to see if his shilling is sure. A dome of brow denotes one thing; a pot-belly another; a squint, a pug-nose, mats of hair, the pigment of the epidermis, betray character. People seem sheathed in their tough organization. Ask Spurzheim, ask the doctors, ask Quetelet, if temperaments decide noth­ ing? or if there be anything they do not decide?... In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin,—seven or eight ancestors at least,— and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is. At the corner of the street, you read the possibility of each passenger, in the facial angle, in the complexion, in the depth of his eye.128 To compare Emerson's essays here with the belles-lettres of fifty years earlier is to gain some idea of the extent to which

NINETEENTH-CENTURY LETTERS

literary interest in physiognomy had, by mid-century, devel­ oped into a sophisticated physiognomical awareness, and the art of physiognomical observation become central to many a discussion of human relations. A notable example of this is to be seen in Stevenson's long essay "Virginibus Puerisque" (1881), the fourth section of which, "Truth of Intercourse," includes an extensive passage on the importance of physiog­ nomical observation in personal relations.129 Stevenson's ap­ proach to physiognomy reminds us somewhat of another essay written in the same decade, Sully Prudhomme's "De l'Artiste et des beaux-arts" (1883), in which physiognomy (and pathognomy) is discussed in detail without a word being said about its historical development in the previous hundred years;130 indeed, the reader gets the impression here that physiognomy had long since been accepted as an integral part of nineteenth-century thought. Similar traces of a phys­ iognomical outlook are evident in some of the literary criti­ cism of the period. For example, the second section of Taine's introduction to his Histoire de la litterature anglaise (1863) begins with a long passage which in style and content fore­ shadows the passages of Stevenson and Prudhomme referred to just now. Here is the first part of the passage: Quand vous observez avec vos yeux Thomme visible, qu'y cherchez-vous? L'homme invisible. Ces paroles qui arrivent a votre oreille, ces gestes, ces airs de tete, ces vetements, ces actions et ces oeuvres sensibles de tout Quand ... rotdeur: When you observe the visible man with your eyes, what do you look for? The hidden man. Those words you hear, those ges­ tures, those turns of the head, those clothes, those actions as well as all manner of visible achievements are only expressions for you; something is expressed, an inner being. There is an inner man hidden behind the out­ ward man, and the latter is but a manifestation of the former. You look at his house, his furniture, his clothes, in order to find in them traces of his habits and his tastes, the degree of his elegance and his loutishness, his ex­ travagance and his thriftiness, his stupidity and his intelligence. You listen to his conversation, you note the inflections of his voice, his changes of at­ titude in order to judge his liveliness, his expansiveness, and his cheerful­ ness, or his energy and his stiffness of manner.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

genre, ne sont pour vous que des expressions; quelque chose s'y exprime, une ame. Il y a un homme interieur cache sous Thomme exterieur, et Ie second ne fait que manifester Ie premier. Vous regardez sa maison, ses meubles et son costume; c'est pour y chercher Ies traces de ses habitudes et de ses gouts, Ie degre de son elegance ou de sa rusticite, de sa prodigalite ou de son economie, de sa sottise ou de sa finesse. Vous ecoutez sa conversa­ tion, et vous notez ses inflexions de voix, ses changements d'attitudes; c'est pour juger de sa verve, de son abandon et de sa gaiete, ou de son energie et de sa roideur.131 The author continues in the same physiognomical vein for several lines, appropriately leading up to the enunciation of his famous triad "race, moment et milieu," which may itself be considered a kind of physiognomical metaphysics. The effects of Lavaterian physiognomy are also conspicu­ ous in the language and style of late nineteenth-century let­ ters. We note this, for example, not only in the title of Ernest Hello's book Physionomies de saints (1875), but even in this extract from Barbey d'Aurevilly's review of it: Il y en a trente-deux [physionomies], et de toutes 1'habile physionomiste a fait jaillir Ie trait, indiscerne jusqu'a Iui et saisissant... Lavater voyait dans Ies visages la ou Ies autres ne voyaient pas. M. Hello a de cette divination feconde. C'est Ie Lavater de la saintete.132 Hardly less physiognomical is the language of a minor work of literary criticism of the 1880s entitled Literarische Physiognomien, in the introduction to which the author, Wilhelm Goldbaum, justifies his title, significantly enough, by pointing I l y e n a . . . s a i n t e t e : There are thirty-two physiognomies, and this skillful physiognomist has brought out the essence of each of them, re­ vealing characteristics that remained unnoticed before, and he has done so in such an impressive manner.... Lavater could see in faces what others could not. Monsieur Hello has something of this divinatory skill: he is the Lavater of sainthood.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY LETTERS

to the number of monographs known in his day as "Dichterkopfe," "Dichterprofile," "Dichterbiisten," and so on. But the interest of the book lies rather in a passage from the in­ troduction, which shows how deeply, not to say excessively, nineteenth-century literature was imbued with physiognomi­ cal thought: Nicht viel anders und doch wieder durchaus verschieden ist es von Dichterphysiognomien zu sprechen. Die Physiognomie ist mehr als das Profil, mehr als Kopf und Buste, sie ist nicht erstarrte Form, nicht Linie, Strick und Wendung, sie ist der Ausdruck des geistigen Lebens. Mehr als in dem Stil, von dem Buffon gesagt hat, es sei der Mensch, spiegelt sich in der Physiognomie was auf dem Grunde Iebt und lauert, sinnt und webt, ja die Physiognomie im weiteren Sinne ist so zu sagen der Stil des Kunstwerkes, Mensch genannt, denn nicht bloss das Mienenspiel, die Sprache der Augen und der Muskeln, sie umfasst auch den ganzen Habitus, den Klang des Organs, den Gang und den Gestus, Ruhe und Bewegung, Geschichte und Gegenwart, Leib und Seele zugleich.133 Significant, too, is the title of the book itself in that it illus­ trates how the meaning of Physiognomie had widened since the publication of the Fragmente. Indeed, it is evident from a careful study of literary texts that, before Lavater's time, the word Physiognomie, like physiognomy, had almost always meant "the art of reading the face," even though the French Nicht... zugleich: It is not so different, and yet at the same time quite another matter, to speak of the physiognomies of men of letters. The physiognomy is more than the profile, more than the head and the bust: it is not petrified form, nor is it line, stroke, or turn; it is the expression of the inner man. More than style, which Buffon claimed to be the man, the physiognomy reflects everything that lives, moves, and has its being in our innermost selves; indeed, the physiognomy in the wider sense of the term is, so to speak, the style of the work of art known as man, for apart from the facial expression, the language of the eyes and the muscles, it includes the whole bearing, the sound of the voice, gait and gesture, rest and mo­ tion, past and present, body and soul, all at the same time.

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

word physionomie had long been synonymous with "face" or "appearance." After 1775, physiognomy and Physiognomie increasingly came to mean "face" or "general appearance," and both words, together with physionomie are commonly used in descriptions of landscapes, cities, streets, and houses, as well as in abstract contexts.134 Such usages still obtain in present-day literature. We have seen, then, some of the ways in which nineteenth-century European letters betray the influence of what may be aptly described as the Lavaterian physiognomical era. How far writers accepted the principles of physiognomy is much less important than the fact that they were consciously or otherwise affected by them; and of those writers who re­ jected physiognomy and physiognomists, one could easily have predicated Lavater's following remark: "Man wird allenthalben, selber von den Gegnern der Physiognomik, physiognomische Urtheile in Menschen horen und lesen."135 For the comparatist, the particular interest of Lavater's reception during this period is to note that, whereas he continued to be remembered in the German-speaking world for his personal­ ity, his association with Goethe, his occultism, his religious writings, and so on, he was rarely thought of abroad outside the context of physiognomy; so that, despite the periods of ne­ glect his physiognomical essays suffered, his name had be­ come virtually a synonym for "physiognomy" by the end of the century. That Lavater's reputation had, however, rested largely on prejudice and ignorance was particularly con­ firmed in the 1880s and 1890s; and it is no small irony that, even while his achievements were being disparaged, physiog­ nomy itself was still thought to have a promising future. Heinrich Hart, for example, in his essay "Physiognomik und Kulturgeschichte" (1889), whilst dismissing "die dilettantischen Studien eines Lavater," was clearly hopeful for the sci­ entific possibilities of the science.136 Even more sanguine was the American physiognomist Joseph Simms, who, though reM a n . . . lesen: O n e w i l l e v e r y w h e r e r e a d a n d h e a r p h y s i o g n o m i c a l judgments made by people, including opponents of physiognomy.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY LETTERS

jecting Lavater's work as being "of little practical value," not only spoke of physiognomy's assured position in "the fore­ ground of social and scientific progress," but also recom­ mended that physiognomy be taught in schools and that chairs of physiognomy be instituted at universities as a means of hastening "the approach of the millennium."137 In view of the curious physiognomical ideas and the pseudo-phrenologi­ cal language of the book, Simms' optimism strikes the present-day reader as naive; for despite the fact that physiog­ nomy, like phrenology, still had its adherents at that time, and continued to be respectfully referred to in belles-lettres, popular interest in physiognomy had already gone into a de­ cline, from which, notwithstanding the commendable phys­ iognomical writings of Klages, Lange, Kretschmer, Sheldon, Stevens, Hellpach, Corman, Fraenger, Lersch, Brednow, Buttkus, Werner, Kohler, and Koffka,138 or the complex forms of character description obtaining in some contemporary fic­ tion, it has yet to be revived.

PART TWO

The Literary Foreground

Physiognomy in the Modern European Novel before 1800 CHARACTER DESCRIPTION and physiognomy have been part and parcel of the epic genre since antiquity. We find rudi­ ments of them in Homer's epics, where beauty and ugliness have a moral significance and human beings are physically compared with animals; we also find occasional physiognom­ ical judgments, as in the Odyssey, when Menelaus recognizes Telemachus' and Peisistratus' illustrious birth by their faces. Some Homerip characters are portrayed with a distinctive appearance: "the red-haired Menelaus," "the bright-eyed Athene," "the white-armed Nausicaa," and so on; and such labeling has more or less the same symbolic function it was to have later in the medieval epic.1 Thus, in La Chanson de Ro­ land the hero's fair hair is deliberately contrasted with the red hair of the treacherous Ganelon. Also contrasted with fair hair, which at that time was a sign of beauty and virtue, is dark hair, commonly a symbol of evil as embodied, for in­ stance, by Saracens, pagans, devils, giants, Lombards, bringers of bad tidings, and the like. In most medieval epic verse, the face is the mirror of the soul, beauty being usually the property of Christian heroes and heroines; and those pagan antagonists who are fine-looking almost always convert to Christianity in the end. Physiognomy in medieval litera­ ture is generally simple, and is confined mostly to references to family resemblances, nobility of features, pathognomic ex­ pressions and gestures, and, occasionally, the deceptiveness of the face.2 The development of the physical portrait was at first re-

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

tarded by Manichaeistic influences on early Old French liter­ ature; and it was only in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that it achieved prominence and prestige as a literary device, together with copious descriptions of clothes, furnishings, shields, and so on. Yet, like these, the character portrait often gives the impression of being pictorial rather than phys­ iognomical, as is evident particularly in the poet's tendency to describe each feature with one epithet alone—a tendency that lived on well into the eighteenth century. To be sure, physiognomical realism of a kind exists in, say, Adam de la Halle's Jeu de la feuillee, with his striking presentation of Maroie both as a young beauty and later as an old hag; other­ wise, there is practically nothing comparable until we come to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales or Froissart's historical writ­ ings. The relative indifference to realism is amply borne out by descriptions of beauty and ugliness. Consider, for instance, portraits of women such as Enide in Erec or the eponymous heroine of Aucassin et Nicolette, whereby blond hair and the hyperbolical treatment of facial and bodily features are statu­ tory topoi. Indeed, physiognomical distinctiveness is out of the question in such portraits, as it is also in descriptions of ugliness, where monstrosity of features is just as exaggerated. The descriptive methods used in medieval portraits of fem­ inine beauty were, of course, typical of the blason or effectio, a device which was first formulated in Matthieu de Vendome's Ars versificatoria (ca. 1175) and Geoffroi de Vinsauf s Poetria nova (ca. 1210), and was to become universal after Clement Marot had published his Blason du Beau Tetin (1531). Written largely in the tradition of ancient Roman and Alexandrian Greek poetry, especially elegiac verse, the bla­ son is a description of the female body according to a specific sequence of details in which femininity is evoked not only by reference to certain indispensable facial features, but also to the color and shape of the hand. The blason was especially favored by the Petrarchans, and is seen to great advantage in Petrarch's own portraits of Laura in his sonnets as well as his autobiography. But it was in the romances of the sixteenth

PHYSIOGNOMY BEFORE 1800

and seventeenth centuries that this device was to reach its highest point of development. The seventeenth century may be considered the first im­ portant period for the development of the literary portrait as we know it in the modern novel.3 First of all, it was the period that saw the revival of interest in Theophrastan "characters" which inspired the "charactery" of Joseph Hall, John Earle, and John Overbury.4 Joseph Hall's Characters (1608), in par­ ticular, achieved great popularity not only in England but also in France, where charactery soon became a favorite pastime of intellectuals. Charactery is concerned essentially with human foibles and passions, and though the authors tend to draw moral portraits, there are occasional passages of physiognomical interest, as in John Earle's Microcosmographie (1628), in which the formal man is defined as follows: "When you have seen his outside, you have looked through him, and need comply your discovery no further."5 Some­ thing of this approach is evident in perhaps the most famous of all writings of this genre, La Bruyere's Caracteres (1688), which, together with works just referred to, had a profound influence on the "moral weeklies" as well as on characteriza­ tion in eighteenth-century fiction.6 Another major factor in the development of literary portraiture was the Horatian principle of ut pietura poesis, which reigned supreme in the seventeenth century, and nowhere more conspicuously than in the French historical romances, with their highly wrought descriptions of female beauty. Let us briefly consider the background to these descriptions. It is interesting to note that the word portrait as used in "portrait painting" or "literary portrait" dates from the early seventeenth century, when, in accordance with the Horatian principle, it became common practice for painters to write verse under their portraits and for poets to make their poetry as pictorial as possible. Nor was it unusual for a painter to add the phrase peintre-poete under his signature on a portrait.7 In an aesthetic atmosphere of this kind it was inevitable that the character portrait should become a prominent literary de-

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

vice, as it did in the heroic romances of Madeleine de Scudery, d'Urfe, Gomberville, and La Calprenede, which were widely known in Europe and exerted a great influence on the English and German novel. Like the portrait painters of that time, writers of romances tended to idealize the char­ acters they described. Here, for example, is a description of Mandane in Scudery's Grand Cyrus (1649-53): Elle estoit ce jour la habillee magnifiquement... Ie voile de gaze d'argent, qu'elle avait sur sa tete, n'empechoit pas que Ton ne vist mille anneaux d'or que faisoient ses beaux cheveux qui sans doute estoient du plus beau blond qui sera jamais, ayant tout ce qu'il faut pour donner de 1'esclat sans oster rien de la vivacite, qui est des parties necessaires a la beaute parfaite. Cette princesse estoit dune taille tres noble, tres avantageuse,... elle marchait avec une majeste modeste,... elle avait Ies yeux bleus, mais si doux, si brilIans ... qui'il estoit impossible de Ies voir sans re­ spect. ... Elle avoit la bouche si incarnatte, Ies dents si blanches, si egales, si bien rangees, Ie teint si eclatant, si lustre, si uni et si vermeil, que la fraicheur et la beaute des plus rares fleurs du Printemps ne sgauroit donner qu'une idee imparfaite... .8 A popular rhetorical device in these portraits was the hyper­ bole, a striking example of which is to be noted in the deE l l e . . . i m p a r f a i t e : She was dressed magnificently that day ... the thin silvery veil which she wore on her head could not prevent you from seeing the golden ringlets of her lovely hair, which was doubtless of the finest blond that could ever exist, and she possessed everything you need to make a brilliant effect without losing any of that vivacity which is one of the essentials of perfect beauty. The princess had a very fine, noble figure,... she walked with demure majesty,... she had blue eyes, but so mild, so sparkling ... that it was im­ possible to look at them without respect.... She had such a red mouth, such white, even, regular teeth, such a glowing, bright, smooth, pink com­ plexion that the freshness and beauty of the most choice spring flowers could but give an imperfect idea of it.

PHYSIOGNOMY BEFORE 1800

scription of Silvie in d'Urfe's Astree (c. 1608-27): "Sa bouche estoit si rouge qu'on l'eust jugee du plus vif corail qui se trouve ... Ie col un peu long, mais si blanc, si rond et si uni, qu'il sembloit une colonne d'albatre."9 The excessive use of the hyperbole was one reason why Boileau disliked these his­ torical romances, though it was not until Madeleine de Scudery's death that he dared to publish his criticism of them in his Dialogue des heros du roman (1688). Here Boileau tells how, much as he had admired these romances in his youth, he came to find them puerile, especially for "les portraits avantageux faits a chaque bout de champ de personnes de tres mediocre beaute, et quelquefois mesme laides par exces...." In one ironic dialogue Boileau points up the tediousness of long adverbs and hyperboles, as a character called Saphir reads out a description of the artificial beauty of a lady called Tisiphone.10 The abuse of the hyperbole in the heroic romance was probably first satirized in Don Quixote (1605-15), particularly in the hero's portrait of his beloved Dulcinea, the irony of which is at once evident from the triteness of the hyperboles and a certain casualness of tone and manner: . . . su calidad, por Io menos, ha de ser de princesa, pues es reina y senora mia; su hermosura, sobrehumana, S a . . . d ' a l b a t r e : Her mouth was so red that you would have thought it the brightest coral in existence :.. the somewhat long neck, yet so white, so round, so smooth that it seemed a column of alabaster. Ies portraits ... exces: those extravagant portraits repeatedly drawn of people of mediocre beauty, and sometimes even excessively ugly. s u . . . c o m p a r a r l a s : her calling must be at least of a princess, seeing she is my queen and lady; her beauty sovereign, for in her are verified and given generous lustre to all those impossible and chimerical attributes of beauty that poets give to their mistresses, that her hair is gold, her fore­ head the Elysian fields, her brow the arcs of heaven, her eyes suns, her cheeks roses, her lips coral, her teeth pearls, her neck alabaster, her bosom marble, ivory her hands, and her whiteness snow; all the parts which mod­ esty conceals from human sight, such as I think and understand that the discreet consideration may prize, but never be able to equalise them (trans. Thomas Shelton).

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

pues en ella se vienen a hacer verdaderos todos Ios imposibles y quimericos atributas de belleza que Ios poetas dan a sus damas que sus cabellos son oro, su frente campos eliseos, sus cejas arcos del cielo, sus ojos soles, sus mejillas rosas, sus labios cordes, perlos sus dientes, alabastro su cuello, marmol su pecho, martil sus manos, su blancura nieve, y las partes que a la vista humana encubrio la honestidad son tales, segiin yo pienso y entiendo, que solo la discreta consideracion puede encaracerlas, y no compararlas.11 In Charles Sorel's Histoire comique de Ffancion (1622), how­ ever, the satire on such figurative language is much more virulent: "Vostre teint surpasse Ies oignons en rougeur. Vos cheveux sont jaunes comme la merde d'un petit enfant. Vos dents, qui ne sont point empruntees de la boutique de Carmeline, semblent pourtant avoir este faictes avec la corne du chaussepied de mon grand Prince."12 The satirical thrust at the idealized portrait is unmistakable, and is partly an ex­ pression of that quest for realism which marks the "bour­ geois" novel in general. This quest is made quite explicit in Furetiere's Roman bourgeois (1666), when the narrator prom­ ises to relate "plusiers historiettes ou galanteries arrivees entre des personnes qui ne seront ny heros ny heroines," or when he describes a woman alms-collector: N'attendez pas pourtant que je la decrive icy, comme on a coustume de faire en ces occasions; car, quand je vous Vostre ... Prince: Your complexion surpasses onions in redness, your hair is as yellow as a child's stool, your teeth, though not borrowed from Carmeline's shop, nevertheless seem to have been made out of my Prince's shoehorn. plusiers ... heroines: several short tales or gallant incidents about peo­ ple who will be neither heroes nor heroines. N'attendez pas ... depense: But don't expect me to give a description here, as one is accustomed so to do on these occasions; for if I were to tell you that she had a splendid figure, that she had lovely large blue eyes, very curly blond hair, and several particulars about her person, you would not recognize her, and she might not necessarily be beautiful for all that: for

PHYSIOGNOMY BEFORE 1800

aurois dit qu'elle estoit de la riche taille, qu'elle avoit Ies yeux bleus et bien fendus, Ies cheveux blonds et bien frisez, et plusiers autres particularitez de sa personne, vous ne la reconnoistriez pas pour cela, et ce ne seroit pas a dire qu'elle fut entierement belle: car elle pourroit avoir des taches de rousseur ou des marques de petite verole. Temoin plusiers heros et heroines, qui sont beaux et blancs en papier et sous Ie masque de roman, qui sont bien laids et bien basanez en chair et en os et a decouvert. J'aurois bien plutost fait de vous la faire peindre au devant du livre, si Ie libraire en vouloit faire la depense.13 Here Furetiere vindicates a method of portraiture that had already been used a number of times in the picaresque novel. Thus we may think of Quevedo's detailed description of the ugly clerical pedagogue Cabra in La Vida del Buscon (1636). Another grotesque portrait is one of an old hag in Grimmelshausen's Simplieius Simplicissimus (1668): Diese hatte ein Paar Augen wie zween Irrwische und zwischen denselben eine lang-magere Habichsnase, deren Ende oder Spitze die untere Lefzen allerdings erreichte.... Ihr Angesicht sahe wie spanische Leder, und ihre weisse Haar hiengen ihr seltsam zerstrobelt um den Kopf herum, weil man sie erst aus dem Bette geholet she might have freckles or pockmarks. Witness many heroes and heroines who, though handsome and pale on paper and under fictional masks, are very ugly and swarthy in the flesh and when undressed. I would rather have had her portrait on the dust cover of the book, had the publisher been willing to go to that expense. Diese. . . lang: She had a pair of eyes like two will-o'-the-wisps, and be­ tween the same a long thin hawklike nose, whose end or tip reached right down to her chin.... Her face looked like Spanish leather and her white hair was all in a tangle round her head because she had only just been yanked out of bed. Her long breasts I cannot compare to anything ex­ cept two pendulous udders from which two thirds of the contents had been drained; and at the end of each udder hung a blackish-brown nipple half a finger long.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

hatte. Ihre lange Briiste weiss ich nichts zu vergleichen, als zweien lummerichten Kuhblasen, denen zwei Drittel vom Blast entgangen; unten hienge an jeder ein schwarzbrauner Zapf halb Fingers Iang.14 By the end of the seventeenth century, fictional character description fell into two basic categories: the idealized por­ trait, in which female beauty came to be associated in the French novel with melancholy and mystery, and in which brunettes began to replace blondes as heroines;15 and the gro­ tesque portrait. These categories continued to prevail well into the first half of the eighteenth century; and thus we find idealized portraits of a kind in the highly stylized and lengthy descriptions of beautiful heroines in the novels of Eliza Haywood, Penelope Aubin, Charlotte Lennox, and John Shebbeare, with each description adhering to a strict conven­ tion of language and style. Hardly different from these por­ traits are the better-known ones of Sophia Western in Tom Jones, Emily Gauntlett in Peregrine Pickley and Harriet Byron in Sir Charles Grandison, even though each portrait is couched in an informal style befitting the ethos of the "mid­ dle-class" novel. Here, for example, is the description of So­ phia Western: Sophia ... the only daughter of Mr. Western, was a middie-sized woman, but rather inclining to tall. Her shape was not only exact, but extremely delicate; her hair, which was black, was so luxuriant that it reached her middle, before she cut it to comply with the modern fashion; and it was now curled so gracefully in her neck that few could believe it to be her own. If envy could find any part of the face which demanded less commen­ dation than the rest, it might possibly think that her forehead might have been higher without prejudice to her. Her eyebrows were full, even, and arched beyond the power to imitate. Her black eyes had a lustre in them which all her softness could not extinguish.16

PHYSIOGNOMY BEFORE 1800

The narrator then goes on to describe the beauty of her nose, mouth, cheeks, chin, complexion, neck, and so on. But despite the vividness of the description, the portrait none the less has the finality of a painting, as do, indeed, practically all eigh­ teenth-century portraits of heroines, whereby, in accordance with the neo-Platonic ideal, the beauty of a face derives much less from regularity of features than from goodness and sensi­ bility. The grotesque portrait was developed to delightful ex­ tremes in the eighteenth century, particularly in the presen­ tation of evil or eccentric characters. Thus we may refer to such portraits as of Mrs. Jewkes in Pamela (1741) and of blear-eyed Moll in Amelia (1751). A notable example of this type of portrait is the description of Tabitha Bramble in The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771): I have already told you, that Mrs. Tabitha Bramble is a maiden of forty-five. In her person, she is tall, raw-boned, awkward, flat-chested, and stooping; her complexion is sallow and freckled; her eyes are not grey, but greenish like those of a cat, and generally inflamed; her hair is of a sandy, or rather dusty hue, her forehead low, her nose long, sharp, and, towards the extremity, always red in cool weather, her lips shining, her mouth extensive, her teeth straggling and loose, of various colours and confor­ mations; and her long neck shrivelled into a thousand wrinkles.17 That such portraits should remind us forcibly of Hogarth's paintings is no accident; indeed, indebted as these English novelists were to the seventeenth century for their descrip­ tions, they owed a good deal to Hogarth's brilliant satirical studies of English society.18 The connection between Hogath and literature is somewhat confirmed by the fact that Ho­ garth considered himself a sort of dramatist who "wished to compose pictures on canvas similar to representations on the stage";19 and it was the very literary overtones of his paint-

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

ings that influenced Fielding's development as a dramatist and novelist. It is noteworthy how often Fielding invokes a Hogarth painting in his novels, especially to convey the gen­ eral appearance of an unsympathetic character or even a mo­ mentary facial expression. Thus in Tom Jones he likens Brid­ get Allworthy, on her way to Covent Garden Church, to a lady in Hogarth's Morning in the series Four Times of the Day (1738); and of Miss Tow-wouse in Joseph Andrews, the narra­ tor writes that "nature had taken such pains in her counte­ nance, that Hogarth himself never gave more expression to a picture."20 References to Hogarth in contexts of character description become more frequent with the development of the novel of realism, and are even to be found in the mid-nineteenth-century novel. The "conventional" portrait of heroes or male characters established itself much later than the idealized and grotesque portraits; and though we see elements of it in the picaresque novel, it only began to be prominent in the novels of Le Sage and Marivaux. Le Sage's Gil Bias (1715-35) contains some twenty character descriptions of varying length, but it is evi­ dent that the narrator is generally more interested in painting a portrait than in analyzing character. Here is a typical in­ stance: La cuisiniere (il faut que j'en fasse Ie portrait) etoit une personne de soixante et quelques annees. Elle avoit eu dans sa jeunesse Ies cheveux d'un blond tres-ardent; car Ie temps ne Ies avoit pas si bien blanchis, qu'ils n'eussent encore quelques nuances de Ieur premiere couleur. Outre un teint olivatre, elle avoit un menton pointu et releve, avec des levres fort enfoncees; un grand nez La cuisiniere ... pourpre: The cook (I must draw her portrait) was a person of some sixty years of age. In her youth she had had very light blond hair; for time had not so whitened it as not to leave some traces of the original color. Apart from a sallow complexion, she had a pointed chin that jutted out, and deeply sunken lips; a large aquiline nose hung down over her mouth, and her eyes seemed to be of a very fine purple.

PHYSIOGNOMY BEFORE 1800

aquilin Iui descendoit sur la bouche, et ses yeux paroissoient etre d'un tres-beau rouge pourpre.21 With Marivaux, on the other hand, the character portrait had already become an essentially physiognomical analysis. Rooted as he was in the tradition of the seventeenth-century moral­ ists, Marivaux appears to have been stimulated to human ob­ servation by Addison's Spectator, on which he modeled his own Spectateur franqais (1721-24), in the third number of which we see something of the physiognomist in the author: "J examinai done tous ces porteurs de visages, hommes et femmes. Je tachai de demeler ce que chacun pensait de son lot, comment il s'en trouvait."22 These words remind us of similar ones uttered by the hero of Le Paysan Parvenu (1735): "... cet art de lire dans l'esprit des gens et de debrouiller leurs sentiments est un talent que j'ai toujours eu et qui m'a quelquefois bien servi." The hero's physiognomical bent is plain to see in the many portraits he draws, a good example of which is that of the unsympathetic priest Doucin: Ce directeur-ci etait un assez petit homme, mais bien fait dans sa taille un peu ronde; il avait Ie teint frais, d'une fraicheur reposee; l'oeil vif, mais de cette vivacite qui n'a rien d'etourdi ni d'ardent. N'avez-vous jamais vu J'examinai ... trouvait: So I examined all these bearers of faces, men and women. I tried to discern what each thought of his or her lot in life, and how they were coping with it. cet. . . servi: this art of reading the minds of people and discerning their feelings is a gift I have always had, and it has served me well. C e . . . t o u c h e : Our father confessor was quite a small man, but with a good, if slightly plump, figure; he had a fresh—serenely fresh—complex­ ion, a lively eye, but of a liveliness bespeaking neither stupidity nor hearti­ ness. Have you ever observed those faces which suggest something com­ plaisant, kindly, and comforting about their owners and which are a sort of guarantee of a soul filled with gentleness and perspicacity? That was just how our confessor was. Again, imagine short hair all evenly cut in a most becoming style, and half curling round his cheeks with that natural quiff which owes nothing to artifice; add to all this a rather red mouth, with fine teeth, whose beauty and whiteness exist only because they are happily left alone.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

de ces visages qui annoncent dans ceux qui Ies ont je ne sais quoi d'accommodant, d'indulgent et de consolant pour Ies autres, et qui sont comme Ies garants d'une ame remplie de douceur et de clarte? C'etait la positivement la mine de notre directeur. Du reste, imaginez-vous de courts cheveux dont l'un ne passe pas l'autre, qui sieent on ne peut mieux, et qui se relevent en demi-boucles autour des joues par un tour qu'ils prennent naturellement, lequel ne doit rien au soin de celui qui Ies porte; joignez a cela des levres assez vermeilles, avec de belles dents qui ne sont belles et blanches a Ieur tour que parce qu'elles se trouvent heureusement ainsi sans qu'on y touche.23 Another novelist who made abundant use of physiognomy was Diderot. Diderot was, in fact, one of the most phys­ iognomical of all writers, as is evident from works such as Lettre sur Ies Aveugles (1749); Dictionnaire philosophique (1751-52); Elements de physiologie (1774-80); Voyage en Hollande (written 1774, published 1819), where he gives an account of his visit to Camper and of the latter's studies on the facial angle; and, of course, the Essai sur la peinture, re­ ferred to earlier.24 Diderot's use of physiognomical detail in his fictional character descriptions may well have been partly an expression of his admiration both for Richardson's novels and for the genre paintings of Chardin and Greuze, whose merits he recognized when such paintings were still largely frowned upon by connoisseurs; yet each description usually suggests the physiognomist's eye. Let us, for example, con­ sider the description of a monk as seen through the eyes of the observant heroine of La Religieuse (written 1760, published 1796): C'est un cordelier; il s'appelle Ie P. Lemoine; il n'a pas plus de quarante-cinq ans. C'est une des plus belles C ' e s t . . . c o m p a g n i e : He is a friar called Pere Lemoine, and he can't be more than forty-five. He has one of the finest physiognomies you could ever see—it is gentle, serene, open, merry, and pleasant when he is not

PHYSIOGNOMY BEFORE 1800

physionomies qu'on puisse voir; elle est douce, sereine, ouverte, riante, agreable quand il n'y pense pas; mais quand il y pense, son front se ride, ses sourcils se froncent, ses yeux se baissent, et son maintien devient austere. Je ne connais pas deux hommes plus differents que Ie P. Lemoine a l'autel et Ie P. Lemoine au parloir seul ou en compagnie.25 The particular interest of this portrait lies in the fact that the narrator has observed the priest a number of times already. This approach to character description is also noticeable in Marivaux, and it sets both novelists apart from their English colleagues, with their essentially "pictorial" portraits. That Diderot was much more interested in the physiognomical sig­ nificance of outward man than in the merely pictorial quali­ ties is suggested in Jacques Ie fataliste (1796) when the hero condemns literary portraits for saying little about the inner man and declares the spoken word or gesture to be more rev­ elatory.26 As physiognomical novelists before the appearance of the Fragmente, Diderot and Marivaux were exceptional. There is very little physiognomical analysis in the literary portraits of the English realist novel, and what physiognomy we find in, say, Richardson or Fielding is concerned mainly with beauty and ugliness, the effects of the emotions on the appearance, and the physical features that denote social class. Moreover, complain as Diderot's Jacques does about the uselessness of character description, it was by no means a universal device in the novel. Moll Flanders (1722), Manon Lescaut (1735), The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), and Le Diable amoureux (1772) have virtually no character descriptions, and the only one to be found in Robinson Crusoe (1719) is that of Man Friday. The same is true of most minor French and English novelists self-conscious; but when he is, his forehead becomes lined, his brows wrinkled, his eyes downcast, and his bearing stiff. I do not know two men more unalike than Pere Lemoine at the altar and Pere Lemoine in the parlor alone or in company.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

until the end of the century. Again, characters are seldom de­ scribed more than once, the description being given essen­ tially from the narrator's viewpoint. Some novelists such as Fielding tend to delay describing their heroes until long after introducing them, even though some idea of their appearance is early conveyed to the reader through the reactions of the other characters. This method is used to some advantage in Smollett's Peregrine Pickle (1751) when a group of elderly ladies, jealous of Emily Gauntlett's beauty, try to find fault with it as they watch her dancing with the hero. Yet despite the advances made in literary portraiture in the first half of the eighteenth century, the aesthetic possibilities of descrip­ tion, whether of human beings or landscapes, or things, had still hardly begun to be realized. But if this relative indiffer­ ence to description was in some measure indicative of the classical restraints imposed on the eighteenth-century novel­ ist, it may also be considered a sign of the caution with which the literary world tended to treat the question of outward man at that time. Let us consider this point in some detail. THAT PHYSIOGNOMY has always been of interest to men of let­

ters is a self-evident truth that scarcely needs to be asserted. Lavater himself, in a footnote in the Fragmente, quotes the names of sundry European philosophers, theologians, poets, dramatists, novelists, essayists, and the like, both ancient and modern, in whose writings he has found physiognomical comments of one kind or another.27 Literature is, as we saw in earlier chapters, an important historical repository of phys­ iognomical vogues from the Renaissance onward. Thus the topicality of physiognomy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is evident in the savage attack on its astrological nature in Thomas Nashe's essay "Terrors of the Night" (1594), in ironic references to metoposcopy and chiromancy in Ben Jonson's Alchemist (1610), in serious comments on the uses of physiognomy in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), and so on.28 Defenses of physiognomy are also to be found here and there in pre-Lavaterian literature, whether in Thomas

PHYSIOGNOMY BEFORE 1800

Browne's writings or John Armstrong's essay on physiognomy in his Sketches (1758), where it is stated that "the face is sel­ dom a false glass."29 Noteworthy, too, are the physiognomical readings made by fictional characters. An early example may be seen in Quevedo's Vida del Buscon (1636) when the narra­ tor ironically relates how his first schoolmaster "told my Fa­ ther that my Phisonomei (meaning I suppose my Physiognomie) proved that I should one day be a greater Personality than I was at present."30 Such readings, together with the physiognomical correlations obtaining in portraits, become more frequent with the development of realism in the novel. Physiognomy is further justified in the writings of the mor­ alists, with their stress on the importance of observation. We see this particularly in Lord Chesterfield's famous Letters to His Son (1738-68), which were written to instruct their recip­ ient in the art of becoming accepted in polite society. Throughout the letters the author gives allegiance to the cul­ tural ideals of France; but in his attempts to inspire his son with a love for these ideals there is something of the coldhearted fastidiousness of a grand seigneur, which makes itself felt, amongst other things, in the repudiation of Rembrandt and in the advocacy of a taste for neoclassicism. In this con­ nection, it is significant that he should recommend the study of La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyere, for it partly accounts for his calculating attitude to the uses of physiognomy in so­ ciety. The important thing for Chesterfield is not to be vir­ tuous, but to avoid solecisms; and, as he points out in Letter CVIII, one may do so by learning to observe people while they talk: Mind, not what people say, but how they say it; and if you have any sagacity, you may discover more truth by your eyes than by your ears. People can say what they will, but they cannot look just as they will; and the looks frequently discover what their words are calculated to conceal. Observe, therefore, people's looks carefully, when they speak not only to you, but to each other. I

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

have often guessed, by people's faces, what they were saying, though I could not hear one word they said.31 Similar advice is given in Letter CXXXVII, where it is pointed out that one of the practical needs in life is to have "sagacity enough to read other people's countenances," as well as in Letter CCXIV, where the author advocates analyz­ ing one's first favorable impression of a person.32 Few eigh­ teenth-century men of letters would have questioned Ches­ terfield's attitude to physiognomy any more than they would have denied a somewhat more sympathetic view of physiog­ nomy as put forward most eloquently in Tristram Shandy by the hero's father: "There are a thousand unnoticed openings ... which let a penetrating eye at once into a man's soul; and I maintain it... that a man of sense does not lay down his hat in coming into a room,—or take it up in going out of it, but something escapes, which discovers him."33 But as is usual with Walter Shandy's disquisitions, the sound reasoning of a man well versed in classical physiognomy degenerates into what seems sheer nonsense to Uncle Toby, as the former goes on to state the physiognomical characteristics he expects of the man who would tutor his son. The interest of Sterne's treatment of Walter Shandy as physiognomist lies, of course, in the author's awareness of the dangers of theory getting out of hand, whereby we sense something of that caution with which the literary world had approached the question of physiognomy from earliest times. This caution is noticeable even in the most physiognomical of writers. For example, Bacon, who regarded physiognomy as having "a solide ground in nature" provided that it was not "coupled with superstitious and fantasticall arts," thought the study of "the factures of the bodie" less useful than the obser­ vation of the gestures and "the notions of the countenance."34 Nevertheless, he would have probably agreed with most other pre-Lavaterian writers concerned with the question that, de­ spite the claims that might be justifiably made for the science, mastery of "skill in physiognomy" was rarely achieved, be-

PHYSIOGNOMY BEFORE 1800

cause of the essential deceptiveness of appearances. Even Montaigne, who gives physiognomy every possible considera­ tion in his well-known essay on the subject, felt obliged to admit, "C'est une foible garantie que la mine."35 As for La Bruyere, he regarded the face as unreliable simply because it was the easiest medium of dissimulation; indeed, he doubted whether physiognomy could be of much help in the assess­ ment of character.36 Vigneul-Marville, too, in his Melanges d'histoire et de litterature (1740) speaks of the deceptiveness of the face, and he is as skeptical about physiognomists as Buffon is in his Histoire naturelle (1749-88), from which we take the following passage: Dans tous Ies temps il y a eu des hommes qui ont voulu faire une science divinatoire de leurs pretendues connaissances metoposcopiques, mais il est bien evident qu'elles ne peuvent s'etendre qu'a deviner Ies mouvements de l'ame par ceux des yeux, du visage et du corps, que la forme du nez, de la bouche et des autres traits ne fait pas plus a la bonte de l'ame, au naturel de la personne, que la grandeur ou la grosseur des membres fait a la pensee. Tout ce que nous ont dit Ies physionomistes est destitue de tout fondement.37 The distrust of physiognomy continued well into the mideighteenth century, and it is especially confirmed by defini­ tions of physiognomy in one or two major reference works of the period. For example, in Johnson's Dictionary the word still retains a partly astrological meaning: "Physiognomy: the art of discovering the temper, and foreknowing the future by the features of the face"; and in Diderot's Encyclopedie the C ' e s t . . . m i n e : The face is hardly any guarantee [of the inner man], Dans... fondement: In all ages there have been men who claimed that their so-called metoposcopic skills were a divinatory science, but it is quite evident that such skills can only serve as a means of reading mental activity from the movements of the eyes, the faces, and the body; that the shape of the nose, the mouth, and other features do not add to spiritual goodness any more than the length or size of the limbs adds to one's inner life. Everything the physiognomists have said is utterly unfounded.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

definition of physiognomy (probably contributed by Vauvenargues) seems to be a compendium of attitudes hitherto noted: Physionomie, s.f. (Morale). La physionomie est l'expression du caractere; elle est encore celle du temperament. Une sotte physionomie est celle qui n'exprime que la complexion, comme un temperament robuste, etc. Mais il ne faut jamais juger sur la physionomie. Il y a tant de traits meles sur Ie visage & Ie maintien des hommes que cela peut souvent confondre; sans parler des accidens qui defigurent Ies traits naturels, et qui empechent que l'ame ne se manifeste, comme la petite verole, la maigreur, etc.38 Skepticism toward physiognomy and its basic principles is, of course, a common motif in the European drama and novel before Lavater's time, and it is often an implicit protest against enthusiasts of the science. This is as true of the plays of Shakespeare, Webster, and Corneille as it is of those novels in which beauty and virtue are regarded as being by no means necessarily correlated.39 In Don Quixote, for example, the ob­ session with female beauty in heroic romances is ironically questioned by the shepherdess Marcela in words that fore­ shadow an important tenet of neo-Platonism: "La honora y las virtudes son adornos del alma, sin las cuales el cuerpo, aunque la sea, no debe.de paracer hermoso... ."40 That moral beauty can exist in a physically imperfect body is shown in Physionomie... etc.: Physiognomy [feminine noun] (Moral). The physi­ ognomy is the [physical] expression of character; it is also that of the tem­ perament. A stupid physiognomy is one which expresses only the com­ plexion, a sort of hearty temperament, etc. But one should never judge anyone by his physiognomy. There are so many elements mingled together in the human face and bearing as to lead to confusion, not to mention the accidents which disfigure the natural features, thus preventing the inner man from manifesting himself, such as smallpox, thinness, etc. La honora... hermoso: Honour and virtue are the ornaments of the soul without which the fairest body is not to be esteemed such (trans. Thomas Shelton).

PHYSIOGNOMY BEFORE 1800

the description of the Prince de Conde in Madame de La­ fayette's Princesse de Cleves (1678).41 It is noteworthy, too, how often in eighteenth-century English literature physical beauty is shown as not necessarily proportionate to moral beauty, as though there were but a tenuous connection be­ tween the inner and outer man. Thus in Eliza Haywood's Injur'd Husband (1725) the narrator writes, "... but she also knew, that all lovely as he was, the Graces of his Mind were far superior to the Beauties of his Person."42 This idea is vir­ tually repeated, albeit ironically, in Richardson's Pamela (1740): "My Pamela's Person, all lovely as you see it, is far short of her Mind."43 The notion that appearance is not al­ ways indicative of character is a theme running through Ad­ dison's Spectator. In number 4, for example, we are reminded of Marcela's remark in Don Quixote as the narrator speaks of beauty as being insufficient unless it is "adorned with con­ scious virtue." This idea is repeated in number 86, appropri­ ately enough in the context of a discussion on physiognomy, whereby the narrator bids caution in the reading of faces: I have seen many an amiable Piece of Deformity, and have observed a certain Chearfulness in as bad a System of Features as ever was clap'd together, which hath ap­ peared more lovely than all the blooming Charms of an insolent Beauty. There is a double Praise due to Virtue, when it is lodged in a Body that seems to have been pre­ pared for the Reception of Vice: in many such Cases the Soul and the Body do not seem to be Fellows.44 This belittling of the importance of appearances is further underlined by the comical treatment that physiognomists are given in eighteenth-century fiction. Addison and Steele were certainly alive to the eccentricities of physiognomists in their day in number 505 of the Spectator, which gives a humorous account of the follies of astrological physiognomy. Again, in number 518 there is an appended letter by one Tom Tweer about the extraordinary physiognomical readings that take place at Cambridge University; and like so many other simi-

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

Iar letters in the Spectator, it is ironically left without com­ ment. We may also refer to Arbuthnot's History of John Bull (1726), in which Jack's braggart nature is emphasized by his habit of making categorical physiognomical judgments; to the alchemist (disguised as a monk) in Gil Bias, who, having been laughed at by the hero for his pretensions to skill in metoposcopy and chiromancy, makes a judgment of the latter's face that proves meaningless and cures Gil of a momentary inter­ est in physiognomy; or to the eccentric Sir Rowland in Sir Charles Grandison, who, whilst paying court to Mrs. Reeves, praises her for her beauty, which he claims to be in a position to judge, for, as he adds boastfully, he is a physiognomist.45 Another common theme in the pre-Lavaterian novel is the folly of relying on a man's outward appearance. For example, in Le Paysan parvenu there is a passage in which the priest Doucin, who is father confessor to the two Habert sisters, re­ bukes them for employing the hero as a servant merely on the recommendation of his favorable appearance: De quelle consequence est-il, me dites-vous, d'avoir retenu ce gargon qui parait sage? D'une tres serieuse consequence. Premierement, c'est avoir agi contre la prudence humaine; car, enfin, vous ne Ie connaissez que de l'avoir rencontre dans la rue. Sa physionomie vous parait bonne, et je Ie veux; chacun a ses yeux la-dessus, et Ies miens ne Iui sont pas tout a fait aussi favorables; mais je vous passe cet article. Eh bien! depuis quand, sur la seule physionomie, fie-t-on son bien et sa vie a des inDe quelle... homme: What does it matter, you will ask, that one should have taken on this seemingly well-behaved lad? It matters a great deal. First, it was an act contrary to human wisdom: after all, you only know him through having met him in the street. You think he has a pleasant physiognomy, and I don't deny it: anybody can use his eyes in this matter, even though mine do not see him quite so favorably; but that's your busi­ ness. All the same, since when has it been all right to entrust one's prop­ erty and one's life to a complete stranger simply on the strength of his physiognomy? . .. Who can answer for his way of life, his religion, his character? Is it not possible for a crook to have a good face?

PHYSIOGNOMY BEFORE 1800

connus? ... Qui vous a repondu de ses moeurs, de sa re­ ligion, de son caractere? Un fripon ne peut-il avoir la mine d'un honnete homme?46 Subsequent events will indeed show that the hero is by no means as "honnete" as he looks. The incongruity between character and appearance is again brought out by Diderot in Le Neveu de Ratneau (written 1762-73) when the hero states: Il nous vient... un certain niais qui a l'air plat et bete, mais qui a de l'esprit comme un demon et qui est plus malin qu'un vieux singe. C'est une de ces figures qui appellent la plaisanterie et Ies nasardes et que Dieu fit pour la correction des gens qui jugent a la mine et a qui Ieur miroir aurait du apprendre qu'il est aussi aise d'etre un homme d'esprit et d'avoir l'air d'un sot que de cacher un sot sous une physionomie spirituelle.47 That "une physionomie spirituelle" may be no guarantee of sensible behavior is made quite clear in Prevost's brilliant presentation of Des Grieux in Manon Lescaut (1735). All these references to physiognomy are, then, so many tes­ timonies to the ambivalence of the physiognomical climate in Europe before 1775, an ambivalence that is deliberately un­ derlined by some of the humorous English writers of the pe­ riod. We may think, for example, of John Clubbe's brilliant satire "Physiognomy" (1763), in which the author sets out to reject all physiognomical systems past and present and to propose instead a new system whereby moral character is es­ timated by an ingenious process of weighing heads on a ma­ chine of most original invention. The ideal head for Clubbe is one whose weight falls exactly halfway between that of a I l . . . s p i r i t u e l l e : You get a certain kind of blockhead with an insipid, stupid face who has a diabolical character and is craftier than an old mon­ key. It is one of those faces that ask to be ridiculed and mocked, and which God made in order to teach those who judge by apperances that it is as easy to be a man of intelligence and to look like a fool as it is to hide a fool behind an intelligent physiognomy.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

light head and that of a grave one—in other words, a head that would belong essentially to a man of humor and good sense.48 Clubbe's satire, which was, incidentally, dedicated to Hogarth, is clearly in the tradition of Shaftesbury and Ad­ dison, though its genial, exaggerated humor reminds us rather of Fielding. But though Fielding's own fictional treatment of physiognomy betrays something of that light-hearted attitude we find in both Addison and Clubbe, it would be a mistake to regard it as superficial; on the contrary, it possesses a moral and aesthetic interest seldom matched by other writings of that era. And since, in any case, Fielding's novels more or less reflect the pre-Lavaterian climate, it seems worthwhile now to consider them in some detail. FIELDING was as deeply rooted as any eighteenth-century writer in the classical tradition of human observation, and no one could have been more aware of the importance of ap­ pearances in ordinary life, or more interested in the question of physiognomy, than he. It is noteworthy that Fielding dis­ cusses physiognomy in The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (1735), in the context of his portrait of an unprepossessing Isle-of-Wight landlady, all the more as it has an obvious bear­ ing on his tendency to bring out the moral nature of his fic­ tional characters through physical descriptions of them.49 One important aspect of the author's concern with physiog­ nomy is his treatment of beauty. Fielding commonly associ­ ates beauty with goodness and sensibility, and in this respect he belongs clearly to the neo-Platonic school of Shaftesbury. But unlike Shaftesbury, for whom beauty is primarily an inner phenomenon, or Addison and Steele, who, as we have just seen, regard beauty as a much overrated thing, Fielding finds an irresistible, even daemonic, force in physical beauty. Thus in Amelia, the narrator asserts that to feel no delight in exquisite beauty is "as impossible as to feel no warmth from the scorching rays of the sun."50 The irresistibility of beauty is, moreover, proved by the tendency of Fielding's plain and prudish characters to debunk it or to be shocked by the sight

PHYSIOGNOMY BEFORE 1800

of human flesh. Here we see one example of Fielding's merits as a novelist: his use of responses to appearances as a means of conveying the physicality of his characters. Indeed, the reader gains a clear impression of Tom Jones' handsomeness, kind nature, and good breeding from many reactions to him long before these traits are actually described. But though this presentation of Tom Jones would seem to affirm the validity of physiognomy, just as it serves to reflect the popularity of the science in the mid-eighteenth century, Fielding appears to have been more concerned with the question why physiognomical judgments so often go awry. The danger of appearances, Fielding suggests, is that, like opinions and beliefs, they can be too easily taken for granted. There are several instances in the novels where appearance belies character. We may think, for example, of the pure looks of Tom Jones' illegitimate mother, Bridget Allworthy. Indeed, nothing is more deceptive than an innocent-looking or benign face, as some of Fielding's characters discover to their dismay. Perhaps the most remarkable of all mistaken physiognomical readings is one made by Parson Adams in Jo­ seph Andrews, all the more as it leads to a discussion of physi­ ognomy itself. Let down by a squire who promised him hospi­ tality, Adams tells the landlord of an inn how much greater is his disappointment after having seen in the squire's face "symptoms of that sweetness of disposition, which furnishes out a good Christian." There follows the discussion on physi­ ognomy, in which, despite the abortive reading, Adams speaks respectfully of the science as one who has traveled well, by which he means that he has read widely and has learnt from books that "nature imprints such a portraiture of the mind on the countenance, that a skilful physiognomist will rarely be deceived." He then goes on to relate the famous anecdote of Zopyrus' unfavorable reading of Socrates, a read­ ing which incensed the boys of Athens "so that they threw stones at the physiognomist," but which was acknowledged by the philosopher himself. The patent irrelevance of this an­ ecdote merely enhances the irony of Adams' apology for

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

physiognomy, for which reason the reader is tempted to take sides with the landlord, who, as a well-traveled man in the real sense of the term, has already rejected physiognomy out of hand, saying that he would look at a man's face only to see if it had "symptoms of smallpox."51 A similar misreading occurs in Amelia. After the heroine has informed Dr. Harrison of Colonel James' intention to be her "temporary husband" while Booth is away in the West Indies, Harrison tells her that it is not villainy as such that surprises him, but the fact that the villainy had been "so art­ fully disguised under the appearance of so much virtue." What is worse for Harrison is that his vanity has been wounded not least because he has been deceived by "the fairest and most promising appearance [he has] ever beheld." Like Adams, Harrison has relied too much on physiognomical platitudes, as is evident when he states: "A good face, they say, is a letter of recommendation. O Nature, Nature, why art thou so dishonest as ever to send men with these false recom­ mendations into the world?"52 Harrison's first statement here is practically identical with that made in Tom Jones by the Man of the Hill, who, having gained a favorable impression of the hero, says to him: "I have read that a good countenance is a letter of recommendation; if so, none ever can be more strongly recommended than yourself." Although this judg­ ment is valid in respect to Tom's presentation, it none the less has a hastiness about it that reminds us of Adams' and Harri­ son's faulty readings. Tom himself has already sensed this hastiness earlier in the dialogue; for when the Man of the Hill tells him that he does not look like "one who is used to travel far without horses," the hero replies somewhat abruptly: "Appearances ... are often deceitful; men sometimes look like what they are not."53 Although Tom's words are an im­ plicit criticism of the hasty physiognomical judgment, it would be a mistake to regard them as a total condemnation of physiognomy. On the contrary, Tom's cautious attitude to ap­ pearances would seem to lie somewhere between the enthusi­ asm of Parson Adams, Dr. Harrison, and the Man of the Hill,

PHYSIOGNOMY BEFORE 1800

on the one hand, and the outright skepticism of the landlord in Joseph Andrews, on the other. The peculiar interest of Tom's comments on the deceptiveness of appearances is that they reflect Fielding's own ambivalent attitude to physiognomy as manifest in his sec­ ondary writings. To be sure, there are remarks affirming the validity of the science in The Voyage to Lisbon as well as in the "Essay on the Knowledge of the Characters of Men" (1743), in which the author claims, in words ironically recall­ ing those of the Man of the Hill, that "nature doth really im­ print sufficient marks in the countenance to inform an accu­ rate and discerning eye." Yet though Fielding here considers physiognomy to be one of the three ways of coming to know men (the other two being through a study of their behavior to us and their behavior to others), he none the less deems it the least trustworthy of the three ways because it is "liable to some uncertainty." The trouble with physiognomy is that "the generality of mankind mistake the affectation for the re­ ality:"54 people are too easily taken in by solemn and pious faces (according to Sterne, "grave faces" are "implements of deceit"),55 just as they tend to be deceived by smiles and laughter, thereby mistaking good humor for good nature. Fielding's concern for a better understanding of physiognomy derived partly from his experience of society as a big mas­ querade in which "the greatest part appear disguised under false vizors and habits."56 To survive in society means to con­ ceal your true self; hence, as Fielding adds, the few who show their true faces, that is, those with literally "an open disposi­ tion," do so to the astonishment and ridicule of others. In a word, it is deceit, not force, that we have to fear most in so­ ciety, an idea that puts us in mind not only of the many hypo­ crites and poseurs the author portrays in his novels, but also of their victims, those with "an open disposition" such as Adams, Allworthy, Heartfree, and the like. Perhaps the outstanding example of the successful hypo­ crite is the hero of Jonathan Wild, who embodies Fielding's concept of the great man as exploiter of mankind. This novel

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

is a very caricature of the ways in which deceivers, flatterers, promisers, and ready friends carry out their evil intentions, though its particular interest here lies in the fact that Wild's successes are due in large measure to society's excessive re­ liance on appearances. Elaborating a theme prominent in the novels of Le Sage, Marivaux, and Prevost, Fielding depicts the society of his day as a strictly hierarchical organization in which some people are able to impose upon others because most are bent on winning and retaining the approval of their fellow men. This explains why appearances come to count for more than reality and why, as Fielding shows satirically in most of his novels, such things as clothes, property, posses­ sions, titles, and, above all, reputation assume a dispropor­ tionate importance. No character of Fielding's is more con­ scious of these truths than Jonathan Wild, and it is comical to see how he takes advantages of them for his own ends. The fact that society is easily deceived by appearances is further confirmed by Wild's ability to make skillful use of physiognom­ ical expressions, especially in the moment he is deceiving the good-natured Heartfree with well-chosen words. Moreover, two of Wild's "Maxims for the Great Man" are specifically concerned with the use of physiognomical expressions. But if in Jonathan Wild as well as in his secondary writings Fielding gives the impression of being in sympathy with vic­ tims of the "masquerade," his novels suggest that the roots of physiognomical error lie essentially in the character of the physiognomist himself. Much physiognomical incompetence derives, it seems, from stupidity, whether it be of the kind we find in the good-natured Heartfree, Adams, and Allworthy, or in such vain and pompous characters as Mrs. Western and Lady Booby. A more serious cause of physiognomical incom­ petence lies in the tendency to look for the worst in people. Such a tendency characterizes Fielding's landlords, most of whom betray a cynical distrust of appearances, just as it char­ acterizes those people whom the author classifies as belonging to "the mob."57Much suspicion is, of course, fed by gossip,

PHYSIOGNOMY BEFORE 1800

especially where money and sexual morality are concerned; and sometimes Fielding shows how people of otherwise sound physiognomical sense can be adversely affected by it. Thus we may refer to the hostess of the Bell Inn, Gloucester, Mrs. Whitefield, who, having had a favorable impression of Tom Jones' appearance, decides, to renounce her "skill in physiog­ nomy" and to wish him out of her sight once she has been turned against him by two pettifogging lawyers.58 The power of opinion not merely to undermine one's physiognomical judgments but actually to determine them is brought out in Joseph Andrews, in the episode where Adams rescues Fanny Wilkes from the ravisher. For shortly after Adams has beaten him up, he manages, with persuasive argument, to convince a party of "bird batters," who arrive on the scene by chance, that both Adams and the girl have assaulted him. The alacrity with which the bird batters take sides with the ravisher can, no doubt, be put down to their loutishness, as suggested some­ what by their brutal pastime. But the irony of their presumptuousness is most striking when, having studied Adams' face by the light of a lantern, they all agree that "he had the most villainous countenance they ever beheld," even though the narrator has already referred to "the benevolence visible in his countenance." The irony of physiognomical incompe­ tence is then completed when, later, a clerk of the justice is persuaded by the bird batters' accusation against Adams to the point of presuming him to be "an old offender," more par­ ticularly since the latter has only a halfpenny on his person.59 That credulity should be an essential cause of hasty or erro­ neous physiognomical judgments is confirmed by Fielding's presentation of some of his main characters. Fielding sees credulity in all its many forms as an obstacle to the reasonable and happy life, and throughout his writings he shows how it is nourished by the crankish religious and philosophical ideas that were bandied about in his day. It is perhaps no mere coincidence that hasty or incompetent physiognomists— Adams, the Heartfrees, the Man of the Hill, Dr. Harrison,

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

Partridge—hold crankish beliefs of one kind or another. With Parsons, Adams, and the Heartfrees, it is an excessive trust in Providence; with the Man of the Hill, a belief in natural reli­ gion; and with Partridge, a superstitious fear of ghosts. Nor is it a mere coincidence that most of these characters should be well read. Allworthy, for example, is described as "a very competent judge in all kinds of literature."60 And, as Fielding shows ironically, the well-read person gets his knowledge of physiognomy, as he gets his knowledge of life in general, more from books than from personal experience and observa­ tion. This is amply illustrated in the presentation of Adams. Another well-read character (we know this from his propen­ sity for quoting classical writers) who has acquired his knowl­ edge of physiognomy from books is Partridge. Partridge is a notable example of the hasty physiognomist, as we see when he meets Tom Jones for the first time; for though his reaction to the latter's appearance is correct in respect to Fielding's presentation of the hero, it is essentially comical in its over­ weening confidence: "... so I have no skill in physiognomy if you are not the best gentleman in the universe."61 Yet with the same excess with which he affirms the science of physiog­ nomy here, he later comes to reject it when, at a perform­ ance of Hamlet in London, he finds the king not looking like a murderer, and so acknowledges that there is some truth after all to the fronti nulla fides attitude to physiognomy. The ab­ surdity of Partridge's change of outlook is suggested by the fact that the phrase is misleading outside the context of Ju­ venal's Sixth Satire, from which it is taken. In other words, the implication here is that there is no more wisdom in Par­ tridge's acknowledgment that "nulla fides fronti" (the mis­ quotation is as telling as any made by Mrs. Western) is "a true saying" than there was in the hastiness with which he cor­ rectly judged the hero's face at their first meeting. Neverthe­ less, the readiness with which Partridge reverses his attitude to physiognomy, as he remarks "how people may be deceived by faces,"62 suggests that he is at least beginning to acquire something of his master's cautious attitude to physiognomy.

PHYSIOGNOMY BEFORE 1800

Whether or not Tom Jones speaks for the author here is im­ material; but it is significant that perhaps the sanest and most sympathetic of all Fielding's characters, though acknowledg­ ing the deceit of appearances, is seldom, if ever, deceived by them himself. Here, then, we have a treatment of physiog­ nomy worthy of the great moralists. For Fielding, true skill in physiognomy is a matter not so much of technique as of being free from self-delusion, a matter of not losing sight of the realities of life; and if his novels seem to be aesthetic expres­ sions of that widespread distrust of physiognomy we find in so much pre-Lavaterian literature, that is because physiogno­ mists are at fault, not physiognomy itself. By the mid-1770s, when Lavater was hardly known in England, the fronti nulla fides philosophy appears to have still retained its strong hold over English letters. For example, the frontispiece of the first edition of Cogan's John Buncle, Junior, Gentleman (1776-78) consists of an illustration of this apothegm in the form of an engraving of a wise man holding up a mirror with ribbons above bearing the words "Mirror of Truth," into which a swain in pastoral attire gazes, only to find the image of a devil endued with horns, claws and tail {figure 11). Nevertheless, the narrator of this novel proves to be not merely a sharp observer of men, especially on coach journeys, but also to have a physiognomist friend called Charles, who in one episode makes a favorable judgment of a certain landlord's manner of welcoming them to his inn, whereupon the narrator comments on Charles' "pretentions to skill in physiognomy" as well as on the latter's reliance on "the countenance, the tone of voice, the accent, the gesture, which interpret their genuine signification."63 In spite of a somewhat ironic attitude to physiognomy reminiscent of Fielding, it seems that the narrator's fondness for observing his fellow creatures on his travels marks the beginning of a less skeptical attitude to physiognomical observation in gen­ eral. Such an attitude is particularly striking in such novels of sensibility as Henry Mackenzie's Man of Feeling (1771), where we are told that

Figure 11. The frontispiece of Thomas Cogan's John Buncle. 152

PHYSIOGNOMY BEFORE 1800

physiognomy was one of Harley's foibles, for which he had been often rebuked by his aunt in the country, who used to tell him that when he was come to her years and experience he would know that all's not gold that glis­ ters: and it must be owned that his aunt was a very sensi­ ble, harsh-looking maiden lady of three score and up­ wards.84 Harley is, however, not to be deterred, even though with his heartfelt optimism he is occasionally liable to gross errors of physiognomical judgment. It is ironic that a "very sensible, harsh-looking maiden lady" should be skeptical about the physiognomical enthusiasms of a "man of feeling," for in a cu­ rious way this seems to adumbrate the conflict that Lavater was to have with his Rationalist critics. Yet despite the aunt's fronti nulla fides attitude, Mackenzie's novel could just as easily be said to foreshadow the enthusiasm with which the German-speaking literary world was shortly to welcome the Fragmente. THE FACT that the German novel lay heavily under foreign in­

fluences and, notwithstanding a handful of masterpieces, had hardly developed qua genre by 1775 accounts for the delay hitherto in discussing it in more detail. Apart from the histori­ cal and pastoral romances of Kaspar von Lohenstein, Anton Ulrich, and others whose influence certainly continued into the eighteenth century, the novel at first adhered mainly to the picaresque pattern set by Moscherosch and Grimmelshausen, or to the pattern of the Robinsonaden, that is, imi­ tated Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Characteristic of the Robin­ sonaden, the most famous of which is Schnabel's Insel Felsenburg (1741-43), was not only a Utopian setting but also that pronounced "middle-class" ethos which had long in­ formed the "moral weeklies." The "middle-class" values up­ held by German novelists of the period were one aspect of that extraordinary influence which the English realists had had on them. Indeed, the English novel enjoyed greater popu-

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

larity in mid-eighteenth century Germany than the French novel, a fact corroborated, it seems, by a question asked in Hermes' Sophiens Reise naeh Memel und Sachsen (1769-73): "Warum gefallen uns die englische Romane besser als die franzosische?"65 Thus the English novel became the model to imitate not merely for its content, but also for its various liter­ ary devices, including character description. But character description is not conspicuous in German fiction before 1775. We find practically no portraits in the Robinsonaden, and only one or two caricatural ones in Loen's Der redliche Mann vom Hofe (1740). Wieland's Agathon (1776-67) has one or two interesting descriptions, but, as befits the novel's Greek background and ideals, the narrator is concerned mainly with the purely aesthetic effects of physical beauty. Nevertheless, the opening line of his description of the hero is a reminder of the influence of English novelists: "Hier konnen wir unseren Lesern einen Umstand nicht langer verhalten, der in diese ganze Geschichte einen grossen Einfluss hat." There is also something of Fielding's and Smollett's descriptive techniques present in Wieland's Don Sylvio von Rosalva (1764), both in the grotesque portrait of Donna Mergelina and in the humorous dialogue about the merits and de­ fects of the hero's appearance.66 Richardson's influence on Sophie von la Roche is to be noted, for example, both in the tendency to give pathognomical descriptions in moments of intense emotion and in the description of the heroine in Geschichte des Fraulein von Sternheim (1771), which begins as follows: "Sie miissen aber keine vollkommene Schonheit erwarten."67 Again, although physiognomical readings and cor­ relations are occasionally to be found in the pre-Lavaterian German novel, few writers before 1775 made aesthetic use of physiognomy. Rabener's satires are virtually alone in the way they poke fun at human eccentricities by drawing attention Warum .. . franzosische: Why do we like English novels better than French novels? Hier .. . hat: Here we can no longer hide from our readers something that has an important influence on our entire story. Sie ... erwarten: But you mustn't expect a perfect beauty.

PHYSIOGNOMY BEFORE 1800

to the facial appearance, the gait, posture, gestures, and other movements. The relative indifference to. outward man in the novel is reflected to some extent in Gellert's Schwedische Grafinn von G*** (1747-48). Thus, having begun a descrip­ tion of her husband's facial features, the heroine concludes: "Man verderbt durch genaue Beschreibung oft das Bild, das man seinen Lesern von einer schonen Person machen will. Genug, mein Graf war in meinen Augen der schonste Mann."68 Not until the early 1770s did character description in the German novel begin to assume an essentially physiog­ nomical function. For example, this is how Milord Derby de­ scribes the heroine of Geschiehte des Fraulein von Sternheim, whom he has just met at a masked ball and whose beauty he has now been able to see for the first time: "Doch machte ich noch in Zeiten die Anmerkung, dass unser Gesicht, und das was man Physiognomie nennt, ganz eigentlich der Ausdruck unserer Seele ist."69 These words alone suggest how much Lavaterian physiognomy was already in the air. But if, as Riemann has shown, Lavater's Fragmente had an extraordinary impact on the development of character de­ scription in the German novel, it was the topicality of Lavaterian physiognomy that seemed to concern novelists at first. Thus the age-old controversy over physiognomy seemed to be stirred up afresh by the publication of the Fragmente, as we see in Moritz's Anton Reiser (1782-85), with its warning against boastful physiognomists, or in Engel's Herr Lorenz Stark (1795), when Doktor Herbst makes light of his wife's fear of a particular character's face.70 But most references were concerned with Lavaterian physiognomy; and though some were respectful, as in Sophiens Reise, and Friedrich Heller's Sokrates (1790),71 many were humorous or satirical. One of the most famous satires on physiognomy was Musaeus' Physiognomosehe Reisen (1779), which tells the story of a young Man . .. Mann: An exact description often spoils the image one wishes to convey to one's readers of a beautiful person. Doch . . . ist: But I have observed from time to time that the face, or what we call the physiognomy, is very much the expression of the inner man.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

man's progressive disillusionment with physiognomy as he en­ counters various people on his travels.72 In similar satirical vein is the following character description from Nicolai's Sebaldus Nothanker (1776): Was den Major gegen den Generalsuperintendenten so gar sehr misstrauisch gemacht habe, ist schwer zu sagen. Vermuthlich war es dessen Physiognomie. Ob aber insbesondere ein weit gegen das Ende der Nase vor sich gehendes Naslappchen, oder eine eingekerbte Oberlifze, oder griinliche Zahne, oder ein horbarer Athem, oder nur uberhaupt sein superintendentenmassiges Ansehen daran Schuld gewesen, wiirde Herr Kaspar Lavater am sichersten berichten konnen, wenn er den Generalsuperintendenten gesehen hatte.73 This passage exemplifies the tendency of the Rationalist nov­ elists to poke fun at the Sturm und Drang movement and its cult of genius. Some novelists indirectly ridiculed physiog­ nomy by drawing satirical portraits of geniuses. Thus, in Knigge's Des seligen Herrn Etatrats Samuel Conrad von Schafskopfhinterlassene Papiere (1792), there is a description of the physiognomical essence of a genius—his way of walk­ ing, where he looks, what happens to the wrinkles on his forehead, how his physiognomy is affected when he senses that there are no enemies around, and so on. This method of portraiture is also evident in the following description of Herr Peter Fix in Johann Gottwerth Miiller von Itzehoe's Siegfried von Lindenberg (1779): "Aus den Augen, aus den Falten der Was. . . hatte: What may have made the major so distrustful of the rural dean is hard to say. Presumably it was his physiognomy. But whether it was particularly a prominent wart on the end of his nose, or his harelip, or his greenish teeth, or his heavy breathing, or simply his rural-deanish ap­ pearance that was to blame, only Herr Kaspar Lavater would have cer­ tainly been able to tell, had he seen the rural dean. Aus . . . Ohren: Out of his eyes, the lines on his forehead, the folds in his nose; . . . in short, out of every feature flowed genius. High genius streamed out of his nostrils, foamed at his mouth and swarmed behind his ears.

PHYSIOGNOMY BEFORE 1800

Stirn, aus den Falten der Nase . .. aus jedem Zuge strahlte hoher Genius. Hoher Genius dampfte aus seinen Nasenlochern, schaumte ihm vom Munde und kribbelte ihm hinter den Ohren."74 Miiller was to satirize Lavater again in Herr Thomas, a novel which appeared in 1790 together with three others parodying Lavaterian theory: Karl Friedrich Bahrdt's Yhakanpol, Georg Kellner's Familiengeschichte, and Johann Christian Miiller's Fragmente aus dem Leben und Wandel eines Physiognomisten, which has been de­ scribed as the "best extant satirical [German] novel of 1790."75 This use of "Fragmente" for similar purposes is again to be seen in Thummel's Reise in die mittaglichen Provinzen υοη Frankreich (1791-1805) where there is an account of a prince who, anxious that one of his daughters should learn deportment in order that she may no longer be stiff and awk­ ward in company, quotes the authority of Lavater on the sub­ ject, adding that "sein prophetischer Geist sah alle Frag­ mente der Welt heraus."76 The humor of these words inevitably evokes the writings of Jean Paul, who probably made more references and allusions to the Fragmente than did any other novelist of that period. Thus he refers to Lavater's comparisons of human and animal physiognomies in Quintus Fixlein (1796), to the famous "frontometer" in Hesperus (1795), and to a disciple of La­ vater's in Titan (1800-3). Again, in a satirical sketch, Jean Paul agrees with Lavater on the importance of the thumb as a sign of character, and then gives a comic twist to his discus­ sion by saying that, just as thinking causes furrows on the brow, so the signs of mental strain due to writing are to be seen on the thumb. One of the most amusing allusions to La­ vater's theories occurs in the idyllic novel Leben des vergnugten Schulmeisterlein Maria Wutz in Auenthal (1793) when Dr. Fink tells the narrator that, since tasting an un­ pleasant cup of coffee which had been poured out of a vi­ cious-looking coffeepot, he has decided not to buy teapots or s e i n . . . h e r a u s : his prophetic mind could foresee the fragments of the entire world.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

coffeepots unless satisfied beforehand with their physiogno­ mies. The comic effect is completed with other obvious allu­ sions, as when Fink remarks that the reason why the ancient Greeks were more beautiful than modern housewives is that they had lovely statues to look at, and the Spartan women pictures of handsome youths, whereas these housewives have nothing but ugly teapots to stare at.77 In practically every ref­ erence to Lavater's theories, Jean Paul displays the same richly allusive humor with which he treats human eccentrici­ ties in all his writings, though underneath the caricatural ex­ aggeration lies the profound seriousness of a Cervantes or a Sterne. Indeed, much of Jean Paul's humor resembles the let­ ter's, as we can see from yet another dig at Lavater in Auswahl aus des Teufels Papieren (1787?), whose "physiognomische Postskript iiber die Nasen der Menschen" reminds us of Sterne's famous discussion of the same feature in Tristram Shandy. There is otherwise little of interest in Jean Paul's character descriptions, for, with their ambagious style and language, they remain essentially outside the tradition of the realist novel. But topical though physiognomy was, its influence on char­ acter description in the German novel was restricted by the limitations of the novel itself. Such limitations were, in fact, pointed up by Merck in his startling essay "Uber den Mangel des epischen Geistes in unserm lieben Vaterland" (1778). Merck's complaint was that the German novel was suffering from a surfeit of foreign and Utopian influences, that there was too much fantasy and reflection and too little contempo­ rary reality.78 Wezel, too, held much the same views, and in the preface to Hermann und Ulrike (1780) suggested that the genre might be saved if, as in England and France, it was modeled somewhat on the drama.79 That this was by no means the most satisfactory solution to the problem is abun­ dantly clear when we think of those virtually unreadable dia­ logue novels of Meissner, Hase, Wieland, Klinger, and Engel which appeared in the 1770s and 1780s.80 At any rate, consid­ ering the primacy of fictional dialogue at that time, we can

PHYSIOGNOMY BEFORE 1800

see why it was that in his highly influential treatise, Hber Handlung, Gesprach und Erzahlung (1774), Engel should have had this to say about descriptions: Es ist mit der Beschreibung der Seele vollig so, wie mit der Beschreibung korperlicher Gegenstande beschaffen. Der Anblick unterrichtet uns immer unendlich vollstandiger, geschwinder, und um beider Ursachen willen, auch unendlich lebhafter, von der Beschaffenheit eines Gegenstandes, als die ausfiihrlichste Beschreibung.81 Engel's statement on the limitations of description as a lit­ erary device was quite in keeping with the aesthetics of the eighteenth-century classical novel; and it may partly explain why the Fragmente at first had only a relatively slight impact on fictional literary portraiture. In other genres, however, the impact was soon conspicuous, notably in the travel book. Nicolai, for example, in his popular Beschreibung einer Reise durch Deutsehland und die Sehweiz im Jahre 1781, makes a number of Lavaterian analyses of townsfolk and peasants in South German cities, notes the physiognomical differences between Jesuits and Carmelites as well as the effects of pro­ fessional and institutional life on the appearance, and in a section on national physiognomies regrets that Lavater was not there to see them.82 This reference to national physiogno­ mies is, indeed, as unthinkable without the Fragmente as are Georg Forster's physiognomical analyses of Asiatic races in his Reise um die Welt (1784).83 Also rich in physiognomical analyses was, as Riemann himself points out, the autobio­ graphical novel. Thus we may mention Knigge's Roman meines Lebens (1781-83), in which the author tells of his pro­ pensity for observing people and drawing portraits of them, and also alludes to aspects of Lavater's physiognomy such as E s . . . B e s c h r e i b u n g : There is really no difference to speak of between a description of the inner man and a description of his outward features: merely looking at an object can tell us infinitely more completely and more swiftly, and, hence, more vividly, about the essence of an object than the most detailed description.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

mutual sympathy and antipathy, the way married couples grow to look alike, and so on; or Hippel's Lebenslaufe in aufsteigender Linie (1778-81), in the early volumes of which we find a serious discussion on the question whether artists should vie with one another to draw portraits of Christ.84 But it was not until the 1790s that character description began to assume a truly physiognomical quality in the Ger­ man novel. Let us, for example, consider Tieck's description of Durer in Franz Stembalds Wanderungen (1798): Durer war gross und schlank, lieblich und majestatisch fielen seine lockige Haare um seine Schlafe und Schultern, sein Gesicht war ehrwurdig und doch freundlich, seine Mienen veranderten den Ausdruck nur langsam, und seine schonen braunen Augen sahen feurig aber sanft unter seiner edlen Stirn hervor. Franz bemerkte deutlich, wie die Umrisse von Alberts Gesichte denen auffallend glichen, mit denen man oft den Erloser der Welt zu malen pflegt. Lukas erschien neben Albert noch kleiner, als er wirklich war, sein Gesicht veranderte sich in jedem Augenblicke, seine Augen waren mehr lebhaft als ausdrucksvoll, sein hellbraunes Haar lag schlicht und kurz um seinen Kopf.85 With its reference to paintings of Christ, its use of moral epi­ thets for various features, its qualified adjectival phrases ("feurig aber sanft," "mehr lebhaft als ausdrucksvoll"), and its terminology (e.g. "Umrisse"), the portrait certainly sug­ gests the physiognomist's touch. But the lead for this descripDiirer.,. Kopf: Diirer was tall and slim, with curly hair that flowed at­ tractively and majestically round his temples and down to his shoulders. He had a dignified, yet friendly countenance, his facial expressions changed only gradually and his brown eyes looked piercingly, yet gently from beneath his fine forehead. Franz could distinctly see how the con­ tours of Albrecht's face were strikingly similar to those with which paint­ ers usually depict our Saviour. Lukas seemed more diminutive in com­ parison with Albrecht than he really was, with his facial expression changing at every moment, his eyes lively rather than full of expression, and his light brown hair worn short and plain round his head.

PHYSIOGNOMY BEFORE 1800

tion had probably been given by Goethe, whose Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795) not only has such detailed physiog­ nomical descriptions as the one of Philine but also shows how a character's reaction to an unpleasant appearance can be presented without the traditional caricatural elements. Thus, Aurelie describes her reaction to Philine's appearance, after the latter has sung a song: Wie sie mir zuwider ist! recht meinem innern Wesen zuwider! bis auf die kleinsten Zufalligkeiten. Die rechte braune Augenwimper bei den blonden Haaren, die der Bruder so reizend findet, mag ich gar nicht ansehn, und die Schramme auf der Stirne hat mir so was Widriges, so was Niedriges, dass ich immer zehn Schritte von ihr zuriicktreten mochte.86 Noteworthy, too, is a virtually unprecedented structural use of physiognomy. Thus, when Wilhelm and Werner are re­ united, they each note how the other has changed: Wilhelm has the impression that Werner has in some way declined physically, whereas the latter's reaction to his friend's ap­ pearance is favorable: Werner ging um seinen Freund herum, drehte ihn hin und her, so dass er ihn fast verlegen machte. Nein! nein! rief er aus, so was ist mir noch nicht vorgekommen, und doch weiss ich wohl, dass ich mich nicht betriige. Deine Augen sind tiefer, deine Stirn ist breiter, deine Nase Wie . . . mochte: How she repels me to the very core of my being: even in the tiniest aspects of her person! That right, brown eyelash amid the blond hair, which my brother finds so charming, is painful for me to look at. As for the scar on her forehead, I find it so off-putting, so repulsive, that I always feel like stepping back ten yards from her. Wemer ... gedeihet: Werner walked round his friend, turned him hither and thither so that [Wilhelm] felt almost embarrassed. "I can't be­ lieve it!" he exclaimed. "I've never known anything like it, and yet I'm sure I'm not mistaken. Your eyes have more depth, your forehead is wider, your nose finer, and your mouth more delicate. Look at him standing there! And how it all fits together! That's what an idle life does for you!"

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

feiner und dein Mund liebreicher geworden. Seht nur einmal wie er steht! wie das alles passt und zusammenhangt! Wie doch das Faulenzen gedeihet!87 IF, by the end of the eighteenth century, French novelists had

made little advance on the physiognomical methods of char­ acter description we find in Marivaux and Diderot, they had at least been affected to some degree, like their German com­ peers, by the new vogue of Lavaterian physiognomy. For example, Sebastien Mercier, whose novels include phys­ iognomical descriptions and references, writes at length on the subject in his Tableau de Paris (1781-89); and, like Nicolai, he considers various aspects of Lavaterian physiognomy in some detail, and occasionally apostrophizes Lavater, as, for instance, when he advises him to visit the Palais Royal on Fridays "pour lire sur Ies visages tout ce qu'on cache dans l'abysme des coeurs!"88 It is noteworthy that Mercier planned to write a physiognomical study of his own, and was particu­ larly interested in the foot; what he wrote, however, is exigu­ ous, being scattered in the pages of his Nouveau Paris under the heading "Dessins de Lebrun."89 Another French novelist who knew his Lavater, and whom Lavater himself is said to have nicknamed the French Richardson,90 was Restif de la Bretonne. Restif actually mentions Lavater in contexts of character description: first, in Mon Calendrier (1794-97) when, in the description of Claire German, Monsieur Nicolas frankly admits, "je suis physionomiste comme Lavater ... "; and, again, in Les Nuits de Paris (1788-94) when the narrator, having told of his arrival at a bordel, continues: "Le sacripant ouvrit la porte et sortit.... Ah! Lavater, vous l'auriez bien juge: c'etait Ie crime personnifie... ."9I Bernardin de SaintPierre, too, was evidently familiar with the Fragmente, to pour.. . coeurs: to read in people's faces what is hidden in the depths of their hearts. Le sacripant... personnifie: The sacristan opened the door and came out. Oh, Lavater! You would have condemned him, for he was crime per­ sonified.

PHYSIOGNOMY BEFORE 1800

judge by his essay "De la figure humaine" in Etudes de la na­ ture (1784), where, apart from referring to the face as "la vraie physionomie de l'ame," he acknowledges Lavater's idea concerning the importance of the inner life for physical beauty, whether the inner quality be virtue, religion, or, as he puts it, the harmony of the soul without social constraints.92 Such ideas are certainly embodied in the author's dual por­ trait of the hero and heroine in Paul et Virginie (1789). But it seems that the more Lavater won adherents, the more physiognomy became a source of controversy. Some­ thing of this new atmosphere of overconfident physiognomi­ cal judgments is mildly satirized in Louvet's Amours du Che­ valier de Faublas (1787-89).93 Again, Madame Cottin, whose main fictional characters are usually presented as sensitive observers, shows in one or two of her novels how fashionable it was at that time to make use of physiognomy in formal so­ cial relations, and yet how little one could rely on what physi­ ognomical skills one possessed. For example, there is a pas­ sage in Claire d'Albe (1795) where the heroine, in a letter depicting the wretchedness of life in Paris, discusses the problem of trusting one's own physiognomical reactions: Au milieu de cette foule de malheureux qui fourmillent dans Ies grandes villes, comment distinguer Ie fourbe de l'infortune? On commence par se fier a la physionomie; mais bientot revenue de cet indice trompeur, pour avoir ete de fausses larmes, on finit par ne plus croire aux Q4 vraies. Far from being an expression of fronti nulla fides skepticism, Claire d'Albe's hesitancy over physiognomy is a typical ex­ ample of the struggle between feelings and reason that so often informs the late eighteenth-century novel of sensibility. Au milieu . . . vraies: In the midst of this crowd of wretches that throng the cities, how can you tell a crook from a man down on his luck? You begin by believing in the physiognomy, but, disappointed in no time by this deceptive indicator because the tears on it were sham, you end by no longer trusting genuine tears.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

It is as if the heroine were aware that, whereas physiognomi­ cal judgments are based essentially on one's feelings and in­ tuition, the same intuition and feelings can easily lead one as­ tray. IT IS INTERESTING to note how, as in French and German fic­

tion, character description in the English novel began to be affected by Lavaterian physiognomy in the last decades of the eighteenth century. This is all the more significant in that from the 1760s onward (thanks partly to the influence of the French novelists Prevost and Baculard d'Arnaud) a certain re­ action had set in against realism with the emergence of the Gothic and sentimental novel.95 However, as Lavaterian physiognomy came into vogue in England in the late 1780s and, as is evident from mundane references to the English edition and from enthusiastic affirmations of physiognomy, overwhelmed the literary world, so novelists began to become increasingly physiognomical in their character descriptions.96 We see this even in Gothic novels such as The Monk (1795), whose author, M. G. Lewis, is, incidentally, known to have been a subscriber to an expensive English edition of Lavater's essays,97 and Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), in which the portrait of Valancourt is drawn from the view­ point of Emily's physiognomical eye: Emily still gazed on his countenance, examining its fea­ tures, but she knew not where to detect the charm that captivated her attention, and inspired sentiments of such love and pity. Dark brown hair played carelessly along the open forehead, the nose was rather inclined to aqui­ line; the lips spoke in a smile; but it was a melancholy one; the eyes were blue and were directed upwards with an expression of peculiar meekness, while the soft cloud of the brow spoke of the fine sensibility of the temper.98 Another Gothic novelist to refer to in this context is Charlotte Smith, in whose Desmond (1792) and Marchmont (1796) Lavater is mentioned by name,99 and characters are described

PHYSIOGNOMY BEFORE 1800

with an analytical language hardly to be found in earlier fic­ tion. Here, for example, is a portrait in Desmond: I never saw a face that gave me so much pleasure in the contemplation of it, as hers did; and yet I have seen many more regular— The reason of this, I believe, is that there is so much sense blended with so much sweetness in every expression of her countenance.— I have often seen both separately, but, in faces, where one predomi­ nates, there is frequently a want of the other — Her form, too, is, in my opinion, the very perfection of femi­ nine loveliness; yet it seems to owe all its charms to her mind — the dignity of the one heightens every grace of the other.100 As the literary portrait grew more and more physiognomi­ cal, so physiognomy, it seems, took on an increasing respecta­ bility. Seldom do we now find that ironic attitude toward physiognomy that colors the pre-Lavaterian novel. For exam­ ple, the hero of Godwin's Caleb Williams (1795) is utterly serious about the advantages of physiognomy, as we see particularly when, after escaping from prison, he feels com­ pelled to study the science in order to survive in an area of London inhabited mainly by criminals.101 A similar serious­ ness is evident in other minor English novels of the same dec­ ade, including Bage's Man as He Is (1793), George Keate's Sketches from Nature (1793), and Richard Cumberland's Henry (1795).102 That all this was a portent for later develop­ ments in the literary portrait will be seen in the chapters to follow.103

Lavater and the Composite Portrait in the Nineteenth-Century Novel

BY THE END of the eighteenth century the novel had become by far the most popular of the literary genres, being regarded not merely as an ideal medium for passing the time but also as a useful source of information.1 The demand for fiction had, in fact, become great enough for writers to make a living by novel-writing, if seldom to maintain the highest standards of their craft. Of the numerous novels published around the turn of the century, the more important ones were modeled on the Richardsonian or Sternean novels of sensibility and, particu­ larly during the last quarter of the century, on the French sentimental novels of Prevost, Baculard d'Arnaud, and Rous­ seau.2 These imitations again fell into three main categories: the epistolary novel, which was cultivated mainly by women writers and had a strongly moral, even didactic strain; the Gothic novel, as typified by Ann Radcliffe and "Monk" Lewis, whose works had been influenced respectively by the sentimental romances of Prevost and the German diablerie of Sturm und Drang origin; and the historical romance, which was represented, for example, by Madame de Genlis and Chateaubriand, and which, though in many ways maintaining the traditions of Scud ry and La Calprenede, owed its later development to the influence of Prevost's Cleveland and Le Doyen de Killerine.3 Though all these types of fiction contin­ ued to flourish as late as the 1830s—especially the Gothic novel, whose influence can be felt in English and French liter­ ature throughout the nineteenth century—this was generally

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL

a poor phase in the history of the novel. Indeed, apart from Goethe's Wilhelm Metster and the novels of Madame Cottin, who was commonly regarded as the best French novelist in the early decades of the new century, the most important novel at this time was Chateaubriand's Rene (1804), if only because, having been influenced by Rousseau's La Nouvelle Helotse and Goethe's Werther, it constituted a principal link between European pre-Romanticism and the French Roman­ tic autobiographical novels of the nineteenth century; for meritorious though Rene was in its way, it possessed few of the novelistic merits to be found in Fielding, Sterne, Diderot, or Marivaux.4 The aesthetic failures of the novel at this time may have been due to the contempt in which a large part of the literary world held the genre, despite its growing popularity. Dr. Johnson had poured scorn on the genre in The Rambler, and a minor novelist, Charles Jenner, had referred to his period, in his novel The Placid Man (1773), as "this trifling novel-read­ ing age."5 The idea that the novel was little better than a means of idle distraction was prevalent even in the nine­ teenth century. Schopenhauer, for example, was highly selec­ tive in his choice of novels for educational purposes,6 and Flaubert's Madame Bovary was a kind of homily on the dan­ gers of novel-reading. On the other hand, there were some strong vindications of the novel already in the eighteenth century. Restif de la Bretonne, for instance, regretted that parents were so quick to condemn what he regarded as "!'in­ struction la plus efficace" for their sons and daughters.7 Mercier, too, declared that, in spite of the snobbery of the literary world toward novels, they were, in his view, "plus utiles que toutes Ies histoires."8 A similar defense had been made by one of the earliest theorists of the novel, Friedrich von Blanckenburg, who in his Versttch uber den Roman (1774) argues that novel-reading can be an instructive form of pastime not only for the common run of men but also, as he puts it, for "denkende Kopfe."9 Few men of letters would have dared to say such a thing; in fact, none had done so since the time of Aris-

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

totle. To be sure, Fielding makes a number of perspicuous re­ marks on the novelist's function in the opening chapters of each book in Tom Jones; but what he says is often couched in irony and cannot be taken too seriously. Even Goethe, who might have justifiably championed the novel, said little in def­ inite favor of it, being content, like Schiller, to dismiss it as a pseudo-epic. By the early nineteenth century, the idea of the novel as a shallow medium of entertainment still obtained, as Madame de Stael suggested when she spoke of the low esteem in which the novelist was held in her day.10 Scott himself, at the height of his fame, still preferred to be designated as a gentleman-farmer rather than as a novelist, and looked upon his literary activity merely as a pleasant way of passing the time and making money.11 Yet it was Scott who, with Goethe, inspired a more positive attitude to the novel in the early nineteenth century. Let us first deal with Goethe, whose Wilhelm Meister was to become the prototype for the German Btldungsromane of Gotthelf, Stifter, and Keller and the Zeitromane of Immermann, Laube, Gutzkow, Freytag, and Spielhagen. Wilhelm Meister was also the work that prompted the German Romantics Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis to place the novel highest of all the liter­ ary genres. What Schlegel admired about Wilhelm Meister was not only its philosophical essence but also its comprehen­ sive range: no form of literature seemed better suited as a medium for a Universalpoesie or Gesamtkunstwerk than the Goethean novel, whose capacity to embrace all the genres prompted Schlegel to consider the novel as "die urspriinglichste, eigentumlichste, vollkommenste Form der romantischen Poesie."12 A typical Romantic novel for Schlegel was Don Quixote, though present-day critics would normally regard this work as one of the ancestors of modern realism. Ironically enough, Schlegel repudiated realism of any kind and instead wanted novels to be highly symbolic, not to say hieroglyphic, renderings of eternal human truths. Novalis die urspriinglichste .. . Poesie: the most original, most essential, most perfect form of Romanticism.

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL

confirmed this criterion with his famous phrase, "Nach innen geht der geheimnisvolle Weg." It is, therefore, hardly sur­ prising to find that the German Romantic novel is much closer to romance or the prose poem than to the European tradition of realism.13 Indeed, the failure of the German Ro­ mantics to affirm those elements in Don Quixote and Wilhelm Meister which clearly pointed the nineteenth-century novel­ ists toward realism may in part explain why Gutzkow criti­ cized the German novel in the 1830s for its clumsiness and immaturity,14 and why the nineteenth-century German reading-public tended to take a greater interest in translations of French and English fiction than in their own novelists, and had done so ever since Scott had begun to make his name abroad. Scott's popularity in Europe was no less phenomenal than Lavater's had been in the previous century, and it led Goethe to describe him as "der erste Erzahler des Jahrhunderts";15 and while his novels were respected and imitated in England, they were accorded an almost disproportionate reverence in France and Germany. The publication of a Scott novel in Germany was usually a momentous event, and the enthusias­ tic reception given to Scott's son in Berlin in 1822 was enough to show how much Germany valued his father's achieve­ ments.16 There was, moreover, hardly a German novelist who did not immerse himself in Scott or learn his craft from him; and it was no exaggeration to say, as Fontane did in his essay on the author, that Scott had even ousted Napoleon as a household name.17 The adulation that Scott enjoyed in Ger­ many was equally intense in France, where 200,000 copies of translations of his novels are said to have been sold by 1824; and it was with admiration and gratitude that the author was welcomed to Paris in November 1826, where he had the honor of being introduced to Charles X.18 But amidst all this acclaim there were the inevitable voices of dissent, not the least important of them being those of one or two already Nach . .. Weg: Inward goes the mysterious way. der erste... Jahrhunderts: the foremost narrative writer of the century.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

well-established historical novelists. That the historical novel was nothing unusual in France or England in the years imme­ diately before the publication of Waverley (1814) may be noted in Madame de Genlis' preface to her Belisaire (1808), in which she apologizes for adding yet another work to such a well-loved, if oft-criticized, genre.19 It is, therefore, certain that Scott was felt as a kind of usurper, not only by Madame de Genlis, but also by Chateaubriand, who had achieved some success with this type of novel through his ingenious use of local color.20 In any event, neither novelist cared much for Scott, and in her Memoires Madame de Genlis made no se­ cret of being bored by Scott's novels.21 But just as historical novelists as well as critics of a conservative stamp balked at Scott's innovatory methods, so these very methods helped to raise the status of the novel and give it a prestige it had scarcely enjoyed before. This was suggested in Le Figaro (2 August 1826): "Walter-Scott a cree un genre dont notre epoque avait besoin et qui a l'interet puissant d'un roman sans en avoir la frivolite."22 Most critics recognize that Scott largely determined the expansion of the nineteenth-century novel, though his main interest for us here lies in his powers of observation and his ability to create vivid characters. Such a treatment of fic­ tional characters seemed very new in his time, even though Scott had obviously had predecessors in this respect. One as­ pect of Scott's realistic characterization was his method of setting his personages against specific backgrounds and de­ scribing them in abundant detail—a method which was more or less imitated in the German Bildungsroman and Zeitroman, as well as in the French and English realist novel. Later modifications of this method of literary portraiture owed not a little to Balzac (himself a staunch disciple of Scott) and Dickens, though we may just as easily account for the univer­ sality of this method by pointing to the close links that were Walter-Scott... frivolite: Walter Scott has created a genre which our era badly needed and which has the compelling interest of a novel without having any of its frivolity.

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL

maintained between the three principal European literatures at that time. Nevertheless, there is some danger of overesti­ mating the significance of Scott and his successors for literary portraiture, since the essentially physiognomical methods they were to use abundantly in their novels had, as we saw in the last chapter, already been applied to some extent in the final decades of the eighteenth century. But before consid­ ering the further development of the composite portrait as an essentially physiognomical device, let us deal with various other factors that have commonly been said to underlie nineteenth-century character description. First of all, it may be reasonably asked how far the appear­ ance of a fictional character resembles that of a real person, as has often been done in France, where painstaking research has been undertaken in attempts to trace, for example, the originals of the heroines of Madame Bovary and Eugenie Grandet.23 A knowledge of biographical data may, indeed, shed some light on character presentation; and when the reader learns that Madeleine in Fromentin's Dominique bears a close resemblance to the Creole Jenny Chesse, that the model for Hermann's uncle in Immermann's Epigonen is none other than Gottlob Nathusius, or that Paul Emanuel in Villette is based on M. Heger, his enjoyment of the novels in question may even be enhanced.24 In some cases there is a definite physical similarity between a fictional character and an actual person, as is evident, for instance, with Philip Wakem in The Mill on the Floss, who is based on a M. d'Albert, whom George Eliot met in Geneva in the 1840s.25 On the other hand, we occasionally find that an original has been considerably modified in a novel. Thus in Musset's Confession d'un enfant du Steele George Sand is not only transformed into the gentle Brigitte Pierson, but her dark hair is changed to ash blond.26 Similarly, in his autobiographical Dominique, Fromentin, who was of short stature, presents his hero as a tall man.27 But though it is evident that the biographical ap­ proach to literary criticism still enjoys a certain respectabil­ ity, it may be doubted whether the attention given to all these

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

details has any more historical significance than the question of whether or not characterization depends on the author's imagination and invention. Much more important, it seems, is to study the composite portrait in the light of certain nonliterary techniques whose universality in the European novel is of unmistakable interest to the comparatist. Of all such techniques invented in the nineteenth century, none seemed more likely to determine the course of the arts than daguerreotypy and other types of photography. In some quarters it was feared that the daguerreotype would actually replace painting, though few could have foreseen that pho­ tography would, in fact, be instrumental in the rise of im­ pressionism. To what extent photography affected the devel­ opment of character description cannot easily be shown; but what is certain is that it often became associated, as it still is today, with the faithful reproduction of reality in the arts, especially in the novel. For example, Eichendorff refers in Die deutschen Volksschriftsteller (1848) to the character portraits in Gotthelfs novels as "... fast daguerreotypisch genaue Portrats, oft zum Erschrecken ahnlich."28 In this connection, we may quote Champfleury's ironic comments on the excessive use of this word by critics of the realist novel: "Qu'un ecrivain etudie serieusement la nature et s'essaye a faire entrer Ie plus de Vrai possible dans une creation, on Ie compare a un daguerreotypeur. On n'admet pas que la vie habituelle puisse fournir un drame complet."29 But it was one thing to use pho­ tography as a metaphorical image of reality, and quite an­ other to use it as a medium through which to reflect that real­ ity. In fact, Trollope and some other novelists believed that, where it was a question of true observation, the camera could never properly replace the human eye.30 This attitude was fast.. . ahnlich: almost daguerreotypically exact portraits, often frighteningly lifelike. Qu'un . . . complet: If a writer studies nature seriously and tries to bring as much truth as possible into a work of art, he is compared to a daguerreotypist. People are not willing to admit that everyday life can supply all the dramatic material needed.

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL

more or less shared by Delacroix, who deeply disapproved of daguerreotypes and scarcely found one out of a hundred worth looking at. Like Trollope, Delacroix maintained that no machine could capture the essence of a characteristic fa­ cial expression. As he notes, "De la personne ou de l'objet qu'on dessine, c'est done surtout l'esprit qu'il faut comprendre et rendre."31 This distrust of an essentially mechanical means of produc­ ing a physical likeness suggests how jealously both painters and novelists still clung to the privileges of the physiognomi­ cal eye. This idea seems to be especially corroborated by the close association at that time between literature and the fine arts, perhaps closer in the nineteenth century than ever be­ fore, or since. Gautier himself describes the nature of this as­ sociation in mid-nineteenth-century France: "En ce temps-la, vivant trait d'union entre ces deux mondes, la peinture et la poesie fraternisaient... . On lisait beaucoup dans Ies ateliers ... Ies artistes lisaient Ies poetes et Ies poetes visitaient Ies ar­ tistes."32 Moreover, when it was said that Champfleury's school of realism was born in the studio of Courbet, this was much more than a convenient figure of speech.33 No less sig­ nificant is the fact that many novelists of this period were competent painters in their own right, or at least dabbled in the fine arts. For example, we are told that Hugo, who was a friend of David d'Angers, had a flair for painting; that Raabe was an artist manque who enjoyed sketching during his lei­ sure hours; that Charlotte Bronte copied mezzotint and cop­ per-plate engravings, inventing tales about the aristocratic characters depicted in them and incorporating them in her Glass Town Stories.34 Johanna Schopenhauer, who wrote pop­ ular novels in the early nineteenth century, had had ambiDe . . . rendre: When delineating a person or a thing, one should be concerned above all to understand and reproduce their inner essence. E n . . . a r t i s t e s : At that time there was a very close link between these two realms of art: painting and poetry went hand in hand... . We read a great deal in the studios . .. the painters read the poets, while the poets consulted the painters.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

tions as a girl to become a painter, and during her early art studies had, interestingly enough, looked upon Lavater's Fragmente as an indispensable textbook. It was only when her father refused to allow her to study with Chodowiecki that she finally turned to literature.35 More fortunate than Scho­ penhauer's mother were writers such as Stifter, Keller, and Fromentin, who were able to devote themselves to both painting and literature and to become equally adept in them. All these details are, then, so many useful aids to our appre­ ciation of nineteenth-century literary portraiture, and cer­ tainly help us to account for the frequent borrowings from the fine arts for purposes of characterization. Let us now con­ sider this question in some detail. The idea of character description as essentially a "paint­ ing" or a "depiction" had long been a commonplace in the novel in much the same way as the tendency to refer to the beauty of a face or a physical feature as deserving the atten­ tion of a painter or sculptor. But it was not until realism began to permeate the novel in the 1730s that novelists made references to specific paintings or statuary, a practice that reached its high point in the nineteenth century. We note, for example, Tieck's apt choice of a painter in one of his many descriptions of the heroine of Vittoria Accorombona (1840), whose action is set in Renaissance Italy: "... so hatte Tizian kein holderes Modell zu seinen schonsten Bildnissen antreflFen konnen."36 Scott, too, very often has a certain painter in mind when he is depicting a group scene or drawing an individual portrait. Here is an instance from The Antiquary: "In the in­ side of the cottage was a scene which Wilkie alone could have painted, with that exquisite feeling of nature that character­ ises his enchanting productions."37 (In this connection, it is no small irony that Fontane should have spoken of Wilkie as "der Walter Scott der Palette.")38 But the more realism pen­ etrated the European novel, the more there was a tendency in character descriptions to make references to painters. For exso .. . konnen: Titian himself could not have found a more sublime model for his finest paintings.

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL

ample, Eugene Sue in Les Mysteres de Paris (1842-43) quotes such names as Callot, Murillo, Goya, Watteau, Raphael, and many others, to the extent that the reader cannot but feel that all this is an attempt to make up for a lack of more important literary skills. The same may be said of Spielhagen, many of whose references to painters and sculptors in Problematische Naturen (1860-61) seem trite. It is, therefore, little wonder that references to painters and sculptors became much less frequent in the novel after the 1860s. On the other hand, the occasional references we find to Dutch paintings in the novel have a special historical interest in so far as they bespeak a new and more understanding in­ terpretation of reality. That this was also an expression of an almost complete reversal of aesthetic values is obvious enough in view of the low esteem in which such paintings were generally held in the eighteenth century.39 Neverthe­ less, it is noteworthy that Dutch paintings were already be­ ginning to win recognition in the German-speaking world of the 1770s. Thus, apart from Lavater, who speaks warmly of Rembrandt in the Fragmente, Merck is known at that time to have found more physiognomical truth in Flemish paintings than in Greek statues.40 But full recognition for these paint­ ings was slow to come; indeed, remarks on their unjust ne­ glect are to be found in aesthetic writings during the first half of the nineteenth century, particularly those of Hegel and Schopenhauer, who, though diametrically opposed in philo­ sophical outlook, were in clear agreement about the merits of Dutch painters.41 It is also interesting to note how some crit­ ics of this period drew connections between Dutch paintings and the novel. For example, Anna Jameson, who has praise for the "wonderful fullness and truth of detail," finds in Jan Steen's most farcical pictures "a depth of feeling and obser­ vation which remind us of the humour of Goldsmith... ."42 The fact that some novelists and dramatists also contributed to the growing appreciation of Dutch paintings suggests how important such paintings had already been for the develop­ ment of realism in fiction. We note, for instance, in Buchner's

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

portrait of Lenz the extent to which the latter connected real­ ism in the arts with the work of Dutch painters: "Der Dichter und Bildende ist mir der liebste, der mir die Natur am wirklichsten gibt, so dass ich iiber seinem Gebild fuhle; alles iibrige stort mich. Die hollandischen Maler sind mir lieber als die italienischen, sie sind auch die einzigen fasslichen."43 Again, Diderot's well-known love of Greuze and Chardin is hardly more important for our understanding of his fiction and drama than is his recognition of the merits of Rem­ brandt.44 Rembrandt's particular interest for literary histori­ ans lies in his having inspired writers not merely to look at the world with more understanding eyes but also to discover beauty in faces that had formerly been dismissed as merely homely or grotesque. Trollope's preference for the "real ma­ trons of Rembrandt" to the "idealized Madonnas of Ra­ phael"45 certainly helps to explain his tendency to look for beauty in the most ordinary face. Another striking example of this inspiration is evident in Stifter's Nachsotnmer, where the face of an elderly Fiirstin is described as possessing a subtlety of expression that Rembrandt alone would have been capable of reproducing on canvas.46 Such an approach to an old per­ son's appearance would be hard to find in literary portraiture before 1800. It was the English realists who most readily espoused the cause of the Dutch painters in the nineteenth century 47 The historical reasons for this are obvious enough if we consider how deeply the neo-Platonic ideal of moral virtue as against physical beauty had struck root in the minds of the eigh­ teenth-century novelists. What particularly distinguishes the English realists in this respect is not merely that, like their Continental counterparts, they mention Rembrandt by name in their character portraits or describe house interiors with that detail reminiscent of Dutch paintings, but that in their Der Dichter . . . fasslichen: My favorite writer or artist is the one who most faithfully reproduces nature, and in ways that make his handiwork palpable to me; everything else irritates me. I prefer the Dutch painters to the Italians, for their paintings are, in fact, the only ones that can be called palpable.

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL

defense of homely appearances they make light of the notion of physical beauty. Prominent, indeed, in the novels of Char­ lotte Bronte, Thackeray, Trollope, and George Eliot is the idea that handsome is as handsome does, that a good heart very often goes with a plain face. This is one of the central themes of Charlotte Bronte's Villette (1853), whose heroine, Lucy Snowe, believes it is more important to look for the hidden merits of a commonplace appearance than to put people in dubious categories of beauty and ugliness. The trouble with past novelists, it was now felt, was their over­ simplified treatment of the human appearance, and their fail­ ure to perceive the numerous gradations which the Dutch painters were so keenly aware of. It is noteworthy that George Eliot, in a letter to her publisher Blackwood (11 June 1857), asserted that the novelist, in order to give a true pic­ ture of life, could no longer afford to indulge in a one-sided treatment of beauty.48 We see this idea again in Adam Bede, when the narrator, though acknowledging the need for "di­ vine beauty of form" in our lives, makes a plea on behalf of homely appearances, in a language which most poetically up­ holds the cause of Dutch paintings.49 It is, therefore, hardly surprising that these English novelists should have been gen­ erally unaffected by the Lavaterian notion of beauty as a sign of virtue; on the contrary, they tend to give their heroes and heroines unprepossessing appearances: one has only to think of Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss, Dobbin in Vanity Fair, Mary Thome in Doctor Thome, and the heroine of Jane Eyre, all of whom have commendable or, at least, interesting qualities of character. That an interesting appearance did not necessarily mean a beautiful one was an essential aspect of the idea of the Pictur­ esque,50 an aesthetic criterion of largely English origin, whose beginnings we can sense to some extent already in the writ­ ings of Addison, Hutcheson, and Burke. This "mode of vi­ sion," as it has been described,51 arose in reaction to the eighteenth-century obsession with the beautiful and the sublime, and the term Picturesque came to be applied to artistic subjects that had hitherto been considered unworthy of aes-

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

thetic treatment. Although the period of the Picturesque ex­ tended roughly from 1730 to 1830,52 the major publications on the subject did not appear until the 1780s and 1790s, when, significantly enough, Lavaterian physiognomy was having its first apparent impact on character description. Perhaps the most important book on the subject, apart from William Gilpin's pioneering Observations Relating Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty (1786), was Sir UvedaIe Price's Essay on the Picturesque (1796), which set out to show how irregularity or asymmetry of features, whether in landscapes, objects, or human beings, had a peculiar charm such as to make them eminently suitable as subjects for painting. This idea was to be affirmed some ten years later by Richard Payne Knight when he wrote that "irregularity of appearance is generally essential to picturesque beauty."53 It is also interesting to see this concept used occasionally in literary portraits. For in­ stance, this is how the unprepossessing Jeremiah Tugwell is described in Richard Graves' Spiritual Quixote (1820): ".. . these strokes of time had only given him a more picturesque appearance; and one solitary tooth in his upper mandible, when any thing excited his mouth, gave an inexpressibly droll and joyous air to his physiognomy."54 The significance of the concept of the Picturesque lay in its being not merely a repudiation of age-old aesthetic principles but also an implicit criticism of an overcivilized society. This is suggested in the tendency at that time to regard those fa­ miliar outcasts of society, the gypsies, with their "dirty and tattered garments, the dishevelled hair and general wild ap­ pearance"55 as typically Picturesque; and it is noteworthy how this new affirmation of gypsies as a subject for painting is matched in literature by a more or less sympathetic treat­ ment of them in the novels of Fielding, Scott, Emily Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell, and George Eliot. That a "wild appearance" could now be said to have a certain value in itself is, of course, just as indicative of the new aesthetic climate as are the ap­ preciative remarks on Dutch paintings. What Uvedale Price, Payne Knight, and others did for the Picturesque, Hogarth had already done to a considerable ex-

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL

tent earlier in the eighteenth century when in the face of an all-pervasive aesthetics of decorum, grandeur, and stylization he advocated what then seemed to be an offensive ideal of truth to nature; and so in a period when the Picturesque was emerging as an acceptable aesthetic criterion and when Dutch paintings were fast gaining recognition, it was hardly surprising that Hogarth should have aroused fresh interest, particularly amongst novelists of the realist school who, like Fielding and his contemporaries, made references here and there to his paintings in their literary portraits. That such paintings were both the essence and the inspiration of realism in art was, moreover, proved by the distaste the German Ro­ mantics had for them. A. W. Schlegel, for instance, regarded Hogarth as an archbungler in painting and deplored his hav­ ing perfected what he describes as the false and worthless genre of the caricature.56 (This disparagement, no doubt, helps to explain the relative aversion of German Romantic novelists for the world of reality.) Hogarth's importance for the nineteenth-century realists is further confirmed by the way in which other "caricatural" artists such as Rowlandson, Cruikshank, and Monnier were resorted to for purposes of characterization. Eugene Sue, for instance, mentions Monnier in the context of one of several literary portraits in Les Mysteres de Paris, and refers to him as the French Hogarth.57 Interesting, too, is Monnier's own awareness of the tendency of novelists to borrow the methods of painters whose style and manner corresponded to their particular visions of reality;58 and some critics have noted Monnier's influence on Balzac and Champfleury.59 Champfleury's passionate interest in the caricature led him to write books on the subject, in two of which he confesses to a weakness for English caricature and discusses Hogarth's significance for his own period.60 Not the least remarkable detail in Champfleury's study of the carica­ ture is his reference to the fact that Balzac spent a year work­ ing for a periodical entitled La Caricature (1830-35).61 This is, indeed, one instance amongst several showing the connection between caricature and fiction in the nineteenth century, a connection that was intimate enough in the case of Thack-

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

eray, who, as an accomplished cartoonist in his own right, contributed to Punch and illustrated a number of books, in­ cluding his own Vanity Fair. Charlotte Bronte was a great admirer of his sketches and thought them "preferable to thou­ sands of carefully finished paintings."62 Thackeray's skill as both novelist and caricaturist de­ pended, no doubt, partly on observation, for which he had an evident propensity, to judge by accounts of his habit of study­ ing people he was in company with and commenting on their faces.63 The idea of the novelist, particularly the realist novel­ ist, as observer was a relatively new one in the nineteenth century, and it appears to have been first set up as a criterion in Champfleury's Le Realisme (1857). Champfleury believed that observation was of paramount importance for the novel­ ist, and felt certain that such writers as Dickens, Thackeray, and Charlotte Bronte had been far less influenced by literary schools, systems, and dogmas than by what they had discov­ ered with their own eyes. Of particular interest is a section Champfleury has on characterization, in which, although giv­ ing Balzac, Hugo, and Sue some credit for their character portraits, he reserves his admiration for the now virtually forgotten French novelist Robert de Challes (1659-1728), whose simplicity of approach to characterization convinced Champfleury how mistaken his contemporaries had been in looking for new ways of depicting the human appearance. Observation, for Champfleury, was clearly not a matter of character description, but a matter of narrating the actions of the main character and presenting his moral development; and it is certain that he deplored the literary portrait of his day for its excesses, as we see by his remarks on the extent to which novelists borrow the language and methods of painters, physiologists, physiognomists, and so on.64 How far observa­ tion actually played its part in the nineteenth-century novel is a question that need not detain us here; but it is evident that, as Champfleury suggests, literary portraiture depended quite as much on techniques borrowed from the fine arts as on any other factors.

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL

The interest of Champfleury's remarks here lies not least in the reference to physiognomy, more especially since he was already familiar with Lavater's theories, just as he was, no doubt, conscious of the usefulness of the Fragmente for novel­ ists. Yet it would be doing less than justice to Lavater to limit his significance for literary portraiture merely to the question of physiognomical correlations, for there is much else in the Fragmente that already appears to have had a direct perti­ nence to our discussion hitherto, notably the affirmation of Rembrandt, Hogarth, the art of the caricature, and so on. Equally pertinent, too, is the way in which Lavater seems to postulate a close relationship between literature and the fine arts in his assertion that all good artists are physiognomists in the finest sense of the term. This is further suggested when Lavater declares that "physiognomy is a poetic feeling" and, elsewhere, that the true artist, whatever his medium, must needs have a flair for physiognomical homogeneity.65 Clearly, Lavater saw all artists as sharing a common task and was, in a sense, encouraging them to learn from one another and to borrow one another's methods. Moreover, much of the gen­ eral advice Lavater has to offer the physiognomist, particu­ larly on the necessity of developing one's powers of observa­ tion and of being true to nature, would seem to have had a direct bearing on Champfleury's idea of the novelist as ob­ server; indeed, the extent to which physiognomical observa­ tion became a fundamental theme in the nineteenth-century novel was quite extraordinary, as our later discussions will show. But whether or not novelists drew inspiration from Lavater's broader aesthetic principles, it is certain that they made good use of his basic physiognomical theories, and most noticeably so in the one literary device that has been most commonly associated with him: the composite portrait. Let us now consider this device in some detail, and its develop­ ment in the novel after 1800. THE FACT that the literary portrait was in Lavater's day not

merely a well-established device but sometimes even an es-

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

sentially physiognomical one, as in the novels of Marivaux and Diderot, is a useful reminder for us not to overestimate the importance of the Fragmente for characterization. Lavater himself was perfectly conversant with fictional charac­ ter description and may well have used the format of the lit­ erary portrait for his own analyses of engrayings. And yet when we consider these analyses, we note a concreteness of physiognomical detail seldom to be found in fiction before 1775. Let us illustrate this point by referring to two of Lavater's portrait analyses. The first is based on an engraving of the Swiss jurist Kleinjogg (figure 12): Ausnehmend gefallt mir auch das Kinn. So viel Mannlichkeit ohne Harte! so viel Verstand ohne Schlauigkeit! so nichts von Weichlichkeit und Verzartelung—Nur gewinnen, nicht verlieren kann Kleinjogg bey einem gesunden physiognomischen Auge! Alle Falten und Schattierungen seiner Backen geben seinem Gesetze den zusammenstimmenden Ausdruck der Gesetzheit, Massigkeit, Fertigkeit, Gemiithsruhe!66 The second analysis is based on a portrait of Socrates (figure 13): Das hohe geraumige Gewolbe dieser Stirn, die Scharfe der Augenknochen; die Anstrengung der Muskeln zwischen den Augenbraunen; der breite Rucken der Nase; das tiefe Auge; dies Aufsteigen des Augsterns unter dem Augdeckel—wie ist diess alles sprechend... .67 Ausnehmend... Gemuthsruhe: I particularly like the chin; it is so virile without being hard, so intelligent without being wily! Not a trace of weakness or effeminacy! Kleinjogg can only gain, not lose, when studied with a sound physiognomical eye. All the wrinkles and shaded parts of his cheeks lend his face a harmonious expression of staidness, sobriety, com­ petence, and serenity. Das hohe ... sprechend: The high spacious dome of the forehead, the angularity of the eye sockets; the tautness of the muscles between the eyebrows; the wide bridge of the nose; the profound eye; the way the iris looks up from beneath the eyelid—how all this speaks volumes....

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL

The difference between these two "anatomical" analyses and the most detailed literary portrait will be conspicuous enough to students of the nineteenth-century novel, and it confirms how much the development of the composite por­ trait was determined by literary conventions that preceded Lavaterian physiognomy. Nevertheless, as we saw earlier, the composite portrait did begin to take on something of the physiognomical quality of these two analyses in the English novel of the 1790s; and though the descriptive methods of the eighteenth century lived on in German Romantic fiction as well as the English epistolary novel, the pictorial methods of character description came to be gradually modified by an essentially physiognomical approach to portraiture. Thus we note a steady increase in the use of physiognomical correla­ tions as well as in comments on the efiFects of the inner life on the appearance; and alongside such terms as "contour," "symmetry," "physiognomy," "cut of features," we occasion­ ally find phrenological analyses, whether serious, as in George Sand and Charlotte Bronte, or humorous, as in Thackeray, Trollope, and Dickens. Interesting, too, is the way in which the somewhat Olympian methods of the narrator as a painter of portraits gives way more and more to the hesitant, tenta­ tive approach of the physiognomist intent on seeking out subtleties and nuances of facial expression. One aspect of this physiognomical approach is the revival of a tendency already seen in Marivaux and Diderot, namely, the comparison of a momentary expression with the permanent characteristics of a face. For example, in Bulwer Lytton's Pelham (1829) Mr. Gordon is described as follows: "The lines in the countenance were marked as if in iron, and had the face been perfectly composed, must have given to it a remarkably stern and sinis­ ter appearance, but at that moment there was an arch leer about the mouth, which softened, or at least altered, the ex­ pression the features habitually wore."68 Another aspect of this approach is the remarking on the harmony among an assortment of features, as though the nar­ rator were conscious of certain physiognomical laws. We see

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

Figure 12. Kleinjogg.

an instance of this in Balzac's description of the heroine of Eugenie Grandet: "Son nez etait un peu trop fort, mais il s'harmoniait avec une bouche dun rouge de minium, dont Ies levres a mille raies etaient pleines d'amour et de bonte."69 On Son nez ... bonte: Her nose was somewhat too prominent, but it har­ monized with her minium-red mouth, whose numerous little furrows were full of lovingkindness.

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL

Figure 13. Socrates.

the other hand, a face may be interesting to the narrator for its contrasts or incongruities, as we note in the portrait of Judge Pyncheon in The House of the Seven Gables (1851): His dark, square countenance, with its almost shaggy depths of eyebrows, was naturally impressive, and would, perhaps, have been rather stern, had not the gen-

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

tleman considerately taken upon himself to mitigate the harsh effect by a look of exceeding good-humour and be­ nevolence. Owing, however, to a somewhat massive ac­ cumulation of animal substance above the lower region of his face, the look was perhaps unctuous, rather than spiritual, and had, so to speak, a kind of fleshy efful­ gence, not altogether so satisfactory as he doubtless in­ tended it to be.70 But perhaps the most important development in the postLavaterian portrait is the tendency to describe characters not from the viewpoint of a first- or third-person narrator alone, as is common in the novel before 1800, but from the double viewpoint of both narrator and an observing character, a pro­ cedure that undoubtedly lends the portrait a certain dramatic interest, especially if the narrator has already said that the observing character's attention has been aroused by the ap­ pearance of the person about to be described. This method is used in Heinrich υοη Ofterdingen (1800) in the description of the poet Klingsohr as seen by the hero, and that to some ad­ vantage, since Klingsohr is to play the most important part in Heinrich's poetic development. We also note how, once a character's visual interest is said to have been aroused, the description is presented as though he or she has managed to get close enough to the character being observed to examine his appearance in detail. A typical example of this is seen in The Heart of Midlothian (1818) when George Staunton is de­ scribed from Reuben Butler's viewpoint: "Butler had an op­ portunity of accurately studying his features as they advanced slowly to meet each other."71 The phrase "accurately study­ ing his features" reminds us of many other nineteenth-cen­ tury portraits in which the observing character is presented as literally "examining," "surveying," "scrutinizing," or "scan­ ning" the appearance of the character being described. Sig­ nificant, too, is the way in which the physiognomical quality of a portrait is brought out by a reference to the observing

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL

character as a connoisseur of faces. For example, in Charles Brockden Brown's Ormond (1811), a novel swamped with physiognomical analyses, a long description is interrupted thus: A less sagacious observer would have eyed the stranger with indifference; but Constance was ever intent on in­ terpreting the language of features and looks.... She delighted to investigate the human countenance, and treasured up numberless conclusions as to the connec­ tion between mental and external qualities.72 There are also portraits in which, for want of an observing character, the narrator imagines how "a susceptible ob­ server," "the beholder," "connoisseurs," "an equitable judge of beauty," and the like might react to a given feature or set of features. We find instances of this in the portrait of the her­ oine of Eugenie Grandet and in that of Mr. Gordon in Pelham. In some of his portraits Bulwer Lytton even mentions Lavater's name in the context of a particular physiognomical idea, as we see, for example, in the portrait of Alain de Kerouec at the beginning of The Parisians (1872). Thus, having already given a detailed description of the young Frenchman ("the purest type of French masculine beauty"), whose facial features are each as fine as could be desired, the narrator notes that the lips are compressed "as if smiles had of late been unfamiliar to them; yet such expression did not seem in harmony with the physiognomical character of their formation, which was that assigned by Lavater to tempera­ ments easily moved to gayety and pleasure."73 Dickens, too, quotes Lavater in Our Mutual Friend (1865) when, in one of a series of comical descriptions that accompany the eccentric Mrs. Boffin throughout the novel, he brings out the unusual nature of the latter's face by referring to her as one "to whose countenance no disciple of Lavater could possibly sub­ scribe."74 Ironic as is the latter reference to Lavater, it none the less

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

typifies a tendency amongst novelists of this period to declare that a character's face would be a matter of interest or aston­ ishment to physiognomists. One of the earliest such refer­ ences is to be found, significantly enough, in Walter Bage's Man as He Is (1793) when the narrator remarks how a man looks out of place amidst a group of prisoners on account of his "agreeable (though sickly and puisne) face" and his eyes, which "indicated intelligence and a tout ensemble capable of interesting a profound physiognomist in so small degree."75 A similar reference occurs in Susan Ferrier's Marriage (1810): "In short, Miss Jacky was all over sense. A skilful physiogno­ mist would, at a single glance, have detected the sensible woman in the erect head, the compressed lips, square elbows, and firm, judicious step."76 Scott's narrators, too, refer now and then to physiognomists in much the same way. Here, for example, is part of a description of Rashleigh in Rob Roy (1817): "But there was in these eyes an expression of art and design, and, in provocation, a ferocity tempered by caution, which nature made quite obvious to the most ordinary phys­ iognomist, perhaps with the same intention that she has given the rattle to the poisonous snake."77 Again, in Ivanhoe (1820) Scott describes Rowena as follows: "Her disposition was natu­ rally that which physiognomists consider as proper to fair complexions—mild, timid and gentle: but it had been tem­ pered, and, as it were, hardened by the circumstances of her education."78 Finally, in Waverley (1814), Fergus the Chief­ tain is presented thus: "An air of openness and affability in­ creased the favourable impression derived from this hand­ some and dignified exterior. Yet a skilful physiognomist would have been less satisfied with the countenance on the second than on the first view."79 In Captain Marryat's Frank Mildmay (1833) the narrator, like most of the author's narrators, has a keen eye for facial appearances and even confesses to some skill in physiognomy as he describes Captain G's hand­ some, piercing eye in which he finds "a lurking expression, which, though something of a physiognomist, [he] could not easily decipher."80 In Harrison Ainsworth's Jack Sheppard

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL

(1839) the narrator describes a character called Jonathan thus: "His eyes were small and grey: as far apart and as slylooking as those of a fox. A physiognomist, indeed, would have likened them to that crafty animal, and it must be owned the general formation of his features favoured such a comparison."81 Champfleury, in La Succession Ie Camus (1858), describes a wood-merchant as follows: "... grand, fort, Ies epaules carrees, d'epais favoris noirs, Ie marchand de bois aurait deroute tous Ies physionomistes qui n'auraient pu reconnaitre pour son frere Ie pauvre simple, sans cheveux, sans barbe et sans sourcils."82 The American novelist Maria Mcintosh depicts the hero of her Charms and CounterCharms (1864) as follows: "The physiognomist declared that the secret of his power lay in his dark and deep-set eye, and in the firmly-compressed lips, which told of an indomitable will. The phrenologist placed it in the contour of his head, with his broad high forehead."83 Victor Hugo, too, is fully conscious of physiognomical the­ ory in two character descriptions which, it is worth noting, are separated from each other by almost forty years. Here, for instance, is a passage from Han d'Islande (1823): "A cote d'elle se tenait debout un jeune homme d'assez fiere mine, quoique un peu vaine et bravache, un de ces beaux gargons dont toutes Ies femmes tombent d'accord, bien que Ies hommes graves et physionomistes en haussent Ies epaules."84 The other passage, from Les Miserables (1862), may be re­ garded as an extreme expression of the influence of physiog­ nomical theory on character description, just as it is probably one of the last of its kind in nineteenth-century fiction: grand ... sourcils: tall, strong, with square shoulders and thick, dark side whiskers, this wood-merchant would have baffled all the physiogno­ mists because they would have failed to recognize his brother as that poor, bald, beardless, eyebrowless simpleton. A cote ... epaules: Next to her stood a young man with a haughty, if somewhat conceited, look on his face—one of those handsome fellows that all women fall for, even though serious-minded people and physiognomists shrug their shoulders.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

Un physionomiste, qui eut ete familier avec la nature de Javert, qui eut etudie depuis longtemps ce sauvage au service de Ia civilisation, ce compose bizarre du roman de Spartiate, du moine et du caporal, cet espion incapa­ ble d'un mensonge, ce mouchard vierge, un physiono­ miste qui eut su sa secrete et ancienne aversion pour M. Madeleine, son conflit avec Ie maire au sujet de la Fantine, et qui eut considere Javert en ce moment, se fut dit: que s'est-il passe? Il etait evident pour qui eut connu cette conscience droite, claire, sincere, probe, austere et feroce que Javert sortait de quelque grand evenement interieur. Javert n'avait rien dans l'ame qu'il ne l'eut aussi sur Ie visage. Il etait, comme Ies gens violents, sujet aux revirements brusques. Jamais sa physionomie n'avait ete plus etrange et plus inattendue.85 With Hugo, as with other minor nineteenth-century novel­ ists—Sue, Spielhagen, Bulwer Lytton—the literary portrait becomes a veritable tour de force, existing more or less in its own right, rather like a portrait in the French heroic ro­ mance, but otherwise possessing little of that structural inter­ est we find in literary portraits drawn by the major novelists. Let us now consider a handful of such portraits in detail, both for their structural or poetic significance and for that blend of the physiognomical and the literary we so often find Un physionomiste . . . inattendue: Any physiognomist who was familiar with Javert's character, who had long since studied this savage in the ser­ vice of civilization, this curious fictional compound of Spartan, monk, and corporal, this spy incapable of telling lies, this virginal police-spy—any physiognomist who had known of his secret and long-standing aversion for Monsieur Madeleine and who had studied Javert at that moment would have asked himself: "What has happened?" It was evident to anyone fa­ miliar with this upright, clean, sincere, honest, ascetic, and fierce man of conscience that Javert was just emerging from some inner drama. Javert had nothing in his inner self that was not expressed in his face. Like most violent people, he was subject to sudden changes of mood. Never before had his physiognomy been so strange, so unusual.

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL

in composite portraits of this period. Our first example is taken from Charlotte Bronte's Villette (1853): When attired Madame Beck appeared a personage of a figure rather short and stout, yet still graceful in its own peculiar way; that is, with the grace resulting from pro­ portion of parts. Her complexion was fresh and sanguine, not too rubicund; her eye, blue and serene; her dark silk dress fitted her as a French seamstress alone can make a dress fit; she looked well, though a little bourgeoisie; as bourgeoisie, indeed, she was. I know not what of har­ mony pervaded her whole person; and yet her face of­ fered contrast, too; its features were by no means such as are usually seen in conjunction with a complexion of such blended freshness and repose: their outline was stern: her forehead was high but narrow; it expressed ca­ pacity and some benevolence, but no expanse; nor did her peaceful yet watchful eye ever know the fire which is kindled in the heart or the softness which flows there. Her mouth was hard: it could be a little grim; her lips were thin. For sensibility and genius, I felt somehow that Madame would be the right sort of Minos in petticoats.86 It is evident that the subject of this description has been ob­ served several times already, though the presentation of the description is such as to suggest that Madame Beck is being analyzed in much the same way as a portrait painting might be analyzed. Thus we note how, after taking in a few essential details of the facial and bodily appearance, the narrator's eye returns to the face and, by concentrating on particular fea­ tures in it, comes to discover its essential hardness. The phys­ iognomical intention of the portrait is plain enough, and there is much to indicate that the narrator is familiar with physiognomical theory: the use of such terms as "outline" and "proportion of parts," the social categorizing of the general appearance, and the moral interpretation of the forehead, the eyes, and the mouth. Significant, too, is the reference to the

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

relationship between the features and the complexion, for it suggests that the narrator is something of a habitual observer, not to say a connoisseur, of faces. This is again apparent in the tentative approach to the analysis, as seen in the quest for nu­ ances and the concern with harmony and contrasts, as though, despite ambiguous feelings toward her subject, the narrator was anxious, like a good physiognomist, to be as ob­ jective as possible. The remarkable thing about this portrait is not merely that it serves a distinctly structural function in foreshadowing the curious incongruities of Madame Beck's character, but that it implies how easily a less sensitive ob­ server might be deceived by what is superficially a favorable appearance. Another inveterate observer and analyzer of the the human appearance is Julien, the hero of Le Rouge et Ie Noir (1830). In one episode he is asked by the abbe Pirard to deliver to the bishop of Besangon a letter giving reasons why he (Pirard) is resigning his post as director of the seminary. In the absence of the bishop, however, the letter is intercepted by Pirard's archenemy, the powerful and scheming abbe de Frilair, who, ironically enough, has been endeavoring to have Pirard re­ moved from his post. Julien, who is already distressed at the thought of the latter's resignation, is not yet aware that Fri­ lair is partly responsible for Pirard's unhappy decision; hence he is astonished not a little when Frilair, whom he now sees for the first time, boldly opens the letter. The narrative then continues as follows: La belle figure du grand vicaire exprima bientot une sur­ prise melee de vif plaisir, et redoubla de gravite. PenLa belle ... pretre: The vicar-general's handsome face soon expressed a mixture of surprise and keen satisfaction, and then began to assume a dou­ bly solemn look. While he was reading [the letter], Julien, who had been impressed by his favorable appearance, took time to analyze it. It was a face that might have had more gravity in it were it not for the extreme delicacy of certain features, and had the possessor of this fine face ceased for a moment being self-conscious. The very prominent nose described a single, perfectly straight line, giving the rather distinguished face an un-

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL

dant qu'il lisait, Julien, frappe de sa bonne mine, eut Ie temps de l'examiner. Cette figure eut eu plus de gravite sans la finesse extreme qui apparaissait dans certains traits, et qui fut allee jusqu'a denoter la faussete, si Ie possesseur de ce beau visage eut cesse un instant de s'en occuper. Le nez, tres avance, formait une seule ligne parfaitement droite, et donnait, par malheur, a un profil, fort distingue d'ailleurs, une ressemblance irremediable avec la physionomie d'un renard. Du reste, cet abbe, qui paraissait si occupe de la demission de M. Pirard, etait mis avec une elegance qui plut beaucoup a Julien et qu'il n'avait jamais vue a aucun pretre.87 Here we have a typical nineteenth-century composite por­ trait, with the description being given by an omniscient nar­ rator, but presented essentially from the viewpoint of an ob­ serving character. It may, however, be objected that it is not always possible to distinguish the narrator from the character, even though, as we shall see in a later chapter, Julien is capa­ ble of the most subtle analysis to be found here. The descrip­ tion is much less a portrait than a physiognomical analysis, as is evident from the fact that the hero is presented as literally having time to examine a face, from the very analysis of the nose, with the reference to "ligne" and "profil," and from the use of an animal comparison. Particularly interesting is the judgment in the third sentence, for in the way it con­ trasts the face as it is at that moment with what it is poten­ tially, it gives some insight into Frilair's character as a ruth­ lessly ambitious and vain man, with a born actor's gift for keeping up appearances. But at the same time as Julien per­ ceives the real man beneath the favorable appearance, he seems to be none the less taken with the abbe's good looks and worldly elegance; and this tension between subjective feelfortunate but unmistakable resemblance to a fox. Moreover, this priest, who appeared much taken up with Monsieur Pirard's resignation, was dressed with an elegance which appealed to Julien and which he had never seen in any priest before.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

ings and objective appraisal lends the portrait a certain struc­ tural interest in as much as it partly reflects the perpetual conflict in the hero's breast between envy and ambition, on the one hand, and good sense and perspicacity, on the other. In Tieck's historical novel Vittoria Accorombona (1840), which tells the story of the downfall of an aristocratic family in Renaissance Italy through political ambition and intrigue, the narrator describes an old friend of the Accoromboni fam­ ily as he makes his first appearance in the novel: Cesare Caporale war eine jener hohen schlanken Gestalten, die durch den Ausdruck harmloser Giitigkeit die Hasslichkeit ihres Gesichtes vergessen machen konnen. Sein Anstand und die Gebarde war edel, und man sah ihm an, dass er viel in der grossen Welt gelebt hatte. Die kleine, zuriickgekriimmte Nase in dem Iangen gebraunten Gesicht, die vielen Falten, gaben ihm neben dem fast Geringen und Possierlichen den Anschein eines hoheren Alters, als er wirklich erreicht hatte, denn er war noch nicht funfzig Jahr. Seine grauen, kleinen und lebhaften Augen verriethen den Schalk, denn sie begleiteten jedes seiner Worte mit so geistreichem Ausdruck, dass viele seiner Ausdriicke von seinem Munde witzig schienen, die man oft als Rede eines andern fiir unbedeutend wurde gehalten haben.88 This portrait suggests that the narrator is certainly an ob­ server of men, and, like Lavater's ideal physiognomist, one who tries to look for positive qualities in appearances not alCesare. .. haben: Cesare Caporale was one of those tall, slender people who, thanks to an expression of innocence and good nature, can make you overlook the ugliness of their faces. His manner and gestures were aristo­ cratic, and you could tell that he was a man of the world. His small hooked nose in his long, tanned, and very wrinkled face, taken together with his droll, unprepossessing characteristics, made him look older than he really was, for he was not yet fifty. His small, gray, lively eyes bespoke the man of wit, for they accompanied everything he said with such a sparkling ex­ pression that many of his utterances seemed witty that would have been thought insignificant if made by others.

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL

together prepossessing. The narrator's physiognomical dispo­ sition is especially conspicuous in the last two sentences, which suggest that he has arrived at certain conclusions through repeated and detailed observation. It is interesting to note the narrator's choice of physiognomical features. Thus he senses Caporale's worldly experience and social back­ ground, appropriately enough, in his manner, bearing, and gestures, whilst discovering the essential man in permanent features such as the nose and the eyes. But the eyes, above all, bespeak Caporale's character, and their physiognomical sig­ nificance is underlined by the suggestion that, but for them, their possessor's forceful personality would be diminished. In a few strokes, then, Tieck manages to convey the essence of a minor character by purely physiognomical means. At the same time the portrait is not without a certain structural in­ terest, for, apart from foreshadowing Caporale's role in the novel, it enables us to see what it is about him that makes him such a welcome guest in the Accoromboni household. Let us now turn to Fromentin's Dominique (1862) for a de­ scription of the heroine on her return from a summer holiday in the mountains: Elle avait bruni. Son teint, ranime par un hale leger, rapportait de ses courses en plein air comme un reflet de E l l e . . . g r a n d i o s e : She had gone brown. Her complexion, now revita­ lized by a slight tan, had assumed a kind of gilded glow as a result of her rambles in the open air. Her glance was more lively, her face thinner, and her eyes had the expressive look of someone who has lived to the full and contemplated wide horizons. Her voice, which had a soothing timbre ap­ propriate for the utterance of tender words, had taken on a kind of un­ wonted richness of tone which made her sound more mature. Her gait had improved, it was more jaunty; and her foot had become more slender, thanks to long walks along rugged paths. Her entire person had, so to speak, diminished in volume in taking on firmer, more precise qualities, and her traveling attire, which suited her wonderfully, put the finishing touches to this fine, vigorous metamorphosis. It was a beautiful Madeleine beautified and transformed by independence, by pleasure, by the exercise of all her powers, by contact with more active elements, by the sight of grandiose nature.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

chaleur qui Ie dorait. Elle avait Ie regard plus rapide avec Ie visage un peu plus maigre, Ies yeux comme elargis d'une vie tres-remplie et par l'habitude d'embrasser de grands horizons. Sa voix, toujours caressante et timbree pour l'expression des mots tendres, avait acquis je ne sais quelle plenitude nouvelle qui Iui donnait des accents plus murs. Elle marchait mieux, d'une fagon plus libre; son pied lui-meme s'etait aminci en s'exergant a de longues courses dans Ies sentiers difficiles. Toute sa personne avait pour ainsi dire diminue de volume en prenant des caracteres plus fermes et plus precis, et ses habits de voyage, qu'elle portait a merveille, achevaient cette fine et robuste metamorphose. C'etait Madeleine embellie, transformee par l'independance, par Ie plaisir, par Ies mille accidents d'une existence imprevue, par l'exercice de toutes ses forces, par Ie contact avec des elements plus actifs, par Ie spectacle d'une nature grandiose.89 The reader cannot help being struck by the utterly physiog­ nomical quality of this description; and to the extent that it is concerned exclusively with inner development as reflected in the outward appearance it might aptly be called Lavaterian, all the more as portraits of this kind are seldom to be found in the novel before 1800. This is, in fact, one of several physical descriptions of Madeleine, and its physiognomical interest for us depends partly on our remembering the previous descrip­ tion of her as a pale, awkward schoolgirl just out of a convent. It is a highly sensitive analysis, based on repeated observa­ tion; and in the references to the subject's face, voice, gait, and, above all, the eyes, the narrator succeeds in conveying a delightful impression of moral and spiritual well-being as well as of emerging womanhood. The descriptive methods applied here are largely tentative, not to say impressionistic, as though the narrator wishes to stress both the subtleties of the physiognomical transformation as well as the subjectivity of his reactions to them; and in the increasingly lyrical tone of the description we are reminded of Lavater's idea of physiog-

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL

nomical analysis as being an essentially poetic activity. It is also interesting to note how much the structural interest of the portrait derives from its physiognomical character in that the narrator's markedly contemplative attitude here to the girl he is in love with somehow ironically enhances that psy­ chological distance which tragically separates them, and will continue to do so. In Gotthelf s Geld und Geist (1843-44) there is an episode in which Resli meets Anne Mareili secretly at a country inn. The reason for the secrecy is due partly to the failure of Resli's family to establish good relations with Anne Mareili's family and partly to the intention of Anne Mareili's father, the Domgriitbauer, to marry her off to a rich old farmer. When the girl eventually turns up for the rendezvous, Resli can hardly recognize her at first because she is "mehr angezogen wie eine mittelmassige Jumpfere und nicht wie eine reiche Bauerntochter." Nevertheless, he finds that her dowdy clothes do not lessen her attractiveness; and as he sits oppo­ site her at a table in the inn, he has a further opportunity to observe her and to confirm his first, favorable impression: Resli hatte immer grossere Freude an dem Madchen, je mehr er es ansah, es war trotz seiner geringen Kleidung mehr... Bauerntochter: dressed more like a dowdy spinster than a rich farmer's daughter. Resli... konnte: The more Resli looked at the girl, the more he enjoyed looking at her. She was, despite her poor clothing, so clean and neat, so polite and well-spoken, and yet without in any way being prim or insin­ cere. She ate and drank unaffectedly, and only as much as she needed, doing so in such an appetizing way that it gave you an appetite just to watch her. She didn't stick out her fingers, particularly her little fingers, in all directions, just as she didn't pick up the meat with her hands or stuff her mouth with large pieces of cake and thus plaster her face all over with crumbs. On the contrary, she did everything so nicely, ate off the bone very gracefully, which is saying a good deal. Resli could have spent all day watching her eat. She seemed to remind him more and more of his mother, and yet he could not say in what way: it wasn't any one thing in particu­ lar, it was her whole manner. That is why it struck him more and more as odd that she should come from such a family as hers.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

so sauber und nett, redete so gesetzt, manierlich und doch ohne Zimpferlichkeit, sondern in aller Aufrichtigkeit. Es ass und trank ohne Ziererei, soviel es notig hatte, aber dabei so sauberlich irnd appetitlich, dass man selbst Appetit bekam darob ... es streckte die Finger, namentIich die kleinen, nicht nach alien vier Winden aus, nahm ebensowenig das Fleisch in die ganze Hand, fuhr auch nicht so grosse Stiicke Kuehen ein, dass es das Gesieht iiber und viber mit Brosmen bepflasterte, es machte alles so nett ab, gnagte sogar Beine mit Manier, was viel heisst. Resli hatte ihm den ganzen Tag mogen essen sehen ... es schien ihm immer mehr, es hatte etwas von seiner Mutter, und er konnte doch nicht sagen was, es war nicht hier, es war nicht dort, es war in der ganzen Art. Es ward ihm immer auffallender, wie das Meitschi in diesem Hause so werden konnte... .90 Like the portrait of Madeleine just discussed, this one re­ minds us of a statement of Lavater's in the Fragmente: "Alles ausser uns wirkt auf uns, und wir wirken auf alles. Aber nichts wirkt auf uns wir das, was wir lieben—und unter alien Geliebten nichts, wie das Angesicht eines Mensehen."91 The same contemplative approach is also to be noted here; but whereas Madeleine is unaware of Dominique's loving gaze, Anne Mareili is fully conscious of Resli's. The physiognomical interest of the portrait derives almost entirely from the way in which the subject's peculiar charm is conveyed by her manner, gestures, and movements while she is eating: Resli's analytical eye misses nothing, not even the way her fin­ gers move. In this connection, another remark by Lavater is worth quoting here: "Oft entscheiden Kleinigkeiten fiir den Alles. . . Menschen: Everything outside ourselves has an influence on us, just as we have an influence on everything around us. But nothing has quite such an influence on us as what we love, and of all things beloved nothing has a greater influence on us than a person's face. O f t . . . z u r i i c k k e h r t : It is often the trifles that betray character. One such trifle for me is the way in which a teacup is picked up, held, and then put back in its saucer.

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL

Charakter des Menschen. Eine fiir mich entscheidende Kleinigkeit dieser Art ist die Weise, wie eine Theeschale in die Hand kommt, darinn sich halt, und daher wieder an ihren Ort zuriickkehrt."92 The tentative quality of the final sentence is, of course, typical of the nineteenth-century portrait; and though the idea of Anne Mareili's resemblance to Resli's mother seems to contradict what Lavater has to say about family physiognomies, it serves to underline the subjectivity of the lover's reactions as well as the peculiar appeal of the beloved, not to say her individuality. This portrait gives us a good idea of some of the new directions taken by novelists during this period, albeit at the expense of purely pictorial details; but as an example of sensitive, realistic physiognomi­ cal analysis it has few peers in literary portraiture. The physiognomical interest of the nineteenth-century composite portrait is further evident when it constitutes a de­ scription of two or more fictional characters; this type of por­ trait is, in fact, practically an innovation in the novel after 1800, illustrating as it does an important aspect of the phys­ iognomist's business: the comparative analysis. In general, the analysis has to do with contrasting appearances. For example, in Problematische Naturen, when Oswald Stein describes his first impression of the two boys, whom he is to tutor at the Schloss Grenwitz, as they lie asleep in their beds, he writes: "... in dem Bette unter der silbernen Uhr ein Knabe, der wohl um ein Jahr alter sein mochte, als der erste, aber mindestens um drei Jahre alter aussah und iiberhaupt mit jenem den sonderbarsten Contrast bildete." (Incidentally, Oswald chooses an ideal moment for physiognomical analysis, as rec­ ommended by Lavater himself.) Oswald also begins his long double portrait of the Baroness Grenwitz and Melitta Berkow as follows: "Ein grosserer Gegensatz war nicht leicht denkbar."93 In some cases, a description of contrasting appearin dem Bette ... bildete: in the bed below the silver clock lay a boy who might have been a year older than the other, but who looked at least three years older and formed the most curious contrast with him. E i n . . . d e n k b a r : A greater contrast you could hardly imagine.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

ances becomes a means of symbolizing rivalry or conflict. Scott, for example, uses this procedure in the first chapter of The Talisman (1825) in his joint portrait of the Christian and the Saracen.94 And when Trollope in Doctor Thome (1858) emphasizes the handsomeness of Frank Gresham by deliber­ ately contrasting it with the dissipated appearance of the un­ fortunate Louis Philippe,95 he leaves the reader in no doubt as to which of the two will be the successful rival for the hand of Mary Thorne. The same device is also used by Gotthelf in Geld und Geist when he contrasts the heroine Anneli (Resli's mother) with the Domgriitbauer s wife. Typically, the de­ scription begins as follows: "Uberhaupt bildeten die beiden Weiber einen grossen Gegensatz, so wie eine schone gelbe Ankenballe mit einer ungelaufenen Kaffeekanne."96 The de­ lightful humor of these contrasting similes prepares the way for a description which admirably brings out the glaring dif­ ferences between the two women. Yet, as with most of GotthelFs character descriptions, the portrait possesses a dis­ tinct structural function in that it underlines the theme of psychological conflict running through the novel and adum­ brates the eventual resolution of the conflict through the ma­ turity of Anneli's conduct. That contrasting appearances tend to signify incompatibility of temperaments is again suggested in Freytag's Soil und Haben, when Anton compares the vale­ tudinarian Bernhard Ehrenthal with the aristocratically healthy Fink, whom he has just introduced to the latter. "Kein grosserer Gegensatz war moglich, als ihr Wesen. Die magere durchsichtige Hand Bernhards und der kraftige Uberhaupt... Kaffeekanne: The two women were as diametrically op­ posite to each other as a lovely yellow butter-ball and a rough-cast coffee­ pot. Kein ... zusammen: There could be no greater contrast than between their physical selves: Bernhard's thin, transparent hand and the healthy flesh-tint of Fink's muscles, the subdued manner of the one and the buoy­ ant strength of the other, the former's lined face and dreamy eyes, the let­ ter's proud features and eagle eyes—they looked an ill-assorted pair.

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL

Fleischton in den Muskeln Finks, die gedriickte Haltung des Einen, die elastische Kraft des Andern, dort ein faltiges Gesicht mit traumerischen Augen, hier stolze Ziige und einen Blick, der dem eines Adlers glich, das passte nimmermehr zusammen."97 Even so, as the novel later shows, opposites can often get on well together. Another innovation made during this period was the family portrait, in which the use of hereditary features and family re­ semblances has an obvious bearing on what Lavater has to say on such questions in the Fragmente. Trollope uses this type of portrait in Doctor Thome when he wishes to emphasize the family traditions of the Greshams and the De Courcys through descriptions of their characteristic facial features.98 Again, in Cranford (1853) Captain Brown and his daughters are first introduced in a joint portrait, whereby the father and younger daughter Jessie are physiognomically compared with the elder Miss Brown. Thus the "sickly, pained, careworn ex­ pression" on the latter's face contrasts sharply with Captain Brown's "elastic figure" and "springy step" and Jessie Brown's "large blue wondering eyes"; and the contrast is in­ tensified in the reference that Jessie "had something of her fa­ ther's jauntiness of gait and manner."99 But the particular aes­ thetic interest of this portrait lies in the way it underlines a central theme of the novel, namely, the contrast between, on the one hand, vitality and optimism and, on the other, the fear of life. Finally, in Der Nachsommer (1857) the hero Heinrich Drendorf draws a portrait of the family of four who come to dinner one evening at the Rosenhaus, beginning with the sentence "Ich betrachtete wahrend der Zeit des Essens und nachher, da wir uns noch eine Weile in dem Speisezimmer aufhielten, sogar auch die Schonheit der Madchen." In this description the two daughters, Julia and Apollonia, are compared in their coloring and the moral expression of their features; and, as in Cranford!, we find a reference to herediI c h . . . Madchen: I also gazed at the beauty of the two girls, both during the meal, and afterward as we stood for a while in the dining room.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

tary resemblances when Heinrich remarks on Apollonia's eyes: "Diese Augen schienen von dem Vater zu kommen, der sie auch blau hatte, wahrend die der Mutter braun waren."100 Another interesting aspect of literary portraiture during this period, if one not altogether unprecedented, is the way in which novelists sometimes describe a crowd or a group of people less as a collection of separate individuals than as a physiognomical homogeneity—an approach which is some­ what similar to Lavater's own analyses of collective portraits. Let us consider the description of the Cruchots in Eugenie Grandet: Il y avait en eux une parfaite entente de mauvaise grace et de senilite. Leurs figures, aussi fletries que l'etaient leurs habits rapes, aussi plissees que leurs pantalons, semblaient usees, racornies et grimagaient. La negli­ gence generale des autres costumes, tres incomplets, sans fraicheur, comme Ie sont Ies toilettes de province, ou Ton arrive insensiblement a ne plus s'habiller Ies uns pour Ies autres, et a prendre garde au prix d'une paire de gants, s'accordait avec l'insouciance des Cruchot.101 The idea that members of the same social class should share certain physical characteristics in much the same way as, for example, those who belong to the same family, the same pro­ fession, or the same nation is, of course, very Lavaterian. Bal­ zac certainly acknowledges this idea in many of his novels; so, too, do other French realists of this period, especially when they wish to draw an ironic contrast between the bourgeoisie Diese ... waren: Apollonia seemed to have inherited her father's blue eyes, whereas her mother's eyes were brown. Il y avait... Cruchot: You could see in them a perfect blend of gaucherie and senility. Their faces, which were as withered as their shabby clothes, and as creased as their trousers, looked jaded, shriveled and full of grimaces. The general neglect of their other clothes, which were very drab and ill-matching, as clothes usually are in provincial France, where you gradually reach the stage of no longer dressing to please, or of fussing about the price of a pair of gloves—this neglect was of a piece with the Cruchots' complacency.

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL

and the aristocracy. Champfleury, for example, tends to pre­ sent the bourgeoisie as a physiognomically homogeneous group in his novel Les Bourgeois de Molinchart (1855) and to distinguish them sharply from the aristocrats.102 The same is true of Flaubert in Madame Bovary, and never more effec­ tively so than in the description of the aristocrats at the Vaubyessard ball, who are seen through the eyes of the bourgeois heroine: lis avaient Ie teint de la richesse, ce teint blanc que rehaussent la paleur des porcelaines, Ies moires du satin, Ie vernis des beaux meubles, et qu'entretient dans sa sante un regime discret de nourritures exquises. Leur cou tournait a l'aise sur des cravates basses; leurs favoris longs tombaient sur des cols rabattus; ils s'essuyaient Ies levres a des mouchoirs brodes d'un large chiffre, d'ou sortait une odeur suave. Ceux qui commengaient a vieilIir avaient l'air jeune, tandis que quelque chose de mur s'etendait sur Ie visage des jeunes. Dans leurs regards indifferents flottait la quietude de passions journellement assouvies; et a travers leurs manieres douces pergait cette brutalite particuliere que communique la domina­ tion de choses a demi faciles, dans lesquelles la force s'exerce et ou la vanite s'amuse, Ie maniement des chevaux de race et la societe des femmes perdues.103 l i s . . . perdues: They each had the complexion of the well-to-do, that white complexion which is set off by the pallor of porcelain, by shimmer­ ing silk, by the varnish on fine furniture—a complexion whose glow is maintained by a choice diet of exquisite food. Their necks moved freely on low cravats; their long side-whiskers fell on turned-down collars; and the handkerchiefs they wiped their lips with were monogrammed and gave off a delicate fragrance. Those who were getting on in years looked young, while there was something mature about the faces of the young men. Their nonchalant facial expressions reflected the calm which comes from having your passions gratified daily: and through their genteel manners you could sense that peculiar brutality which comes from having fairly easy tasks to accomplish, whereby one can display strength and flatter vanity, whether it be in handling thoroughbred horses or consorting with fallen women.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

Few descriptions could more physiognomically convey the self-confidence and complacency of the nineteenth-century French aristocracy than this one. Its particular effect is also derived from our knowledge that Emma is highly envious of these aristocrats for their solidarity and at the same time con­ scious of the unbridgeable social gulf that separates her from them. The group or collective portrait was an important ex­ tension of the traditional literary portrait. But whatever its function—dramatic, lyrical, social, or symbolic—the fact that it is very rare in the novel before 1800, and much less common after 1860, would again seem to suggest the influ­ ence of Lavaterian physiognomy. THE COMPOSITE PORTRAIT is, then, by virtue of being the most

prominent aspect of character description, an appropriate starting point for a discussion of physiognomy in the nine­ teenth-century novel. No literary device was more popular during this period than the composite portrait, to the extent that some critics were actually disappointed if a novelist was uninterested in descriptions.104 On the other hand, there were those who objected to descriptions of all kinds, whether of people or landscapes or objects. Champfleury's quarrel with his contemporaries for borrowing too often from painters, physiognomists, and physiologists has already been noted; yet his criticism has little of the vitriolic tone of EichendorfFs at­ tack on the nineteenth-century composite portrait for its undue length, its excessive detail, its physiognomical deter­ minism, and its failure to allow scope for the imagination and the mystical sentiments. Let us quote his words: Welche langweilig breite Expositionen! Der innere Mensch wird anstatt aller gottlichen Fiigung und LeiWelche .. . Tier: What tediously long expositions! The inner man, in­ stead of being under Divine Providence and guidance is mathematically constructed and explained by mere absurdities and chance circumstances which are supposed to have been determined at birth, during one's educa­ tion and so on. Thus, from a childhood accident you have a crooked nose, and from a crooked nose a crooked character. This pragmatic superstition

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL

tung aus lauter Lappalien und zufalligen Umstanden, die sich bei seiner Geburt, Erziehung u.s.w. massgebend ereignet haben sollen, mathematisch konstruiert und erklart: aus dem Fall des Kindes eine schiefe Nase, aus der schiefen Nase ein schiefer Charakter. Dieser pragmatische Aberglaube ist ohne Zweifel der niichternste Fatalismus und fiihrt von selbst auf das Dogma von der sklavischen Nachahmung der Natur. Solch Daguerreotyp-Portrat gibt freilich jedes Harchen und jede Warze wider, aber das materielle Licht erkennt eben nur der Leichnam: der geistige Lichtblick des Kiinstlers kann erst das Wunderbare im Menschen, die Seele, befreien und sichtbar machen. Und eben weil die Phantasie ganz in den Hintergrund gedrangt und der Sinn von allem Mystischem und Wunderbaren abgewendet ist, so glitt die Poesie in naturlich wachsender Schwerkraft immer mehr vom Sein zum Schein, von der Religion zur Moral, von der Moral zum blossen Anstand und von dem stets biegsamen und zweideutigen Anstande zum asthetischen Materialismus, der in endlich errungener Freiheit mit den Liisten spielt wie das Tier.105 EichendorlFs principal targets here were the German histori­ cal novelists Van der Velde, Trommlitz, and Blumenhagen, all of whom had learnt their descriptive methods from Scott. Such methods were, in fact, just what Stendhal disapproved of in Scott, as is evident from his disparaging remark of the is surely the most prosaic form of fatalism and automatically leads to the dogma of the slavish imitation of nature. Such a daguerreotypic portrait of course reproduces every hair and every wart, but material light can only illumine the physical body, whereas the artist's spiritual beam of light can alone liberate and make visible the mystery of man and his inner life. And precisely because the imagination is pushed entirely into the background, and the sense of all that is mystical and wonderful rejected, so literature lapses in ever-increasing gravity from essence to appearance, from reli­ gion to morality, from morality to mere respectability, and from that ever pliable, ambivalent respectability to aesthetic naturalism, which with the freedom it has finally gained indulges its lusts like an animal.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

latter's narrative art: "La prose de Walter Scott est inelegante et surtout pretentieuse. On voit un nain qui ne veut pas perdre une ligne de sa taille."106 Carlyle, too, censured Scott for concentrating on the outward man at the expense of his inner nature, and wrote: "... buff belts and all manner of jer­ kins and costumes are transitory: man alone is perennial."107 A further objection to long character portraits had to do with their being introduced too early in the novel, that is, before the reader had become truly interested in the fate of the char­ acters described. This was, in fact, what Paul Heyse objected to in Turgenev, and why he admired Goethe's presentation of Philine in Wilhelm Meister, of which he says: "Von Philines Ausserem wird uns Nichts mitgetheilt, als dass sie schone Haare hatte. Und doch steht die reizende Siinderin vor unserer Phantasie, als ob sie leibte und lebte."108 Daudet himself clearly held the same view, as can be seen from these words in a letter to a friend: "Ne fais pas par avance Ie portrait de tes gars: fais-les connaitre peu a peu a propos."109 Such words of advice would have, indeed, benefited many a minor nine­ teenth-century novelist. Again, Tolstoy in his essay "What is Art?" (1898) was to question whether the concern with the minutest details of the "external appearance, the faces, the clothes, the gestures, the tones and the habitations of the characters represented" had anything to do with art, and was certain that "the infection of others with the feelings the art­ ist has expressed" was vitiated by "all those well-observed details."110 Harsh and sweeping as some of these criticisms may appear, especially in view of some character descriptions discussed earlier in this chapter, they are still less dated than most of the composite portraits they were evidently aimed at. La prose ... taille: Walter Scott's prose is inelegant and utterly preten­ tious. It is like a dwarf anxious not to lose one inch of its height. Von Philines ... lebte: We are told nothing about Philine's appearance other than that she had nice hair. And yet the charming little hussy stands before our imagination as if she were real flesh and blood. Ne fais . .. a propos: Don't describe your characters in advance: de­ scribe them little by little and at appropriate moments.

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL

But though it would be tempting here to lay the blame for such excesses at the door of Lavater and his successors and, hence, to explain the turning away from detailed descriptions since the end of the last century,111 there is little doubt that physiognomy helped the novelist to broaden the scope of the literary portrait in a number of interesting ways to be consid­ ered in subsequent chapters. Meanwhile, we conclude our present discussion with a passage which, whatever the au­ thor's intention, amply shows how far physiognomical think­ ing underlay nineteenth-century fictional theory and prac­ tice. The passage in question is from Maupassant's famous preface to Pierre et Jean (1887) and consists of a paraphrase of some words uttered by his mentor, Flaubert: Quand vous passez, me disait-il, devant un epicier assis sur sa porte, devant un concierge qui fume sa pipe, de­ vant une station de fiacres, montrez-moi cet epicier et ce concierge, Ieur pose, toute Ieur apparence contenant aussi, indiquee par l'adresse de l'image, toute Ieur nature morale, de fagon a ce que je ne Ies confonde avec aucun autre epicier ou avec aucun autre concierge, et faitesmoi voir, par un seul mot, en quoi un cheval de fiacre ne ressemble pas aux cinquante autres qui Ie suivent et Ie precedent.112

Quand . . . precedent: When you go past a grocer sitting on his doorstep, he said to me, or a concierge smoking his pipe in front of a cab-rank, then show me that grocer and that concierge, their general bearing, their physi­ cal appearance and, by means of choice imagery, their entire moral na­ ture, in such a way that I won't confuse them with any other grocer or concierge, and with one single word show me in what way a cab-horse is different from the fifty others in front of it or coming up behind.

Aspects of Lavaterian Physiognomy in Nineteenth-Century Literary Portraiture

IT HAS BEEN SUGGESTED in earlier chapters that the develop­

ment of the nineteenth-century composite portrait had much to do with the popularity of physiognomy during that period. In this chapter the focus of our comparative analyses will be narrowed in the attempt to discover how far literary portrai­ ture after 1800 actually reflects certain physiognomical prin­ ciples as laid down in the Fragmente. The first part of the chapter will be concerned with individual physical features and characteristics, and the remainder with ways in which the appearance is determined by psychological, social, and hereditary influences. The critic who sets out to study the fictional treatment of the individual facial and bodily features in the light of Lavater's Fragmente may often feel as though confronted by an invidious, if not hopeless, task.1 First of all, much of what Lavater has to say about certain facial features, both in his gen­ eral statements and in his portrait analyses, is either too tech­ nical or too vague to relate usefully to the novel.2 Seldom, for instance, do novelists share Lavater's concern with, say, the angle, position, or contours of an eye, the complex geometri­ cal proportions of a nose, or the particular arrangement of a set of teeth (figures 14 and 15). On the contrary, nineteenthcentury novelists tend to describe these familiar features in much the same way as their predecessors had done: eyes are

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

Figure 14. Engravings of eyes, from Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente. Eye 1. "Strength, candor and goodness. If we pay attention to the energy which the eyebrow promises, we shall find that the contours, and especially the inferior contours, are almost too feeble. This eye, without being the eye of genius, is capable of sound observation." Eye 2. "The upper part is more expressive than the lower, and the obtuse angle of the corner forms a contour with the under part of the upper eyelid" (Lavater).

J 3

N

Figure 15. Engravings of noses, from Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente. "Nose 1 is destitute of every species of delicate sentiment. But I do not think he wants malice." Nose 2. "The caricature of a nose which sup­ poses good sense and nothing more." Nose 3.."Naturally timid, he merits consideration only for his love of order and propriety" (Lavater).

fiery, penetrating, laughing, brilliant; noses are straight, snub, sharp, Roman, Grecian, aristocratic, aquiline; mouths are good-natured, hard, wide, smiling, querulous; teeth beautiful, ugly, white, straggling, long, and so on. Similar differences of approach may be noted in respect to other facial or bodily features commonly used in nineteenth-century character de-

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

scription. For instance, whereas Lavater makes elaborate and, often, ingenious interpretations of eyebrows, and in one passage declares that, if taken separately, they are often in­ dicative of a person's character,3 nineteenth-century novelists pay relatively little attention to them. Two novels that men­ tion Lavater's name, Les Bourgeois de Molinchart and Problematisehe Naturen, have long, "objective" descriptions of eye­ brows;4 otherwise, it seems as if novelists associate eyebrows mostly with the middle-aged or the elderly, or lend them a caricatural function. This is particularly true of Dickens' novels such as Great Expectations, in which the enigmatic lawyer Jaggers is depicted as having "black bushy eyebrows that wouldn't lie down, but stood up bristling,"5 and David Copperfield, where Miss Murdstone's grim character is partly indicated by the hero's constant reference to her black eye­ brows. The same difference between Lavater and novelists is apparent in the treatment of chins, which, like noses and eye­ brows, are generally treated as a caricatural feature. Another important aspect of the Fragmente are the discus­ sions of heads and skulls; and yet an actual reference to the size or shape of a head is rare in the novel of our period, ex­ cept where it has a phrenological interest. This may have to do with the fact that most literary portraits have something of the frontal quality of portrait paintings. As with some other features, the head is described mostly with an epithet or two, though it is interesting to note that Spielhagen, in Problematische Naturen, singles out some five characters for their wellshaped heads. Spielhagen is no less interested in the size and shape of his characters' foreheads, descriptions of which be­ tray the same Lavaterian touch. No feature occupied La­ vater's attention more than the forehead, and with none was he more confident of his physiognomical skills or, indeed, more technical in his analyses. Yet it is doubtful whether nineteenth-century novelists would have made much sense of Lavater's vague remarks on the subject. They appear, in any case, to have gone their own way with commonplace epithets

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

to denote the intellectual, moral, or aesthetic significance of foreheads. Again, mention should be made of Lavater's rules on the stature and proportions of the body, which are just as rigid as his rules for determining vice and virtue; in other words, the nearer to perfection the body, for Lavater, the nearer to perfection the character.® In this respect, it must be admitted that most novelists are basically Lavaterian, even if some descriptions have to do with physical strength rather than with moral nature. Not that the description of a phy­ sique always has a specifically physiognomical intention. On the contrary, Stendhal, than whom no novelist could have been a more faithful disciple of Lavater, seems to debunk the physiognomy of physiques in descriptions of two essentially sympathetic characters in Le Rouge et Ie Noir: Julien Sorel's loyal friend Fouque, who is "de haute taille, assez mal fait" (tall, but ungainly), and the marquis de la Mole, who, in the hero's eyes, has "une tournure assez mesquine" (a rather puny figure).7 Nevertheless, it may be argued that there are close links here and there between Lavater's theories and the fictional treatment of such "traditional" features as the eyes and the hair. Many novelists, for example, seem to share Lavater's view, as evident from a portrait analysis of his, that small eyes bespeak a narrow-minded, uncouth person. Thus we may refer, appropriately enough, to pere Sorel in Le Rouge et Ie Noir, who possesses "petits yeux gris et mechants" (unpleasant little gray eyes); to Rawdon Crawley in Vanity Fair; and to Mr. Pullett in The Mill on the Floss.8 Similarly, in Geld und Geist Gotthelf succeeds in conveying the miserliness of the Domgriitbauer by referring to his "schmalen Augen" (slit eyes).9 If the sympathetic abbe Pirard can hardly be coupled with those just mentioned, Stendhal's description of his "petits yeux noirs faits pour efFrayer Ie plus brave"10 amply suggests the idea of the unpleasantness of small eyes. On the petits .. . brave: small dark eyes made to frighten the bravest of us

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

other hand, whereas Lavater seems to have made no com­ ment on large eyes, novelists tend to assign them to good characters, especially female characters. Then there is the question of eye color, on which subject Lavater says surprisingly little, being content to quote pas­ sages from Buffon, Winckelmann, and others.11 However, he does make one qualified statement that seems to have some relevance to fictional practice: "Blaue Augen zeigen uberhaupt mehr von Schwache, Weiblichkeit, als die braunen und schwarzen. Zwar giebt's unzahlige kraftvolle Menschen mit blauen Augen—doch ich kenne viel mehr starke, mannliche, denkende Menschen mit braunen als mit blauen Augen."12 In the novel dark eyes (brown or black) frequently belong to the physically or morally strong: Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, Klingsohr in Heinrich von Ofterdingen, the heroine of Vittoria Accorombona, Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss, Melitta and Helene Grenwitz in Problematische Naturen, Edmee in Mauprat, the heroine of Emma, Lord Vin­ cent in Pelham, Ratcliffe in The Heart of Midlothian. Blue eyes, on the other hand, tend to be found in gentle characters such as Jessie Brown in Cranford and Harriet Smith in Emma. In this connection, one of Lavater's comments on the rela­ tionship between the eyes and the four temperaments seems apposite here: "Hellblaue Augen habe ich fast nie bey melancholischen, selten bey cholerischen, am allermeisten bey phlegmatischen Temperamenten, die jedoch viel Aktivitat hatten, angetroffen."13 And in view of Lavater's earlier state­ ment, it is noteworthy that characters lacking in moral fiber, Blaue ... Auger»; Blue eyes indicate weakness and femininity, rather than brown and black eyes. It is true that there are countless strong people with blue eyes—but I know many more strong, virile, intelligent browneyed people than blue-eyed ones. Hellblaue ... angetroffen; Light blue eyes I have practically never found in melancholy temperaments, rarely in choleric, and most com­ monly in phlegmatic temperaments, which were nevertheless very ener­ getic.

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

such as Rawdon Crawley in Vanity Fair, Oswald Stein and Albert Timm in Problematische Naturen, and Olivier d'Orsel in Dominique, all have blue eyes. Gray eyes, which Lavater does not discuss, but which are possibly a variation of blue eyes, are usually found in unpleasant characters: the Baroness Grenwitz and Emilie von Breesen in Problematische Naturen, Mr. Stelling in The Mill on the Floss, Mrs. Clutterbuck in Pelham. It is also interesting to compare Lavater's remarks on the hair with the treatment of this feature in nineteenth-century fiction. According to Lavater, the hair can tell us a great deal about a person's temperament, energy, sensibility, and men­ tal capacity; and he advises the physiognomist to pay particu­ lar attention to its length, quantity, texture, and color. Most nineteenth-century novelists, however, are concerned, like their predecessors, almost entirely with the color of the hair, which is usually described as black, brown, blond, red, dark, or fair. Some novelists are, moreover, quite systematic in their use of hair color. One critic, for instance, has shown that Scott's official heroines are almost all blond, whereas his sec­ ondary heroines, who usually have more "character," are dark-haired.14 Again, Pierre Abraham has tabulated the many different colors of hair and their moral significance in Balzac's novels.15 But whereas Lavater bids the physiognomist note the color of hair, he says relatively little on the subject him­ self. It is true that he regards blond hair as the sign of a sanguino-phlegmatic temperament; but if in one passage he re­ gards dark-brown curly hair as a physiognomical advantage, the reader is hard put to make sense of the following remark on dark hair to be found in the original French edition: Des cheveux noirs qui sont plats, naturellement defrises epais & gros, denotent peu d'esprit, mais de l'assiduite, & Des cheveux ... intellectuelles: Dark hair that is straight, uncurling, abundant, and thick in texture denotes a certain lack of intelligence, but a love of perseverance and orderliness. Thin, black hair on a half-bald head, whose forehead is high and well domed, has often furnished me with evi-

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

l'amour de l'ordre. Des cheveux noirs & minces places sur une tete mi-chauve, dont Ie front est eleve & bien voute, m'ont souvent fourni la preuve d'un jugement sain & net, mais qui excluoit l'invention & Ies saillies; au contraire, cette meme espece de cheveux, lorsqu'elle est entierement plate & lisse, implique une foiblesse decidee des facultes intellectuelles.16 It is noteworthy that, whereas Lavater does not draw as clear a physiognomical distinction between dark and fair hair as he does between dark and blue eyes, such a distinction seems to prevail amongst nineteenth-century novelists as a whole. We note, for instance, that strong characters are al­ most always dark-haired: Mary Thome in Doctor Thome, Na­ talie in Der Nachsommer, Melitta in Problematische Naturen, Estella in Great Expectations, Edmee in Mauprat, Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss, Madeleine in Dominique, Rosalie and Dortchen Schonfund in Der Griine Heinrich, Luciane in Die Wahlverwandtschaften, Effie Deans in The Heart of Midlothian, Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, Bracciano in Vittoria Accorombona, Paul Emanuel in Villette, Dobbin in Vanity Fair, Dr. Braun in Problematische Naturen, and Ratcliffe in The Heart of Midlothian. By contrast, and in accord­ ance with Lavater's own physiognomical correlation, fair hair is often assigned to characters of an essentially gentle nature: Jeanie Deans in The Heart of Midlothian, Harriet Smith in Emma, Anna in Der Griine Heinrich, Brigitte Pierson in Con­ fession d'un enfant du Steele, and Joe Gargery in Great Ex­ pectations. But fair hair is sometimes a feature of characters who are weak, stupid, or morally defective: Octave in Con­ fession d'un enfant du Steele, Peretti in Vittoria Accorom­ bona, Lady Crawley in Vanity Fair, Margot in Pelham, Ginevra Fanshawe in Villette, Adolphe des Grassins in Eugenie Grandet, Olivier d'Orsel in Dominique, Mrs. Tulliver, the dence of a sound, clear mind, but one that is neither imaginative nor witty. On the other hand, when this kind of hair is entirely straight and smooth, it suggests a decided weakness of the intellectual faculties.

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

Reverend and Mrs. Stelling in The Mill on the Floss, Albert Timm and the Frau Pastorin in Problematische Naturen. Red hair, according to Lavater, is said to characterize "un homme souverainement bon, ou souverainement mechant."17 Nineteenth-century novelists, however, seem to have pre­ ferred the latter interpretation. For example, Pierre Abraham writes: "Pour Balzac, Ie poil roux, s'il n'est pas signe de tare physiologique proprement dite, est signe tres net de bestialit6."18 In Vanity Fair Thackeray gives red hair to the eccen­ tric or less sympathetic characters such as Laetitia Hawky, Lord Steyne, and, significantly perhaps, to the upstart Sir Pitt Crawley's two footmen. Then we may refer to two "villains" who have red hair: Veitel Itzig in Soil und Haben and Thorn­ ton in Pelham. Sometimes red hair adorns pathetic figures such as Louis Scatcherd in Doctor Thome and Hippolyte in Madame Bovary. But as if to explode the myth of red hair, George Eliot in The Mill on the Floss allows the naughty, redhaired Bob Jakin to grow up into a fine man. So far, then, our comparison has been concerned with what might be termed the traditional physical features of literary portraiture; and we have already seen to what extent nine­ teenth-century novelists can be conspicuously physiognomi­ cal in their descriptions of these features. Yet it might be questioned whether in this respect they are necessarily Lavaterian; whether, indeed, in some of their brief, one-epithet descriptions of eyes, noses, mouths, chins, foreheads, and the like they are not simply adhering to patterns set by their predecessors. Moreover, much nineteenth-century literary portraiture, particularly general facial description, seems to be little more than a means whereby the novelist helps his readers to visualize the characters he introduces. The disad­ vantages of a comparison of this kind are further underlined when we note the tendency of novelists to be governed by purely aesthetic considerations in so far as they associate cerun homme ... mechant: a person supremely good or supremely evil. Pour ... bestialite: For Balzac, red hair is, if not strictly speaking the sign of some physiological defect, a very clear sign of a brutish nature.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

Figure 16. Engravings of hands, from Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente. Hand 1. "Although the drawing may have been botched, it is still by no means the hand of a fine person of great sensibility and wisdom." Hand 2. "Not the hand of a coarse person, but of one fine and stout­ hearted." Hand 3. "The hand of an almost sublime artist—or a would-be artist. There is much evidence of this already in the contour of the thumb" (Lavater).

tain facial features with female rather than male characters, and are highly selective in their choice of features. All this would, therefore, suggest that the attempt to study the fic­ tional treatment of individual facial features one by one is, if not futile, at least problematic, and that such a study is best done within the context of the composite portrait itself. On the other hand, when we turn our attention to the non-facial features and characteristics, particularly those which are not usually incorporated into composite portraits, we find our comparison of Lavater with the nineteenth-century novel doubly justified, all the more as some of these features and characteristics are not only accorded due physiognomical im­ portance by Lavater but are either neglected or seldom men­ tioned in the novel before 1800. Let us consider some of these features in detail, starting with the hand. According to Lavater, the hand is "so gut, als irgend etwas, ein Gegenstand der Physiognomie—und ein sehr bedeutsamer—und vorzuglich bemerkenswerter Gegenstand— wegen ihrer Unverstellbarkeit so wohl, als wegen ihrer Beweglichkeit."19 (See figure 16.) A description of the hand is often a useful means of suggesting a character's general physo gut... Beweglichkeit: as good as any an object of physiognomy—and a very significant one, as well as an eminently remarkable one on account of both its undeceptiveness and its flexibility.

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

sique or state of health, and we occasionally find some novel­ ists bearing out Lavater's remark that the size of the hands will always be proportionate to the body. Thus we may think of Dobbin in Vanity Fair, where sundry references to his "big hands" enhance our impression of his ungainly build. Dickens is also conscious of this idea of proportion when in Great Ex­ pectations he describes Jaggers as "a burly man of an exceed­ ing dark complexion, with an exceedingly large head and a correspondingly large hand."20 Moreover, social background or general way of life can often be hinted at by a significant description of the hand. Champfleury, for instance, speaks of the "main calme et aristocratiquement grasse" of the comtesse Donquieres in Les Bourgeois de Molinchart.21 White hands are, aptly enough, commonly associated with good breeding and a luxurious life of leisure. This idea is ironically illustrated in Eugenie Grandet when the heroine's father makes a sardonic remark about Charles Grandet's white hands,22 thereby heightening the ironic contrast between his nephew's well-to-do past and the cruelly uncertain future he now has to face as a result of his father's untimely death. Moral character and sensibility can also be suggested by a de­ scription of the hand; indeed, it is in this very use of the hand that nineteenth-century literary portraiture is to be distin­ guished from that of earlier periods, in which such references are essentially decorative, especially in portraits of female beauty. It is interesting to note, too, how an appropriate de­ scription of a hand can convey the idea not merely of beauty, but of beauty as an expression of moral depth. This is cer­ tainly apparent in descriptions of Ottilie in Die Wahlverwandtschaflen and Johanna in Die Epigonen. A description of the fingers can also be significant; and there is a patent con­ nection between Tieck's reference to the long white fingers of the cultured heroine of Vittoria Aceorombona and Lavater's claim that "les doigts longs et bien effiles ne s'associent presmain ... grasse: serenely plump aristocratic hand les doigts... grossier: long tapering fingers practically never go together with a coarse, vulgar mind.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

que jamais avec un esprit rude et grossier."23 The essence of an unsympathetic character can also be admirably conveyed by a suitable reference to the hand. Thus, in Vanity Fair Thackeray vividly evokes the essential repulsiveness of Sir Pitt Crawley by drawing our attention to his "horny black hand."24 Nor could anything better illustrate the physical re­ vulsion which the heroine of Madame Bovary usually feels for her husband than when, amidst her growing passion for Rodolphe, it seems that Charles has never before had "les doigts aussi carres" (such square fingers).25 Just as the hand is revelatory of character, so, too, in Lavater's view, is handwriting: "Je mehr ich die verschiedenen Handschriften, die mir vor die Augen kommen, vergleiche, desto sicherer werd' ich, dass sie physiognomische Ausdriicke, Ausfliisse von dem Charakter des Schreibers sind."26 In the Fragmente, Lavater makes a number of character judgments from examples of handwriting, while being careful to advise his readers not to attach undue importance to this physiognom­ ical characteristic. It is interesting to compare the rarity of novelists' references to handwriting before 1800 with those many references which, in nineteenth-century fiction, serve a distinctly characterizing function. For example, in Vanity Fair the reference to Rawdon Crawley's "schoolboy hand" emphasizes his immaturity, just as something of George Os­ borne's arrogance is suggested when the narrator speaks of a letter of his to Amelia being couched in his "well-known bold handwriting."27 Conversely, nothing more strikingly indicates that handwriting alone can bespeak strength of character than Polly Home's affectionate physiognomical analysis of the handwriting of her future husband, Graham Bretton.28 Goethe, too, makes interesting use of handwriting in his am­ bivalent presentation of Ottilie in Die Wahlverwandtschaften. First of all, something of Ottilie's reserve is foreshadowed ]e mehr... sind: The more I compare the different kinds of handwriting I see, the more certain I become that they are physiognomical expressions and manifestations of the character of the writer.

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

in the Gehiilfe s letter to Charlotte: "Man hat iiber ihre Handschrift geklagt ... es ist wahr sie schreibt langsam und steif, wenn man so will, doch nicht zaghaft und ungestalt." Later in the novel, Eduard rejoices when he finds that Ottilie, having copied out some notes for him, betrays a hand that is remarkably similar to his own;29 and through this poetic treatment of an essentially Lavaterian idea Goethe manages to convey the close spiritual bond between the lovers. Fi­ nally, we may mention an interesting treatment of handwrit­ ing in Emma, which takes the form of a discussion. John Knightley opens the discussion with a particularly Lavaterian idea when he says: "I have heard it asserted ... that the same sort of handwriting often prevails in a family...." He then goes on to say that his wife Isabella and Emma write alike. Mr. Knightley, his brother, though agreeing with this, claims, nevertheless, that "Emma's hand is the stronger." However, when Emma later praises Frank Churchill's handwriting as "one of the best gentleman's hands I ever saw," Knightley dis­ agrees with her by saying that he does not admire it: "It is too small—wants strength. It is like a woman's writing."30 Thus we see how skillfully the author manages, first of all, to char­ acterize Emma through Knightley's judgment of her hand­ writing, and, secondly, to suggest his interest in the heroine as well as his jealousy of Frank Churchill. Interesting, too, is the treatment of clothes in literary por­ traiture. Descriptions of clothes are, of course, a time-hon­ ored aspect of character description, and may be said to have always had an implicit physiognomical function.31 Neverthe­ less, it is noteworthy that, whereas seventeenth and eigh­ teenth-century novelists seldom describe clothes outside the context of the composite portrait, nineteenth-century novel­ ists often do so, as though by singling out clothes they were perhaps even more conscious than their predecessors of their Man . . . ungestalt: There have been complaints about her handwriting . . . it is true that she writes slowly and stiffly, if one is so insistent, but not hesitantly or formlessly.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

physiognomical function. Lavater claims that clothes gen­ erally reveal the man: "Wie der innere Charakter der Menschen, so ihre Kleidung, vorausgesetzt, dass sie frey und durch keine Arten von Zwang eingeschrankt sey."32 What criterion Lavater would use for judging character by clothes is, how­ ever, not made clear in the Fragmente, though his reference to the extravagance of women's fashions, in the context of his criticism of mid-eighteenth-century European civilization, would suggest that he preferred simplicity of attire and equated it with piety. In this connection, it is interesting to see that, in Der Nachsommer, Stifter treats simplicity of attire as an expression of piety and virtue. The idea that clothes do, indeed, indicate character and way of life is brought out early in the novel by the narrator Heinrich Drendorf: "Ich hatte in Kleidern ... die grosste Einfachheit, weil es meiner Natur so zusagte, weil wir zur Massigkeit erzogen waren...." The same is true of Heinrich's mother, Risach, Gustav, Risach's gardener, Natalie, and Mathilde. It is this very attitude to clothes which links the main characters together and under­ lines the novel's theme of piety toward life. Furthermore, we are reminded of Lavater again when Heinrich tells of his dis­ taste for the fashionable attire characteristic of the artificial­ ity of city life. Thus, in comparing it with Risach's modest dress, he writes: "Mir fiel... ein, dass manches nicht geschmackvoll sei, was wir so heissen, am wenigsten der Stadtrock und der Stadthut der Manner."33 Stifter's treatment of clothes reminds us of Thackeray's critical, albeit ironic, attitude to clothes in Vanity Fair; indeed, the very detailed descriptions of the elegant attire of, say, Jos. Sedley, or Mrs. Pitt Crawley, or even of eleven-year-old George Osborne, who, we are told, "had little white waistcoats for evening parties and little cutWie .. . sey: As the inner man, so his attire, provided that it is free and not the expression of some external constraint. Ich . . . waren: I had the simplest taste in clothes because it suited my nature, because we had been brought up to be modest [in our tastes]. Mir. .. Manner: It occurred to me that much of what we call good taste is not so, least of all the hats and coats worn by men in the cities.

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

velvet waistcoats for dinners,"34 serve both to illustrate Thackeray's satire of upstart society and to justify the very title of the novel. Another novelist who uses clothes for physiognomical pur­ poses is Flaubert. We see a memorable example of this in his description, in Madame Bovary, of a crowd of bourgeois at­ tending the Cornices, whereby the author somehow conveys their complacent provincialism as he describes how they look and what they wear: Tous ces gens se ressemblaient. Leurs molles figures blondes, un peu halees par Ie soleil, avaient la couleur du cidre doux, et leurs favoris bouffants s'echappaient de grands cols roides, que maintenaient des cravates blanches a rosette bien etalee. Tous Ies gilets etaient de velours, a chale; toutes Ies montres portaient au bout d'un long ruban quelque cachet ovale en cornaline.35 That Flaubert treats clothes as an extension of personality is evidenced, too, by his description of Charles Bovary's schoolclothes and the famous cap, of Homais' "bonnet de velours a gland d'or," and of Bournisien's shabby clerical attire. Dickens also has the ability to suggest the essence of a charac­ ter by concentrating on one striking aspect of the clothing. Thus in Great Expectations he manages to make Mrs. Joe Gargery's apron at once expressive of her hard-heartedness and the interminable drudgery of her domestic life. As Pip says, "... she made it a powerful merit in herself, and a strong re­ proach against Joe, that she wore an apron so much."36 Many more instances could be quoted to show how often a descrip­ tion of attire seems physiognomically appropriate: Joe Gargery's "shirt collar" in Great Expectations, Ursule Cretan's Tous ... comaline: All the people looked exactly alike. Their chubby, light-complexioned, slightly tanned faces had the color of sweet cider, and their bushy sideburns stuck out above their high starched collars, which were held in place by white cravats studded with large rosettes. Every waistcoat had a velvet revers, every watch bore some oval cornelian hanging on the end of a long riband. bonnet... d'or: velvet cap with the golden tassel

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

"chapeau vert clair double de jaune" in Les Bourgeois de MolinchaH, Riley's "ample white cravat and shirt frill" in The Mill on the Floss, Valenod's "bonnet grec place de travers sur Ie haut de la tete" in Le Rouge et Ie Noir, the uncle's "viereckigen Knieschnallen, den fahlen Striimpfen, und den schweren Schuhen" in Die Epigonen.37 However, in Geld und Geist Gotthelf shows that clothes may not make a significant difference in some cases. Indeed, he points out that the Dorngriitbauer's wife always looked dowdy whatever she wore, whereas on Anneli "alle Kleider zu Sonntagskleidern wurden." Anne Mareili, too, can still look charming in spite of a spinsterish dress she has on, whereby the narrator concludes "dass nicht immer die Kleider es sind, welche die Leute machen."38 Lavater also advises the physiognomist to study the voice carefully: Bezeichne dir auch, sag ich dem Physiognomisten weiter ... die Stimme der Menschen; die Hohe, Tiefe, Starke, Schwache, Dumpfheit, Klarheit, Rohigkeit oder Annehmlichkeit—Natur oder Falschheit der Stimme— forsche, welche Stimmen und Tone am oftesten beysammen seyn! Du wirst sicherlich, wenn du feines Gehor hast, dazu gelangen, aus der Stimme auf die Classe der Stirnen, des Temperaments und des Charakters schliessen zu konnen.39 chapeau .. . jaune: bright green hat lined with yellow bonnet... tete: Greek cap cocked on his head viereckigen ... Schuhen: rectangular knee-buckles, the fawn-colored stockings, and the heavy shoes alle... wurden: whatever clothes she wore looked like her Sunday best. dass ... machen: that it is not always clothes that make the man. Bezeichne ... konnen: Make a note, I tell the physiognomist, of the human voice—its height, depth, strength, weakness, dullness, clarity, roughness, or charm—its naturalness or artificiality—find out what voices and tones go oftenest together. And if you have a good ear, you will surely manage to deduce the class of forehead, temperament, and character from the voice.

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

It is interesting to note how, after having been relatively ne­ glected in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the voice increasingly comes into its own in fiction after 1800. Several nineteenth-century novelists use the voice for pur­ poses of characterization, whether to enhance the charm of a beautiful heroine, as in Pelham, Der Griine Heinrich, and Les Bourgeois de Molinchart; to suggest aristocratic birth, as in Wuthering Heights and Die Wahlverwandtschaften; or sim­ ply to emphasize unpleasantness of character, as in Dte Epigonen, Le Rouge et Ie Noir, Vanity Fair and The Mill on the Floss. Some novelists are highly analytical in their descrip­ tions of voices. For instance, in Villette, Lucy Snowe waxes lyrical over the sound of Graham Bretton's voice, as she re­ marks that "his mellow voice never had any sharpness in it; modulated as at present, it was calculated rather to soothe than startle slumber."40 Interesting, too, is the way Flaubert skillfully conveys Emma Bovary's fundamental discontent with life by describing the tone of voice with which she speaks to Charles, before their marriage, of her dreams and aspirations: "... selon ce qu'elle disait, sa voix etait claire, aigue, ou, se couvrant de langueur tout a coup, trainait des modulations qui finissaient presque en murmures, quand elle se parlait a elle-meme... ."41 Few descriptions could more aptly bear out Lavater's following words: "Der Ton der Sprache, die Artikulation, samt der Schnelle, und Hohe oder Tiefe—alles charakterisiert gar sehr... ."42 There are, of course, other physiognomical features and characteristics we could refer to in order to confirm our pre­ sent findings. It might be shown, for example, how often nine­ teenth-century novelists appear to acknowledge Lavater's view that smiles and laughter are as physiognomically signifiselcm .. . elle-meme: according to what she was saying, her voice would be clear, shrill, or, suddenly turning into a drawl, would trail off into mod­ ulations that ended up in a murmuring tone when she was talking to her­ self. Der Ton ... sehr: The tone of voice, the articulation of words, together with its speed, height, or depth—all this is very indicative of character.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

cant as any other characteristic.43 Dickens is one novelist out of several who makes special use of smiles and laughter by way of suggesting character. Thus we may think of Great Expectations, in which Drummond's vicious cynicism is em­ phasized by his tendency to persistent laughter; in which the fact that "Mr. Jaggers never laughed" succeeds in conveying to the reader the idea of the unquestionable integrity of the prosperous, albeit enigmatic, lawyer; in which Miss Haversham is summed up in all her pathos by the reference to her "weird smile" as well as the added suggestion that she had no capacity to smile.44 It would also be possible to compare Lavater's sundry remarks on gait, bearing, gestures, movements, and so on with the ways in which nineteenth-century novel­ ists use these characteristics, just as Marivaux and Diderot had done to some extent already, in order to indicate moral character, state of mind or body, social background, or youthfulness or old age.45 Some novelists such as Fromentin are particularly concerned with gesture as a means of char­ acterization. Thus we see in Dominique how, apart from re­ ferring to the momentary gestures of Augustin, Olivier, and Madeleine as so many signs of attitude or mental state, the narrator gives a good picture of the foppish M. de Nievres through an account of his movements: "Je distinguais Ie geste un peu lent dont il accompagnait ses paroles et la grace avec laquelle il se tournait de temps a autre vers Madeleine."46 Fi­ nally, there is Pip's classic description in Great Expectations of Mrs. Joe Gargery's "trenchant way of cutting bread,"47 the very details of which constitute an almost unique means of characterization, thus bringing us back to one of Lavater's earliest statements concerning the wide range of physiog­ nomical possibilities in a study of the outward man: "Alle J e . . . M a d e l e i n e : I noticed the somewhat ponderous gesture with which he accompanied his words and the graceful way in which he now and then turned toward Madeleine. A l l e . . . P h y s i o g n o m i k : All features, all passive and active movements, all postures and positions—in short, everything whereby passive and ac­ tive man can be directly portrayed and revealed is the object of physiog­ nomy.

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

Ziige, alle passive und active Bewegungen, alle Lagen und Stellungen des menschlichen Korpers: alles, wodurch der Ieidende und handelnde Mensch unmittelbar bemalt werden kann, wodurch er seine Person zeigt, ist der Gegenstand der Physiognomik."48 By way of concluding our present discussion, it would be worth mentioning one particular use of individual features that seldom obtained before 1800, namely, the "label" that usually accompanies a fictional character throughout the story. The so-called label, which is, in fact, a repetitive refer­ ence to a facial feature, a hereditary expression, or a charac­ teristic gesture, is generally used for ironic purposes, and can be found in Die Epigonen, Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts, Vanity Fair, Cranford,, The Mill on the Floss, Chronik der Sperlingsgasse, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, and Problematische Naturen, not to mention Thomas Mann's novels, where it is developed in most sophisticated fashion. Sometimes a number of references to an individual's appear­ ance constitutes a kind of leitmotif. For example, in Vanity Fair there are some ten references and allusions to Becky Sharp's green eyes, each of which seems to form part of the theme of an irrepressible schemer of boundless ambition and infinite courage, whom society may ostracize but not entirely defeat. Another effective use of the leitmotif occurs in Villette, where references to the color of Graham Bretton's hair (which is anything from golden to red) imperceptibly form the thread of the latter's relationship with Polly Home from the time of their meeting as children until their wedding day. The release of the individual physical feature from the tradi­ tional confines of the composite portrait was one of the most important innovations in character description, and was a sign of the growing maturity of the novel. And though it is true that our study of the composite portrait and the individ­ ual features in nineteenth-century fiction often has a histori­ cal rather than an aesthetic interest, it would not be too much to say that some novelists, in their use of the individual phys­ iognomical feature, managed to achieve a most satisfactory compromise between physiognomy and art, just as they, so to

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

speak, honored Lavater's idea that it is sometimes possible to judge character by one physiognomical sign alone. THIS INNOVATORY USE of the single characteristic is but one no­

table example of that dynamic approach to literary portrai­ ture by which the nineteenth-century novel is to be generally distinguished from earlier fiction. Indeed, it is noteworthy how, with the development of interest in the psychological life of fictional characters, novelists increasingly widened the scope of literary portraiture, which had long been restricted to little more than the traditional composite portrait. That such measures were rendered possible by the physiognomical climate of the period is evident when we consider, for in­ stance, the widespread treatment in post-1800 fiction of La­ vater's idea that changes in the inner life are commonly re­ flected in the outward man. It is true that eighteenth-century novelists often suggest state of mind through references to blushing, turning pale, gesticulations, and the like; but most of their references are concerned with momentary changes, and it is seldom that they suggest the complexities of a mental condition with a detailed physiognomical description, as their successors were to do abundantly. In short, where the eigh­ teenth-century novelist is simply pathognomical, as Lavater might have put it, the nineteenth-century novelist is both pathognomical and physiognomical; and it is in this very dif­ ference that we realize how much physiognomy not only furthered the development of psychology in the novel but also enabled novelists to achieve certain aesthetic effects that had hardly seemed possible to their predecessors. Let us, for example, quote two representative passages, in each of which the description of the effects of the inner life on the appearance includes a somewhat rhetorical enunciation of the Lavaterian principle just mentioned. The first is taken from Die Epigonen, in which the narrator describes how Jo­ hanna is affected by the news of Medon's arrest for sedition, even though her love affair with the latter has been hitherto generally unhappy:

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

Wenn Missgeschicke gewohnlichen Menschen leicht etwas Widerliches geben, so verschonern sie dagegen den Ausdruek hoherer Naturen und breiten auch iiber die Gestalt einen Zauber der Verklarung. Johanna schritt neben ihm [Hermann] wie eine tragische Konigin; selbst die Marmorblasse ihrer Wangen erhohte den Reiz, der von ihr ausging.49 The second passage is from Eugenie Grandet, in which the narrator shows how, during her illness, Madame Grandet's unprepossessing face is transfigured by the effects of prayer: Qui n'a pas observe Ie phenomene de cette transfigura­ tion sur de saints visages ou Ies habitudes de l'ame finissent par triompher des traits Ies plus rudement contournes, en Ieur imprimant !'animation particuliere due a la noblesse et a la purete des pensees elevees!50 Some novelists also reflect Lavater's idea of the effects of neg­ ative thoughts on the appearance. For example, in Wuthering Heights there is an episode in the novel where young Heathcliff, having already sensed an unwonted snobbishness in Cathy on her return home from her five-week stay with the Lintons, and realizing that he must now compete with Edgar for her attention, begs Nelly Dean to "make [him] decent" because he is "going to be good." Despite Nelly's attempt to make him conscious of his own worth by assuring him of his physical superiority over Edgar, Heathcliff remains none the less convinced that goodness is a matter of having the right social appearance; hence his naive wish that, like Edgar, he had "light hair and a fair skin, and was dressed and behaved as well...." Such, indeed, is Heathcliff s naivete about apWenn . . . ausging: Though misfortune tends to have a disfiguring effect on the appearance of ordinary people, it beautifies the facial expression of higher natures and also transfigures the entire body in a magical way. Qui .. . elevees: Who has not observed the transfiguration of saintly faces, in which the habits of the soul eventually triumph over the most rough-hewn features, enduing them with that peculiar liveliness due to the nobility and purity of lofty thoughts.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

pearances that, even after Nelly's lecture to him on the neces­ sity of getting rid of the fierce expression on his face, he still assumes it is enough to wish for "Edgar Linton's great blue eyes and even forehead." For Nelly Dean, who misses nothing of the irony implicit in HeathclifFs words, having the right appearance depends first and foremost on being the right person inwardly. As she retorts to Heathcliff: "A good heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad,.. . if you were a regu­ lar black; and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly."51 What is interesting about these aphoristic words is not so much their Lavaterian content, or even their ironic implications with regard to HeathclifFs subsequent de­ velopment, as their essentially characterizing function; for nowhere in the novel does the author better illustrate her main narrator's conventional outlook on life and her simplehearted, pious nature than by pointing up her faith in phys­ iognomical maxims. But if Nelly Dean's words of advice have only a momentary effect on Heathcliff, the substance of her physiognomical ar­ guments is borne out by the author's presentation of Hareton Earnshaw. Few aspects of the novel could be more poignantly ironic than the way in which Nelly Dean, having lovingly nursed Hareton as a baby, is destined to suffer the latter's viciousness or indifference throughout much of the action, at the same time as she objectively observes his physical and moral development. Not least painful for Nelly Dean are those occasions when, by describing the physiognomical manifestations of Hareton's feelings of rage, embarrassment, or humiliation, she conveys his utter inarticulateness. The first detailed descriptions of Hareton occur in the early period of his service as HeathclifFs farmhand, and, in the suggestion of a certain loutishness, remind us how, through the brutish existence Heathcliff led under Hareton's father, Heathcliff himself went into a physical decline: "... personal appear­ ance sympathized with mental deterioration; he acquired a slouching gait, and ignoble look."52 In Hareton's appearance, however, Nelly Dean discovers a promise that neither Heath­ cliff nor Hindley had at the same age, as she remarks: "Still, I

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

thought I could detect in his physiognomy a mind owning better qualities than his father ever possessed." This physiog­ nomical remark, with significant reference to the word "physiognomy," foreshadows that stage in Hareton's relation­ ship with Catherine Linton where, after a long period of con­ flict, they are brought together by a common interest in books. It is noteworthy, too, how in the lyricism of her ac­ count of Catherine's educative influence on Hareton—a lyri­ cism enhanced by the fact that "they both appeared, in a measure, [her] children"—Nelly Dean pays homage in­ directly to Lavater in the following description of Hareton: His honest, warm, and intelligent nature shook off rap­ idly the clouds of ignorance and degradation in which it had been bred; and Catherine's sincere commendations acted as a spur to his industry. His brightening mind brightened his features, and added spirit and nobility to their aspect—I could hardly fancy it the same individual I had beheld on the day I discovered my little lady at Wuthering Heights, after her expedition to the Crags.53 No less Lavaterian is the way in which Catherine and Hareton's growing mutual love brings out the Earnshaw character­ istics in their appearance and heightens their resemblance to each other—a phenomenon which, as we shall see, marks the waning of HeathclifTs tyranny over his household. When the description has to do with an improvement in the appearance, a novelist can often achieve a certain lyrical effect, or underline a turning point in the action, or even en­ hance the idea of a happy ending. This is particularly evident in those passages concerned with the effects of love. For ex­ ample, this is how the narrator of Eugenie Grandet describes the transformation of the heroine's beauty shortly after Charles has departed for the East Indies: Depuis ce jour, la beaute de mademoiselle Grandet prit un nouveau caractere. Les graves pensees d'amour par Depuis ... I'amour: From that day onward Mademoiselle Grandet's beauty took on a new character. The serious thoughts of love which slowly

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

lesquelles son ame etait lentement envahie, la dignite de la femme aimee, donnerent a ses traits cette espece d'eclat que Ies peintres figuraient par l'aureole. Avant la venue de son cousin Eugenie pouvait etre comparee a la Vierge avant la conception; quand il fut parti, elle ressemblait a la Vierge mere: elle avait congu l'amour.54 Similarly, in Madame Bovary there are noticeable improve­ ments in the heroine's appearance once she has begun her love affair with Rodolphe. Thus on returning from her first ride on horseback with him, Emma notices in the mirror a change in the expression of her eyes: "Jamais elle n'avait eu Ies yeux si grands, si noirs, ni d'une telle profondeur. Quelque chose de subtil epandu sur sa personne la transfigurait." When, after Charles' abortive operation on Hippolyte's club­ foot, Emma completely succumbs to Rodolphe's charms, the narrator relates how she "changea d'allures: ses regards devinrent plus hardis, ses discours plus libres...." Later in the novel we read a Lavaterian account of the effects of emo­ tional happiness on the heroine's general appearance: "Jamais madame Bovary ne fut aussi belle qu'a cette epoque; elle avait cette indefinissable beaute qui resulte de la joie, de 1'enthousiasme, du succes, et qui n'est que l'harmonie du temperament avec Ies circonstances."55 The physiognomical manifestations of Emma's happiness are further confirmed through references to her individual features—her eyelids, invaded her soul, the dignity of being someone's beloved, lent her features that special glow which painters used to render by means of a halo. Before her cousin came, Eugenie might have been compared to the Virgin Mary before the Conception; when he left, she was looking like the Virgin Mother: she had conceived love. Jamais elle ... transfigurait: Never before had she had such large, such dark, such deep eyes. There was something delicate diffused over her per­ son which gave her a transfigured look. changea ... libres: changed her manner: her glance became bolder, her talk freer.... Jamais madame ... circonstances: Never had Madame Bovary been so beautiful as she was at that period of her life; she had that indefinable beauty which derives from joy, enthusiasm, and success, and which is but the harmony of temperament with circumstances.

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

nostrils, lips, voice, and so on. Illicit love also has like effects on the heroine of Les Bourgeois de Molinchart, whose "grand yeux noirs" lose their resigned look, while their possessor re­ gains some of her former maidenly beauty.56 Betrothals and marriages, too, have their transfiguring powers. For example, in Die Epigonen, when Hermann re­ turns to the Herzogs estate to help supervise the carousel (having by now pledged his troth to Kornelie), the Herzog shortly afterward remarks on a change he has noticed in Her­ mann's face: "Sie haben einen Zug im Gesicht, den ich sonst nicht an Ihnen wahrgenommen habe, und den ich nur den Brautigamszug nenne." The Herzog then explains to his wife how he has arrived at this judgment: "Der Brautigamszug besteht in einem gedankenvollen Senken der Mundwinkel, auch pflegt damit ein eigner Ausdruck der Lippen und Augen verbunden zu sein." The irony implicit in the Herzogs super­ ficial love of theorizing here, of course, evokes the theme of the essential impracticality of the aristocracy during the pe­ riod of social change in early nineteenth-century Germany. This does not, however, prevent the narrator from showing, in a more serious context, how marriage has improved the ap­ pearance of Wilhelmi and Madame Meyer. The change in Madame Meyer is seen through Johanna's eyes: "Ihre Zuge, welche sonst etwas Strenges hatten, bekamen in dieser milden Dammerung einen unendlich sanften Ausdruck; selbst ihre Stimme wurde weicher." Of Wilhelmi the narrator writes: "Selbst das Aussere Wilhelmis hatte der Brautigamsstand verwandelt: seine Wangen waren roter geworden, seine Sie ... nenne: There is something in your facial features I have never noticed before, something I would call the fiance look. Der Brautigamszug ... setn: The fiance look consists of a pensive drooping of the corners of the mouth, and it usually goes together with a peculiar expression of the lips and the eyes. Ihre... weicher: Her features, which were usually somewhat hard, took on an infinite softness in this mild twilight; even her voice had become softer. Selbst... aus: Even Wilhelmi's exterior had been transformed by the marital state: his cheeks had become redder, his eyes more lively, and his look that of a man of prosperity in the prime of life.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

Augen lebhafter, und er sah wieder wie ein stattlicher Mann in den besten Jahren aus."57 Marriage also has its positive ef­ fects on the appearance of two characters in Cranford: Jessie Brown (now Mrs. Gordon), and Lady Glenmire, whose face during her wedding ceremony "seemed to have almost some­ thing of the flush of youth in it; her lips looked redder and more trembling full than in their old compressed state... ."58 Some nineteenth-century novelists are also conscious of the temporary or permanent physiognomical effects caused by environment. Champfleury, for example, puts forward this idea as an essential principle in Les Bourgeois de Molinchart: "La vie des petites provinces, comme la vie des casernes, des prisons, des hopitaux, imprime son cachet mesquin a tout individu, dans ses actions, dans ses demarches, dans ses habi­ tudes, dans ses vetements."59 Another striking example of environmental influence on character is, in fact, a brilliant illustration of Champfleury's own comments on the effects of prison life. It is to be found in Great Expectations when Pip gives his impressions of Magwitch shortly after the latter's return from a penitentiary in Australia. Indeed, few descriptions could match this one for physiognomical vividness: The influences of his solitary hut-life were upon him be­ sides, and gave him a savage air that no dress could tame.. .. In all his ways of sitting and standing, and eat­ ing and drinking—of brooding about, in a high-shoul­ dered reluctant style—of taking out his great horn-han­ dled jack-knife and wiping it on his legs and cutting his food—of lifting light glasses and cups to his lips, as if they were clumsy pannikins—of dropping a wedge of his bread, and soaking up with it the last fragments of gravy round and round his plate, as if to make the most of an allowance, and then drying his fingers on it, and then La vie . . . vetements: Petty provincial life, like life in barracks, prisons, and hospitals, leaves its grim stamp on each individual—his actions, his way of walking, his habits, his clothes.

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

swallowing it—in these ways and a thousand other small nameless instances arising every minute in the day, there was Prisoner, Felon, Bondsman, plain as plain could be.60 Underlying the pathos of this sensitive description is, of course, the irony that Pip, the inveterate social snob, has learnt by now that this very outcast of society has been his benefactor all along. Some novelists also reflect Lavater's idea that the proxim­ ity of others may exercise a certain influence on our physiog­ nomies. Thus in Great Expectations Pip virtually acknowl­ edges this idea when he makes the following description of Estella: In some of her looks and gestures there was that tinge of resemblance to Miss Haversham which may often be no­ ticed to have been acquired by children from grown-up persons with whom they have been much associated and secluded, and which, when childhood is passed, will pro­ duce a remarkable occasional likeness of expression be­ tween faces that are otherwise quite different.61 If, however, Pip finds the likeness only a momentary one, it is, as we shall see, enough to set him in the right direction to finding Estella's real mother by means of his physiognomical powers. In Confession d'un enfant du Steele Musset makes lyrical use of Lavater's idea. Thus, on hearing the news of his father's sudden death, the hero comes to realize for the first time that he has failed to be a good son; and during the period he tem­ porarily renounces his debauched mode of life, he falls into a reflective mood, as is evident especially from an observation he makes on the resemblance his father's valet Larive bears to his late master: "II etait de la meme taille et portait des habits I l . . . m a n i e r e s : He was the same height and wore clothes my father gave him, as he had no livery. He was practically the same age, that is to say, his hair was going gray, and for the twenty years he had been in ser­ vice to my father he had taken on something of his manner.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

que mon pere Iui donnait, n'ayant point de livree. Il avait a peu pres Ie meme age, c'est-a-dire que ses cheveux grisonnaient et depuis vingt ans qu'il n'avait pas quitte mon pere, il en avait pris quelque chose de ses manieres."62 Through Larive, then, Octave is able, so to speak, to re-experience his father's presence, at the same time as he undoubtedly realizes how much the butler's long years of loyalty and devotion to his master ironically contrast with the meaninglessness of his present turbulent way of life. Another aspect of Lavaterian physiognomy that found ex­ pression in the nineteenth-century novel was the concept of national physiognomies (figure 17). Not that it was by any means a new concept at that time in physiognomical theory, or even in literature: the ancient Greeks, in fact, justified the study of physiognomy partly by noting the physical differ­ ences between themselves and other peoples and races; and the concept had often been aesthetically treated in epic po­ etry, especially the medieval epic, with the contrasting de­ scriptions of Saracens and Christians. But for all that, there did seem to be something unprecedented about the concept when it began to come to the fore again in the 1770s, fostered as it was by the pre-Romantics, with their emphasis on the importance of national identity, as well as by the develop­ ment of anthropology, which, as we saw earlier, was emerg­ ing as a serious science in Germany. It is interesting to learn that much of Camper's research on the facial angle was based on his study of a wide range of human skulls from different parts of the world; and when Diderot visited him in Holland in the 1770s, he was impressed by the accuracy with which the Dutchman could tell nationality from the face alone. But the interest of Diderot's remark that Camper "connaissait parfaitement Ies physionomies nationales"63 is that it is prob­ ably one of the first of its kind ever to have been made in modern European literature. Moreover, the concept of na­ tional physiognomies hardly had a place in belles-lettres be­ fore 1800, except in travel books or letters, and that mostly in the last two decades of the eighteenth century. Such refer­ ences as may be found in the novel are not usually significant,

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

18

20 22

25

Figure 17. National physiognomies, by Chodowiecki. "On the right you see the European nations, and on the left the peoples of the other parts of the world. These figures are, to my mind, among the artist's finest achieve­ ments. The Frenchman (20) standing almost on tiptoe is saying things which, despite the eminent clarity of his language, the Englishman (18) can make neither head nor tail of, while the Italian (22), with his expres­ sive, careworn face, is interested to see how that conversation will turn out. The cool, pensive, modest, dispassionate, tall, healthy man is none other than the German (25), and next to him stands the almost tubby Dutchman" (Lavater).

though it is perhaps worth mentioning here that Goldsmith's Citizen of the World (1762) contains an ironically elaborate

description of the differences between the facial features and limbs of the English and the Chinese.64 Scott was one of the first novelists after 1800 to make conscious use of national physiognomies, especially in his historical fiction, where ref­ erences to peculiarly national faces underline the patriotic themes and also serve as symbolic expressions of the entire history of a particular race or people. For example, in Waverley the hero at one point observes Fergus the Chieftain and is said to be "struck with the peculiar grace and dignity of the Chieftain's figure.... His countenance was decidedly Scottish, with all the peculiarities of the northern physiog­ nomy. .. ."65 The thematic function of national physiognom­ ies is even more evident in the striking physical contrast be­ tween the Christian and the Saracen in The Talisman, which

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

was discussed in an earlier chapter. Keller also makes good structural use of this physiognomical concept in Der Griine Heinrich in so far as each reference to a national facial type, whether it concerns Judith, Ferdinand Lys, or the North Ger­ man journeyman-joiner, is linked with the theme of the hero's destiny and salvation as lying ultimately in his own country. One of the most interesting aesthetic treatments of national physiognomies is to be found in Charlotte Bronte's Villette. The fact that the heroine, Lucy Snowe, should have a keen eye for national physiognomies is certainly to be expected in a novel which tells of an Englishwoman's experiences as a teacher on the Continent. But even before she has planned to go abroad, the narrator's descriptions of three characters contain references to national and racial peculiarities. For example, Mrs. Bretton is described a being "dark for an Eng­ lishwoman"; the "character" of Mr. Home's face is said to be "quite Scotch"; and this is how Lucy records her first im­ pression of Graham Bretton: "Graham was at that time a handsome, faithless-looking youth of sixteen. I say faithlesslooking, not because he was really of a very perfidious dispo­ sition, but because the epithet strikes me as proper to de­ scribe the fair, Celtic (not Saxon) character of his good looks."66 Through this description of Graham, the narrator is, in fact, preparing the reader for later symbolic contrasts of character. Thus Graham's Celtic appearance will be a disad­ vantage to him in his courtship of Ginevra Fanshawe, who, much to the consternation of Lucy Snowe, will bestow her af­ fections on the dark young dandy Colonel de Hamal, who, as Ginevra says, is "a gentleman of excellent connections, per­ fect manners, sweet appearance, with a pale interesting face, and hair and eyes like an Italian."67 Graham's appearance, like his essentially happy, phlegmatic temperament, stands also in marked contrast to that of Paul Emanuel, whose pas­ sionate southern temperament and Catholic outlook are ap­ propriately matched by his dark physiognomy or, as the nar­ rator says at one point, "his Spanish face."68 And in the next chapter we shall see what importance this "Spanish face" has in the relationship between M. Paul and Lucy Snowe.

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

Equally significant are the comparisons drawn by the nar­ rator between English and Continental physiognomies. For instance, the Englishness of Ginevra's beauty lends her a cer­ tain distinction in Madame Beck's pension: "Beautiful she looked: so young, so fresh, and with a delicacy of skin and flexibility of shape altogether English,· and not found in the list of Continental female charms."69 The positive tone of this description is, however, deceptive; for, whereas Ginevra's beauty seems to be such as to point to a triumphant, happy ending for her, it is later shown to be resting on the shaky foundations of emotional instability. Hence Ginevra's destiny turns out to be less fortunate than that of most beautiful women in nineteenth-century fiction. Similarly, Lucy Snowe becomes aware of the physiognomical differences between her compatriots and the Labassecouriens as she observes the audience at the concert hall in Villette: "Some fine forms there were here and there, models of a peculiar style of beauty; a style, I think, never seen in England; a solid firm-set sculptural style."70 Sometimes in her comparisons the narrator seems to betray a certain sense of alienation. For example, in her description of a recalcitrant pupil in her first lesson at the pension, she refers to "eyes full of an insolent light, and brows hard and unblushing as marble," and then goes on to draw this distinc­ tion: "The continental 'female' is quite a different being to the insular 'female' of the same age and class. I never saw such eyes and brows in England."71 A similar feeling of alien­ ation is somehow conveyed in her portrait of the Catholic priest she turns to for help during her "mental breakdown": "He was not a native priest: of that class, the cast of physiog­ nomy is, almost invariably, grovelling: I saw by his profile and brow he was a Frenchman"; and it is probably the priest's for­ eign look, added to his "honest Popish superstitions,"72 that strengthens the lonely Protestant Lucy in her decision not to visit him again. As it happens—ironically perhaps—it is the Brettons who come to her rescue in time. National physiog­ nomies certainly play a significant part in the novel, for, apart from accentuating the Continental atmosphere, they serve to

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

underline some of the central themes concerning differences in outlook, religion, and culture. One of Lavater's remarks on national physiognomies occurs in the context of his discussion of family physiognomies, in relation to what he also considers the heredity of moral dis­ positions; and though, as an eighteenth-century pioneer of he­ reditary theory, the Swiss physiognomist can hardly be classed with, say, Maupertuis, Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, Bon­ net, or Monboddo, it needs to be pointed out that what he puts forward so simply and directly on this subject was by no means a commonplace even in the late eighteenth century.73 And whether or not critics are justified in considering the fic­ tional treatment of heredity only in the light of nineteenthcentury hereditary theory as propounded by the Lamarckians and their successors, there is none the less something Lavaterian about the way in which heredity and family physiog­ nomies are treated in such novels as Die Epigonen and Problematische Naturen, not to speak of the naturalist novels of Zola and his successors. Indeed, in some novels the treatment seems to be utterly Lavaterian. Let us, for instance, consider Geld und Geist, in which these ideas are brought in to under­ line the central theme of the unity and sanctity of family life. First of all, it is noteworthy how in the last part of a portrait of Anne Mareili, a section of which was analyzed in Chapter V, the narrator practically echoes Lavater's following state­ ment from the Fragmente: "Die Familienphysiognomien sind so unlaugbar, als die Nationalphysiognomien."74 Thus Gotthelf s narrator writes: Wie die Spanier fast alle dunkel sind, die Englander aber blass und blond, in der Jugend wenigstens jeder seine Die Familienphysiognomien ... Nationalphystognomien: Family phys­ iognomies are as incontrovertible as national physiognomies. Wie ... gewesen: Just as the Spanish are practically all dark, but the English pale and fair, and as all young people's complexions can tell us at least something about their nationality, so everybody has a complexion characteristic of the family he belongs to, each member of that family being more or less endowed with it. Thus you will see families where the

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

Landfarbe im Gesichte tragt, so hat hinwiederum jeder Mensch seine Hausfarbe, und alle Glieder des Hauses sind mehr oder weniger damit angelaufen. Man sieht zvim Beispiel Familien, in welchen alle Kinder und Kindeskinder, ja bis ins siebente Glied hinaus, Schmutzgiiggel bleiben, sich nie waschen, als wenn sie miissen, und nie mehr, als was zunachst vor die Leute kommt, welche daher ordentlich spriichwortlich werden. Nun aber schien es ihm so gar nichts zu haben von seinen Leuten und der Hausfarbe oder dem Hausgeruch (denn manchmal ist's eben ein Geruch), weder innerlich, noch ausserlich, dass [Resli] fragen musste, ob es denn immer daheim gewesen.75 The physiognomical differences between Anne Mareili and her parents, the Domgrtitbauer couple, are significant in the novel: first, they help to explain, amongst other things, her reluctance to comply with their plan to marry her off to a rich but unsavory old farmer; and, secondly, they make more comprehensible to the reader her sympathy for Resli and his family. Again, the differences between Anne MareiIi and her parents stand in marked contrast to the essential harmony of Resli's family, which is suggested in the early part of the novel before the financial crisis creates temporary discord in that household. For instance, we read that "die Kinder hatten iiberhaupt der Eltern Art und wuchsen in der Sitte des Hauses auf adelicher Ehrbarkeit," and also that "Resli, der children and grandchildren, right down to the seventh generation, remain slovenly, never washing except when they have to, and only those parts that have to be seen, and who for that reason generally become a byword. And yet [Anne Mareili] seemed to have inherited nothing from her par­ ents, neither the family coloring nor the family odor (for sometimes there is even an odor), whether inwardly or outwardly, so that Resli was bound to wonder whether she had always lived at home. die Kinder ... Ehrbarkeit: the children took after their parents and grew up in a household of noble, honorable outlook Resli... Mutter: Resli, the youngest, was a handsome fellow, quick, ac­ tive, and energetic, like his mother.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

jungste, war ein schoner Bursch, rasch, tatig, gewirbig wie die Mutter."76 The pivotal figure in Resli's family is Anneli, whose God­ fearing nature not only prompts her to take the first humble steps toward re-establishing harmony in her home, but also is epitomized by her selfless ministrations to the victims of an epidemic known as "der rote Schaden," of which she herself is eventually to die. Her importance in the novel is seen par­ ticularly at the end, when, on her deathbed, she advises Resli to adopt a more patient and loving attitude toward Anne Mareili, with whom he has temporarily severed relations on account of mutual misunderstandings concerning the terms on which their marriage is to be contracted. There is a pecu­ liar charm about Anneli when, in her bid to Resli not to ex­ pect perfection from his beloved, she says to him: "Glaub mir, wenn du mich jung gekannt hattest, du hattest mich nicht genommen, ich ware dir z'wust und z'wild g'si."77 And we note how the author, in his characteristic concern for struc­ tural unity, suggests what Anneli must have been like as a girl through an earlier account of her daughter Annelisi's wild be­ havior and coquettish treatment of various young suitors, in­ cluding a young peasant called Hans Uli. Through this heredi­ tary link between mother and daughter, then, Gotthelf achieves a delightful realism and makes Anneli herself into a fully sympathetic figure. In Der Nachsommer, family resemblances have a structural and poetic significance in so far as they link the main charac­ ters together and form an essential part of the theme of love. Indeed, one aspect of the hero's cultural and spiritual devel­ opment is his need to become aware of the importance of the family unit in society, and to prepare himself, through his marriage with Natalie, for "das reine Familienleben" (pure family life).78 It is characteristic of this tightly organized novel that careful attention should have been given to the unity of physiognomies. For example, the predominant feaGlaub... g'si: Believe me, if you had known me as a girl, you wouldn't have had me; I would have been too rough and wild for you.

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

tures are dark hair and dark eyes. In Heinrich's second de­ scription of Mathilde and her daughter Natalie, he notes that they both have large dark eyes. Earlier, on his second visit to the Rosenhaus, he had described the boy Gustav as possessing "braune Haarfiille (thick brown hair) and "die grossen schwarzen Augen" (big dark eyes); so that, when the two women arrived at the Rosenhaus for the first time, he could see "dass hier Gustavs Mutter und Schwester zugegen seien; denn beide hatten dieselben schwarzen Augen wie Gustav, beide dieselben Ziige des Angesichts, und Natalie hatte auch die braunen Locken Gustavs...." The physiognomical re­ semblance between Gustav and Natalie is, in fact, so remark­ able that as Heinrich watches them from a distance as they walk in the garden together it seems "als sahe man eine einzige, braune, glanzende Haarfiille."79 These family resemblances constitute a major link to the story of Risach's love affair with Mathilde, which is told in the chapter called "Der Riickblick." Thus Heinrich learns how Risach, while employed as house-tutor to Mathilde's family, fell in love with her but was unable to marry her, owing to the disapproval of her socially ambitious parents. Noteworthy is the way Risach describes Mathilde's mother as he first saw her on his arrival in her household: "Sie war sehr schon, noch ziemlich jung, und was mir am meisten auffiel, war, dass sie sehr schone braune Haare, aber tiefdunkle, grosse schwarze Augen hatte." Risach goes on to tell Heinrich how he met Mathilde again several years later, both of them having had loveless marriages; how this time she was accompanied by a small boy whom he correctly took to be her son because, as he dass ... Gustavs: that it was Gustav's mother and sister; for they both had the same brown eyes as Gustav, both the same facial features, and Natalie had Gustav's brown hair. als sahe ... Haarfiille: as if you were seeing one single, brown, shining mass of hair. Sie ... hatte: She was very beautiful and still quite young, and what struck me most about her was that she had lovely brown hair as well as very large dark eyes.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

explained to her on that occasion, "ich habe deine schwarzen Augen an ihm gesehen"; and, finally, how he was later aston­ ished at the likeness between her daughter Natalie and what she (Mathilde) had looked like as a girl: "Eine grossere Gleichheit als zwischen diesem Kinde und dem Kinde Mathilde kann nicht mehr gedacht werden. Ich erschrak, als ich das Madehen sah."80 Through these physiognomical resem­ blances, then, Stifter seems to suggest most poetically that the love between Risach and Mathilde has been sustained over the years in spite of unfavorable circumstances. Furthermore, as a link between the past and the present, these resem­ blances may be seen as a kind of leitmotif in that Risach and Mathilde are now able, through Gustav and Natalie, to be compensated for their thwarted love of earlier years: thus, Gustav is named after Risach and becomes his foster son, while Natalie's marriage with Heinrich will be a vicarious fulfillment and consummation of that love. In some novels, hereditary resemblances may be the basis for a conflict between families. For example, in The Mill on the Floss, the antagonism between the Dodsons and the Tullivers is to be ascribed first and foremost to their physiog­ nomical differences. In Wuthering Heights physiognomical contrasts play a significant part in the rivalry between the Lintons, on the one hand, and between Heathcliff and the Earnshaws, on the other. The Linton physiognomy is treated in two ways: first, the "light hair and fair skin" of Edgar Lin­ ton, which are so ardently coveted by Heathcliff as a boy, are associated, it seems, with social privilege and cultural refine­ ment; secondly, they imply a certain decadence which be­ comes evident in the child of HeathclifFs marriage with Isa­ bella Linton. By marrying Isabella, Heathcliff has sought to avenge himself on Cathy and on the Lintons. But Fate an­ swers this quest for vengeance with an act of counter-ventch ... gesehen: I saw your dark eyes in him Etne ... sah: No greater likeness could be imagined than between this young creature and Mathilde as a girl. I was astonished when I saw the girl.

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

geance; for HeathclifiPs son proves not only to bear no physi­ cal resemblance to himself but also to possess a sickly version of that Linton physiognomy which his father had once so en­ vied and admired, and which, to judge by the latter's con­ demnation of Isabella in front of Cathy for "that mawkish, waxen face" and for her blue eyes in so far as they "detestably resemble Linton's," he has by now come to hate and despise. The irony of this is made plain when Nelly Dean describes Linton HeathclifiTs resemblance to his uncle: "A pale, deli­ cate, effeminate boy, who might have been taken for my master's younger brother, so strong was the resemblance, but there was a sickly peevishness in his aspect that Edgar Linton never had." Pathos is then added to irony in Nelly Dean's dia­ logue with Linton HeathclifiF, who learns to his dismay that he is physically quite different from his father, with the "black hair and eyes," and then again in the boy's own awareness of this difference as expressed in a letter to his uncle Edgar: "I believe an interview would convince you that my father's character is not mine; he affirms I am more your nephew than his son...." Disappointed for obvious reasons by the physical appearance of his son, HeathclifiF nevertheless resolves to have him well looked after in order to use him later for pur­ poses of vengeance; though, as time passes, his dislike of the boy becomes more and more apparent, being typified, for in­ stance, by his "antipathy to the sound of his voice." However, his plan to win a vicarious triumph over the Lintons by hav­ ing his offspring "lord of [the Lintons'] estates" and "hiring their children, to till their fathers' land for wages" is thwarted; for, though HeathclifiF forces Catherine Linton to marry his son, the latter dies an invalid's death shortly after­ ward.81 The fair hair and blue eyes of the Lintons are also con­ trasted with the Earnshaws' dark hair and dark eyes, which, in the person of Catherine Earnshaw, represent that boister­ ous vitality which is lacking in the Lintons. Moreover, the fundamental incompatibility between Cathy and Edgar is suggested to some extent by their being physically quite una-

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

Idce—an incompatibility which is made symbolically manifest in that mixture of sensitivity and discontent we so often see in the child of their tragic union. Nevertheless, as Nelly Dean implies in her first detailed description of Catherine Linton, the child has clearly inherited the best of both parents: She was the most winning thing that ever brought sun­ shine into a desolate house—a real beauty in face—with the Earnshaws' handsome dark eyes, but the Lintons' fair skin, and small features, and yellow curling hair. Her spirit was high, though not rough, and qualified by a heart sensitive and lively to excess in its affections. That capacity for intense attachments reminded me of her mother: still she did not resemble her; for she could be soft and mild as a dove, and she had a gentle voice and pensive expression.82 Catherine's heredity becomes the basis for her role in the novel. Thus, with her Earnshaw vitality and Linton sensitiv­ ity, she not only offers resistance, however short-lived, to Heathcliflrs tyranny but also manages after a long period of conflict with Hareton (for which her snobbishness is largely to blame) to draw the latter out and, as we saw earlier, to edu­ cate him. Furthermore, the loving friendship that develops between Catherine and Hareton enhances their resemblance to each other, which in turn becomes a kind of bastion against HeathclifFs domination. This is shown just before the turning point in the action when Heathcliff confides in Nelly Dean about being ceaselessly haunted by the ghost of the first Catherine. The resemblance between Catherine Linton and Hareton Earnshaw is, in fact, noted by Heathcliff; and, by virtue of its overpowering effect on him, it marks the begin­ ning of his spiritual decline: They lifted their eyes together, to encounter Mr. Heath­ cliff; perhaps you have never remarked that their eyes are precisely similar, and they are those of Catherine Earnshaw. The present Catherine has no other likeness to her except a breadth of forehead, and a certain arch of

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

the nostril that makes her appear rather haughty, whether she will or not. With Hareton the resemblance is carried further: it is significant at all times, then it was particularly striking because his senses were alert, and his mental faculties wakened to unwonted activity.83 What is remarkable about this description is that it poetically marks yet another step toward the resolution of the conflict between the Earnshaws and the Lintons—a resolution al­ ready symbolically adumbrated in the physiognomical make­ up of Catherine Linton—just as it portends the defeat of HeathclifiF and the start of a new life for Catherine and Hareton at Thrushcross Grange. Finally, let us refer to Goethe's Die Wahlverwandtschaften, in which the treatment of physiognomical resemblances in respect to the child born to Charlotte and Eduard is han­ dled with a compound of irony and poetic symbolism. First of all, the narrator relates how, shortly after the birth, the ladies of Charlotte's household are unanimous that the boy resem­ bles his father Eduard. It is, therefore, comically ironic that Mittler, whose role in the novel is to uphold the sanctity of marriage, should be the first to notice that the boy does not, in fact, resemble his parents, but, instead, looks like the Hauptmann: "Mittler, der zunachst das Kind empfing, stutzte gleichfalls, indem er in der Bildung desselben eine so aufiFallende Ahnlichkeit, und zwar mit dem Hauptmann erblickte, dergleichen ihm sonst noch nie vorgekommen war." Later the narrator tells of the astonishment of others at the child's increasing likeness to the Hauptmann and to Ottilie. Man sah in ihm ein wunderbares, ja ein Wunderkind, hochst erfreulich dem Anblick, an Grosse, Ebenmass, Mittler... war: Mittler, who was the first to take the baby into his arms, was at once startled to see such a striking resemblance between it and the Hauptmann—a resemblance he had never seen the like of before. Man ... unterscheiden: You could see that it was a phenomenal child, nay a child wonder, an utter delight to the eyes in size, proportions, strength, and health; and what was more astonishing was that double re-

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

Starke und Gesundheit, und was noch mehr in Verwunderung setzte, war jene doppelte Ahnlichkeit, die sich immer mehr entwickelte. Den Gesichtsziigen und der ganzen Form nach glich das Kind immer mehr dem Hauptmann, die Augen liessen sich immer weniger von Ottiliens Augen unterscheiden.84 Eduard's first reaction to his child is that it looks like the Hauptmann, so that he is amazed to hear from Ottilie that ev­ eryone considers it to resemble her. However, when the boy opens his eyes, Eduard is immediately able to understand just what Ottilie has meant: "Du bists! rief er aus; deine Augen sinds. Ach! aber lass mich in die deinigen schaun!"85 And so, although the boy is his and Charlotte's natural offspring, Eduard realizes that it is also the lovechild of a double psy­ chological adultery. For this treatment of the baby's heredity as a symbol of Eduard's love for Ottilie and Charlotte's for the Hauptmann, Goethe is said to have been indebted to Schelling, who showed that psychic and spiritual forces can exercise a certain control over the laws of nature. At the same time, however, we should not overlook the relevance here of Lavater's own ideas concerning the influence of the imagination on the human physiognomy. Moreover, in a novel where character description is at a minimum, the considerable at­ tention given to these physiognomical resemblances is signifi­ cant, even if, in a sense, Goethe appears to be poking fun at the Swiss physiognomist for his ability to see resemblances between newborn babies and their parents. Just as novelists were conscious of family physiognomies, so they were conscious of social physiognomies; and though the idea of appearance as revelatory of social background had al­ ready obtained in literary portraiture long before Lavater's semblance which was growing more and more intense. In facial features and general physique the child increasingly resembled the Hauptmann, while its eyes looked more and more like Ottilie's. Du bists... schaun: "It's you to a T!" he exclaimed; "they're your eyes! Oh, let me gaze into your eyes!"

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

time, it was only in nineteenth-century fiction that it received prominent treatment, especially in novels concerned with so­ cial stratification and class consciousness. Some novelists, as we saw earlier, seem to acknowledge the view that breeding can be physiognomically determined. Thus Champfleury in Les Bourgeois de Molinchart describes the members of Coimt Julien's hunting party as having "une physionomie qui ne permettait pas de Ies classer dans la bourgeoisie."86 Stendhal, too, pays homage to this idea in Le Rouge et Ie Noir in so far as the hero's persistent fascination with Mathilde's aristocratic birth is made palpable to the reader by significant references to her fair hair, voice, gestures, movements, and general bearing. That a highborn physiognomy is an undoubted privi­ lege is suggested by Trollope in Doctor Thome, as he tells how the social standing of the Greshams is enhanced by the fact that they are all endowed with "that pleasant aristocratic, dangerous curl of the upper lip which can equally well express good humour or scorn."87 Some novelists, on the other hand, appear to reject this physiognomical idea. For example, in ITie Mill on the Floss George Eliot, having described Mr. Deane as possessing "a type of physique to be seen in all ranks of English society—bold crown, red whiskers, full forehead, and general solidity," goes on to say: "You may see noblemen like Mr. Deane, and you may see grocers or day-labourers like him."88 Similarly, Mrs. Gaskell in Wives and Daugfiters (1864-66), though admitting that "leanness goes a great way to gentility," shows Squire Hawley, who comes from a family of a long aristocratic lineage, expressing doubts whether "a stranger would take [him] for a gentleman, with [his] red face, great hands and feet, and thick figure."89 The physiognomical skepticism evident in the passages just quoted puts us in mind of the brilliantly ironic treatment of social physiognomies we find in Jane Austen and Dickens. In Emma, for example, the heroine's disastrous tendency to let her grandiose illusions run away with her is shown early in une physionomie... bourgeoisie: a physiognomy that could not be clas­ sified as bourgeois.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

the novel through her treatment of Harriet Smith. It all starts with Emma's conviction that Harriet is "the natural daughter of somebody," a conviction based simply on the fact that she admires Harriet's beauty and manners. Because of this, Emma, in her determination to match Harriet with Mr. Elton, tries to prevent her from succumbing to the blandish­ ments of Mr. Martin, a member of the yeomanry. Thus, while mildly acknowledging Martin's good qualities, she seeks to draw Harriet's attention to his humble social background: "I am sure you must have been struck by his awkward look and abrupt manner, and the uncouthness of a voice which I heard to be wholly unmodulated as I stood here." A dialogue be­ tween the two women then takes place, during which they agree on the incomparable merits of Mr. Knightley (an ironic foreshadowing that both will become more or less amorously entangled with him). At the same time, Emma tries to divert Harriet's interest to Elton by such remarks as; "In one re­ spect, perhaps, Mr. Elton's manners are superior to Mr. Knightley's or Mr. Weston's. They have more gentleness." But plausible though Emma's social assessments sound to an innocent ear, the action of the novel will prove them to have been too subjective; for not only does Elton turn out to be a disappointing fop, and Martin a man of commendable charac­ ter and education, but also, at the end of the novel, by which time Emma has come down to earth with a fair bump, she learns that Harriet is, after all, only the daughter of a trades­ man, wherefore the narrator comments somewhat ironically: "Such was the blood of gentility which Emma had formerly been so ready to vouch for."90 Social physiognomies also play an important part in Great Expectations. Indeed, one of the reasons for Pip's social snob­ bery is the fact that Estella, whom he ironically presumes to be highborn, humiliates him on his first visit to Satis House, not only for his solecisms of speech, but also for his "coarse hands" and "thick boots." And the memory of this occasion never ceases to rankle in his mind. Pip's awareness of his infe­ rior birth is also emphasized in his first portrait of Herbert

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

Pocket as an adult. In Herbert, Pip recognizes a young man who is completely himself, "a pale young gentleman" who is obviously quite content with his place in society; hence, no doubt, Pip's momentary suspicion that Herbert "would never be successful or rich." Herbert, indeed, displays that good breeding which Pip himself lacks, and this is conveyed by the hero in the last part of his description of Herbert: "Whether Mr. Trabb's local work would have sat more gracefully on him than on me, may be a question; but I am conscious that he carried off his rather old clothes much better than I carried off my new suit"91—which is another interesting twist on the popular idea that clothes reveal social class. Social physiognomies also form part of the novel's central theme of the inconsistencies and injustices of society. For ex­ ample, when Magwitch gives Pip an account of his tragic friendship with Compeyson, who, as he says, "had been to a public boarding-school and had education," he relates how the latter originally took him on as a partner in his dishonest business, how both were subsequently committed for felony on a charge of putting stolen bank notes into circulation, and how, finally, Compeyson's favorable social appearance ena­ bled him to get off with a much lighter sentence than Magwitch got. Indeed, the poignancy of Magwitch's account lies particularly in the contrast he noted at the trial between Compeyson's appearance and his own shabby exterior: "When he was put in the dock, I noticed first of all what a gentleman Compeyson looked, wi' his curly hair and his black clothes and his white pocket-hankercher, and what a common wretch I looked."92 Also relevant to nineteenth-century literary portraiture are Lavater's discussions of the similarities (and differences) be­ tween human and animal physiognomies; indeed, we may imagine that the Swiss pastor's fascinating, if often naively anthropomorphic, engravings of apes, goats, cattle, snakes, and insects became for many a novelist a source to draw on. Nineteenth-century physiognomists certainly developed this aspect of physiognomy as far as it could go, at the same time

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

as novelists themselves made more abundant use of animal comparisons than their predecessors had done.93 The ten­ dency to discover similarities between human beings and ani­ mals is, of course, practically as old as literature itself, though the animal comparison was, at least until the late eighteenth century, essentially metaphorical or symbolical, as is evident, for example, in the medieval Physiologus, in Shakespeare,94 and in such seventeenth-century French moralists as La Fon­ taine, La Bruyere, and La Rochefoucauld. The moralist's touch certainly prevailed throughout most of the eighteenth century, which, despite acknowledging the unity of nature and, hence, man's close kinship with animals, still held for the most part to the idea of the immutability of species as well as the unquestioned superiority of man in the chain of being 95 It was, moreover, a rare novelist who made aesthetic use of physiognomical similarities between man and beast; and al­ though Lavater himself, in keeping with his premiss that man was created in the image of God, differs from his predecessors Aristotle and Porta by being cautious on the question of such similarities, he nevertheless admits that we may perceive "Zuge an den Menschen ..., die uns an Thiere sogleich erinnern."96 The nineteenth-century novelist most renowned for animal comparisons is, no doubt, Balzac. It is true that the parallels he draws, in the Avant-Propos to the Comidie Humaine, be­ tween the multiplicity of human social types and zoological varieties is hardly less metaphorical than similar postulations made by, say, Diderot in Satire 1 or La Rochefoucauld in Reflexions diverses 97 Yet there are statements which clearly point to Balzac's familiarity with Lavater's discussions on ani­ mal physiognomies. Consider, for example, the following from La Peau de chagrin: "Les ressemblances animales inZtige... erinnem: human facial features that at once remind us of ani­ mals. Les ressemblances ... corps: Animal characteristics imprinted on human faces, and interestingly enough substantiated by physiologists, can again be seen more or less in the gestures and habits of the body.

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

scrites sur Ies figures humaines, et si curieusement demontrees par Ies physiologistes, reparaissent vaguement dans Ies gestes, dans Ies habitudes du corps."98 Sometimes Balzac's animal comparisons have that phantasmagoric quality which Hugo carried to extremes in his novels. Nevertheless, with the de­ velopment of realism, the use of animal comparisons was in­ creasingly based on the assumption of man's close biological kinship with animals—a kinship that is already quite evolu­ tionary in George Eliot and most explicitly so in the naturalist novel. Perhaps the most interesting aesthetic treatment of this kinship is to be found in Wuthering Heights. Consider, for in­ stance, the treatment of dogs, which are mentioned some sixty times in the novel. At first sight, the dog would seem to be not much more than an appropriate adjunct for a portrayal of Yorkshire country life, a matter of local color. In fact, the domestic animal proves to be an important image of the au­ thor's cosmic vision of human nature; for she seems to suggest that, just as the dog has taken on certain human characteris­ tics through its close association with man, so man himself re­ veals how, in physiognomical and pathognomical moments of passion or helplessness, he is precariously poised, somewhat like the dog, between civilization and instinct. Noteworthy, for example, is Nelly Dean's occasional recourse to canine similes, whether it be to show Cathy looking "as dismal as a drowned whelp" or Catherine Linton running ahead "like a young greyhound" or Linton Heathcliff slinking away from his father "exactly as a spaniel might which suspected the person who attended on it of designing a spiteful squeeze." This last is typical of those similes Nelly Dean uses in order to convey the degradation some of the main characters suffer at the hands of Heathcliff. The idea that a man in a fit of passion may actually take on a certain canine nature is shown in Nelly Dean's striking description of Heathcliff as seen with the dying Cathy: "... he gnashed at me, and foamed like a mad dog, and gathered her to him with greedy jealousy. I did not feel as if I were in the company of a creature of my own

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

s p e c i e s . . . S u c h a description might be said to form a kind of bridge between Lavater and Darwin's Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872).100 Another aspect of Lavaterian physiognomy worth men­ tioning here is the treatment of the novel's setting as an ex­ pression of the character of an individual or a group. In this connection, it is noteworthy that the idea of the relationship between human nature and environment, which was to be­ come central to nineteenth-century scientific thought and thematic in the naturalist novel, is just as clearly foreshad­ owed in the Fragmente as is hereditary theory itself. But what particularly seemed to interest Lavater about this relation­ ship is the way in which a human habitat, like possessions, can take on something of the owner's character. As Lavater says, "So lassen Kleider und Hausrath eines Mannes auf dessen Charakter schliessen."101 Although the word Hausrath is re­ stricted in meaning to "household furniture," it is likely that Lavater would have acknowledged the view held by many nineteenth-century novelists that even a house is in some sense a physiognomical expression of its owner. Perhaps the first novelist to point to the close connection between character and setting was Scott, though it was his disciple Balzac who carried this idea to Lavaterian extremes. Thus of his well-known character Gobseck, Balzac writes: "Sa maison et Iui se ressemblaient. Vous eussiez dit I'huitre et son rocher." Again, in Le Pere Goriot the author says of Madame Vauquer and her boardinghouse: "Toute sa personne explique la pension, comme la pension implique sa personne."102 The same physiognomical principle is ironically illustrated in Eugenie Grandet, in which the description of pere Grandet's So lassen . . . schliessen: Thus clothes and furniture can tell us some­ thing about human character. Sa maison ... rocher: He and his entire house resembled each other. It was like an oyster and its rock. Toute ... personne: Her entire person explains her boardinghouse, just as her boardinghouse suggests her person.

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

bleak and almost dilapidated house, as seen through the eyes of Charles Grandet, seems curiously expressive of the owner's miserliness and the ascetic life of the household. The French realists Champfleury and Duranty also tend to make their de­ scriptions of domestic interiors physiognomically signifi­ cant.103 That houses can be expressive of human atmosphere appears to be acknowledged throughout much of Wuthering Heigjits in the contrast between the prevailing grimness of Wuthering Heights and the orderliness of the Lintons' house, Thrushcross Grange. Similarly, we note how skillfully Gotthelf brings out the different psychologies of the two families in Geld und Geist by showing how one family, or member of a family, derives its impressions of the other simply by observ­ ing the way the house is kept. As the narrator says: "Wie Kinder tun, wenn man gegen ein Haus kommt, und Rosse oder auch Kiihe, wenn man in den Stall kommt, daran kann man viel erraten von dem was inwendig im Haus ist, ja selbst der Hund, der auf der Bsetzli liegt, verrat schon viel."104 Other settings that serve a specifically physiognomical func­ tion are the Rosenhaus in Der Nachsommer, which, as the narrator tells us, is fully expressive of Risach's appearance and his harmonious way of life,105 and Satis House in Great Ex­ pectations, which symbolizes the morbid eccentricity of Miss Haversham. Dickens, it seems, attaches physiognomical sig­ nificance not only to houses but also to their smallest adjuncts, as we can see in a delightful episode in Sketches by Boz (1833-36). Thus the narrator, who spends a good deal of his time observing people in the streets, remarks: The various expressions of the human countenance af­ ford a beautiful and interesting study; but there is some­ thing in the physiognomy of street-door knockers, almost Wite... viel: What the children are up to when you call on a household, or what the horses or even the cattle are doing when you go into a stable, can tell you a good deal about the general atmosphere of that household; indeed, the very dog lying on the paving can be very revealing.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

as characteristic, and nearly as infallible. Whenever we visit a man for the first time, we contemplate the fea­ tures of his knocker with the greatest curiosity, for we well know that, between the man and his knocker, there will inevitably be a greater or lesser degree of resem­ blance and sympathy.... Some phrenologists affirm that the agitation of a man's brain by different passions, produces corresponding de­ velopments in the form of his skull. Do not let us be un­ derstood as pushing our theory to the full length of as­ serting that any alteration in a man's disposition would produce a visible effect on the feature of his knocker. Our position merely is, that in such a case, the magne­ tism which must exist between a man and his knocker, would induce the man to remove, and seek some knocker more congenial to his altered feelings. If you ever find a man changing his habitation without any reasonable pretext, depend upon it, that, although he may not be aware of the fact himself, it is because he and his knocker are at variance. This is a new theory, but we venture to launch it, nevertheless, as being quite as ingenious and infallible as many thousands of the learned speculations which are daily broached for public good and private fortune-making.106 And with this characteristic touch of Dickensian irony, we are reminded once more of the absurdities to which physiog­ nomists and phrenologists led some of their more credulous disciples. By way of complete contrast to the foregoing, let us con­ clude this chapter by considering an unusual and much less familiar aspect of Lavaterian theory, in the treatment of which some novelists were at their most earnest and, in some cases, their most poetic: the human physiognomy at death. In the Fragmente Lavater speaks of the "unaussprechliche Veredlung" (ineffable refinement) of the facial features of the dying, and remarks how physiognomies take on "eine

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

schonere Zeichnung" (finer contours) some sixteen to twentyfour hours after death; and the features are, indeed, "viel bestimmter, proportionierter, harmonischer, homogenischer, edler, erhabener... ."107 But if Lavater appears to be the first amongst modern physiognomists to have written on the physiognomy of death, he was certainly not the first to re­ count the experiences he so vividly describes here. Thus Rich­ ardson suggests that he had himself undergone much the same experiences some thirty years earlier, to judge from the fa­ mous description of Clarissa in death, as given by Mr. Belford in a letter to Lovelace: "We could not help taking a view of the lovely corpse, and admiring the charming serenity of her noble aspect. The women declared, they never saw death so lovely before; and that she looked as if in an easy slumber, the colour having not quite left her cheeks and lips."108 Similar descriptions occur in Rousseau's Nouvelle Heloise and Frances Brooke's Julia Mandeville (1769). But such descrip­ tions are exceptional in fiction before 1800, and, indeed, the earliest references to the physiognomy of death in belles-lettres hardly predate those to be found, say, in the writings of Jean Paul, Friedrich Schlegel, Brillat-Savarin, and Herman Grimm.109 As for descriptions of the physiognomy of death in nineteenth-century fiction, these are almost invariably con­ cerned with the beautification of the face, and are essentially lyrical, as, for example, in Cranford, The Old Curiosity Shop, and Chronik der Sperlingsgasse. The same is true of Chateau­ briand's Christian novels Atala and Rene; indeed, the de­ scription of the hero's father in the latter novel has a certain Lavaterian interest: "Les traits paternels avaient pris au cercueil quelque chose de sublime. Pourquoi cet etonnant mystere ne serait-il pas l'indice de notre immortalite? Pourv i e l . . . e r h a b e n e r : more distinct, better proportioned, more harmoni­ ous, more homogeneous, more refined, more sublime. Les traits ... univers: My father's features had taken on a certain sublimeness in the coffin. Why should this astonishing mystery not be a sign of our immortality? Why should death, which is omniscient, not have en­ graved the secrets of another universe on the foreheads of its victims?

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

quoi la mort, qui sait tout, n'aurait-elle pas grave sur Ie front de sa victime Ies secrets d'un autre univers?"110 In some novels character description is used with dramatic effectiveness to mark the final stages leading to death. For ex­ ample, in VittoriaAccorombona Tieck skillfully illustrates the tragedy of ambition as he presents Signora Accorombona, shortly before her death, in a state of raving madness caused by her moral guilt, the physiognomical effects of which are suggested partly by the words "im kreideweissen, alten ganz abgemagerten Gesicht." With intense dramatic irony, the narrator then describes the climactic moment when her son Ottavio, himself by now a piteous victim of her ambitions, re­ turns home, only to be told by the priest Vinzenz that his mother has passed away. Soon afterward, when Ottavio lies prostrate with grief beside her bier, the narrator brings out a striking physiognomical contrast between mother and son, as the priest sees Signora Accorombona transfigured by death: "Als er sich naherte, schaute ihn vom Grabhiigel ein verklartes Angesicht entgegen, eine Begeisterung des Schmerzes leuchtete in alien Zugen, und so wie die Zeichen der Krankheit verschwunden waren, glanzte das Angesicht, wie das eines selig Sterbenden, der schon im toten Ohr die Stimme der Engel vernimmt."111 In Wuthering HeigJvts, Nelly Dean's descriptions of the dying and the dead take on a peculiarly Lavaterian interest when considered in the light of her use of the Bible as a touchstone for moral conduct, her adherence to orthodox Christian beliefs as manifest in her rejection of ghosts and similar supernatural phenomena, and her certainty of the ex­ istence of an afterlife. But Lavaterian as her descriptions may be in this respect, they none the less bespeak a certain subjec­ tivity on her part, as though she were passing moral judgi m . . . G e s i c h t : in the chalk-white, old, and utterly emaciated face. A l s . . . v e m i m m t : As he drew near, a transfigured countenance gazed up at him from the tumulus with a look of agonized rapture diffused over its features; and now that the signs of strain had vanished, the face was radi­ ant, like that of a dying devout whose ears can already hear angels' voices.

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

ments. Consider, for example, her sympathetic account of the dying Edgar Linton, in which references to "his raised eyes, that seemed dilating with ecstasy" before his death and to "that rapt, radiant gaze"112 immediately afterward corre­ spond specifically with his last words to his daughter about being reunited with Cathy. Similar observations are made about HeathcliflF in the last chapter, where, having been de­ scribed on his return from one of his nocturnal wanderings as betraying "a strange, joyful glitter in his eyes, that altered the aspect of his whole face," and, a few hours later, with "the same unnatural... appearance of joy under his black brows," he remarks to Nelly Dean that he is "within sight of [his] heaven." Yet, notwithstanding the persistence, in each de­ scription, of a certain transcendental exultation of expression, the prevailing grimness of Heathcliffs appearance, with its goblin-like quality and its final sneering expression, would seem to suggest damnation in Nelly's eyes, especially in the context of her reproaching him on the eve of his death with having lived "a selfish, unchristian life."113 But it is in her account of Cathy's illness, convalescence, and death that Nelly Dean is at her most Lavaterian and, perhaps, her least subjective as well. We note how she con­ veys the physical effects of the heroine's suicidal impulses, of her fear of being haunted, of her nightmares, and of her in­ somnia (all of which later prove to have been symptoms of "brain fever") by such references as "ghastly countenance," "strange exaggerated manner," and "wasted face," and how she emphasizes the physiognomical interest of the illness by the alarm and horror with which both she and Edgar react to her haggard look or changing facial expressions. This change in Cathy's appearance brought about by her illness later serves as an appropriate transition to Nelly's description of Cathy on the eve of her death: Her appearance was altered, as I had told HeathcliiF, but when she was calm, there seemed unearthly beauty in the change.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

The flash of her eyes had been succeeded by a dreamy and melancholy softness: they no longer gave the im­ pression of looking at the objects around her; they ap­ peared always to gaze beyond, and far beyond—you would have said out of this world... .114 Despite Nelly Dean's remark later in the chapter that heaven might be "a land of exile" to Cathy, the idea of the latter's otherworldly destiny is amply suggested in descriptions of her appearance in death. Thus, having contrasted Cathy's "per­ fect peace" with Edgar's "hush of exhausted anguish," Nelly goes on to say: Her brow smooth, her lids closed, her lips wearing the expression of a smile, no angel in heaven could be more beautiful than she appeared; and I partook of the infinite calm in which she lay. My mind was never in a holier frame than while I gazed on that untroubled image of Divine rest.115 That Nelly Dean is Lavaterian here in the fullest sense of the term is clearly borne out by the succeeding paragraph, in which she speaks of being happy "while watching in the chamber of death," where she sees "a repose that neither earth nor hell can break;" and though she admits that it is doubtful whether the heroine "merited a haven of peace" after her "wayward and impatient existence," such doubts are soon dispelled for her "in the presence of her corpse," which, as she adds, "asserted its own tranquillity."116 But confident as she is here, as elsewhere in her narrative, of the principles of physiognomy, Nelly Dean's descriptions are of interest mainly as an expression of her simple Christian faith, since it is evident from subsequent chapters that, from the au­ thor's viewpoint at least, the question of the heroine's fate after death remains, like that of Heathcliff, unresolved. In any event, the interest of all these descriptions, like those dis­ cussed earlier, lies in their more or less embodying the sub­ stance of Lavater's observations concerning the physiognomy

LITERARY PORTRAITURE

of the dying and the dead; and we might add that, by the very lyricism of these passages, nineteenth-century novelists not only enriched literary portraiture, but came very close to the transcendental spirit of the Fragmente.

Physiognomical Awareness in the Nineteenth-Century European Novel

STUDIES of physiognomy in the nineteenth-century European

novel have tended to be prompted by the discovery of spe­ cific references to Lavater and Gall, physiognomy and phre­ nology, in contexts of literary portraiture.1 Such references have also been thought a useful means not only of gauging the intensity and duration of the Lavaterian physiognomical cli­ mate but also of substantiating arguments put forward about the influence of these sciences on the novel. This would be hardly less true of a number of long-forgotten literary works, especially satires, farces, and extravaganzas, in which one or other science constitutes the main theme, and Lavater or Gall is occasionally portrayed as hero.2 Moreover, those concerned with drawing parallels between Lavater's theories and say, the treatment of character description in the English novel down to the mid-nineteenth century might somewhat propiti­ ate their readers in advance by pointing out, for instance, that a play about Lavater and his physiognomical skills 'was staged in London as late as 1867, and was even attended by Ruskin and Lewis Carroll.3 But whatever the uses or limitations of such historical ma­ terial for purposes of persuasion, the literary critic is ulti­ mately bound to have to consider what aesthetic value, if any, is to be attached to these extrinsic elements, or, at least, how far their presence in literature deserves his attention. That physiognomy and phrenology should have been thought ad­ mirable subject matter for comedies and melodramas scarcely

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

needs to be elaborated here: both sciences were the cause of much fierce controversy and, inevitably, aroused tensions which, as playwrights have wisely shown, are often best re­ leased in the theater. Yet the very topicality of the subject matter that originally guaranteed the success of these com­ edies also doomed them to eventual oblivion; and however admirable still their dialogues or skillful their plots, such works now seem to possess greater interest for the historian than for the literary critic. The same is also true of a number of novels or short stories in which physiognomy and phrenol­ ogy are of prime importance for the plot.4 Topical references are, of course, prominent enough even in the best fiction of the period, which is a reminder of the extent to which some novelists, particularly the realists, regarded it as their func­ tion to be historians of contemporary manners: we need only think of Balzac, Stendhal, Dickens, and George Eliot. This historical function is nowhere more evident than in contexts of character description, where the merest mention of physi­ ognomy or phrenology, whether in serious or in comic vein, sometimes gives the impression that the author is eager to as­ sure his reader that he is up to date with the latest thinking, if not to suggest that both are participating in a familiar ritual.5 Although the presence of physiognomy and phrenology in the novel may point up the aesthetic shortcomings of the genre during that period, it would be mistaken to suppose that documentary elements necessarily vitiate a novel as a work of art, just as it would be to declare that the purest aes­ thetic treatment of an idea has no documentary interest at all. On the other hand, when it is a question of evaluating the uses of physiognomy and phrenology in the novel, certain distinc­ tions can, and should, be made at the outset. Thus, there is a sense in which, by virtue of its having always been intrinsic to human observation in the novel, physiognomy may be rightly said—pace Lavater—to be ahistorical, whereas every refer­ ence to phrenology can only be properly understood in terms of the history of that science from Gall onward. Moreover, the fact that phrenology is usually subordinated to physiog-

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

nomy in studies on literature portraiture, and that no such study has hitherto been made in the light of phrenology alone, is enough to suggest the limitations of the science as an object of literary criticism. Nevertheless, in view of its very close association with physiognomy, it would be fitting at this point to consider briefly the uses of phrenology in nine­ teenth-century literature and, more particularly, to estimate how far phrenology in the novel may be said to retain an aes­ thetic interest for the present-day reader. First of all, there can be no question that phrenology had an important enough influence on nineteenth-century cul­ tural life to have attracted the attention of scholars in several disciplines, much research on the science having been con­ cerned so far with its relevance to anthropology, sociology, criminology, and political theory as well as the occult sci­ ences.6 Literary critics, too, have pointed to the different ways in which phrenology affected the language and thinking of poets and novelists such as Vigny, Marryat, Poe, Baude­ laire, Whitman, Melville, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Mark Twain.7 One critic has recently shown that three tenets of Romanticism—evolutionism, individualism, and perpetual striving—had their roots partly in phrenological theory.8 This preoccupation with the influence of phrenology is conspicu­ ous in studies on American writers, some of whom might be described as having been veritably smitten by the science. In­ deed, it has been shown, for example, how much Whitman drew on phrenology for some of the central ideas in Leaves of Grass.9 Phrenology also permeates Poe's writings, where his ambivalent attitude to the science is illustrated by the differ­ ent narratorial stances he adopts. Thus, in a study of the au­ thor it has been suggested that, whereas Poe is utterly serious about phrenology in The Murders of the Rue Morgue, The Fall of the House of Usher, and Ligeia, he was just as ready to see its humorous side in sketches such as "The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether," "Diddling Considered as One of the Exact Sciences," and "Some Words with an Enemy," the sat-

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

ire in each case being directed less at phrenology than the pretensions of phrenologists.10 References and allusions to phrenology are also evident in the European novel throughout the nineteenth century, and it is interesting to discover a fictional reference to Gall as late as 1898, in Svevo's admirable Senilitd.11 Something of the es­ sence of the phrenological atmosphere has been caught in much of the minor fiction of the period— in Arnim's Grafin Dolores (1810), Mary Russell Mitford's Our Village (1824-32), Willibald Alexis' Ruhe ist die erste Biirgerpflicht (1852), Meredith's Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859), Henry Kingsley's Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn (1859), and Oliver Wendell Holmes' Elsie Venner (1861), to mention but a few. Phrenological correlations are, as stated earlier, common enough in literary portraits: in Dickens and Thackeray, for example, such correlations are always ironic; in Balzac, Char­ lotte Bronte, and George Sand, rarely so. But whatever their aesthetic function, there can be little doubt that most such references now seem curiously dated, all the more as the reader is conscious of phrenology's historical failure as a sci­ ence. Perhaps this may explain why an essentially humorous treatment of phrenology, such as we see in, say, Peacock's Headlong Hall (1816) or in Oliver Wendell Holmes' delightful Breakfast-Table fictions (1858-72) still has a certain appeal. There is a similar appeal, too, in Dickens' and Flaubert's treatment of phrenology, even though the humor, which is al­ ways thematically integrated, is utterly satirical. Thus, Dickens implies that the cult of phrenology is quite as stupid as are many other Victorian cults he attacks in his novels. This is amply suggested in Edwin Drood, where a satirical thrust at phrenology occurs, appropriately enough, in the context of a dig at one of the author's pet aversions: philanthropy. Flau­ bert's debunking of phrenology, too, has a distinctly thematic function in that it exemplifies his distaste for the naive opti­ mism underlying the inveterate tendency of his contem­ poraries to confuse metaphysics with science. We see this not

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

only in Bouvard et Pecuchet, where the premisses of phrenol­ ogy and its educational uses are called into question, but also in Madame Bovary, in which Charles Bovary's medical in­ competence is subtly underlined by three references to a phrenological skull in his possession. Flaubert's skeptical attitude toward phrenology reminds us of his exasperation with the physiognomical obsessions of his era, as evident, for instance, in Homais' disquisition on tem­ peraments and national types in Madame Bovary and, again, in the Dictionnaire des idees reques, where, for example, blondes are defined as "plus chaudes que Ies brunes," and vice-versa; embonpoint as "signe de richesse et de faineantise"; front as "large et chauve, signe de genie et d'aplomb"; and visage as "miroir de I'ame. Alors il y a des gens qui ont l'air bien laide." Flaubert was, of course, not the first to treat physiognomy banteringly any more than he was the only novelist of his time to do so. Indeed, the idea of the physiog­ nomist as an eccentric or a fool lingered on in the novel well into the nineteenth century, colored as it was now and again by allusions to the controversies aroused by physiognomy in everyday life. There is a good example of this in Der Griine Heinrich when the narrator compares a quarrel that has started among a group of intellectuals, who are railing at someone for his reactionary outlook, to a heated argument between "die doktrinarsten Physiognomisten."12 Keller's dig here at the adherents of Lavater and his successors has the same ironic quality with which some of his contemporaries portray their fictional physiognomists. Two novelists who mention Lavater's name in their fiction, Bulwer Lytton and Champfleury, show up the comicality of physiognomical judgments in Pelham and Les Bourgeois de Molinchart, re­ spectively, and Dickens, who, as we saw earlier, ridicules the plus .. . brunes: more hot-blooded than brunettes signe ... faineantise: a sign of affluence and indolence large . . . d'aplomb: wide and bald, a sign of genius and poise miroir. . . laide: the mirror of the soul. That means there are some very ugly people.

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

typical Lavaterian disciple in Our Mutual Friend, pokes fun at the earnestness with which some of his minor characters, say, a landlord in Little Donit or Magwitch in Great Expecta­ tions, take their physiognomical skills.13 Charlotte Bronte, too, has humorous episodes about physiognomical readings both in Jane Eyre, as when Rochester, disguised as a gypsy fortuneteller, reads the heroine's destiny in her face, and in Villette, as when Lucy Snowe, having just arrived at Madame Beck's pension, is informed by the latter that her teaching appointment is contingent upon the result of a physiognomi­ cal reading to be made by one of the staff, M. Paul Emanuel. The humor of the episode is admirably conveyed in the ensu­ ing dialogue between Madame Beck and M. Paul, whose "judgement," the narrator tells us, "when it at last came, was as indefinite as what had gone before it."14 The comicality of a physiognomical reading, as suggested in the foregoing, derives in part from the idea of the apparent undemonstrability of physiognomy as a science. In the case of a phrenological reading, the comicality seems to be scarcely different in kind. But whereas the comicality of a phrenological reading is to be understood almost entirely in terms of the scientific fallibility of phrenology, that of a phys­ iognomical reading may be, and has often been, expressive of the moral or intellectual limitations of the physiognomist himself. This concept of the physiognomist is, as we saw in an earlier chapter, fairly prevalent in the novel before 1800. On the other hand, just as a physiognomical reading may bespeak the shortcomings of the physiognomist himself, so it may, by the same token, bespeak his moral depth and intelligence, his perspicacity and his sensitivity; and it was, in fact, this latter concept that was to find favor with nineteenth-century novel­ ists. Even Flaubert, for all his impatience with the banalities of physiognomical generalizations and phrenological claims, could hardly have denied that, in this respect at least, physi­ ognomy offered far greater aesthetic possibilities than phre­ nology. In fact, there is evidence that, despite his famous quest for scientific truth and objectivity, he regarded the art

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

of narrative as a fundamentally physiognomical activity. It would be enough here to recall not only the famous advice he gave to Maupassant, but also a letter to Sainte-Beuve (23-24 December 1862), in which he declared that all his descrip­ tions have a definite function in respect to character and ac­ tion.15 To be sure, one should not expect to find physiognomy and phrenology in Flaubert as one does in, say, Balzac; in fact, Flaubert eschews all phrenological correlations in his portraits, and where he describes facial and bodily features, he prefers to suggest rather than to specify their physiognom­ ical significance. Nevertheless, it is by studying Flaubert's novels against the historical background discussed in earlier chapters that we come to realize that character descriptions in his novels, whatever they may tell us about the persons described, often tell us something about the person (or view­ ing agent) through whose eyes the description is given. The fact that this particular treatment of physiognomy obtains in much other nineteenth-century fiction would, moreover, sug­ gest that character descriptions should be analyzed not merely for their morphological development or the extrinsic influences they betray but also, more particularly, as manifes­ tations of a certain point of view, be it understood in the Jamesian sense of the term or not. This point of view, which may otherwise be designated as "physiognomical awareness," will now be discussed in some detail in respect to the narra­ tor's function. FEW METHODS of literary criticism could be more instructive

than to study the development of the fictional treatment of human observation against the background of Lavaterian physiognomy. The traditional fictional medium of observa­ tion is, of course, the narrator himself, whose existence in the modern novel can be traced back partly to those highly ob­ servant narrators we find in the picaresque and realist novels of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Influenced by the descriptive techniques used in "charactery" and the "moral weeklies," as well as by the fine arts, these narrators

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

are commonly portrayed as intelligent, perspicacious beings, whose capacity to reveal the psychological or pictorial es­ sence of someone's appearance we assume to be the fruits of worldly experience. Yet despite differences of character, sex, and way of life, there is very little to distinguish them from one another in respect to descriptive approach; nor does their gift for observation necessarily tell the reader much about their particular individuality. Moreover, what observational powers they possess are generally confined to seizing the es­ sence of a character once and for all and presenting him in a single portrait in the manner of the French moralists. The physiognomical restrictions of pre-1800 fictional nar­ rators become most evident once we begin to compare the latter with their nineteenth-century counterparts; indeed, there is no question that the nineteenth-century narrator not only displays a virtually new sensibility in his methods of ob­ servation but is also endowed with a far wider range of phys­ iognomical skills than ever possessed by his predecessors. It is true that he still makes occasional use of the cool, detached approach to literary portraiture typical of earlier fiction; but his analyses of appearances are often marked by a profound interest in faces for their own sakes as well as a sensitivity that sometimes causes him to react quite physically when at­ tracted or repelled by the outward man. Such a narrator is especially common in minor fiction, Bulwer Lytton's Pelham being a notable case in point: no fictional first-person narrator could, indeed, be more inclined to physiognomical observa­ tion than the hero of this novel, with his tendency to describe in scrupulous detail every character introduced, his ability to recognize someone by his features (usually at a single glance), and his gift for striking analogies and metaphors, all of which testify to a new physiognomical atmosphere. What also marks the nineteenth-century first-person narrator as observer is his essentially contemplative approach to character description. This approach added a delightful lyrical dimension to narra­ tive art, as we can see, for example, in Raabe's Chronik der Sperlingsgasse (1859), whose lyricism derives partly from the

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

way in which characters both living and dead are evoked not so much in portraits as in references to significant physical features. The narrator's physiognomical outlook is already suggested in an early passage, which occurs, significantly for us, shortly after he has related how, in order to dispel a mel­ ancholy mood, he has looked through a collection of Chodowiecki engravings: Schaue ich auf aus meinen Traumen, so sehe ich zwar dasselbe Lacheln, dasselbe Schmerzenszucken auf den Menschengesichtern um mich her, wie vor langen, bliihendern Jahren, aber wenn auch Freud und Leid dieselben sind auf der alten Mutter Erde: die Gesichter selbst sind mir fremd—ich bin allein! Allein—und doch nicht allein. Aus der dammerigen Nacht des Vergessens taucht es auf und klingt es: Gestalten, Tone, Stimmen, die ich kannte, die ich vernahm, die ich einst gern sah und horte in vergangenen bosen und guten Tagen, werden wieder wach und lebendig.. . .16 In Raabe's novel, physiognomical contemplation is essentially an expression of love, as it is in Dominique and, as we shall see, in Der Griine Heinrich. It would not be too much, then, to say that the nineteenthcentury first-person narrator sometimes reflects Lavater's concept of physiognomy as an act of love and understanding. Moreover, the narrator's physiognomical disposition is often a manifestation of the particular moral values he or she repre­ sents. We see this most clearly in Villette, whose heroine, Lucy Snowe, is one of the most gifted and "objective" of all nineteenth-century first-person narrators and, with her neoSchaue . . . lebendig: If I gaze up out of my dreams, I can certainly see the same smiles, the same agonized looks on people's faces around me as I could in halcyon days long ago. But if the joys and sorrows are still the same on old mother earth, the faces themselves are foreign to me—I am alone—alone—and yet not alone. Out of the twilight of oblivion I hear a singing and a ringing—figures, sounds, voices that I used to know and hear in good and bad days of yore reawake and come to life again.

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

Platonic views on the relationship between character and ap­ pearance, one of the most understanding. But what is re­ markable is the way her moral development goes hand in hand with her development as a physiognomist, just as her al­ most excessive predilection for observation seems to be essen­ tial to her role as a spectator of life rather than a participant in it. The idea of the physiognomical narrator as essentially a spectator of life also appears to underlie the presentation of the two main narrators of Wuthering Heights, Lockwood and Nelly Dean. Nelly Dean's physiognomical disposition and Lavaterian ideas have been discussed in the previous chapter; and there are many parts of her narrative where we note how acutely, even painfully, sensitive she is to the facial expres­ sions she describes. What is especially appropriate about her presentation as a physiognomist is not merely that as a ser­ vant she is bound to be a spectator of events rather than a participant in them but also that her dependence on physiog­ nomy underlines her frequent lack of communication with the main characters, not to say her virtual incapacity to help them in their plight. Indeed, it is through Nelly Dean's powers of observation that the author succeeds in ironically marking out the inevitable course of the action. Lockwood, too, is portrayed with a certain gift for phys­ iognomical observation, but his gift serves an altogether dif­ ferent ironic function. Like Nelly Dean, he is prone to de­ scribing appearances in all parts of his narrative; and, like her, he has a keen eye for momentary states of mind or psy­ chological development as suggested by a facial expression. His propensity for physiognomical analysis is, no doubt, es­ sential to his presentation as an aesthete, who prefers to ob­ serve life rather than live it to the full; it is also an aspect of his inveterate curiosity, which, besides enhancing the dra­ matic interest of the opening chapters, constitutes the motive for the narration of the story. We note already in the first two chapters that Lockwood shows a certain familiarity with physiognomical theory, possibly Lavaterian theory (for the

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

date heading the first diary entry is 1801), as he speaks in two separate contexts of the "language" of appearances. We may also refer to his use of the word physiognomy on two occa­ sions, and that in the sense of "general appearance." More in­ teresting, however, is his tendency to make physiognomical judgments, for they throw considerable light on his character. Thus, although in an attempt to ingratiate himself with Cath­ erine HeathcliflF in Chapter II (just before he asks her to tell him the way back to Thrushcross Grange) he flatters her by saying that "with that face" he is sure that she "cannot help being good-hearted,"17 later in the novel he bids himself "be­ ware the fascination that lurks in [Catherine HeathcliiFs] eyes," adding that "I should be in a curious taking if I surren­ dered my heart to that young person, and the daughter turned out a second edition of the mother!" This cautionary remark is directly related to an earlier physiognomical com­ ment in his diary which tells how, on being shown a portrait of Edgar Linton, he "marvelled how he [Edgar] with a mind to correspond to his person could fancy [Lockwood's] idea of Catherine Earnshaw." The particular interest of these phys­ iognomical judgments is that they confirm as much as any­ thing else his extraordinary fear of human relationships—a fear already evident in the first chapter when he relates how he spurned the affections of a young lady at a seaside resort, even though, as he adds, "the merest idiot might have guessed I was over head and ears."18 Indeed, the more we study Lockwood as an observer of man, the more we realize how much his gift for observation is a manifestation of his pro­ found misanthropy as well as his inability to experience that passionate love which HeathcliflF, misanthropist as he is in a different way, is so capable of experiencing. Hence the steril­ ity of Lockwood's life. The fact that physiognomy in the nineteenth-century novel is sometimes significant for what it tells us about the observer no less than about the observed would appear to be linked with a tendency to reduce the importance of the narrator's viewpoint and, as we noted in Chapter V, to present portraits from the angle of a non-narratorial observing character, even

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

in such novels as Eugenie Grandet, Vanity Fair, Les Bourgeois de Molinchart, Les Mysteres de Paris, Doctor Thome, Vittoria Accorombona, and Die Epigonen, with their prominent and occasionally Lavaterian third-person narrators. In some third-person novels we find literary portraiture used as a pre­ text for the author to display the physiognomical skills of sev­ eral characters. In order to give some idea of this, let us con­ sider Scott's Heart of Midlothian. One of the most signal effects of physiognomy on this novel is the way in which both major and minor characters are given to observing and analyzing one another's appearances. Thus apart from the observant Reuben Butler, through whose eyes we get the description of George Staunton already re­ ferred to, and that of the jail-bird RatclifiFe at Staunton's trial ("Butler's eyes were instantly fixed on the person whose ex­ amination was at present proceeding"),19 the heroine, Jeanie Deans, is presented in a number of situations in which she shows certain physiognomical reactions. For example, there is one occasion when the heroine, on her way down to London to get a reprieve for her sister Effie (who, because of Jeanie's truthful testimony in court, has been sentenced to death for killing her illegitimate baby), falls into the hands of the high­ wayman Levitt, and encounters Meg Wildfire and her insane daughter Madge. However, the following morning Jeanie and Madge manage to escape while the others are still asleep, and, as it is a Sunday, attend a church service. Impressed by the officiating clergyman, "an aged gentleman, of a dignified appearance and deportment, who read the service with an undisturbed and decent gravity," Jeanie decides to go to him for help because, as she has been warned by Madge, Meg Wildfire intends to obstruct her journey. While Jeanie waits in the anteroom of the vicarage in order to see the vicar, a Reverend Mr. Staunton (who, by ironic coincidence, turns out to be the father of Effie's lover), the narrator tells of her re­ flecting as follows: "and from whom could she hope for assis­ tance if not from Mr. Staunton? His whole appearance and demeanour encouraged her hopes. His features were hand­ some, though marked with a deep cast of melancholy; tone

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

and language were gentle and encouraging."20 Nor, indeed, is she disappointed. Once arrived in London, Jeannie succeeds in getting an in­ terview with the Duke of Argyle, who, on the morning after her first visit to him, calls for her at her London inn and takes her in his carriage to Richmond Park. On this occasion Jeanie pays particular attention to his attire: "She remarked that the Duke's dress, though still such as indicated rank and fashion (for it was not the custom of men of quality to dress them­ selves like their own coachman or groom), was nevertheless plainer than that in which she had seen him upon a former occasion."21 Jeanie also has an opportunity at Richmond Park to get a close view of Queen Caroline and Lady Suffolk, who are both described in great detail. Noteworthy is the way in which the description begins: "As they advanced slowly, Jeanie had time to study their features and appearances."22 When, toward the end of the novel, Effie turns up in Scotland, we learn that, as Lady Staunton, she has led an aristocratic life of late, which in turn has had its influence on her general appearance: "Her manner was easy, dignified and command­ ing, and seemed to evince high birth, and the habits of ele­ vated society." Ironically, however, Jeanie does not immedi­ ately recognize her sister, though the physiognomist in her becomes active at the same time: There was something about the whole of the stranger's address, and tone, and manner which acted upon Jeanie's feelings like the illusions of a dream, that tease us with a puzzling approach to reality. Something there was of her sister in the gait and manner of the stranger, as well as in the sound of her voice, and something also, when, lifting her veil, she showed features in which, changed as they were in expression and complexion, she could not but at­ tach many remembrances.23 In this connection, it is interesting to note that, shortly be­ fore Effie's arrival in Scotland, the Duke of Argyle himself pays a visit to Jeanie (now Mrs. Reuben Butler) and tells of his

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

meeting a Lady Staimton of Wellingham. The reason he mentions this person, he explains to Jeanie, is "because she has something in the sound of her voice and cast of her coun­ tenance that reminded me of you...." Furthermore, the Duke's observation of EfBe suggests how sensitive a physiog­ nomist he is: "Amidst her noble and elegant manners, there is now and then a little touch of bashfulness and conventual rusticity, if I may call it so, that makes her quite enchanting. You see at once the rose that had bloomed untouched amid the chaste precincts of the cloister, Mrs. Butler."24 Nor is the Duke of Argyle the only minor character with a physiognomical eye. For example, at the London inn where Jeanie puts up, there is a hostess whose interest in royal and aristocratic persons is so stimulated by the thought of Jeanie's outing with the Duke of Argyle that she gives the heroine a description of an aristocratic lady, a Mrs. Dably, which is presented in style indirect libre: "She used sometimes after­ wards to draw a parallel betwixt her [Mrs. Dably] and the Queen, in which she observed, that Mrs. Dably was dressed twice as grand, and was twice as big, and spoke twice as loud, and twice as muckle, as the Queen did, but she hadna the same goss-hawk glance that makes the skin creep and the knee bend... Z'25 No less observant is David Deans, Jeanie's father, as we can tell, for example, when he notices how mar­ riage has transformed the general appearance of Dumbiedikes, the somewhat gauche Scottish landowner and formerly unsuccessful suitor of Jeanie: There was a change also, David did not very well know of what nature, about the exterior of the proprietor—an improvement in the shape of his garments, a spruceness in the air with which they were put on, that were both novelties. Even the old hat looked smarter; the cock had been newly painted, the lace had been refreshed, and in­ stead of slouching backwards and forwards on the laird's head as it happened to be thrown on, it was adjusted with a knowing inclination over one eye.26

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

It is evident that Scott's treatment of the physiognomical disposition of his characters, though useful for the construc­ tion of the plot, is too self-conscious to have any true aesthetic interest for us today; indeed, it is difficult to escape the im­ pression that, despite the obvious anachronisms, he is con­ cerned here largely to pay homage to the physiognomical cli­ mate of his day for its own sake. Much the same might be said of Immermann's Epigonen, in which the Herzogin's remark­ able eye for family physiognomies is used as a means of thick­ ening the plot concerning Hermann's aristocratic heredity. Nevertheless, such instances of physiognomical awareness were important signs of a new moral and intellectual climate in which the capacity to use one's eyes with sensitivity and understanding had evidently become an important means of sympathetic characterization. It is perhaps no accident that a physiognomical gift of one kind or another had by now be­ come practically a moral attribute of many a non-narratorial hero and heroine. We note, for example, in Die Epigonen that the hero Hermann, through whose eyes many characters are described, is presented as one of those "welche durch eine Physiognomie, durch den Klang einer Stimme bis in das Innerste zu verwunden sind."27 Much the same words could be applied to some heroines of third-person novels, such as the heroine of Vittoria Accorombona and Madame de Renal in Le Rouge et Ie Noir, Part of Madame de Renal's charm for the reader lies in her physiognomical sensitivity, which is evident in her tendency to be shocked by the harsh tones of voice of unsympathetic characters, as well as in her appreciation of Julien Sorel's physical beauty. Mathilde de la Mole is simi­ larly sensitive, as we note when, at the height of her passion for Julien, she draws a profile of him with a speaking likeness. And in The Mill on the Floss, Philip Wakem, too, is inspired by love for Maggie Tulliver to draw a portrait of her face, whose peculiar qualities he understands better than do the other characters in the novel. We could also point to other w e l c h e . . . sind: who are terribly sensitive to a person's physiognomy, to the sound of a voice.

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

love relationships, such as that between Resli and Anne Mareili in Geld und Geist and between Julien Donquieres and Louise Creton in Les Bourgeois de Molinchart, where the lover's physiognomical appreciation of the beloved plays a prominent part. Sometimes even a minor character is used to indicate the importance of physiognomy in a love relation­ ship, as we note, for example, in Trollope's Doctor Thome when Squire Gresham's approval of his son's choice of Mary Thorne as a wife stems from his suddenly becoming aware of the peculiar appeal of her appearance. Perhaps the finest treatment of physiognomy in the delin­ eation of a love relationship is given in Villettey a novel in which the attitudes of the literary world to physiognomy may be said to have been compendiously embodied in the very presentation of Paul Emanuel in so far as his steady rise to full sympathetic stature is marked essentially by his develop­ ment from an essentially caricatural figure to one of great moral depth and vision, with an extraordinary capacity to love. And yet of all love relationships in fiction none, it seems, could begin more inauspiciously than between Lucy Snowe and Paul Emanuel, as we note how, during that strange first physiognomical reading, the heroine is made forcibly con­ scious of the latter's eccentric manner and forbidding appear­ ance. Gradually, however, Lucy learns not merely to discover depth of character behind the eccentricity but also to discern positive qualities in the forbidding exterior, qualities which, ironically enough, remain hidden to the beautiful but shallow Ginevra Fanshawe, who considers him "hideously plain," and even to the handsome Graham Bretton, who on one occasion refers to him as "savage looking."28 The development of the relationship between Lucy Snowe and Paul Emanuel from antagonism to mutual love is one of the most remarkable achievements of this novel; and we see how skillfully this is shown not only through Lucy's increasingly mature physiog­ nomical approach to M. Paul but also in the latter's eventual transformation from the comical physiognomist we find at the beginning of the novel into a poetic one, whose following

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

analysis of Lucy's face must be surely one of the most lyrical expressions of love in all nineteenth-century fiction: . . . you are a strict Protestant, and I a m a sort of lay Jesuit; but we are alike—there is affinity between us. Do you see it, mademoiselle, when you look in the glass? Do you observe that your forehead is shaped like mine? Do you hear that you have some of my tones of voice? Do you know that you have many of my looks? I perceive all this, and believe that you were born under my star. Yes, you were born under my star! Tremble! for where that is the case with mortals, the threads of their destinies are difficult to disentangle; knottings and catchings occur—and sudden breaks leave damages in the web.· But these "impressions," as you say, with English caution. I, too, have had my "impressions."29 The idea that two people should share the same destiny by virtue of their physiognomical resemblance is one that would no doubt have appealed to Lavater. But there is also a poi­ gnant irony in this lyrical physiognomical judgment in the way it foreshadows, particularly with the words "sudden breaks leave damages in the web," the tragic death of Paul Emanuel on the high seas. Lucy's fate is to be deprived of the happiness almost within her reach—a happiness which the more fortunate Graham Bretton and Polly Home will find to­ gether in marriage. Yet, as the heroine sums up her friendship with Paul Emanuel before she hears the tragic news, we see how much she has matured in her attitude to the eccentric "lay Jesuit." And in the following words of one whose obser­ vant eye has been responsible for a remarkable number of an­ alytical and almost excessively physiognomical character de­ scriptions in the novel, it becomes clear to the reader that Lucy's experience of M. Paul has enriched not only her life but also her physiognomical vision: He deemed me born under his star; he seemed to have spread over me its beam like a banner. Once—unknown, and unloved, I held him harsh and strange; the low stat-

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

ure, the wiry make, the angles, the darkness, the manner, displeased me. Now, penetrated with his influence, and living by his affection, having his worth by intellect, and his goodness by heart—I preferred him before all hu­ manity.30 The extent to which relationships between main characters in nineteenth-century fiction may be described as physiog­ nomical is again well illustrated in Madame Bovary. First of all, we note Charles Bovary's fascination with Emma's ap­ pearance and, in particular, the attention he gives to specific physiognomical characteristics. Here, for instance, is how he observes her hands on his first visit to the Rouault farm: Charles fut surpris de la blancheur de ses ongles. Ils etaient brillants, fins du bout, plus nettoyes que Ies ivoires de Dieppe, et tailles en amande. Sa main pourtant n'etait pas belle, point assez pale, et un peu seche aux phalanges; elle etait trop longue aussi et sans molles inflexions de lignes sur Ies contours.31 In a later passage Charles is shown being aware of the way in which Emma's eyes change color according to the time of day. Such physiognomical sensitivity may strike the reader as incompatible with the generally doltish figure Charles cuts in the novel, and it would suggest that he is as incurably a Ro­ mantic as the heroine herself. But the chief function of Charles' analyses is to underline the lack of communication between him and Emma, in much the same way as does the heroine's revulsion for Charles' physical appearance, one in­ stance of which, as we saw earlier, is evident when, having re­ newed her love affair with Rodolphe, Emma becomes more conscious than usual of Charles' squarish fingers and vulgarity of manner. Another instance of Emma's revulsion occurs Charles . .. contours: Charles was surprised at the whiteness of her fin­ gernails. They were shining, tapering, and smoother than Dieppe ivories, and almond-shaped. Yet it was not a lovely hand, it was not white enough, and the skin was rather dry round the knuckles; it was also too long, and lacked a gentleness of contour round the edges.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

when she gets a back view of Charles at the loom factory which they are being taken round by Homais: Il avait sa casquette enfoncee sur Ies sourcils, et ses deux grosses levres tremblotaient, ce qui ajoutait a son visage quelque chose de stupide; son dos meme, son dos tranquille etait irritant a voir, et elle y trouvait etalee sur la redingote toute la platitude du personnage.32 That this passage has unquestionable physiognomical signifi­ cance may be seen if we compare it with an excerpt from a letter (25 February 1800) which Lavater wrote to his friend L. H. Nicolay (1737-1820): Der Mensch ... kann sich in keinem einzigen Punkte seines Wesens verlaugnen. Besonders hab'ich die Menschen auch vom Rucken her zu beobachten gesucht—und sehr oft—ausserst entscheidende Merkmale der Weisheit und Dummheit, ja wahrlich, der Tugend und des Lasters bemerkt.33 Emma's physiognomical reactions to Charles are, of course, utterly characteristic; and it is precisely through her con­ stantly disillusioning visual experiences—disillusioning be­ cause they are ever set against the ideal world created by the excesses of her imagination—that Flaubert partly expresses the pessimism and nihilism that permeate his novel. It was most particularly in the English novel of our period that physiognomy came to play a decisive role in the treat­ ment of love and hate. We note, for example, in Wuthering Heights (a novel in which relations between the main characIl . . . personnage: He had his cap pulled down over his eyes, and his fleshy lips were trembling, which lent his face a certain look of stupidity; even his back, his placid back, was irritating to look at, and she could see spread all over his frock coat the utter mediocrity of his character. Der Mensch ... bemerkt: People give away their character in the most trivial details. In particular, I have tried to observe people from behind— and I have very often noticed extraordinarily distinctive characteristics of intelligence and stupidity, even of vice and virtue.

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

ters are largely determined by their acute consciousness of one another's appearances) how HeathclifFs vicious attitude toward the Earnshaws and the Lintons is maintained through­ out the novel partly because, with their characteristic phys­ iognomical features, they are each of them a poignant re­ minder not only of the memory of Cathy but also of the part they have played in depriving him of her love. We might even go so far as to say that HeathclifFs tragedy is essentially a physiognomical one, foreshadowed already in his childhood in those snobbish reactions to his gypsy appearance and in his own boyish awareness of the stark contrast between himself and the other characters, with their Anglo-Saxon physiogno­ mies. But whereas in Wuthering Heights criticism of the undue importance attached to appearances is implicit, in The Mill on the Floss it is utterly explicit. To be sure, George Eliot's novel is hardly less physiognomical than any other nine­ teenth-century novel in respect to literary portraiture; and despite the author's evident dislike of the Fragmente, it is re­ markable how often her prominent non-participating firstperson narrator makes use of Lavaterian ideas, notably that of family physiognomies. Nevertheless, physiognomist as she is herself indirectly, the author is mainly concerned here with the dangers of certain physiognomical attitudes in the pro­ vincial English society she portrays, whether these be clan­ nish, even racial assumptions about the advantages of the Anglo-Saxon physiognomy or the bigotry and narrow-mindedness underlying physiognomical opinions and judgments. This concern is quite evident in the narrator's essayistic disgressions on the subject, as, for example, when she jibes at the idea (which Lavater himself puts forward in the Fragmente) that the appearance of the adult may be predicted by a study of his physiognomy as a child. Thus the narrator describes Tom Tulliver as possessing a physiognomy in which it seems impossible to discern anything but the general character of boyhood; as differ-

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

ent as possible from poor Maggie's phiz, which Nature seemed to have moulded and coloured with the most de­ cided intention. But that same Nature has the deep cun­ ning which hides itself under the appearance of open­ ness, so that simple people think they can see through her quite well, and the while she is secretly preparing a refutation of their confident prophecies. Under these av­ erage boyish physiognomies that she seems to turn off by the gross, she conceals some of her most rigid, inflexible purposes, some of her most unmodifiable characters; and the dark-eyed, demonstrative, rebellious girl may after all turn out to be a passive being compared with this pink-and-white bit of masculinity with the indetermi­ nate features.34 George Eliot sees the habit of prejudiced physiognomical judgments taking root in childhood; and notwithstanding Lavater's claim that children make excellent physiognomists, she shows them to be no less subjective and biased in their re­ actions than adults. We note this particularly when the nar­ rator comments with gentle irony on Tom and Maggie Tulliver's childish physiognomical reactions to, say, the blond Mrs. Clegg or the red-haired Bob Jakin. More serious in the narrator's eyes, however, is Tom Tulliver's physiognomical attitude to the hump-backed Philip Wakem: "An anato­ mist—even a mere physiognomist—would have seen that the deformity of Philip's spine was not a congenital hump, but the result of an accident in infancy; but you do not expect from Tom any acquaintance with such distinctions: to him Philip was simply a humpback."35 Tom's inveterate revulsion for Philip's appearance is, of course, one of the ironic motifs in the novel, and it plays an important part in undermining Maggie's relationship with the latter. Interesting, too, is the narrator's intervention in the epi­ sode concerning Mr. Tulliver's conflict with Philip Wakem's father. Thus when Mrs. Tulliver visits the latter at his office in an attempt to effect a reconciliation between the two men,

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

the narrator alludes to Tulliver's earlier physiognomical judgment of Wakem as "a hook-nosed glib fellow."36 In ironic vein the narrator then assumes that the reader is "possibly wondering whether [Wakem] was really as eminent a rascal ... as he is represented to be in that eidolon or portrait of him we have seen to exist in the miller's mind," and then goes on to discourse upon the habit of judging people on first impres­ sions: But it is really impossible to decide this question by a glance at his person: the lines and lights of the human countenance are like other symbols—not always easy to read without a key. On an a priori view of Wakem's aquiline nose, which offended Mr. Tulliver, there was not more rascality than in the shape of his stiff shirt-col­ lar, though this, too, along with his nose, might have be­ come fraught with damnatory meaning when once the reality was ascertained.37 Although The Mill on the Floss may be considered to be the one novel of George Eliot's in which she is at her most antiphysiognomical, a study of her narrators in, say, Adam Bede or Middlemarch, with their poetic disquisitions on the beauty or hereditary significance of the human face, shows her to have been quite as deeply imbued with physiognomical thought as any of her contemporaries. In any event, no novel better reflects the controversies of the Lavaterian physsiognomical era than The Mill on the Floss; and there is little doubt that in her brilliant structural use of physiognomy as a means of showing up the limitations of second-hand thinking, and, occasionally, as in the case of the Tullivers, its harmful consequences, she belongs very clearly to the moralistic tra­ dition of Fielding, and, as we shall see at the end of this chap­ ter, to that of Jane Austen. HAVING GIVEN a general idea of what we mean by physiog­

nomical awareness in nineteenth-century fiction, we shall now go on to confirm our argument by considering a number

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

of major and minor novels, including some that have received little or no attention hitherto. Let us start by discussing three major novels, narrated in first or third person, in which the hero is presented as a physiognomical observer. Our first hero is Julien Sorel in Le Rouge et Ie Noir. It is interesting to see the extent to which the literary por­ traits in this novel are presented from the hero's viewpoint, at the same time as his physiognomical reactions play an essen­ tial part in his characterization. First of all, we note early in the novel his appreciation of specific characteristics of Ma­ dame de Renal's beauty. At the rendezvous in the garden at Verrieres, on the eve of the departure for three days' leave of absence, he anticipates seeing her thus: "il songeait a sa main si jolie"; and when he is with her at the rendezvous, we read: "il admirait ces bras si beaux qu'un chale jete a la Mte laissait apercevoir." For Julien, Madame de Renal's beauty is of true aesthetic interest: "Cette beaute modeste et touchante, et cependant pleine de pensees que l'on ne trouve point dans Ies classes inferieures, semblait reveler a Julien une faculte de son ame qu'il n'avait jamais sentie."38 There is a similar aes­ thetic reaction in Julien when he sees Madame de Renal's children on returning to the Renal household after a short ab­ sence. Part of this reaction is conditioned, no doubt, by his recent tedious experience as guest of the Valenods and his meeting with other bourgeois provincials: "II etait etonne de la douceur de Ieur voix, de la simplicite et de la noblesse de leurs petites fagons; il avait besoin de laver son imagination de toutes Ies fagons d'agir vulgaires, de toutes Ies pensees il songeait... jolie: he thought of her lovely hand il admirait... apercevoir: he admired those lovely arms, which a hastily cast-off shawl made it possible for him to see. Cette... sentie: This modest, fascinating beauty—a beauty full of those inner qualities not to be found in the lower classes—seemed to rouse feel­ ings in Julien that he had never had before. Il etait... Verrieres: He was astonished at their gentle voices, their sim­ ple, noble way of doing things; he felt an urge to cleanse his imagination of all vulgar forms of behavior, all the unpleasant thoughts he had been im­ mersed in at Verrieres.

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

desagreables au milieu desquelles il respirait a Verrieres."39 Julian's first impressions of people are usually quite defi­ nite, even if they sometimes have to be corrected later. When he is first introduced to the marquise de la Mole, we read that he "lui trouva l'air impertinent";40 and this impression is subsequently confirmed as he becomes better acquainted with her. His first impression of M. de la Mole, whom he sees on the occasion of the king's visit to Verrieres, is also unfa­ vorable: "II lui trouva l'air hautain et meme violent."41 But when the abbe Pirard introduces him to the marquis in Paris, we are told that Julien "eut beaucoup de peine a Ie reconnaitre." Indeed, he finds a certain incongruity about the marquis: "Le descendant de l'ami de Henri III lui parut d'abord avoir une tournure assez mesquine."42 Ironically enough, however, the marquis turns out to be an excellent friend to Julien. The hero also reacts unfavorably to Mathilde at first sight: "Elle ne lui plut point... "; but at least he takes time at the dinner table to analyze her eyes: "cependant en la regardant attentivement, il pensa qu'il n'avait jamais vu des yeux aussi beaux; mais ils annongaient une froideur d'ame"; and he proceeds to compare them with Madame de Renal's to the advantage of the latter.43 It is, therefore, no small irony that Mathilde's physical appearance is what eventually de­ cides Julien that he is in love with her: "C'etait apres s'etre perdu en reveries sur l'elegance de la taille de Mile, de la lui... impertinent: thought she was stuck-up Il lui... violent: He thought him haughty, even vicious looking. eut... reconnoitre: found it hard to recognize him. Le descendant... mesquine: The descendant of Henri Ill's companion seemed to have a rather puny figure. Elle ... point: He didn't like her cependant... d'dme: yet as he gazed at her more attentively, he real­ ized that he had never before seen such lovely eyes, even though they be­ spoke a cold heart C'etait... amoureux: It was after being absorbed in dreams about the elegance of Mademoiselle de la Mole's figure, her excellent taste in clothes, the whiteness of her hands, the beauty of her arms, the noncha­ lance of all her movements, that he realized he was in love with her.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

Mole, sur l'excellent gout de sa toilette, sur la blancheur de sa main, sur la beaute de son bras, sur la disinvoltura de tous ses . mouvements, qu >.i il se trouvaxt amoureux. >»44 Sometimes, however, Julien can be physically over­ whelmed by a first impression. Thus, after having been ad­ mitted into the Besa^on seminary by a hideous-looking hallporter, whose face he analyzes very physiognomically, Julien faints in the abbe Pirard's study. Pirard's retort to Julien's ex­ cuse that he had passed out because "la figure du portier m'avait glace" is that Julien is merely used to "visages riants, veritables theatres de mensonge."45 This remark in some way foreshadows the occasion when Julien compares Pirard's ap­ pearance with that of the various guests in Mathilde's salon. Irritated by Mathilde's remark on the abbe's ugliness, even though he cannot disagree with her judgment, he is neverthe­ less convinced that Pirard is "le plus honnete homme du salon," which then leads him to question the validity of phy­ siognomical theory: "Croyez apres cela aux physionomies, pensa Julien, c'est dans Ie moment ou la delicatesse de l'abbe Pirard se reproche quelque peccadille, qu'il a l'air atroce; tandis que sur la figure de ce Napier, espion connu de tous, on lit un bonheur pur et tranquille."46 Julien's allusion to physiognomy reminds us that he is something of an amateur physiognomist himself, though this may seem strange in one who has obviously read the adverse comments on Lavater and Gall made by his idol Napoleon in the Memorial de Sainte-Helene. It is true that he is sometimes comically wrong in his judgments, as, for example, when he mistakes the young bishop of Agde for his secretary or for some lackey, or when he challenges the comte de Beauvoisis' coachman to a duel (on account of an insult) because he asIa figure .. . glace: the janitor's face had transfixed him visages ... mensonge: laughing faces, veritable theaters of deceit. Croyez .,. tranquille: "Who'd believe in physiognomy after that!" thought Julien. "It's at the very moment the abbe Pirard's conscience re­ proaches him for some peccadillo that he looks evil, whereas on that noto­ rious spy Napier's face you can read utter self-satisfaction"

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

sumes the latter to be an aristocrat. On one occasion Julien actually resorts to physiognomy in order to extricate himself from a difficult situation. This happens when, after receiving three letters from Mathilde urging him to come to her room one night, he suspects that a trap is being laid for him; and so he is particularly watchful one evening in the dining room: "II regardait tous ces domestiques en grande Iivree. Il etudiait Ieur physionomie. Quels sont ceux qu'on a choisis pour !'expedition de cette nuit? ... Il regarda Mile, de la Mole pour lire dans ses yeux Ies projets de sa famille... ."4? Of course, his anxiety proves later to have been misplaced. An­ other example of Julien's propensity for physiognomical ob­ servation is to be noted on the occasion he attends the secret political meeting with M. de la Mole, and carefully studies each of the participants as they arrive one by one. Let us quote three statements made by the narrator to this effect: (1) "Julien Iui trouva la physionomie et l'eloquence d'un homme qui digere"; (2) "... pour juger Ie nouveau venu, Julien en fut reduit a ce que pouvaient Iui apprendre ses traits et sa tournure"; and (3) "Julien fut vivement interrompu dans ses ob­ servations physionomiques par la voix de M. de la Mole."48 Stendhal's presentation of Julien as constantly observing, watching, or analyzing people's appearances is, of course, an important aspect of his characterization of the hero as an am­ bitious young upstart bent on conquering society. And yet this treatment of Julien as a physiognomist, so to speak, is es­ sentially ironic; for though it is true that he can be extremely perceptive in his physiognomical judgments, we see how I l . . . f a m i l l e : He looked at all the lackeys in their grand liveries; he studied their physiognomies. Which of them have been chosen for to­ night's expedition? . .. He looked at Mademoiselle de la Mole to see if he could read the family plans in her eyes. Julien Iui ... digere: Julien thought he had the physiognomy and elo­ quence of a man with good digestion p o u r . . . t o u m u r e : in order to size up the new arrival Julien was reduced to finding out what he could learn from his face and his figure Julien fut... M. de la Mole: Julien was interrupted in his physiognomi­ cal observations by M. de la Mole's voice.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

often envy and admiration, combined with his youthfulness and lack of worldly experience, lead him into comically erro­ neous assessments of people. Moreover, Stendhal seems to suggest that Julien's extreme sensitivity to outward appear­ ances also has its negative side in so far as it partly prevents him from coming to terms with himself and the world of real­ ity. Let us now discuss Pip as physiognomical narrator of Great Expectations. From his earliest years Pip is shown as being very sensitive to people around him. His physiognomical awareness is so intense that as a small boy he can actually conjure up images of his parents, whom he never knew, sim­ ply by reading the inscriptions on their graves: The shape of the letters on my father's gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscrip­ tion, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above," I drew a chil­ dish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly.49 One aspect of Pip's powers of observation is his tendency not so much to describe a person in detail as to concentrate on one salient characteristic, whether it be a physical feature, a gesture, or a mannerism. For example, we do not see Mrs. Gargery as a physical entity so much as a series of physiogno­ mical aspects. Thus apart from her eternal apron and her strange way of cutting bread already referred to, Pip notices one memorable detail: "Mrs. Joe ... had such a prevailing redness of skin, that I sometimes used to wonder whether it was possible she washed heself with a nutmeg-grater instead of soap."50 In one passage where he describes Magwitch eat­ ing the stolen pie, he shows a physiognomist's flair for noting analogies between man and beast: "I have often watched a large dog of ours eating his food; and now I noticed a decided similarity between the dog's way of eating and the man's. The man took strong sharp sudden bites, just like the dog."51 In his vivid description of Mr. Wopsle, Pip draws attention to the

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

latter's voice, which is particularly noticeable in church, where "he punished the Amens tremendously."52 But it is Wopsle's nose that becomes a special source of irritation for the hero during the Christmas dinner, and also a starting point for a discussion of Roman noses: "I think the Romans must have aggravated one another very much, with their noses. Perhaps, they became the restless people they were in consequence. Anyhow, Mr. Wopsle's Roman nose so aggra­ vated me, during the recital of my dismeanours, that I should have liked to pull it until he howled."53 We might also refer to Pip's ability to use appropriate figurative language as a means of conveying the peculiarity of a person's appearance. An example of this is best seen in part of his description of Wemmick: Casting my eyes on Mr. Wemmick as we went along, to see what he was like in the light of day, I found him to be a dry man, rather short in stature, with a square wooden face, whose expression seemed to have been imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel. There were some marks in it that might have been dimples, if the material had been softer and the instrument finer, but which, as it were, were only dints. The chisel had made three or four attempts at embellishments over his nose, but had given them up without an effort to smooth them off.54 Pip's sensitivity to appearances may be seen as essential for the growth of his snobbery. Thus in his description of Biddy ("an orphan like myself') he writes: "She was most notice­ able, I thought, in respect of her extremities; for her hair al­ ways wanted brushing, her hands always wanted washing, and her shoes always wanted mending, and pulling up at the heel."55 Later, but only after he has come to know Estella, he notices an improvement in Biddy's appearance: "Impercepti­ bly I became conscious of a change in Biddy, however. Her shoes came up at heel, her hair grew bright and neat, her hands were always clean." But his snobbishness comes out again in the next sentence: "She was not beautiful—she was

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

common, and could not be like Estella—but she was pleasant and wholesome and sweet-tempered." These references to Biddy's character are then ironically confirmed when he dis­ covers one evening her "curiously thoughtful and attentive eyes; eyes that were very pretty and very good."56 Through this favorable physiognomical analysis of Biddy's eyes, Pip becomes fully aware of her inherent good nature; but, sadly, he cannot forget Estella's cruel remarks to him about his "coarse hands" and "thick boots," just as he is unable to resist her beauty. As he says to Biddy: ". .. she's more beautiful than anybody ever was, and I admire her dreadfully, and I want to be a gentleman on her account."57 Part of Pip's trag­ edy, then, is that he almost willfully refuses to be guided by his observational powers for his own good in so far as he re­ jects Biddy for Estella. There are occasions in the novel when we see something of the physiognomist proper in Pip. The first occurs when he an­ alyzes the general appearance of Herbert Pocket, who is now trying to make his living as a young man in London: "There was something wonderfully hopeful about his general air, and something that at the same time whispered to me that he would never be successful or rich. I don't know how this was. I became imbued with the notion on that first occasion before we sat down to dinner, but I cannot define by what means."58 Pip's physiognomical interpretation, however, turns out at the end of the novel to have been ill-founded, for he discovers that, whereas he himself has failed to make his mark in Lon­ don, Herbert has become fairly prosperous. In fact, after join­ ing Herbert's firm, Pip soon realizes what a good businessman Herbert is. Thus he writes: "We owed so much to Herbert's ever cheerful industry and readiness, that I often wondered how I had conceived that old idea about his ineptitude."59 Clearly, Pip has forgotten that his initial misjudgment of Herbert's capacity was made at a time when he was still cher­ ishing snobbish illusions about future successes of his own. The other occasion Pip makes a physiognomical reading is when, as a guest to dinner at Jaggers' house, he suddenly be-

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

comes aware that the housekeeper, whom Jaggers has rescued from the clutches of the law, is actually Estella's long-lost mother. It is noteworthy that Pip arrives at this conclusion after paying careful attention to specific physiognomical fea­ tures: "I looked at those hands, I looked at those eyes, I looked at that flowing hair; and I compared them with other hands, other eyes, other hair, that I knew of, and with what these might be after twenty years of a brutal husband and a stormy life.... And I felt absolutely certainly that this woman was Estella's mother."60 This dramatic revelation has the ironic effect of immediately shattering Pip's illusions about Estella's aristocratic origins, thereby bringing him closer still to the realities of life, from which he has been largely shielded but which he is destined to have to face in the end. From these few excerpts, as well as from others discussed in earlier chapters, we can see that Pip has a fairly wide range of physiognomical skills. Part of this is, of course, due to the fact that Dickens has placed the burden of character description almost entirely on the hero's shoulders. And though it is true that Pip makes little use of physiognomical correlations or the analytical procedures that typify many a nineteenth-century composite portrait, there is little doubt that his ability to fas­ ten on a characteristic feature, his ingenious use of metaphors and analogies, and his gift for conveying the essence of a per­ son without a concatenation of details all bespeak the tal­ ented physiognomist that Dickens was in all his novels. At the same time, however, it is to Dickens' credit that, by using Pip as a vehicle for his character description, he gives us to un­ derstand that the hero's physiognomical outlook is an essen­ tial aspect of his character. Thus, on the one hand, we see how, for example, Pip's concentration on the absurdities or oddities of the human appearance, his obsession with Estella's beauty, and his mistaken judgment of Herbert are each in their way expressive of his snobbishness; on the other hand, Pip's physiognomical awareness of Biddy's good nature, as well as his ability to trace Estella's mother through an analy-

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

sis of her physical features, seem to be manifestations of that positive side of his nature which is tragically smothered until, perhaps too late, he comes to full self-realization at the end of the novel. Der Nachsommer, like Great Expectations, tells the story of the moral and spiritual development of a young man, but with the difference that Heinrich Drendorfs takes place mostly in a sheltered environment where he undergoes a number of educative experiences in preparation for an ideal life of happiness. One significant aspect of his steady growth to maturity is the way in which he learns to observe people and things with a keener and more sensitive vision. At the be­ ginning of the novel we learn that Heinrich has had a rela­ tively pious upbringing, but also, in so far as he has not yet gone into the deeper issues of life, a narrow and conventional one. This is especially noticeable on the first occasion he comes down to the Rosenhaus. He is convinced that there is going to be a storm, and there is something overweening not only in the way he argues with the master of the house, Risach, who assures him (correctly, as it turns out) that there will be no storm, but also in his reaction to the general ap­ pearance of Risach, whom he initially mistakes for a servant: "Ich sah, dass es ein Mann mit schneeweissen Haaren war, die er nicht bedeckt hatte. Sonst war er unscheinbar und hatte eine Art Hausjacke an, oder wie man das Ding nennen soil, das ihm uberall enge anlag und fast bis auf die Knie herabreichte."61 And on the morning after his first night at the Ro­ senhaus, he again notices Risach still wearing the same strange outfit: "Sein Anzug war heute wieder sonderbar."62 Heinrieh spends a few more days at the house, where he wit­ nesses the remarkable routine and efficient organization which Risaeh has established for himself and for the servants Ich sah .., herabreichte: What I saw was a man with snow-white hair and without headgear. Otherwise he was insignificant looking and wore a kind of house-jacket, or whatever you might call it, which was very tight fitting and reached almost down to his knees. Sein .,. sonderbar: His outfit was again a strange sight that day.

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

and workers under him; but he still cannot reconcile Risach's methodical approach to everyday life, his profound knowl­ edge of the laws of nature (we have seen what a good meteo­ rologist he is), and his appreciation of art with his curious attire: "Ich bewunderte den Mann, der, da er so redete, in einem sonderbaren, ja abgeschmackten Kleide ging."63 Heinrich is, indeed, still a long way from understanding that simplicity of being which is of paramount importance for Risach. But if Heinrich finds Risach's jacket distasteful, he nev­ ertheless has an eye for its details: Die Jacke war weisslich, hatte jedoch iiber die Brust und den Rucken hinab einen rotlichen Streifen, der fast einen halben Fuss breit war, als ware die Jacke aus zwei Stoffen verfertigt worden, einem weissen und einem roten. Beide StoflFe aber zeigten ein hohes Alter; denn das Weiss war gelblichbraun und das Rot zu purpurbraun geworden.64 On another occasion he finds it strange that Risach and the boy Gustav should wear no headgear in the strong sun: "Ich wusste nicht, kamen mir die beiden ohne Kopfbedeckung sonderbar vor, oder ich neben ihnen mit meinem Reisehute auf dem Haupt."65 This latter reference amply suggests that, although Heinrich is reasonably observant, his vision is still conditioned by his conventional attitudes. Indeed, it is clear that his social background has prevented him from seeing the world around him with anything more than a superficial gaze. It is noteworthy that, by contrast, Risach is presented at Ich bewunderte... ging: I was puzzled by this man, who, as he uttered these words, walked along in his strange, even tasteless attire. DieJacke... geworden: The jacket was whitish, but across the chest and down the back was a red stripe which was about six inches wide, as though the jacket had been made out of two materials, one white and the other red. But both materials looked very old, for the white had turned a yel­ lowy brown, and the red a purplish brown. Ich wusste. .. Haupt: I didn't know which seemed more curious to me: the two of them without any headgear or myself with my traveling-hat on my head.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

the outset as a man of true physiognomical vision. This is first hinted at when he asks Heinrich a question which foreshad­ ows the appearance of Mathilde: Habt ihr denn nie eine jener alten Frauen gesehen,... die in ihrer Jugend sehr schon gewesen waren und sich lange kraftig erhalten haben? Sie gleichen diesen Rosen. Wenn sie selbst schon unzahlige kleine Falten in ihrem Angesichte haben, so ist doch noch zwischen ihnen die Anmut herrschend und eine sehr schone liebe Farbe.66 As is to be expected at this stage, Heinrich then adds: "Ich antwortete, dass ich das noch nie beobachtet hatte. ..." Evi­ dence of Risach's physiognomical outlook is shown on two other occasions: first, when, by a judgment of Heinrich's ap­ pearance, he foresees that the latter will make great progress once he has chosen to pursue a particular path of life; and, secondly, when, having philosophized about the way in which clothes take on the shape and structure of the wearer, he goes on to say: "Wie es mit dem Gewande ist, ist es auch mit dem Leibe, der das Gewand der Seele ist, welchen der Kiinstler durch das Bild und Gleichnis des Leibes darstellt."67 But, as we can already see, Risach is no ordinary physiognomist. In­ deed, in the second half of the novel, we learn that he has a profound love of classical sculpture as well as a wide knowl­ edge and understanding of art. Particularly interesting is Ri­ sach's virtually Lavaterian concern with homogeneity in art, and his admiration for the old masters because they copied nature more faithfully than the moderns. And so it seems that, through his presentation of Risach as one who has learnt to Habt... Farbe: have you ever observed one of those elderly women . . . who, having been beautiful in their youth, are still well preserved? They are like the roses. And though these women now have countless wrinkles in their faces, there is, nevertheless, a certain grace and beauty of color between the wrinkles which continues to prevail. Ich antwortete ... hatte: I replied that I had not noticed them before. Wiie.. . darstellt: As with the attire, so with the body, which is the inner man's attire, which the artist represents through the image and symbol of the body.

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

use his eyes with aesthetic feeling, Stifter is drawing attention to the importance of true physiognomical vision as constitut­ ing an integral part of the completely mature human being. Heinrich's spiritual development, then, consists partly in his learning to appreciate the human appearance with a more aesthetic eye. His early days at the Rosenhaus already show that he is in the right atmosphere for such a development. But the turning point in his physiognomical progress comes after he has noticed a girl (who later turns out to be Natalie) weep­ ing with great emotion at a performance of King Lear: "Das Angesicht war von Tranen iibergossen, und ich richtete meinen Blick unverwandt auf sie."68 This experience has such an overwhelming effect on the hero that afterward, when he returns to his own home, he begins to consider the human face as the finest subject for drawing, and proceeds to study it: "... ich suchte mir Kenntnisse iiber das menschliche Antlitz zu verschaffen."69 Furthermore, he finds it curious that he has never before thought of seeing whether his sister's facial fea­ tures were worth drawing. Later, Heinrich discovers that drawing people helps him to understand them better, an idea we find also expressed by Lavater. When he returns to the Rosenhaus, he seems to be much more observant than he was on his first visit. He describes the appearance of the gardener and his wife; he also observes changes in Gustav, and at table becomes aware of another aspect of Risach's appearance: "Da ich so, da die Speisen erschienen, meinem alten Gastfreunde gegenuber sass, fiel mir plotzlich auf, was der Mann fur schone Zahne habe. Sehr dicht, weiss, klein und mit einem Schmelze uberzogen sassen sie in dem Munde, und kein einziger fehlte."70 Indeed, Heinrich's way of looking at people Das Angesicht. .. sie: Tears were streaming down her face, and I kept my eyes incessantly fixed on her. ich suchte... verschaffen: I tried to acquire some knowledge about the human face. Da ich... fehlte: As I sat opposite my host at dinner, I suddenly noticed what a fine set of teeth he had. They were very compact, white, small, and enameled, and there was not one missing.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

has by now taken a distinctly positive turn. This is especially emphasized by the change in his attitude to Risach's general appearance: Seine seltsame Kleidung und seine Gewohnheit, immer barhauptig zu gehen, welch beides mir anfangs aufgefalIen war, beirrte mich endlich gar nicht mehr, ja es stimmte eigentlich zu der Umgebung sowohl seiner Zimmer als der immer um ihn herum wohnenden Bevolkerung, von der er sich nicht als etwas Vornehmes abhob, der er vielmehr gleich war, und von der er sich doch wieder als etwas Selbstandiges unterschied.71 Another example of Heinrich's new physiognomical aware­ ness (which was discussed in the last chapter) is shown when, on seeing Mathilde and Natalie for the second time, he notes a family resemblance between them and Gustav. He also refers from time to time to his artistic pursuits: "Ich malte die Hande oder Biisten verschiedener Leute, die sich in dem Rosenhause oder in dem Meierhofe befanden."72 He describes, too, the joy of constantly improving his draftsmanship: Besondere Freude machte es mir, dass ich nach und nach die Feinheiten des menschlichen Angesichtes immer Seine .. . unterschied: His strange attire and his habit of going about bareheaded, which I had noticed at the beginning, no longer bothered me after a while; indeed, I thought it toned in both with the rooms in the house and the household staff, whom he did not stand out from as a supe­ rior, but, rather, was equal with, while retaining a distinct individuality. Ich malte. .. befanden: I painted the hands and busts of people living at the Rosenhaus and the farmhouse. Besondere . . . nachzuahmen: It was especially gratifying for me to learn to understand the subtleties of the human face better and better and, above all, to be able to do something I had previously found so difficult, that is, to catch that slight aura which could be noted on the cheeks of fair damsels—cheeks which, though gently curving, and seeming to lack vari­ ety of contour, were, nevertheless, so full of character. But what I enjoyed doing most of all was to try and reproduce that peculiar mixture of demureness, charm, and roguishness you could see in the faces of many a country girl or mountain lass.

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

besser behandeln lernte, besonders, was mir friiher so schwer war, wenn der leichte Duft der Farbe uber die Wangen schoner Madchen ging, die sich sanft rundeten, schier keine Abwechslung zeigten und doch so mannigfaltig waren. Mir waren die Versuehe am angenehmsten, das Liebliche, Sittige, Schelmische, das sich an manchem jungen Land-oder Gebirgsmadchen darstellte, auf der Leinwand nachzuahmen.73 Thanks to his father, who possesses a number of paintings, the hero is also able to study the work of such masters as Titian and Veronese and to read books about art, just as he takes the opportunity to look at the sculptures in his native city. As Heinrich acquires a more thorough knowledge of the fine arts, he develops more and more into a sensitive observer of the human appearance. This is shown particularly in his attitude to the beauty of older women: Seit ich Mathilden kannte ... war ich auf die Angesichter altlicher und alter Frauen aufmerksam geworden. Man tut sehr unrecht, und ich bin mir bewusst, dass ich es auch getan habe, und gewiss handeln andere Leute ebenfalls so, wenn man die Angesichter von Frauen und Madchen, sobald sie ein gewisses Alter erreicht haben, sofort beseitigt und sie fur etwas halt, das die Betrachtung nicht mehr lohnt. Ich fing jetzt zu denken an, dass es anders sei.74 And each time he sees Mathilde, he is able to discover more evidence of her beauty, but, as he adds: "Und mehr als diese Seit... set: Since coming to know Mathilde .. . I had become interested in the faces of old and elderly women. It is quite mistaken—and I realize I have been no less guilty in this respect than others—to dismiss the faces of women and girls once they have reached a certain age, and to consider them no longer worth looking at. I began to see now that it was quite oth­ erwise. U n d . . . w i r k t e : And having made such a careful study of faces in order to copy them, I now realized that it was [Mathilde's] inner being rather than her physical beauty, a demure, beneficent beauty, that had such an effect on people in her presence.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

Schonheit war es, wie ich wohl jetzt erkannte, da ich so viele Angesichter so genau betrachtet hatte, um sie nachzubilden, die Seele, welche giitig und abgeschlossen sich darstellte und auf die Menschen, die ihr nahten, wirkte."75 (Here we are re­ minded of a remark made by Lavater: "Echter, reiner physiognomiseher Sinn in Ansehting des weibliehen Gesehlechtes ist die beste Wiirze und Starkung des menschlichen Lebens—und das allerwurksamste Verwahrungsmittel vor Erniedrigungen seiner selbst und anderer.")76 The refinement of Heinrich s physiognomical outlook is again confirmed when he compares Gustav's healthy appearance with the somewhat jaded facial features of youths living in the city. The high point in his descriptions is the long portrait of Natalie, which culminates a series of observations he has made of her since first he saw her at the theater. Noteworthy is the way he compares her with antique sculpture: Ich erkannte erst jetzt, warum sie mir immer so merkwiirdig gewesen ist, ich erkannte es, seit ich die geschnittenen Steine meines Vaters gesehen hatte. Mir erschien es, Natalie sehe einem der Angesichter ahnlich, welche ich auf den Steinen erblickt hatte, oder vielmehr in ihren Ziigen war das namliche, was in den Ziigen auf den Angesichtern der geschnittenen Steine ist.... Nata­ lie stammte also gleichsam aus einem Geschlechte, das vergangen war und das anders und selbstandiger war als das jetzige.77 For Heinrich, Natalie is, indeed, not merely someone to be compared with sculptural forms, but an actual physical emEchter... anderer: To have a genuine physiognomical sense when gaz­ ing at the fair sex is the best spice and tonic of life—and the most effective preventive against debasing oneself and others. Ich ... jetzige: Only then did I realize what I had found so remarkable about her, and I realized it when I had seen my father's sculptures. It seemed to me that Natalie looked like the faces I had seen in those sculp­ tures, or rather her features had the essence of the facial features of the sculptures.... Natalie was, then, the symbol of a race which had vanished, which was different, more independent than the present race.

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

bodiment of classical beauty and simplicity, just as she is also a symbolic expression of a certain humanistic ideal, to a knowledge and understanding of which the hero's Bildung is mainly directed. At this stage, then, we see how much the hero has benefited by his increasingly physiognomical appre­ ciation of the human appearance, by his study of paintings and sculpture, and by his own artistic activities. In fact, if we consider Heinrich's character from this point of view, we may say that he has, so to speak, acquired many of the aptitudes which Lavater requires the ideal physiognomist to possess. But the peculiar merit of Stifter's treatment of Heinrich as a physiognomist lies in the skillful way in which he incorpo­ rates it in the story of Heinrich's inner moral development while relating it as well to the other ethical and aesthetic themes of the novel. One of the most significant aspects of the nineteenth-cen­ tury novel is the widespread and varied structural use of char­ acter description, such as we rarely find in the novel before 1800. Not content with the single composite portrait, the novelists of our period delight in describing their characters again and again, according to the demands of their narratives. In many cases we find that with each successive description we become more and more familiar with the inner essence of the characters. Character description is also used as an effec­ tive means of suggesting the passage of time, and is particu­ larly helpful in showing, amongst other things, the develop­ ment from childhood to adulthood of such characters as Tom and Maggie Tulliver and Bob Jakin in The Mill on the Floss, Graham Bretton and Polly Home in Villette, Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, Charles Bovary in Madame Bovary, and Olivier d'Orsel in Dominique. Sometimes character descrip­ tion goes hand in hand with the development of the action. For instance, a series of misfortunes or tragic events may with time bring about a noticeable decline or deterioration in a character's physical appearance. This is true of Captain Brown in Cranford, Signora Accorombona and Torquato Tasso in Vittoria Accorombona, Baron Rothsattel, Veitel Itzig,

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

Hirsch Ehrenthal, Sehroter, and Sehmeie Tinkeles in Soil und Haben, Old Osborne in Vanity Fair, Julie in Dominique, Miss Haversham in Great Expectations, and Professor Berger, Xenobie, and Baroness Grenwitz in Problematische Naturen. On the other hand, a positive inner development usually leads to a pleasing maturity in the appearance, as we see in Joe Gargery and Biddy in Great Expectations, Amelia and Dobbin in Vanity Fair, the heroine of Eugenie Grandet, Frank Gresham in Doctor Thome, Anton and Lenore in Soil und Haben, Ju­ dith in Der Grtine Heinrich, and Augustin in Dominique. That all this is in itself ample testimony to the physiognomical awareness of novelists themselves is self-evident. But apart from adding to our understanding and appreciation of the characters, the tendency to describe them at various stages in the narrative bespeaks a fine use of physiognomy in the novel. First of all, as far as the first-person narrator is concerned, there is a certain physiognomical validity in presenting char­ acters in a drawn-out portrait. Thus by not restricting himself to a single description, the narrator is free to choose signifi­ cant moments for referring to particular features or noting facial expressions or describing physical changes. Moreover, in so far as the narrator avoids the Olympian practice of ob­ serving everything en bloc, the drawn-out portrait is, of course, much more realistic, as well as dramatically more in­ teresting. Indeed, the drawn-out portrait may be regarded in some sense as an aesthetic expression of Lavater's injunction to physiognomists to make repeated observations of their subjects. Let us consider the treatment of the drawn-out portrait of the hero's cousin Anna in Der Griine Heinrich, a first-person novel. Because of the additive structure of the novel, the characters introduced are rarely given more than one de­ scription each. But there are two exceptions: Anna and Ju­ dith, the two main loves in Heinrich's life. Judith represents in a certain sense das ewig Wetbliche, an epitome of sensual femininity; Anna, on the other hand, is the hero's conception of an unattainable ideal, a creature to be contemplated and

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

admired at a distance. In fact, Heinrich draws the following distinction between his two loves: "... wahrend ich in Anna den besseren und geistigeren Teil meiner selbst liebte, suchte Judith wieder etwas Besseres in meiner Jugend, als ihr die Welt bisher geboten." Hence there is always a certain irony in the descriptions of Anna, for even in his most adoring gaze at her beauty, Heinrich's heart is still partly given to Judith. Nor is he able to resolve this dilemma: "Ich fiihlte mein Wesen in zwei Teile gespalten und hatte mich vor Anna bei der Judith und vor Judith bei der Anna verbergen mogen."78 The first time Heinrich sees Anna is when, after a brief visit to his grandparents, he goes to stay with an uncle, a retired schoolmaster. She is introduced thus: . . . aus der Haustiire trat ein zierliches Treppchen herunter das junge Baschen, schlank und zart wie eine Narzisse, in einem weissen Kleide, mit goldbraunen Haaren, blauen Auglein, einer etwas eigensinnigen Stirne und einem lachelnden Munde. Auf den schmalen Wangen wallte ein Erroten iiber das andere hin, das feine Glockenstimmchen klang kaum vernehmbar und verhallte alle Augenblicke wieder.79 This description has a mainly pictorial appeal and, particu­ larly in the contrast of colors, conveys an extremely poetic impression of Anna's beauty. At the same time, through the reference to her mouth and her voice, we get a good idea of Anna's character: her goodness, her simplicity, and her rewahrend... geboten: At the same time as I loved in Anna the better and more spiritual side of my nature, Judith was looking for something in my youth that was better than anything life had offered her hitherto. I c h . . . m o g e n : I felt myself split in two and would have liked to conceal from Anna the kind of person I was with Judith, and vice-versa. aus . . . wieder: Out of the front door and down the neat little steps came my young cousin, as slender and delicate as a narcissus, wearing a white dress, with golden-brown hair, blue eyes, a somewhat stubborn forehead, and a smile on her lips. You could see a succession of blushes suffusing her cheeks, and the sweet, tinkling sound of her voice was barely audible, dying away as it did every time she spoke.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

serve. The physiognomical interpretation of her forehead seems to indicate a certain remoteness and self-sufficiency. Then such phrases as "schlank und zart," "wie eine Narzisse," and "auf den schmalen Wangen" not only suggest the fragile quality of her beauty but also hint at her delicate health. Moreover, the narrator already seems to foreshadow her death and, as it were, her otherworldly destiny in the words "in einem weissen Kleide" and "das feine Glockenstimmchen klang kaum vernehmbar und verhallte alle Augenblicke wieder." The idea of her imminent death is further suggested by the fact that Anna, in contrast to Judith, whose presence the hero enjoys best by daytime, is associated in his mind with sunsets and evening landscapes. In his next description of Anna, she is seen standing among asters, flowers symbolic of death, and once again he brings out the pictorial essence of her appearance: "... wie eine junge Englanderin aus den neunziger Jahren."80 While staying at his uncle's house, Heinrich becomes fully sensitive to every­ thing about her person: each word he hears her utter sounds "wie ein Tropfen Muskatwein" (like a drop of muscatel); he even watches her biting her bread "mit ihren kleinen weissen Zahnen (with her small white teeth)."81 Later, he describes Anna in a colorful dress she has put on before going to a dancing lesson, and he refers to the white jabot covering "die jungen schmalen Schultern" (her young, narrow shoulders) 82 When Heinrich attends his grandmother's funeral with Anna and her father, he senses a change in Anna through her very movements, thereby discovering a new charm about her: "... dazu drang sie heut eine tiefe Frommigkeit und Andacht, sie war still und ihre Bewegxmgen voll Sitte, und dieses alles liess sie in meinen Augen in neuem, unendlichem Reize erscheinen."83 From this point onward their relationship steadily grows wie .. . Jahren: like a young Englishwoman of the 1790s. dazu . .. erscheinen: that day she was permeated by a deep piety and seriousness, she was calm, and her movements full of grace, all of which lent her a new and infinite charm in my eyes.

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

into one of tender, innocent love, though Anna is soon sent away to boarding school, and he does not see her again until she returns home one spring. At first sight her appearance, as she stands amidst her three cousins, is unfamiliar, "eine schlanke aufgewachsene jungfrauliche Gestalt" (a slender, grown-up, maidenly figure); but through his deep physiogno­ mical knowledge of her, Heinrich can still recognize the old Anna: "An ihrer eigenthiimlichen Stimme erkannte ich sogleich Anna; sie sah fein und nobel aus, und ich bliebe ganz ratios und verblufft stehen." There follows a description of the complete change in her appearance, for "sie war eine ganz andere Gestalt geworden." He notices, for example, that a fastidiously neat hairstyle has replaced the informal way she used to wear her hair; and though her facial features are the same, a definite physiognomical transformation has taken place: "... nur hielten sie sich viel ruhiger, und die armen, schonen blauen Augen hatten ihre Freiheit verloren und lagen in den Banden bewusster Sitte."84 It is noteworthy, too, that the narrator makes a special point of adding that he did not notice all these details at once. Nevertheless, the general view of her appearance on the day of their reunion is enough to make a startling impression on him: "... allein es machte zusammen einen solchen Eindruck auf mich, dass ich erschrak, als ich mich zum Friihstiick, welches inzwischen aufgetragen war, neben sie setzen musste."85 Shortly after­ ward, Heinrich declares his love, and there is a description of his walk with her through the woods to the river. The idealized, contemplative nature of his love is suggested in A n . . . stehen: I immediately recognized Anna from her distinctive voice; she looked refined and aristocratic, and I stood there quite at a loss for words. s i e . . . g e w o r d e n : she had become a quite different person. n u r . . . S i t t e : [her features] were more composed, and her lovely blue, sad eyes had lost their freedom and gave the impression of self-conscious, moral constraint. a l l e i n . . . m u s s t e : yet it made such an impression on me that I was alarmed when I found I had to sit next to her at breakfast, which had been served in the meantime.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

these words: "Meine Augen hingen mit Andacht und Liebe an ihrer Gestalt, immer bereit sich abzuwenden, sobald sie zuriickschauen wiirde." But the idyll is by no means perfect. First of all, Judith passes them on their way and nods at Heinrich "mit einem etwas ironischen Lacheln (with a some­ what ironic smile)."86 Later, there is one of those humorous situations in Heinrich's perennial conflict with the fair sex, in which the other cousins steal a portrait of Anna which he has done for her father's Namenstag, only to return it on the said day in a beautiful frame. At the Fastnachtspiel, when Heinrich and his relatives take part in a performance of WtZhelrn Tell, Anna is described vividly in her regal attire, in which there is a suggestion of her ethereal beauty: "... sie sah nicht nur aus wie ein Ritterfraulein, sondern wie eine Feenkonigin." Anna's beauty, in fact, has a great effect on her family: "... das ganze Haus war in ihren lieblichen Anblick verloren."87 Another description of her is given when Heinrich goes riding with her in an evening landscape. On this occasion he refers to her "reizende, fast marchenhafte Gestalt" (charming, almost fairy-like figure);88 and the epi­ sode culminates in his fervent demonstration of love, followed by Anna's tears. But illness brings about a dramatic change in Anna's ap­ pearance, in the description of which there is an adumbration of her death. Thus Heinrich senses "dass sie gegen friiher fast grosser, aber auch zugleich zarter und schmachtiger erschien; Meine ... wiirde: My eyes rested on her person devotedly and lovingly, though I was ready to avert them the moment she turned round. sie ... Feenkonigin: and she looked not only like a chatelaine, but a fairy queen. das ganze . .. verloren: the entire household was rapt in her loveliness. dass ... Leidendes: that, in comparison with last time, she seemed al­ most taller, and yet at the same time more fragile and delicate; her com­ plexion had taken on a kind of transparency, and there was a certain look of suffering in the unusual radiance in her eyes, as though she were at one moment thinking of the rapturous joys of childhood, and in the next lost in deep contemplative thought.

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

ihre Gesichtsfarbe war wie durchsichtig geworden, und in ihren Augen, welche erhoht glanzten, bald in dem kindlichen Feuer friiherer Tage1 bald in einem traumerischen tiefen Nachdenken, lag etwas Leidendes."89 The final description of Anna in death is essentially poetic, recalling as it does some of the details of her first portrait, such as her complexion, her golden hair, and her white dress; and so the presentation of Anna is brought to a structurally satisfying conclusion. There is no doubt that in his portrait of Anna the narrator has skill­ fully combined the contemplative adoration of her physical person with a certain measure of realistic observation, and the success of his characterization of Anna is due to her com­ ing across to the reader almost entirely through physiognomi­ cal techniques. Another interesting drawn-out portrait by a first-person narrator is to be found in George Sand's Mauprat, in which the narrator, Bernard Mauprat, is introduced by the framenarrator as an octogenarian who is about to tell the story of his life. But the action of the novel is, of course, presented al­ most entirely through the eyes of Bernard as a youth and a young man. Amongst the many portraits of characters drawn by the young Bernard, there is a particularly striking one of the rustic philosopher Patience, who appears at various stages in the action. Patience is one of George Sand's ideal peasants, a self-educated genius and an admirer of Rousseau, who acts as a kind of mouthpiece for the author's particular message of socialism. His other function in the novel is to exert a benefi­ cent influence on the young hero, the taming of whose wild behavior and savage attitudes constitutes part of the plot. It is significant that in Bernard's first detailed description of Pa­ tience the emphasis is on the idea of a man of formidable and fearsome appearance as seen by a wild, inexperienced youth. Thus Bernard ends his description with the words: "II me fit l'effet d'une bete feroce."90 However, for Bernard the octoge­ narian, Patience's appearance in retrospect is quite different: I l . . . f e r o c e : He struck me as a kind of wild animal.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

"Sa figure courte et commune comme celle de Socrate."91 That the older Bernard should make this analogy, which can hardly have occurred to the young Bernard on that first occa­ sion, brings a certain ambiguity into the description, even though the narrator is careful to add: "Si Ie feu du genie brilIait dans ses traits fortement accuses, il m'etait impossible de m'en apercevoir."92 This reference to Socrates, is, of course, intended to suggest that, in spite of his first unfavorable im­ pression of Patience, Bernard was later to discover sterling qualities of character in him. In any case, the moral strength of Patience's character is already suggested in the description of various features—"sa grosse tete," "l'epaisseur du sourcil," "un oeil rond et enfonce profondement dans l'orbite lan^ait des eclairs,"—for which details George Sand may well have made use of Lavater's engravings of Socrates' bust (figure 13); The next description of Patience occurs shortly after Ber­ nard's first quarrel with the heroine, Edmee, over his refusal to submit readily to the discipline of education. This time, when Patience talks to the hero about his (Bernard's) relation­ ship to Edm£e, the narrator takes time to refer to other as­ pects of the peasant's appearance, such as the calluses on his shoeless feet and the exiguity of his clothing, all of which sug­ gests a Rousseauesque character who has no truck with the artificialities of civilization. And as Patience gazes up at the sky, Bernard poetically describes his beard, which "brillait comme de l'argent" (gleamed like silver),93 and his reference to the old man's bald pate and slow gait seems to complete this picture of the peasant in meditative mood. The hero then evokes Patience's physiognomy as the latter discusses social­ ism at the gate of his cottage: "... il y avait en Iui quelque Sa figure ... Socrate: His compact, commonplace, Socratic face. S i . . . a p e r c e v o i r : Whether the fire of genius glowed in his very distinct features was impossible for me to see. sa grosse ... eclairs: his large head, his thick eyebrows, his round, deeply socketed eyes were flashing il y avait ... voix: he had something of the strength of the ancient prophets, and the more than plebeian simplicity of his attire enhanced his proud gestures and the mellifluousness of his voice.

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

chose de puissant comme la parole des vieux prophetes, et la simplicite plus que plebeienne de son accoutrement rehaussait encore la fierte de son geste et l'onction de sa voix."94 Apart from a passage where Patience tells Bernard, who has recently returned home from the American War of Inde­ pendence, that he (Patience) has not changed outwardly ("meme tenue, memes allures"), the philosopher-peasant is not described again until the occasion of Bernard's trial for the attempted murder of Edmee, of which, as a result of an incriminating letter he once wrote threatening to kill her, he is found guilty. Then, just as the crowd is about to disperse, after the verdict has been given, Patience makes a dramatic appearance in court. This dramatic effect is achieved partly because the peasant, though described with features that are not unfamiliar to the reader, is not actually mentioned by name, as though the narrator wished to convey his momen­ tary unfamiliarity to the audience. (This descriptive proce­ dure, which seems to be a borrowing from the drama, is fairly common in the nineteenth-century novel, and it provides an occasion for the reader to become, as it were, a physiogno­ mist himself). In this description of Patience there is an em­ phasis on those characteristic aspects of his appearance which seem to constitute a formidable homogeneity: "... une figure en tout semblable a celle qu'on prete au paysan du Danube, trapue, en haillons, pieds nus, a la barbe longue, aux cheveux en desordre, au front large et austere, au regard imposant et sombre."95 And because the old man speaks out in defense of Bernard "d'une voix creuse et accentuee" (in a hollow, mod­ ulating voice), the verdict is rescinded. In the reopened trial, Patience's final defense of Bernard is most physiognomically recounted. The narrator notes, amongst other things, "plusieurs belles cordes" (several fine modulations) in his voice, significant variations in his gestures, and the fine expression in his "figure courte et socratique" (compact Socratic face).96 meme ... allures: the same attire, the same manner une figure ... sombre: a figure in all respects similar to that attributed to peasants of the Danube, stocky, ragged, barefooted, long-bearded, di­ sheveled, with a broad, stern forehead, and an imposing, solemn mien.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

He even detects a certain physiognomical change in the peas­ ant due to external influences, as he concludes his description: "II parla d'une maniere claire et concise qu'il avait acquise necessairement dans son commerce recent avec Ies hommes et dans la discussion de leurs interets positifs."97 The modern reader may find the presentation of Patience somewhat melodramatic; but there is little doubt that the rustic sage's personality comes across most effectively through his physical attributes. Also, we have the impression that Bernard eventually comes to have a true physiognomical understanding of Patience, which insight puts him in a class above those others to whom the peasant's "caractere bizarre, sa figure severe et son esprit un peu railleur ne plurent • L >>98 point. In some third-person novels, multiple descriptions of a character are occasionally presented less as a linear physiog­ nomical history than as a collection of different viewpoints that together bring out the character's essential features, as well as the biases of the observers. This is particularly true of the physical presentation of Dobbin in Vanity Fair, by means of which the author indirectly satirizes a society that relies too much on outward appearances. Again, one of the merits of Tieck's Vittoria Accorombona is the method by which the reader is made constantly aware of the physical presence of the heroine through the remarks or reported reactions of the other characters, whereby the author is clever enough to pre­ vent them from sounding like so many cliches. A similar treatment is to be noted in the presentation of Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss: through the Dodsons' and Mrs. Tulliver's negative remarks on Maggie's dark hair and brown skin, on the one hand, and the sensitive reactions of Philip Wakem, Bob Jakin, and Lucy Deane to her eyes and comI I . . . p o s i t i f s : He spoke in the clear, precise manner which he had inevi­ tably acquired in his recent dealings with men and in his discussions with them about their material interests. caractere ... point: bizarre character, grim face, and somewhat mock­ ing attitude were off-putting.

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

plexion, on the other, George Eliot succeeds in presenting a brilliantly objective portrait of the heroine as well as under­ lining the peculiar individuality of her appearance. One notable example of this method of character descrip­ tion is to be found in Problematische Naturen. Here we see that the hero's appearance is hardly described by the narra­ tor, but, rather, is suggested by the comments of the other characters. The reason for this is mainly structural in that it serves to thicken the subplot leading up to the disclosure of Oswald's aristocratic heredity. It is, therefore, ironic not only that Oswald (who only later learns about his true birth) should hate the aristocracy, but also that his aristocratic ori­ gins should be first alluded to in two conversations which take place at a social gathering of the very class he detests. For in­ stance, when Baron Cloten comments on Oswald's almost genteel appearance, Baron Oldenburg retorts: "Beinahe gen­ teel? Lieber Freund, er sieht nicht nur beinahe genteel aus, sondern ausnehmend genteel, genteeler als irgend einer der Herren hier im Saale, Sie selbst und mich nicht ausgeschlossen."99 Later on in the party, Emilie von Breesen also notices signs of good breeding in the hero, as she says to him: "Sie haben in Ihrem ganzen Wesen etwas Chevalereskes, das man heut zu Tage nur selten und nur bei unsern jungen Leuten aus den besten Familien findet."100 Then one afternoon, the witty but shallow surveyor Albert Timm tells Oswald the story of the late Baron Harold Grenwitz, who in his will left the estate of Stantow and Baerwolde to his illegitimate son, who had disappeared as a small child with his mother; so that if, as Albert continues, the long-lost claimant turns up, the present Grenwitz family, with whom Oswald is employed as house-tutor, will have to forfeit the property. At this point Oswald's physical appearance takes on Beinahe ... ausgeschlossen: Almost genteel? My dear fellow, he looks not only genteel, but exceptionally genteel, more genteel than any of the gentlemen in this room, including you and me. S i e . . . f i n d e t : There is something so aristocratic about him that you sel­ dom find nowadays, and only in young men from the best families.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

a greater dramatic significance, since Timm, who has studied physiognomy and knows his Lavater, detects a remarkable re­ semblance between Oswald and the Grenwitz family por­ traits: "Wahrhaftig, Dottore, Sie konnen sich portratieren und unter die Familienbilder der Grenwitze, oben im Saale, hangen lassen."101 Timm also notes that Oswald has the fatal Grenwitz features. From this point onward, needless to say, the motif takes on the quality of a hereditary whodunit, and curiously reminds us of Pip's physiognomical discovery of Estella's mother in Great Expectations. The hero, of course, turns out to be Baron Harold's son, though a banal denoue­ ment is luckily avoided. In any case, the main purpose of this motif is to illustrate the moral decadence of the aristocracy. It is interesting to see how the author rounds off his treatment of Oswald's hereditary physiognomy through the latter's ac­ count of his early life, in which he tells his friend Doktor Braun of the enormous difference between his putative father and himself: "Ich wundere mich jetzt freilich kaum noch dariiber, seitdem ich eingesehen habe, dass zwei grundverschiedene Wesen, wie meinen Vater und mich, die Natur nicht leicht schaffen kann. Wir waren uns korperlich so unahnlich, wie wir es an Gemutsart und Neigungen waren."102 We might also refer to another character whom Spielhagen uses for his presentation of Oswald's physical appearance. Shortly after the arrival of Baroness Grenwitz' beautiful daughter Helene—the attractiveness of whose character is soon suggested by the fact that, even though she has the basic attitudes of her social class, she does not share her mother's obsession with mundane aristocratic matters—there is some Wahrhaftig .. . lassen: Really, doctor, you could have your portrait done, and have it hung in the drawing-room, along with the Grenwitz family portraits. Ich wundere... waren: I am, of course, hardly surprised at all this since coming to realize that nature can hardly have created two creatures so radically different from each other as my father and myself. We were as dissimilar in physique as we were in temperament and disposition.

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

speculation on the part of the reader as to what will be the outcome of her relationship with Oswald, of whom she gives a favorable account in her first letter to an English schoolfriend, Mary Burton. Meanwhile, the Baroness is anxious to marry her daughter off to the latter's rich cousin, Baron Felix Grenwitz, since she knows that after her husband's death the family fortunes will dwindle considerably. When Felix arrives at the Schloss Grenwitz, he is overwhelmed by Helene's beauty and after a while is confident that she reciprocates his passionate love. At the same time he has already learnt from the Baroness that Oswald holds a certain fascination for her daughter. However, little is known of the reserved Helene's attitude until she writes a second letter to Mary, from which we gain an even better idea of her opinion of Oswald. After describing her sense of alienation amidst her family sur­ roundings, she goes on to talk about Oswald, whom, as she says, she could love if he were her brother, but from whom she is separated by social position. This is followed by a phys­ iognomical description of Oswald, through which she sug­ gests his particular appeal for her: "Es Iegt eine Schwermuth auf seiner hohen Stirn, in seinen tief blauen grossen Augen, die fur mich etwas unendlich Riihrendes hat."103 She then points out that, since knowing Oswald, she has given up her hatred of things plebeian. This is explained by a further de­ scription of Oswald, which is, of course, ironically linked with other descriptions concerning his aristocratic heredity: Ich habe noch kein Wort aus seinem Munde gehort, das den Plebejer verrathen hatte, dagegen viele, sehr viele, E s . . . h a t : There is a melancholy in his big deep-blue eyes that I find infinitely attractive. Ich habe ... zuriickzufuhren: I haven't heard him utter one word that sounds plebeian; on the contrary, I have heard hundreds which have come from his soul and which have found an echo in my heart. He speaks with an elegance I have never heard before, with a rich modulation of voice that sounds like music in my ears, so that for hours afterward I often try and recall the manner and tone with which he said something.

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

die nur aus der Seele gesprochen waren, die ein lautes Echo in meinem Herzen fanden. Er spricht mit einer Anmuth, wie ich es noch von keinem Menschen gehort habe, mit einer reichen Modulation der Stimme, die wie Musik in meinem Ohre klingt, so dass ich oft noch stundenlang nachher versuche, die Art und Weise, den Tonfall, mit dem er dieses oder jenes sprach, in meine Erinnerung zuriickzufiihren.104 The letter is then used as a means of thickening the plot con­ cerning the Baroness' marriage schemes for her daughter. Thus when Helene finds out that her mother has secretly read this letter, their relationship is strained to the point where Helene adamantly refuses to marry Felix. (Some time later, however, the Baroness herself loses interest in Felix as a po­ tential bridegroom when he falls seriously ill, and eventually has him packed off to Palermo.) The motif of Helene's interest in Oswald is treated again in her third letter to Mary Burton. Having spoken once more of the magical effects which Oswald exerts on her, she suggests the ambiguity of her feelings toward him in yet another phys­ iognomical description: "Er gleicht, streng genommen, gar nicht dem Ideal, das ich von dem Helden, den ich lieben konnte, im Herzen trage; aber es ist in dem Ton seiner Stimme, in dem Blick seiner grossen blauen Augen, in seinem ganzen Wesen ein Etwas, das mich unsaglich riihrt."105 HeIene is, however, later to be disenchanted somewhat with Os­ wald when it becomes clear to her that he is having an affair with Emilie von Breesen. After a lapse of time Oswald comes back to Helene to declare his love and to beg her forgiveness, which she grants. Their relationship is, however, tragically terminated, for Oswald meets his death in the 1848 Revolu­ tion. But since it is clear that Oswald could never have in­ spired total love in her, this seems to be the most satisfactory E r . . . r t i h r t : Strictly speaking, he does not in any way match my ideal of a hero I might love; but there is something about the tone of his voice, the look in his big blue eyes, his whole person that I find ineffably attractive.

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

outcome. It is, incidentally, interesting to note that, whereas most of the descriptions of Oswald, whether by the narrator or the other characters, concern his good looks or his aristoc­ racy, Helene's descriptions manage to convey both these aspects of Oswald as well as his essentially "problematic nature." Spielhagen's presentation of Oswald's physical ap­ pearance by means of his characters' comments on it cer­ tainly reflects the climate of physiognomy in his day, though it is difficult to deny that such a presentation has a certain ar­ tificiality about it, mainly because too many characters are endowed with the same sort of physiognomical skills. In the physical portraits of Dobbin in Vanity Fair, the her­ oine of Vittoria Accorombona, Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss, and Oswald Stein in Problematische Naturen we find that considerable use is made of dialogue. And since dia­ logue may often reflect a Zeitgeist even more faithfully than pure narrative, one is tempted to see some connection be­ tween the remarks that fictional characters make on one an­ other's appearances and the physiognomical talk that must have taken place so often in nineteenth-century social life. Nevertheless, the connection is a fairly tenuous one in such novels as Vanity Fair and The Mill on the Floss, where the re­ marks are essentially subordinated to specific thematic pat­ terns. On the other hand, there are novels in which dialogues on appearances quite realistically reflect the physiognomical vogue of the period. Let us, for instance, consider the physical presentation of some characters in Emma. First of all, it is noteworthy that the heroine is introduced at the beginning simply as "handsome, clever and rich"; and it is only when Mr. Knightley and Mrs. Weston discuss Emma's character that we get the first full description of her. What leads up to it are Knightley's disapproving remarks concerning Emma's endeavors to pair Harriet Smith off with Elton, as well as his criticism of her lack of application and industry, though she is, as he says, the cleverest member of her family. That Knightley should be concerned with Emma's moral character is not only necessary to the plot (it is an early

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

sign of his interest in her) but also quite in keeping with his particular role in the novel: he is, after all, the touchstone for right social and moral conduct. It is, therefore, no small irony when, after this, Knightley, who is eventually to marry the heroine, should hear Mrs. Weston defend Emma by praising her beauty: Such an eye!—the true hazel eye—and so brilliant! regu­ lar features, open countenance, with a complexion—oh, what a bloom of full health, and such a pretty height and size! such a firm and upright figure! There is health not merely in her bloom, but in her air, her head, her glance. One sometimes hears of a child being the picture of health; and Emma always gives one the idea of being the complete picture of growing health. She is loveliness it­ self, Mr. Knightley, is not she?106 Another kind of irony is seen when Knightley discusses Frank Churchill with Emma. Thus whereas Knightley consid­ ers it irresponsible of Frank to keep postponing his visit to Highbury, Emma defends him on the grounds of his family commitments and duties. Knightley then goes on to say that, without wishing to think ill of Frank, the only good things he has heard about him are "that he is well-grown and goodlooking, with smooth plausible manners"; to which Emma re­ plies: "Well if he have nothing else to recommend him, he will be a treasure at Highbury. We do not often look upon fine young men, well-bred and agreeable."107 Here Knightley's preoccupation with character as opposed to appearance seems to point ironically to a certain jealousy on his part. At the same time, the dialogue throws interesting light on Emma's character, for it suggests that she attaches consider­ able importance to appearances. Hence it is, perhaps, not surprising that her first impression of Frank Churchill should be favorable: He was presented to her, and she did not think too much had been said in his praise. He was a very good-looking

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

young man—height, air, address, all were unexception­ able, and his countenance had a great deal of the spirit and liveliness of his father's:—he looked quick and sensi­ ble. She felt immediately that she should like him.108 Emma's reaction here certainly bespeaks the physiognomical eye; but the irony of her judgment of Frank's appearance is that she cannot foresee that she will later be disappointed in his character. Jane Austen could not, indeed, have more effec­ tively illustrated the strong element of illusion underlying the heroine's attitudes to people than by showing the conse­ quences of this rapturous physiognomical judgment. Conversely, when Emma is not laboring under her visual il­ lusions she can be remarkably objective in her physiognomi­ cal judgments. This is seen not only in her unexpectedly fa­ vorable analysis of Jane Fairfax's appearance, "which for two whole years she had been depreciating," but also when she discusses Jane's complexion with Frank Churchill. To Frank's criticism of Jane's complexion as being unhealthy, Emma re­ plies in the following style indirect libre: "It was certainly never brilliant, but she could not allow it to have a sickly hue in general, and there was a softness and delicacy in her skin which gave peculiar elegance to the character of her face." Frank then says that he has heard all this before, "but yet he must confer that to him nothing could make amends for the want of the fine glow of health. Where features were indiffer­ ent, a fine complexion gave beauty to them all; and where they were good, the effect was—fortunately he need not at­ tempt to describe what the effect was."109 Frank's remarks are, of course, deliberately calculated to suggest that he is not at all interested in Jane; that he is, in fact, free to court Emma herself. But the irony of Frank's condemnation of Jane's com­ plexion is made plain at the end of the novel, not only when it is revealed that he has all along been engaged to her, but also when, in his final conversation with Emma, we see how he more or less comes round to the latter's point of view in a complete revision of his earlier physiognomical opinions:

THE LITERARY FOREGROUND

.¾

f¥mmS

Figure 18. The physiognomist, by G. Spratt, ca. 1830.

"Did you ever see such a skin? such smoothness! such deli­ cacy! and yet without actually being fair. One cannot call her fair. It is a most uncommon complexion, with her dark eye­ lashes and hair—a most distinguishing complexion! So pecu­ liarly the lady in it. Just colour enough for beauty."110 It is clear that Emma and Frank Churchill have more than

PHYSIOGNOMICAL AWARENESS

an ordinary capacity for physiognomical observation; and even Mrs. Weston's assessments of the heroine's beauty are, stylistically speaking, not far removed from some of Lavater's more rhapsodical analyses of portraits. At the same time, by showing that physiognomical judgments—including those of Mr. Knightley—may often depend for their validity on the attitudes and motives of the characters, Jane Austen not only makes brilliant and realistic structural use of physiognomy, but also, by avoiding the tendency of some novelists of our pe­ riod to equip their characters with faultless physiognomical skills, she manages to bring the physiognomical atmosphere of her day into the novel without making it seem banal or ob­ trusive.

CONCLUSION OUR primary aim here has been to study the treatment of out­

ward man in the nineteenth-century novel and to suggest how far it should be considered an expression of the influence which Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente exerted on Eu­ ropean literary culture during that period. Only a relatively small number of works were selected for detailed discussion, but it was felt that this number, representing as it does many of the great novelists of the period, was enough to illustrate the principal ways in which physiognomy was incorporated in fiction. Such an approach made it also necessary to show the development of character description in the pre-Lavaterian novel so that the reader might more readily understand the main thesis put forward in this book; and it is hoped that the comparative methods often used in our critical analyses will have been thought more or less justified by the historical background delineated beforehand. One of the principles of comparative literature is that the critic concerned with the movement of ideas should, irre­ spective of all possible sources of an idea, confine himself to one pivotal work for his binary comparisons. For our pur­ poses, the choice of the Fragmente as the pivotal work may be considered justified on two grounds: first, because physiog­ nomy in the nineteenth century was associated most of all with Lavater; and, secondly, because nineteenth-century physiognomical theory derives essentially from the Fragmente. It is certain that most nineteenth-century men of let­ ters knew about the Fragmente, even if they had not read them, just as it is evident that writers who were skeptical of physiognomy did not remain impervious to its effects. More­ over, it is ironic that many of those who lay under the spell of physiognomical theory appear to have been unaware of La­ vater's important role in this respect, especially those who made light of his historic contribution. In any event, whence novelists derived their physiognomical ideas is less important

CONCLUSION

for us than actual evidence of such ideas in their writings. Of those nineteenth-century writers who did read the Fragmente, there were, no doubt, some of a secular cast of mind who were put off by the theological content of the essays, let alone the seemingly naive arguments and the effusive style. But whether novelists disparaged the Fragmente or rated them highly, as, indeed, many did, they could scarcely have denied that the work, with all its shortcomings, had sound advice for the man of letters, and that in its injunction to the artist to sharpen his observational powers it was a textbook for that type of realism to which most novelists were com­ mitted during that period. No less pertinent to nineteenthcentury realism was Lavater's scrupulous approach to phy­ siognomical theory itself, an approach that was to be matched to some extent by nineteenth-century fictional practices. Thus we have seen, for example, how the composite portrait developed increasingly away from being a largely pictorial device into one essentially physiognomical; how in their methods of characterization novelists made specific use of physiognomical principles and correlations laid down in the Fragmente; and, finally, how often narrators and characters were endowed with physiognomical skills and vision such as to suggest that it had now become the norm for fictional pro­ tagonists to be physiognomists in the most positive sense of the term. Through the study of physiognomy in the nineteenth-cen­ tury novel, then, the comparatist discovers to his delight how closely the three main European literatures were linked dur­ ing this period. This quest for links is, of course, the principal function of comparative literature as a humanistic discipline. Yet whilst discovering such links, the comparatist inevitably becomes aware of those divergences by which each literature ultimately retains its peculiar identity; and his first concern in respect to the treatment of an idea is likely to be with atti­ tudes to it as implicit in the fictional works under considera­ tion. As far as physiognomy and phrenology are concerned, there is little need for us to dwell on the many satires these

CONCLUSION

sciences inspired, especially since most of them have lost whatever force they had in their time. More important is the question of how far the treatment of physiognomy in fiction is an expression of the author's moral attitude. Thus we have noted in our analyses of nineteenth-century fictional narrative that, whereas, broadly speaking, physiognomy is incorporated "uncritically" into the French and German novel, in the English novel it tends to be treated with irony and ambiva­ lence. The explanation for this is obvious enough once we re­ alize the extent to which Jane Austen, Thackeray, Trollope, George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, and Dickens were writing in the tradition of Addison, Fielding, and Sterne, as we can tell from the sophisticated, worldly tone of their narrators, their light-hearted attitude to their craft, and, above all, their pro­ found suspicion of anything that smacks of cold-blooded the­ ory. Indeed, some of these novelists went even further than their eighteenth-century forebears in debunking traditional physiognomical ideas concerning moral nature and social class. To be sure, the nineteenth-century English novelist was often quite as Lavaterian in his use of literary portraiture as any of his fellow writers on the Continent; yet it would seem that in his treatment of physiognomy he was concerned not so much to show up the limitations of the science as to suggest, like a novelist of the Fielding stamp, that the capacity for true physiognomical observation depends first and foremost on the character of the observer himself. This is strikingly il­ lustrated in Jane Austen's Emma, as it is also in George Eliot's Mill on the Floss, whose intelligent, albeit somewhat humor­ less, narrator makes use of the weapons of positivism to attack secondhand physiognomical ideas, at the same time as she implies that sound physiognomical judgments depend on sound thinking. In this connection, it is interesting to note how often the use of physiognomy and phrenology in the novel has been regarded as a mark of realism. In fact, it would be more correct to speak of two kinds of realism with regard to the treatment of these sciences: on the one hand, that whole-hearted confidence in the interpretability of appear-

CONCLUSION

ances typical of the Scott and Balzac school of realism; on the other, that distrust of appearances characteristic of the Field­ ing school of realism. Which approach may be said to be the more realistic is a question to which the answer depends largely on the temperament of the reader. Nevertheless, it would seem that, in our present climate of rationality, the subtler treatment of physiognomy as a problematic sign of the observer's own moral character has dated much less than the enthusiasm with which so many nineteenth-century novelists put their faith in it as a science. But whatever the relationship between physiognomy and realism, there still remains the important question of how far physiognomy affected the aesthetics of the nineteenth-cen­ tury novel. There are, as we have seen, many references to physiognomy and phrenology in the novel, which, however useful to historians of science, can hardly be said to possess much aesthetic significance now. Indeed, one of the ironies of our comparative study is that several novels in which Lavater's name occurs, or in which physiognomical descriptions exist in abundance, have long since been cast in the limbo of minor fiction, despite the high esteem they enjoyed in their day. We may even suppose that the very success of such novels as Pelham, Les Mysteres de Paris, and Problematische Naturen derived in large measure from their incorporation of those physiognomical elements that meant so much to the nineteenth-century reader, even though it is difficult to es­ cape the impression that such elements were put in to make up for the author's lack of more important aesthetic skills. Descriptive passages, whether of people, landscapes, or ob­ jects, were, of course, essential aspects of a genre committed to the portrayal of contemporary life; and it was a rare novel­ ist who felt, like Gide, that description had no place in fic­ tion. Nevertheless, an attempt has been made here to suggest that, despite the limitations of physiognomical description as a literary device and the excesses to which it was prone, the major novelists of our period did achieve a remarkable com­ promise between art and physiognomical theory. It would be

CONCLUSION

enough to mention such novels as Emma, Wuthering Heights, Der Nachsommer, Der Griine Heinrich, Vanity Fair, Eugenie Grandet, Great Expectations, Villette, Geld und Geist, Le Rouge et Ie Noir, Madame Bovary, The Mill on the Floss, Chronik der Sperlingsgasse, and Dominique—in which we find economical use of character description or a deliberate selectiveness in the treatment of specific physiognomical fea­ tures; in which physiognomy enhances the psychological in­ terest of a character's fate or underlines the dramatic or lyri­ cal essence of a particular passage; in which family, social, or national physiognomies serve a definite thematic function; and in which, finally, the presentation of narrators and char­ acters as physiognomists so often has a structural appropriate­ ness. From these points of view, then, there can be little doubt that physiognomy had a beneficial effect on fictional art, enriching it with aesthetic qualities that had been rare in the novel before 1800. It is noteworthy that, although the Lavaterian physiog­ nomical culture had already gone into a certain decline by the mid-nineteenth century, physiognomy itself did not dis­ appear from the novel; on the contrary, it is possible to show not only how many novelists writing between 1860 and 1900 reaped the aesthetic benefits of physiognomy provided by their immediate predecessors, but also how much the highly sophisticated use of character description in twentieth-cen­ tury fiction is but a refinement of those methods of literary portraiture we have discussed in this book. Yet it is also evi­ dent from a study of the European novel after 1860 how much the Lavaterian physiognomical culture had already lost its intensity in the face of new philosophical thinking, scien­ tific development, and social change; and as we look back on that culture, it is difficult not to find something quaint about the seriousness with which people analyzed one another's ap­ pearances or had the bumps on their heads examined. It is true that psychologists and sociologists continue, and will continue, to make scientific studies of the human appearance, to document the physiognomical and pathognomical interest

CONCLUSION of human behavior, and, occasionally, even to revive the cult of phrenology; but in all other respects physiognomy, like phrenology, seems for the time being to belong to a distant past. All the same, the student of literature might do well to read Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente, for, in ways both peculiar and profound, they have been somehow immorta­ lized in the nineteenth-century European novel.

NOTES

A key to the abbreviations of frequently cited sources can be found on the first page of the Bibliography. Other works listed in the Bibliography are cited here by author and short title only. Is INTRODUCTORY

1. We may refer here to a number of studies concerned with character description and literary portraiture in both novel and epic: Ivo Bruhns, Das literarische Portrat der Gtiechen im fiinften und vierten Jahrhundert vor Christi Geburt (Berlin, 1856); J. Houdoy, La Beaute des femmes dans la litterature franqaise et dans I'art du XIIe au XVIe Steele (Paris, 1876); Rodolfo Renier, Il tipo estetico della donna nel Medioevo (Ancona, 1885); Jean Loubier, Das Ideal der mannlichen Schonheit bet den altfranzosischen Dichtem des XII. und XIII. Jahrhunderts (Halle, 1890); Oskar Voigt, Das Ideal der Schonhett und Hasslichkeit in den altfranzosischen chan­ sons de geste (Marburg, 1891); P. Clemen, Die Portratdarstellungen Karl des Grossen (Aachen, 1890); Kurt Gaebel, Beitrage zur Technik der Erzahlung in den Romanen Walter Scotts (Marburg, 1901); Friedrich Kircheisen, Die Geschichte des literarischen Portrats in Deutschland, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1904); Franz, Das literarische Portrat in Frankreich; Ulrich, Gustav Freytags Romanteehnik; Neubert, "Die Anschauungen uber Physiognomik in Frankreich"; Korver, Stendhal und der Ausdruck der Gemiitsbewegungen; Morris P. Tilley, "The 'White Hand' of Shakespeare's Heroines," Sewanee Review, XIX (1911): 207-12; M. B. Ogle, "Classical Literary Tradition in Early German and Romance Literature," Modem Lan­ guage Notes, XXVII (1912): 233-42; idem, "The Classical Origin and Tradition of Literary Conceits," American Journal

NOTES TO CHAPTER I

of Philology, XXXIV (1913): 125-52; Franz Beyel, Zum Stil des Griinen Hetnrich (Tubingen, 1914); Ernest Edelmann, Die Charakterzeichnung in den Romanen von Dickens (Darm­ stadt, 1915); Walter Clyde Curry, The Middle English Ideal of Personal Beauty as Found in the Metrical Romances, Chronicles and Legends of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Baltimore, 1916); Dibelius, Charles Dickens; Gilbert Malcolm Fess, The Correspondence of Physi­ cal and Material Factors with Character in Balzac (Philadel­ phia, 1921); Nathaniel E. GrifiBn, "Chaucer's Portrait of Criseyde," Journal of English ir Germanic Philology, XX (1921): 39-46; E. Faral, Les Arts poetiques du XIIe et du XIIe Steele, in Bibltotheque de I'Ecole des Hautes Etudes (Paris, 1923); Paul Appel, Die Schilderung der korperlichen Erscheinung des Menschen im deutschen Roman zwischen 1870 und 1900 (Giessen, 1924); Edith Schwarz, Das literarische Portrat bet Saint-Simon (Munich, 1925); Friedrich Thiele, H. de Balzac als Physiogncnniker (Berlin, 1927); Abraham, Creatures chez Balzac·, H. Kindermann, Goethes Menschengestaltung (Berlin, 1932); Hilda Vogt, Die literarische Personenschilderung des friihen Mittelalters (Leipzig & Berlin, 1934); Erich Werner, Das literarische Portrat in Frankreich im 18. Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1935); Christian N. Wenger, "An Introduction to the Aesthetics of Literary Portraiture," PMLA, L (1935): 615-29; Henri Guerlin, Le Portrait (Paris, 1936); F. I. Car­ penter, "Puritans Preferred Blondes: The Heroines of Mel­ ville and Hawthorne," New England Quarterly, IX (1936): 253-72; L. Haselmayer, "Chaucer and Medieval Verse Por­ traiture" (Diss., Yale University, 1937); idem, "The Portraits in Chaucer's Fabliaux," Review of English Studies, XIV (1938): 310-14; P. Ganter, Das literarische Portrat in Frankreich im 18. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1939); Bates, Literary Portraiture in the French Renaissance; J. Friedman, "The Ubi Sunt, the Regrets and Effectio," Modem Language Notes, LXXII (1947): 499-505; Elizabeth C. Evans, "Literary Por­ traiture in Ancient Epic," Harvard Studies in Classical Philol­ ogy, LVIII ir LIX (1948): 190-217; O. S. Brewer, "The Ideal

NOTES TO CHAPTER I

of Feminine Beauty in Medieval Literature, Especially 'HarIey Lyrics,' Chaucer and some Elizabethans," Modem Lan­ guage Review, L (1955): 257-69; Claes Schaar, The Golden Mirror, Studies in Chaucer's Descriptive Technique and Its Literary Background (Lund, 1955); R. M. Lumiansky, "Benoit's Portraits and Chaucer's General Prologue," Journal of English and Germanic Philology, LV (1956): 431-38; Paul Salmon, "The Wild Man in Iwein and Medieval Description Techniques," The Modem Language Review, LVI (1961): 520-28; Carroll Franklin Coates, "Balzac's Physiognomy of Genius" (Diss., Yale University, 1964); Peter M. Schon, "Das literarische Portrat im franzosischen Mittelalter," Archiv fur das Studium der neueren Sprachen, CCII (1965): 240-63; Alice M. Colby, The Portrait in Twelfth-Century French Liter­ ature. An Example of the Stylistic Originality of Chretien de Troyes (Geneva, 1965); J. D. Lafond, "Les Techniques du portrait dans Ie recueil des portraits et eloges de 1659," Cahiers de VAssociation Internationale des Etudes Franqaises, XVIII (1966): 139-48; Lucienne Frappier-Mazur, "Espace et regard dans La Comedie Humaine," L'Annee Balzacienne (1967): 325-38; Paul Ilie, "Grotesque Portraits in Torres Villaroel," Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, LV (1968): 16-37; Ruth P. Thomas, "The Art of the Portrait in the Novels of Marivaux," French Review, XLII (1968): 23-31; Pierre Huegas, "Variation sur un portrait: de Melibee a Dulcinee," Bulletin Hispanique, LXXI (1969): 5-30; Henri Jones, "Du Portrait dans l'art et la litterature classiques," Revue des Sciences Humaines, XXXIV (1969): 197-211; W. Hirdt, "Descriptio Superficialis. Zum Frauenportrat in der italienischen Epik," Ar­ cadia, V (1970): 39-57; Sean Shasgreen, Literary Portraits in the Novels of Henry Fielding (De Kalb, 1970); D. van der Cruysse, Le Portrait litteraire en France au XVIIe Steele (Paris, 1971); T. Folley, "Clothes and the Man: An Aspect of Benito Perez Galdos' Method of Literary Characterisation," Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, XLIV (1972): 30-35; Bernard Vannier, L'Inscription du corps. Pour une semiotique du portrait balzacien (Paris, 1972); Tohsin Yucel, Figures et messages dans La

NOTES TO CHAPTER I

Comedie Humaine (Paris, 1972); Susan Dunn, "Nerval et Ies portraits," Australian Journal of French Studies, XII (1975): 286-94; William M. Evans, "The Question of Emma's Eyes," Romance Notes, XVI (1975): 274-77; Margot Kruse, "Das Selbstportrat von Paul Scarron in der Nachfolge des Selbstportrats von Cervantes," Romantsches Jahrbuch, XXVII (1976): 100-17; Naomi Eva Lindstrom, "Physical Appear­ ances in Aolt," Romance Notes, XVII (1976): 227-29; Robert R. Nunn, "Mile, de Scudery and the Development of the Lit­ erary Portrait: Some Unusual Portraits in Clelie," Romance Notes, XVII (1976): 180-84; Harriet Goldberg, "Moslem and Spanish Christian Literary Portraiture," Hispanic Review, XLV (1977): 311-26; Henry Ettinghausen, "Torres Villaroel's Self-Portrait: The Mask behind the Mask," Bulletin of His­ panic Studies, LV (1978): 321-28; Aurelia Turcu, Modalites descriptives de la technique balzacienne dans la construction du personnage (Timi§oara, 1978); David Wakefield, "Le Role du portrait dans Ies romans de Stendhal," in Victor Del Litto, ed., Stendhal-Balzac: realisme e t cinema. Actes d u X I e Congres International (Auxerre, 1976} (Grenoble, 1978): 141-46; Dwayne E. Carpenter, "Descriptive Modes of Physi­ cal Beauty in Hispano-Arabic Muwassahat and Romance Models," Comparative Literature Studies, XVI (1979): 294-306; Michael Irwin, Picturing: Description and Illusion in the Nineteenth-Century Novel (London, 1979); Robert Pope, "A Sly Toad, Physiognomy and the Problem of Deceit: Henryson's The Paddok and the Mous," Neophilologus, LXIII (1979): 461-68; Dharie Vanbimol, "Le Portrait esthetique au XIXe siecle" (Diss., City University of New York, 1979); P. T. Barry, "Physical Descriptions in the International Tales of Henry James," Orbis Litterarum, XXXV (1980): 47-58; Lawrence Jones, "Physiognomy and the Sensual Will in TTie Ladybird and The Fox," The D. H. Lawrence Reviews, XIII (1980): 1-29; Grazia Merler, "Description et espace dans La Chartreuse de Parme," Stendhal Club, LXXXIX (1980): 28-52; Rafael Osuna, "La Figura humana en Las Galas del

NOTES TO CHAPTER I

difunto de Valle-Inclan," Journal of Spanish Studies, VIII (1980): 103-16; Ludmila Gorochowski Plotnichenko, "Le Portrait litteraire et Ies descriptions du physique chez Ies Romantiques" (Diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 1980). 2. For example, in Senac de Meilhan's Emigre (1797) the Comtesse de Loewenstein writes: "Lorsqu'on commence un roman, on doit faire Ie portrait du heros et je vais me conformer a cette invariable coutume." Cf. Senac de Meilhan's Emigre in Romanciers du XVIIIe Steele, II, 1557. 3. Gide, Les Faux-Monnayeurs, p. 93. Gide's implicit re­ jection of the traditional literary portrait is clearly in the spirit of Andre Breton's first Manifeste du surrealisme, pub­ lished a year earlier, in which, having condemned the realist novelists for their obsession with "observation," the author writes: "Et Ies descriptions: Rien n'est comparable au n£ant de celles-ci...." (As for descriptions, there's nothing to com­ pare with their nullity.) Breton, Manifestes, p. 19. 4. Cf. Petsch, Wesen und Formen der Erzahlkunst, p. 188, and Rague, Jane Austen, p. 140. 5. Cf. Maugham, A Writer's Notebook, p. 197. 6. Cf. Allott, Novelists on the Novel, p. 208. 7. For example, Camille Reynaud, in La Genese de "Do­ minique," writes of Fromentin's novel as follows: "Ses personnages ne sont pas de chair et de sang, et si Ieur ame—celle de Dominique surtout—est parfaitement, et dune main legere, dissequee devant nous, Ieur corps reste dans l'imprecision. Nous avons grand mal a Ies voir; ils ne sont pas decrits physiquement." (His characters are not flesh and blood, and if their souls—especially Dominique's—are per­ fectly dissected before us, their bodies remain imprecise. We have great difficulty in visualizing them; they are not de­ scribed physically) p. 177. 8. For Dickens, cf. Dibelius, Charles Dickens, pp. 273-75, and for Scott, cf. Ulrich, Gustav Freytags Romantechnik, p. 101.

9. Cf. Booth, Anthony Trollope, p. 217; Graham, "La-

NOTES TO CHAPTER I

vater's Physiognomy in England," p. 563; and Turnell, The Art of French Fiction, p. 25. 10. Cf. Riemann, Goethes Romantechnik, passim, and "Johann Jakob Engels Herr Lorenz Stark," pp. 266-91; 482-514. 11. Baldensperger, "Les theories de Lavater," p. 84. 12. Cf. Wilfred M. Senseman, "Charlotte Bronte's Use of Physiognomy and Phrenology," Papers of the Michigan Acad­ emy of Sciences, Arts ir Letters, XXXVIII (1953): 475-83; John Graham, "The Development of the Use of Physiognomy in the Novel" (Diss., Johns Hopkins, 1960); E. Paul Gauthier, "New Light on Zola and Physiognomy," PMLA, LXXV (1960): 297-308; Hans Ludwig Scheel, "Balzac als Physiognomiker," Archiv fiir das Studium der Neueren Sprachen, CXCVIII (1961): 227-44; Gendzier, "La Figure humaine chez Diderot et chez Balzac"; N[ikolaj] K[allinikovic] Gudzig, "Elementy fiziognomiki ν tvorcestve L'va Tolstogo ," in Problemy StavniteVnoj filologii. Sbomix statej K70-letiju clerc-konespondenta A[kademii\ N[a«/c] SSR V[iktore] M[aksimovica] Zirmunskogo, pp. 354-62 (Moscow & Leningrad, 1964); Graham, "Character Description in the Romantic Novel"; Ian Jack, "Physiognomy, Phrenology and Characterisation in the Novels of Charlotte Bronte," Bronte Society Transactions, XV/5 (1970): 377-91; Graeme D. C. Tytler, "Character Description and Physiognomy in the Eu­ ropean Novel (1800-1860) in Relation to J. C. Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente" (Diss., University of Illinois, 1970); Edmund Heier, "Lavater's System of Physiognomy as a Mode of Characterisation in Lermontov's Prose," Arcadia, VI (1971): 267-82; idem, " 'The Literary Portrait' as a Device of Characterisation," Neophilologus, LX (1976): 321-31; Fran