NOT JUST A PRETTY FACE

It is very easy to be deceived by first impressions and to be seduced by the superficial appearance of people you meet. Cleopatra no doubt had a dazzling smile, a majestic manner and a pert bottom but her heart was of ice and Betrayal was her middle name. Luckless, straight-forward Antony became enmeshed in her perfumed web and paid with his life. May he be a salutary lesson to us all!

Ancient image of Cleopatra

We men love all women, of course, for their gossamer delights, but sometimes we tire of the endless chatter, the obsessive shopping and the relentless egotism and long for serious conversation and civilised companionship. The trouble is that intellectual ladies often come at a heavy price in terms of outward appearance and Nature’s ill-favour. Clever George Eliot (“a horse-faced blue-stocking” in Henry James’ ungallant phrase), Virginia Woolf’s long face and hooded eyes would frighten the children while plain-Jane Austen graces our useful £10 note and is given a thin-lipped smile, artistic licence I suspect, flattering that grimly accomplished novelist.

Jane Austen on a £10 note

Yet how often have we thrilled to the grace and acute insights of clever women – their wide-ranging interests, their instinctive understanding of the minds of others and their driven industriousness. They enrich so much of our lives and they are agreeably thick on the ground – the dumb air-head is happily in a distinct minority.

In recent days one of my favourite TV women has been in the eye of a controversy. I refer to Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at Cambridge University. Now in truth Mary usually looks like she has been pulled through a hedge backwards but her programmes on Ancient Art and on the history of the Roman Republic and early Empire have been unmissable. Mary wears her erudition lightly and shares her enthusiasms with a popular audience, including me. She tweeted some mild remarks in sympathy with currently demonised Oxfam’s problems in Haiti and was rewarded with a tsunami of violent abuse, accusing her of racism (for not supporting a black nation) and for betraying feminism (by not unreservedly supporting Haitian women). I will not join the controversy as racism and feminism are not really my forte. I nonetheless think she has been unjustly vilified, but that is the sad old world we inhabit.

Besieged Mary Beard

After all my sardonic remarks about the talents of the Ladies, I have to turn my attention to the Men. The great majority are far from being oil-paintings and although they bloom in their 20s, the ubiquitous beer-belly soon swells into prominence, followed by a profusion of chins and then an argumentative and grumpy attitude to the outside world. The career is never quite right, the cares of family crush them and the pension is never enough. In their world, it is always winter and never bright summer. They make difficult companions and it is not entirely surprising that many wives/partners prefer dogs.

As regards physical beauty their reigns tend to be very short. I suppose recent idols have been George Cluny (his resemblance to me often noticed!) and David Beckham – better if he does not speak and hides his tattoos. But men fall apart more quickly than women; the hair disappears and the face wrinkles with only rare recourse to the plastic surgeon, the cosmetic arts and the radical make-over.

Just as with the Ladies, clever men eventually take pride of place. We care little for Kipling’s whiskers or Churchill’s podginess when their works entertain or move us so much. Many of our best loved men enjoyed eccentric outward appearance. Just off the bat I can cite young fogey John Betjeman, machine-gun conversationalist Lord David Cecil or debunker Lytton Strachey, all of whom added much to the gaiety of the nation.

John Betjeman

Lord David Cecil

 

Lytton Strachey

I can only encourage all to look beyond the externals and enjoy such depths as can be found, ignoring the superficial and the ephemeral. Here endeth the lesson!

SMD

21.02.18

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2018