There is nothing described with so little attention, with such slovenliness, or so without verification - albeit with so much confidence and word-painting - as the eyes of the men and women whose faces have been made memorable by their works.The describer generally takes the first colour that seems to him probable.The grey eyes of Coleridge are recorded in a proverbial line, and Procter repeats the word, in describing from the life.Then Carlyle, who shows more signs of actual attention, and who caught a trick of Coleridge's pronunciation instantly, proving that with his hearing at least he was not slovenly, says that Coleridge's eyes were brown - "strange, brown, timid, yet earnest-looking eyes." AColeridge with brown eyes is one man, and a Coleridge with grey eyes another - and, as it were, more responsible.As to Rossetti's eyes, the various inattention of his friends has assigned to them, in all the ready-made phrases, nearly all the colours.
So with Charlotte Bronte.Matthew Arnold seems to have thought the most probable thing to be said of her eyes was that they were grey and expressive.Thus, after seeing them, does he describe them in one of his letters.Whereas Mrs Gaskell, who shows signs of attention, says that Charlotte's eyes were a reddish hazel, made up of "a great variety of tints," to be discovered by close looking.
Almost all eves that are not brown are, in fact, of some such mixed colour, generally spotted in, and the effect is vivacious.All the more if the speckled iris has a dark ring to enclose it.
Nevertheless, the eye of mixed colour has always a definite character, and the mingling that looks green is quite unlike the mingling that looks grey; and among the greys there is endless difference.Brown eyes alone are apart, unlike all others, but having no variety except in the degrees of their darkness.
The colour of eyes seems to be significant of temperament, but as regards beauty there is little or nothing to choose among colours.
It is not the eye, but the eyelid, that is important, beautiful, eloquent, full of secrets.The eye has nothing but its colour, and all colours are fine within fine eyelids.The eyelid has all the form, all the drawing, all the breadth and length; the square of great eyes irregularly wide; the long corners of narrow eyes; the pathetic outward droop; the delicate contrary suggestion of an upward turn at the outer corner, which Sir Joshua loved.
It is the blood that is eloquent, and there is no sign of blood in the eye; but in the eyelid the blood hides itself and shows its signs.All along its edges are the little muscles, living, that speak not only the obvious and emphatic things, but what reluctances, what perceptions, what ambiguities, what half-apprehensions, what doubts, what interceptions! The eyelids confess, and reject, and refuse to reject.They have expressed all things ever since man was man.
And they express so much by seeming to hide or to reveal that which indeed expresses nothing.For there is no message from the eye.It has direction, it moves, in the service of the sense of sight; it receives the messages of the world.But expression is outward, and the eye has it not.There are no windows of the soul, there are only curtains; and these show all things by seeming to hide a little more, a little less.They hide nothing but their own secrets.
But, some may say, the eyes have emotion inasmuch as they betray it by the waxing and contracting of the pupils.It is, however, the rarest thing, this opening and narrowing under any influences except those of darkness and light.It does take place exceptionally; but I am doubtful whether those who talk of it have ever really been attentive enough to perceive it.A nervous woman, brown-eyed and young, who stood to tell the news of her own betrothal, and kept her manners exceedingly composed as she spoke, had this waxing and closing of the pupils; it went on all the time like a slow, slow pulse.But such a thing is not to be seen once a year.
