Impressions and comments / Havelock Ellis.

  • Ellis, Havelock, 1859-1939.
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Impressions and comments / Havelock Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    8 IMPRESSIONS AND COMMENTS August 8.—I have sometimes thought when in Spain that in ancient imiversity towns the women tend to be notably beautiful or attrac¬ tive, and I have imagined that this might be due to the continuous influence of student blood through many centuries in refining the population, the finest specimens of the young students proving irresistible to the women of the people, and so raising the level of the population by sexual selection. At Salamanca I was impressed by the imusual charm of the women, and even at Falencia to some extent noticed it, though Falencia ceased to be the great university of Spain nearly eight centuries ago. At Fécamp I have been struck by the occasional occurrence of an unusual type of feminine beauty, not, it seems to me, peculiarly Norman, with dark, ardent, spiritual eyes, and a kind of proud hierarchical bearing. I have wondered how far the abbots and monks of this great and ancient abbey of Benedictines were occupied—in the intervals of more supra- mundane avocations—^in perfecting, not only the ancient recipe of their liqueur, but also the physical type of the feminine population among which they laboured. The type I have in mind sometimes rather recalls the face of Baudelaire, who, by his mother's family from which he