Slippers for Cinderella

DR. MEIKLEJOHN remarked the other day that the American mind was very clever, but that it thought about the wrong things. Shoes, for instance, instead of religion. According to the Doctor, Massachusetts thinks beautifully about shoes, and very badly about where we are going in them. Personally, I disagree. I admit the badness of our philosophy, but I question whether we do any better by the shoe.

At least, after two days of shopping, what I want to ask is this: has Mr. Hoover’s bureau of standards waved its wand over the shoe industry and ruled out as a wasteful side line all heels on which a person who loves exercise, beauty, and her feet might like to walk? Or are this year’s shoes only Babbittry in pedal form? If we have here merely the tyranny of the mob over the manufacturing mind, then, alas! I suppose I am doomed to wear standardized shoes on an unstandardized foot — or pay the price of individuality at twenty dollars a pair.

The pity of it is that it is really a very fine foot capable of a smart appearance in proper boots. It might even have made Trilby look to her honors. It can walk or dance ten miles barefoot, and its arch supports were provided by that complex of cumulative forces familiarly called Nature. Mid must this foot, as strong as a peasant’s and as slim as a duchess’s, be thrust into a hideous object called a pump but resembling nothing in nature so much as a hyena humped upward in the rear? It never had a heel under it till it was twenty years old, and then only experimentally. Those were the days when children were children, and misses’ shoes were springheeled, and a small lady could wear them all her life. Those were the days when odd people could find something to taste in the shops, and short lines were a specialty of the smart dealer. Those were the days when little flat slippers of spangled satin, rosetted and ribbon-bound, such as stole in and out among grandmother’s hoop skirts, were still worn to parties by her tiny great-grandchildren and such grandchildren as had the wit and the feet — slippers in which one stood upon the ground, and could cross a room with graceful dignity or pirouette securely in a fancy dance.

For consider the foot, not, after the fashion of shoe designers, as a mere spare part, but as the base of the whole body’s rhythm. Vera incessu patuit dea — the goddess was revealed by her walk. Put the Venus de Milo in French heels, and how would her godhead vanish! Clap them upon Pavlowa’s winged feet, and where would be the poetry, the lovely rise and fall from earth to heaven? Choose then — wings or heels! All dancers answer, ‘Wings.’ All manufacturers have answered, ‘Heels’; and the feet of America freeze into an attitude — motionless, expressionless, grotesque.

Perhaps it is impossible to be completely rational. The ante-bellum ladies with ballooning hoops and tightlaced waists wore sensible shoes. The short-skirted, supple-waisted flapper goes on stilts. Yet a year or so ago a moment of reason came to costume. Hair was bobbed, waists were unbound, skirts were brief and free, shoes almost as lovely as the foot itself—heelless, flexible, filigree sandals for sport or street or ball, the light touch of art on nature which gives beauty its deepest lure. It would have been almost possible two years ago to make a statue of a lady without undressing her. Never had we come so close to the frank grace of Greek sculpture — every pretty girl a Diana in disguise! Then presto! all the lovely little shoes grew heels, and Diana could run no more upon the hills. She must come home in a motor car.

It is not that many Dianas do not still long to run. It is merely that there are no longer any pretty tripping shoes. There are only ground grippers — clodhopping hoofs for satyrs, not for nimble nymphs. For Thetis must be silver-slippered, and all the slippers have high heels!

Yet I would not be intolerant. Many there are, no doubt, whose natural feet are so plain or ugly that deformity alone can make them interesting. And for such let heels abound. But why must I too go in grotesque? Why must I limp with my lame neighbor? If this be democracy, let me have done with it. I had thought it meant teaching my halting neighbor how to skip!

‘Sir,’ said I to a salesman, ‘I want a shoe the shape of the human foot. St3’lized, perhaps, but still footlike.’

“Not being worn this season, madam,’ he replied.

It is true that I shop upon Main Street, where uniformity is the order of the day. Perhaps there are towns where dealers still buy for the few as well as for the mob. I wonder. But mine is not one of them. I live in an Orpheum town, and I suppose I shall have to wear Orpheum shoes and see Orpheum plays. But I do not like it. Still, what can one do? The little theatre outside the syndicate, the solitary independent baker who still makes my crisp French bread, the old shoemaker around the corner — are these the only ways to keep the feet of ugliness from stamping out the beauty and variety of life? If so, then Pan is dead indeed.