Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1904 (Heft 7))

ON THE APPRECIATION OF VANITY.

" VANITY OF vanities—all is vanity," said the wise king,
who was writing in a pessimistic mood on the morning
after. But a re-revised edition now being prepared for
the use of modern readers wisely has it " Vanity is the
whole thing.”
Ah, yes, my ineffective friend, I know what you
would say. You would remind me that the meek shall
inherit the earth. And doubtless the meek shall, ulti-
mately, come into their inheritance. But, meanwhile, the
estate has been a long time in chancery and the decision of the court will
hardly be handed down in our day.
Yet, dear fellow-students in the school of self-sufficiency, let us beware
of dangerous generalizations. Let us mark well the quality of our vainness.
“ If I were not Alexander,” said an early exemplar of the strenuous life,
“ I would be Diogenes.” “ Humph ! ” said the old gentleman, who was
having his morning tub and who had a nice discrimination in vanities him-
self, “ Humph! Would you mind moving out of my printing-light ? ” And
the world, which hates a snob but loves a man with a proper estimate of his
own value, has allowed that the philosopher had the better of the argument.
All, then, that swaggers is not vanity. There are grades and shades of
vanity. There are even nuances. And by this we see that true vanity is a
fine art. To paraphrase an epigram of Zola’s, it is “a bit of egotism seen
through a temperament.” Now, unfortunately, an epigram is like a formula
for making gum-prints. It makes life seem too easy. Let us therefore be
careful. And first let us see to it that it be our own egotism and seen
through our own temperament. Hair, for instance, is an excellent, fine thing,
and the basic raw material of much good vanity, yet without a temperament
it is nothing. Else were the Sutherland Sisters secessionists ! And seen
through a borrowed temperament it is distorted, out of drawing, faked, and,
by the same token, no true photography. So if long hair, be its sleekness
never so sinuous, is plainly an exotic in the latitude of my head, and I have,
ready to my use, an indigenous smile that is “ childlike and bland,” why —
me to the barber! Moreover, man can not live by hair alone. Hair,
planted in soft places, merely runs to stalks. To bear fruit it needs a hard
cranium and a rich sub-soil. Again, “ If thy brother’slong hair offend thee,
cut it off,” is poor advice and leads, at best, to negative results. Nor must
we think to grow a longer shock on our own pates and thus gain honor
among men. They will only say that the influence of Steichen is plainly to
be traced in our development. In short, coat your own vanity. It is more
work, but the results make conversation, and the stirring of the pool is still
a condition precedent to success. Be careful, too, that your vanity be chem-
ically neutral. A few drops of the green alkali of jealousy will destroy the
purity of its high lights and flatten its effect.
Courage, then, brethren. It is true that vanity is impossible on an


38