These peculiar furrows are best represented in fig. 3, Plate II., on
the forehead of a young lady who has the power in an unusual degree of
voluntarily acting on the requisite muscles. As she was absorbed in the
attempt, whilst being photographed, her expression was not at all one
of grief; I have therefore given the forehead alone. Fig. 1 on the same
plate, copied from Dr. Duchenne s work,[704] represents, on a reduced
scale, the face, in its natural state, of a young man who was a good
actor. In fig. 2 he is shown simulating grief, but the two eyebrows, as
before remarked, are not equally acted on. That the expression is true,
may be inferred from the fact that out of fifteen persons, to whom the
original photograph was shown, without any clue to what was intended
being given them, fourteen immediately answered, despairing sorrow,
suffering endurance, melancholy, and so forth. The history of fig.
5 is rather curious: I saw the photograph in a shop-window, and took it
to Mr. Rejlander for the sake of finding out by whom it had been made;
remarking to him how pathetic the expression was. He answered, I made
it, and it was likely to be pathetic, for the boy in a few minutes
burst out crying. He then showed me a photograph of the same boy in a
placid state, which I have had (fig. 4) reproduced. In fig. 6, a trace
of obliquity in the eyebrows may be detected; but this figure, as well
as fig. 7, is given to show the depression of the corners of the mouth,
to which subject I shall presently refer.
Few persons, without some practice, can voluntarily act on their
grief-muscles; but after repeated trials a considerable number succeed,
whilst others never can. The degree of obliquity in the eyebrows,
whether assumed voluntarily or unconsciously, differs much in different
persons. With some who apparently have unusually strong pyramidal
muscles, the contraction of the central fasciae of the frontal muscle,
although it may be energetic, as shown by the quadrangular furrows on
the forehead, does not raise the inner ends of the eyebrows, but only
prevents their being so much lowered as they otherwise would have been.
As far as I have been able to observe, the grief-muscles are brought
into action much more frequently by children and women than by men.
They are rarely acted on, at least with grown-up persons, from bodily
pain, but almost exclusively from mental distress. Two persons who,
after some practice, succeeded in acting on their grief-muscles, found
by looking at a mirror that when they made their eyebrows oblique, they
unintentionally at the same time depressed the corners of their mouths;
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