Have the English Big Feet?

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 465, 23 April 1890, Page 4

Have the English Big Feet?

Max O’Rell somewhere declares that every English human foot is twelve good inches long. The English traveller in France comments on the smallness of the local foot. What means this—read backwards —bub that British feet are big ? Some South Americans had a house in a fashionable London street, and the ladies of the family said it was pleasure enough for them to sit atthe lower windows and watch ‘ theenormous English feet ’ pass by ! The feet of the father of the family were perhaps 8 inches long. The points of his boots only just showed beyond the hem of his trousers. Let any doubter look at upper class Russian feet, and then say are English feet abnormally big, or nob. Why not fairly face the fact ? English leet are exceedingly long. As a rule they are low in the instep. If they have good insteps, ten to one their owner has Norman blood in his veins. Bub big, flab feet only become supremely ugly when deformed by squeezing. English feet, if left alone, are very useful, though not ornamental. Is not ‘ mere lioofiness ’ Carlyle’s expression ? It very well describes the large foot cramped into a French boot several sizes two small. When the self-in-flicted ‘ torture of the boob ’ has gone on for a while, and the toes are twisted inwards and outwards, the great joints are enlarged, and a ruggedness of outline is produced which might be picturesque in another place, but is much the reverse of picturesque in a human foot.