[Ads-l] Adage: Beauty=?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=99s_?=only skin deep, but ugliness goes to the bone

[Jonathan Lighter]

1859 _North Carolina University Magazine_ (March) 329:
Let him remember, however,

    Beauty's but skin deep,
      Ugly's to the bone;
    Beauty ever fades away,
      Ugly holds its own.

Don't ignore the early appearance of nominalized "ugly."

JL

On Sat, Sep 26, 2020 at 8:39 AM ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Dorothy Parker sometimes has been given credit for the remark "Beauty
> is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone". An interaction on
> twitter inspired me to investigate this saying, and the results are
> available here:
>
> https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/09/25/skin-deep/
>
> In 1829 a newspaper in Exeter, England printed an anonymous short item
> that partially matched the saying under examination:
>
> [ref] 1829 February 5, Trewman’s Exeter Flying-Post, Varieties, Quote
> Page 4, Column 1, Exeter, Devon, England. (Newspapers_com) [/ref]
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> "Beauty is but skin deep," quoth an old maid, who had no pretensions
> to it; "and so is ugliness," replied a young lady who had no
> pretensions to that.
> [End excerpt]
>
> In 1840 a collection of essays and illustrations titled "Heads of the
> People; or, Portraits of the English" was published in London. The
> piece "Tavern Heads" by Charles Whitehead included dialog containing
> the twisted adage:
>
> https://books.google.com/books?id=4rkTAAAAQAAJ&q=+ugliness+#v=snippet&
>
> [ref] 1840, Heads of the People; or, Portraits of the English, Drawn
> by Kenny Meadows, With Original Essays by Distinguished Writers,
> Tavern Heads by Charles Whitehead, Start Page 113, Quote Page 142,
> Robert Tyas, London. (Google Books Full View) [/ref]
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> "When beauty was shared, I was behind the door, and my portion came
> through the keyhole, I’m sure: but beauty’s only skin deep, after all,
> they say."
>
> "But ugliness goes to the bone, they say also," remarked Mrs. Chatham,
> laughing. "Ah! Susan, you’re a sly girl."
> [End excerpt]
>
> Dorothy Parker died in 1967, and the earliest linkage between Parker
> and the saying apparently occurred in 1977. This evidence was not
> substantive, and QI believes that the attribution to Parker is
> currently unsupported.
>
> Feedback welcome,
> Garson O'Toole
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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