Elegance of Manner.--Grace of the Latin Races.--The Secret
of Grace.--Gliding Movement.--Calisthenics.--Erectness of
Figure.--Shoulder Braces.--How to acquire Sloping
Shoulders.--Care of the Feet.--The Art of Walking.--Picturesque
Carriage of Southern Women.
Was it not Madame de Genlis who described the education in manners
under the old régime of France? In her memoirs she speaks of hating
Paris, when she came from the provinces, for the ordeal she underwent
there to fit her for polite society. She was taught, what she fancied
she knew already, how to walk, and was placed in the stocks two or
three hours a day to teach her the right position of her feet in
standing. A corset and back-board were provided to form an erect habit.
Whether in her day or later ones, the elegancies of manner are not
cultivated without sincere pains. Nature, indeed, creates some models
of such refined proportions and such informing spirit that they fall
at once into the curves of grace; but these are meant for models, and
happily nothing forbids those of lesser merit to attempt the same
lesson. Are not some born masters of the piano, full-flown at once over
the first difficulties of music? But does this hinder any pupil from
six hours’ daily drill, if need be, to grasp the same difficulties?
The one end is to be attained, whether instantly or not; and in some
cases the most laborious is by all means the most delightful player.
Courage, then. The same thing is true of other efforts than those of
the key-board; and it is quite as certain that the woman who trains
herself to be graceful will be so, as that the clumsy young pedant at
the scales will, in time, rush victoriously through the “Shower of
Pearls,” the “Cascade of Roses,” or any other drawing-room favorite of
gelatinized octaves.
For the first comfort, it must be owned that American women have the
least natural grace of any nation in the world. English women are
usually well trained in a sort of martinet propriety of attitude which
suits their solid contours; but neither Anglo-Saxon race knows an
approach to those lengthened curves, those bends of every slender joint
and supple muscle, which fill the eye in looking at a woman of Latin
race. I watched a Spanish-American girl in the gallery of the United
States Senate one night, in order to seize, if possible, her charm of
gesture. She was rounded, yet fine in figure, and seemed to be, as I
can best phrase it, all muscle. No one could think of her bones as
having any more stiffness than the pliant sprays of an elm. She leaned
on the railing of the balcony, not straight forward as even the elegant
and delicate diplomatic English ladies did, but lengthwise, as if
reclining; and the bend of her supple wrist, with the black and gold
fan, was simply inimitable to an American woman. Those intransferable
curves bewitched the eye even to pain; but something was gained in that
five minutes’ study which I reduce to two points: Sideway movements
and attitudes please more than those either forward or backward. The
secret of grace is to teach every joint of the body to bend all that it
can.
Take the last point first, and you have all that you need to teach the
finest grace. To the dumb-bells, to the calisthenic exercises and work
as if you were qualifying yourself to be a contortionist at a circus.
Vitalize every fibre, as the hot-blooded Southerner is vitalized, and
the body will play into grace of itself.
The first thing is the hardest--to stand straight. Most people are
satisfied indeed to attain this point of physical and polite culture,
and never get beyond it. Erect stiffness is better than crookedness.
To be admirable, the figure must be perfectly flat in the shoulders.
No projecting shoulder-blades, no curves are allowed here, however
pleasing they may be elsewhere. A stout figure can hardly be unrefined
if it is flat behind. A pair of inelastic shoulder-braces must be
called into requisition; and these should be made of coutille,
or satin jean, two inches wide, and corded at the edge. Make them
barely long enough to reach the belt of the skirts worn, and button
on them. Set the shoulders perfectly flat against the wall, and find
the distance between their blades; fasten a broad strap the same
length--not more than two inches, very likely--by sewing it to the
straps behind even with the lower edge of the scapula. This is the
best, as well as the cheapest shoulder-brace to be found. If well
proportioned, and all the measure taken scant, it can not fail to draw
the shoulders into place. Excellent teachers of physical training
say that the will alone should be used to force one’s self to stand
straight. This is true of a person in perfect health. But round
shoulders often result from weakness or sedentary pursuits, against
whose influence it is useless to struggle; and I would not debar any
half-invalid from the luxury of the support given by a strict pair of
braces. They relieve the heart and lungs by throwing the weight of
the chest on the back, where it belongs, instead of crowding it down
on the breast. To correct the ugly rise of the shoulders which always
accompanies curvature, and sometimes exists without it, weights must be
used. Nothing is more unfeminine than the straight line of shoulder,
which properly belongs to a cuirassier or an athlete. Some mothers make
their young folks walk the floor with a pail of water in each hand,
to give their shoulders a graceful droop. A substitute may be worn in
one’s room while at work, in the shape of an outside brace of triple
gray linen, having two extra straps buckling round the tip of each
shoulder, one long end reaching the belt, with a wedge-shaped lead or
iron weight hooked on it. This is heroic practice, but effectual; and
its pains are amply compensated by lines of figure which are the surest
exponents of high breeding.
The position of the feet is not to be neglected in the lesson of
standing. The toes should be widely turned out, to balance well; and
if the foot is inclined to turn in, this may be remedied by having the
boot heels made higher on the inside. This will throw the foot into
a position to develop the arched instep. A crooked leg is a matter
for surgical treatment; and in these days of curative ingenuity, with
steel braces it will be but the work of a few months to bring the most
awkward limb into shape. Those who have seen the wonders wrought with
deformed children who have crooked limbs and bodies will consider it
a simple matter to bring a partial disfiguration under control. As to
the size of the feet, sensible people will never be persuaded that any
degree of pressure which can be borne without suffering is injurious.
Nature knows how to protect herself. A clever old shoe-dealer gave
as his experience that people who always wear tight shoes never have
corns. It is the alternation of tight and loose shoes that gives rise
to these torments.
The great-toe joint ought not to project beyond the line of the foot.
I know a zealous young girl who regularly screwed her bare foot up in
a linen bandage before going to bed, to keep it in shape. For painful
swelling of the feet in warm weather, no remedy is as effectual as an
ice-cold foot-bath for five minutes in the evening or when they are
most troublesome. This, however, must never be taken without first
wetting the head plentifully with ice-water, and keeping a cold bandage
on it all the while. It is good to soak the feet for fifteen minutes
in warm water at least twice a week. This keeps them elastic, and in
delicate, pliant condition.
An elegant carriage is the patent of nature’s nobility, and appears of
itself when the body is held into proper attitudes, and made properly
elastic by exercise. The great cause of all stiffness is want of
exertion--a general rustiness of all the limbs. To the slender child of
the South the climate supplies a degree of relaxation and suppleness
which dispenses with the need of action. The women of South American
colonies seldom walk for exercise, yet their movements are full of
grace. The stimulus of thorough circulation, so potent and softening,
can only be gained in our colder latitude by exertion. A lazy woman may
be picturesque in a room or in a carriage, but never on foot. Americans
have one-sided ideas of grace in walking. A woman as straight as a
dart, who moves without any perceptible movement of the hips or limbs,
is considered an excellent walker. But this unvarying rectitude is far
from the poetry of motion. Watch the slight _balancement_ of a graceful
French woman, and you will see an ease, a spontaneity, and variety of
motion which set the former by comparison in the light of a bodkin out
for a “constitutional.” A fine walk is an affair of proper balance.
A clever friend, who has spent more time in the study of women’s ways
and manners in different countries than one can think profitable, has
some unique views on the subject of their walking. He says the haughty
women of Old Spain carry their weight mainly on the hips, which
gives an indescribable stiffness of demeanor. Americans do the same,
throwing the weight a little more on the thigh, without bending the
knee. French women carry the weight on the calf of the leg, and the
knee bends very much at each step, while the body is carried with the
least _balancement_ of the shoulders, and the head, so far from being
held like a cockade, or the head of tongs, is easy. _La tête dégagée,
les épaules tombante_ is the rule for a good style. Try the difference
of contracting the muscles in the calf of the leg in walking, with the
knee bent sensibly at each step. The body involuntarily throws itself
back, and a lightness of motion is the result, which is impossible with
the usual swing of the leg from the hips in the stiff walk of Saxon
women. The same authority says that the far-famed serpentine glide of
the creole, which travelers admire and vainly try to describe, comes
from a peculiar movement of the hips. The weight of the figure is
thrown on the loins, and half of the body moves alternately at each
step, not in a wriggle, as it is caricatured at the North, but with
a soft turn of the shoulders corresponding, and a smoothness which
betrays the sensuous temperament and luxurious physique. Such is the
walk of the women of Venezuela, Bogota, and La Plata. Such a gait,
however, would hardly be accepted in the Champs Elysées as suggestive
of high refinement. The women of Alabama and Georgia have traits enough
of this walk to make them among the most graceful in the world, as far
as carriage goes. The creoles of the Gulf have this sinuous glide,
betraying a flexibility of limb which we can scarcely imagine. To gain
this pliancy, twisting movements of gymnastics are especially suitable.
Gyrations of each limb, the head and body, produce, in a few weeks’
practice, an enviable degree of elasticity, which gives the carriage
something more than the up and down, forward and back, straight lines
of motion with which ladies ordinarily favor us. A smooth, long step,
the weight of the body on the loins, where nature intended it should
be, and the legs propelled from thence, without stiffness at the knee
or obtrusive motion of the hips, is, probably, the ideal of walking;
such as one finds both in a highly trained woman and in the untaught
perfection of a South Sea Islander.
I have spoken at length on the topic of walking, because its importance
as an art of grace can not be overrated, and because it has a still
deeper bearing on women’s health. The training which secures an
elegant carriage is precisely that which counteracts the tendency
to a dozen fatal relaxations at different points of the frame, and
prevents their appearance. No one ought to say that walking brings
on the disorders which blanch and wither feminine life. The cause is
the fatal, inherited weakness of constitution, shown by either undue
redness or pallor, by indolence or excitability, which is a slow decay
from its first breath, and poisons the hopes and the loveliness of so
many women. These doomed beings must work out their own salvation,
and make themselves anew in the effort. The weaknesses would develop
whether they walked or not. The care should be to adjust exercise and
nourishment, stimulus and rest, in due proportion. But the weak woman
must have separate counsel, for she by no means comes under the head of
these unpremeditated consultations.