The Bonniest Kate in Christendom.--A Word to Mothers and
Aunts.--Different Vanities.--The Sorrows of Ugly Women.--Recipes of
an Ancient Beauty.--Sand Wash.--Color for the Nails.--Embrocation
for the Hands.--Soap to Bleach the Arms.--Freckle Lotions.--Artistic
Enthusiasm at the Toilet.
Was the last chapter too much of a sermon on Christiana’s breakfast?
You think so, Kate, who are longing to learn some art that may make
you the bonniest Kate in Christendom. You say your hands are rough and
unsightly, your hair grows where you do not want it, and is none too
thick where it ought to be. Your eyebrows are bushy--a most unfeminine
trait, that makes you look fierce as a lamb with mustaches. You don’t
seem lovely to yourself, and this consciousness makes you stiff and shy
in your manner. Somebody is to blame for this state of things. Either
your mother, or your aunt, or the lady principal of the school where
you studied, ought to have taken you in hand before you were fourteen,
and showed you the remedies for these defects that were to affect your
spirits and comfort in after-life. A girl should be taught to take care
of her skin and hair just as she is to hold her dress out of the dust,
and not to crumple her sash when she sits down. One thing will not
make her vain more than another. There are many vanities to be found
in women’s character. One is vain of knowing three languages, one of
her Sunday-school devotion, another of her pattern temper, and one of
her pretty face. Of all these errors, the last is most endurable. Every
attraction filched from a girl by neglect or design is so much stolen
from her dowry that never can be replaced.
Victor Hugo says that he who would know suffering should learn the
sorrows of women. Let him say of ugly women, and he will touch the
depth of bitterness. What tears the plain ones shed on silent pillows,
shrinking even from the pale, beautiful moonshine that contrasts so
fatally with their homeliness. They would give years of life to win
one of beauty. This regret is natural, irresistible, and not to be
forbidden. Better let the grief have its way till the busy period of
life takes a woman’s thoughts off herself, and she forgets to care
whether she is beautiful or not. Dam up the sluices of any sorrow, and
it deepens and grows wider. Is this treating a peculiarly feminine
regret over-tenderly? This is written in remembrance of a girl who
thought herself so homely that she absolutely prayed that she might
die and go to be perfect in heaven. More than one girl makes such a
wish this night before small mirrors in cottage or mansion chambers,
with no eye but her own to scan her hopeless features. Why doesn’t some
one open a school of fine arts, literally _des beaux-arts_, and make a
greater success than Worth, by improving wearers instead of costumes?
Till that time comes, let us make the best of present resources, and
consider these recipes, unearthed from an ancient book-shelf belonging
to a maiden lady who was once, if tradition may be credited, a beauty
of no mean order. There is one thing to console us, Kate: you and
I will never have to cry for our lost beauty. Your hands are to be
pitied, for soft, sensitive fingers are what a woman can least afford
to lose. They are needed to nurse sick folks, and do quick sewing, and
handle children with. So we are glad to learn something of this kind.
To soften the hands, fill a wash-basin half full of fine white sand and
soap-suds as hot as can be borne. Wash the hands in this five minutes
at a time, brushing and rubbing them in the sand. The best is flint
sand, or the white powdered quartz sold for filters. It may be used
repeatedly by pouring the water away after each washing, and adding
fresh to keep it from blowing about. Rinse in warm lather of fine soap,
and after drying rub them in dry bran or corn meal. Dust them, and
finish with rubbing cold cream well into the skin. This effectually
removes the roughness caused by house-work, and should be used every
day, first removing ink or vegetable stains with acid.
Always rub the spot with cold cream or oil after using acid on the
fingers. The cream supplies the place of the natural oil of the skin,
which the acid removes with the stain.
To give a fine color to the nails, the hands and fingers must be well
lathered and washed with scented soap; then the nails must be rubbed
with equal parts of cinnabar and emery, followed by oil of bitter
almonds. To take white specks from the nails, melt equal parts of pitch
and turpentine in a small cup; add to it vinegar and powdered sulphur.
Rub this on the nails, and the specks will soon disappear. Pitch and
myrrh melted together may be used with the same results.
An embrocation for whitening and softening the hands and arms, which
dates far back, possibly to King James’s times, is made from myrrh,
one ounce; honey, four ounces; yellow wax, two ounces; rose-water, six
ounces. Mix the whole in one well-blended mass for use, melting the
wax, rose-water, and honey together in a dish over boiling water, and
adding the myrrh while hot. Rub this thickly over the skin before going
to bed. It is good for chapped surfaces, and would make an excellent
mask for the face.
To improve the skin of the hands and arms, the following old English
recipe is given, the principle of which is now revived in different
cosmetic combinations. Take two ounces of fine hard soap--old Windsor
or almond soap--and dissolve it in two ounces of lemon juice. Add one
ounce of the oil of bitter almonds, and as much oil of tartar. Mix
the whole, and stir well till it is like soap, and use it to wash the
hands. This contains the most powerful agents which can safely be
applied to the skin, and it should not be used on scratches or chapped
hands. For the latter a delicate ointment is made from three ounces of
oil of sweet almonds, an ounce of spermaceti, and half an ounce of
rice flour. Melt these over a slow fire, keep stirring till cold, and
add a few drops of rose-oil. This makes a good color for the lips by
mixing a little alkanet powder with it, and may be used to tinge the
finger-tips. It is at least harmless.
Oil of almonds, spermaceti, white wax, and white sugar-candy, in equal
parts, melted together, form a good white salve for the lips and cheeks
in cold weather. A fine cold cream, much pleasanter to use than the
mixtures of lard and tallow commonly sold under that name, is thus made:
Melt together two ounces of oil of almonds and one drachm each of
white wax and spermaceti; while warm add two ounces of rose-water, and
orange-flower water half an ounce. Nothing better than this will be
found in the range of toilet salves.
A wash “for removing tan, freckles, blotches, and pimples,” as the
high-sounding preface assures us, is made from two gallons of strong
soap-suds, to which are added one pint of alcohol and a quarter of a
pound of rosemary. Apply with a linen rag. This is better when kept in
a close jar overnight.
Freckle lotion, for the cure of freckles, tan, or sunburned face and
hands--something which I would prefer to the rosemary wash before
given, is thus made: Take half a pound of clear ox gall, half a drachm
each of camphor and burned alum, one drachm of borax, two ounces of
rock-salt, and the same of rock-candy. This should be mixed and shaken
well several times a day for three weeks, until the gall becomes
transparent; then strain it very carefully through filtering-paper,
which may be had of the druggists. Apply to the face during the day,
and wash it off at night.
Now, Kate, do you see your way clear to the use and benefit of these
mixtures? All these articles are to be found at any large druggist’s,
or, if not, he will tell you where to find them. The rosemary and honey
may be found in that still fragrant store-room of your aunt’s, in the
country, unless she has taken to writing very poor serial articles,
and let the herb garden and the bees run out. To save trouble, take the
recipes and have them made up at once by the druggist, who understands
such things; but it is pleasant to dabble in washes and lotions one’s
self, like the Vicar of Wakefield’s young ladies. Then have you
patience to persevere in their use? For making one’s self beautiful
is a work of time and perseverance as much as being an artist, or a
student, or a Christian. I wish I were with you, and could keep you up
to your preparations, brush your eyebrows, trim your eyelashes, and
do the dozen different offices of sympathy and womanly kindness. I
should feel that I was the artist putting the touches on something more
valuable than any statue ever moulded. Can you feel so yourself? For if
you can once get hold of that artistic impulse, you have the secret of
all these toilet interferences.