Madame Celnart’s Works of the Toilet.--Literature of Beauty.--Cares
of the Toilet.--Arts of Coiffure and Lacing.--How to Hold a
Needle Gracefully.--Iris Powder for Tresses.--Arts of Italian
Women.--Depilatory used in Harems.--Spirit of Pyrêtre.--Herbs used
by Greek Women.--Mexican Pomade.--Dusky Perfumed Marbles.--Lost
Perfumes.--Sultanas’ Lotion.--Brilliant Paste for Neck and
Arms.--Baking Enamel.
If ever a woman deserved a seat in the French Academy for the value of
her literary labors to her kind, it was Madame Celnart.
The works of this lively author on manners, dress, cosmetics, and
kindred topics no less interesting to her sex, are found in eight
small octavos in their native French. The lady was an industrious
and brilliant writer on themes of the toilet, the household, and
deportment, on which Mrs. Farrar, author of _The Young Lady’s
Friend_, of our mothers’ time, and Mrs. Beeton, the editor of _The
Englishwoman’s Magazine_, in our day, have succeeded her with much
adornment but hardly equal scope. Madame Celnart talks--one can hardly
imagine her holding a pen--like a Parisian, with empressement, with
drollery, precision, and inimitable sprightliness. Her lectures sound
like those of a gentle old beauty, secure in the charm of her finished
manner against the loss of her earlier fascinations, telling the
secrets of her age to a younger generation, with half a smile at their
readiness to seize these arts, and seriously pointing out the most
graceful or the most modest way of doing things, with the concern of
one who is conscious that grace and prudence do not come to all her sex
by nature. Imagine the arch gentleness with which she opens her work on
the toilet in such easy, sparkling guise as this:
“_Je viens de feuilleter les arts de plaire, les livres de beauté, et
autres évangiles des courtisane_,” which may be freely translated,
“I come to speak of the arts of pleasing, the literature of beauty,
and other evangels of coquetry.” She has a well-bred curl of disdain
for “_une allure bourgeoise mesquine_;” but with the reverence of
a true Frenchwoman, whose creed is her mirror, she pronounces her
work “_consacré à la toilette, et la conversation de la beauté_.”
These duties she divides with serious precision into the “_soins
de la toilette_,” which include cosmetic arts, and “_l’art de se
coiffer, lacer, et chausser_.” It was indeed an art, in the time of
hundred-boned corsets without clasps, to lace one’s self, and in the
days of classic sandals to put on one’s shoes. She is as exact in all
her details as a school-mistress, though one fancies a covert smile
on her wise face as she rallies the young demoiselles who dreaded the
bath--because it was so cold? Oh no; but because their modesty could
not endure the baring of their person even to themselves. Such, she
gravely advises, may save their “_pudeur_” by bathing in a peignoir.
One inevitably recalls Lola Montez’s dedication of her famous _Book
of Beauty_, “To all men and women who are not afraid of themselves,”
on encountering these French demoiselles with their conventual
susceptibility.
The graceful preceptress goes on with directions for sitting, for
holding one’s needle, for dancing, and holding one’s petticoats out
of the mud. Nobody will allow that these hints are superfluous who
notices the varied awkwardness which women fall into who are habitually
thoughtless on these points. Some of these nice customs may have
been carried to our shores, possibly with Rochambeau’s French ladies
at Newport or Salem. I remember hearing one of the fine Newburyport
ladies, who answer to the description of gentlewomen still, maintain
earnestly that it was most graceful to “sew with a long point”--that
is, to push the needle nearly its whole length through at each stitch,
instead of pulling it out, so to speak, by the nose. And she was right,
as you can verify by the next sewing you take up.
In the time of Madame Celnart, fine ladies used to powder their hair
with the dust of Florentine iris, which gave their love-breathing
tresses the violet odor of spring. A pleasant idea; but their iris, our
orris-root, must have been a trifle fresher than comes to this country.
It makes us sure that the beauties of Titian’s and Guido’s times were
real women, to know that they steeped their tresses in bleaching
liquids and dyes, and spread their locks in the sun for hours to gain
the coveted golden tinge; and the hair of the Bella Donna herself might
have caught part of its enchantment from the sprinkling of violet
powder that lent its waves a soul. Those immortal beauties would have
canonized Lubin had he been alive with his pomades and perfumes in
their time. Celnart was a courageous advocate of cosmetics, or else
she was wise enough to put the worst first, for one of her earliest
recipes is this depilatory, which is not at all quoted by way of
recommendation. It is the Oriental Rusma, a depilatory used in harems:
Two ounces of quicklime, half an ounce of orpiment and red arsenic;
boil in one pint of alkaline lye, and try with a feather to see when
it is strong enough. Touch the parts to be rid of hair, and wash with
cold water. When we say that orpiment and realgar are deadly poisons,
and add Madame Celnart’s remark that the mixture is of “_une grande
causticité_,” often attacking the tissue of the skin, our readers will
quite agree with her that it is only to be used with “_la plus grande
circonspection_,” or, still better, not at all. The _Crème Parisienne
depilatoire_ is harmless, and is given for what it is worth: One eighth
of an ounce of rye starch, and the same of sulphate of baryta (or
heavy-spar), the juice of purslane, acacia, and milk-thistle, mixed
with oil.
The high-sounding Paste of Venus, devised by a Parisian cosmetic
artist, who shared the mythologic fancy which prevailed years ago, was
spread over the skin to soften and perfume it. Esther herself might
have used it, for its conjugation of spices would delight an Oriental.
It was made of fat, butter, honey, and aromatics--the more the better;
but as none of our belles wish to try the anointing bodily, I spare
them the list, and give instead the _Esprit de pyrêtre_. The pyrethrum,
or Spanish pellitory, is an herb highly valued by cosmetic artists, and
appears in several recipes of the French:
Powdered cinnamon, one drachm; coriander, nineteen scruples; vanilla,
the same; clove, eighteen grains; cochineal, mace, and saffron, the
same; simple spirit of pyrethrum, one litre (about seven eighths of
a quart). Let these ingredients digest for fifteen days, and add
orange-flower water, half an ounce; oil of anise, eighteen drops;
citron, ditto; oils of lavender and thyme, each nine drops; ambergris,
three grains. Mix the ambergris with the pyrêtre, and put the two
liquids together. Filter after two days. Use as a toilet water.
No wonder French cosmetics are so highly valued, when their composition
embraces such a variety of pleasing ingredients. Thyme, anise, and
saffron seem homely herbs for a woman’s use, but they assisted at
every toilet among the Greek women of old; and Rhodora wove the crocus
(meadow-saffron) with the rose, and fennel among her jasmines, without
a thought such as these things give us of sick-teas and home-made dyes.
Why should herbs of such excellent renown lose the poetry that belongs
to them? Mingled in variety with ambergris and orange flowers, they
give body to a perfume rich enough to have satisfied Cleopatra.
If this recipe is complicated, what will be said to the next,
compounded by South American women, and fashionable in Paris not so
very long after the time of Josephine, who may have patronized, or,
indeed, introduced this souvenir of creole coquetry. Madame Celnart
says of it, “Only the Tartuffes of coquetry could blame the Mexican
pomade,” whose proportions indicate that the formula came straight from
the perfumer’s hands, and is therefore correct. Any one who wishes to
try it can reduce the measure to suit herself:
Extract of cocoa, sixty-four ounces; oil of noisette, thirty-two
ounces; oil of ben, thirty-two ounces; oil of vanilla, two ounces;
white balsam of Peru, one drachm; benzoin flowers, half a drachm;
civet, ditto; neroli, one drachm; essence of rose, one drachm; oil
of clove flowers, one ounce; citron and bergamot waters, each half a
pint. Steep the vanilla in the cocoa butter eight days in a hot place;
dissolve the balsam in half a glass of alcohol, with the benzoin and
civet, and add the spirit of clove. Mix the essence of rose and neroli
in the oils of ben and noisette, and beat the whole forcibly together
in a large marble or china bowl.
Creole women spread this paste on their smooth skins, which the oil
of cocoa softens and moistens, while the delightful changing odor
is absorbed, till their forms are like living, dusky, but perfumed
marbles. These recipes are given not so much for imitation, or
to contribute to the lore of perfumers this side the water, as
curiosities of national arts and feminine vanity. Where in our country
would we find the ingredients of the celebrated _Eau de Stahl_, known
to the Parisian chemists forty years ago? Its compound was as follows:
Alcohol, nine litres; rose-water, three litres; the root of Spanish
pellitory, five ounces; gallingale root, three ounces; tormentil, three
ounces; balsam of Peru, three ounces; cinnamon, five drachms; rue, one
ounce; ratania, eight ounces. Powder the whole, and put in alcohol;
shake well, and leave to macerate six days. Pour off, and let it stand
twenty-four hours to clear, after which add essential oil of mint, one
and a half drachms; powdered cochineal, four drachms. Leave to infuse
anew three days; filter through filtering-paper, and decant. Use for a
tooth-wash, for washing the face, or for baths.
Peruvian powder was a standard dentifrice of the same date. It is made
of white sugar, half a drachm; cream of tartar, one drachm; magnesia,
ditto; cinnamon, six grains; mace, two grains; sulphate of quinine,
three grains; carmine, five grains. Powder and mix carefully, adding
four drops of the oils of rose and mint.
The following cosmetic, called the _Serkis du Sérail_, is said to be
a favorite lotion used by the Sultanas, for whom it is imported from
Achaia--though this sounds more like one of those pleasant fictions
which perfumers delight to invent concerning their oils and pomades
than any thing we are obliged to believe. This may be said in favor of
the assertion--it is such a mixture of starch and oils as no one but an
odalisque could endure to use. It is made of sweet-almond paste, ten
livres; rye and potato starch, each six livres; oil of jasmine, eight
ounces; the same of oil of orange flowers and of roses; black balsam of
Peru, six ounces; essence of rose and of cinnamon, each sixty grains.
Mix the powders and essences separately in earthen vessels, then add
the powder to the liquid little by little, bruise well together, and
strain through muslin.
An elegant preparation for whitening the face and neck is made of
terebinth of Mecca, three grains; oil of sweet almonds, four ounces;
spermaceti, two drachms; flour of zinc, one drachm; white wax, two
drachms; rose-water, six drachms. Mix in a water-bath, and melt
together. The harmless mineral white is fixed in the pomade, or what
we would call cold cream, and is applied with the greatest ease and
effect. It must be to some preparation of this subtle sort that the
lustrous whiteness of certain much-admired fashionable complexions is
due. It is a cheap enamel, without the supposed necessity of _baking_,
which, by the way, is such a blunder that I wonder people of sense
persist in speaking of it as if it could be a fact.