MISS LEFFLER-ARNIM’S statement, in a lecture delivered recently at St.
Saviour’s Hospital, that “she had heard of instances where ladies were so
determined not to exceed the fashionable measurement that they had
actually held on to a cross-bar while their maids fastened the
fifteen-inch corset,” has excited a good deal of incredulity, but there
is nothing really improbable in it. From the sixteenth century to our
own day there is hardly any form of torture that has not been inflicted
on girls, and endured by women, in obedience to the dictates of an
unreasonable and monstrous Fashion. “In order to obtain a real Spanish
figure,” says Montaigne, “what a Gehenna of suffering will not women
endure, drawn in and compressed by great _coches_ entering the flesh;
nay, sometimes they even die thereof!” “A few days after my arrival at
school,” Mrs. Somerville tells us in her memoirs, “although perfectly
straight and well made, I was enclosed in stiff stays, with a steel busk
in front; while above my frock, bands drew my shoulders back till the
shoulder-blades met. Then a steel rod with a semi-circle, which went
under my chin, was clasped to the steel busk in my stays. In this
constrained state I and most of the younger girls had to prepare our
lessons”; and in the life of Miss Edgeworth we read that, being sent to a
certain fashionable establishment, “she underwent all the usual tortures
of back-boards, iron collars and dumbs, and also (because she was a very
tiny person) the unusual one of being hung by the neck to draw out the
muscles and increase the growth,” a signal failure in her case. Indeed,
instances of absolute mutilation and misery are so common in the past
that it is unnecessary to multiply them; but it is really sad to think
that in our own day a civilized woman can hang on to a cross-bar while
her maid laces her waist into a fifteen-inch circle. To begin with, the
waist is not a circle at all, but an oval; nor can there be any greater
error than to imagine that an unnaturally small waist gives an air of
grace, or even of slightness, to the whole figure. Its effect, as a
rule, is simply to exaggerate the width of the shoulders and the hips;
and those whose figures possess that stateliness which is called
stoutness by the vulgar, convert what is a quality into a defect by
yielding to the silly edicts of Fashion on the subject of tight-lacing.
The fashionable English waist, also, is not merely far too small, and
consequently quite out of proportion to the rest of the figure, but it is
worn far too low down. I use the expression “worn” advisedly, for a
waist nowadays seems to be regarded as an article of apparel to be put on
when and where one likes. A long waist always implies shortness of the
lower limbs, and, from the artistic point of view, has the effect of
diminishing the height; and I am glad to see that many of the most
charming women in Paris are returning to the idea of the Directoire style
of dress. This style is not by any means perfect, but at least it has
the merit of indicating the proper position of the waist. I feel quite
sure that all English women of culture and position will set their faces
against such stupid and dangerous practices as are related by Miss
Leffler-Arnim. Fashion’s motto is: _Il faut souffrir pour être belle_;
but the motto of art and of common-sense is: _Il faut être bête pour
souffrir_.
Talking of Fashion, a critic in the _Pall Mall Gazelle_ expresses his
surprise that I should have allowed an illustration of a hat, covered
with “the bodies of dead birds,” to appear in the first number of the
_Woman’s World_; and as I have received many letters on the subject, it
is only right that I should state my exact position in the matter.
Fashion is such an essential part of the _mundus muliebris_ of our day,
that it seems to me absolutely necessary that its growth, development,
and phases should be duly chronicled; and the historical and practical
value of such a record depends entirely upon its perfect fidelity to
fact. Besides, it is quite easy for the children of light to adapt
almost any fashionable form of dress to the requirements of utility and
the demands of good taste. The Sarah Bernhardt tea-gown, for instance,
figured in the present issue, has many good points about it, and the
gigantic dress-improver does not appear to me to be really essential to
the mode; and though the Postillion costume of the fancy dress ball is
absolutely detestable in its silliness and vulgarity, the so-called Late
Georgian costume in the same plate is rather pleasing. I must, however,
protest against the idea that to chronicle the development of Fashion
implies any approval of the particular forms that Fashion may adopt.