400 Years Ago

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 122, 19 November 1932, Page 9

400 Years Ago

Every now and then the question of whether or not our grandmothers painted, creamed, or otherwise adorned their faces is brought up (writes a correspondent). The Victorians certainly boast that nothing more than good cold water and ordinary yellow soap was responsible for their damask cheeks. Tho question of cosmetics must, however, have been a burning ono long before our grandmother's time, for even so sober and highbrow a person as the great Erasmus threw himself into the controversy some' 400 years ago. Erasmus was long before his time in seeing the women's point of view; he also took the side of the humbler classes, and hated snobbery. In one of his satires, pretending to mock at the presumption of the "lower orders," he went on in this strain: "Nor can you find a young woman, let her birth be never so humble, who would hesitate to avail herself of the same cosmetics as the aristocracy use, whereas people of limited means ought to content themselves with a little ale-yeast, or the juice of a tree;after it has been barked, or any like cosmetic.of small cost; expensive dyes-and'ointments should be the indulgence." of;.the" gentry alone." Those seem to. have been the days, of cosmetics without- the chemist.