THE CORSET.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 1880, 12 January 1875, Page 2

THE CORSET.

There are few opinions or practices so thoroughly exploded as to be incapable of revival. We had supposed that it was generally agreed that tight-lacing is injurious to the health of girls ; but it now appears that there are two sides to this, as well as to every other question. Indeed, we have before us a publication, "Art the Handmaid of Nature," which assumes that a slender waist is beautiful, and that the meaus usually taken to produce it are healthful; and further that there is some connexion, which we cannot trace, between tight-lacing and an upright and graceful carriage.

It is manifest from this and other recent publications that there is a disposition to return in the treatment of girls to a strictness, or we might even say severity, which would be thought unsuitable to boys. The notion seems to pervade many minds that a girl of 12 or 14 years old ought to be "taken up" like a filly and 'broken." The treatment of young horses has been of late years ameliorated, and is not now intentionally cruel, but no severity that is thought necessary is spared. We might almost say that both the process and the object, with some trainers of girls, appear to be borrowed from the manege. A girl who has been properly brought up will have begun to be tightly laced soon after she was born; but if a girl's education has been neglected, she may be " effectually improved" by what aro called " safe means." The author of the book before us contrasts the " corsets " which it describes with the "rude, severe, but potent appliances" for correcting the figure in bygone days. We doubt whether the author would be satisfied if we called the new system more gentle than the old, and perhaps we had better confine ourselves to stating that under the new system a girl is put into the "corset," and made to sleep or at least to go to bed in it; and readers can then apply to this system any epithet they may think suitable. But although the instruments of what we shall venture to call torture are now different from those used a century ago, the conception of training for girls in which they originated has been always the same, and it differs wholly from that which now prevails for boya. The saying "II fant souffrir pour etre belle" appears to be gravely adopted as a maxim by the professors, as well as by some of the victims of the " corset" system. Three enthusiasts, aged respectively 16,18, and 20, describe themselves as having received " the benefits of an English education,'' from which, unfortunately, the "corset" was omitted. " The result has been that, a/though we have been even up to a comparatively recent date kept in a state of the most absolute subjection, so far as school discipline is concerned, our figures have become so flat, inelegant, and clumsy," <fee. The letter from which these words are quoted is either genuine or a well-considered fiction, and we may take it as the sort of description which three grown-up girl 3 would give of the treatment they had undergone at a school in an English provincial town. The ladies in whose charge they were placed by their absent father were " determined opponents of the corset," but in other respects they seem to have administered a sufficiently severe discipline. This book is published by the publishers of the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, from, which large parts of ifc are reprinted. It is a repetition of an old contrivance for advertising which we had supposed to be worn out. It expatiates learnedly and enthusiastically. on the advantages of tight-lacing, and proceeds to recommend a " corset " of particular manufacture. It gives an eloquent discourse on the grace and beauty of highheeled boots, " coupled with the name," as the toast-masters say, of a particular bootmaker at the West-end. The book is a palpable puff, and if it were that only we should not notice it, because notice of any kind helps a system which ought to be repressed. But we see no reason to doubt that the book represents the views of a considerable number of women as to the education of their own sex. I* is difficult to trust female enthusiasm for accutate description, and therefore we will not assume that all "fashionable boarding-schools " practise the atrocities represented in this book. If we accepted the picture fully, we should propose that Mr Kewdegate should take up the matter, and urge the inspection of boarding-sch.o6ls as well as convents ; and we should lament that Parliament has come to an end before a question could be put to the Home Secretary on the subject of tight-lacing. If a mass of "well-authenticated information",, exists regarding the "far more severe and regidly-strict discipline " insisted on in some ladies' boarding-schools, it might deserve more publicity than this book can give to it. A part of this information is supplied by a young lady signing herself "Nora," who*states that she was placed at the age of 15 at a fashionable school in London, and that there it was the custom for the waists of the pupils to be reduced one inch per month until they were what the lady principal considered small enough. When I left school at 17 my waist measured only 13 inches, it havirig been formerly 23 inches in circumference. Every morning one of the maids used to come to assist us to dress, and a governess superintended to see that our corsets were, drawn as tightly as possible. After the first few minutes every morning I felt no pain, and the only ill effects apparently occasional headaches and loss of appetite.

There is, it seems, a treatise which has net yet come under our notice, called The Corset and the Crinoline, and it appears that a lady determined to try with her own daughter the gystem recommended in "that excellent Volume," and accordingly. desired her not to unlace her "corset"- on going to ted. The daughter had had her principles undermined by reading some " nonsensical tirades"

against tight-lacing in the papers, and had taken up the idea that being made to wear a properly laced "corset" was equivalent to death by torture, However, the mother insisted, the daughter wore the "corset" one night under protest but took it off next night on the sly; then the mother fastened the staylace in a knot., and then the daughter cut the staylace. Ihe mother punished her somewhat severely for her disobedience, but she declared that she would brave any .punishment rather than submit to the discipline of the " corset." She is now 14, has a very strong constitution, and is m perfect health. She does not complain that tight lacing makes her feel ill, but she objects that, the "corset" is uncomfortable, and prevents her from romping as she used to do. The perplexed mother appeals to some other mother or the principal of some school to inform her what method has been adopted in similar caset, as "she cannot allow her daughter to gain the mastery." She asks for adrice how to impair her daughter's constitution, ruin her health, and break her spirit, and n » doubt she would get it, because we find another correspondent stating that " Mamma procured a steel belt fitted with lock and key, to be worn at night outside the corset" by her daughters. These things were done at home. At the school already mentioned, in one case, where the girl was stout and largely built, two strong maids were obliged to use their utmost force to make her waiat the s'ze ordered by the lady principal— namely, 17in.--and though she fainted twice while the stays were being made to meet, she wore them without seeming injury to her health, and before she left school she had a waist measuring only 14in., yet she never suffered a day's illness.

The lady principal who " ordered " the waists of her pupils to be reduced to a certain me might properly have married the so-called "tyrant" who cut off his prisoners' feet to make them fit the beds he had provided for them, and her husband might have advantageously superintended the " figure training " of her pupils, and have assisted nature by "art, which might be called by hasty observers cruelty. One lady principal has been particularly fortunate in her pupils. They not only submit to tight-lacing, but positively delight in it; and, indeed, she has been obliged to resort to "severe punishment" to. check the practice of tightening the "corset" voluntarily at night beyond the regulated stringency. " It might be an interesting question whether "deportment" was studied in ancient times, and by what methods. Veraincessupatuitdea: but how was the goddess taugUt to walk ? Did Helen—

Daughter of the gods, divinely tall, And most divinely fairwear in childhood a "back-board" like that which is depicted in these pages P Did the silver-footed Thetis ever stand in | the stocks " in the first position in dancing—namely, with the heels together and the toes turned outwards P" In tome countries a girl will walk from fountain to cottage with a heavy water pitcher on her head erect, steady, yet light of tread,, without spilling a drop, and without raiting i hand to. support her burden. Nature, iwd riot art, has taught that girl a " deportment" which no dancing or drillmaster or contriver of boards and straps could equal. Welearafrora these interesting pages that the " Back-boards," "stocks," " faceboards," and ,other instruments of our grandmothers* figure-training are again coming into vbgue,and although the author seems to consider some of these contrivances barbarous, we must say that they would be infinitely preferable to the vaunted " carset," because they were at worst only irksome, while that is positively mischievous. The vice of what may be called the "back-board" system was" that it kept the pupil still, whereas the same or a better effect might be produced by regulated motion. A machine much favoured at girls' schools formerly was what is called a " reclining board," on which, the pupil was required to lie motionless for an hour or more. No doubt this "discipline" would be favoured by the stern bigots of the '■' corset," because it was disagreeable, But if the board were made six timeg the usual length, and furnished with pegs at the sides, so that the pupil might pull herself up, and let herself ; down by them, it would become an amuse* * ment instead of beiog a " discipline" or a punishment. The initiated reader will perceive that we are describing an ordinary and favourite feature of a gymnasium, and we shall be borne out in the remark that all the valuable results of the " back-board" system may be. attained easily and pleasantly, by the use, under proper supervision, of a gymnasium.—* Saturday Eeview.