Lacing

“ Tight lacing is also very unbecoming to those who usually adopt it—women of thirty-eight or forty who are growing a little stout. In thus trussing themselves up they simply get an unbecoming redness of the face, and are not the handsome, comfortable-looking creatures which Heaven intended they should be. Two or three beautiful women well known in society killed themselves last year by tight lacing. ”

“ Nor do I think a girl whose constitution is sound would suffer any injury to her health from moderate lacing, but I must beg that you will allow me to declare that when stays are not worn till fourteen years of age, very tight lacing causes absolute torture for the first few months, and it was principally to deter ladies from subjecting their daughters to this pain in similar cases that mamma wrote to you. ”

“ But vigour of lungs and stomach both fill out and also redden the cheeks, and hence promote beauty. But tight-lacing has been shown to destroy both. One reason why marriage impairs the beauty, is because it impairs the health. But not to dwell here. I take the broad ground—a ground supported by both observation and science—that no woman having an artificial waist can be handsome. Tight-lacing would make Venus herself homely—will make any woman homely, tame and uninteresting, by making her thin, spare, scrawny, and haggard in appearance. ”

“ If it be improper for a man to allude to this effect of lacing, what is it for a woman to cause and experience it? Let me tell you, Miss Fastidious, that the less you say about this, the better; because I have truth on my side, and because it is high time that men who wish virtuous wives, knew it, so that they may avoid those who have inflamed and exhausted this element of their nature. It is also high time that virtuous woman should blush for very shame to be seen laced tight, just as she should blush to be caught indulging impure desires. ”

“ The most efficient method of putting an end to the practice of tight lacing will be, not merely to point out its unhealthiness, and even dangerous consequences, because these, though imminent, are uncertain,—every lady who resorts to the practice hoping that she, individually, may escape the penalty,—but to prove that the practice, so far from adding to the beauty of the figure, actually deteriorates it. ”

“ Lacing, Tight.—This produces such serious deformity, and in many ways so interferes with the health of women, that we are constrained to write upon the subject. We find in cases which come before us that lacing, both of the feet and the waist, as practised by our women, has caused disease, and prevents our curing it. ”

“ We allude to the pernicious practice of tight lacing, which, as appears from contemporary paintings, was as general on the continent as in England.
The savage American Indian changes the shape of the soft and elastic bones of the skull of his infant by compressing it between two boards; the intelligent but prejudiced Chinese suffers the head to grow as nature formed it, but confines the foot of the female to the size of an infant's; while the highly-intellectual and well-informed European lady limits the growth of her waist by the pressure of the stays. ”

“ The craze for tight lacing once more made itself felt at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and not many years before the end one heard from time to time of the cruelty that was practised at high-class schools for young ladies, where the girls were made to sleep in specially tight and rigid corsets. ”

“ The practice of tight lacing is another fruitful cause of destruction of health and broken-down constitutions. Young girls should not lace at all—an easy smooth jacket to make the dress fit smoothly is all they should wear. ”

“ Most men, it is true, harangue against the former; but if masculine sentiment were really set against tight-lacing and its results, do you think girls would long make their dressing-maids sit up waiting their return from balls, lest an unpractised hand should not unloose the lacings by those short and easy stages which are necessary to prevent the shock of nature’s too sudden rebound? ”

“ The evil effects of tight-lacing, or of lacing at all, and of binding the clothing around the hips, instead of suspending it from the shoulders, can never be fully realized without a thorough education in anatomy and physiology. ”

“ Haweis’s Art of Beauty, or in Behnke and Brown’s Voice, Song, and Speech; or look without horror at the skeletons showing the excessive compression of the lower ribs brought about by fashionable lacing, and the injurious displacement, in consequence, of some of the most important vital organs. Nor can any young man who does not desire to marry a foredoomed invalid, and raise sickly children, fail to be cured for ever of his love for any wasp-waisted girl if he will take the trouble to read the account of the terrible female maladies resulting from lacing, given in Dr. ”

“ I wish to make woman ashamed to lace tight, and this will do it. No woman who reads this will dare be seen laced tight, because she knows it to be true, both from experience and from physiology. My object in this allusion is, to break up this most pernicious fashion ”

“ One appeal more, and, if possible, still more cogent. It is directed to ­the very organ that makes our woman lace—to their vanity. Properly are you called fair. You are called fair, beautiful, lovely, handsome, pretty, graceful, charming, &c. ”

“ A glance at our illustration will show that the waist is put in the natural position—that is, across the abdomen, below the floating ribs, and just over the hips; by doing this we avoid all injurious effects, which are laid—and that truly—at the door of the ordinary corset, and by placing the waist in its natural position give not only a more beautiful but a more slender appearance. ”

“ And when you are among yourselves, how naturally, after the first compliments, do you entertain yourselves with the price and choice of lace, apply your hands to each other's lappets and ruffles, as if the whole business of your life and the public concern depended on the cut of your petticoats. ”

“ She was engaged in very nimbly and dexterously making lace. A lace-pillow lay upon her breast; and the quick movements and changes of her hands upon it, as she worked, had given them the action he had misinterpreted.
“That is curious,” she answered with a bright smile. “For I often fancy, myself, that I play tunes while I am at work.” ”

“ In the wise old days when men outshone their consorts, we find their hearts set discerningly on one supreme extravagance. Lace, the most artistic fabric that taste and ingenuity have devised, "the fine web which feeds the pride of the world," was for centuries the delight of every well-dressed gentleman. ”

“ I will suppose that distinction so far done away with, that, a pattern once invented, you can spin lace as fast as you now do thread. Everybody then might wear, not only lace collars, but lace gowns. Do you think they would be more comfortable in them than they are now in plain stuff—or that, when everybody could wear them, anybody would be proud of wearing them? A spider may perhaps be rationally proud of his own cobweb, even though all the fields in the morning are covered with the like, for he made it himself—but suppose a machine spun it for him? ”

“ For the lassie made me marvel with the aptness of her speech, and ashamed with her plain saying of things that I had hardly named within myself.
'Ah,' she said gently and wisely, 'the thoughts of a lass when a lad comes courting her, are more than she tells with her mouth. For many a kiss is honey-sweet on the lips, but bitter as gall in the heart. ”

“ And her grand-daughter Julie—just seven years old, Is learning already the bobbins to hold. Without drawings to follow, or patterns to trace, How can these poor cottagers fashion their lace? From the plant and the flower and unfolding fern And the frost on the pane their patterns they learn,— From gossamer web by the spider wove,— From natural taste and natural love For every form of beauty and grace, They've learned to fashion their wonderful lace. ”

“ A real lace collar lay softly over her enormous, billowing shoulders; real lace ruffles lay over her great, shapeless hands. Her face, the delicacy of whose features was veiled with flesh, flushed and paled. Not even flesh could subdue the sad brilliancy of her dark-blue eyes, fixed inward upon her own sad state, unregardful of the company. ”

“ Nay, even for the most ladylike occupations—reading, or writing, or playing with her children—do you think a lace gown, or even a lace collar, so great an advantage or dignity to a woman? If you think of it, you will find the whole value of lace, as a possession, depends on the fact of its having a beauty which has been the reward of industry and attention. ”

“ Now look here, Young Lady, I don't doubt but this lace is great stuff. You say so, and I haven't seen man, woman or child on this side of the Atlantic knows as much as you do. I'm mighty grateful for the lace—don't you forget that, but just the same—well, now I'll tell you. I have a very special reason for wanting something a little livelier than lace. ”

“ Do those rare and ghost-like laces, wrought with the cunning device, and worth their weight in gold, never oppress the hearts of the fair women who wear them?—are they never burdened with the sighs of those whose scant covering scarcely conceals their nakedness, and much less serves as a protection against the chilling blasts of winter, and whom it would take the price of but one single yard of that delicate lace to feed, and warm, and clothe? ”

“ Dieppe laces are in little request; nevertheless there is a narrow kind, named 'poussin,' the habitual resource and work of the poor lace-makers of this town, and which recommends itself by its cheapness and pleasing effect when used as a trimming to collars and morning dresses. ”

“ Only a few years have elapsed since this plucky little woman made a single piece of lace edging from common braid as an experiment, and sold it for a trifling sum. Love for the work and perseverance have enabled her to overcome obstacles that would have discouraged a woman of ordinary energy, and she has gradually improved upon her earlier methods until modern lace occupies a front rank among the numerous dainty forms of needle-work of the day. ”

“ The maids I kiss:
They shriek, “Who’s this?”
I answer nought but ho, ho, ho! [18] NOSES.
How very odd that poets should suppose
There is no poetry about a nose,
When plain as is man’s nose upon his face,
A nose-less face would lack poetic grace!
Noses have sympathy, a lover knows:
Noses are always touched, when lips are kissing;
And who would care to kiss, if nose were missing? “BEWARE OF PAINT.”
A lover sat down with his love by his side,
With a countenance joyous, and beaming with pride. ”

“ This profusion of lace, rumpled by the cushions of the sofa to which her indolent and languid life confined her, hung around her like the black and clustering bunches of the elder, shedding its berries in the autumnal wind. ”

“ Nevertheless, most of these works, necessarily voluminous and replete with detail, are more for the connoisseur or dilettante than for the busy man of affairs upon whom the practical aspect of lace, quite dissociated from the romance in which it is steeped, always forces itself. ”

“ In the middle of the nineteenth century it was the fashion that no young lady should wear lace previous to her marriage. In the reign of George II. etiquette was different, for we find the Duchess of Portland presenting Mrs. Montague, then a girl, with a lace head and ruffles.
Wrathfully do the satirists of the day rail against the expense of
"The powder, patches, and the pins,
The ribbon, jewels, and the rings,
The lace, the paint, and warlike things
That make up all their magazines," [1049]
and the consequent distress of the lace merchants, to whom ladies are indebted for thousands. ”

“ The author “tells us in ‘The lace book’ in a concise form, all that is interesting in the history of the evolution and production of lace in the countries which have given the world the finest examples of this delicate fabric. This handsome volume is illustrated with engravings from famous pictures of distinguished personages, showing how lace was employed in costume at different times; well-chosen, full-size examples are also given of the various kinds of lace; and an index endows the collector and connoisseur with a book of reference.”—Nation. ”

“ All in a lordly garden ground
Is weeding hemp a maid,
A Lark addresses her and asks,
Why sad, and why afraid?
‘O how can I then joyful be,
Thou pretty little lark?
My lover they have ta’en from me,
And shut in dungeon dark. ”

“ We were taken into the rooms where the women were making the ‘dentelles,’ and after seeing their methods we shall never again wonder that duchesse and point laces are such costly fabrics. Nearly all the most valuable laces of the world are made here, and many women spend their entire lives in making a piece of lace to ornament some other woman made of the same perishable dust{285} as themselves and of whom they are the equals. ”

“ TO think of lace merely as a symbol of vanity is quite to miss its deeper significance. If the feeling that prompts to personal decoration be a proper one—and it is certainly a natural and universal sentiment—then lace has its defense, and we may agree with old Fuller of the seventeenth century, when he says: "Let it not be condemned for superfluous wearing, because it doth neither hide nor heat, seeing that it doth adorn." ”

“ At the end, in a chapter of good advice to young ladies, after exhorting them to "salutairement passer la journée, tant pour l'âme que pour le corps," he winds up that he is aware that other exercises, such as stretching the hands and feet, "se frotter un peu les points des bras," and combing the hair, are good for the health; that to wash the hands occasionally in cold water is both "civil et honnête," etc.
Belgian, Bobbin-made.
Plate XLV.
Drawn and Embroidered Muslin, resembling fine lace.—Flemish work. ”