CHAPTER IX.
Hope for Homely People.—Two Vital Charms.—The Way to Live.—Sunrise and Open Air.—Bleached by the Dawn.—Live at Sunny Windows.—In Balconies and Parks.—Christiana’s Breakfast.—Brown Steak and Good-humor.—True Bread.—Device for Stiff Shoulders.—Corsets and Girdles.—The Latter more Needed.—How to be Pleased with One’s Self.
Is there such a being as a hopelessly homely woman? In the light of modern appliances, study the faces and figures one meets on a journey from the sea-board to the interior, and confess that there are few fatally ugly women. On the railway I often amuse myself, in default of better things, by considering how hygiene, cosmetics, and good taste in dress would transform the common-looking women about one into charming and even striking personages. In most of them, all that is wanting is strength of expression and a clear complexion, two things with which no woman can be wholly unattractive. The one is the sign of mental, the other of physical health. No wonder nature makes them so winning. To show what I mean, let us mention some common faults, and their antidotes. Nothing is more delightful than pulling our neighbors to pieces, with a good motive for it.
Christiana is over thirty—no reason in the least why she should not be as admired as a three days’ rose, for one of the most beautiful women in New York, whom every one is infatuated with, is over sixty. Yet nobody thinks of Christiana’s looks, for the simple reason that she has given up thinking of them herself—believing her poor skin can not be improved, nor the stiff, high carriage of her shoulders be changed. The depth of her eyes and her really good color are lost with these defects. To judge how the remedies should be applied, scrutinize her entire mode of living. Sunrise, in January or June, and she is not up! This will never serve a candidate for beauty. The first rays of the sun, the purity of early air, have as potent an effect on the complexion as the noon rays on the webs of linen in the bleaching-ground. By all means, if one must rob daylight for sleep, take the hours from ten to three, but see the fires in the east from out-of-doors, even if your head touched the pillow only two hours before. I don’t believe in any special morality in getting up early, but I do know its benefits on nerves and circulation of the blood. There is a tonic in the dew-cool air, a lingering of night’s romance, that stirs while it soothes the blood like a fine magnetic hand.
But getting up and staying in the house won’t improve one’s complexion. How much of her rose-and-lily face the English peasant woman owes to her walk to the reaping-field at daybreak is well known. After the first soft days of February and March there is nothing to hinder Christiana from reading her prayer-book or morning paper on the porch in the sunlight, if she choose to do this rather than rake the dead leaves from the grass, sweep the steps, or do something to stir her laggard blood. If it is cold, let her plant herself at the sunniest window, sew, run her machine, lounge, and eat there, till she is no more afraid of sunshine than of any other blood relation. Our women want to imitate French sense, and sit in the balconies and parks to do their work. When they lose the detestable vice of self-consciousness that saps American well-being in all ways, they will be able to live at their casements, sewing, singing, reading, as thoughtless and unnoticed as the white doves soaring above them where the sunshine is widest. It is matter of custom merely.
But Christiana’s breakfast is ready by this time, and we will see what she eats. Coffee: well, housekeepers buy the ready-ground coffee now, and it is mixed trash, wanting the heartiness of a good pure cup, but no great harm at worst. Meat: do you call that bit the width of two fingers, crisped, greased at one end, raw and bleeding at the other, fit sustenance for a woman who is to grow, work, walk, dance, and sing to-day? She is made to live neither on leather nor raw meat. Cook a slice of thick beef-steak as quickly as possible till the color is changed all the way through without drying any of the juice. The albumen of the blood must be coagulated before meat is fit for human stomachs, and proper cooking means something more than mere warming through, and a great deal less than crisping. Now let at least a quarter of a pound of this browned and fragrant sacrifice be cut for this young woman—better if she eat half a pound—to be converted into energetic work and Christian good-humor in the course of the day. One, two, three, four slices of fried potato withered in fat! And this is what some people call nourishment! Put on her plate two baked potatoes of unimpeachable quality—poor potatoes are poison—and let each be the size of her small fist. Where are the tomatoes, the celery, the artichokes, salads, and sauces? She has tomatoes, three bits in a tiny saucerette, as if it held some East Indian condiment. There ought to be a saucer piled with them, or some savory vegetable delicately cooked; for breakfast ought to be next to the heartiest meal of the day. It is far the best way to take coffee and bread on rising, and eat the meal later when one has worked into an appetite for it. Those who find it impossible to alter their habits enough for this usually have duties which ought to call them up long enough before to be quite hungry by seven or eight o’clock, the usual hours in this country for breakfast.
Take away that thin slip of toast; it makes one turn invalid to see it. What do you call this gray, broad-celled, pallid stuff? Bread—good yeast bread? If there is any thing intolerable, it is what the makers of it commonly call good home-made bread. It is mealy, or bitter, or gray and coarse-grained, sad-looking, with white crust, as if the owners were too poor to afford fire to bake it thoroughly. Give me poor bread, and I can eat it in a spirit of resignation; but this domestic hypocrisy of good bread libels the wheat that made it, and arraigns the taste of those who eat it. Were it ever so good, there is something better yet—the crisp, unbolted cake that lingers with nutty richness on the palate, once tasting of which weans one from the impoverished gentility of white bread forever. It is not urged on the score of being wholesome. The phrase has been so much abused that the cry of “healthful food” invariably suggests something which doesn’t taste good. But the strength and richness and coloring of wheat-cake recommend it to any breakfast fancier. There is no use aiming at fine-grained complexions without the use of coarse bread at every meal. A slice of Graham bread at breakfast will not counteract the evil tendencies of incorrect diet the rest of the day. When you get your coarse bread, two or three slices will not be too much at a meal. Such ought to be the breakfast of a young lady who wishes to have roundness of contour, unfailing spirits, and self-command, with ready strength for walking, working, or study. Brain-work takes food as much as bodily labor. Between Mrs. O’Flaherty in the laundry and the faithful lady editor of a newspaper, it is probable that the former has the easiest time of it, and uses less strength. The women worth any thing are built and sustained by hearty feeding. It is so that singers and dancers eat, and lecturers and authors—Grisi and Jenny Lind, Mrs. Kemble and Ristori, Mrs. Edwards, the novelist, and with her nearly every writer of note at this day. They are well-nourished women, whose appetites would embarrass the candy-loving sylphs whose usefulness amounts to nothing more than that of cheap porcelain. Women who exercise little, of course eat little; in the end they can do nothing, because they are not sufficiently fed. There is no grossness in eating largely if one work well enough to consume the strength afforded. The best engines are best fed. The grossness lies in eating and being idle. A woman who limits her exertions to a walk around the squares daily may confine herself to a slice of toast and a strip of meat. She will grow thin and watery-looking, nervous and “high-strung,” to pay for it. To know what charm there is in womanhood, go among the girls brought up in villages along the coast. The well-poised shoulders that have a will of their own, the round arms and necks, the profusion of hair, the strength and nerve combined in their movements, give one the idea of walking statuary. The poor drooping figures, the stiff shoulders we complain of, come from one cause—lack of nutrition. Their muscles are not strong enough to hold them erect, and their nerves are not fed enough to stimulate the weak muscles to activity. How many times must it be said over? Want of sunshine and nourishing food gives the coarse, uninteresting look to most American women.
If Christiana would invoke mechanical aid to bring down her high shoulders and put flexibility into her chest muscles, after thirty years of abuse, it is easily done. Walking with a pail of water in each hand is rather dull work unless there is a call for domestic help. A homely but very effectual way of educating the muscles is to wear weights fastened to the shoulders. A shawl-strap answers every purpose, buckled on the shoulders with the handle between them on the back, and fastening a flat-iron of five or six pounds’ weight to the straps which hang under the arms. An extra buckle may be sewed half-way down each strap, to fasten the iron on the end by a second loop. The weights may be worn while reading or writing for hours, and will be found rather agreeable to balance the stooping propensity by throwing the stress on fresh muscles. With or without it, nine tenths of women from eighteen years old upward will need another simple support to relieve the muscles of the trunk below the waist. It matters little what causes this feebleness, whether too hard work, the weight of skirts, or degeneration of the muscular fibre from want of exercise and lack of fresh air. Its relief is imperative to preserve bloom and life of any kind worth calling life. If any girl or woman can not dance, run up stairs, take long walks, or stand about the house-work, no matter how slight the fatigue, support must be provided. Women wear corsets, and say they can not exist without them, when the demand for aid of the relaxed muscles of the hips and back, though far more imperative, is neglected. The means are very simple: a bandage of linen toweling, soft and cool, buckled, tied, or pinned, as tight as will be comfortable, and so arranged as to relieve every muscle that feels fatigue. This is worth all the manufactured appliances in the market, and its prompt use averts a hundred distressing consequences. At the first approach of debility these girdles should be worn, as they have been from ancient times among Greek and Jewish women. It is not sure that their office of prevention is not more essential than that of cure. Tight corsets are an abomination, for they interfere with flexibility, and so with that constant exercise of the trunk muscles which alone can keep them in tone—keep them from degeneration and atrophy. As to the muscles of the back and abdomen affected by the girdle, a degree of support just sufficient to encourage them to their work, and prevent their giving it up in fatigue and despair, will exercise and strengthen them. A bandage tighter than is needed for this will do harm, not only by keeping the muscles idle, and so weakening them, but by compressing the abdominal viscera, and thus producing numerous evils.
There is a game children play called “wring the towel,” in which two clasp hands and whirl their arms over their heads without losing hold, that every woman ought to practice to keep her muscles flexible. Hardly any exercise could be devised which would give play to so many muscles at once. A woman ought to be as lithe from head to heel as a willow wand, not for the sake of beauty only, but for the varied duties and functions she must perform.
It would be an artistic feat to take Christiana through a course of baths, diet, sun-sittings, and open-air walks, to show her to herself. The oleander glow on firm cheeks, the eye of light, the tread of Diana, the buoyancy of body that fosters buoyancy of mind and spirits, would please her with herself.
How dexterously Nature inserts the reward of beauty before the self-denials needed to gain health! A thoroughly healthy woman never is unbeautiful. She is full of life, and vivacity shines in her face and manner, while her magnetism attracts every creature who comes within its influence.