CHAPTER XIII.
Madame Celnart’s Works of the Toilet.—Literature of Beauty.—Cares of the Toilet.—Arts of Coiffure and Lacing.—How to Hold a Needle Gracefully.—Iris Powder for Tresses.—Arts of Italian Women.—Depilatory used in Harems.—Spirit of Pyrêtre.—Herbs used by Greek Women.—Mexican Pomade.—Dusky Perfumed Marbles.—Lost Perfumes.—Sultanas’ Lotion.—Brilliant Paste for Neck and Arms.—Baking Enamel.
If ever a woman deserved a seat in the French Academy for the value of her literary labors to her kind, it was Madame Celnart.
The works of this lively author on manners, dress, cosmetics, and kindred topics no less interesting to her sex, are found in eight small octavos in their native French. The lady was an industrious and brilliant writer on themes of the toilet, the household, and deportment, on which Mrs. Farrar, author of The Young Lady’s Friend, of our mothers’ time, and Mrs. Beeton, the editor of The Englishwoman’s Magazine, in our day, have succeeded her with much adornment but hardly equal scope. Madame Celnart talks—one can hardly imagine her holding a pen—like a Parisian, with empressement, with drollery, precision, and inimitable sprightliness. Her lectures sound like those of a gentle old beauty, secure in the charm of her finished manner against the loss of her earlier fascinations, telling the secrets of her age to a younger generation, with half a smile at their readiness to seize these arts, and seriously pointing out the most graceful or the most modest way of doing things, with the concern of one who is conscious that grace and prudence do not come to all her sex by nature. Imagine the arch gentleness with which she opens her work on the toilet in such easy, sparkling guise as this:
“Je viens de feuilleter les arts de plaire, les livres de beauté, et autres évangiles des courtisane,” which may be freely translated, “I come to speak of the arts of pleasing, the literature of beauty, and other evangels of coquetry.” She has a well-bred curl of disdain for “une allure bourgeoise mesquine;” but with the reverence of a true Frenchwoman, whose creed is her mirror, she pronounces her work “consacré à la toilette, et la conversation de la beauté.” These duties she divides with serious precision into the “soins de la toilette,” which include cosmetic arts, and “l’art de se coiffer, lacer, et chausser.” It was indeed an art, in the time of hundred-boned corsets without clasps, to lace one’s self, and in the days of classic sandals to put on one’s shoes. She is as exact in all her details as a school-mistress, though one fancies a covert smile on her wise face as she rallies the young demoiselles who dreaded the bath—because it was so cold? Oh no; but because their modesty could not endure the baring of their person even to themselves. Such, she gravely advises, may save their “pudeur” by bathing in a peignoir. One inevitably recalls Lola Montez’s dedication of her famous Book of Beauty, “To all men and women who are not afraid of themselves,” on encountering these French demoiselles with their conventual susceptibility.
The graceful preceptress goes on with directions for sitting, for holding one’s needle, for dancing, and holding one’s petticoats out of the mud. Nobody will allow that these hints are superfluous who notices the varied awkwardness which women fall into who are habitually thoughtless on these points. Some of these nice customs may have been carried to our shores, possibly with Rochambeau’s French ladies at Newport or Salem. I remember hearing one of the fine Newburyport ladies, who answer to the description of gentlewomen still, maintain earnestly that it was most graceful to “sew with a long point”—that is, to push the needle nearly its whole length through at each stitch, instead of pulling it out, so to speak, by the nose. And she was right, as you can verify by the next sewing you take up.
In the time of Madame Celnart, fine ladies used to powder their hair with the dust of Florentine iris, which gave their love-breathing tresses the violet odor of spring. A pleasant idea; but their iris, our orris-root, must have been a trifle fresher than comes to this country. It makes us sure that the beauties of Titian’s and Guido’s times were real women, to know that they steeped their tresses in bleaching liquids and dyes, and spread their locks in the sun for hours to gain the coveted golden tinge; and the hair of the Bella Donna herself might have caught part of its enchantment from the sprinkling of violet powder that lent its waves a soul. Those immortal beauties would have canonized Lubin had he been alive with his pomades and perfumes in their time. Celnart was a courageous advocate of cosmetics, or else she was wise enough to put the worst first, for one of her earliest recipes is this depilatory, which is not at all quoted by way of recommendation. It is the Oriental Rusma, a depilatory used in harems:
Two ounces of quicklime, half an ounce of orpiment and red arsenic; boil in one pint of alkaline lye, and try with a feather to see when it is strong enough. Touch the parts to be rid of hair, and wash with cold water. When we say that orpiment and realgar are deadly poisons, and add Madame Celnart’s remark that the mixture is of “une grande causticité,” often attacking the tissue of the skin, our readers will quite agree with her that it is only to be used with “la plus grande circonspection,” or, still better, not at all. The Crème Parisienne depilatoire is harmless, and is given for what it is worth: One eighth of an ounce of rye starch, and the same of sulphate of baryta (or heavy-spar), the juice of purslane, acacia, and milk-thistle, mixed with oil.
The high-sounding Paste of Venus, devised by a Parisian cosmetic artist, who shared the mythologic fancy which prevailed years ago, was spread over the skin to soften and perfume it. Esther herself might have used it, for its conjugation of spices would delight an Oriental. It was made of fat, butter, honey, and aromatics—the more the better; but as none of our belles wish to try the anointing bodily, I spare them the list, and give instead the Esprit de pyrêtre. The pyrethrum, or Spanish pellitory, is an herb highly valued by cosmetic artists, and appears in several recipes of the French:
Powdered cinnamon, one drachm; coriander, nineteen scruples; vanilla, the same; clove, eighteen grains; cochineal, mace, and saffron, the same; simple spirit of pyrethrum, one litre (about seven eighths of a quart). Let these ingredients digest for fifteen days, and add orange-flower water, half an ounce; oil of anise, eighteen drops; citron, ditto; oils of lavender and thyme, each nine drops; ambergris, three grains. Mix the ambergris with the pyrêtre, and put the two liquids together. Filter after two days. Use as a toilet water.
No wonder French cosmetics are so highly valued, when their composition embraces such a variety of pleasing ingredients. Thyme, anise, and saffron seem homely herbs for a woman’s use, but they assisted at every toilet among the Greek women of old; and Rhodora wove the crocus (meadow-saffron) with the rose, and fennel among her jasmines, without a thought such as these things give us of sick-teas and home-made dyes. Why should herbs of such excellent renown lose the poetry that belongs to them? Mingled in variety with ambergris and orange flowers, they give body to a perfume rich enough to have satisfied Cleopatra.
If this recipe is complicated, what will be said to the next, compounded by South American women, and fashionable in Paris not so very long after the time of Josephine, who may have patronized, or, indeed, introduced this souvenir of creole coquetry. Madame Celnart says of it, “Only the Tartuffes of coquetry could blame the Mexican pomade,” whose proportions indicate that the formula came straight from the perfumer’s hands, and is therefore correct. Any one who wishes to try it can reduce the measure to suit herself:
Extract of cocoa, sixty-four ounces; oil of noisette, thirty-two ounces; oil of ben, thirty-two ounces; oil of vanilla, two ounces; white balsam of Peru, one drachm; benzoin flowers, half a drachm; civet, ditto; neroli, one drachm; essence of rose, one drachm; oil of clove flowers, one ounce; citron and bergamot waters, each half a pint. Steep the vanilla in the cocoa butter eight days in a hot place; dissolve the balsam in half a glass of alcohol, with the benzoin and civet, and add the spirit of clove. Mix the essence of rose and neroli in the oils of ben and noisette, and beat the whole forcibly together in a large marble or china bowl.
Creole women spread this paste on their smooth skins, which the oil of cocoa softens and moistens, while the delightful changing odor is absorbed, till their forms are like living, dusky, but perfumed marbles. These recipes are given not so much for imitation, or to contribute to the lore of perfumers this side the water, as curiosities of national arts and feminine vanity. Where in our country would we find the ingredients of the celebrated Eau de Stahl, known to the Parisian chemists forty years ago? Its compound was as follows:
Alcohol, nine litres; rose-water, three litres; the root of Spanish pellitory, five ounces; gallingale root, three ounces; tormentil, three ounces; balsam of Peru, three ounces; cinnamon, five drachms; rue, one ounce; ratania, eight ounces. Powder the whole, and put in alcohol; shake well, and leave to macerate six days. Pour off, and let it stand twenty-four hours to clear, after which add essential oil of mint, one and a half drachms; powdered cochineal, four drachms. Leave to infuse anew three days; filter through filtering-paper, and decant. Use for a tooth-wash, for washing the face, or for baths.
Peruvian powder was a standard dentifrice of the same date. It is made of white sugar, half a drachm; cream of tartar, one drachm; magnesia, ditto; cinnamon, six grains; mace, two grains; sulphate of quinine, three grains; carmine, five grains. Powder and mix carefully, adding four drops of the oils of rose and mint.
The following cosmetic, called the Serkis du Sérail, is said to be a favorite lotion used by the Sultanas, for whom it is imported from Achaia—though this sounds more like one of those pleasant fictions which perfumers delight to invent concerning their oils and pomades than any thing we are obliged to believe. This may be said in favor of the assertion—it is such a mixture of starch and oils as no one but an odalisque could endure to use. It is made of sweet-almond paste, ten livres; rye and potato starch, each six livres; oil of jasmine, eight ounces; the same of oil of orange flowers and of roses; black balsam of Peru, six ounces; essence of rose and of cinnamon, each sixty grains. Mix the powders and essences separately in earthen vessels, then add the powder to the liquid little by little, bruise well together, and strain through muslin.
An elegant preparation for whitening the face and neck is made of terebinth of Mecca, three grains; oil of sweet almonds, four ounces; spermaceti, two drachms; flour of zinc, one drachm; white wax, two drachms; rose-water, six drachms. Mix in a water-bath, and melt together. The harmless mineral white is fixed in the pomade, or what we would call cold cream, and is applied with the greatest ease and effect. It must be to some preparation of this subtle sort that the lustrous whiteness of certain much-admired fashionable complexions is due. It is a cheap enamel, without the supposed necessity of baking, which, by the way, is such a blunder that I wonder people of sense persist in speaking of it as if it could be a fact.