CHAPTER XIX.
A Talk about Complexions.—Delicate Lotion.—Cause of Rough Faces.—Sun Painting and Bleaching.—Court Ladies Refusing to Wash their Faces.—Experiments with Olive-tar.—Consumption and Clear Faces.—Rev. W. H. H. Murray on Olive-tar.—Porcelain Women.—Drawing Humors to the Surface.—What is to be Done for the Weak Women?
A Southern lady sends the following recipe for glycerine lotion, which is refined and pleasant as well as useful. The pain of sunburned and freckled skin, so troublesome to many of our fair readers, can be relieved, and the shining morning face of youth restored, by this application: Take one ounce of sweet almonds, or of pistachio-nuts, half a pint of elder or rose-water, and one ounce of pure glycerine; grate the nuts, put the powder in a little bag of linen, and squeeze it for several minutes in the rose-water; then add glycerine and a little perfume. It may be used by wetting the face with it two or three times a day. This is a grateful application for a parched, rough skin. It should be allowed to dry thoroughly, when, if it feel sticky or pasty, it may be washed off with warm water.
The reason why so many young women have rough faces is, they wash their faces every day but neglect to cleanse their bodies. The pores are clogged by secretions, and morbid matters in the blood break out in the only free spot, the face. The ladies of King George’s court were perfectly logical when they refused to wash their faces lest it should spoil their complexions. They seldom washed either bodies or linen, and it was dangerous to give their festering blood an outlet by clearing a place for it.
Full-blooded girls whose complexions give them trouble should not eat fat meat save in the depth of winter, nor drink milk. They may take these in after-years, if they grow thin and weak from hard work or the nursing of children. Their systems can turn the grapes and pears they ought to feed on, the fish, chicken, and lean meat, the nutty oatmeal and wheat cakes (not mushes), into flesh enough to round their elbows, and strength enough to make their walk like the figure of a dance. They should try daily bathing, or rather scrubbing with soap and hot water, followed by a cold dip, a process taking a matter of ten minutes a day, at most, if they know the meaning of dispatch. Very likely they will need a few bottles of Saratoga water or doses of salts to clear the blood, adhering religiously to a Graham diet the while, or their last state after the medicine will be worse than the first. After taking the sulphur vapor-baths they must go out-of-doors, and finish bleaching themselves in the sun. By living in it five hours a day, they may gain the lovely painted marble of the English girl’s face, who reaps all day in the harvest field.
Cosmetics sometimes play tricks with fair skins which are quite mysterious to the unlucky subject. This is the case with the tar and olive ointment named a few chapters ago. Those who find that its application brings out a fearful crop of pimples, and turns the skin yellow, should feel that the ointment has been a friend to them, in detecting a state of the blood that is any thing but safe. People of sedentary habits, who pay little attention to their health, are not aware how vitiated their blood may be for want of sunshine, good food, and exercise. Its torpid current leaves no mark of disease on the surface; humors concentrate in the vital organs, and finally appear in the form of chronic disorders. Consumption leaves the skin clear and brilliant, because the morbid matters which usually pass off through the skin are eating away the life in ulcers beneath. The tar brings them to the surface, and one application sometimes leaves a face in a sorry state. Three ladies of different families tried the recipe at the same time, with frightful results, for the reason that they were all in the state when a dose of blood purifier would have had the same effect. One lady kept on using the lotion, and her face became smooth after trying it three or four times. When people perspire freely, such unhappy effects are seldom noticed. Apropos of this, come a few lines from W. H. H. Murray, the author of the Hand-book of the Adirondacks. A lady who was puzzled by the effect of the cosmetic wrote to him about it, knowing he was familiar with its use in the mountains, and received this merry answer:
“I have had a hearty laugh over your perplexity. All I know is, the mixture was common sailors’ tar and sweet-oil, with the consistency of sirup. Our party, ladies and gentlemen both, have used it freely for years in the woods, and the ladies have always declared that it made their skin as soft as satin. Certain it is, it never caused any rash in their case.”
Delicate, fair-skinned women are the very ones on whom this cosmetic will have the effect of drawing humors to the surface. Heavens! how many of this sort there are in the world—pale, shadowy as porcelain, fragile of bone and tender of skin, about as useful as wish-bones of a Christmas chicken! They have intense souls; it is a pity they have not enough body to hold them. Is there not wit enough in the world to conjure flesh to the bones and strength to the muscles of this great army of weak women?