A Dark Potion.—Olive-oil and Tar for the Face.—Olive-tar for Inhalation.—Carbolic Lotion for Pimples.—Cure for Musquito Bites.—Pale Blondes.—A French Marquise.—Deepening Colors by Sunlight.—Seductive Cosmetics.—Nose-machine.—Finger Thimbles.
Neither distilled waters perfumed like May, nor embrocation smoother than velvet, are this time to be offered you. The compound in its ugliness is more like a witch’s potion, and the odor is generally liked by those only who are used to it. But its merits are equal to its ugliness—nay, so firmly am I persuaded of its effectiveness that before sundown I doubt not its virtues will be in active test within this household. Sea winds will roughen the face, and miscellaneous food deteriorate the softest skins. There are wrinkles, too, showing their first faint daring on the brow before the glass—wrinkles which had no business there for ten years to come, at any rate. “What hand shall soothe” their trace away?
It is a hunter’s prescription that comes in use. You will hear of it along the Saranac, or up in the Franconia region, where the pines and spruces yield fresh resins for its making. It is popular there for its efficacy in keeping the black-flies and musquitoes away; yet even hunters bear witness to its excellence in leaving the skin fair and innocent. Thus runs the formula, simple enough, in all conscience, yet how few will have the boldness to try it: Mix one spoonful of the best tar in a pint of pure olive or almond-oil, by heating the two together in a tin cup set in boiling water. Stir till completely mixed and smooth, putting in more oil if the compound is too thick to run easily. Rub this on the face when going to bed, and lay patches of soft old cloth on the cheeks and forehead to keep the tar from rubbing off. The bed-linen must be protected by old sheets folded and thrown over the pillows. The odor, when mixed with oil, is not strong enough to be unpleasant—some people fancy its suggestion of aromatic pine breath—and the black, unpleasant mask washes off easily with warm water and soap. The skin comes out, after several applications, soft, moist, and tinted like a baby’s. Certainly this wood ointment is preferable to the household remedy for coarse skins of wetting in buttermilk. Further, it effaces incipient wrinkles by softening and refining the skin. The French have long used turpentine to efface the marks of age, but the olive-tar is pleasanter. A pint of best olive-oil costs about forty cents at the grocer’s; for the tar apply to the druggist, who keeps it on hand for inhaling. A spoonful of the mixture put in the water vase of a stove gives a faint pine odor to the air of a room, which is very soothing to weak lungs. Physicians often recommend it.
What is to be done with the malignant little red pimples that crop out annoyingly at the close of warm weather? The cause is very plain. When cool days check the perspiration, the system must send out matter by some other outlet before it can adjust itself to the new state of things. Nothing is better for the irritable face than bathing with a dilution of carbolic acid—one teaspoonful of the common acid to a pint of rose-water. The acid, as usually sold in solution, is about one half the strength of really pure acid, which is very hard to find. The recipe given above was furnished by a regular physician, and was used on a baby, to soothe eruptions caused by heat, with the happiest results. Care must be taken not to let the wash get into the eyes, as it certainly will smart, though it may not be strong enough to do further harm. No more purifying, healing lotion is known to medical skill, and its work is speedy. Poor baby was not beautiful with his face of unaccustomed spots and blotches, when the laving with the fluid began at night, but next morning they were hardly visible. I commend this again to mothers as a specific against those irritations with which children suffer. For soothing musquito bites alone it is worth all the camphor, soda washes, and hartshorn that ever were tried.
There is a word of comfort to-day for those most hopeless cases of unloveliness, tow-colored blondes. Light hair of the faintest shade, without a tinge of gold or auburn, is now fancied abroad. Chignons of pale hair, dressed in abundant frizzes, command nearly as high a price as those pure blondes dorées which have been worth so many times their weight in gold. Ladies of fashion in France dye their hair, or rather bleach it, to this colorless state; and the effect is very piquant with dark eyes and complexion. At the fêtes in Paris recently a marchioness of daring taste attracted general admiration by her pale tresses, relieved by profuse black velvet trimmings. Indeed, the only wear for très blondes is black, even if it is only black alpaca, with transparent ruches at the neck and wrists. Let such not fear to expose themselves to the fiercest sun to gain a shade or two of color in the face. If the fine-grained skin which accompanies such hair take on a pale, even brown, so much the better for artistic effect. Dark eyes will give brilliancy to the dullest face; and dark they must be, if the harmless crayon can make them so by skillful shading about the light lashes. If ever art is a boon, it is when called in to change the sickly whiteness of too blonde brows and lashes. We can hardly expect that girls will carry their zeal for coloring so far as to feed for months on the meal from sorghum seed, which has the powerful effect of deepening the tint of the entire flesh—a phenomenon as true as strange; but we must hope that they will live and work in the rays of that great beautifier, the sun, which brings out and perfects all undeveloped tones in Nature’s painting. Pale eyes darken in exercise out-of-doors, and pasty skins grow prismatic like mother-of-pearl, in that wonderful way which fascinated Monsieur Taine when he beheld the miraculous brows and shoulders of English ladies. The idea did not seem to suggest itself to the critical Frenchman, but it will to every woman, that these charms were not wholly due to Nature. It is bewildering to read the announcements of toilet preparations under seductive names—rosaline, blanc de perle, rose-leaf powder, magnolia, velvetine, eau romaine d’or, and the rest. Think of the potent chemistry which waits outside our windows untried! Among the list of “eyebrow pencils,” “nail polishes,” and lip salves, a foreign paper brings to notice one invention which might be of use—a nose-machine, which, we are told, so directs the soft cartilage that an ill-formed nose is quickly shaped to perfection. No surgeon will deny that this is possible to a great degree. That it would be a boon nobody can doubt, seeing how many unfortunates walk the world whose noses have every appearance of having been sat upon, or made acquainted with the nether millstone. Long thimbles reaching to the second joint for shaping fingers are a new device, though something of the kind was used by very particular beauties fifty years ago. The only thing women would not do to increase their comeliness is to put themselves on the rack, unless indeed it were to live healthily.
CHAPTER XII.
Removal of Superfluous Hair.—Effects of High Living.—Work of Typhoid Fever.—Roman Tweezers.—Lola Montez’s Recipes.—Paste of Wood-ashes.—Bleaching Arms with Chloride.—Cautions about Depilatories.—Public Baths.—Improving Complexions by the Sulphur Vapor-bath.—How Arabian Women Perfume Themselves.—Profuse Hair, Sign of Nature’s Bounty.
A correspondent wishes to know what will remove superfluous hair, adding that she is annoyed with such a growth of it on her face that she is the remark of her friends. These unfortunate cases are the result of morbid constitution, freaks of nature which are to be combated as one would eradicate leprosy or scrofula. The extreme growth of hair where it should not be comes from gross living, or is inherited by young persons from those whose blood was made of too rich materials. Living for two or three generations on overlarded meats, plenty of pastry, salt meats, ham, and fish, with good old pickles from brine—in short, what would be called high living among middle-class people—is pretty sure to leave its marks on lip and brow. Sometimes typhoid fever steps in and arrests the degeneration by a painful and searching process, which, as it were, burns out the vile particles, and, if the patient’s strength endure, leaves her almost with a new body. The red, scaly skin peels off, and leaves a soft, fresh cuticle, pink as a child’s; the dry hair comes out, and a fine, often curling suit succeeds it, while moles and feminine mustaches disappear and leave no sign. But this fortunate end is not secured to order, and there are preferable ways of renewing the habit of body.
For immediate removal of the afflicting shadows which mar a feminine face there are many methods. The Romans used tweezers, regularly as we do nail-brushes, to pull out stray hairs; and Lola Montez speaks of seeing victims of a modern day sitting for hours before the mirror painfully pulling out the hairs on their faces. But this often makes the matter worse; for if the hairs are broken off, and not pulled up by the roots they are sure to grow coarser than before. Often one hair pulled out sends two or three to grow in its place. A paste of fine wood-ashes left to dry on the skin is said to eat off hairs, and is probably as safe as any remedy. The authority on feminine matters quoted above recommends very highly a plaster which pulls the hairs out by the roots. Spread equal parts of galbanum and pitch plaster on a piece of thin leather, and apply to the place desired; let it remain three minutes, and pull off suddenly, when it brings the hairs with it, and they are said not to grow again. This will probably bring the tears into the eyes of any one who tries it; but the courage of damsels desiring a smooth face is not to be damped by such trifles as an instant’s pain. If the plaster were left on more than three minutes, it would be apt to bring the skin with it in coming off. It is better to use daily a paste of ashes or caustic soda, left on as long as it can be borne, washing with vinegar to take out the alkali, and rubbing on sweet-oil to soften the skin, which is left very hard by these applications. Applied day after day, it would not fail to kill the hair in a month, when it would dry and rub off. This may be used on the arms, which might be whitened and cleared of hair together by bathing them in a hot solution of chloride of lime as strong as that used for bleaching cotton, say two table-spoonfuls to a quart of water. Bathe the arms daily in this, as hot as can be borne, for not over two minutes, washing afterward in vinegar and water, and rubbing with almond or olive-oil. This should be done in a warm room before an open window to avoid breathing the fumes of the chloride, which are both unpleasant and noxious. Strong soft-soap left to dry on the arms would in time eat away any hair. But the trouble is that these strong agents eat away the skin almost as soon as they do the hair, and nice care must be used to prevent dangerous results. If the blood should be in bad order, though not suspected by any one, least of all by the person interested, caustic of any sort might eat a hole in the flesh that would fester, and be a long time healing. I saw a frightful sore that a lady made on her neck, trying to remove a mole with lunar caustic, and should advise every one to be careful how they run such painful risks. It is not wise to endure pain heroically, thinking to have the matter over and done with at once. Better try the applications many times, leaving them to do their work gradually and surely.
To lay the foundation of true beauty, the system should be purified within as well as without. Nothing is of so much value in this respect as the vapor-bath. In all our large cities public establishments exist for taking these baths, and their virtues are well appreciated by those who once try them. At the largest bathing-houses in New York ladies attend regularly for the sole object of improving their complexion. Perhaps the most successful form administered is the sulphur vapor-bath, which works wonders for neuralgia. It purifies and searches the blood, and I have seen a patient who had lost one of the loveliest complexions in the world, as she thought forever, come out of her bath day after day visibly whitened at each trial. For ladies past youth nothing restores such softness and child-like freshness to the cheek or such suppleness to the figure. Of course these baths can only be taken at places for the purpose, where chemical means are not wanting. I only mention them to urge all ladies who have the chance of trying them not to fail of doing so, both for pleasure and benefit.