Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. V, October, 1850, Volume I.

by Unknown

O mystery of preparation!—Pardon, sir. You err if you suppose me to insinuate that ladies are more careful over personal adornment than the gentlemen. When men made a display of manhood, wearing beards, it is recorded that they packed them, when they went to bed, in pasteboard cases, lest they might be tumbled in the night. Man at his grimmest is as vain as woman, even when he stalks about bearded and battle-axed. This is the mystery of preparation in your daughter's case: How does she breathe? You have prepared her from childhood for the part she is to play to-night, by training her form into the only shape which can be looked at with complacency in any ball-room. A machine, called stays, introduced long since into England by the Normans, has had her in its grip from early girlhood. She has become pale, and—only the least bit—liable to be blue about the nose and fingers.

Stays are an excellent contrivance; they give a material support to the old cause, Unhealthiness at Home. This is the secret of their excellence. A woman's ribs are narrow at the top, and as they approach the waist they widen, to allow room for the lungs to play within them. If you can prevent the ribs from widening, you can prevent the lungs from playing, which they have no right to do, and make them work. This you accomplish by the agency of stays. It fortunately happens that these lungs have work to do—the putting of the breath of life into the blood—which they are unable to do properly when cramped for space; it becomes about as difficult to them as it would be to you to play the trombone in a china closet. By this compression of the chest, ladies are made nervous, and become unfit for much exertion; they do not, however, allow us to suppose that they have lost flesh. There is a fiction of attire which would induce, in a speculative critic, the belief that some internal flame had caused their waists to gutter, and that the ribs had all run down into a lump which protrudes behind under the waistband. This appearance is, I think, a fiction; and for my opinion I have newspaper authority. In the papers it was written, one day last year, that the hump alluded to was tested with a pin, upon the person of a lady, coming from the Isle of Man, and it was found not to be sensitive. Brandy exuded from the wound; for in that case the projection was a bladder, in which the prudent housewife was smuggling comfort in a quiet way. The touch of a pin changed all into discomfort, when she found that she was converted into a peripatetic watering-can—brandying-can, I should have said.

Your daughter comes down stairs dressed, with a bouquet, at a time when the dull seeker of Health and Strength would have her to go up stairs with a bed-candlestick. Your guests arrive. Young ladies, thinly clad and packed in carriages, emerge, half-stifled; put a cold foot, protected by a filmy shoe, upon the pavement, and run, shivering, into your house. Well, sir, we'll warm them presently. But suffer me to leave you now, while you receive your guests.

I know a Phyllis, fresh from the country, who gets up at six and goes to bed at ten; who knows no perfume but a flower-garden, and has worn no bandage to her waist except a sash. She is now in London, and desires to do as others do. She is invited to your party, but is not yet come; it may be well for me to call upon her. Why, in the name of Newgate, what is going on? She is shrieking “Murder!” on the second floor. Up to the rescue! A judicious maid directs me to the drawing-room: “It's only miss a-trying on her stays.”

Here we are, sir; Phyllis and I. You find the room oppressive—'tis with perfume, Phyllis. With foul air? ah, your nice country nose detects it; yes, there is foul air: not nasty, of course, my dear, mixed, as it here is, with eau-de-Cologne and patchouli. Pills are not nasty, sugared. A grain or two of arsenic in each might be not quite exactly neutralized by sugar, but there is nothing like faith in a good digestion. Why do the gentlemen cuddle the ladies, and spin about the room with them, like tee-totums? [pg 605] Oh, Phyllis! Phyllis! let me waltz with you. There, do you not see how it is? Faint, are you—giddy—will you fall? An ice will refresh you. Spasms next! Phyllis, let me take you home.

Now then, sir, Phyllis has been put to bed; allow me to dance a polka with your daughter. Frail, elegant creature that she is! A glass of wine—a macaroon: good. Sontag, yes; and that dear novel. That was a delightful dance; now let us promenade. The room is close; a glass of wine, an ice, and let us get to the delicious draught in the conservatory, or by that door. Is it not beautiful? The next quadrille—I look slily at my watch, and Auber's grim chorus rumbles within me, “Voici minuit! voici minuit!” Another dance. How fond she seems to be of macaroons! Supper. My dear sir, I will take good care of your daughter. One sandwich. Champagne. Blanc-mange. Tipsey-cake. Brandy cherries. Glass of wine. A macaroon. Trifle. Jelly. Champagne. Custard. Macaroon. The ladies are being taken care of—Yes, now in their absence we will drink their health, and wink at each other: their and our Bad Healths. This is the happiest moment of our lives; at two in the morning, with a dose of indigestion in the stomach, and three hours more to come before we get to bed. You, my dear sir, hope that on many occasions like the present you may see your friends around you, looking as glassy-eyed as you have made them to look now. We will rejoin the ladies.

Nothing but Champagne could have enabled us to keep up the evening so well. We were getting weary before supper—but we have had some wine, have dug the spur into our sides, and on we go again. At length, even the bottle stimulates our worn-out company no more; and then we separate. Good-night, dear sir; we have spent a Very Pleasant Evening under your roof.

To-morrow, when you depart from a late breakfast, having seen your daughter's face, and her boiled-mackerel eye, knowing that your wife is bilious, and that your son has just gone out for soda-water, you will feel yourself to be a Briton who has done his duty, a man who has paid something on account of his great debt to civilized society.

IV. The Light Nuisance.

Tieck tells us, in his “History of the Schildbürger,” that the town council of that spirited community was very wise. It had been noticed that many worthy aldermen and common-councilors were in the habit of looking out of window when they ought to be attending to their duties. A vote was therefore, on one occasion, passed by a large majority, to this effect, namely—Whereas the windows of the Town-hall are a great impediment to the dispatch of public business, it is ordered that before the next day of meeting they be all bricked up. When the next day of meeting came, the worthy representatives of Schildbürg were surprised to find themselves assembling in the dark. Presently, accepting the unlooked-for fact, they settled down into an edifying discussion of the question, whether darkness was not more convenient for their purposes than daylight. Had you and I been there, my friend, our votes in the division would have been, like the vote in our own House of Commons a few days ago, for keeping out the Light Nuisance as much as possible. Darkness is better than daylight, certainly.