In view of all these passages is there any wonder that it is hard to persuade women that men do not admire "wasp" waists? How are they to know that the "jimp middle" of the ballads was in its jimpness in proportion to the shoulders? The trouble is, that the early rhymesters have used up the only side of the question capable of poetical treatment. One cannot sing of the reverse: no poet could seriously lift up his voice in praise of her "ample waist" or "graceful portliness." In order to reach woman's ear, modern writers must adopt a different course, and it is curious to contrast their utterances with those of the ballad-makers. Place Charles Reade by the side of Douglas, and then what becomes of the "waist ye weel micht span"? After showing how the liver, lungs, heart, stomach and spleen are packed by Nature, the novelist asks: "Is it a small thing for the creature (who uses a corset) to say to her Creator, 'I can pack all this egg-china better than you can,' and thereupon to jam all those vital organs close by a powerful, a very powerful, and ingenious machine?"
Every lady should read A Simpleton, and learn something of the monstrous wrong she inflicts upon herself by trying to compass an artificially-produced "middle sae jimp." It will prepare her for Mrs. Haweis's lessons upon The Art of Beauty. One or two passages will give a hint of their flavor: "Nothing is so ugly as a pinched waist: it puts the hips and shoulders invariably out of proportion in width.... In deforming the waist almost all the vital organs are affected by the pressure, and the ribs are pushed out of their proper place." "Tight-lacing is ugly, because it distorts the natural lines of the figure, and gives an appearance of uncertainty and unsafeness.... Men seldom take to wife a girl who has too small a waist, whether natural or artificial." "In architecture, a pillar or support of any kind is called debased and bad in art if what is supported be too heavy for the thing supporting, and if a base be abnormally heavy and large for what it upholds. The laws of proportion and balance must be understood. In a waist of fifteen inches both are destroyed, and the corresponding effect is unpleasant to the eye. The curve of the waist is coarse and immoderate, utterly opposed to what Ruskin has shown to be beauty in a curve. Real or artificial, such a waist is always ugly: if real, it is a deformity that should be disguised; if artificial, it is culpable, and nasty to boot."
No rhyming can withstand such reasoning. If the ballads really had any effect in fostering an admiration of abnormally small waists, both science and a truer conception of beauty should by this time have counteracted their influence. Women cannot much longer, with decency, plead ignorance of the results of a practice which would be ridiculous were it less pernicious.
J.J.
VICTOR HUGO AT HOME.
On the steep heights of the Rue de Clichy, at the corner of a street, we find the number 21. How many heads crowned either with a laurel or a diadem have passed beneath the arch of this doorway since Victor Hugo left the Rue Pigalle to take up his abode here! The apartment inhabited by the poet can hardly be considered either spacious or elegant. Its dining-room is of cramped dimensions, and the famous red drawing-room, though handsomely furnished, lacks the air of individuality that one would naturally expect to find in it. Probably this arises from the wandering life that Victor Hugo has led for so many years. After the coup d'état the furniture of his house in the Rue de la Tour d'Auvergne was sold at auction. Contrary to custom, and probably through the interference of some member of the imperial party, no police were at hand to protect or watch over the articles exposed for sale. Consequently, the depredations were frightful. Small objects were carried off bodily, tapestries were cut to pieces and the furniture and statues were mercilessly mutilated. One well-dressed man walked off with Columbus's compass—that which the insurrectionists had a few months before examined so respectfully, their leader remarking, "That compass discovered America." Many of the poet's household treasures remain at Hauteville House, in the island of Guernsey.
But the curiosity of the abode is the study. From floor to ceiling it is one mass of books, letters, newspapers and manuscripts: the chairs, the mantelpiece, the table have disappeared beneath their burdens. A narrow path, shaped in the midst of these accumulations, permits the poet to pass from the door to the window, Victor Hugo's correspondence is enormous, and is continually increasing. He receives letters from all sorts of people on all sorts of subjects—letters of homage and letters of abuse, requests for autographs and demands for money, verses sent by youthful poets with prayers for his advice, and the wails of the oppressed who look to him as their sworn champion. Very seldom does Victor Hugo refuse to answer, though his responses are necessarily brief. Among these accumulated papers must be cited the vast mass of Victor Hugo's unpublished works. He never fails to devote a certain portion of the day to literary work, his brain being as clear, his imagination as fertile, his pen as ready, as they were twenty-five years ago. "Nulla dies sine linea" is the motto of his daily life. Yet with all his industry he has been heard to lament that he will not live long enough to transfer to paper all the conceptions that crowd his busy brain. In January, 1876, he remarked to a friend, "Were I to begin giving to the world my unpublished and completed works, I could issue a new volume monthly for a year." Among these treasures for posterity are to be found the tragedies of Torquemada and the Twins (the Iron Mask); the comedies of the Grandmother, The Sword, and perchance The Brother of Gavroche; a fairy piece wherein the flowers and trees play speaking parts; volumes of poems entitled The Four Winds of the Mind, All the Lyre, Just Indignation, The Sinister Years (a connecting link between Les Châtiments and a Terrible Year); and even a scientific work on the effects of the sphere. He once said, "I have more to do than I have yet done. It seems to me that as I advance in years my horizon grows larger, so I shall depart and leave my work unfinished. It would take several more lifetimes to write down all that fills my brain. I shall never complete my task, but I am resigned: I see in my future more than I behold in my past."
He was once speaking of the dénouement of Marion Delorme, and remarked that he had written two last scenes for that tragedy, the first sombre and terrible, the second tender and touching, and that he had preferred the former, but had yielded to the counsels of his friends and the actors in the piece, and had suffered it to be produced with the more gentle dénouement. On being asked if he had destroyed the rejected scene, he made answer that he preserved everything he had ever written. "Posterity can destroy what it pleases, and keep what it pleases," he added with a smile.
Victor Hugo's receptions are delightfully simple and informal. He is at home one evening in the week, when his friends and admirers gather round him. No change of toilette is needed: the ladies appear in walking costume, the gentlemen in frock-coats. "The Master," as his intimate friends and disciples love to call him, avoids all airs and posing with the quiet simplicity of true genius. He does not plant himself in the midst of his company, neither does he assume the consequential manners of a dictator. Seated in an arm-chair or on a sofa beside some favored guest, he converses—he does not discourse. At an early hour, in view of the age and the simple habits of the host, the company separate, the most enthusiastic raising the hand of the Master to their lips as they take leave. One of the greatest charms about Victor Hugo's manner is that he never shrinks from or repels any manifestation of genuine admiration or homage. Unlike celebrities of far less note, who profess to be indignant or disgusted at any such manifestations, he lends himself to what must often be wearisome to him with a kindly graciousness that often changes the enthusiasm of his admirers into a passionate personal attachment.