The Princess Blanche, Daughter of Edward III.
Gower, too, when describing a lover who is in the act of admiring his mistress, thus writes:—
"He seeth hir shape forthwith, all
Hir bodye round, hir middle small."
That the taste for slender figures was not confined to England will be shown by the following quotation from Dunbar's Thistle and Rose. When the belles of Scotland grouped together are described he tells us that
"Their middles were as small as wands."
A great number of ancient writings descriptive of female beauty go clearly to prove that both slenderness and length of waist were held in the highest esteem and considered indispensable elements of elegance, and there can be no question that such being the case no pains were spared to acquire the coveted grace a very small, long, and round waist conferred on its possessor. The lower classes were not slow in imitating their superiors, and the practice of tight lacing prevailed throughout every grade of society. This was the case even as far back as Chaucer's day, about 1340. He, in describing the carpenter's wife, speaks of her as a handsome, well-made young female, and informs us that "her body was genteel" (or elegant) and "small as a weasel," and immediately afterwards that she was
"Long as a maste, and upright as a bolt."
Notwithstanding the strict way in which the waist was laced during the thirteenth century, the talents of the ingenious were directed to the construction of some article of dress which should reduce the figure to still more slender proportions, and the following remarks by Strutt show that tight lacing was much on the increase from the thirteenth to the fourteenth centuries. He says—