"Now a shape in neat stays,
Now a slattern in jumps,"
these "jumps" being merely loose short jackets, very much like those worn under the name of "jumpers" at the present day by shipwrights and some other artificers. The form of the modern "Garibaldi" appears to have been borrowed from this. The reign of relaxation seems to have been of a comparatively short duration indeed, as we see by the remark made by Buchan's son, who edited a new edition of his father's work, Advice to Mothers, and an appendix to it:—"Small" (says he) "is the confidence to be placed in the permanent effects of fashion. Had the author lived till the present year (1810), he would have witnessed the fashion of tight lacing revived with a degree of fury and prevailing to an extent which he could form no conception of, and which posterity will not credit. Stays are now composed, not of whalebone, indeed, or hardened leather, but of bars of iron and steel from three to four inches broad, and many of them not less than eighteen in length." The same author informs us that it was by no means uncommon to see "A mother lay her daughter down upon the carpet, and, placing her foot on her back, break half-a-dozen laces in tightening her stays." Those who advocate the use of the corset as being indispensable to the female toilet have much reason on their side when they insist that these temporary freaks of fancy for loose and careless attire only call for infinitely more rigid and severe constriction after they (as they invariably have done) pass away, than if the regular training of the figure had been systematically carried out by the aid of corsets of ordinary power. In a period certainly not much over thirty years, the old-established standard of elegance, "the span," was again established for waist measurement. Strutt, whose work was published in 1796, informs us that in his own time he remembers it to have been said of young women, in proof of the excellence of their shape, that you might span their waists, and he also speaks of having seen a singing girl at the Italian Opera whose waist was laced to such an excessive degree of smallness that it was painful to look at her.
Lady of Fashion, 1806.
Pope, in the Challenge, in speaking of the improved charms of a beauty of the court of George II., clearly shows in what high esteem a slender figure was held. As a bit of acceptable news, he says—
"Tell Pickenbourg how slim she's grown."
There is abundant evidence to show that no ordinary amount of management and training was had recourse to then, as now, for reducing the waists of those whose figures had been neglected to the required standard of fashionable perfection, and that those who understood the art were somewhat chary in conferring the benefit of it. In a poem entitled the Bassit Table, attributed to Lady M. W. Montagu, Similinda, in exposing the ingratitude of a rival beauty, exclaims—