PERSEVERANCE writes- “I must plead guilty to a touch of self-conceit in my last, but it will be perhaps explained when I confess that, though born a gentlewoman, and restored to that position by marriage, I was once a lady’s-maid. Hence my experience.
My first mistress (the smallness of whose figure — 15inches — I never saw surpassed) was, I fancy, attracted into engaging me on account of the trimness of mine. A lady who laces appreciates a sympathetic maid. And I have found that, where in girlhood it has been forgotten, in after life the maid can do much in promoting the use of the tight-fitting corset in the improvement of a neglected figure. As a missionary in the cause of tight-lacing, I can boast to have worked some marvellous conversions.
My lady was an enthusiast that way, and had her wardrobe filled with works of the best artistes of London and Paris. She soon placed me in possession of a tight little corset, and with its aid, and following her practice and example, I quickly managed, with ease and comfort to myself, to taper off my waist. Her simple practice was to have her corset first laced firmly, not too tightly, on from the top downwards; then securing the lace at bottom, and commencing there and lacing upwards, the stays were drawn in tightly round the small of the waist; some nine or ten eyelet-holes almost touching one another enabled this to be done effectually, and the pressure to be regulated to a nicety at the required spot. For under those circumstances the plaited lace will be found not to slip, however loose the lacing be elsewhere.
The confinement of the waist causing the chest to expand, the slack of the lace was employed in easing the corset above, so as to leave the chest quite free and unconfined. The width of three fingers would have covered the restricted portion of the figure. Thus she, myself, and others, whom I have initiated in the same practice, have attained great tenuity where slimness is desirable without any ill effects, as far as I have ever perceived, on the health; besides winning that comfort and pleasurable sensation which; as several of your correspondents have mentioned, the support and pressure of the tightly-laced corset affording to the wearer, it is truly a reward and luxury to enjoy.
I might tell an amusing story how, when from being a pupil I became a teacher in the art, I for some time educated the figure of an ambitious but shy young lady under the cover of a loose-fitting jacket; and how I was at last obliged to have recourse to a coup d’état to oblige her to exhibit the improvement made, and how she got an immediate reward for her pains in a present from an admiring brother of a riding-habit to show off her dainty little form; and how I am afraid this habit cost the little waist another inch to be taken off. But the details would be too long.
However, it is an example of the fact which all who are the happy owners of little waists cannot but be aware of — that men will be found to admire them. My husband often laughingly tells me I caught him with my waist. I believe it first attracted his attention to me, though I flatter myself I won and held him better qualities. Yet if he ever regrets the choice he made — and I believe not — I am sure I never regret that I was once, and still am, able to gratify his artistic taste by displaying in my figure that curved line of swelling wave and sinking hollow which Hogarth styled the line of beauty, and which the tight-laced corset alone so well produces, as is so well exhibited in the well-known engraving of that great painter, where he exemplifies its varied and graceful curves by as many sketches of the stays of his period. It is quite contrary to the fact, as some assert, that the tight-laced corset renders the figure stiff and ungainly; and if any one doubts me, I challenge them to ride behind some tight-laced beauty in Rotten-row, and compare the graceful undulations of her slightly-swaying figure with those of some companion untrammeled and unconfined by stays, and I feel certain of a verdict in favour of the corset and its effects.”