M.C writes — “I cannot comply with the request of A WIDOWER, who writes in your June number, and asks for my full address. I will give a sufficient reason. When I wrote that ‘lengthy letter’— too long for full insertion— I had commented, and now have completes, the winding-up of a business which my necessities in early life forced me into. It has served me well, for I gave to it thought, and threw into it all my energy, and now I retire to enjoy my otium, not because I am tired, but for the sake of my family. My son and three daughters fill positions in society into which a corsetiere, however celebrated, cannot intrude.
A WIDOWER may be certain that I did not neglect to train the figures of my own children, and my recommendation to him is, not to stand upon the trifling matter of expense, but to take his daughters to a first-rate corset-maker at once. ‘Figure before face’ is a maxim acknowledged by all. When the two are combined in the same person, joined to a good education, a girl will always have the opportunity of improving her social position. Figure always attracts first, and by is meant slenderness of waist and an erect and graceful carriage, not the Grecian stoop and ungainly straight-up-and-down style of dress that some ladies have taken to for reasons best known to themselves. From my own experience, I can affirm that no lady possessing a good figure that I have the honour of knowing has conformed to the deforming style of short waists. A fashion it cannot be called, for it has not, and never will be, generally followed either here or in Paris; in fact, it has died out already in the last-mentioned. I can also inform A WIDOWER that my son was fitted with stays when seven years of age, and that he continues to wear them now that he is married; also that almost every gentleman who has arrived at a ‘certain age’ wears a belt or stays for comfort and for health’s sake. These belts or stays vary in depth from 9, 12, 15, up to 20 inches or more; they are mostly made by those who call themselves anatomical or surgical machinists. But I have made stays for gentlemen, the measurements and directions brought to me by their wives, and I am of opinion that a clever corset-maker would always make a better fit than the said machinists, who are more au fait at supplementing a leg or an arm than they are at stay-making.
A medical man of great practice, under whose directions I have made stays for some of his patients, gives it as his confident opinion that if our youths and young men wore properly-constructed belts there would not be one of rupture for a hundred that now are. Belts would not only not interfere with athletic youthful exercises, but would give strength and safety in all arduous exertions. In middle and advanced life they cure incipient rupture, check all tendency to obesity, and contribute to health.
Those of your correspondents who would ignore the use of the corset by the female sex are not worthy of a word in reply; they are clothed in armour of proof — their own ignorance! Why, I have had families of daughters from their tenderest years placed under my care. I have trained their figures up to womanhood until they married, and became the healthy mothers of healthy children; and as to spinal curvature, no instance can be adduced of it ever having been caused by stays; but I have known many instances of spinal curvature and other defects of figure which have been cured by properly-formed corsets. This can be confirmed by many eminent corset-makers in this town, and by medical men as well. The vexed question of tight lacing having been so well ventilated in your elegant publication, and by the clever writer of the book of The Corset and the Crinoline, any remarks of mine would be superfluous. I will only observe that some ladies can bear, and insist upon bearing, greater constriction than others. I have never known any evil arise from the practice, and yet I could, from my business memoranda, work out in detail some very extraordinary cases of tight lacing and reduction of waist by slow degrees — quite enough letterpress to make a good-sized volume.
I fear that I am too lengthy again, but some of your correspondents having asked my opinion upon two subjects, I trust you will allow me space to reply with brevity. First, Front-fastening stays I condemn. No plan will ever supersede or give such elegance to the figure as the hind-lacing. Second, Corsets, when made to measure by an artiste, can be as well made hero as in Vienna. The superb elegance of figure attained by the ladies of that city comes from the early use of the corset, and the strict attention given to the training of the growing girl. This training of figure is, in truth, a science with them, as it ought to be, and, as I trust it will be, with us. Although now an ex-corsetière, I shall never cease to take a lively interest in the corset question, and your delightful Magazine will continue to be a monthly treat for me.”