Dear Sir,–I notice in your jolly paper that there has been considerable reference lately to “pipe waists,” and at one time I had almost made up my mind to train for one. It was some years ago now, before the war and I was sickened by an exhibition I saw at Marseilles at a second-rate music-hall.
I have been a tight-lacer all my life, and was much intrigued by an advertisement about an actress (not Polaire) with the smallest waist in the world. I went with a friend and saw the girl laced into an incredibly small pair of corsets, which were passed round the audience for inspection; but I did not think they were smaller than Polaire could manage.
However, as we left the performance we were handed circulars saying that the lady gave private views to small parties of her wonderful pipe waist on payment of 20 francs, at a certain address.
Naturally I went and found she was working for a corset maker, to whom she had been apprenticed when a child, as an orphan. This woman was making money out of the girl’s tiny waist, which was maintained by the most vicious corsetry.
We were ushered into a luxurious boudoir, and the girl came in wearing a silk chemise and a tiny-waisted pair of corsets, shoes and silk stockings. She carried the two parts of the pipe waist corset for our inspection–an inner, laced at four points and measuring only 13in. round of a length of 6in., and the outer to support the figure when the first had been laced home.
The girl was obviously under the subjection of Madame, and at a signal two muscular women came in and seized the girl and had her trussed up on a stretching frame before she could do anything but submit. They treated her as an animal, and pulled and pulled on the laces while the poor girl was fighting for her breath, and only gave her a moment’s respite before they were at her waist again, as though they hated the sight of it.
It took exactly half-an-hour to make the laces meet from top to bottom, and the girl was taken down and laid on a couch in a fainting condition and in tears. She was totally unable to sit up or stand by herself, so tightly were her muscles crushed inside that steel vice, until they laced the outer corset home and gave her the necessary support from hips to bust.
Then she posed about in front of – a wonderful, but to me most ugly sight. She looked so much better in her tapered, tiny waist corset of the music-hall and every-day wear; and when I told her so, she said she had prayed Madame to reduce her by another two inches rather than lace her into the pipe-waist shape but Madame knew which paid best and was deaf to her complaint.
I felt I would like to have had this fat Madame in a pair of stays of my lacing, but of course nothing could be done by me. However, I did speak to her about it, and I received the answer that her little girl was well looked after and really liked it, although the heat did make her weep sometimes.
As I have said it was enough to sicken me of any desire to be so laced. A pretty tapered tiny waist I adore, both on myself and others; but this other monstrosity, never!
Yours truly.
AN ADMIRER OF NATURE.