St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1891-07-13
SOME FOOLISH FADS.
How the Women Have Sue
ceeded in Misleading Wan
dering Foreigners.
High-Class Society Ladies
Whose Paint, Powder and
Clothes
Are Liable to Give an Amer
lean a Very Bad Inn
preston.
The Muzzle Which English
Women Undergo to Com
press Their Ribs.

tnlnK tnaU the carriages WHICH crown
the famous driveway are monopolized
by ladies who are no better than they
should be, writes correspondent in the
Boston Herald. The error may be par
doned in his provincial mind. The
ladies are highly respectable, but it is
their own fault if an unenlightened for
eigner mistakes them for sirens of the
half-world. Fashion, silly thing, de-
crees that her priestesses and vestal vir-
gins shall not only make themselves
ridiculous, but Haunting and brazen into
the bargain. 1t is now the passion of
fashionable" women to emulate, as far
as appearance goes. those charmers who
are not mentioned in polite society.
Painted up to the eyeS-and over them
powdered on cheek and neck, flaming
with color, young girls, sedate matrons,
and even grandmothers, appear in the
| highways but not adorned.
What Englishmen think of this bust
ness no one has yet been able to learn.
1t is not to be expected that you should
ask a man what he thinks of his wlfe's
or his daughters painted face. The
fact is that Englishmen appear not to
notice this revolving habit Oh the part of
their female kind; but that they have
relish for clean faces no one can doubt
who has seen their gallantry toward
American woman.
1t seems never to have occurred to
English mothers who view with envy
the matches made in England by Amer
lean girls that the English lasSies would
stand better chance if they kept their
faces clean.
In Hyde park on a summer afternoon
he Of 10 will
painted faces. High color is the rule.
'Are these the famous English COM
plexions?'' asked an astonished Bos-
tonian whom had taken to the park one
afternoon. Such highly cOlOred faces
and such friZZled heads are never seen
in America off the burlesque stage, or
outside other places occasionally visited
by the police. But in London you see
them at every turn, i'll every public
place and in most private houses. But
for the edification of the WOuld-be fash
ionablee in America--the sort that imi-
tate the English, and usually only imi-
tate the English Wallets and waiting
maids-it is we'll to state that the higher
you go into London society the less
paint you see on the women's faces, and
that the most notable exceptions to the
rule of the Vender of cosmetics are
among women of rank.
Middle-clasS women almost invariably
paint their faces; so do the women in
the minor grades of the upper class.
And the painting is badly done, so badly
done that many OF the painted parties
Guido the drabs and demireps of Picca-
Oily circus. At the play and the opera,
the dinner party and the ball, the ten
dency of tie EnglishwOman to display
her person is wont to surprise the poor
fn-oinnnr Tho GtfQ0tS of tho tttnilQt3'
are often ridiculous in the extreme.
The low-pScked dress being en- regle.
the border lfge 11twixt artificial high
color and Fhe Eal tints of the flesh
Is Enthusiastically apparent. 1t usually
stops half way down the neck. which it
never encompasses. There are some
people who fancy they can wear wig
without detection. They must be related
to the women who paint, who never re-
member to put the color as carefully be-
hind their ears as they have put it in
front of them.
Her majesty the Queen is reSponsib ct
for much that is ridiculous in the toilles
of Englishwomen. Her majesty insiste
that at court ceremonies the loW-necked
dress must be worn without regard to
fitness or unfi tnesS on the person of its
wearer. Her majesty having thus de-
creed it is the sad lot of mOrtalS in Eng
land to see more scraggy necks and at
tenuated shoulders than any lover of
the human form di vine is willing to
put up with, for the deluded owners of
the detected anatomy seem to insist
that the more unsightly their necks and
busts the more must they show them.
1t is evident that they have no sense of
the ridiculous.
Nowhere else in Europe will you see
female waists so small as they are in
England. The attenuated waist is
somehow regarded as a form of beauty.
Because the Princess of Wales has
small waist it occurred to all English
women some years ago that small
waist must be fashionable possession,
so they set about torturing nature, and
they have continued the performance
ever since. Tight lacing is one of the
banes OF English beauty.
In the martyr-like struggle to COM
press their ribs the Englishwomen have
succeeded only at the expense of I'M
sightliness in other directions. On any
occasion to which the name of 'full
Dress is paradoxically given, you will
see any number of delicate waists, some
of them painfully small-as painful to
the behOlder as they must be to the
possessor. But the arms and hands of
the wasp-waisted beauties are always
red and blotchy. This is one of the
consequences of tight lacing as they
lace in England.
The American in England must not
be led by appearances. In no country
in the world are appearances so deceit
full. The dowdiest women you may see
will not be washerwomen, or even CO.'S
termongers' girls; they may be dowager
duchesses. The most gorgeously col
ored women, painted like country villas
or Barnum's chariots, are in ninety-nine
cases out of hundred not femmes de
plaisir, but women of eminent respect
ability.
The worst of this painting is that
it is worn by daylight as we'll as by
gaslight. This painting up to the nlnes
to go into the park of a bright afternoon
ficult to under stand. Eyes painted, lips
painted. cheeks painted, necks half
painted. ears not painted at all-these
women saunter forth, got up for all the
world like the nymphs du pave who so
fright the soul of Mr.. McDougaIl, l.. G.
c. They make their calls, they visit
their sick friends, they go to the art
galleries, to the matinees, to the races,
they go up the river, they go on the
coaches-they go everywhere, painted
as if for pantomime. The heart of the
Stranger is roJOlceu Wueu NC sees d
clean face.
If Englishmen do not give much
thought to this alleged decorative art, |
which is more disfguring than any
hump; if they are so accustomed to it
that they do not trouble themselves |
about 1t, one thing is certain, they are
attracted by women who do not paint. |
They may not know why they are at
tracted. Cleanliness may be the secret |
of it-novelty may be the magnet that
draws; but they are attracted, and the |
painted matrons. the powdered dowa- !
gers, and the rouged virgins become
Wearisome by their abundance,
s'The old women who paint are even
more numerous than the young ones.
You will see them in the park as highly
rouged as any of the girls of seventeen
or any of the matrons of forty--women
of sixty, seventy and eighty years-aged
persons who have TO be lifted into their