TOPICS OF THE DAY.
niu French say, that in England, if a child cries, our Government tells in the military. Our Cocknies, on the other hand, for every nonsense that occurs to them, are for invoking the interference of the Lord Mayor. An amusing example of this folly has just ap- peared in the newspapers. Some worthy gentleman, ruralizing m the shades of Kentish-town, finding himself unequal to the govern- ment of his family in the article of dress, writes a most pathetic letter to Mr. Hobler, entreating the Lord Mayor's good offices for the emancipation of bondaged waists. He represents the evil in
these touching terms :—
" It is with a deep sense of self-abasement I state to you, Sir, that my 'wife encourages my children, by her example, to persist in following the hideous and perilous fashion, which I entreat your most serious condemna- tion,—I mean the fashion of squeezing in the waist, until the body re- sembles that of a pismire or ant. My daughters are as yet living instances (God knows how long they may continue so) of the baneful consequences of this dreadful fashion. Would you believe it ? their stays are bound with steel in the holes through ty.hich the laces are drawn, so as to be able to bear the tremendous tug- ging which is intended to reduce so important a part of the human frame to one-third of its natural proportions. They are unable to sit, walk, or stand, as women used to. To expect one of them to stoop, would be ab- surd, and to witness the attempt alarming. My daughter Margaret made the experiment the other day, to satisfy me that she was quite loose. The effort was too much for the strength of the steel and whalebone vice with which she was enveloped. Her stays gave way with a tremendous explo- .sion, and down she fell upon the ground, and I almost thought she had snapped in two." How the Lord Mayor was expected to cure this bad habit, and to render Miss Margaret as loose as her papa desires, we are ut- terly at a loss to imagine. A pair of scissors seems to us in such a case a more immediate and certain remedy than a pen, and the parental vole de fait preferable even to magisterial dehortation. The Kentish-town complainant reckons, however, on the good effects which must result from "the interference of a man of in- fluence, from his station in life and experience ;" meaning thereby a Lord Mayor, esteemed in the East a sovereign redresser of all disorders. Alas ! had the good gentleman studied history, he would have found that no authority, spiritual or temporal, has ever prevailed in a contest with the ladies' fashions. The Roman Catholic Church itself, in all its potency, was vanquished by top- knots and high-heeled shoes. The difficulty or impossibility of curing an evil, is, nevertheless, no argument against regret at its existence ; and if tight lacing prevailed to the extent described by the applicant to the Lord Mayor, it would undoubtedly be an ex- tremely lamentable practice ; but when we look around us, and see the vast proportion of healthy female faces and symmetrical forms, we are strongly inclined to doubt the fact. Ease is too much con- sulted just now to allow of any accumulation of distresses and em- barrassments; and the care of their huge bonnets is alone quite sufficient to occupy our women of fashion. Their waists do not appear to be under any extraordinarily severe restraint ; and in- stead of calling in the authority of the Lord Mayor, we would recommend the Kentish-town parent to take his daughters to Ken- sington Gardens before the season entirely closes, where they may see that the highest fashion is not the greatest extreme. The ex- ample of a "loose" Marchioness will do ten thousand times more than the exhortation of a score of Mayors.
Previous page
