The Ugly-Girl Papers/Chapter 3

CHAPTER III.

• Elegance of Manner.
• Grace of the Latin Races.
• The Secret of Grace.
• Gliding Movement.
• Calisthenics.
• Erectness of Figure.
• Shoulder Braces.
• How to acquire Sloping Shoulders.
• Care of the Feet.
• The Art of Walking.
• Picturesque Carriage of Southern Women.

Was it not Madame de Genlis who described the education in manners under the old régime of France? In her memoirs she speaks of hating Paris, when she came from the provinces, for the ordeal she underwent there to fit her for polite society. She was taught, what she fancied she knew already, how to walk, and was placed in the stocks two or three hours a day to teach her the right position of her feet in standing. A corset and back-board were provided to form an erect habit. Whether in her day or later ones, the elegancies of manner are not cultivated without sincere pains. Nature, indeed, creates some models of such refined proportions and such informing spirit that they fall at once into the curves of grace; but these are meant for models, and happily nothing forbids those of lesser merit to attempt the same lesson. Are not some born masters of the piano, full-flown at once over the first difficulties of music? But does this hinder any pupil from six hours' daily drill, if need be, to grasp the same difficulties? The one end is to be attained, whether instantly or not; and in some cases the most laborious is by all means the most delightful player. Courage, then. The same thing is true of other efforts than those of the key-board; and it is quite as certain that the woman who trains herself to be graceful will be so, as that the clumsy young pedant at the scales will, in time, rush victoriously through the "Shower of Pearls," the "Cascade of Roses," or any other drawing-room favorite of gelatinized octaves.

For the first comfort, it must be owned that American women have the least natural grace of any nation in the world. English women are usually well trained in a sort of martinet propriety of attitude which suits their solid contours; but neither Anglo-Saxon race knows an approach to those lengthened curves, those bends of every slender joint and supple muscle, which fill the eye in looking at a woman of Latin race. I watched a Spanish-American girl in the gallery of the United States Senate one night, in order to seize, if possible, her charm of gesture. She was rounded, yet fine in figure, and seemed to be, as I can best phrase it, all muscle. No one could think of her bones as having any more stiffness than the pliant sprays of an elm. She leaned on the railing of the balcony, not straight forward as even the elegant and delicate diplomatic English ladies did, but lengthwise, as if reclining; and the bend of her supple wrist, with the black and gold fan, was simply inimitable to an American woman. Those intransferable curves bewitched the eye even to pain; but something was gained in that five minutes' study which I reduce to two points: Sideway movements and attitudes please more than those either forward or backward. The secret of grace is to teach every joint of the body to bend all that it can.

Take the last point first, and you have all that you need to teach the finest grace. To the dumb-bells, to the calisthenic exercises and work as if you were qualifying yourself to be a contortionist at a circus. Vitalize every fibre, as the hot-blooded Southerner is vitalized, and the body will play into grace of itself.

The first thing is the hardest — to stand straight. Most people are satisfied indeed to attain this point of physical and polite culture, and never get beyond it. Erect stiffness is better than crookedness. To be admirable, the figure must be perfectly flat in the shoulders. No projecting shoulder-blades, no curves are allowed here, however pleasing they may be elsewhere. A stout figure can hardly be unrefined if it is flat behind. A pair of inelastic shoulder-braces must be called into requisition; and these should be made of coutille, or satin jean, two inches wide, and corded at the edge. Make them barely long enough to reach the belt of the skirts worn, and button on them. Set the shoulders perfectly flat against the wall, and find the distance between their blades; fasten a broad strap the same length —not more than two inches, very likely—by sewing it to the straps behind even with the lower edge of the scapula. This is the best, as well as the cheapest shoulder-brace to be found. If well proportioned, and all the measure taken scant, it can not fail to draw the shoulders into place. Excellent teachers of physical training say that the will alone should be used to force one's self to stand straight. This is true of a person in perfect health. But round shoulders often result from weakness or sedentary pursuits, against whose influence it is useless to struggle; and I would not debar any half-invalid from the luxury of the support given by a strict pair of braces. They relieve the heart and lungs by throwing the weight of the chest on the back, where it belongs, instead of crowding it down on the breast. To correct the ugly rise of the shoulders which always accompanies curvature, and sometimes exists without it, weights must be used. Nothing is more unfeminine than the straight line of shoulder, which properly belongs to a cuirassier or an athlete. Some mothers make their young folks walk the floor with a pail of water in each hand, to give their shoulders a graceful droop. A substitute may be worn in one's room while at work, in the shape of an outside brace of triple gray linen, having two extra straps buckling round the tip of each shoulder, one long end reaching the belt, with a wedge-shaped lead or iron weight hooked on it. This is heroic practice, but effectual; and its pains are amply compensated by lines of figure which are the surest exponents of high breeding.

The position of the feet is not to be neglected in the lesson of standing. The toes should be widely turned out, to balance well; and if the foot is inclined to turn in, this may be remedied by having the boot heels made higher on the inside. This will throw the foot into a position to develop the arched in step. A crooked leg is a matter for surgical treatment; and in these days of curative ingenuity, with steel braces it will be but the work of a few months to bring the most awkward limb into shape. Those who have seen the wonders wrought with deformed children who have crooked limbs and bodies will consider it a simple matter to bring a partial disfiguration under control. As to the size of the feet, sensible people will never be persuaded that any degree of pressure which can be borne without suffering is injurious. Nature knows how to protect herself. A clever old shoe-dealer gave as his experience that people who always wear tight shoes never have corns. It is the alternation of tight and loose shoes that gives rise to these torments.

The great-toe joint ought not to project beyond the line of the foot. I know a zealous young girl who regularly screwed her bare foot up in a linen bandage before going to bed, to keep it in shape. For painful swelling of the feet in warm weather, no remedy is as effectual as an ice-cold foot-bath for five minutes in the evening or when they are most troublesome. This, however, must never be taken without first wetting the head plentifully with ice-water, and keeping a cold bandage on it all the while. It is good to soak the feet for fifteen minutes in warm water at least twice a week. This keeps them elastic, and in delicate, pliant condition.

An elegant carriage is the patent of nature's nobility, and appears of itself when the body is held into proper attitudes, and made properly elastic by exercise. The great cause of all stiffness is want of exertion—a general rustiness of all the limbs. To the slender child of the South the climate supplies a degree of relaxation and suppleness which dispenses with the need of action. The women of South American colonies seldom walk for exercise, yet their movements are full of grace. The stimulus of thorough circulation, so potent and softening, can only be gained in our colder latitude by exertion. A lazy woman may be picturesque in a room or in a carriage, but never on foot. Americans have one-sided ideas of grace in walking. A woman as straight as a dart, who moves without any perceptible movement of the hips or limbs, is considered an excellent walker. But this unvarying rectitude is far from the poetry of motion. Watch the slight balancement of a graceful French woman, and you will see an ease, a spontaneity, and variety of motion which set the former by comparison in the light of a bodkin out for a "constitutional." A fine walk is an affair of proper balance.

A clever friend, who has spent more time in the study of women's ways and manners in different countries than one can think profitable, has some unique views on the subject of their walking. He says the haughty women of Old Spain carry their weight mainly on the hips, which gives an indescribable stiffness of demeanor. Americans do the same, throwing the weight a little more on the thigh, without bending the knee. French women carry the weight on the calf of the leg, and the knee bends very much at each step, while the body is carried with the least balancement of the shoulders, and the head, so far from being held like a cockade, or the head of tongs, is easy. La téte dégagée, les épaules tombante is the rule for a good style. Try the difference of contracting the muscles in the calf of the leg in walking, with the knee bent sensibly at each step. The body involuntarily throws itself back, and a lightness of motion is the result, which is impossible with the usual swing of the leg from the hips in the stiff walk of Saxon women. The same authority says that the far-famed serpentine glide of the creole, which travelers admire and vainly try to describe, comes from a peculiar movement of the hips. The weight of the figure is thrown on the loins, and half of the body moves alternately at each step, not in a wriggle, as it is caricatured at the North, but with a soft turn of the shoulders corresponding, and a smoothness which betrays the sensuous temperament and luxurious physique. Such is the walk of the women of Venezuela, Bogota, and La Plata. Such a gait, however, would hardly be accepted in the Champs Elyeées as suggestive of high refinement. The women of Alabama and Georgia have traits enough of this walk to make them among the most graceful in the world, as far as carriage goes. The creoles of the Gulf have this sinuous glide, betraying a flexibility of limb which we can scarcely imagine. To gain this pliancy, twisting movements of gymnastics are especially suitable. Gyrations of each limb, the head and body, produce, in a few weeks' practice, an enviable degree of elasticity, which gives the carriage something more than the up and down, forward and back, straight lines of motion with which ladies ordinarily favor us. A smooth, long step, the weight of the body on the loins, where nature intended it should be, and the legs propelled from thence, without stiffness at the knee or obtrusive motion of the hips, is, probably, the ideal of walking; such as one finds both in a highly trained woman and in the untaught perfection of a South Sea Islander.

I have spoken at length on the topic of walking, because its importance as an art of grace can not be overrated, and because it has a still deeper bearing on women's health. The training which secures an elegant carriage is precisely that which counteracts the tendency to a dozen fatal relaxations at different points of the frame, and prevents their appearance. No one ought to say that walking brings on the disorders which blanch and wither feminine life. The cause is the fatal, inherited weakness of constitution, shown by either undue redness or pallor, by indolence or excitability, which is a slow decay from its first breath, and poisons the hopes and the loveliness of so many women. These doomed beings must work out their own salvation, and make themselves anew in the effort. The weaknesses would develop whether they walked or not. The care should be to adjust exercise and nourishment, stimulus and rest, in due proportion. But the weak woman must have separate counsel, for she by no means. comes under the head of these unpremeditated consultations.