RetroXotique

When Mrs. Warren gave birth to her little daughter, the tiny creature looked so exquisite that Mrs. Warren named her after  Elaine, the fair. Elaine, the loveable. But Elaine grew up neither fair nor loveable.  Elaine's colouring of both face and hair was to dull.  Her nose and mouth were to large. Her sad contrast  with Tennyson’s lovely Elaine made her cry.  When she reached her late teens she knew too well that she did not look loveable to young men.  She became a lonesome, sad young woman

She almost detested her face, it brought her such poor fortune.  She thought her figure a tragedy too; her hips measured forty inches at a lime when hips were not of fashion.  Cosmetics could do nothing worth mentioning for her fare, and no girdle could give her the perpendicular body then in style.

She gave up trying to improve her face but she had the illusion that she could make her figure straight up and down with no sign of waist or hips.  Modern fashion had decreed this feminine figure, which made many girls look like heavy peasant women.  Elaine believed she could really achieve this style.  She did, to a degree. but accomplished no good.  She laced in her hips and allowed her waist to expand  she even padded out her waist above the hips because it was so small.  Forth into the world she walked. like all other women. with her figure thus disguised, looking like neither woman nor man. Her efforts brought no lovers or admirers. She obtained nothing of the sweet attention that young women desire. She became discouraged.

During the many efforts she gave to improving her figure, she was impressed by the smallness of her waist. This was a vexation to her. She said to herself in a petulant fit, “I wish tight lacing were in style again, Then I might have my day !”.

Her mind dwelt on the subject more thereafter. She considered that with all her heaviness of hips she was more comely than the robust ladies in Rubens pictures. Really she thought standing before a Sargent painting or looking at an illustration in old magazine “Why couldn’t I be like that ?''  Could she be like that ? No. not She.  But the subject continued to fascinate her.  A year later she decided that she would like try on a corset with a tight waist.  The only available thing like ii at the shops, so far as she knew, was a boned girdle with two-inch bust and a slightly smaller waist than she had been getting, hardly a real corset it laced in the back however. and when she bought it reduced her waist to twenty-four inches. She was able to lace herself in quite easily.  She found too, that.  she liked the tight. wellbraced feeling the corset gave her. Standing before her mirror she gazed at her new figure. The image exhilarated her.  She ran to her mother and said.   I think I look better with a laced-in waist."

Mrs. Warren smiled sadly.  She knew how disappointed Elaine was in her appearance.    “Your grandmother had an eighteen-inch waist. my dear. but it is  completely out of style now.  I don’t know anybody who laces that way now except Lady Hortense Ellings, and she makes  herself quite ridiculous."

Who is Lady Hortense Ellings ? " asked Elaine.

“She is fifty if a day, quite passe. I would not think emulating her if I were  you,'' evaded Mrs. Warren.

Elaine felt quite repulsed, the more so because her mother added, “Tight lacing will hurt you”.

She returned to the straight lined attire of the day, but the dowdy figure of fashion depressed her more and more.  She knew no hope lay in it for her.  Three weeks later, after a blighting time at an afternoon tea where she had no fun at all, she felt a the urge to lace in again.

Behind closed doors in her room she put on her twenty-four inch corset and pulled the strings.  The sensation was very pleasant as the corset gripped her torso. She drew the strings into the limit. She walked up and down the room with her chest thrust out and her hips moving in rhythm with her walk. Her high heels seemed to balance her tight torso. “Really”,  she thought,  “I love to walk in high heels and tight corsets.''

Thereafter she went to her room every day to enjoy the comfort of being laced in. She loved particularly to corset herself late in the afternoon when weariness

made her appreciate more the firm support of the garment. it felt like a kind friend.

                     After some weeks of this improvement she began to feel so attached to her corset that she wanted to wear it whenever she pleased. She was Old enough, now, she thought, at almost twenty, to deckle some things for herself.

                     It took some determination to appear before her mother in her new girdle. The way of discretion, she decided, was to appear in it loosely laced. Therefore she went down to breakfast one morning wearing the girdle laced as much as possible to look as she usually looked in the ordinary straight-formed style. The stiffer boning, however, caused her to sit lip in a more erect way than customary, so that her mother's eyes took in the change.  Her mother said nothing. nor did she when Elaine repeated the experiment the next day. At the end of a week Elaine felt hold enough to lace tighter.  This brought a reproach. " Surely you are not going out laced in that style," said her mother.

"                    allow her a little romance of her own.  On the point of fashion she felt that her mother was right. The pencil figure was de rigeur.

                     Donning a light coat cut on the lines of the popular mode, she set out for a walk. She loved to walk, she was athletic.  Braced well in her corset she discovered even greater pleasure in walking. The support combined with the stimulation of a fresh' breeze brought a healthy glow. She experienced a sensation of gratitude for a new happiness.  Only when she had walked briskly for four miles was she aware of restriction from the corset.  When she reached home she took it off, went through some bending exercises, and took a cool bath. Then she felt in Splendid condition.  She ate a good lunch, and attended to her ordinary programme for the afternoon, feeling very fit.  At the end of the afternoon she felt a desire to put on her corset again. She did so and was charmed by its friendly help.

                     For a week she followed this programme. The corset was happiness.

                     She was so pleased that she wanted to learn more about corsets. Why were such marvellous things kept a secret?  perhaps they were not a secret. The fact that one did not hear much about tight lacing could be merely the whim of fashion.  Where togo for information she did not know.  Timidity prevented her from men­tioning the subject to her mother, her friends or a corsetierre.  She believed they would not know much about the subject, anyway.  She perused women’s journals and fashion books, but found nothing there except advice concerning the cultivation of the straight, hipless figure.  Bookshops had nothing on their shelves about corsets that she could find by browsing.  She hesitated to ask openly for books on the subject.  One day, white in London she looked up the word " Corset " in the catalogue of a library.  She found a card marked " Corsets and Crinolines, Freaks of Fashion," the name of a book printed in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Nervously she sent for it.  The attendant who brought it seemed to regard the event as only a detail in the day's work.  Nevertheless, she felt her face bum, as she walked away.  She hurried to a chair in a corner,

                     Here the book proved so interesting that she forgot her youthful qualms entirely.  It was illustrated with twenty old-fashioned drawings, none too artistic but made with some detail, that showed the history of tight lacing.  A hasty flurry through the pages showed her that it was a book she wanted to read from cover to cover.  skipping towards the end Elaine saw that the author included several letters from ladles who were enthusiastic about tight corsets.  Elaine was so thrilled that she returned to the library on two other occasions in order to read every word of the book, it so elated her.

                     Mrs. Warren observed that Elaine had been more animated of late, She wanted to ask her what made her eyes sparkle, bust when Elaine offered no explanations voluntarily she refrained from asking anything.  She believed Elaine would inform her in her own good time. She had much confidence in her daughter’s good sense. She was positive Elaine's excitement could have nothing to do with attention from a man, the girl's unhappy luck in that direction was painfully clear.

                     The next day she wondered whether she was right in thinking a man could not be in the background.  Elaine had come to breakfast laced to the limit of her corset. Although the corset was not the real nipped-in stay of a previous era, it displayed the curves of the figure plainly, at least in comparison with the style of the time.  Dip­lomatically, Elaine's mother held her tongue.