416 



KNOW 



DG; 



[Nov. 1:1, 1883. 



^which vary a great deal naturally), nature, and anatomy, 

 IJnfk women in tlesh and marble, and the unquestioned 

 l>ail effwts of uiitiii!;/ tight-lacing, which proves nothing 

 but itselL Such a multitude of persons of all ages and 

 kinds i-annot possibly l>e either mistaken or lying about 

 the fact of their own good health, or that of their children. 

 pupils, schoolfellows, sisters, mothers, and friends, not- 

 withstandiiii:, or in consequence of, their liaving been con- 

 tracti-d into the smallest circumference they could bear for 

 niajiy years of their lives. It is very easy to be mistaken 

 in attributing either good or l>ad health to a particular 

 cause, but the fact of it cannot be doubtfvil. And that, 

 with sundry medical letters such as I have alluded to, is 

 the summary of all those letters containing any personal 

 experience. There were one or two about ladies who had 

 obstinately persisted, in the face of manifest warnings tliat 

 they were injuring their health, and of course did so. 



1 rememlKT reading years ago, in an extract from some 



medical newspaper, 1 think, that the Empress of Austria 



was killing herself with tight^lacing, for she happened to 



be ill, and was famous for the smallness of her waist — 



which seems to be specially cultivated there, and is even 



enforced on lioys as well as girls, according to a gentleman 



who was at school in Vienna, and learnt there to enjoy 



Iteing laced as tight as possible in long and stift' stays, 



though he was very angry at it at first, as was the case with 



many others of the above-mentioned writers. Well, she is 



now a grandmother, and we are told every year that she is 



Btill conspicuous in our hunting-fields for her riding and her 



figure. In one of those letters an old lady of S.'> said that she 



use<l to l>e contracted into ir> inches when she was young, 



and. indeed, the compass of their own span, or from 11 to 



lA inches, was often spoken of, up to about 40 years ago 



from very early times, as the standard to be aimed at by 



ladies, and fre<iufntly reached, and occasionally even 1.'5; 



but more in foreign countries than this, though there was 



one confession of it in the book on figure-training. Of 



course, I am not advocating those e.xtreme and foolish and 



dangerous reductions, but only using the fact that ladies 



liTed long and in good health under them, to prove the 



monstrous e.xaggerations about the danger of waists which 



contain twice as much as those. You, at any rate, will 



lee at once that a waist of 20 inches contains twice as 



much as one of 14, and l"* nearly half as much again as 15. 



I cannot imagine what books Lady F. Harberton has 



been reading — or not reading — to write such amazing 



things as that 2>< in. is the projx^r size for a young womaji's 



■ waist, when it is a full size for a well-made young man ; 



and, still more, that " it is only in tlie last twenty years 



that stays have been cheap enough for all classes to wear 



thetn from the age of ten ye.ars." When did maidservants 



not visibly wear stays, and sometimes very tight ones 1 



And to go down very low indeed, the " female 'prentice 



that Mrs. IJrownrigg whipped to death and hid her in the 



coal-hole " (as the " Rejected Addresses " puts it), was 



found with scanty enough clothing on, but with leather 



«tay« next her skin, which the most fashionable ladies 



wore in the last century, introduced from Germany, as 



engines of the most powerful compression ; and the same 



material, only thinner and 8tifr<ned with steels, has been 



recommended again as the nicest to wear next the skin, 



and k»-eping rlean and sweet longer than anythit)g, and only 



nef*iing washing with cold water oc-asionally. Another old 



la/ly wrrjte that she was edu'ated at a charity-school, 



managwl by vnme other larlies, and that t)ie girls all wore 



thos*- stiff leather stays, " and no mercy was shown in the 



m»tt<>r of lacing. " fJeorge Oruiksliank's pictures of women 



of all claste*, exceptionally ogly and fat ones, give them 



wonderfully small waists ; and so do the hooks of costumes 



of all nations in Europe for many centuries ; and fi-equcntly 

 the gentlemen too, whose slender waists and tight-lacing 

 used to be the subject of satire and denunciation from 

 very old down to very modern tinu^s, and, I suppose, of 

 admiration none the less. If Lady Harberton is right, the 

 higher classes ought to liave perished long ago all over 

 Europe, without waiting for this era of " cheap corsets." 



It is just worth notice, on the reiterated assertions about 

 Greek laxity, that the term " wasp-waisted," in several 

 forms, is as old as Aristophanes. And it is certain that 

 the Romans severely laced and shoulder-strapped tlieir 

 girls, and even starved them, if necessary, to make them 

 slender and upright. Jiivrncir et (jracilfs el sic amauUtr, 

 Terence says ; and Macaulay, who had read everything, 

 said that the Roman ladies did still worse things to pre- 

 serve their figures. Whatever are the reasons for it, it is 

 quite clear from history that corsets and tight lacing in one 

 form or another have been the windmills of dress reforming 

 (Juixotes for 1,000 years at least. The wind has sometimes 

 lulled, and they have flattered themselves that they had 

 stopped the sails ; but it has always risen again and 

 knocked over the philosophers, " clerical, medical, and 

 general," and probably always will ; so they may as well 

 save their preaching for something more amenable, or at 

 any rate preach more rationally than they do. 



An OnsEUVER. 



THE FUEL OF THE SUN. 



By W. Mattiku Williams. 



BEFORE discussing the points raised by Mr. Proctor in 

 his original criticism, there are two in his note to 

 my last letter that demand some explanation. 



First, as regards the relative gravitation reaction of 

 Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and the earth upon the sun. If 

 Mr. Proctor will turn to section S4 of " The Fuel of the 

 Sun," he will find that I specify the " nirnii. gravitation" of 

 these planets upon the sun. I did this with express and 

 deliberate intent, in order that I might not bo understood 

 as describing the " tide-raising action " of these planets. 

 The difference between these is just all the dillerence 

 between my figures and those of Mr. Proctor's, one vary- 

 ing with the cube, the other with the square of the distance 

 of the gravitating body. Perhaps I should have been 

 better understood liad I said the " l(il((l" rather than the 

 " ini'an " ; but in sections 75 and ^!l 1 had been describing 

 the varying gravitation of Venus and the other planets on 

 different parts of the sun, in order to show that " the 

 nucleus of the sun, and all the different parts of the solar 

 atmosphere, are subject to sensibly variable degrees of 

 attraction from the same planet." 



Mr. Proctor says that the disturbance of the solar action 

 which I describe " must be akin " to tide-raising action. 

 In the sense of common parentage it is akin, as they arc 

 both due to the reaction of gravitation upon the primary, 

 but of themselves they are materially did'crent. The tide- 

 raising is a deformation, the action which I describe as 

 " the reeling of the solar nucleus " is a motion of translation 

 of the whole mass bodily, and this I still "maintain" 

 varies inversely with the square of the distance of the 

 gravitating body, and not, as Mr. Proctor's figures imply, 

 with the cube. 



Anybody who will read attentively what I have said 

 will see winj I make this distinction. A mere tidal defor- 

 mation of a comjilrtn and profound fluid envelope (whether 

 liquid or gaseous) would not produce the vortices and 

 instirring of solar fuel which I have described. In section 



