The Mirror of the Graces: Containing General Instructions for Combining Elegance, Simplicity, and Economy with Fashion in Dress; Hints on Female Accomplishments and Manners; and Directions for the Preservation of Health and Beauty — John Shaqi
The Mirror of the Graces: Containing General Instructions for Combining Elegance, Simplicity, and Economy with Fashion in Dress; Hints on Female Accomplishments and Manners; and Directions for the Preservation of Health and BeautyLady of distinction, active 19th century
History
The Mirror of the Graces: Containing General Instructions for Combining Elegance, Simplicity, and Economy with Fashion in Dress; Hints on Female Accomplishments and Manners; and Directions for the Preservation of Health and Beauty
Lady of distinction, active 19th century
Beauty, Personal; Clothing and dress -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century; Etiquette -- Great Britain
While I recommend that the rouge we sparingly permit, should be laid on
with delicacy, my readers must not suppose that I intend such advice
as a means of making the art a deception. It seems to me so slight
and so innocent an apparel of the face, (a kind of decent veil thrown
over the cheek, rendered too eloquent of grief by the pallidness of
secret sorrow,) that I cannot see any shame in the most ingenuous
female acknowledging that she occasionally rouges. It is often, like a
cheerful smile on the face of an invalid, put on to give comfort to an
anxious friend.
That our applications to this restorer of our usual looks should not
feed, like a worm, on the bud it affects to brighten, no rouge must
ever be admitted that is impregnated with even the smallest particle
of ceruse. It is the lead which is the poison of white paint; and its
mixture with the red would render that equally noxious.
There are various ways of putting on rouge. Frenchwomen in general, and
those who imitate them, daub it on from the bottom of the side of the
face up to the very eye, even till it meets the lower eye-lash, and
creeps all over the temples. This is a hideous practice. It is obvious
that it must produce deformity instead of beauty, and, as I said
before, would metamorphose the gentlest-looking fair Hebe into a fierce
Medusa.
For brunettes, a slight touch of simple carmine on the cheek, in its
dry powder state, is amply sufficient. Taste will teach the hand to
soften the color by due degrees, till it almost imperceptibly blends
with the natural hue of the skin. For fairer complexions, letting down
the vivid red of the carmine with a mixture of fine hair powder, till
it suits the general appearance of the skin, will have the desired
effect.
The article of rouge, on the grounds I have mentioned, is the only
species of positive art a woman of integrity or of delicacy can permit
herself to use with her face. Her motives for imitating the bloom of
health, may be of the most honorable nature, and she can with candor
avow them. On the reverse, nothing but selfish vanity, and falsehood of
mind, could prevail on a woman to enamel her skin with white paints, to
lacker her lips with vermilion, to draw the meandering vein through the
fictitious alabaster with as fictitious a dye.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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