An Elegant Ornament

So there she was, trussed from chin to toe, looking like a fashion plate and able to achieve little more. I mentioned as much and Miss B_____ gave a little sigh of regret saying that it was the fashion. I tried to console saying that she had managed it now and it would get easier, but she replied that no it would get harder. I could scarce believe how it could get any harder, but Miss B_____ then told me that on return to England she would be fitted for the final stage of her wardrobe before the season. This would require another inch off her waist for daywear and two inches for the evening, five and six inch heels, which she wondered how she would cope, as her feet were quite small, and she was already on her toes in the four inch heels and the worst she bemoaned was her new collars an extra half an inch in height a loss of another half an inch in girth with the latest mode which was that they would rise from under her chin to under her ears and higher at the back. She wondered how she would breath or speak with her head held in such a vice like grip.

Miss B____ looked so sad at this and I could do little to console her, she fully expected to be trapped in such rigourous fashions for the rest of her life and could see no relief from her fashionable torment. My dear Dolly we should feel ourselves very lucky that we were not born into high society as I would not wish upon my worst enemy the hardships that that young girl had to go through on a daily basis to make herself fashionable, I have to admit when fully attired she did look an exact copy of those whimsical fashion plates that you see in the Ladies Register, but I can assure you that nothing would make it worth it, for me to go to the lengths that she was forced to attain that fashion plate image. I left her then looking a little forlorn, standing in the middle of her room a tribute to 'belle fashion', but I will shudder every time I think of that poor young body underneath, not yet fully formed, but still riven into shape by unyielding canvas, leather, bone and steel, allowing her no freedom of movement in any part of her body, save the slightest in hers arms and legs. She was quite right in that she had little future, but to become an 'elaborate ornament' created to satisfy her mother's and Lady Patricia's ambitions

yours sincerely

Dorothy