This exceedingly expensive instrument of
torture was compounded chiefly of silk (which easily frayed) and
whale-bone. Many good women of the middle class have gone to their
graves for three hundred years believing that Almighty God had
specially created toothless whales of the Family _Balaenidae_ solely
for the purpose of providing women with the only possible ingredient
for a corset; and for three hundred years, brave seamen of the
Dutch, British and Basque nations had gone to a watery grave to
procure for women this indispensable aid to correct clothing. But
these filaments of horny palatal processes are unamiable. Though
sheathed in silk or cotton, they, after the violent movements of a
Suffragette or a charwoman, break through the restraining sheath and
run into the body under the fifth rib, or press forward on to the
thigh. Which is why you often see a woman's face in an omnibus
express severe pain and her lips utter the exclamation "Aie, Aie."
Then this confounded corset had to be laced with pink ribbons at the
back and in front and both lacings demanded unusual suppleness of
arms and sense of touch in finger-tips; and when the corset went to
the wash the ribbons had to be drawn out, washed, ironed, and
threaded again.
From the front of the corset hung two elastic suspenders as yet
awaiting their prey. But first must be drawn on the silk or
stockinette knickerbockers which in the 1910 woman replaced the
piteously laughable drawers of the Victorian period.
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