Granger 20
- This article is a Biography
- Chapter 20 - Changing scenes
I now sit down putting pen to paper, to give the second, and in some way, the most exciting part of Ethel's biography one that has been accomplished. In it, I may concentrate for a time, on one aspect of what we were about, and if perhaps, I rush ahead of others that you, the reader may consider more important, or that events given are not always in the correct chronological order. If, for instance, the topic of tight lacing is put on one side for a period in favour of high heels or body decoration, then these will all be covered in turn, so eventually to come together to give the finished product.
In the first part of her history I gave a truthful and factual evidence of her long training, and its results, until it reached its culmination at the beginning of the war, with a THIRTEEN INCH WAIST; and a brief description of how, due to the exigencies of the times, this was lost for a time, and our attempts later to regain it. I have often cursed the war for this, as I am certain that another three or four years of training under Mrs Kayne, would have brought her down to even smaller sizes, and we could have retained it too. Clothes rationing was bad enough, it is true, but it even became impossible to get corsets made to measure without a doctors prescription. Even so, materials suitable for the strain of excessive tightlacing, disappeared from the market. Steels to make busk fronts were likewise unobtainable.
Our most experienced corsetière, Mrs Kayne, gave up the business, owing to the difficulties she experienced. Her last letter to us explained matters in this way and she said she would get in touch with her clients when the war was over, but she failed to do so. A letter I sent to her last address came back, "Address Unknown." For long I wondered what had become of her, perhaps died or a victim of an air raid. It was many years later, that I heard she had moved down Plymouth way and was still alive there after the war. Perhaps she lost her old records, that I do not know. I heard that it was her husband who designed the corsets and wrote the booklets she sold, one of which got her into trouble. The friend who told me had act her. Later still I discovered she, or someone had sent her steel 13 inch corset cover to one of the present few remaining corset makers in London, and there I saw it. So I fear that she has passed on now.
Then super high heeled shoes and boots disappeared, for they had been made on the continent. However, those we had lasted well, and we still have a number of pairs of shoes in suede or black patent with heels of 5 or 6 inches in height, still in excellent condition, and which on special occasions Ethel wears even today. Prices of those items still available, rocketed beyond our slender means, so we would look with longing eyes at a few pairs still on display in the Wardour Street Shoe Shop at £20 per pair. Even so, with Ethel's feet only size three, her size was not in stock.
Long black kid gloves, a product of France, also disappeared, and today's prices are even now 6 to 8 times above pre-war. Our stock of long gloves disintegrated, and when nylon and velvet later came back as substitutes, they in no way replaced them. Perhaps the worst shock was the closing down of the old London Life. Due it was said, to security reasons, the correspondence columns were stopped in 1949 and never recommenced, although no one knows why. The paper when it did reappear had fallen to a monthly book of film starlets, a pale and useless shadow of the pre-war editions. Even the offices of the magazine were blasted and so all the old copies of the magazine were destroyed. Many more copies found their way into the ceaseless calls for scrap paper to help the war effort.
And to what end these sacrifices have now led us in sufficient to make us gnash our teeth in futile rage, for now the Germans are invited to sully our native soil with their jack boots and their tanks, and we are sold out to the Common Market. What that period cost us can never be regained, for even when the war ceased, things did not go back to normal for many years, if ever. In those ten years of life, lost beyond recall, no doubt we could have accomplished much that we shall never now be able to do. Ethel was getting in to 13 inches at the beginning of the war, also developing nice and steadily. She was still young and flexible, so it is certain that she had not reached her limit and would have reduced further if the steady progress had continued. Certainly we could have retained it, so that today she might well have been 12 inches or even a mere 11 inches at the waist.
One other regret I may have, is that Ethel was not trained properly when young. If her training had begun at 13 or 14 years of age, then her waist could have been developed as I could have wished it to be, with a nice long taper up from the waist, to a nicely developed high bosom above. This could have been a permanent effect to give her a waist of the smallest size down to 10 inches. Starting as we did in the middle twenties and getting down to 13 inches in ten years is a proof that, given the full treatment from an earlier age, a waist of much smaller size, such as 10 inches, should be possible. It could not be done at a later period in life, for the bones set early. Nor could anyone hope to make a reduction of 3 to 4 inches in a matter of days without great discomfort and possible internal injury. Ethel's training had been long and patient, taking small stops and retaining what had been accomplished, or nearly so. It had not caused her any serious illness, indeed she has had far less illness since taking up tight lacing than in her early days. She is quite capable of doing any ­ thing that most normal people would undertake and she is always laced in tightly. She could, and did, ride a bicycle in the early days, but went quite easily into riding her own small motor cycle, and in fact has covered many thousands of miles upon it, so that several long tours were done in this way. She likewise manages her own nursery and greenhouse attached to half an acre of garden, in which she digs, hoes, weeds and cultivates with a heavy motor plough, which it takes me all my time to manage.
She can, and does frequently mix cement and concrete for me and I can recommend this work as a splendid exercise for any woman desirous of developing a small trim waist, for the whole series of body actions entailed are ideal for the reduction of the waist line. In addition to this Ethel has now undertaken the business of a professional corsetière, for which perhaps she is ideally suited, for who, except myself, knows more about corseting and how to get a good figure.
Nor does she faint or suffer from indigestion, nor does she diet in any way. To see her eat a full meal with hearty appetite after her labours on the land is an experience. Waiters in hotels, and others too, really wonder where the food goes, but it goes somewhere and often in fact she will eat more than I do. She really enjoys her food, and it is a standing joke with us, that it you miss her, look where the meals are being served and there you will find her. Waiters seem to take a delight when they spot her tiny waist, in trying to see if she can eat at all, and I have seen them deliberately load her plate high, then goggle in astonishment when she empties it and sometimes asks for a second helping if it is something she really likes. It amuses me to see it.
One fad Ethel takes no interest in is tattooing although I have suggested it to her once or twice, but we did, as I have said, visit a tattooist twice to have her cheeks and lips done with permanent colouring. We visited the famous Mr Burchett in his studio near Waterloo Station and there we saw pictures of tattooed men and women and designs of all kinds. There was a picture of his wife, who was completely covered with pictorial effusions, including her face, with the beauty treatment that Ethel was to have done. She looked a very pleasant woman and I would have liked to have met her, but never did so. Perhaps it we had she might have encouraged Ethel to go on further than she did. Burchett died some years ago, and he was then an old man, but his hand was steady and his eyes good.
The first visit was to have her cheeks done. She flinched a bit when the needle started working on her flesh, but she stood it very well, so that in an hour her cheeks had been given a permanent tint. They were painful for a week, but then seemed O.K., and it was nice to know that she would never need rouge there any more.
Three mouths later we paid our second visit for her lips to be done. When he looked at her lips he said they could do with a second coating to deepen the colour and would do it next time we came. For her lips, a very sensitive spot, he said it would be necessary to inject a local anaesthetic first. She revolted, saying she could not stand the needle being pierced into her lips. But after some time we got her to stand for it. He drove the needle well into each lip so that after she said they were quite numbed. Then he started work, putting the colour on very heavily, making a neat little cupids bow of' her mouth. When the process was completed her lips looked heavy and voluptuously provocative. People stared at them quite a lot. As the anaesthetic wore off she said they were very painful, and were so for a week, until the scabs came away. Then I was surpassed to find how much of the colour came away too. These too needed further coats to make them right. But the blitz came soon after so we never did go back to got her eyeshadow put on and the finishing coats to cheeks and lips. Again the war defeated us, for perhaps if we had done so, she might have begun a picture gallery on her body.
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