Anonymous
School life in Paris
A series of letters from Blanche, aged seventeen, who has just been sent to a Paris finishing School, to her cousin Ethel, in England, with whom she had formerly been at school.
LETTER 1
My dearest Ethel, I promised to write and tell you all about my new school life here, and having now had ten days of it, I can give you a very fair idea of what it is like. To begin with, it is about as unlike Mrs. Walker's establishment as anything you can possibly imagine.
There, if you remember, we were kept grinding all day long at History and Geography, and dry things of that kind; and, with the exception of the fact that she always saw to it that our stays were tightly laced, because mamma insisted on it, we were taught not to think about our clothes and we certainly never got the chance of being dressed in any but tlie very dawdiest style. It makes me quite shudder now to look back upon the awful shapeless garments, the ideous cotton gloves, and the low-heeled, broad-toed boots which we used to wear, when we were under her.
The head-mistress heref or " Madame,'' as we have to call her, is a tall handsome woman, of about thirty, exquisitely dressed in the very height of fashion, and in such a way as to show off to the very best advantage her really magnificent figure.
When I was first introduced to her, I was quite over-awed by her grandeur; while she on the hand was, I think, horrified at my ill-fitting and unfashionable clothes.
When however she learnt that Mamma was willing that she should spend upon my clothes any amount of money that she thought proper, she immediately carried me off, to have me fitted out in the latest Parisian style.
Our first visit was to the corsetiere, which revealed the fact that, in spite of my illfitting clothes, the waist beneath,them had been carefully laced-in, ever since I was ten years old, so that I was easily able to wear the smallest and longest-waisted pair of corsets that the corsetiere had in stock. This I found caused the greatest delight to Madame who takes a special pride in having all her pupils as small-waisted and as tightly-corsetted as herself. She accordingly ordered a pair with a considerably smaller waist measurement to be specially made for me, assuring me that, after a little training, my figure would easily bear the constraint, while she pointed out that all the other girls in the school would be mad with envy, as, in spite of their enthusiastic efforts, none of them could hope to attain to such a tiny waist for a long time to come.
We next bought a supply of exquisite under-linen and night dresses, the tryingon of which caused Madame still further to compliment me on the tine development of my bust and hips. The point over which she seemed in despair was my feet, which were still shod in the large square-toed English boots that I had worn ait Mrs, Walker's. When however these and my thick woollen stockings had been removed, and the latter replaced by dainty black cobwebs of open-worked silk, it became apparent that my feet were not so very large after all, and to my own astonishment as well as hers, a very small pair of patent-leather shoes, with the tiniest pointed toes and three-inch heels, which had excited my warmest admiration on first entering the shop, were slipped on my feet and buttoned Jyy the skilled chausseur without the slightest difficulty When she finally took me back, with my hair frizzed and curled in the latest style, by a firstrate coiffeur, and surmounted by a fashionable picture-hat with a suitable vei}t my figure displayed by a smart gown that made the most of every curve and undulation, my hands encased in lavender gloves? sewn with black, of the most exquisitely soft kid, and my feet in the, fairy-like shoes that I have already described, I simply did not recognise myself, when I first _ g — confronted the immense looking-glass, reaching to the ground, which I found one of the most conspicuous objects in my large and luxurious bedroom.