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Updated: June 27, 2025
This was an antic fellow, half pedlar and half mountebank, who travelled about the country on foot to vend hones, strops, razors, washballs, harness-paste, medicine for dogs and horses, cheap perfumery, cosmetics, and such-like wares, which he carried in a case slung to his back.
Cosmetics are not greatly in use among these women. They grow very brown and wrinkled at an early age, just when our sheltered women are looking their best. This is accounted for by the hard lives they live, exposed to the burning summer suns and biting winter winds, and by cooking over smoky campfires or hovering over them for warmth in the winter.
By way of lesson to the belles of the present day, let them be told that DIANE DE POITIERS was never ill, nor affected indisposition. In the severity of the winter, she daily washed her face with spring-water, and never had recourse to cosmetics. "What pity," says Brantome, "that earth should cover so beautiful a woman!"
Nero's mistress and unhappy wife, Poppaea, of shameful memory, had in her travelling retinue fifteen or, as some say, fifty she-asses, for the sake of their milk, that was thought an incomparable guard against cosmetics with poison in them.
Mostly men they were, some old, some young but there were women too, women in showy kirtles, with bare shoulders showing well above the colverteen kerchief and faces wherein every line had been obliterated by plentiful daubs of cosmetics. They moved about the room from table to table, laughing, talking, making comments on the games as these proceeded.
Seated before a dressing-table covered with more cosmetics, paints, perfumes, false hair, and other unmentionable shams, than are to be found on the toilet-tables of our modern belles, he began to undo the work of nature, and make himself a new face. He worked slowly, handling his brushes with great care. But in an hour he had accomplished one of his daily masterpieces.
The mosaics, signet rings, cameos, bracelets, bronzes, chains, vases, couches, banqueting tables, lamps, chariots, colored glass, gildings, mirrors, mattresses, cosmetics, perfumes, hair dyes, silk robes, potteries, all attest great elegance and beauty.
Miss Hite-Smith was blondined in the back, with a transformation in the front that did not quite match and all of the aristocratic dames had resorted to cosmetics of one kind or another. Powder predominated but an occasional dash of rouge gave color to the party. Dinner was in courses, served by two colored maids whose social strata must have been about that of Betty's at Mrs. Pete's.
And possibly at the present moment applying, with her cunning hand, the cosmetics and powders he could excuse for a concealment of the traces of grief. Satisfied in being a superficial observer, he did not spy to see more than the world would when Nataly entered the dining-room at the quiet family dinner.
At others she proved entertaining. Primrose learned to know her way about the great house and the garden and orchard. Now she must go with a bonnet to protect her from the sun and linen gloves to keep her hands white, or to get them that color. At night she was anointed with cosmetics, and her hair was brushed and scented, but needed no help from curling tongs or pins.
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