Maybe She’s Born With It
(Maybe It’s Lead!)
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Barbara Palmer (née Villiers), Duchess of Cleveland by John Michael Wright |
So many seventeenth-century portraits feature women with
smooth, perfectly white complexions. The paint used in the portraits would have
been very similar to the makeup used by the women featured, both being
comprised chiefly of white lead. By the Restoration, cosmetics were widely
available and used across the social spectrum. In a time when freckles were
undesirable and so many faces were marred with smallpox scars, demand for
complexion correctives was high, and white lead made its first comeback as a cosmetic
since the end of the Roman Empire.
Ceruse was made of lead carbonite or oxide and could be
combined with lemon juice or vinegar. It was bought as a powder and mixed into
a paste with water or egg whites and applied with a damp cloth to whiten the face,
neck, and chest. It clung well to the skin and didn’t have to be applied too
heavily to produce an even, matte result. It could be set with a mask of egg
whites to varnish the skin or powders of starch or ground alabaster.
While it could create the illusion of perfection for a time,
ceruse was not without its failings. The egg whites dried quickly on the skin,
and they would have created an uncomfortably tight mask that would wrinkle and
crack with any facial movement at all, so smiling and talking were out. Over
the course of a day, it could even turn grey, necessitating touch-ups with
alabaster powder to disguise the changing tone. Ceruse was also found to have a
depilatory effect on the eyebrows and hairline, which could be seen as an
advantage (or disadvantage, if false mouse-skin eyebrows don’t appeal to you)
and could partially explain the artificially high hairlines that appeared
throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Still, it was preferable to
the alternative, a combination of borax and sulphur, which created a pale
powder that was very drying as well as slightly yellow; not very compatible
with the fashionable pink and white complexion of the time.
Ceruse was also extremely poisonous. The most sought-after
ceruse came from Venice, seen by many as the center of the fashionable world,
which was the most expensive and contained the highest concentration of lead.
In 1651, Noah Biggs warned against the use of lead in lab equipment and near
any water supplies in The Vanity of the
Craft of Physic, and the Royal Society noted that people involved in the
manufacture of white lead suffered from cramps and blindness by 1661. Mercury
was used in the production of beaver hats, giving rise to the term “mad as a
hatter.”
Although mercury and lead were known to cause madness, they
continued to be used in cosmetics, hair rinses, and popular (if only somewhat
successful) remedies for syphilis in every form from enemas, ointments, and
pills to steam baths or “sweats” in mercury vapor.
The first person known to die from it was Lady Coventry in
1760.
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Hogarth. Harlot's Progress (detail) |
Patches
Patches reached their height of popularity in the seventeenth
century. Lady Castlemaine advised ladies to wear them daily, except when in
mourning. They could be made of taffeta or other thin, black fabrics, and even
red Spanish Leather. They came in all shapes and were affixed to the face with
gum to disguise blemishes or pockmarks, or to provide a “mark of Venus.”
They were called different things depending upon their position
on the face. A patch beside the mouth was called a “kiss.” At the middle of the
cheek, it was called a “finery,” a “boldness” beside the nostril, and a
“passion” at the corner of the eye. During the 1650s, it became fashionable to
wear patches shaped as coaches complete with galloping horses, although it’s
difficult to imagine how large a patch would have had to be to resemble
anything of the kind.
If a coach and six was not to the wearer’s taste, the Exchanges
were restocked daily with a plethora of shapes. From The Gentlewoman’s Companion (Anonymous, 1675):
“By the impertinent pains of this curious Facespoiling-mender,
the Exchanges (for now we have three great Arsenals of choice Vanities) are
furnished with a daily supply and variety of Beautyspots … and these Patches
are cut out into little Moons, Suns, Stars, Castles, Birds, Beasts, and Fishes
of all sorts, so that their Faces may be properly termed a Landscape of living
Creatures. The vanity and pride of these Gentlewomen hath in a manner
abstracted Noah’s Ark, and exprest a Compendium of the Creation in their Front
and Cheeks. Add to this the gallantry of their Garb, with all the Ornamental
appurtances which rackt Innvention can discover, and then you will say … That
she was defective in nothing but a vertueus mind.”
Despite this scathing attack on the virtue of London’s
patch-wearing populace, patches continued to be popular through the eighteenth
century, and during the reign of Queen Anne, were even worn to indicate
political allegiances by wearing them on different sides of the face.
Jessica Cale
Jessica Cale is a historical romance author and journalist based in North Carolina. Originally from Minnesota, she lived in Wales for several years where she earned a BA in History and an MFA in Creative Writing while climbing castles and photographing mines for history magazines. She kidnapped ("married") her very own British prince (close enough) and is enjoying her happily ever after with him in a place where no one understands his accent. You can visit her at http://www.authorjessicacale.com
Look out for her debut novel, Tyburn the first of a romantic series set in the time of the Restoration.
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