Consumptive Chic: A History of Beauty, Fashion, and Disease

336 Pages·2017·30.34 MB·English

by  Carolyn A. Day

CONSUMPTIVE CHIC

CONTENTS
List of Figures
List of Plates
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Constructing Tuberculosis
The Social Context
Scholarly Construction of Tuberculosis
1 The Approach to Illness
Tuberculosis Mortality
Anatomico-Pathological Approach to Disease
2 The Curious Case of Consumption: A Family Affair
Contagious?
The Constitution
Palliate Rather than Cure
3 Exciting Consumption: The Causes and Culture of an Illness
The Personal Environment: Status Symbol
Ephemeral Causes of Consumption
Nervous Consumptives
Civilizing Consumption
4 Morality, Mortality, and Romanticizing Death
The Consumptive Performance: Resignation in the Face of Death
Romanticizing Consumption
The Illness Intelligence
Consumptive Keats
5 The Angel of Death in the Household
That Sentimental Feeling: Feminizing Consumption
Consumptive Marriage
The Reproductive Body
Sensibility and Feminine Character
6 Tragedy and Tuberculosis: The Siddons Story
A Beautiful Predisposition
That Lothario Lawrence
The Decline of Maria
A Beautiful Ending?
7 Dying to Be Beautiful: The Consumptive Chic
From Corpulent to Consumptive Chic
Fashionable Illness
Sentimental Beauty
8 The Agony of Conceit: Clothing and Consumption
Classical Consumptive and the Dangers of Fashionable Life
Consumptive Corsetry and Romantic Fashion
Tubercular and Tight the Sentimental Way
Epilogue: The End of Consumptive Chic
Concluding the Fashion
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
LIST OF FIGURES

I.1 X-ray of chest showing tuberculosis and photograph of the lungs of a
patient after death from tuberculosis (1903).
1.1 Gideon Harvey by A. Hertochs (n.d.).
1.2 Robert Koch as the new Saint George after isolating the tuberculosis
bacillus (c.1882).
1.3 Giovanni Battista Morgagni (1761).
2.1 A group of young, fashionable doctors (1823).
2.2 Sea-bathing was often prescribed for those with delicate constitutions
(1813).
2.3 A man suffering from gout (represented by a group of dancing blue devils).
(1795).
2.4 Portrait of St. John Long and a Letter from a Consumptive (1828).
2.5 St. John Long dressed as a funeral mourner (1830).
2.6 Caricature of “A Galloping Consumption” (19th century).
2.7 Sir Alexander Crichton and the Iodine Inhalation Apparatus (c.1830–1870).
3.1 “Lodging House in Field Lane” (1848).
3.2 Death points an arrow at a female dancer (1832).
3.3 John Brown by J. Donaldson after J. Thomson (1838–1840).
3.4 Table of Excitability (1795).
3.5 George Cheyne (1732).
4.1 Margaret Emily Shore after unknown artist (c.1838).
4.2 “Mourn Not your Daughter Fading” (1842–1865).
5.1 A family group in their drawing room at evening prayer (c.1846).
5.2 A baffled doctor taking the pulse of a love-sick young woman (19th
century).
6.1 Portrait of Maria Siddons (1831).
6.2 Hot-well House and St. Vincent Rocks (n.d. early 18th century).
6.3 Portrait of Thomas Lawrence, after a self-portrait (1812).
6.4 Illustration for Richardson’s Clarissa (1785).
7.1 “Dropsy Courting Consumption” (1810).
7.2 Capturing the Window to the Soul (early 19th century).
7.3 Deadly Nightshade (Atropa belladonna) (1855).
7.4 George Combe (19th century).
7.5 Don’t make it any Redder M’em, Else they will think you paint (1845?).
7.6 Innocence is the Best White Paint. The Lady’s Toilet (c.1845).
7.7 Romantic 1830s hair and Sentimental 1840s styles with instructions for
attaching false hair (1831 and c.1840).
8.1 “The Graces in a High Wind” (1810).
8.2 Caricaturizing the “Naked” fashions (1796).
8.3 “A Naked Truth or Nipping Frost” (1803).
8.4 Early nineteenth-century sandals (1806–1815).
8.5 The fashionable hump and prominent shoulder blades reminiscent of the
winged-back appearance of consumption (1811).
8.6 “Progress of the Toilet—The Stays” (1810).
8.7 Martha Gibbon, Stays for Women and Children (1800).
8.8 Romantic fashions (c.1836).
8.9 “Waist and Extravagance” (1829).
8.10 Romantic era corset (c.1825–1835).
8.11 Woman turning a wheel to make a young girl’s waist smaller (c.1830).
8.12 Contrasting the natural skeleton with the shape of the “modern boarding-
school miss” (1833).
8.13 Gardner stays for support (1822).
8.14 Richard Kingdon, “Apparatus for the Support of the Human Body” (1840).
8.15 Elastic stays for women and children (1815).
8.16 Example of a sentimental style of corset (c.1840–1850).
8.17 Contrast of the “Deformed” corsetted waist versus that of the “Natural”
uncorsetted waist (1845).
8.18 The stoop-shouldered sentimental style that emulated the consumptive
bodily conformation (1842).
LIST OF PLATES

1 Hon. Mrs. Mary Graham (1775–1777).
2 Day Dress worn by Hon. Mrs. Graham (c.1790–1792).
3 Pulmonary tubercle (2nd half 20th century).
4 Macrophage engulfing TB bacteria (n.d.).
5 Laennec-type monaural stethoscope (1851–1900).
6 Robert Carswell’s illustration of the tuberculous lung (1838).
7 Horace Walpole by Sir Joshua Reynolds (c.1756–1757).
8 Emily Brontë who perished from consumption in 1848 (c.1833).
9 Skeleton in pink dress (1822–1856).
10 Cupping set with scarifier (1801–1900).
11 Leeches (1831–1859 and 1827).
12 The eighteenth-century nervous system (1796).
13 John Keats by Joseph Severn (1819).
14 Tom Keats, nineteenth century.
15 Wax anatomical Venus (1771–1800).
16 “Mrs Siddons with the Emblems of Tragedy” (1793).
17 Portrait of Sally Siddons by Sir Thomas Lawrence (c.1795).
18 Caricaturizing the pigeon-breasted fashions (1786).
19 1790s fashions (c.1790?, 1794).
20 Windows of the Soul (1846).
21 A map of the open country of woman’s heart (1833–1842).
22 English example of neoclassical dress with train (front and back) (c.1803).
23 Fashion plate illustrating the highlighting of the décolletage and posterior
furrow (1810).
24 Dress illustrating the low back that would have showcased the backbones
(1809).
25 Short diaphragm-length pair of stays (c.1790).
26 Day Dress (c.1830–1834).
27 Example of Sentimental Dress (1845–1850).
28 Romantic and Sentimental decoration for Evening Dress (1832?, 1848).
29 Romantic and Sentimental decoration for Day Wear (1830?, 1845).
30 Stooping posture reminiscent of consumption (1842).
31 Marie Duplessis (1824–1847).
32 Dress (c.1853–1862).
33 “Hygean or Corporiform Corset” (1849).
34 Front and back views of a new style of “Reformed” corset (1851).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book has been a labor of love that has kept me constantly entertained for
more than a decade, and would not have been possible without the assistance of
more people than I have room to thank. Most importantly, thank you to my
amazing family for believing in me when I chose to change disciplines and
follow my heart. I am so very grateful to you, mom and dad, for teaching me to
chase my dreams and to persevere in the face of whatever obstacles come my
way. Donal, Lorraine, Benjamin, and Emily this book is dedicated to you and is
a testament to your love and support. To my beloved niece and nephew, Avalyn
and Brennan, thank you for being so excited about Aunt Nee Nee’s book and
constantly wanting to be a part of the process. Your enthusiasm as I trudged
through archives, and thirst for the stories I uncovered, has made the process all
the sweeter. It is hard to believe that you are the same age as the project and
watching you grow up as the book did has been incredibly special.
The encouragement and assistance I have received from other academics and
friends has been invaluable, both to my development as a scholar as well as to
Consumptive Chic. To my current and former colleagues and wonderful friends,
thank you for your constant advice and support as I navigated academic life and
the ins and outs of publishing. Special thanks must go to Dr. Mark Smith for
your championing of a young scholar and to Dr. Hugh Belsey and Claudia and
Robert Maxtone-Graham for their kind assistance with Mary Graham’s dress.
I am extremely grateful to Dr. James Secord for encouraging this project when
I first stumbled across the idea and words cannot express what the constant
support of Dr. George Bernstein has meant to me. Thank you for taking a chance
on me, not only as your student but also for being willing to back a dissertation
on the strange juxtaposition of fashion and disease. I would also like to thank Dr.
James Boyden and Dr. Alisa Plant who championed this book when it was only
a dissertation proposal. Your friendship and wisdom have been invaluable and
are so appreciated. I have also been the beneficiary of the generosity of so many
archivists, but a special thank you must be given to the wonderful staff of the