Centuries pass by but nothing much really changes

Sep 3 2007 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

THERE is nothing new in this world. The emotional problems of our ancestors remain much the same as those that we contemplate today, even in spite of undreamed-of technological advances. The human race is still hard-wired in the same way as when we were chasing hairy mammoths. Or women. Or men.

Rare editions of John Gough’s guides to male and female behaviour, dating from 1661 and 1694, are being sold at auction this month. They deal with much the same fare as glossy magazines today.

However, what has changed are the remedies. Back in the 17th century, life was that much more earthy. And smelly.

In the manual, The Ladies’ Dictionary: being a General Entertainment for the Fair Sex, we get a host of bizarre and, to us, amusing home remedies to make life and romance that bit easier and more enjoyable. Like the Cosmopolitan magazine of its day, it advises on dating, make-up, diet and broadening the mind. Equally familiar are the many column inches devoted to those other pesky inches, expanding waistline and other unwanted flesh.

It says: “Bodies sometimes fall away in one part, and not in another. If so, to bring your body to even terms: take an ounce and half of Oyl of Foxes, Oyl of Lillies and Capons Grease and Goose Grease, each two ounces, Pine, Rosin, Greek Pitch and Turpentine, of each two ounces, add Virgins-Wax, as much as will stiffen the Mass, apply to the place that Languishes, or does not equally Thrive.”

As complex is the remedy offered for “breasts that hang down or are ponderously large; how to make them plump and round”. Remember, this was a much more difficult world, when signing up for Ten Years Younger and putting yourself in the hands of that scary South African blonde and her plastic surgeons was not an option.

That other great chestnut, what to do on a first date, is also up for discussion. The advice is unequivocal: make him wait. The Dictionary advises on a section headed: “Is it proper for a woman to yield at the first address, though to a man she love?” The practical advice is that wars with the Irish and French have not killed all the good men off. So hang on for a good one to come along.

Keeping up the military theme, it rather quaintly adds: “You will get better Conditions if the Enemy does not know how weak you are within. Forgive, ladies the Warlike Gibberish.”

Neither does the dictionary have any truck with make-up: “A painted face is enough to destroy the reputation of her that uses it.”

Crash dieting and deliberate starvation to achieve a fashionable figure are also given short-shrift: “Bodies that are very Lean and Scragged, we must own, cannot be very Comely: It is the contrary Extream to Corpulency and the Parties Face always seems to carry Lent in it.”

Chatting up ladies back in Restoration times was a world in which any lads’ mag advice columnist would thrive. According to John Gough, bosoms were an ideal conversation opener with “ladies and gentlewomen”. Just have your poetic similes and metaphors ready, saying “her breasts are twins where Lillies grow” or “two Ivory balls of listing pleasure”. In the unlikely event of a man in such a situation getting bored of talking about breasts, he can move onto the neck, telling a maiden hers is like “polisht Ivory, white as the Silver Dove”.

As with all these manuals, you often wonder how one person can be such an authority on so much. Mr Gough is no exception. We shouldn’t sleep on our backs as “it causes deafness, disturbs the front part of the brain and procures the night mare”.

But it’s always useful to have ideas about why women are more pleasure bent, apparently because “men being of a better temper are dryer and stronger”.

And why are women “more craftily revengeful than men”? It’s by reason “of the weaknesse of their natures; what they cannot do by force, they maintain by subtility.”

Has nothing changed? Discuss.

peter.elson@dailypost.co.uk