Waiting and Mad, by Charles Marion Russell (1899)

 

A real look into the internal workings of the mind of Charlie Russell, Cowboy Artist Extraordinaire, with this witty and wonderful picture, Waiting and Mad (1899).

People who have known me for some time have surely heard me say, “I’ve been married for 33 years and I’ve spent 27 of them waiting.”  As someone who regularly waits by the door, waits by the shower and waits in the car while my Much Better Half does whatever it is that he’s doing, the feeling in this picture is very familiar.  And I’m sure the look on my face is much the same.

Just to be upfront about it – I love this picture.   Though Charlie was merely a capable draughtsman of the human form, every detail of this picture speaks volumes.

The story is clear from the surroundings and the look of … sultry disgust on the Indian woman’s face.  Here is a beautiful and sexualized woman – notice the nearly exposed breast and the provocative curve of hip.  Her pallet is ready for company, but the fire in the foreground has grown cold (a witty joke), the dinner bowl is now empty, and the long pipe is cast aside and unused (ditto).  Like the wispy smoke from the dead fire, there is only a dissipating trace of something that was once hot.

Most delicious of all is the look on her face: a mixture of disappointment, fury, resignation and bored familiarity.  One has the distinct impression that this has happened before, and will probably happen again in the future.  And she knows it.

So … why do I like this painting so much?  Mainly because Charlie’s views on humanity were much smarter and commonsensical than the ways we are taught to think today.  Charlie knew many Native Americans in his time in the West, and genuinely liked them.  He was one of nature’s democrats – he judged people as individuals, and knew that, as groups, people are more alike than they are different.

Today, we are taught that our differences matter more than our similarities, and that our cultural peculiarities are some sacred carapace that protect us from being more like one another.  Charlie would’ve thought we were crazy (and I’m with Charlie).  This picture works so well because Charlie was able to capture the look of everyone who has ever waited for their wife or husband to show up.  It would be the same picture if the woman was in an Asian setting, or a Middle-European one, or in a contemporary American home: and that is Charlie’s point.  We’re all people, and we’re all more alike than we are different. 

 

I love this picture! What do you think of it?

THE HOURGLASS FIGURE - Meg Mims

Looking back on history, it's amazing to see how fashions have changed so fast and so drastically in a hundred years. What was it like as a young girl in Victorian times? They dressed similar to their mothers, except for hair allowed to flow freely, in braids, or held a la Alice in Wonderland with a headband. And skirts were only to the knee. They were educated to various degrees depending on their social class, learning flower arranging, dancing, embroidery, or cooking, sewing, and keeping house depending on social class.

John George Brown - 1888

In the Victorian age, hourglass figures were all the rage. Mothers put their girls in corsets even during early childhood to train their posture; once they reached puberty, the waist was trained further. Why all the hoopla over a woman's "figure"? What better way to establish her future marriage eligibility? It was an outward physical sign of readiness. When teen girls put their hair up and lowered their skirts, the game was on - and heaven help a spinster.

Teenage Girl in Massachusetts

Ladies in the upper and middle classes had nothing else to hope for except as a wife to a prosperous husband. Even after the turn of the twentieth century, middle class women who worked as typists or office girls stopped working (outside the home, of course!) after marriage. Becoming a wife meant raising children and keeping house for middle class women, and upper class women had the luxury of servants - nannies, maids, etc. Lucky them. For some women, their "figure" became their "fortune" - for those depending on their beauty to gain a stage career. Voluptuousness in the right places meant a lot.

One case in point - Anna Held.

Anna's 18-inch waist

Helene Anna Held, aka Anna Held, was born in 1872 in Warsaw, Poland - which was at the time part of the Russian Empire. Her parents, a German-Jewish glove maker and a French-Jewish wife, fled to Paris nine years later in 1881. Of their eleven children, only Anna survived - and began singing on the streets to make a few pennies. When her father died, Anna and her mother moved to England. Anna soon chose to go on stage.

15-year-old Anna and her mother

She returned to Paris as a young woman. Her popularity rose due to her beauty, boldness, willingness to show her legs, flirtatious manners, and suggestive songs. Anna is counted among the top of the Victorian beauties of her day,  including Lily Langtry, Lillian Russell, and Lotta Crabtree.

Anna showing a shapely leg

Anna was also one of the first women to ride a bicycle, and ooh-la-la! did she make a splash.

  

Showing a little more leg

While Anna appeared on stage in 1896, at London's Palace Music Hall, Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., saw her perform and offered her an exorbitant salary of $1500 a week, enormous for the era. Anna floated off to Broadway, leaving behind an older husband and a daughter. "Flo" kept her in the public eye and popular with audiences by clever promotional schemes - that Anna bathed in milk and had several ribs removed to achieve that incredibly tiny waist.

Anna and Flo in happier times, 1905

Anna and Flo became common-law spouses during this time. She could not perform in his new 1909 Follies show due to pregnancy, but had an abortion. Ziegfeld soon left Anna for another actress and then ended up marrying the actress Billie Burke in 1914 (Glinda the good witch in The Wizard of Oz.) But both Anna and Flo benefited by their partnership in New York City.

Anna and her famous figure

By the time Word War I began, Anna's fortune had added up to the millions. During the war, fashions and figures changed and the slim silhouette dominated. Just look at the difference in the corsets from 1870 to 1920.

Thirty Year Change in Corsets

Also bringing about change - the suffrage movement, the war's demands for fabric and food, and the 1920s flapper era. But ladies never truly tossed out their "foundations" until the late 1960s.

Flappers in 1920s

With a few exceptions, such as Marilyn Monroe and the Barbie doll, so much for the hourglass figure!

Reference Sources:

Famous People Profiles - Anna Held
The Cabinet Card Gallery
John George Brown - American Painter
Fashion News for 1905
Flappers on Pinterest
Undergarments on Pinterest

Mystery author Meg Mims earned a Spur Award from WWA and also a Laramie award for her western historical mystery series, Double Crossing (still 99c!) and Double or Nothing. Meg -- also one-half of the writing team of D.E. Ireland for Agatha-Award nominated mystery series featuring Eliza Doolittle & Henry Higgins for Minotaur books -- lives in Southeastern Michigan with her husband and a sweet Malti-poo. She loves reading and writing novels, novellas and short stories, both contemporary and historical.

Meg's novellas - Santa Paws  Santa Claws  Home for the Holidays

Love My Fair Lady? Click here for the Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins series!