(Coryat, _Crudities_, 1611. The fashion of _decollete_
garments, it may be remarked, only began in the fourteenth
century; previously, the women of Europe generally covered
themselves up to the neck.)
In Northern Italy, some years ago, a fire occurred at night in a
house in which two girls were sleeping, naked, according to the
custom. One threw herself out and was saved, the other returned
for a garment, and was burnt to death. The narrator of the
incident [a man] expressed strong approval of the more modest
girl's action. (Private communication.) It may be added that the
custom of sleeping naked is still preserved, also (according to
Lippert and Stratz), in Jutland, in Iceland, in some parts of
Norway, and sometimes even in Berlin.
Lady Mary Wortley Montague writes in 1717, of the Turkish ladies
at the baths at Sophia: "The first sofas were covered with
cushions and rich carpets, on which sat the ladies, and on the
second, their slaves behind them, but without any distinction of
rank in their dress, all being in a state of Nature; that is, in
plain English, stark naked, without any beauty or defect
concealed. Yet there was not the least wanton smile or immodest
gesture among them. They walked and moved with the same majestic
grace which Milton describes of our general mother. I am here
convinced of the truth of a reflection I had often made, that if
it was the fashion to go naked, the face would be hardly
observed.
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