more than historical, they are autobiographical. They tell their
story in broad outlines and in minute detail. Was it for nothing that
Charles the First devised that rich and sombre costume of black and
white from which he never sought relief? Was it for nothing that
Garibaldi wore a red shirt, and Napoleon an old grey coat? In proof
that these things stood for character and destiny, we have but to
look at the resolute but futile attempt which Charles the Second made
to follow his father's lead, to express something beyond a
fluctuating fashion in his dress. In 1666 he announced to his
Council--which was, we trust, gratified by the intelligence--that
he intended to wear one unaltered costume for the rest of his days.
A month later he donned this costume, the distinguishing features
of which were a long, close-fitting, black waistcoat, pinked with
white, a loose embroidered surtout, and buskins. The court followed
his example, and Charles not unnaturally complained that so many
black and white waistcoats made him feel as though he were surrounded
by magpies. So the white pinking was discarded, and plain black
velvet waistcoats substituted. These were neither very gay, nor very
becoming to a swarthy monarch; and the never-to-be-altered costume
lasted less than two years, to the great relief of the courtiers,
especially of those who had risked betting with the king himself on
its speedy disappearance. Expressing nothing but a caprice, it had
the futility and the impermanence of all caprices.
Within the last century, men have gradually, and it would seem
permanently, abandoned the effort to reveal their personality in
dress. They have allowed themselves to be committed for life to a
costume of ruthless utilitarianism, which takes no count of physical
beauty, or of its just display. Comfort, convenience, and sanitation
have conspired to establish a rigidity of rule never seen before,
to which men yield a docile and lamblike obedience. Robert Burton's
axiom, "Nothing sooner dejects a man than clothes out of fashion,"
is as true now as it was three hundred years ago. Fashion sways the
shape of a collar, and the infinitesimal gradations of a hat-brim;
but the sense of fitness, and the power of interpreting life, which
ennobled fashion in Burton's day, have disappeared in an enforced
monotony.
Men take a strange perverted pride in this mournful sameness of
attire,--delight in wearing a hat like every other man's hat, are
content that it should be a perfected miracle of ugliness, that it
should be hot, that it should be heavy, that it should be disfiguring,
if only they can make sure of seeing fifty, or a hundred and fifty,
other hats exactly like it on their way downtown. So absolute is this
uniformity that the late Marquess of Ailesbury bore all his life a
reputation for eccentricity, which seems to have had no other
foundation than the fact of his wearing hats, or rather a hat, of
distinctive shape, chosen with reference to his own head rather than
to the heads of some odd millions of fellow citizens. The story is
told of his standing bare-headed in a hatter's shop, awaiting the
return of a salesman who had carried off his own beloved head-gear,
when a shortsighted bishop entered, and, not recognizing the peer,
took him for an assistant, and handed him _his_ hat, asking him if
he had any exactly like it. Lord Ailesbury turned the bishop's hat
over and over, examined it carefully inside and out, and gave it back
again. "No," he said, "I haven't, and I'll be damned if I'd wear it,
if I had."
Even before the establishment of the invincible despotism which
clothes the gentlemen of Christendom in a livery, we find the
masculine mind disposed to severity in the ruling of fashions. Steele,
for example, tells us the shocking story of an English gentleman who
would persist in wearing a broad belt with a hanger, instead of the
light sword then carried by men of rank, although in other respects
he was a "perfectly well-bred person." Steele naturally regarded
this acquaintance with deep suspicion, which was justified when,
twenty-two years afterwards, the innovator married his cook-maid.
"Others were amazed at this," writes the essayist, "but I must
confess that I was not. I had always known that his deviation from
the costume of a gentleman indicated an ill-balanced mind."
Now the adoption of a rigorous and monotonous utilitarianism in
masculine attire has had two unlovely results. In the first place,
men, since they ceased to covet beautiful clothes for themselves,
have wasted much valuable time in counselling and censuring women;
and, in the second place, there has come, with the loss of their fine
trappings, a corresponding loss of illusions on the part of the women
who look at them. Black broadcloth and derby hats are calculated to
destroy the most robust illusions in Christendom; and men--from
motives hard to fathom--have refused to retain in their wardrobes
a single article which can amend an imperfect ideal. This does not
imply that women fail to value friends in black broadcloth, nor that
they refuse their affections to lovers and husbands in derby hats.
Nature is not to be balked by such impediments. But as long as men
wore costumes which interpreted their strength, enhanced their
persuasiveness, and concealed their shortcomings, women accepted
their dominance without demur. They made no idle claim to equality
with creatures, not only bigger and stronger, not only more capable
and more resolute, not only wiser and more experienced, but more
noble and distinguished in appearance than they were themselves.
What if the assertive attitude of the modern woman, her easy
arrogance, and the confidence she places in her own untried powers,
may be accounted for by the dispiriting clothes which men have
determined to wear, and the wearing of which may have cost them no
small portion of their authority?
The whole attitude of women in this regard is fraught with
significance. Men have rashly discarded those details of costume
which enhanced their comeliness and charm (we have but to look at
Van Dyck's portraits to see how much rare distinction is traceable
to subdued elegance of dress); but women have never through the long
centuries laid aside the pleasant duty of self-adornment. They dare
not if they would,--too much is at stake; and they experience the
just delight which comes from cooperation with a natural law. The
flexibility of their dress gives them every opportunity to modify,
to enhance, to reveal, and to conceal. It is in the highest degree
interpretative, and through it they express their aspirations and
ideals, their thirst for combat and their realization of defeat,
their fluctuating sentiments and their permanent predispositions.
"A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat;
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility."
Naturally, in a matter so vital, they are not disposed to listen to
reason, and they cannot be argued out of a great fundamental instinct.
Women are constitutionally incapable of being influenced by
argument,--a limitation which is in the nature of a safeguard. The
cunning words in which M. Marcel Provost urges them to follow the
example of men, sounds, to their ears, a little like the words in
which the fox which had lost its tail counsels its fellow foxes to
rid themselves of so despicable an appendage. "Before the
Revolution," writes M. Provost, in his "Lettres a Francois," "the
clothes worn by men of quality were more costly than those worn by
women. To-day all men dress with such uniformity that a Huron,
transported to Paris or to London, could not distinguish master from
valet. This will assuredly be the fate of feminine toilets in a future
more or less near. The time must come when the varying costumes now
seen at balls, at the races, at the theatre, will all be swept away;
and in their place women will wear, as men do, a species of uniform.
There will be a 'woman's suit,' costing sixty francs at Batignolles,
and five hundred francs in the rue de la Paix; and, this reform once
accomplished, it will never be possible to return to old conditions.
Reason will have triumphed."
Perhaps! But reason has been routed so often from the field that one
no longer feels confident of her success. M. Baudrillart had a world
of reason on his side when, before the Chamber of Deputies, he urged
reform in dress, and the legal suppression of jewels and costly
fabrics. M. de Lavaleye, the Belgian statist, was fortified by reason
when he proposed his grey serge uniform for women of all classes.
If we turn back a page or two of history, and look at the failure
of the sumptuary laws in England, we find the wives of London
tradesmen, who were not permitted to wear velvet in public, lining
their grogram gowns with this costly fabric, for the mere pleasure
of possession, for the meaningless--and most unreasonable--joy of
expenditure. And when Queen Elizabeth, who considered extravagance
in dress to be a royal prerogative, attempted to coerce the ladies
of her court into simplicity, the Countess of Shrewsbury comments
with ill-concealed irony on the result of such reasonable endeavours.
"How often hath her majestie, with the grave advice of her honourable
Councell, sette down the limits of apparell of every degree; and how
soon again hath the pride of our harts overflown the chanell."
There are two classes of critics who still waste their vital forces
in a futile attempt to reform feminine dress. The first class cherish
artistic sensibilities which are grievously wounded by the caprices
of fashion. They anathematize a civilization which tolerates
ear-rings, or feathered hats, or artificial flowers. They appear to
suffer vicarious torments from high-heeled shoes, spotted veils, and
stays. They have occasional doubts as to the moral influence of
ball-dresses. An unusually sanguine writer of this order has assured
us, in the pages of the "Contemporary Review," that when women once
assume their civic responsibilities, they will dress as austerely
as men. The first fruits of the suffrage will be seen in sober and
virtue-compelling gowns at the opera.
The second class of critics is made up of economists, who believe
that too much of the world's earnings is spent upon clothes, and that
this universal spirit of extravagance retards marriage, and blocks
the progress of the race. It is in an ignoble effort to pacify these
last censors that women writers undertake to tell their women readers,
in the pages of women's periodicals, how to dress on sums of
incredible insufficiency. Such misleading guides would be harmless,
and even in their way amusing, if nobody believed them; but unhappily
somebody always does believe them, and that somebody is too often
a married man. There is no measure to the credulity of the average
semi-educated man when confronted by a printed page (print carries
such authority in his eyes), and with rows of figures, all showing
conclusively that two and two make three, and that with economy and
good management they can be reduced to one and a half. He has never
mastered, and apparently never will master, the exact shade of
difference between a statement and a fact.
Women are, under most circumstances, even more readily deceived; but,
in the matter of dress, they have walked the thorny paths of
experience. They know the cruel cost of everything they wear,--a cost
which in this country is artificially maintained by a high protective
tariff,--and they are not to be cajoled by that delusive word
"simplicity," being too well aware that it is, when synonymous with
good taste, the consummate success of artists, and the crowning
achievement of wealth. Some years ago there appeared in one of the
English magazines an article entitled, "How to Dress on Thirty Pounds
a Year. As a Lady. By a Lady." Whereupon "Punch" offered the following
light-minded amendment: "How to Dress on Nothing a Year. As a Kaffir.
By a Kaffir." At least a practical proposition.
Mr. Henry James has written some charming paragraphs on the symbolic
value of clothes, as illustrated by the costumes worn by the French
actresses of the Comedie,--women to whose unerring taste dress
affords an expression of fine dramatic quality. He describes with
enthusiasm the appearance of Madame Nathalie, when playing the part
of an elderly provincial bourgeoise in a curtain-lifter called "Le
Village."
"It was the quiet felicity of the old lady's dress that used to charm
me. She wore a large black silk mantilla of a peculiar cut, which
looked as if she had just taken it tenderly out of some old wardrobe
where it lay folded in lavender, and a large dark bonnet, adorned
with handsome black silk loops and bows. The extreme suggestiveness,
and yet the taste and temperateness of this costume, seemed to me
inimitable. The bonnet alone, with its handsome, decent, virtuous
bows, was worth coming to see."
If we compare this "quiet felicity" of the artist with the absurd
travesties worn on our American stage, we can better understand the
pleasure which filled Mr. James's heart. What, for example, would
Madame Nathalie have thought of the modish gowns which Mrs. Fiske
introduces into the middle-class Norwegian life of Ibsen's dramas?
No plays can less well bear such inaccuracies, because they depend
on their stage-setting to bring before our eyes their alien aspect,
to make us feel an atmosphere with which we are wholly unfamiliar.
The accessories are few, but of supreme importance; and it is
inconceivable that a keenly intelligent actress like Mrs. Fiske
should sacrifice _vraisemblance_ to a meaningless refinement. In the
second act of "Rosmersholm," to take a single instance, the text
calls for a morning wrapper, a thing so manifestly careless and
informal that the school-master, Kroll, is scandalized at seeing
Rebecca in it, and says so plainly. But as Mrs. Fiske plays the scene
in a tea-gown of elaborate elegance, in which she might with
propriety have received the Archbishop of Canterbury, Kroll's
studied apologies for intruding upon her before she has had time to
dress, and the whole suggestion of undue intimacy between Rebecca
and Rosmer, which Ibsen meant to convey, is irrevocably lost. And
to weaken a situation for the sake of being prettily dressed would
be impossible to a French actress, trained in the delicacies of her
art.
If the feeling for clothes, the sense of their correspondence with
time and place, with public enthusiasms and with private
sensibilities, has always belonged to France, it was a no less
dominant note in Italy during the two hundred years in which she
eclipsed and bewildered the rest of Christendom; and it bore fruit
in those great historic wardrobes which the Italian chroniclers
describe with loving minuteness. We know all about Isabella d' Este's
gowns, as if she had worn them yesterday. We know all about the jewels
which were the assertion of her husband's pride in times of peace,
and his security with the Lombard bankers in times of war. We know
what costumes the young Beatrice d' Este carried with her on her
mission to Venice, and how favourably they impressed the grave
Venetian Senate. We can count the shifts in Lucretia Borgia's
trousseau, when that much-slandered woman became Duchess of Ferrara,
and we can reckon the cost of the gold fringe which hung from her
linen sleeves. We are told which of her robes was wrought with fish
scales, and which with interlacing leaves, and which with a hem of
pure and flame-like gold. Ambassadors described in state papers her
green velvet cap with its golden ornaments, and the emerald she wore
on her forehead, and the black ribbon which tied her beautiful fair
hair.
These vanities harmonized with character and circumstance. The joy
of living was then expressing itself in an overwhelming sense of
beauty, and in material splendour which, unlike the material
splendour of to-day, never overstepped the standard set by the
intellect. Taste had become a triumphant principle, and as women grew
in dignity and importance, they set a higher and higher value on the
compelling power of dress. They had no more doubt on this score than
had wise Homer when he hung the necklaces around Aphrodite's tender
neck before she was well out of the sea, winding them row after row
in as many circles as there are stars clustering about the moon. No
more doubt than had the fair and virtuous Countess of Salisbury, who,
so Froissart tells us, chilled the lawless passion of Edward the
Third by the simple expedient of wearing unbefitting clothes. Saint
Lucy, under somewhat similar circumstances, felt it necessary to put
out her beautiful eyes; but Katharine of Salisbury knew men better
than the saint knew them. She shamed her loveliness by going to
Edward's banquet looking like a rustic, and found herself in
consequence very comfortably free from royal attentions.
In the wise old days when men outshone their consorts, we find their
hearts set discerningly on one supreme extravagance. Lace, the most
artistic fabric that taste and ingenuity have devised, "the fine web
which feeds the pride of the world," was for centuries the delight
of every well-dressed gentleman. We know not by what marital cajolery
Mr. Pepys persuaded Mrs. Pepys to give him the lace from her best
petticoat, "that she had when I married her"; but we do know that
he used it to trim a new coat; and that he subsequently noted down
in his diary one simple, serious, and heartfelt resolution, which
we feel sure was faithfully kept: "Henceforth I am determined my
chief expense shall be in lace bands." Charles the Second paid
fifteen pounds apiece for his lace-trimmed night-caps; William the
Third, five hundred pounds for a set of lace-trimmed night-shirts;
and Cinq-Mars, the favourite of Louis the Thirteenth, who was
beheaded when he was barely twenty-two, found time in his short life
to acquire three hundred sets of lace ruffles. The lace collars of
Van Dyck's portraits, the lace cravats which Grahame of Claverhouse
and Montrose wear over their armour, are subtly suggestive of the
strength that lies in delicacy. The fighting qualities of
Claverhouse were not less effective because of those soft folds of
lace and linen. The death of Montrose was no less noble because he
went to the scaffold in scarlet and fine linen, with "stockings of
incarnate silk, and roses on his shoon." Once Carlyle was disparaging
Montrose, as (being in a denunciatory mood) he would have disparaged
the Archangel Michael; and, finding his hearers disposed to disagree
with him, asked bitterly: "What did Montrose do anyway?" Whereupon
Irving retorted: "He put on a clean shirt to be hanged in, and that
is more than you, Carlyle, would ever have done in his place."
It was the association of the scaffold with an ignoble victim which
banished black satin from the London world. Because a foul-hearted
murderess[2] elected to be hanged in this material, Englishwomen
refused for years to wear it, and many bales of black satin languished
on the drapers' shelves,--a memorable instance of the significance
which attaches itself to dress. The caprices of fashion do more than
illustrate a woman's capacity or incapacity for selection. They
mirror her inward refinements, and symbolize those feminine virtues
and vanities which are so closely akin as to be occasionally
undistinguishable.
[Footnote 2: Mrs. Manning.]
"A saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn,"
mocked Pope; and woman smiles at the satire, knowing more about the
matter than Pope could ever have known, and seeing a little sparkle
of truth glimmering beneath the gibe. Fashion fluctuates from one
charming absurdity to another, and each in turn is welcomed and
dismissed; through each in turn woman endeavours to reveal her own
elusive personality. Poets no longer praise With Herrick the brave
vibrations of her petticoats. Ambassadors no longer describe her
caps and ribbons in their official documents. Novelists no longer
devote twenty pages, as did the admirable Richardson, to the wedding
finery of their heroines. Men have ceased to be vitally interested
in dress, but none the less are they sensitive to its influence and
enslaved by its results; while women, preserving through the
centuries the great traditions of their sex, still rate at its utmost
value the prize for which Eve sold her freehold in the Garden of
Paradise.
"The Greatest of These is Charity"
_Mrs. James Gordon Harrington Balderston to Mrs. Lapham Shepherd_
MY DEAR MRS. SHEPHERD,
Will you pardon me for this base encroachment on your time? Busy women
are the only ones who ever _have_ any time, so the rest of the world
is forced to steal from them. And then all that you organize is so
successful that every one turns naturally to you for advice and
assistance, as I am turning now. A really charming woman, a Miss
Alexandrina Ramsay, who has lived for years in Italy, is anxious to
give a series of lectures on Dante. I am sure they will be interesting,
for she can put so much local colour into them, and I understand she
is a fluent Italian scholar. Her uncle was the English Consul in
Florence or Naples, I don't remember which, so she has had unusual
opportunities for study; and her grandfather was Dr. Alexander
Ramsay, who wrote a history of the Hebrides. Unfortunately her voice
is not very strong, so she would be heard to the best advantage in
a drawing-room. I am wondering whether you would consent to lend
yours, which is so beautiful, or whether you could put Miss Ramsay
in touch with the Century Club, or the Spalding School. You will find
her attractive, I am sure. The Penhursts knew her well in Munich,
and have given her a letter to me.
Pray allow me to congratulate you on your new honours as a grandmother.
I trust that both your daughter and the baby are well.
Very sincerely yours,
IRENE BALDERSTON.
I forgot to tell you that Miss Ramsay's lectures are on
Dante, the Lover.
Dante, the Poet.
Dante, the Patriot.
Dante, the Reformer.
There was a fifth on Dante, the Prophet, but I persuaded her to leave
it out of the course.
I. B.
_Mrs. Lapham Shepherd to Mrs. Wilfred Ward Hamilton_
DEAR MRS. HAMILTON,--
Mrs. James Balderston has asked me to do what I can for a Miss
Alexandrina Ramsay (granddaughter of the historian), who wants to
give four lectures on Dante in Philadelphia. She has chopped him up
into poet, prophet, lover, etc. I cannot have any lectures or
readings in my house this winter. Jane is still far from strong, and
we shall probably go South after Christmas. Please don't let me put
any burden on your shoulders; but if Dr. Hamilton could persuade
those nice Quakers at Swarthmore that there is nothing so educational
as a course of Dante, it would be the best possible opening for Miss
Ramsay. Mrs. Balderston seems to think her voice would not carry in
a large room, but as students never listen to anybody, this would
make very little difference. The Century Club has been suggested,
but I fancy the classes there have been arranged for the season. There
are preparatory schools, aren't there, at Swarthmore, which need to
know about Dante? Or would there be any chance at all at Miss
Irington's?
Miss Ramsay has been to see me, and I feel sorry for the girl. Her
uncle was the English Consul at Milan, and the poor thing loved Italy
(who doesn't!), and hated to leave it. I wish she could establish
herself as a lecturer, though there is nothing I detest more ardently
than lectures.
I missed you sorely at the meeting of the Aubrey Home house-committee
yesterday. Harriet Maline and Mrs. Percy Brown had a battle royal
over the laying of the new water-pipes, and over _my_ prostrate body,
which still aches from the contest. I wish Harriet would resign. She
is the only creature I have ever known, except the Bate's parrot and
my present cook, who is perpetually out of temper. If she were not
my husband's stepmother's niece, I am sure I could stand up to her
better.
Cordially yours,
ALICE LEIGH SHEPHERD.
_Mrs. Wilfred Ward Hamilton to Miss Violet Wray_
DEAR VIOLET,--
You know Margaret Irington better than I do. Do you think she would
like to have a course of Dante in her school this winter? A very clever
and charming woman, a Miss Alexandrina Ramsay, has four lectures on
the poet which she is anxious to give before schools, or clubs, or--if
she can--in private houses. I have promised Mrs. Shepherd to do
anything in my power to help her. It occurred to me that the
Contemporary Club might like to have one of the lectures, and you
are on the committee. That would be the making of Miss Ramsay, if
only she could be heard in that huge Clover Room. I understand she
has a pleasant cultivated voice, but is not accustomed to public
speaking. There must be plenty of smaller clubs at Bryn Mawr, or
Haverford, or Chestnut Hill, for which she would be just the thing.
Her grandfather wrote a history of England, and I have a vague
impression that I studied it at school. I should write to the Drexel
Institute, but don't know anybody connected with it. Do you? It would
be a real kindness to give Miss Ramsay a start, and I know you do
not begrudge trouble in a good cause. You did such wonders for
Fraulein Breitenbach last winter.
Love to your mother,
Affectionately yours,
HANNAH GALE HAMILTON.
_Miss Violet Wray to Mrs. J. Lockwood Smith_
DEAR ANN,--