only idle, as she always is idle. But love throws a new glory and a new
interest around her indolence. The endless little notes with which she
worries the Post-Office and her friends become suddenly sacred and
mysterious. The silly little prattle hushes into confidential whispers.
Every crush through the season, becomes the scene of a reunion of two
hearts which have been parted for the eternity of twenty-four hours.
Love, in fact, does not in the least change woman's life, or give it new
earnestness or a fresh direction; but it makes it infinitely more
interesting, and it heightens the enjoyment of wasting a day by a new
sense of power. For that brief space of triumph Phyllis is able to make
Corydon waste his day too. The more he writhes and wriggles under the
compulsion, the more lingering looks he casts back on the work he has
quitted, the greater her victory.
He cannot decently confess that he is tired of the little comedy in
which he takes so romantic a part, and certainly his fellow actress will
not help him to the confession. By dint of acting it, indeed, she comes
at last to a certain belief in her _role_. She really imagines herself
to be very busy, to have sacrificed her leisure as well as her heart to
the object of her devotion. She scolds him for his backwardness in not
more thoroughly sacrificing his leisure to her. Work may be very
important to him, but it is of less importance to the self-sacrificing
being who hasn't had one moment to finish the third volume of the last
sensational novel since she plighted her troth to this monster of
ingratitude! Of course a man likes to be flattered, and does as much as
he can in the way of believing in the little comedy too; in fact, it is
all amazingly graceful and entertaining on the one side and on the
other. Our only doubt is whether this graceful and entertaining mode of
interrupting all the serious business of life will not be treated rather
mercilessly by enfranchised woman. How will the enchantment of passion
survive when the object of our adoration can only spare us an hour from
her medical cases, or defers an interview because she is choked with
fresh briefs? One of two results must clearly follow. Either the great
Westminster philosopher is right, and love will play a far less
important part than it has done in human affairs, or else it will
concentrate itself, and take a far more intense and passionate character
than it exhibits now.
We can quite conceive that the very difficulty of the new relations may
give them a new fire and vigor, and that the women of the future,
looking back on the old months of indolent coquetry, may feel a certain
contempt for souls which can fritter away the grandeur of passion as
they fritter away the grandeur of life. But even the gain of passion
will hardly compensate us for the loss of variety. All this playing with
love has a certain pretty independence about it, and leaves woman's
individuality where it found it. Passion must of necessity whirl both
beings, in the unity of a common desire, into one. And so we get back to
the old problem of the monotony of life. But it is just this monotonous
identity to which civilization, politics, and society are all visibly
tending. Railways will tunnel Alps for us, democracy will extinguish
heroes, and raise mankind to a general level of commonplace
respectability; woman's enfranchisement will level the social world, and
leave between sex and sex the difference--even if it leaves that--of a
bonnet.
COSTUME AND ITS MORALS.
Nothing is more decisively indicative of the real value or necessity of
a thing than the fact that, while its presence is hardly noticeable, it
is immediately missed and asked for when it disappears; and it is thus
that the paramount importance of clothing asserts itself by the
conspicuousness of its absence. Of course the first purpose of dress is,
or should be, decency, and for this, quantity rather than quality is
looked for. But, as with the little cloud no larger than a man's hand,
so from the primary fig-leaf or first element of dress, how great things
have arisen! In respect of amplification, dress may be said to have
attained its maximum when men wore ruffs which nearly concealed their
heads, and shoes a quarter of a yard longer than their feet; but
"fashion" has its day, and now dress threatens to dwindle into something
not far from its original or fig-leaf dimensions.
Another perfectly legitimate object of dress is attractiveness, so that
by its aid our persons may be set off to the best advantage; dress
should also be individual and symbolic, so as to indicate clearly the
position and character which we desire to obtain and hold. It is not of
men's attire that we have now to speak; that has been settled for them
by the tailors' strike, which practically ordained that he that was
shabby should be shabby, or even shabbier still, and he that had allowed
himself to be thrust into the straitened trousers and scanty coatee of
last year should continue to exhibit his proportions long after the
grotesqueness of his figure had been recognised even by himself.
But it is of the dress of our women that we are compelled to testify,
and it can hardly be denied that at the present moment it offends
grievously in three particulars. It is inadequate for decency; it lacks
that truthfulness which is, and should be, the base of all that is
attractive and beautiful; and in its symbolism it is in the highest
degree objectionable, for it not only aims at what is unreal and false,
but it simulates that which is positively hateful and meretricious, so
that it is difficult now for even a practised eye to distinguish the
high-born maiden or matron of Belgravia from the Anonymas who haunt the
drive and fill our streets.
This indictment is, it may be said, a severe one; but if we examine, so
far as male critics may venture to do, the costume of a fashionable
woman of the day, it can hardly be said to be unjust. The apparent
object of modern female dress is to assimilate its wearers as nearly as
possible in appearance to women of a certain class--the class to which
it was formerly hardly practicable to allude, and yet be intelligible to
young ladies; but all that is changed, and the habits and customs of the
women of the _demi-monde_ are now studied as if they were indeed
curious, but exceptionally admirable also, and thus a study unseemly and
unprofitable has begotten a spirit of imitation which has achieved a
degrading success.
"Our modest matrons meet," not "to stare the strumpet down," but to
compare notes, to get hints, and to engage in a kind of friendly
rivalry--in short, to pay that homage to Vice, and in a very direct way
too, which Vice is said formerly to have paid to Virtue. Paint and
powder are of course the first requisites for the end in view, and these
adjuncts have to be laid on with such skill as the _debutante_ or her
toilette-maid possesses, which is sometimes so small as to leave their
handiwork disgustingly coarse and apparent.
There are pearl-powder, violet-powder, rouge, bistre for the eyelids,
belladonna for the eyes, whitelead and blacklead, yellow dye and mineral
acids for the hair--all tending to the utter destruction of both hair
and skin. The effect of this "diaphanous" complexion and "aurified" hair
(we borrow the expressions) in a person intended by nature to be dark,
or swarthy, is most comical; sometimes the whitelead is used so
unsparingly that it has quite a blue tint, which glistens until the face
looks more like a death's head anointed with phosphorus and oil for
theatrical purposes than the head of a Christian gentlewoman. It may be
interesting to know, and we have the information from high, because
_soi-disant_ fashionable authority, that the reign of golden locks and
blue-white visages is drawing to a close, and that it is to be followed
by bronze complexions and blue-black hair--_a l'Africaine_ we presume.
When fashionable Madame has, to her own satisfaction, painted and
varnished her face, she then proceeds, like Jezebel, to tire her head,
and, whether she has much hair or little, she fixes on to the back of it
a huge nest of coarse hair generally well baked in order to free it from
the parasites with which it abounded when it first adorned the person of
some Russian or North-German peasant girl. Of course this gives an
unnaturally large and heavy appearance to the cerebellar region; but
nature is not exactly what is aimed at, still less refinement.
If this style be not approved of, there is yet another fashion--namely,
to cut the hair short in a crop, _creper_ it, curl it, frizzle it,
bleach it, burn it, and otherwise torture it until it has about as much
life in it as last year's hay; and then to shampoo it, rumple it, and
tousle it, until the effect is to produce the aspect of a madwoman in
one of her worst fits. This method, less troublesome and costly than the
other, may be considered even more striking, so that it is largely
adopted by a number of persons who are rather disreputable, and poor. As
is well known, not all of the asinine tribe wear asses' ears;
nevertheless some of these votaries of dress find their ears too long,
or too large, or ill-placed, or, what comes to the same thing,
inconveniently placed, but a prettier or better-shaped pair are easily
purchased, admirably moulded in gutta-percha or some other plastic
material; they are delicately colored, fitted up with earrings and a
spring apparatus, and they are then adjusted on to the head, the
despised natural ears being of course carefully hidden from view.
It is long enough since a bonnet meant shelter to the face or protection
to the head; that fragment of a bonnet which at present represents the
head-gear, and which was some years ago worn on the back of the head and
nape of the neck, is now poised on the front, and ornamented with birds,
portions of beasts, reptiles, and insects. We have seen a bonnet
composed of a rose and a couple of feathers, another of two or three
butterflies or as many beads and a bit of lace, and a third represented
by five green leaves joined at the stalks. A white or spotted veil is
thrown over the visage, in order that the adjuncts that properly belong
to the theatre may not be immediately detected in the glare of daylight;
and thus, with diaphanous tinted face, large painted eyes, and
stereotyped smile, the lady goes forth looking much more as if she had
stepped out of the green room of a theatre, or from a Haymarket saloon,
than from an English home.
But it is in evening costume that our women have reached the minimum of
dress and the maximum of brass. We remember a venerable old lady whose
ideas of decorum were such that in her speech all above the foot was
ankle, and all below the chin was chest; but now the female bosom is
less the subject of a revelation than the feature of an exposition, and
charms that were once reserved are now made the common property of every
looker on. A costume which has been described as consisting of a smock,
a waistband, and a frill seems to exceed the bounds of honest
liberality, and resembles most perhaps the attire mentioned by Rabelais,
"nothing before and nothing behind, with sleeves of the same." Not very
long ago two gentlemen were standing together at the Opera. "Did you
ever see anything like that?" inquired one, with a significant glance,
directing the eyes of his companion to the uncovered bust of a lady
immediately below. "Not since I was weaned," was the suggestive reply.
We are not aware whether the speaker was consciously or unconsciously
reproducing a well-known archiepiscopal _mot_.
Though our neighbors are not strait-laced, so far as bathing-costume is
concerned, they are less tolerant of the nude than we are in this
highly-favored land. There was lately a story in one of the French
papers that at a certain ball a lady was requested to leave the room
because a chain of wrought gold, suspended from shoulder to shoulder,
was the sole protection which it seemed to her well to wear on her
bosom. To have made the toilette correspond throughout, the dress should
have consisted of a crinoline skirt, which, though not so ornamental,
would have been not less admirable and more effective.
Of course there are women to whom nature has been niggardly in the
matter of roundness of form, but even these need not despair; if they
cannot show their own busts, they can show something nearly as good,
since we read the following, which we forbear to translate:--"Autre
excentricite. C'est l'invention des _poitrines adherentes_ a l'usage
des dames trop etherees. Il s'agit d'un systeme en caoutchouc rose, qui
s'adapte a la place vide comme une ventouse a, la peau, et qui suit les
mouvements de la respiration avec une precision mathematique et
parfaite."
Of those limbs which it is still forbidden to expose absolutely, the
form and contour can at least be put in relief by insisting on the
skirts being gored and straightened to the utmost; indeed, some of the
riding-habits we have seen worn are in this respect so contrived that,
when viewed from behind, especially when the wearer is not of too
fairy-like proportions, they resemble a pair of tight trousers rather
than the full flowing robe which we remember as so graceful and becoming
to a woman. It will be observed that the general aim of all these
adventitious aids is to give an impression of earth and the fullness
thereof, to appear to have a bigger cerebellum, a more sensuous
development of limb, and a greater abundance of flesh than can be either
natural or true; but we are almost at a loss how to express the next
point of ambition with which the female mind has become inspired.
The women who are not as those who love their lords wish to be--indeed,
as we have heard, those who have no lords of their own to love--have
conceived the notion that, by simulating an "interesting condition" (we
select the phrase accepted as the most delicate), they will add to their
attractions; and for this purpose an article of toilet--an india-rubber
anterior bustle--called the _demi-temps_, has been invented, and is worn
beneath the dress, nominally to make the folds fall properly, but in
reality, as the name betrays, to give the appearance of a woman advanced
in pregnancy.
No person will be found to say that the particular condition, when real,
is unseemly or ridiculous. What it is when assumed, and for such a
purpose--whether it is not all that and something worse--we leave our
readers to decide for themselves. It is said that one distinguished
personage first employed crinoline in order to render more graceful her
appearance while in this situation; but these ladies with their
ridiculous _demi-temps_, without excuse as without shame, travesty
nature in their own persons in a way which a low-comedy actress would be
ashamed to do in a tenth-rate theatre. The name is French, let us hope
the idea is also; and this reminds us of the title of a little piece
lately played in Paris by amateurs for some charitable purpose--_Il n'y
a plus d'enfants._ No; in France they may indeed say, "It is true _il
n'y a plus d'enfants_, but then have we not invented the _demi-temps_?"
And if each separate point of female attire and decoration is a sham, so
the whole is often a deception and a fraud. It is not true that by
taking thought one cannot add a cubit to one's stature, for ladies, by
taking thought about it, do add, if not a cubit, at least considerably,
to their height, which, like almost everything about them, is often
unreal. With high heels, _toupe_, and hat, we may calculate that about
four or five inches are altogether borrowed for the occasion. Thus it
comes to be a grave matter of doubt, when a man marries, how much is
real of the woman who has become his wife, or how much of her is her own
only in the sense that she has bought, and possibly may have paid for
it. To use the words of an old writer, "As with rich furred conies,
their cases are far better than their bodies; and, like the bark of a
cinnamon-tree, which is dearer than the whole bulk, their outward
accoutrements are far more precious than their inward endowments."
Of the wife elect, her bones, her debts, and her caprices may be the
only realities which she can bestow on her husband. All the rest--hair,
teeth, complexion, ears, bosom, figure, including the _demi-temps_--are
alike an imposition and a falsehood. In such case we should recommend,
for the sake of both parties, that during at least the wedding-tour, the
same precautions should be observed as when Louis XV. travelled with
"the unblushing Chateauroux with her bandboxes and rougepots at his
side, so that at every new station a wooden gallery had to be run up
between their lodgings."
It may be said that in all this we are ungenerous and ungrateful, and
that in discussing the costume of women we are touching on a question
which pertains to women more than to men. But is that so? Are we not by
thus exposing what is false, filthy, and meretricious, seeking to lead
what was once dignified by the name of "the fair sex" from a course
alike unbecoming and undignified to one more worthy of the sex and its
attributes? Most men like to please women, and most women like to please
men. For, as has been well said, "Pour plaire aux femmes il faut etre
considere des hommes, et pour etre considere des hommes il faut savoir
plaire aux femmes."
We have a right to suppose that women do not adopt a fashion or a
costume unless they suppose that it will add to their attractions in
general, and possibly also please men in particular. This being so, it
may be well to observe that these fashions do not please or attract men,
for we know they are but the inventions of some vulgar, selfish
_perruquier_ or _modiste_. We may add that if we want to study the nude
we can do so in the sculpture galleries, or among the Tableaux Vivants,
at our ease; and that for well-bred or well-educated and well-born
women, or even for only fashionable and fast women, to approximate in
their manners, habits, and dress to the members of the _demi-monde_ is a
mistake, and a grievous one, if they wish to be really and adequately
appreciated by men whose good opinion, if not more, they would desire to
possess.
THE FADING FLOWER.
If there is any part of man's conduct which proves more conclusively
than another the baseness of his ingratitude, it is his indifference to
the Fading Flower. Woman may well wonder at the charm which prostrates
the heavy Guardsman at the feet of the belle of the season. Even the
most ardent of worshippers at such a shrine must, one would think,
desire in their deity a little more sweetness and light. But the beauty
of eighteen summers is trained to look on worship as simply her due, and
to regard amiability as a mere superfluity. She knows she can summon an
adorer by one beckon of her fan, and dismiss him by another. A bow will
repay the most finished of pretty speeches, and conversation can be
conducted at the least possible expense by the slight trouble of
recollecting who was at Lady A.'s ball, and the yet slighter trouble of
guessing who is likely to be at Lady C.'s.
It is utterly needless to bestow any labor on society when society takes
it as a crowning favor to be suffered simply to adore. There is a
certain grandeur, therefore, of immobility about the English beauty, a
statuesque perfection which no doubt has great merits of its own. But it
must be owned that it is not amusing, and that it is only the intensity
of our worship which saves us from feeling it to be dull. Beauty is apt
to be a little heavy on the stairs. A shade of distress flits over the
loveliest of faces if we stray for a moment beyond the happy
hunting-grounds of the ball-room or the Opera, the last Academy or the
next Horticultural. Beautiful beings are made, they feel, not to amuse,
but to be amused. The one object of their enthusiasm is the "funny
Bishop" who turns a great debate into a jest for the entertainment of
his fair friends in the Ladies' Gallery. The object of their social
preference is the young wit who lounges up to tell his last little
story, and then, without boring them for a reply, lounges away again.
The debt which they owe to society is simply the morning ride which
keeps them blooming through the season. The debt which society owes to
them is that eternal succession of gay nothings which keeps London in a
whirl till the grouse are ready for the sacrifice. In a word, woman in
her earlier stages is simply receptive.
Light and sweetness come in with the Fading Flower. It is when the shy
retreat of the elder sons makes way for the shyer approach of their
younger brothers that woman becomes fragrant and intelligent. The old
indifference quickens into a subdued vivacity; Hermione descends from
her pedestal and warms into flesh and blood. She turns chatty, and her
chat insensibly deepens into conversation. She discovers a new interest
in life and in the last novel of the season. She ventures on the
confines of poetry, and if she does not read Mr. Tennyson's _Lucretius_,
she keeps his photograph in her album. She flings herself with a far
greater ardor into the mysteries of croquet. She has been known to
garden. As petal after petal floats down to earth she becomes artistic.
She reads, she talks Mr. Ruskin. She has her own views on Venice and its
Doges, her enthusiasm over Alps and artisans. The slow approach of
autumn brings her to politics. She is deep in Mr. Disraeli's novels, and
quotes Mr. Gladstone's Homer. She speculates on Charlie's chances for
the county. She knows why the Home Secretary was absent from the last
division. The drop of another petal warns her further afield. She is
manly now; she comes in at breakfast with her hair about her ears, and a
tale of the gallop she has had across country. She takes you over the
farm, and laughs at your ignorance of pigs. She peeps into the
odoriferous sanctum upstairs, and owns to a taste for cigarettes. She is
slightly horsey, and knows to a pound the value of her mare. Another
season, and she is interested in Church questions, and inquires what is
the next "new thing" at St. Andrew's. She adores Lord Shaftesbury, or
works frontals for St. Gogmagog. She collects for the Irish missions, or
misses an _entree_ on Eves. It is only as woman fades that we realize
the versatility, the inexhaustible resources, of woman.
The one scene, however, where the Fading Flower is perhaps seen at her
best is the County Archaeological Meeting. Of all rural delusions this is
perhaps the pleasantest, and if the name is forbidding, the Fading
Flower knows how little there is in a name. About half a dozen old
gentlemen, of course, take the thing in grand earnest. It is beyond
measure amusing to peep over the learned Secretary's shoulder, to see
the gray heads wagging and the spectacles in full play over the list of
promised papers, to watch the carefully planned details, the solemn
array of morning meetings, the grave excursions from abbey to castle,
from castle to church, the graver soirees where Dryasdust revels amidst
armor and knicknackery. It is even more amusing to see the Fading Flower
step in at the close of this learned preparation, and with a woman's
alchemy turn all this dust to gold. A little happy audacity converts the
morning meetings into convenient gatherings for the groups of the day,
the excursion resolves itself into a refined picnic, the learned soiree
becomes a buzzing conversazione.
Those who look forward with interest to woman's entrance into our
Universities may gather something of the results to be expected from
such a step in the fields of rural archaeology. Her very presence at the
meeting throws an air of gentle absurdity over the whole affair. It is
difficult for the driest of antiquaries to read a paper on Roman roads
in the teeth of a charming being who sleeps to the close, and then
awakes only to assure him it was "very romantic." But it must be
confessed that the charming being has very little trouble with the
antiquaries. Half the fun of the thing lies in the ease and grace of her
taming of Dryasdust; the learned Professor dies at her touch into "a
dear delightful old thing," and fetches and carries all day with a
perfect obedience. It is a delightful change from town, a sort of
glorified afternoon in a pastoral Zoological, this junketing among the
queer unclubbable animals of science and history. There is a noble
disdain of rheumatism in the ardor with which they plunge into the dark
and mysterious vaults where their willful student insists, with Mr.
Froude, that those poor monks snatched their damp and difficult slumber;
and there is a noble disdain of truth in their suppression of the
treacherous and unsentimental "beer-cellar" which trembles on their
lips.