_Dress.--My Light-Grey Trousers create a Sensation in a
Pennsylvanian Town.--Women's Dress.--Style and
Distinction.--Bonnets fit to Frighten a Choctaw.--Dress at
the Theatre.--Ball Toilettes.--Draw a Veil over the Past,
Ladies.--The Frogs and the Oxen.--Interest and Capital.--Dogs
with Gold-filled Teeth.--Vulgarity._
In America, gentlemen's dress is plain, even severe: a high hat, black
coat, dark trousers. Fancy cloth is little used, even in travelling.
I remember well the sensation I created with a pair of light-grey
trousers in a small Pennsylvanian town. Everyone seemed to look at me as
if I had been a strange animal; in the hotel the waitresses nudged one
another, and scarcely repressed a giggle; and the street-urchins
followed me as if I had been a member of the Sioux tribe in national
costume. The day after my arrival, one of the local papers announced
that "a Frenchman had landed in the town the day before in white
trousers, and that his popularity had been as prompt as decisive."
With evening dress, the American gentleman wears no jewellery of any
sort; even the watch-chain is generally invisible. Simplicity, rather
severity, in dress is a mark of distinction in a man, and the American
gentleman is no exception to the rule. This simplicity in the dress of
the men serves to throw up the brilliant attire of the women.
American ladies dress very well, as a rule; but there are a great number
who cover themselves with furbelows and jewels, and, so long as each
item is costly, trouble themselves little about the general effect. The
tailor-made gown is worn in New York, as in Paris; but there is a
proportion of women, even among the cultivated classes, who have the
most sovereign contempt for all that is not silk, satin, or velvet. On
board the _Germanic_ we had two American ladies making the journey from
Liverpool to New York in silk dresses, one a _moire_! They were known to
belong to good society.
Yes, in the large cities they dress well; but they lack the simplicity
of style which the Princess of Wales has so happily inculcated in the
Englishwomen who surround her. American women have plenty of style of
their own, and have certainly also a great deal of distinction and
grace; but they always look dressed for conquest. It is well to be it,
but not well to show it. They are apt to laugh at the toilette of
Englishwomen, and model their own dress more on French lines. For my
part, I think that nothing can surpass a fresh young English girl in a
cotton dress and simple straw hat.
The fashionable headgear, during my sojourn in the States, was a high,
narrow construction, perched on the top of the head, and surmounted with
feathers. At a certain distance it gave its wearer the look of an irate
cockatoo. These monuments looked very heavy and difficult to maintain
in equilibrium, and the ladies wearing them walked like grenadiers in
busbies. There are French milliners in New York, I believe. Dr. Oliver
Wendell Holmes pretends that they deteriorate on American soil. I
remember we got upon this subject during a pleasant chat about his early
days in Paris, and he said, "By the time a French milliner has been six
months in New York, she will make a bonnet to frighten a Choctaw
Indian."
At the theatre, women wear silk, which prevents one from hearing, and
hats a foot high, which prevent one from seeing.
An American was once asked what a play--which he might have _seen_--was
like. "Very much like the back of ladies' bonnets," he answered.
Boston ladies are an exception to the general rule. They are a great
deal more English in style, eschew show and glitter, and wear diamonds
very sparingly, even in the evening.
But the most striking contrast may be seen by going straight from New
York or Chicago to Canada. "Here we are in England once more," I
thought, as I looked at a bevy of Canadian girls disporting themselves
at an afternoon dance in Montreal. Half-a-dozen New York women would
have had on the worth of all the fifty or sixty toilettes in the room.
I fell to talking with a Canadian of the New York belles, their
extravagant elegance, and their feverish love of society turmoil.
"Yes," said he, "they are very smart; with them it is paint and
feathers, and _hooray!_ all the time."
I was told that the Marchioness of Lorne, during her residence in
Canada, had set the example of the greatest simplicity in dress.
* * * * *
American ball-toilettes are ravishing. Here the diamonds are in place. I
do not know any gayer, more intoxicating sight than an American
ballroom. The display of luxury is on a gigantic scale. The walls are
covered with flowers, the rooms artistically lighted, the dancing
animated, and the true spirit of gaiety everywhere visible. The young
women are ideal in beauty and brilliancy; and if it were not for the
atmosphere, which is hot enough to hatch silkworms, you would pass the
evening in an ecstacy of enjoyment.
Low-necked dresses are much worn by American women, not only at balls
and dinners, but at their afternoon receptions. It seems very odd to us
Europeans to see a lady in a low-necked ball-dress, at four in the
afternoon, receiving her friends, who are habited in ordinary visiting
toilettes or tailor-made gowns. I should not have said "ordinary," as
there is nothing ordinary in America, especially in the way of women's
dress. In France, a hostess seeks to make show of simplicity in her
reception toilettes, so as to be likely to eclipse no one in her own
house.
Low dresses are universal in America; old ladies vieing with young in
the display of neck and shoulders. It is true, the Americans are not
peculiar in this. Many times, in a European ballroom, have I longed to
exclaim:
"Ladies, throw a veil over the past, I pray you."
* * * * *
You may see some wonderful costumes in the streets of the large towns,
disguises rather than dresses. The well-bred woman wears quiet colours
on the street, but the other wears loud ones. I have seen dresses of an
orange terra-cotta shade trimmed with huge bands of bright green velvet;
costumes of violet plush worn with sky-blue hats, and other atrocities
enough to make one's eyes cry for mercy. Violet and blue! Oh, Oscar
Wilde! I thought you had been in America.
The wives of men with middle-class incomes imitate the luxury of the
millionaire's wife. I expected to find it so: in a Democratic country
the frogs all try to swell into oxen. They puff themselves out until
they burst; or, rather, until their husbands burst.
In France always, and in England when he will let her, a wife keeps an
eye on her husband's interests. In America, she often lays hands on his
capital.
* * * * *
It must be said that vulgarity is not the monopoly of the middle-class
woman in America. I extract the following from a Boston paper:
"The extreme of vulgarity has lately been attained in a gorgeous
Southern hotel, where the wife of a much-millionaired inventor holds
state with a courier, another man-servant who dances attendance on a
superannuated pug (whose teeth are said to be gold-fitted--the pug's
teeth, remember, not the man's), and several maids. The courier manages
the private palace-car of the family, which stands ready on the rails
for use at any time and in any direction, and attends to the securing of
rooms and steamer berths, as well as private dining privileges, when the
family moves; and it always moves _en prince_."
All this is well enough if one can afford it; but the innate vulgarity
of the thing is shown in fantastic and absurd costuming of the children,
including satin breeches for the boys, and the gorgeous getting-up of
the maids, two of these menials being told off to attend constantly on
each child.