(_Pall Mall Gazette_, October 14, 1884)
MR. OSCAR WILDE, who asks us to permit him ‘that most charming of all
pleasures, the pleasure of answering one’s critics,’ sends us the
following remarks:—
THE “Girl Graduate” must of course have precedence, not merely for her
sex but for her sanity: her letter is extremely sensible. She makes two
points: that high heels are a necessity for any lady who wishes to keep
her dress clean from the Stygian mud of our streets, and that without a
tight corset the ordinary number of petticoats and etceteras’ cannot be
properly or conveniently held up. Now, it is quite true that as long as
the lower garments are suspended from the hips a corset is an absolute
necessity; the mistake lies in not suspending all apparel from the
shoulders. In the latter case a corset becomes useless, the body is left
free and unconfined for respiration and motion, there is more health, and
consequently more beauty. Indeed all the most ungainly and uncomfortable
articles of dress that fashion has ever in her folly prescribed, not the
tight corset merely, but the farthingale, the vertugadin, the hoop, the
crinoline, and that modern monstrosity the so-called “dress improver”
also, all of them have owed their origin to the same error, the error of
not seeing that it is from the shoulders, and from the shoulders only,
that all garments should be hung.
And as regards high heels, I quite admit that some additional height to
the shoe or boot is necessary if long gowns are to be worn in the street;
but what I object to is that the height should be given to the heel only,
and not to the sole of the foot also. The modern high-heeled boot is, in
fact, merely the clog of the time of Henry VI., with the front prop left
out, and its inevitable effect is to throw the body forward, to shorten
the steps, and consequently to produce that want of grace which always
follows want of freedom.
Why should clogs be despised? Much art has been expended on clogs. They
have been made of lovely woods, and delicately inlaid with ivory, and
with mother-of-pearl. A clog might be a dream of beauty, and, if not too
high or too heavy, most comfortable also. But if there be any who do not
like clogs, let them try some adaptation of the trouser of the Turkish
lady, which is loose round the limb and tight at the ankle.
The “Girl Graduate,” with a pathos to which I am not insensible, entreats
me not to apotheosize “that awful, befringed, beflounced, and bekilted
divided skirt.” Well, I will acknowledge that the fringes, the flounces,
and the kilting do certainly defeat the whole object of the dress, which
is that of ease and liberty; but I regard these things as mere wicked
superfluities, tragic proofs that the divided skirt is ashamed of its own
division. The principle of the dress is good, and, though it is not by
any means perfection, it is a step towards it.
Here I leave the “Girl Graduate,” with much regret, for Mr. Wentworth
Huyshe. Mr. Huyshe makes the old criticism that Greek dress is unsuited
to our climate, and, to me the somewhat new assertion, that the men’s
dress of a hundred years ago was preferable to that of the second part of
the seventeenth century, which I consider to have been the exquisite
period of English costume.
Now, as regards the first of these two statements, I will say, to begin
with, that the warmth of apparel does not depend really on the number of
garments worn, but on the material of which they are made. One of the
chief faults of modern dress is that it is composed of far too many
articles of clothing, most of which are of the wrong substance; but over
a substratum of pure wool, such as is supplied by Dr. Jaeger under the
modern German system, some modification of Greek costume is perfectly
applicable to our climate, our country and our century. This important
fact has already been pointed out by Mr. E. W. Godwin in his excellent,
though too brief handbook on Dress, contributed to the Health Exhibition.
I call it an important fact because it makes almost any form of lovely
costume perfectly practicable in our cold climate. Mr. Godwin, it is
true, points out that the English ladies of the thirteenth century
abandoned after some time the flowing garments of the early Renaissance
in favour of a tighter mode, such as Northern Europe seems to demand.
This I quite admit, and its significance; but what I contend, and what I
am sure Mr. Godwin would agree with me in, is that the principles, the
laws of Greek dress may be perfectly realized, even in a moderately tight
gown with sleeves: I mean the principle of suspending all apparel from
the shoulders, and of relying for beauty of effect not on the stiff
ready-made ornaments of the modern milliner—the bows where there should
be no bows, and the flounces where there should be no flounces—but on the
exquisite play of light and line that one gets from rich and rippling
folds. I am not proposing any antiquarian revival of an ancient costume,
but trying merely to point out the right laws of dress, laws which are
dictated by art and not by archæology, by science and not by fashion; and
just as the best work of art in our days is that which combines classic
grace with absolute reality, so from a continuation of the Greek
principles of beauty with the German principles of health will come, I
feel certain, the costume of the future.
And now to the question of men’s dress, or rather to Mr. Huyshe’s claim
of the superiority, in point of costume, of the last quarter of the
eighteenth century over the second quarter of the seventeenth. The
broad-brimmed hat of 1640 kept the rain of winter and the glare of summer
from the face; the same cannot be said of the hat of one hundred years
ago, which, with its comparatively narrow brim and high crown, was the
precursor of the modern “chimney-pot”: a wide turned-down collar is a
healthier thing than a strangling stock, and a short cloak much more
comfortable than a sleeved overcoat, even though the latter may have had
“three capes”; a cloak is easier to put on and off, lies lightly on the
shoulder in summer, and wrapped round one in winter keeps one perfectly
warm. A doublet, again, is simpler than a coat and waistcoat; instead of
two garments one has one; by not being open also it protects the chest
better.
Short loose trousers are in every way to be preferred to the tight
knee-breeches which often impede the proper circulation of the blood; and
finally, the soft leather boots which could be worn above or below the
knee, are more supple, and give consequently more freedom, than the stiff
Hessian which Mr. Huyshe so praises. I say nothing about the question of
grace and picturesqueness, for I suppose that no one, not even Mr.
Huyshe, would prefer a maccaroni to a cavalier, a Lawrence to a Vandyke,
or the third George to the first Charles; but for ease, warmth and
comfort this seventeenth-century dress is infinitely superior to anything
that came after it, and I do not think it is excelled by any preceding
form of costume. I sincerely trust that we may soon see in England some
national revival of it.