(_Pall Mall Gazette_, November 11, 1884)
I HAVE been much interested at reading the large amount of correspondence
that has been called forth by my recent lecture on Dress. It shows me
that the subject of dress reform is one that is occupying many wise and
charming people, who have at heart the principles of health, freedom, and
beauty in costume, and I hope that “H. B. T.” and “Materfamilias” will
have all the real influence which their letters—excellent letters both of
them—certainly deserve.
I turn first to Mr. Huyshe’s second letter, and the drawing that
accompanies it; but before entering into any examination of the theory
contained in each, I think I should state at once that I have absolutely
no idea whether this gentleman wears his hair long or short, or his cuffs
back or forward, or indeed what he is like at all. I hope he consults
his own comfort and wishes in everything which has to do with his dress,
and is allowed to enjoy that individualism in apparel which he so
eloquently claims for himself, and so foolishly tries to deny to others;
but I really could not take Mr. Wentworth Huyshe’s personal appearance as
any intellectual basis for an investigation of the principles which
should guide the costume of a nation. I am not denying the force, or
even the popularity, of the ‘’Eave arf a brick’ school of criticism, but
I acknowledge it does not interest me. The gamin in the gutter may be a
necessity, but the gamin in discussion is a nuisance. So I will proceed
at once to the real point at issue, the value of the late
eighteenth-century costume over that worn in the second quarter of the
seventeenth: the relative merits, that is, of the principles contained in
each. Now, as regards the eighteenth-century costume, Mr. Wentworth
Huyshe acknowledges that he has had no practical experience of it at all;
in fact he makes a pathetic appeal to his friends to corroborate him in
his assertion, which I do not question for a moment, that he has never
been “guilty of the eccentricity” of wearing himself the dress which he
proposes for general adoption by others. There is something so naive and
so amusing about this last passage in Mr. Huyshe’s letter that I am
really in doubt whether I am not doing him a wrong in regarding him as
having any serious, or sincere, views on the question of a possible
reform in dress; still, as irrespective of any attitude of Mr. Huyshe’s
in the matter, the subject is in itself an interesting one, I think it is
worth continuing, particularly as I have myself worn this late
eighteenth-century dress many times, both in public and in private, and
so may claim to have a very positive right to speak on its comfort and
suitability. The particular form of the dress I wore was very similar to
that given in Mr. Godwin’s handbook, from a print of Northcote’s, and had
a certain elegance and grace about it which was very charming; still, I
gave it up for these reasons:—After a further consideration of the laws
of dress I saw that a doublet is a far simpler and easier garment than a
coat and waistcoat, and, if buttoned from the shoulder, far warmer also,
and that tails have no place in costume, except on some Darwinian theory
of heredity; from absolute experience in the matter I found that the
excessive tightness of knee-breeches is not really comfortable if one
wears them constantly; and, in fact, I satisfied myself that the dress is
not one founded on any real principles. The broad-brimmed hat and loose
cloak, which, as my object was not, of course, historical accuracy but
modern ease, I had always worn with the costume in question, I have still
retained, and find them most comfortable.
Well, although Mr. Huyshe has no real experience of the dress he
proposes, he gives us a drawing of it, which he labels, somewhat
prematurely, “An ideal dress.” An ideal dress of course it is not;
“passably picturesque,” he says I may possibly think it; well, passably
picturesque it may be, but not beautiful, certainly, simply because it is
not founded on right principles, or, indeed, on any principles at all.
Picturesqueness one may get in a variety of ways; ugly things that are
strange, or unfamiliar to us, for instance, may be picturesque, such as a
late sixteenth-century costume, or a Georgian house. Ruins, again, may
be picturesque, but beautiful they never can be, because their lines are
meaningless. Beauty, in fact, is to be got only from the perfection of
principles; and in “the ideal dress” of Mr. Huyshe there are no ideas or
principles at all, much less the perfection of either. Let us examine
it, and see its faults; they are obvious to any one who desires more than
a “Fancy-dress ball” basis for costume. To begin with, the hat and boots
are all wrong. Whatever one wears on the extremities, such as the feet
and head, should, for the sake of comfort, be made of a soft material,
and for the sake of freedom should take its shape from the way one
chooses to wear it, and not from any stiff, stereotyped design of hat or
boot maker. In a hat made on right principles one should be able to turn
the brim up or down according as the day is dark or fair, dry or wet; but
the hat brim of Mr. Huyshe’s drawing is perfectly stiff, and does not
give much protection to the face, or the possibility of any at all to the
back of the head or the ears, in case of a cold east wind; whereas the
bycocket, a hat made in accordance with the right laws, can be turned
down behind and at the sides, and so give the same warmth as a hood. The
crown, again, of Mr. Huyshe’s hat is far too high; a high crown
diminishes the stature of a small person, and in the case of any one who
is tall is a great inconvenience when one is getting in and out of
hansoms and railway carriages, or passing under a street awning: in no
case is it of any value whatsoever, and being useless it is of course
against the principles of dress.
As regards the boots, they are not quite so ugly or so uncomfortable as
the hat; still they are evidently made of stiff leather, as otherwise
they would fall down to the ankle, whereas the boot should be made of
soft leather always, and if worn high at all must be either laced up the
front or carried well over the knee: in the latter case one combines
perfect freedom for walking together with perfect protection against
rain, neither of which advantages a short stiff boot will ever give one,
and when one is resting in the house the long soft boot can be turned
down as the boot of 1640 was. Then there is the overcoat: now, what are
the right principles of an overcoat? To begin with, it should be capable
of being easily put on or off, and worn over any kind of dress;
consequently it should never have narrow sleeves, such as are shown in
Mr. Huyshe’s drawing. If an opening or slit for the arm is required it
should be made quite wide, and may be protected by a flap, as in that
excellent overall the modern Inverness cape; secondly, it should not be
too tight, as otherwise all freedom of walking is impeded. If the young
gentleman in the drawing buttons his overcoat he may succeed in being
statuesque, though that I doubt very strongly, but he will never succeed
in being swift; his _super-totus_ is made for him on no principle
whatsoever; a _super-totus_, or overall, should be capable of being worn
long or short, quite loose or moderately tight, just as the wearer
wishes; he should be able to have one arm free and one arm covered or
both arms free or both arms covered, just as he chooses for his
convenience in riding, walking, or driving; an overall again should never
be heavy, and should always be warm: lastly, it should be capable of
being easily carried if one wants to take it off; in fact, its principles
are those of freedom and comfort, and a cloak realizes them all, just as
much as an overcoat of the pattern suggested by Mr. Huyshe violates them.
The knee-breeches are of course far too tight; any one who has worn them
for any length of time—any one, in fact, whose views on the subject are
not purely theoretical—will agree with me there; like everything else in
the dress, they are a great mistake. The substitution of the jacket for
the coat and waistcoat of the period is a step in the right direction,
which I am glad to see; it is, however, far too tight over the hips for
any possible comfort. Whenever a jacket or doublet comes below the waist
it should be slit at each side. In the seventeenth century the skirt of
the jacket was sometimes laced on by points and tags, so that it could be
removed at will, sometimes it was merely left open at the sides: in each
case it exemplified what are always the true principles of dress, I mean
freedom and adaptability to circumstances.
Finally, as regards drawings of this kind, I would point out that there
is absolutely no limit at all to the amount of “passably picturesque”
costumes which can be either revived or invented for us; but that unless
a costume is founded on principles and exemplified laws, it never can be
of any real value to us in the reform of dress. This particular drawing
of Mr. Huyshe’s, for instance, proves absolutely nothing, except that our
grandfathers did not understand the proper laws of dress. There is not a
single rule of right costume which is not violated in it, for it gives us
stiffness, tightness and discomfort instead of comfort, freedom and ease.
Now here, on the other hand, is a dress which, being founded on
principles, can serve us as an excellent guide and model; it has been
drawn for me, most kindly, by Mr. Godwin from the Duke of Newcastle’s
delightful book on horsemanship, a book which is one of our best
authorities on our best era of costume. I do not of course propose it
necessarily for absolute imitation; that is not the way in which one
should regard it; it is not, I mean, a revival of a dead costume, but a
realization of living laws. I give it as an example of a particular
application of principles which are universally right. This rationally
dressed young man can turn his hat brim down if it rains, and his loose
trousers and boots down if he is tired—that is, he can adapt his costume
to circumstances; then he enjoys perfect freedom, the arms and legs are
not made awkward or uncomfortable by the excessive tightness of narrow
sleeves and knee-breeches, and the hips are left quite untrammelled,
always an important point; and as regards comfort, his jacket is not too
loose for warmth, nor too close for respiration; his neck is well
protected without being strangled, and even his ostrich feathers, if any
Philistine should object to them, are not merely dandyism, but fan him
very pleasantly, I am sure, in summer, and when the weather is bad they
are no doubt left at home, and his cloak taken out. _The value of the
dress is simply that every separate article of it expresses a law_. My
young man is consequently apparelled with ideas, while Mr. Huyshe’s young
man is stiffened with facts; the latter teaches one nothing; from the
former one learns everything. I need hardly say that this dress is good,
not because it is seventeenth century, but because it is constructed on
the true principles of costume, just as a square lintel or pointed arch
is good, not because one may be Greek and the other Gothic, but because
each of them is the best method of spanning a certain-sized opening, or
resisting a certain weight. The fact, however, that this dress was
generally worn in England two centuries and a half ago shows at least
this, that the right laws of dress have been understood and realized in
our country, and so in our country may be realized and understood again.
As regards the absolute beauty of this dress and its meaning, I should
like to say a few words more. Mr. Wentworth Huyshe solemnly announces
that “he and those who think with him” cannot permit this question of
beauty to be imported into the question of dress; that he and those who
think with him take “practical views on the subject,” and so on. Well, I
will not enter here into a discussion as to how far any one who does not
take beauty and the value of beauty into account can claim to be
practical at all. The word practical is nearly always the last refuge of
the uncivilized. Of all misused words it is the most evilly treated.
But what I want to point out is that beauty is essentially organic; that
is, it comes, not from without, but from within, not from any added
prettiness, but from the perfection of its own being; and that
consequently, as the body is beautiful, so all apparel that rightly
clothes it must be beautiful also in its construction and in its lines.
I have no more desire to define ugliness than I have daring to define
beauty; but still I would like to remind those who mock at beauty as
being an unpractical thing of this fact, that an ugly thing is merely a
thing that is badly made, or a thing that does not serve it purpose; that
ugliness is want of fitness; that ugliness is failure; that ugliness is
uselessness, such as ornament in the wrong place, while beauty, as some
one finely said, is the purgation of all superfluities. There is a
divine economy about beauty; it gives us just what is needful and no
more, whereas ugliness is always extravagant; ugliness is a spendthrift
and wastes its material; in fine, ugliness—and I would commend this
remark to Mr. Wentworth Huyshe—ugliness, as much in costume as in
anything else, is always the sign that somebody has been unpractical. So
the costume of the future in England, if it is founded on the true laws
of freedom, comfort, and adaptability to circumstances, cannot fail to be
most beautiful also, because beauty is the sign always of the rightness
of principles, the mystical seal that is set upon what is perfect, and
upon what is perfect only.
As for your other correspondent, the first principle of dress that all
garments should be hung from the shoulders and not from the waist seems
to me to be generally approved of, although an “Old Sailor” declares that
no sailors or athletes ever suspend their clothes from the shoulders, but
always from the hips. My own recollection of the river and running
ground at Oxford—those two homes of Hellenism in our little Gothic
town—is that the best runners and rowers (and my own college turned out
many) wore always a tight jersey, with short drawers attached to it, the
whole costume being woven in one piece. As for sailors, it is true, I
admit, and the bad custom seems to involve that constant “hitching up” of
the lower garments which, however popular in transpontine dramas, cannot,
I think, but be considered an extremely awkward habit; and as all
awkwardness comes from discomfort of some kind, I trust that this point
in our sailor’s dress will be looked to in the coming reform of our navy,
for, in spite of all protests, I hope we are about to reform everything,
from torpedoes to top-hats, and from crinolettes to cruises.
Then as regards clogs, my suggestion of them seems to have aroused a
great deal of terror. Fashion in her high-heeled boots has screamed, and
the dreadful word “anachronism” has been used. Now, whatever is useful
cannot be an anachronism. Such a word is applicable only to the revival
of some folly; and, besides, in the England of our own day clogs are
still worn in many of our manufacturing towns, such as Oldham. I fear
that in Oldham they may not be dreams of beauty; in Oldham the art of
inlaying them with ivory and with pearl may possibly be unknown; yet in
Oldham they serve their purpose. Nor is it so long since they were worn
by the upper classes of this country generally. Only a few days ago I
had the pleasure of talking to a lady who remembered with affectionate
regret the clogs of her girlhood; they were, according to her, not too
high nor too heavy, and were provided, besides, with some kind of spring
in the sole so as to make them the more supple for the foot in walking.
Personally, I object to all additional height being given to a boot or
shoe; it is really against the proper principles of dress, although, if
any such height is to be given it should be by means of two props; not
one; but what I should prefer to see is some adaptation of the divided
skirt or long and moderately loose knickerbockers. If, however, the
divided skirt is to be of any positive value, it must give up all idea of
“being identical in appearance with an ordinary skirt”; it must diminish
the moderate width of each of its divisions, and sacrifice its foolish
frills and flounces; the moment it imitates a dress it is lost; but let
it visibly announce itself as what it actually is, and it will go far
towards solving a real difficulty. I feel sure that there will be found
many graceful and charming girls ready to adopt a costume founded on
these principles, in spite of Mr. Wentworth Huyshe’s terrible threat that
he will not propose to them as long as they wear it, for all charges of a
want of womanly character in these forms of dress are really meaningless;
every right article of apparel belongs equally to both sexes, and there
is absolutely no such thing as a definitely feminine garment. One word
of warning I should like to be allowed to give: The over-tunic should be
made full and moderately loose; it may, if desired, be shaped more or
less to the figure, but in no case should it be confined at the waist by
any straight band or belt; on the contrary, it should fall from the
shoulder to the knee, or below it, in fine curves and vertical lines,
giving more freedom and consequently more grace. Few garments are so
absolutely unbecoming as a belted tunic that reaches to the knees, a fact
which I wish some of our Rosalinds would consider when they don doublet
and hose; indeed, to the disregard of this artistic principle is due the
ugliness, the want of proportion, in the Bloomer costume, a costume which
in other respects is sensible.