costumes at forty, fifty and even one hundred and two hundred guineas
per gown, are mulcted of some of their unlawful profits by defaulting
creditors. In nine cases out of ten they richly deserve it. They are
rightly punished, when they accept, with fulsome flattery and servile
obsequiousness a “title” as sufficient guarantee for credit, and in
the end find out that Her Grace the Duchess, or Miladi the Countess is
perhaps more wickedly reckless and unprincipled than any plain Miss, or
Mrs. ever born, and that these _grandes dames_ frequently make use of
both rank and position to cheat their tradespeople systematically. The
tradespeople are entirely to blame for trusting them, and this is daily
and continuously proved. But the touching crook-knee’d worship of mere
social rank still remains an ingredient of the mercantile nature,--it
is inborn and racial,--a kind of microbe in the blood generated there
in old feudal times, when, all over the world, pedlars humbly sought
the patronage and favour of robber chieftains, and unloaded their packs
in the ‘Castle hall’ for the pleasure of the fair ladies who were
kept at home in “durance vile” by their rough, unwashen lords. And so
perhaps it has chanced through long custom and heritage, that at this
present day there is nothing quite so servile in all creation as the
spectacle of the ‘modiste’ in attendance on a Duchess, or a ‘ladies’
tailor’ bending himself double while deferentially presuming to measure
the hips of a Princess. It is quaint,--it is pitiful,--it is intensely,
deliciously comic. And when the price of the garment is never clearly
stated, and the bill never sent in for years lest offence is given to
‘Her Grace’ or ‘Her Highness’--by firms that will, nevertheless, have
no scruple in sending dunning letters and legal threats to _un_-titled
ladies, who may possibly keep them waiting a little for their money,
but whose position and credit are more firmly established than those of
any ‘great’ personages with handles to their names, it is not without
a certain secret satisfaction that one hears of such fawning flunkeys
of trade getting well burnt in the fires of loss and disaster. For in
any case, it may be taken for granted that they always charge a double,
sometimes treble price for a garment or costume, over and above what
that garment or costume is really worth, and one may safely presume
they base all their calculations on possible loss. It is no uncommon
thing to be told that such and such an evening blouse or bodice copied
‘from the Paris model’ will cost Forty Guineas--“We _might_ possibly do
it for Thirty Five,”--says the costumier meditatively, studying with
well-assumed gravity the small, flimsy object he is thus pricing, a
trifle made up of chiffon, ribbon, and tinsel gew-gaws, knowing all the
while that everything of which it is composed could be purchased for
much less than ten pounds. Twenty-five guineas, forty-five guineas,
sixty-five guineas are quite common prices for gowns at any of the
fashionable shops to-day. One cannot, of course, blame the modistes
and outfitting firms for asking these absurd fancy prices if they can
get them. If women are mad, it is perhaps wise, just, and reasonable
to take financial advantage of their madness while it lasts. Certainly
no woman of well-balanced brain would give unlimited prices for gowns
without most careful inquiry as to the correct value of the material
and trimming used for them,--and the feminine creature who runs into
the elaborate show-rooms of Madame Zoë or Berenice, or Faustina, and
orders frocks by the dozen, saying chirpingly: “Oh, yes! _You_ know
how they ought to be made! Your taste is always perfect! Make them
_very_ pretty, won’t you?--_much_ prettier than those you made for Lady
Claribel! Yes!--thanks! I’ll leave it all in your hands!” this woman, I
say, is a mere lunatic, gibbering nonsense, who could not, if she were
asked, tell where twice two making four might possibly lead her in the
sum-total of a banking account.
Not very long ago there was held a wonderful “symposium” of dress at
the establishment of a certain modiste. It was intensely diverting,
entertaining and instructive. A stage was erected at one end of a long
room, and on that stage, with effective flashes of lime-light played
from the “wings” at intervals, and the accompaniment of a Hungarian
band, young ladies wearing “creations” in costume, stood, sat, turned,
twisted and twirled, and finally walked down the room between rows
of spectators to show themselves and the gowns they carried, off to
the best possible advantage. The whole thing was much better than a
stage comedy. Nothing could surpass the quaint peacock-like vanity
of the girl _mannequins_ who strutted up and down, moving their arms
about to exhibit their sleeves and swaying their hips to accentuate
the fall and flow of flounces and draperies. It was a marvellous sight
to behold, and it irresistibly reminded one of a party of impudent
children trying on for fun all their mother’s and elder sisters’ best
“long dresses” while the unsuspecting owners were out of the way. There
was a “programme” of the performance fearfully and wonderfully worded,
the composition, so we were afterwards “with bated breath” informed,
of Madame la Modiste’s sister, a lady, who by virtue of having written
two small skits on the manners, customs and modes of society, is, in
some obliging quarters of the Press called a “novelist.” This programme
instructed us as to the proper views we were expected to take of the
costumes paraded before us, as follows:
FOR THE DINNER PARTY
Topas
Elusive Joy
Pleasure’s Thrall
Red Mouth of a Venomous Flower
The “Red Mouth of a Venomous Flower” was a harmless-looking girl in a
bright scarlet toilette,--neither the toilette nor the sensational
title suited her. But perhaps the “Cult of Chiffon” presented the most
varied and startling phases to a properly receptive mind. Thus it ran:
THE CULT OF CHIFFON
The Dirge O’er the Death of Pleasure
The Fire Motif
The Meaning of Life is Clear
Moss and Starlight
Incessant Soft Desire
A Frenzied Song of Amorous Things
A Summer Night Has a Thousand Powers
Faint gigglings shook the bosoms of the profane as the “Incessant Soft
Desire” glided into view, followed by “A Frenzied Song of Amorous
Things,”--indeed it would have been positively unnatural and inhuman
had no one laughed. Curious to relate, there were quite a large number
of “gentlemen” at this remarkable exhibition of feminine clothes,
many of them well known and easily recognizable. Certain _flaneurs_
of Bond Street, various loafers familiar to the Carlton “lounge,” and
celebrated Piccadilly-trotters, formed nearly one half of the audience,
and stared with easy insolence at the “Red Mouth of a Venomous Flower”
or smiled suggestively at “Incessant Soft Desire.” They were invited to
stare and smile, and they did it. But there was something remarkably
offensive in their way of doing it, and perhaps if a few thick boots
worn on the feet of rough but honest workmen had come into contact
with their smooth personalities on their way out of Madame Modiste’s
establishment, it might have done them good and taught them a useful
lesson. Needless to say that the prices of the Madame Modiste who could
set forth such an exhibition of melodramatically designated feminine
apparel as “The Night has a Thousand Eyes,” or “Spring’s Delirium,”
were in suitable proportion to a “frenzied song of amorous things.”
Such amorous things as are “created” in her establishment are likely to
make husbands and fathers know exactly what “a frenzied song” means.
When the payment of the bills is concerned, they will probably sing
that “frenzied song” themselves.
It is quite easy to dress well and tastefully without
spending a very great deal of money. It certainly requires
brain--thought--foresight--taste--and comprehension of the harmony
of colours. But the blind following of a fashion because Madame This
or That says it is “chic” or “le dernier cri,” or some parrot-like
recommendation of the sort, is mere stupidity on the part of the
followers. To run up long credit for dresses, without the least idea
how the account is ever going to be paid, is nothing less than a
criminal act. It is simply fraud. And such fraud re-acts on the whole
community.
Extravagant taste in dress is infectious. Most of us are impressed by
the King’s sensible and earnest desire that the Press should use its
influence for good in fostering amity between ourselves and foreign
countries. If the Press would equally use its efforts to discourage
florid descriptions of dress in their columns, much of the wild and
wilful extravagance which is frequently the ruin of otherwise happy
homes, might be avoided. When Lady A sees her loathëd rival Lady B’s
dress described in half a column of newspaper “gush” she straightway
yearns and schemes for a whole column of the same kind. When simple
country girls read the amazing items of the “toilettes” worn by some
notorious “demi-mondaine,” they begin to wonder how it is she has
such things, and to speculate as to whether they will ever be able
to obtain similar glorified apparel for themselves. And so the evil
grows, till by and by it becomes a pernicious disease, and women look
superciliously at one another, not for what they are, but merely
to estimate the quality and style of what they put on their backs.
Virtue goes to the wall if it does not wear a fashionable frock.
Vice is welcomed everywhere if it is clothed in a Paris “creation.”
Nevertheless, Ben Jonson’s lines still hold good:
Still to be neat, still to be drest,
As you were going to a feast;
Still to be powder’d, still perfumed:
Lady, it is to be presumed,
Though art’s hid causes are not found
All is not sweet, all is not sound.
“All is not sweet, all is not sound,” when women think little or
nothing of ordering extravagant costumes which they well know they will
never be able to pay for, unless through some dishonourable means, such
as gambling at Bridge for example. Madame Modiste is quite prepared
for such an exigency, for she does not forget to show “creations” in
clothes which, she softly purrs, are “suitable for Bridge parties.”
They may possibly be called--“The Tricky Trump”--or “The Dazzling of
a Glance too long” or “The Deft Impress of a Finger nail”! One never
knows!
Any amount of fashion papers find their way into the average British
household, containing rabid nonsense such as the following:
“There were wonderful stories afloat about Miss B’s dresses. Rumour has
it that a dressmaker came over specially from New York to requisition
the services of the most important artistes in Paris, and gold lace and
hand embroidery were used with no frugal hand; yet, _despite this_ and
the warm welcome accorded her by an English audience, Miss B does not
seem to have made up her mind to stay with us long, for it is said the
end of June will see the end of her season. We have sketched her in
her pink chiffon wrap, which is made in the Empire shape covered with
chiffon and decorated with bunches of chiffon flowers and green leaves
held with bows of pink satin--a most dainty affair, full of delicate
detail and pre-eminently becoming.”
“Despite this,”--is rich indeed! Despite the fact that “gold lace and
hand-embroidery” were used “with no frugal hand,” Miss B is determined
to leave “the gay, the gay and glittering scene,” and deprive us of
her “pink chiffon wrap in the Empire shape”! A positively disastrous
conclusion! Nay, but hearken to the maudlin murmurs of the crazed
worshippers of Mumbo-Jumbo “Fashion”--
“Do you yearn for a grey muslin dress? Half my ‘smart girl’
acquaintances are buying grey muslins as though their lives depended
on it. I fell in love with one of them that was in bouilloné gathers
all round the skirt to within eight inches of the hem, while the
yoke had similar but smaller bouillonés run through, well below the
shoulder-line, with a wide chiné ribbon knotted low in front. Beneath
this encircling ribbon the bodice pouched in blouse fashion over a
chiné waist-ribbon to match, with long pendant ends one side; the
sleeves were a distinct novelty, being set in a number of small puffs
below one big one, a chiné ribbon being knotted around the arm between
each puff.”
“Do you ‘yearn’ for a grey muslin dress?” O ye gods! One is reminded of
a comic passage in the “Artemus Ward” papers, where it is related how
a lady of the “Free Love” persuasion rushed at the American humorist,
brandishing a cotton umbrella and crying out: “Dost thou not yearn
for me?” to which adjuration Artemus replied, while he “dodged” the
umbrella--“Not a yearn!”
“I should like,”--says one of the poor imbecile “dress” devotees, “the
skirt finished off with a wadded hem, or perhaps a few folds of satin,
but otherwise it should be left severely plain. These satin, brocade,
or velvet dresses should stand or fall by their own merits, and never
be over-elaborated.”
True! And is it “a wadded hem” or a padded room that should “finish
off” these people who spread the madness of clothes far and wide till
it becomes a positively dangerous and immoral infection? One wonders!
For there is no more mischievous wickedness in society to-day than the
flamboyant, exuberant, wilful extravagance of women’s dress. It has far
exceeded the natural and pretty vanity of permissible charm, good taste
and elegance. It has become a riotous waste,--an ugly disease of moral
principle, ending at last in the disgrace and death of many a woman’s
good name.
THE DECAY OF HOME LIFE IN ENGLAND
When people tell the truth they are generally disliked. From Socrates,
to the latest of his modern philosophic imitators, the bowl of
death-dealing hemlock has always been mixed by the world and held to
the lips of those who dare to say uncomfortably plain things. When
the late W. E. H. Lecky set down the truth of Cecil Rhodes, in his
book entitled _The Map of Life_, and I, the present writer, ventured
to quote the passage in “The Vulgarity of Wealth,” when that article
was first published, a number of uninformed individuals rashly accused
me of “abusing Cecil Rhodes.” They were naturally afraid to attack
the greater writer. Inasmuch, said they: “If Mr. Lecky had _really_
suggested that Cecil Rhodes was not, like Brutus, ‘an honourable man,’
he, Mr. Lecky, would never have received the King’s new ‘Order of
Merit,’ nor would Mr. Rhodes have been the subject of so much eulogy.
For, of course, the King has read _The Map of Life_, and is aware of
the assertions contained in it.” Now I wish, dear gossips all, you
would read _The Map of Life_ for yourselves! You will find, if you do,
not only plain facts concerning Rhodes, and the vulgarity, i.e. the
ostentation of wealth, but much useful information on sundry other
matters closely concerning various manners and customs of the present
day. For one example, consider the following:
“The amount of pure and almost spontaneous malevolence in the world is
probably far greater than we at first imagine.... No one, for example,
can study the anonymous press, without perceiving how large a part of
it is employed _systematically_, _persistently_ and _deliberately_ in
fostering class, or individual or international hatreds, and often _in
circulating falsehoods to attain this end_. Many newspapers notoriously
depend for their existence on such appeals, and more than any other
instruments, they inflame and perpetuate those permanent animosities
which most endanger the peace of mankind. The fact that such newspapers
are becoming in many countries the main and almost exclusive reading of
the million, forms the most serious deduction from the value of modern
education.”
Let it be noted, once and for all, that it is not the present writer
who thus speaks of “the anonymous press,” but the experienced,
brilliant and unprejudiced scholar who was among the first to hold the
King’s “Order of Merit.” And so once again to our muttons:--
“Some of the very worst acts of which man can be guilty are acts which
are commonly untouched by law, and only faintly censured by opinion.
Political crimes, which a false and sickly sentiment so readily
condones, are conspicuous among them. Men who have been gambling for
wealth and power with the lives and fortunes of multitudes; men who
for their own personal ambition are prepared to sacrifice the most
vital interests of their country; men, who in time of great national
danger and excitement deliberately launch falsehood after falsehood
in the public press, in the well-founded conviction that they will do
their evil work before they can be contradicted, may be met shameless
and almost uncensured in Parliaments and drawing-rooms. The amount
of false statements in the world which cannot be attributed to mere
carelessness, inaccuracy or exaggeration, but which is plainly both
deliberate and malevolent, can hardly be overrated. Sometimes it is
due to a mere desire to create a lucrative sensation, or to gratify
a personal dislike, or even to an unprovoked malevolence which takes
pleasure in inflicting pain. * * * Very often it (i.e. the false
statement in the press) is intended for purposes of stock-jobbing.
The financial world is percolated with it. It is the common method
of raising or depreciating securities, attracting investors, preying
upon the ignorant and credulous, and enabling dishonest men to rise
rapidly to fortune. When the prospect of speedy wealth is in sight,
there are always numbers who are perfectly prepared to pursue courses
involving the utter ruin of multitudes, endangering the most serious
international interests, perhaps bringing down upon the world all the
calamities of war.... It is much to be questioned whether the greatest
criminals are to be found within the walls of prisons. Dishonesty on
a small scale nearly always finds its punishment. Dishonesty on a
gigantic scale continually escapes.... In the management of companies,
in the great fields of industrial enterprise and speculation, gigantic
fortunes are acquired by the ruin of multitudes; and by methods which
though they avoid legal penalties are essentially fraudulent. In the
majority of cases these crimes are perpetrated by educated men who are
in possession of all the necessaries, of most comforts, and of many
luxuries of life, and some of the worst of them are powerfully favoured
by the conditions of modern civilization. There is no greater scandal
or moral evil in our time than the readiness with which public opinion
excuses them, and the influence and social position it accords to mere
wealth, even when it has been acquired by notorious dishonesty, or when
it is expended with absolute selfishness or in ways that are absolutely
demoralising. In many respects the moral progress of mankind seems to
me incontestable, but it is extremely doubtful whether in this respect,
social morality, especially in England and America, has not seriously
retrograded.”
* * * * *
* * * *
* * *
* *
Now had I written the foregoing lines, some hundred or so of
pleasant newspaper friends would have accused me of “screaming” out
a denunciation of wealth, or of “railing” against society. But as
Lecky,--with the King’s “Order of Merit,” appended to his distinguished
name,--was the real author of the quotation, I am not without hope
that his views may be judged worthy of consideration, even though his
works may not be as thoughtfully studied as their excellence merits.
It is not I--it was Mr. Lecky, who doubted whether “social morality
both in England and America, had not seriously retrograded.” But, if
it has so retrograded, there need be very little difficulty in tracing
the retrogression to its direct source,--namely, to the carelessness,
vanity, extravagance, lack of high principle, and entire lapse of
dignity in the women who constitute and lead what is called the Smart
Set. These women cannot be termed as of the Aristocracy, for the
Aristocracy, (by which term I mean those who are lineally entitled
to be considered the actual British nobility, and not the mushroom
creations of yesterday), will, more often than not, decline to have
anything to do with them. True, there are some “great” ladies, who
have deliberately and voluntarily fallen from their high estate in
the sight of a scandalised public, and who, by birth and breeding,
should assuredly have possessed more pride and self-respect, than to
wilfully descend into the mire. But the very fact that these few have
so lamentably failed to support the responsibilities of their position,
makes it all the sadder for the many good and true women of noble
family who endeavour, as best they may, to stem the tide of harmful
circumstance, and to show by the retired simplicity and intellectual
charm of their own lives, that though society is fast becoming a
disordered wilderness of American and South African “scrub,” there yet
remains within it a flourishing scion of the brave old English Oak of
Honour, guarded by the plain device “Noblesse Oblige.”
The influence of women bears perhaps more strongly than any other
power on the position and supremacy of a country. Corrupt women make
a corrupt State,--noble, God-fearing women make a noble, God-fearing
people. It is not too much to say that the prosperity or adversity
of a nation rests in the hands of its women. They are the mothers of
the men,--they make and mould the characters of their sons. And the
centre of their influence should be, as Nature intended it to be, the
Home. Home is the pivot round which the wheel of a country’s highest
statesmanship should revolve,--the preservation of Home, its interests,
its duties and principles, should be the aim of every good citizen. But
with the “retrogression of social morality,” as Mr. Lecky phrased it,
and as part and parcel of that backward action and movement, has gone
the gradual decay of home life, and a growing indifference to home as
a centre of attraction and influence, together with the undermining
of family ties and affections, which, rightly used and considered,
should form the strongest bulwark to our national strength. The love
of home,--the desire to _make_ a home,--is far stronger in the poorer
classes nowadays than in the wealthy or even the moderately rich of the
general community. Women of the “upper ten” are no longer pre-eminent
as rulers of the home, but are to be seen daily and nightly as noisy
and pushing frequenters of public restaurants. The great lady is
seldom or never to be found “at home” on her own domain,--but she may
be easily met at the Carlton, Prince’s, or the Berkeley (on Sundays).
The old-world châtelaine of a great house who took pride in looking
after the comfort of all her retainers,--who displayed an active
interest in every detail of management,--surrounding herself with
choice furniture, fine pictures, sweet linen, beautiful flowers, and
home delicates of her own personal make or supervision, is becoming
well-nigh obsolete. “It is such a bore being at home!” is quite an
ordinary phrase with the gawk-girl of the present day, who has no idea
of the value of rest as an aid to beauty, or of the healthful and
strengthening influences of a quiet and well-cultivated mind, and who
has made herself what is sometimes casually termed a “sight” by her
skill at hockey, her speed in cycling, and her general “rushing about,”
in order to get anywhere away from the detested “home.” The mother of
a family now aspires to seem as young as her daughters, and among the
vanishing graces of society may be noted the grace of old age. Nobody
is old nowadays. Men of sixty wed girls of sixteen, women of fifty lead
boys of twenty to the sacrificial altar. Such things are repulsive,
abominable and unnatural, but they are done every day, and a certain
“social set,” smirk the usual conventional hypocritical approval, few
having the courage to protest against what they must inwardly recognize
as both outrageous and indecent. The real “old” lady, the real “old”
gentleman will soon be counted among the “rare and curious” specimens
of the race. The mother who was _not_ “married at sixteen,” will ere
long be a remarkable prodigy, and the paterfamilias who never explains
that he “made an unfortunate marriage when quite a boy,” will rank
beside her as a companion phenomenon. We have only to scan the pages of
those periodicals which cater specially for fashionable folk, to see
what a frantic dread of age pervades all classes of pleasure-loving
society. The innumerable nostrums for removing wrinkles, massaging or
“steaming” the complexion, the “coverings” for thin hair, the “rays,”
of gold or copper or auburn, which are cunningly contrived for grey,
or to use the more polite word, “faded,” tresses, the great army of
manicurists, masseurs and “beauty-specialists,” who, in the most
clever way, manage to make comfortable incomes out of the general
panic which apparently prevails among their patrons at the inflexible,
unstoppable march of Time,--all these things are striking proofs of
the constant desperate fight kept up by a large and foolish majority
against the laws of God and of Nature. Nor is the category confined to
persons of admittedly weak intellect, as might readily be imagined,
for just as the sapient Mr. Andrew Lang has almost been convicted
of a hesitating faith in magic crystals, (God save him!) so are the
names of many men, eminent in scholarship and politics, “down on the
list” of the dyer, the steamer, the padder, the muscle-improver, the
nail-polisher, the wrinkle-remover, and the eye-embellisher. Which
facts, though apparently trivial, are so many brief hints of a “giving”
in the masculine stamina. “It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of
gain-giving as would perhaps trouble a woman.” Vide _Hamlet_. Such it
may be,--let us hope that such it is.