is to the garment what the royal head and arms are to the coin--the
insignia that give it currency. No matter what the material, gold or
copper, Saxony or sackcloth, the die imparts a value to the one, and the
shears to the other.
Ancient Greece still lives in its marble demi-gods; the vivifying chisel
of Phidias was thought worthy to typify the sublimity of Jupiter; the
master-hand of Canova wrought the Parian block into the semblance of the
sea-born goddess, giving to insensate stone the warmth and etheriality of
the Paphian paragon; and Stultz, with his grace-bestowing shears, has
fashioned West of England broad-cloths, and fancy goods, into all the
nobility and gentility of the "Blue Book," the "Court Guide," the "Army,
Navy, and Law Lists, for 1841."
Wondrous and kindred arts! The sculptor wrests the rugged block from the
rocky ribs of his mother earth;--the tailor clips the implicated "_long
hogs_"[1] from the prolific backs of the living mutton;--the toothless
saw, plied by an unweayring hand, prepares the stubborn mass for the
chisel's tracery;--the loom, animated by steam (that gigantic child of
Wallsend and water), twists and twines the unctuous and pliant fleece into
the silky Saxony.
[1] The first growth of wool.
The sculptor, seated in his _studio_, throws loose the reins of his
imagination, and, conjuring up some perfect ideality, seeks to impress the
beautiful illusion on the rude and undigested mass before him. The tailor
spreads out, upon his ample board, the happy broadcloth; his eyes scan the
"measured proportions of his client," and, with mystic power, guides the
obedient pipe-clay into the graceful diagram of a perfect gentleman. The
sculptor, with all the patient perseverance of genius, conscious of the
greatness of its object, chips, and chips, and chips, from day to day; and
as the stone quickens at each touch, he glows with all the pride of the
creative Prometheus, mingled with the gentler ecstacies of paternal love.
The tailor, with fresh-ground shears, and perfect faith in the gentility
and solvency of his "client," snips, and snips, and snips, until the
"superfine" grows, with each abscission, into the first style of elegance
and fashion, and the excited schneider feels himself "every inch a king,"
his shop a herald's college, and every brown paper pattern garnishing its
walls, an escutcheon of gentility.
But to dismount from our Pegasus, or, in other words, to cut the poetry,
and come to the practice of our subject, it is necessary that a perfect
gentleman should be cut _up_ very high, or cut _down_ very low--_i.e._, up
to the marquis or down to the jarvey. Any intermediate style is perfectly
inadmissible; for who above the grade of an attorney would wear a coat
with pockets inserted in the tails, like salt-boxes; or any but an
incipient Esculapius indulge in trousers that evinced a morbid ambition to
become knee-breeches, and were only restrained in their aspirations by a
pair of most strenuous straps. We will now proceed to details.
_The dressing-gown_ should be cut only--for the arm holes; but be careful
that the quantity of material be very ample--say four times as much as is
positively necessary, for nothing is so characteristic of a perfect
gentleman as his improvidence. This garment must be constructed without
buttons or button-holes, and confined at the waist with cable-like
bell-ropes and tassels. This elegant _déshabille_ had its origin (like the
Corinthian capital from the Acanthus) in accident. A set of massive
window-curtains having been carelessly thrown over a lay figure, or
tailor's _torso_, in Nugee's _studio_, in St. James's-street, suggested to
the luxuriant mind of the Adonisian D'Orsay, this beautiful combination of
costume and upholstery. The eighteen-shilling chintz great-coats, so
ostentatiously put forward by nefarious tradesmen as dressing-gowns, and
which resemble pattern-cards of the vegetable kingdom, are unworthy the
notice of all gentlemen--of course excepting those who are so by act of
Parliament. Although it is generally imagined that the coat is the
principal article of dress, _we_ attach far greater importance to the
trousers, the cut of which should, in the first place, be regulated by
nature's cut of the leg. A gentleman who labours under either a convex or
a concave leg, cannot be too particular in the arrangement of the
strap-draught. By this we mean that a concave leg must have the pull on
the convex side, and _vice versa_, the garment being made full, the
effects of bad nursing are, by these means, effectually "repealed."[2]
This will be better understood if the reader will describe a
parallelogram, and draw therein the arc of a circle equal to that
described by his leg, whether knock-kneed or bandy.
[2] Baylis.
If the leg be perfectly straight, then the principal peculiarity of cut to
be attended to, is the external assurance that the trousers cannot be
removed from the body without the assistance of a valet.
The other considerations should be their applicability to the promenade or
the equestriade. We are indebted to our friend Beau Reynolds for this
original idea and it is upon the plan formerly adopted by him that we now
proceed to advise as to the maintenance of the distinctions.
Let your schneider baste the trousers together, and when you have put them
on, let them be braced to their natural tension; the schneider should
then, with a small pair of scissors, _cut out_ all the wrinkles which
offend the eye. The garment, being removed from your person, is again
taken to the tailor's laboratory, and the embrasures carefully and
artistically fine-drawn. The process for walking or riding trousers only
varies in these particulars--for the one you should stand upright, for the
other you should straddle the back of a chair. Trousers cut on these
principles entail only two inconveniences, to which every one with the
true feelings of a gentleman would willingly submit. You must never
attempt to sit down in your walking trousers, or venture to assume an
upright position in your equestrians, for compound fractures in the region
of the _os sacrum_, or dislocations about the _genu patellæ_ are certain
to be the results of such rashness, and then
[Illustration: "THE PEACE OF THE VALET IS FLED."]
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