The White Uniforms of Our Heroes in the Tropics.
The Mother Hubbard Street Fashion in Honolulu, and That of Riding
Astride--Spoiling Summer Clothes in Manila Mud--The White Raiment
of High Officers--Drawing the Line on Nightshirts--Ashamed of Big
Toes--Dewey and Merritt as Figures of Show--The Boys in White.
Recent experiences of the United States excite attention to the
fashions of the tropics. In Florida our soldiers who invaded Cuba were
in a degree and sense acclimated for the temperature of the island
that has been for so long "so near, and yet so far," so wet and yet so
hot. But the troops of the Philippine expedition were not prepared by
the chilly blasts from the mountains of California for the exceedingly
soft airs of Hawaii, though Honolulu was a pleasant introductory school
to Manila. Our new possession two thousand miles from the continent,
has been preparing for the destiny realized for two generations, and
the American ladies who dwell in the islands of perpetual summer in
the Pacific, have not submitted wholly to the dominion of the climate
and composed themselves to languish in loose and gauzy garments when
on the streets. But the Honolulu women, in general, who largely are
in the possession of luxuriant proportions, are enveloped in the
blandishments of Mother Hubbards, and do not even tie strings about
themselves to show where they would have spectators to infer their
waists ought to be. They go about flowing and fluttering in freedom,
and have all the advantages due the total abandonment of corsets,
and suffer none of the horrors of tight lacing recorded in medical
publications. The Mother Hubbard gown is not without its attractions,
but we can hardly say they are too obvious, and slender figures are
lost in voluminous folds that are billowy in the various ways and
means of embracing the evolutions of beauty. And the native singers
seem fully justified in throwing the full force of their lungs and
the rapture of their souls into the favorite chorus, "The Honolulu
Girls Are Good Enough for Me." The refrains of the Hawaiian songs
are full of a flavor of pathos, and there is the cry of sorrows,
that seem to be in the very air, but belong to other ages. The
Honolulu females of all races have flung away side saddles with
their corsets, and bestride horses and mules with the confidence
in the rectitude of their intentions that so besets and befits the
riders of bicycles. People would stare with disapproval in Honolulu
to see a woman riding with both legs on the same side of a horse,
and those wandering abroad in the voluminous folds of two spacious
garments disapprove the unusual and unseemly spectacle.
It is as hot in some parts of Texas, Arizona and California as in
any of the islands of the seas of the South, but we had not been
educated in the art of clothing armies for service in the torrid
zone, until the Philippine expedition was undertaken, and we were
making ready for challenging the Spaniards in their Cuban fastnesses,
when it speedily was in evidence that we wanted something more than
blue cloth and blankets. The Spanish white and blue stuff and straw
hats were to our eyes unsightly and distasteful, and we began with a
variety of goods. Our army hats were found good, but we tried nearly
all things before holding onto anything as sufficient for trousers
and coats. The officers on long journeys speedily resolved, if we
may judge from the results, that the suit most natty and nice for
wear within twenty degrees of the Equator was the perfect white, and
so the snowy figures below shoulder straps became familiar. This did
not, of course, indicate acute stages of active service. Never were
campaigns more destructive of good looks in clothing, than those in
assailing Santiago and Manila, in which the thin stuffs were tested in
torrential rain and ditches full of mud. The compensation was that the
volunteers fresh from the camps of instruction, put on in a few days
the appearance of veteran campaigners. In Manila there was an edifying
contrast between the Spaniards who had surrendered and the Americans
who did not pause when the Mausers were fired into their ranks, not
with the faintest hope of successful resistance, but for the "honor
of Spain." The Spanish soldiers had been well sheltered and came out
in fairly clean clothes, while the soldiers of our nation closed up
dingy ranks, suited for hunting in swamps and thickets, their coats,
hats and trousers the color of blasted grass and decayed leaves. The
passage of the line from the new to the old clothes was sudden, and
the gallant boys in blue were not in the least disconsolate over the
discoloration of their uniforms, having reached the stage where it
was a luxury to sleep on a floor or pavement, without wasting time
to find a soft or quiet spot.
The sombre taste of the Spanish ladies in dress, so famous and
effective that the black mantillas and skirts, and the fans that do
such execution in the hands of the dark-eyed coquettes, as to have
sway where empires have been lost and won--control Cuba, but does
not dominate the Philippines. The Pope of the period, it will be
remembered, divided the new worlds discovered by the navigators of
Spain and Portugal, awarding to the best of his knowledge, by a line
drawn south from the southern shore of the Caribbean Sea. Portugal
holding that to the eastward and Spain that to the westward. Hence
the separation of South America between Brazil and the rest of the
central and south American states, to await the inevitable end of the
evolutions that were the revolutions of independence. Magellines,
a Portuguese, who, being slighted in his own country, went over to
the Spaniards, and pointed out that by sailing west the east would
be attained, and so found the straits that bear his name, and the
Ladrones and Philippines, annihilating the Papal boundary line by
taking and breaking it from the rear.
The conquest of the Philippines by the Spaniards has not been complete
as a military achievement or the enforcement of the adoption of customs
and costumes according to the habits and taste of the conquerors,
who have nibbled at the edges of the vast archipelago, greater in its
length and breadth and its natural riches than the West Indies. The
Spanish ladies in the Philippines are dressed as in the ancient cities
of their own renowned peninsula. The Filipinos are of the varied
styles that adorn Africans and the Asiatics. They are gay in colors
and curious in the adjustment of stuffs, from the flimsy jackets to
the fantastic skirts. The first essential in the dress of a Filipino
is a jacket cut low, the decolette feature being obscured to some
extent by pulling out one shoulder and covering the other, taking
the chances of the lines that mark the concealment and disclosure
of breast and back. There is no expression of immodesty. The woman
of the Philippines is sad as she is swarthy, and her melancholy eyes
are almost always introspective, or glancing far away, and revising
the disappointed dreams of long ago. Profounder grief than is read
in the faces of bronze and copper no mourning artist has wrought nor
gloomy poet written. Below the jacket, the everlasting blazer, is a
liberal width of cloth tightly drawn about the loins, stomach and hips,
making no mistake in revelations of the original outline drawings, or
the flexibilities which the activities display. There are two skirts,
an outer one that opens in front, showing the tunic, which is of a
color likely to be gaudy and showing strangely with the outer one. The
feet are exposed, and if not bare, clothed only in clumsy slippers
with toe pieces, and neither heels nor uppers. Women carry burdens on
their heads, and walk erect and posed as if for snap photographs. The
young girls are fond of long hair, black as cannel coal, and streaming
in a startling cataract to the hips. It seems that the crop of hair
is unusually large, and it shines with vitality, as the breeze lifts
it in the sunshine. The Philippine boys are still more lightly clad
than the girls, who have an eye to queer combinations of colors, and
the revelation of the lines that distinguish the female form without
flagrant disclosure. There is much Philippine dressing that may under
all the surroundings be called modest, and the prevalent expression
of the Filipino is that of fixed but bewildered grief. The males are
rather careless, and display unstinted the drawings of legs, that are
copper-colored and more uniform in tint than symmetry. Two or three
rags do a surprisingly extensive service, and all the breezes cause
the fluttering of fantastic but scanty raiment. It is a comfort to
return to a country where people wear clothing not as a flimsy and
inadequate disguise. What will be the influence of our armies bent to
the tropics, upon the dress of Americans? It is a question that may
be important. The "wheel" has introduced knickerbockers and promises
to result in knee breeches. On the transports that have traversed the
Pacific the soldiers were fond of taking exercise in undershirts and
drawers only and they swarmed from their bunks at night, to sleep on
deck, sometimes condescending to spread blankets to take the edge
off the cruelty of the hard wood, but reluctant to be encumbered
with undershirts. Their favorite night dress was drawers only,
and they acted upon the false theory that one cannot take cold at
sea. The authority of officers was often necessary to impress the
average soldier that he ought to have an undershirt between his skin
and the sky. The boys were during their long voyage very sparing
in the use of shoes and stockings, and it has perhaps never before
occurred in American experiences that there was such an opportunity
to study the infinite variety of the big toe, and, indeed, of all the
toes. In active army service the care of the feet is essential. The
revelations on shipboard disclose the evils of ill-fitting shoes
to be most distrusting. One of the claims of West Point for high
consideration is in teaching the beauty of white trousers, and our
tropical army experiences will extend the fashion. When General Merritt
and Admiral Dewey parted on the deck of the China in Manila harbor,
both were clad in spotless white, their caps, coats and trousers making
a showy combination. There was also a group of sea captains who had
gathered to give the Captain of the China a good send-off, and they
with the staff officers, were all in radiant white. There was not a
boy in blue among them. The illustrious General and Admiral reminded
me of Gabriel Ravel, when in his glory as The White Knight. It would
be hard to say which wore the nattier cap, but that of the Admiral
was of the more jaunty cut, while the General--gold cord for a band
and gold buttons, especially became his blue eyes. If the officers of
the army, navy and transports could be photographed as they stood in
dazzling array, as if hewn from marble, the fashion plate resulting
would be incomparably attractive, and in the summers to come we shall
find among the influences of our tropical adventure and possessions
a heightening of the colors worn by American ladies, and a whitening
of the suits of gentlemen, involving the necessity of "calling in"
white coats, as well as straw hats on stated days in early September.