Manners and Social Usages by Mrs John M. E. W. Sherwood (best english novels for beginners .TXT) 📕

the elbow. It makes the arm look twice as large. She should wear,

for a thin sleeve, black lace to the wrist, with bands of velvet

running down, to diminish the size of the arm. All those lace

sleeves to the elbow, with drops of gold, or steel trimming, or

jets, are very unbecoming; no one but the slight should wear them.

Tight lacing is also very unbecoming to those who usually adopt

it—women of thirty-eight or forty who are growing a little stout.

In thus trussing themselves up they simply get an unbecoming

redness of the face, and are not the handsome, comfortable-looking

creatures which Heaven intended they should be. Two or three

beautiful women well known in society killed themselves last year

by tight lacing. The effect of an inch less waist was not apparent

enough to make this a wise sacrifice of health and ease of

breathing.

At a lady’s lunch party, which is always an occasion for handsome

dress, and where bonnets are always worn, the faces of those who

are too tightly dressed always show the strain by a most

unbecoming flush; and as American rooms are always too warm, the

suffering must be enormous.

It is a very foolish plan, also, to starve one’s self, or

“bant,” for a graceful thinness; women only grow wrinkled, show

crow’s-feet under the eyes, and look less young than those who let

themselves alone.

A gorgeously dressed woman in the proper place is a fine sight. A

well-dressed woman is she who understands herself and her

surroundings.

CHAPTER XIX.

DRESSING FOR DRIVING.

No one who has seen the coaching parade in New York can have

failed to observe the extraordinary change which has come over the

fashion in dress for this conspicuous occasion. Formerly ladies

wore black silks, or some dark or low-toned color in woollen or

cotton or silk; and a woman who should have worn a white dress on

top of a coach would, ten years ago, have been thought to make

herself undesirably conspicuous.

Now the brightest colored and richest silks, orange, blue, pink,

and lilac dresses, trimmed with lace flounces, dinner dresses, in

fact—all the charming confections of Worth or Piugat—are freely

displayed on the coach-tops, with the utmost graciousness, for

every passer-by to comment on. The lady on the top of a coach

without a mantle appears very much as she would at a full-dress

ball or dinner. She then complains that sometimes ill-natured

remarks float up from the gazers, and that the ladies are

insulted. The fashion began at Longchamps and at Ascot, where,

especially at the former place, a lady was privileged to sit in

her victoria, with her lilac silk full ruffled to the waist, in

the most perfect and aristocratic seclusion. Then the fast set of

the Prince of Wales took it up, and plunged into rivalry in

dressing for the public procession through the London streets,

where a lady became as prominent an object of observation as the

Lord Mayor’s coach. It has been taken up and developed in America

until it has reached a climax of splendor and, if we may say so,

inappropriateness, that is characteristic of the following of

foreign fashions in this country. How can a white satin, trimmed

with lace, or an orange silk, be the dress in which a lady should

meet the sun, the rain, or the dust of a coaching expedition? Is

it the dress in which she feels that she ought to meet the gaze of

a mixed assemblage in a crowded hotel or in a much frequented

thoroughfare? What change of dress can there be left for the

drawing-room?

We are glad to see that the Princess of Wales, whose taste seems

to be as nearly perfect as may be, has determined to set her

pretty face against this exaggerated use of color. She appeared

recently in London, on top of a coach, in a suit of navy-blue

flannel. Again, she and the Empress of Austria are described as

wearing dark, neat suits of drap d’�t�, and also broadcloth

dresses. One can see the delicate figures and refined features of

these two royal beauties in this neat and inconspicuous dress,

and, when they are contrasted with the flaunting pink and white

and lace and orange dresses of those who are not royal, how vulgar

the extravagance in color becomes!

Our grandmothers travelled in broadcloth riding-habits, and we

often pity them for the heat and the distress which they must have

endured in the heavy, high-fitting, long-sleeved garments; yet we

cannot but think they would have looked better on top of a coach

than their granddaughters—who should remember, when they complain

of the rude remarks, that we have no aristocracy here whose

feelings the mob is obliged to respect, and that the plainer their

dress the less apt they will be to hear unpleasant epithets

applied to them. In the present somewhat aggressive Amazonian

fashion, when a woman drives a man in her pony phaeton (he sitting

several inches below her), there is no doubt much audacity

unintentionally suggested by a gay dress. A vulgar man, seeing a

lady in white velvet, Spanish lace, a large hat—in what he

considers a “loud” dress—does not have the idea of modesty or of

refinement conveyed to his mind by the sight; he is very apt to

laugh, and to say something not wholly respectful. Then the lady

says, “With how little respect women are treated in large cities,

or at Newport, or at Saratoga!” Were she more plainly dressed, in

a dark foulard or an inconspicuous flannel or cloth dress, with

her hat simply arranged, she would be quite as pretty and better

fitted for the matter she has in hand, and very much less exposed

to invidious comment. Women dress plainly enough when tempting the

“salt-sea wave,” and also when on horseback. Nothing could be

simpler than the riding-habit, and yet is there any dress so

becoming? But on the coach they should not be too fine.

Of course, women can dress as they please, but if they please to

dress conspicuously they must be ready to take the consequences. A

few years ago no lady would venture into the street unless a

mantle or a scarf covered her shoulders. It was a ladylike

precaution. Then came the inglorious days of the “tied-backs,” a

style of dress most unbecoming to the figure, and now happily no

more. This preposterous fashion had, no doubt, its influence on

the manners of the age.

Better far, if women would parade their charms, the courtly

dresses of those beauties of Bird-cage Walk, by St. James’s Park,

where “Lady Betty Modish” was born—full, long, bouffant

brocades, hair piled high, long and graceful scarfs, and gloves

reaching to the elbow. Even the rouge and powder were a mask to

hide the cheek which did or did not blush when bold eyes were

fastened upon it. Let us not be understood, however, as extolling

these. The nineteenth-century beauty mounts a coach with none of

these aids to shyness. No suggestion of hiding any of her charms

occurs to her. She goes out on the box seat without cloak or

shawl, or anything but a hat on the back of her head and a gay

parasol between her and a possible thunder-storm. These ladies are

not members of an acclimatization society. They cannot bring about

a new climate. Do they not suffer from cold? Do not the breezes go

through them? Answer, all ye pneumonias and diphtherias and

rheumatisms!

There is no delicacy in the humor with which the funny papers and

the caricaturists treat these very exaggerated costumes. No

delicacy is required. A change to a quieter style of dress would

soon abate this treatment of which so many ladies complain. Let

them dress like the Princess of Wales and the Empress of Austria,

when in the conspicuous high-relief of the coach, and the result

will be that ladies, married or single, will not be subjected to

the insults of which so many of them complain, and of which the

papers are full after every coaching parade.

Lady riders are seldom obliged to complain of the incivility of a

passer-by. Theirs are modest figures, and, as a general thing

nowadays, they ride well. A lady can alight from her horse and

walk about in a crowded place without hearing an offensive word:

she is properly dressed for her exercise.

Nor, again, is a young lady in a lawn-tennis suit assailed by the

impertinent criticisms of a mixed crowd of by-standers. Thousands

play at Newport, Saratoga, and other places of resort, with

thousands looking on, and no one utters a word of rebuke. The

short flannel skirt and close Jersey are needed for the active

runner, and her somewhat eccentric appearance is condoned. It is

not considered an exhibition or a show, but a good, healthy game

of physical exercise. People feel an interest and a pleasure in

it. It is like the old-fashioned merry-making of the May-pole, the

friendly jousts of neighbors on the common playground of the

neighborhood, with the dances under the walnut-trees of sunny

Provence. The game is an invigorating one, and even those who do

not know it are pleased with its animation. We have hitherto

neglected that gymnastic culture which made the Greeks the

graceful people they were, and which contributed to the

cultivation of the mind.

Nobody finds anything to laugh at in either of these costumes; but

when people see a ball-dress mounted high on a coach they are very

apt to laugh at it; and women seldom come home from a coaching

parade without a tingling cheek and a feeling of shame because of

some comment upon their dress and appearance. A young lady drove

up, last summer, to the Ocean House at Newport in a pony phaeton,

and was offended because a gentleman on the piazza said, “That

girl has a very small waist, and she means us to see it.” Who was

to blame? The young lady was dressed in a very conspicuous manner:

she had neither mantle nor jacket about her, and she probably did

mean that her waist should be seen.

There is a growing objection all over the world to the hour-glass

shape once so fashionable, and we ought to welcome it as the best

evidence of a tendency towards a more sensible form of dress, as

well as one more conducive to health and the wholesome discharge

of a woman’s natural and most important functions. But if a woman

laces herself into a sixteen-inch belt, and then clothes herself

in brocade, satin, and bright colors, and makes herself

conspicuous, she should not object to the fact that men, seeing

her throw aside her mantle, comment upon her charms in no measured

terms. She has no one to blame but herself.

We might add that by this overdressing women deprive themselves

of the advantage of contrast in style. Lace, in particular, is for

the house and for the full-dress dinner or ball. So are the light,

gay silks, which have no fitness of fold or of texture for the

climbing of a coach. If bright colors are desired, let ladies

choose the merinos and nuns’ veilings for coaching dresses; or,

better still, let them dress in dark colors, in plain and

inconspicuous dresses, which do not seem to defy both dust and sun

and rain as well. On top of a coach they are far more exposed to

the elements than when on the deck of a yacht.

Nor, because the fast set of the Prince of Wales do so in London,

is there any reason why American women should appear on top of a

coach dressed in red velvet and white satin. Let