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

fact that the Queen had placed Windsor Castle at the disposal of

the Prince for his use during Ascot week, but that when she

learned that two somewhat conspicuous American beauties were

expected, she rescinded the loan and told the Prince to entertain

his guests elsewhere.

CHAPTER XX.

INCONGRUITIES OF DRESS.

We are all aware of the value of a costume, such as the dress of

the Pompadour era: the Swiss peasant’s bodice, the Normandy cap,

the faldetta of the Maltese, the Hungarian national dress, the

early English, the Puritan square-cut, the Spanish mantilla, the

Roman scarf and white cap—all these come before us; and as we

mention each characteristic garment there steps out on the canvas

of memory a neat little figure, in which every detail from shoe to

head-dress is harmonious.

No one in his wildest dreams, however, could set out with the

picture of a marquise, and top it off with a Normandy cap. Nor

could he put powder on the dark hair of the jaunty little

Hungarian. The beauty of these costumes is seen in each as a

whole, and not in the parts separately. The marquise must wear

pink or blue, or some light color; she must have the long waist,

the square-cut corsage, the large hoop, the neat slipper, with

rosette and high heel, the rouge and patches to supplement her

powdered hair, or she is no marquise.

The Swiss peasant must have the short skirt, the white chemisette,

the black velvet bodice, the cross and ribbon, the coarse shoes,

and the head-dress of her canton; the Normandy peasant her dark,

striking dress, her high-heeled, gold-buckled shoe, and her white

apron; the Hungarian her neat, military scarlet jacket, braided

with gold, her scant petticoat and military boot, her high cap and

feather. The dress of the English peasant, known now as the

“Mother Hubbard” hat and cloak, very familiar to the students of

costumes as belonging to the countrywomen of Shakspeare’s time,

demands the short, bunched-up petticoat and high-heeled, high-cut

shoes to make it perfect.

We live in an age, however, when fashion, irrespective of artistic

principle, mixes up all these costumes, and borrows a hat here and

a shoe there, the effect of each garment, diverted from its

original intention, being lost.

If “all things by their season seasoned are,” so is all dress (or

it should be) seasonable and comprehensive, congruous and

complete. The one great secret of the success of the French as

artists and magicians of female costume is that they consider the

entire figure and its demands, the conditions of life and of

luxury, the propriety of the substance, and the needs of the

wearer. A lady who is to tread a velvet carpet or a parqueted

floor does not need a wooden shoe; she needs a satin slipper or

boot. Yet in the modern drawing-room we sometimes see a young lady

dancing in a heavy Balmoral boot which is only fitted for the bogs

and heather of a Scotch tramp. The presence of a short dress in a

drawing-room, or of a long train in the street, is part of the

general incongruity of dress.

The use of the ulster and the Derby hat became apparent on English

yachts, where women learned to put themselves in the attitude of

men, and very properly adopted the storm jib; but, if one of those

women had been told that she would, sooner or later, appear in

this dress in the streets of London, she would have been shocked.

In the days of the French emigration, when highborn ladies escaped

on board friendly vessels in the harbor of Honfleur, many of them

had on the long-waisted and full-skirted overcoats of their

husbands, who preferred to shiver rather than endure the pain of

seeing their wives suffer from cold. These figures were observed

by London tailors and dressmakers, and out of them grew the

English pelisse which afterwards came into fashion. On a stout

Englishwoman the effect was singularly absurd, and many of the

early caricatures give us the benefit of this incongruity; for

although a small figure looks well in a pelisse, a stout one never

does. The Englishwoman who weighs two or three hundred pounds

should wear a sacque, a shawl, or a loose cloak, instead of a

tight-waisted pelisse. However, we are diverging. The sense of the

personally becoming is still another branch of the great subject

of dress. A velvet dress, for instance, demands for its trimmings

expensive and real lace. It should not be supplemented by Breton

or imitation Valenciennes. All the very pretty imitation laces are

appropriate for cheap silks, poplins, summer fabrics, or dresses

of light and airy material; but if the substance of the dress be

of the richest, the lace should be in keeping with it.

So, also, in respect to jewellery: no cheap or imitation jewellery

should be worn with an expensive dress. It is as foreign to good

taste as it would be for a man to dress his head and body in the

most fashionable of hats and coats, and his legs in white duck.

There is incongruity in the idea.

The same incongruity applies to a taste for which our countrymen

have often been blamed—a desire for the magnificent, A woman who

puts on diamonds, real lace, and velvets in the morning at a

summer watering-place is decidedly incongruous. Far better be

dressed in a gingham, with Hamburg embroidery, and a straw hat

with a handkerchief tied round it, now so pretty and so

fashionable. She is then ready for the ocean or for the mountain

drive, the scramble or the sail. Her boots should be strong, her

gloves long and stout. She thus adapts her attire to the occasion.

In the evening she will have an opportunity for the delicate boot

and the trailing gauze or silk, or that deft combination of all

the materials known as a “Worth Costume.”

In buying a hat a woman should stand before a long Psyche glass,

and see herself from head to foot. Often a very pretty bonnet or

hat which becomes the face is absolutely dreadful in that wavy

outline which is perceptible to those who consider the effect as a

whole. All can remember how absurd a large figure looked in the

round poke hat and the delicate Fanchon bonnet, and the same

result is brought about by the round hat. A large figure should be

topped by a Gainsborough or Rubens hat, with nodding plumes. Then

the effect is excellent and the proportions are preserved.

Nothing can be more incongruous, again, than a long, slim,

aesthetic figure with a head-gear so disproportionately large as

to suggest a Sandwich-Islander with his head-dress of mats. The

“aesthetic craze” has, however, brought in one improvement in

costume. It is the epauletted sleeve, which gives expansion to so

many figures which are, unfortunately, too narrow. All

physiologists are speculating on the growing narrowness of chest

in the Anglo-Saxon race. It is singularly apparent in America. To

remedy this, some ingenious dressmaker devised a little puff at

the top of the arm, which is most becoming. It is also well

adapted to the “cloth of gold” costume of the days of Francis I.,

which modern luxury so much affects. It is a Frond sort of

costume, this nineteenth-century dress, and can well borrow some

of the festive features of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries, if they be not incongruous. We, like those rich nobles

and prosperous burghers, have lighted on piping times of peace; we

have found a new India of our own; our galleons come laden with

the spoils of all countries; we are rich, and we are able to wear

velvet and brocade.

But we should be as true as they to the proprieties of dress. In

the ancient burgher days the richest citizen was not permitted to

wear velvet; he had his own picturesque collar, his dark-cloth

suit, his becoming hat. He had no idea of aping the cian, with his

long hat and feather. We are all patricians; we can wear either

the sober suit or the gay one; but do let us avoid incongruity.

A woman, in dressing herself for an evening of festivity, should

remember that, from her ear-rings to her fan, all must suggest and

convey the idea of luxury. A wooden fan is very pretty in the

morning at a watering-place, but it will not do in the evening.

None of the modern ch�telaine arrangements, however ornamental,

are appropriate for evening use. The ch�telaine meant originally

the chain on which the lady of the house wore her keys; therefore

its early association of usefulness remains: it is not luxurious

in intention, however much modern fashion may have adorned it.

Many a fashion has, it is true, risen from a low estate. The Order

of the Garter tells of a monarch’s caprice; the shoe-buckle and

the horseshoe have crept up into the highest rank of ornaments.

But as it takes three generations to make a gentleman, so does it

take several decades to give nobility to low-born ornament. We

must not try to force things.

A part of the growing and sad incongruity of modern dress appears

in the unavoidable awkwardness of a large number of bouquets. A

belle cannot leave the insignia of belledom at home, nor can she

be so unkind as to carry Mr. Smith’s flowers and ignore Mr.

Brown’s; so she appears with her arms and hands full, to the

infinite detriment of her dress and general effect. Some

arrangement might be devised whereby such trophies could be

dragged in the train of the high-priestess of fashion.

A little reading, a little attention to the study of costume (a

beautiful study, by-the-way), would soon teach a young woman to

avoid the incongruous in dress. Some people have taste as a

natural gift: they know how to dress from a consultation with

their inner selves. Others, alas! are entirely without it. The

people who make hats and coats and dresses for us are generally

without any comprehension of the history of dress. To them the hat

of the Roundhead and that of the Cavalier have the same meaning.

To all people of taste and reading, however, they are very

different, and all artists know that the costumes which retain

their hold on the world have been preferred and have endured

because of their fitness to conditions of climate and the grace

and ease with which they were worn.

CHAPTER XXI.

ETIQUETTE OF MOURNING.

There is no possibility of touching upon the subject of death and

burial, and the conditions under which funerals should be

conducted, without hurting some one’s feelings. The Duke of

Sutherland’s attempt in England to do away with the dreadful shape

which causes a shudder to all who have lost a friend—that of the

coffin—was called irreverent, because he suggested that the dead

should be buried in wicker-work baskets, with fern-leaves for

shrouds, so that the poor clay might the more easily return to

mother earth. Those who favor cremation suffer again a still more

frantic disesteem; and yet every one deplores the present gloomy

apparatus and dismal observances of our occasions of mourning.

Death is still to the most Christian and resigned heart a very

terrible fact, a shock to all who live, and its surroundings, do

what we will, are painful. “I smell the mould above the rose,”

says Hood, in his pathetic lines on his daughter’s death.

Therefore, we have a difficulty to contend with in the wearing of

black, which is of itself, to begin with, negatory of our

professed belief in the resurrection. We confess the logic of

despair when we drape ourselves in its gloomy folds. The dress

which we should wear, one would think, might