Manners and Social Usages - Mrs John M. E. W. Sherwood (mobile ebook reader TXT) 📗
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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
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