Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014 https://archive.org/details/artofbeautyOOhawe_0 THE ART OF BEAUTY doiqre fxoi KakS> yivmBai ravdoBev' e^codev Be oa-a i)((o ToTv ivTos dvai jlaoi THE ART OF BEAUTY BY MRS H. R. HAWEIS AUTHOR OF 'CHAUCER FOR CHILDREN' WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR SECOND EDITION CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1883 LONDON : PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET THF amy nmni AUTHORS FOREWORDS HE basis of the present book is a series of articles which appeared some years ago in * St. Paul's Magazine/ and which I have often been asked to reprint. I have considerably re-arranged and amplified the subject matter ; but whilst I have traversed a wide field, I can lay claim to neither a fixed scheme nor a scientific method. Still I cannot but hope that the following pages may be helpful to some who have never thought much about the influence or the art of Beauty ; and I may perhaps add that among the portraits derived from nature there are no photographs from life. CONTENTS. §xx%i 2BooL BEAUTY AND DRESS. CHAPTER I. PAGE Pleasure of Beauty 3 Pain of Ugliness . . . . . . . . . . 9 CHAPTER II. Importance of Dress . . . . . . . .11 Meaning of Dress . 18 What Dress should be ........ 22 CHAPTER III. Moralities of Dress ......... 25 Imbecile Ornament ......... 2S Simplicity 31 ^ Form -35 CHAPTER IV. Suitable Dresses 37 Extravagance . . . . • . . . . '39 Good and Bad Costumes 41 What Stays Cost us 48 1 viii " CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. PAGE Some Old Dresses 52 Dresses of Our Day 67 Low Dresses 82 CHAPTER VI. Our Poor Feet 88 Sandals e ..... 91 Clogs and Pattens 95 - CHAPTER VH. Ornaments 98 Modern Jewellery . .104 Oriental and Ancient Ornaments 107 Appropriate Patterns . . . . . . . -113 Good Taste • . . . . . 115 CHAPTER VHI. The Reason Why . . . . . . . . .118 BEAUTY AND HEAD-DRESSES. CHAPTER I.— FORM. The Function of a Head-dress 127 Head-dresses Ancient and Modern 132 Hair-powder and Patches 154 Out of Doors . . . 159 In-doors 165 The Hair 170 CONTENTS. ix CHAPTER II.— COLOUR. PAGE Blue 175 The Tyrian Dye . . . , . . . , .179 Green . 188 Red 190 Yellow 192 Sham Delicacy . . . . . „ . . . . 195 BEAUTY AND SURROUNDIAGS. CHAPTER I. Surroundings . 205 Artists and Artists 208 CHAPTER II. Why 'Old Things are Best' 213 What are we to do? . . . . . . . . 221 CHAPTER III. Practical Hints 225 Furniture and Dress 227 Old and New Colours 231 CHAPTER IV. Colours in Furniture ........ 234 Form in Furniture ' 241 Materials 246 Light and Shade 249 X CONTENTS. A GARDEN OF GIRLS. CHAPTER I. PAGE Pretty and Ugly Women . . . _ . . , . 255. On some Girls . . . . . . . . . . 259 CHAPTER II. The Nonentity . 266 The Ill-educated Girl 268 The Discouraged Girl ........ 269 The Shy Girl 270 The Stupid Girl 271 The Plain Girl 273 CHAPTER III. An 'At Home' 276 A Garden Party 283 Home Tyranny 291 En Fin . . 294 ILL USTRA TIONS. FIG. PACK 1. A Test applied to Dress 35 2. The Hoop, 1570. From a Rare Print of Queen Elizabeth, British Museum . ' . . . . , . . . 42 3. The Hoop, 1750 .» ....... 44 4. The Hoop, i860 . , . . . . , . . 44 6. Greek Women. From small Clay Figures, Greek Room, 7. I British Museum . . . . . . , . . 47 8.. 9. Natural Form of the Ribs and Spine . . . .49 10. Fashionable Form of the Ribs and Spine , . . . 49 11. Natural Position of the Organs . . o . .50 12. Deformed Position of the Organs . . . . . 50 13. Natural Form of the Waist . . ... .50 14. Artificial Form of the Waist . . „ „ . ,. 50 15. Eleventh Century (early) ....... 54 16. Eleventh Century (late) 54 17. Tenth Century \ Origin, Decline, and Final Form 18. Twelfth Century 1- of the Elongated Outer 19. Fourteenth Century J Sleeve ..... 56 . xii ILL USTRA TIONS, FIG. PAGE 20. SiDELESs Gown in its Prime . . . . • • 57 21. SiDELESs Gown in its Decadence 58 22. Court Lady, Early Sixteenth Century . . . . 60 23. Country Lady, Early Sixteenth Century ... 60 24. Duchess of Richmond (Lely) . . . . . . 61 25. Puritan Lady ......... 62 26. Royalist Lady ......... 62 27. 1830. Our Mothers 66 28. 1790. Their Mothers ........ 66 29. Good and Bad Forms of Bodice 68 30. From a Drawing by Holbein 71 31. Grace and Disgrace . , 79 32. A Vista of Dress 80 • A Common Effect . . . . . . . .85 34-, 35. Outlines of Natural and Fashionable Feet . . . 88 36. Fourteenth-century Shoe 89 37. Foot Deformed by Shoe 89 38. Eighteenth-century Shoe versus Normal Foot . . 89 39. Fifteenth-century Shoe 90 40. ) I Suggestions for Modern Pattens 97 41. j 42. Indian Pendants 108 43. Irish Brooch. From Walker's 'History of the Irish Bards' . 108 44. \ I Keltic Ornaments 109 45. J 46. Old Italian Earring 109 ILL USTRA TIONS. xiii Designs by Holbein, British Museum III III III III 112 ) L Greek Earring. Russian Collection 48.] 49. Etruscan Necklace. British Museum . 50. Greek Necklace. British Museum 51. Etruscan Necklace. British Museum . 52. Aigrette. Design by Birckenhultz, British Museum 53. Pendant 54. Button {?). 55. A Dress THAT does not Contradict the Natural Lines 119 56. A Dress that Contradicts the Natural Lines . . 119 57. Vulgarity plus Unhealthiness 123 58. Anglo-Saxon Lady 136 59. Alfgyfe, Canute's Queen 136 60. Lady of Rank, Fourteenth Century . . . . 137 61. Lady of the Middle Class, Fourteenth Century . 137 62. Countess of Suffolk, 1450 138 63. Lady with «a Paire of Locks and Curls,' 1670 . . 138 64. Lady early in the Fifteenth Century . . . . 139 65. Lady in the Fifteenth Century 139 66. Countess of Arundel, 1439 140 67. The Gorget, Fourteenth Century . . . .141 68. 69. 70. Lady Butts. From a drawing by Holbein .... 144 71. From a Drawing by Holbein 145 72. Lady Berkeley. From a drawing by Holbein . . . 146 73. Mistress Souch. From a drawing by Holbein . . . 147 The Wimple 142 xiv ILL USTRA TIONS. FIG. 74. From a Drawing by Holbein 75. From a Drawing by Holbein 76. Elderly Lady, 1631 , 77. Mary Stuart's Cap 78. Lady of Rank, 1604 . 79. The 'Commode,' i68o 80. Patches, 1650 I Fashionable Ladies in 3780 82. ) 83. Vulgarity Pure and Simple 84. 'Chippendale' Fine Art 85. Seventeenth-century Cabinet 86. The Upholsterer's Darling 87. Strong-minded Young Lady 88. Fashion's Slave 89. Seemly or Slatternly? . 90. Grace . . , . „ 91. Un-grace. . » , . Beauty and Dress B CHAPTER I. ^lea^ure of 25eautp* HE culture of beauty is everywhere a legitimate art. But the beauty and adornment of the human form, the culture of personal beauty, and, in our age, especially of female beauty, is of the first interest and importance. It is impossible to separate people from their looks. A woman's natural quality is to attract, and having attracted, to enchain ; and how influential she may be for good or for evil, the history of every age makes clear. We may add, therefore, that the culture of beauty is the natural right of every woman. It is not * wicked ' to take pains with oneself In the present day our altered system of education, and an improved conception of woman's capacities, may have a little blinded us. We have begun to think of the mind almost to the exclusion of the body. It is perhaps, time to notice that the new views, whilst pointing to one truth, are in danger of eclipsing another : not, as 4 BEAUTY AND DRESS. some thoughtless people believe, that mental culture can ever harm a woman, or do aught but confer an added grace, but that the exclusive culture of one good thing involves a deplorable loss, whilst two good things do but enhance each other's lustre. However important the mind may be in fitting woman for her place in the world, either individually or as the companion of man, the body is hardly less important ; and, after all, the old- fashioned notion that a woman's first duty is to be beautiful, is one that is justified by the utter impossibility of stamping it out. I should be the last to imply that physical beauty is the only thing that can make a woman attractive. Many are attractive and magnetic without beauty as it is com- monly understood, and some are too useful to provoke criticism; but physical beauty remains one of the sweetest and strongest qualities, and one which can scarcely be too highly valued or too falsely despised. The immortal worth of beauty lies in the universal pleasure it gives. We all love it instinctively. We all feel, more or less, that beauty (or what we think beauty) is a sort of necessity to us, like the elements. One of the best proofs of this is the fact that we generally invest with ideal beauty any face or thing we are fond of. The beauty of the skies and seas soothes and uplifts our hearts ; the beauty of faces passes into PLEASURE OF BEAUTY. 5 our souls, and shapes our moods and acts. What we love is probably always worth cultivating ; and when we love what after all has an enormous refining influence, its cultivation may even become a duty. The power and sanctity of physical, as well as moral beauty, has been recognised in all ages. The early myth of Beauty worshipped and respected by beasts of prey is a suggestive and touching instance of this. The Greeks considered beauty so essentially a divine boon, that the mother prayed to Zeus that her child might be before all things beautiful. Beauty seemed to the Greek the visible sign of an inward grace, and an expression of divine good-will. Thus it naturally came to be cultivated at Athens with an enthusiasm and devotion such as it is difficult for us to realise. It was a part of their religion, and the common phrase, koXov koi a^yaOov, the Good and the Beautiful, embodied the fact. It may seem strange that the Greeks, whose civili- sation had made them so sensitive to beauty of a certain order, should have remained to a great extent untouched by other orders of beauty which we value so deeply ; but it is even more singular that we who know all that they knew, and have cultivated a susceptibility to sound, as in music, and colour, as in painting, far more keen and complex than theirs, should have become 6 BEAUTY AND DRESS. SO careless of what they held highest — human beauty, and surroundings in so far as they affect human beauty. The wisest of men has called physical beauty a jewel of gold, the value of which is not destroyed, but only checked, by its being occasionally found in a swine's snout ; and though decking it with gold will never make a swine other than a swine, it is possible to cultivate the inner and the outer grace together, and it is possible to actually open a way for the development of the mental and moral good by smoothing the physical veil which encumbers and distorts it. In fact, outward ugliness is an impediment in more ways than one ; influencing the character in an unmis- takable degree (hereafter to be shown), and influencing surroundings and the chances of life, far more than is generally admitted. The part which beauty played in the Middle Ages was a very real one. Woman, whose loveliness so swayed men, was at one time treated with something like divine honours, mistress as she was of the chief civilising influence of the time. Books being few, and secular education nearly confined to woman, her mere knowledge gave her almost unlimited power over her rude, warlike bread-winner. Whilst he could only fight in battle, or wring treasure by force from the traveller crossing his domain, PLEASURE OF BEAUTY. 7 she could often write or read a letter. While he could but teach the young hands to war, and the fingers to fight, to manage a fierce horse, or to bring down the quarry, the whole mental and moral training of the children and the household were in her hands. She could instruct them in the mysteries of their faith, the duties of their position, and teach them the hundred arts and occupations which engrossed the time of woman when shops were not. Knowledge is power ; beauty and knowledge combined are well-nigh all-powerful ; both belonged to woman, and she was, for good or evil, the incentive to action, the prize in the tourney, the leech who cured the sick and tended the wounded, the ruler of the servants, and the keeper of the castle keys. She it was who, pointing to courage and courtesy as the price of her grace, diffused courage and courtesy throughout the land. She it was who fixed the tone of morals and ex- cellence in the court in which she reigned as queen. And she it is who (though books and education have come her master's way at last) still possesses a vast power for good or ill, a power of which her beauty in the ab- stract is the pivot and corner-stone. Darwin has some very curious remarks in his book on the ' Descent of Man,' on the different standards of beauty. * Beauty seems to some people to mean a very pro- 8 BEAUTY AND DRESS. nounced form of whatever type of feature or hue we are most accustomed to ; in short, the exaggeration of cha- racteristic peculiarities. Thus the African savage with his black hide, his large thick mouth, small eyes, flat nose, and heavy ears, considers that woman most lovely who has the blackest skin, the thickest mouth, the least apparent eyes, &c. We Western nations, whose characteristics are a small oval face, coloured pink and white, large eyes, prominent nose, and narrow jaw, think the excess of these characteristics to be beauty, and the deviation from them, ugliness. *The African savage considers the Englishwoman hideous, with her front teeth unextracted and white ^ like a dog's,' her lips untorn by either a copper ring or a piece of wood, and her cheeks coloured * like a potato flower.' The Englishman recoils from a Nubian lady, whose smile brings her lips on a level with her eyebrows, and draws her nose back to her ears.' There is no doubt a great deal in this theory — much more than we can at once realise — that beauty of form, like the colours of the prism, is non-existent except in our own eyes and minds. I do not, however, endorse it. I believe that there are abstract rules of beauty distinct from the charm of the habitual. But however this may be — for I am not concerned with definitions of what constitutes beauty — still on the lowest ground, the PAIN OF UGLINESS. ^ 9 pleasure excited in the mind by what seems to each to be beauty — even supposing it to be a flat nose — is so immense, that it has always been held worth living, and fighting, and dying for. Is it not then a kind of duty to make life beautiful — to disguise deformity, to provide by care and forethought for others, a pleasure which costs so little and brings in so much even to the giver, that one is tempted at times to fancy vanity itself but the abuse or exaggeration of a natural and noble quality — since it seeks, in the pride of beauty, a possession which tends to refine and elevate the mind, and increase the sum of human happiness in a number of direct and indirect ways. ^ain of Ctgline^^* Those whose taste has been cultivated by having beautiful things always about them, are incredibly sensi- tive to awkward forms, inappropriate colours, and in- harmonious combinations. To such persons, certain rooms, certain draperies, certain faces, cause not only the mere feeling of disapprobation, but even a kind of phy- sical pain. Sometimes they might be unable to explain what affected them so unpleasantly, or how they were affected, but they feel an uneasy sense of oppression and discomfort — they would fain flee away, and let the lO BEAUTY AND DRESS. simple skies or the moon with her sweet stare, soothe them into healthy feeling again. This sense of oppres- sion would probably be neither understood nor believed in by the ordinary run of educated people, in England, at least. But it is very real to those whose passionate care for the beautiful makes it a kind of necessity to them — and they are the subtle and delicate souls that build up the art-crown of a nation. The uneasiness to which I allude, is very similar to what we all feel more or less, according to our constitutional suscepti- bility, in the presence of unsympathetic persons. CHAPTER II. ^Importance of ^tt^0. [S in our age and climate the human body is I habitually and completely veiled, the veil as- sumes an artistic importance second only ta the forms that are hidden. In nothing are character and perception so insensibly but inevitably displayed, as in dress, and taste in dress. Dress is the second self, a dumb self, yet a most eloquent expositor of the person. There are garments, as there are faces and natures^ which have no ' bar ' in them — nothing which stops with a sudden shock your pleasure in them, nothing that dis- satisfies or perplexes you. There are colours that are always beautiful because they recall nature, fashions which are beautiful because sensible and fulfilling the aim for which they were invented. In fact, no dress can be beautiful that is not appropriate, and appropriateness consists chiefly in graceful expression and useful purpose. In modern days — so far removed from those when dress 12 BEAUTY AND DRESS. was regarded as a mere covering, and aspired to be no more (although it always admitted of decoration, such as jewellery or needlework) — we no longer look upon a gown as a shield against wintry cold, or a modest veil drawn between ourselves and the outer world. We expect it to be a work of art. Much money, repre- senting much labour, is lavished upon every garment. When the silk-weaver has spent his skill upon the produc- tion of even texture, delicate gloss, and rare tints, only half the work is done. We cannot fling and fold the rich piece upon us after the simple fashion of our forefathers. We want it more to express than to hide us. A clever craftswoman must cut it to the approved shape, and sew it into form ; it must be clothed upon with other and richer fabrics, which we call ' trimming,' until its original price is doubled. Every form is eagerly borrowed for these trimmings. Patterns old and new are exhausted to form attractive combinations — the Greek frieze, the mediaeval missal-border, the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms are laid under contribution — our very discontent with all there is, and our insatiable crav- ing for novelty, is one of the diseases consequent on a certain repletion of variety. Raised work, indented work, tabs, fringes, frills — there is no possible form of ornament that we have not tried and cast aside. So that a dress now claims to be considered as a work of art. IMPORTANCE OF DRESS. 15 Now if dress be worth all this elaboration, if it intends to reach, as it evidently aspires to do, the platform of a picture, or a poem, or a fine building, the art it adopts must be either good or bad art. I believe the melan- choly truth to be that we can hardly find a modern dress which is not throughout in the worst taste and opposed to the principles of all good art. Yet at the same time I think that to a certain extent the milliners mean well. I think that the women who spoil themselves with the milliner's devices mean well too. They do want to make the best of themselves, to be * things of beauty,' and not eyesores. But how to do this they don't know, and they don't think, and they generally refuse to learn. There are some ladies who always look well : they are not necessarily the pretty ones ; but they are women gifted with fine natural taste, who instinctively choose right forms, colours, and fabrics, generally without knowing why. These, however, are exceptions. If everybody who could hold a pencil were suddenly called upon to paint a picture, there would be only a few out of every score at least who would betray any sens^ii* of grace, perspective, colour, or design. Would it not be wise for those unpossessed of the sacred fire to receive instruction of some wholesome kind before they wasted time and good material to so little purpose } 14 BEAUTY AND DRESS. But what is true of painting is true also of dress. We need not all paint, but we have all got to dress, and the sooner dress is recognised by our women as an art- product, the better (and probably the more cheaply) they will be able to apparel themselves. What usually takes place in this country in the matter of dress } Vain persons who are proud of their appearance, and wish to make the most of themselves, spend much time in covering themselves with things that make an artist lift up hands and eyes of regret, astonishment, and pity. Those who are not vain often exclaim, * Don't ask me ! I will wear anything that is brought to me ! ' and both act from ignorance. The vain person wastes time and defeats her own aim ; the other is too ignorant to know that there is anything to know worth knowing, and does not sufficiently respect what God has given her, to care how she looks : so there is always a discord between her inner and outer self Yet dress and a proper care for it ought not to minister merely to vanity, nor impair in any degree the moral tone. A woman ought to care what she wears for her own sake and for the sake of those about her. It is a fault, not a virtue, to be reckless as to the impression one leaves on the eye, just as it is a fault to be indifferent to the feelings of others ; in either case there is a sad IMPORTANCE OF DRESS. absence of those subtle and beautiful perceptions that constitute a delicate and gentle mind. But how difficult it is for a woman to be really well dressed, under the existing prejudice that every body- must be dressed like everybody else ! This notion of a requisite livery is paralysing to anything like develop- ment of individual taste, and simply springs from the incapacity of the many to originate, wherefore they are glad to copy others ; but this majority have succeeded in suffocating the aesthetic minority, many of whom are now forced to suppress really good taste for fear of being called * affected.' We shall never have any school of art in England, either in dress or decoration of any kind, until the fundamental principle of good art is recognised, that people may do as they like in the matter, and until women cease to be afraid of being laughed at for doing what they feel to be wise and right. There can be no originality of scheme until individual taste is admitted to be free ; and how can there be in- dividuality while all are completely subservient to law, that law usually determined by folk who have neither natural feeling for beauty nor education } With regard to the milliner, ladies should remember that by trusting to the milliner's * taste '(?) they are merely playing into the hands of various tradesmen whose interest it is to sell their goods, be they good or i6 BEAUTY AND DRESS. bad. The manufacturer's mill must be kept going, there- fore the fashions must change ; the milliner loves her perquisites, therefore she encourages every fashion which is of a kind to deceive the eye as to quantity of material. It is to her interest that you should not be able to measure the exact number of yards she has used ; it would be to her customer's very considerable interest did the customer calculate and understand more than she usually does, how much stuff is required for flounce, skirt, or sleeve ! It is as absurd to suppose that every variety of short and tall, grave and gay, young and old, must be dressed in one style, as that the same coat must fit every man. How should it be so, whilst nature revels in endless dissimilarity t Why is the woman with taste for colour and form to sacrifice her gift to the others who have it not, and copy, when she is capable of originating } Why this deadly fear of being conspicuous t Why is one's individuality, so clear within, to be so confused with- out } Alas ! perhaps it is a misfortune to be an individual at all. We know the pity, the deep, deep commisera- tion which satirists say ill-natured women feel for those who are congenitally conspicuous — for good looks. Is it a similar commiseration for those who possess the next best thing, good taste, which has destroyed the IMPORTANCE OF DRESS, n interpretation of a beautiful mind, as it would like to stamp out a beautiful body ? If so, in the name of art and nature both, let us shake off the lethargy which immolates us to a Juggernauth of ignorant opinion, and let us assert our individuality, if we have any, in dress as in other things. Woman is most beautiful when she is most herself and least conscious of it — in dress as well as in other things : and as I am at present treating chiefly of her looks, which depend in great measure on her dress, I may lay down as a general principle that dress is most beautiful and most becoming when it follows the outlines of the human form. Dress bears the same relation to the body as speech does to the brain ; and therefore dress may be called the speech of the body. Speech was supposed to be meant for the expression of thought, till a modern cynic told us it was on the contrary for its concealment. Dress once expressed the person, now it disguises it ; well, disguise may sometimes be necessary — but when dress carries its anatomicaL fictions as far as evasion may be carried, as far as false- hood, it ceases not only to be respectable, but beautiful as well. This will be considered later, among the dresses, which contradict the natural lines of the body. C i8 BEAUTY AND DRESS. Observe further, that plenty of time — too much — is given to the dressmaker. Very Httle is given to dress itself ; no thought is expended on the requirements which the dress is to supply. No Englishwoman considers the meaning of each trimming, or form, or colour. She does not even consider whether it expresses in any degree her character, tastes, or wants. Frenchwomen, on the contrary, have carried too far the idea of dress as an index of the inner self. They have got a right notion by its wrong end. Without ever, or seldom, producing a costume which is really beautiful, meeting all needs, they have originated a kind of lan- guage of dress more vulgar and less excusable than the Italian language of flowers, which, apparently, is intelli- gible to a certain class of people, but, in my opinion, robs social intercourse of its spontaneity and self-unconscious- ness, and, in the case of dress, degrades woman to the level of a walking advertisement — of something baser than trade prices. We may learn the kind of way in which the French have spoilt and vulgarised the notion of dress as an -expression of character, from a book by M. Charles Blanc: 'L'Art dans la Parure et dans le Vetement,* MEANING OF DRESS. 19 which, with all its cleverness, is probably written with an ironic arrihe pensee, and meant to be swallowed with reservations. M. Blanc is * Membre de I'lnstitut, Ancien Directeur des Beaux- Arts.' He has thought out his subject with the enthusiasm of a Frenchman, and the servility of a man-milliner, and we can only hope that M. Blanc is not in earnest, but poking fun at us, in much that he says. A few quotations will make his point of view quite clear. Page 222. The author has been telling us that this wondrous work, the human body, * surtout le corps de la femme, doit etre vetu et orne de fagon a rappeler ces trois forces, la croissance, la pesanteur, et le mouvement. . . . La ceinture marque la transition entre les formes montr^es et les formes cachdes . . . ' II va sans dire . . . qu'une femme y sait mettre, quand elle veut, un cachet de modestie ou de richesse, de regu- larite ou de negligence. Est-il quelque chose, par ex- emple, de plus expressif dans une toilette de courses ou de chateau, que la ceinture odalisque trainant a mi-jupe, sur le cote, avec une nonchalance voluptueuse et rappe- lant si bien, par son nom et par sa forme, cette houri qui n'a pas eu le temps ' &c. — we refer the curious to the original. — ^ La jupe. Cette partie du vetement n'etant que pour couvrir et pour cacher, ne doit presenter aucune analogic avec les formes du corps.' c 2 20 BEAUTY AND DRESS. * Les jeunes filles/ proceeds M. Blanc, p. 229, 'qui' sont le plus souvent minces, supportent sans immodestie les releves hauts sur les hanches, lorsqu'elles ne se con- tentent pas d'une seule jupe qui sierait a leur jeunesse ;, mais le camargo, le pouff, c'est a dire le bouffant de der- riere, quand il est prononce, devint un accent de galan- terie qui nous frapperait s'il n'etait aujourd'hui generalise par I'usage. Que la seconde jupe soit drapee sur le de- vant, qu'elle soit aplatie et forme tablier plus ou moins court, c'est pour le mieux, parce que I'ampleur ici res- semblerait a ce que les Anglais appellent un etat inte- ressant, ou paraitrait le dissimuler. Sur le cote, cepen- dant, la tunique pent se retrousser avec timidite ou hardiesse,' &c. It is almost appalling to think of all we may have implied in our dress without knowing it, for so many- years. The mind almost quails before a new fashion, lest it should bear some construction contrary to our feeling. And if M. Blanc can find so much significance in a sash and an apron, what cannot he twist from a bodice, with the many ornaments to which we have hitherto attached no importance } All the different portions of the dress — sleeves> basqueSy ruches^ bands, mantles — he tells us ' en deter- minent la physiognomic selon la maniere dont elles sont faconnees, maniees et portees. Le corsage. Cacher MEANING OF DRESS, 21 €t tnontrer, ou plutot laisser deviner et laisser voir, ce sont les deux objets du corsage : mais il ne faut pas oublier que souvent ce que Ton cache est justement ce que Ton veut montrer . . . Mais que d'impressions vives auxquelles I'attention des hommes ne s'arrete point et qui concourent a Timpression que leur fait la toilette d'une femme ! . . . Quelle difference entre un corsage ferme et montant, agr^mente tout au plus d'un jabot de dentelle, et le corsage a revers qui s'ouvre de lui- meme au regard et a la pensee en laissant voir I'etoffe interieure qui, pour etre mieux remarquee, sera le plus souvent d'une couleur tranchante et d'un autre tissu ! Et plus le ton exterieur est discret plus est genereuse la couleur de dessous. Sur un corsage de cachemire gris- mauve, par exemple, ou de foulard ^cru, se detacheront des revers en taffetas rose-de-Chine, en velours grenat, en satin-marron, car il est de bon gout que la partie du vetement la plus riche soit celle que Ton montre le moins.' Many pages are spent by this fanatic on descrip- tions of the various forms of bodice which crowd modern fashion books, winding up with the corslet, ^Charmante allusion a la petite cuirasse des anciens preux, ironique imitation d'armure qui me rappelle ce mot incisif de Jean-Paul : " Les femmes sont comme les guerriers : elles jettent leurs armes quand elles s'avouent vaincues." ' 22 BEAUTY AND DRESS, These quotations will serve as white stones along a precipice to defend our feet from falling — to show what ought not to be indicated by dress. It is true that the colours and forms we employ should reflect our tastes and harmonise with our character. A puritan or quaker in bright colours would be inconsistent — a gay young face in a nun's veil is equally revolting. There are many persons who would be always out of place in the stately Watteau sacque, and some who would be lost and spoilt in the crossing bodice with its village grace. It is lawful and necessary to consider, when ordering a dress, what will make it suitable and appropriate, and also what will give the trimmings some artistic signifi- cance. A flounce that begins and ends without raison d^etre^ a meaningless scroll seemingly fallen haphazard on the lap but attached by no apparent means, buttons without button-holes, imitation lacing, &c., are bad in art, and to be eschewed by all who aim at being really well dressed ; but M. Blanc pays no regard whatever to the artistic meaning of an adoption which, before all else, is artistic, whilst he wrings only the moral significance from what in itself has really no meaning at all. An aim so forced can result in nothing but a painful and revolting self-consciousness in any woman seeking WHAT DRESS SHOULD BE. 23- to carry French notions into our purer English society ; the illustrations of M. Blanc's book perhaps admit it, for nothing more inane, more vulgar, and more artificial can be imagined than his notion of le beau sexe. There are two general rules to be observed in dress. 1. That it shall not contradict or falsify the natural lines of the body — be that body slightly or fully ex- pressed — and perhaps complete concealment is no gain to the moral as it is a marked loss from the artistic point of view. Our author, taking the very basest view of the body, enjoins concealment pour laisser deviner. The Greek, from a view correspondingly high, saw nothing evil in nature but what coarse minds brought there. The body is so beautiful that it is a pity it can be so little seen ; but the morality or immorality, the decency or indecency, consists in the motive of display. 2. That the attire shall express to a reasonable extent the character of the wearer. I really do not think that Englishwomen ever mean anything at all by adopting one trimming in preference to another, nor that the idea of certain interpretations is one that often occurs to them. They put themselves in the hands of their milli- ners, believing blindly that these professional advisers have given that thought to their costume which properly can and ought to be given by the wearer only. They think so little about the matter that they do not even 24 BEAUTY AND DRESS. guess how much they lose by this indifference. A woman may wear a dress many times without really knowing how the materials and folds mingle on her train. Far better so than that Englishwomen should come to attach the kind of importance to details attributed above to Frenchwomen ; but best, were women to bring pure minds to bear with common sense on what they wear, and why they wear it, considering utility as well as ornament. CHAPTER III. 0?0ralitie^f of 2Dre^^* N proceeding to lay down a few simple laws about the right and wrong — call it morality ^ if you will — of dress, I notice, firstly, the morality of what we wear, which includes the questions of decency and indecency in dress ; secondly, the morality of how we wear it, which is quite another matter, simply affecting ourselves and not the garment ; and then there is, thirdly, the independent morality of the fashion in itself Firstly. T/ie morality of what we wear. Decency in dress is a difficult question, and one too lengthy and involved to discuss fully here. We need only give a few examples which may suggest more to thinking minds. The human body uncovered is not necessarily a shocking thing. There is nothing wrong or improper in that which is made in God's own image, and which is justly held 26 BEAUTY AND DRESS. to be the highest type of beauty in creation. And at a time when beauty for its own sake was intensely appre- ciated, when it was cultivated with something of a re- ligious enthusiasm, when the mother longed for her child to be beautiful because beauty was felt to be divine, at such a time, in the fair warm climate of Greece and Italy, it was hardly thought needful to veil the body. The Greeks were proud of their beautiful bodies, as we are of a beautiful face, and a bare leg was no more to them than a bare arm is to us ; and the sexes mingled in free and honest companionship, clad only in a thin stola, children being devoid even of that. But what was harmless in the early Greeks would be impossible in nations who have lost to a great extent the simple instinct of natural beauty, whilst they have grown abnormally self-conscious and reflective. There are tribes in the East still, of no mean virtue (acting up to their lights) who consider the exposure of the face, or their identity, indelicate, but the rest of the body, wherein everybody is more or less alike, may ' go bare, go bare.' The Turkish woman in her loose trouser, perhaps the most modest and sensible of all feminine costumes, is often held up as a type of indelicate dress ; but in many respects our own fashions are open to juster criticism, when they seem to admit an impropriety by displaying a part only, just enough to hint at the rest, MORALITIES OF DRESS. 2r as though conscious of something wrong. This is far worse than the entire expression of the form, where use and artistic appreciation, or simpHcity of mind, have divested it of all exclusively evil associations. Secondly. The morality of how we wear a thing-. depending on the wearer's mind. Some women though covered up to the eyes always contrive to look indeli- cate ; some others, decolletee as the dressmaker and a corrupt custom have made them, are in their natural innocence without reproach. We may see this in statues and pictures. It is the mind that makes or mars. Many nude figures in sculpture and painting are in- offensive, because the face which is the index of the mind is free from shame or blame, and the whole attitude is sweet and unconscious. Thirdly. But of the first and second moralities it is not so much our wish to speak here ; they must be left to the healthy instincts of pure women, and each will surely enough, by her mode of dress, betray her mind's bent ; we can thereby, as it were, compute her orbit. But as to our third point, the morality of the garment itself now engages our attention. This may be seen when it is hung on a peg with no human form inside it. For moral qualities may be applied to the fashioning and adorning of a robe from a purely artistic point of view, as they may be applied to a building. The noble .28 BEAUTY AND DRESS, principles of art, which are all founded upon healthy- nature, are all * moral' — that is, they tend to exercise a right influence on the mind ; they satisfy, soften, and do not enervate or harass it — all these principles may be as apparent in a gown as in a cathedral. In the following remarks I shall confine myself as much as possible to the independent morality of dress, which had better be considered under several distinct lieadings. %m\^ttx\t (©tnament Probably nothing that is not useful is in any high sense beautiful. At least it will be almost universally- seen in the matter of dress that where an effect is bad it is an artificial or false efi"ect, and vice versa. A trimming, as before remarked, that has no raisoii d'etre is generally ungraceful. A pendent jewel simply sewn to a founda- tion where it neither holds up nor clasps together any part of the dress, usually looks superfluous, as it is. Above all, bows (which are literally nothing but strings tied together) stuck about when there is no possibility of their fastening two parts, almost always appear ridi- culous ; when needed for a mere ornament, a rosette should be used, which pretends to be nothing else. In the making of dresses, lines ending nowhere, and IMBECILE ORNAMENT. 29 nohow, are often apparent, and never fail to annoy the eye. The outlines of bonnets are conspicuous instances of this mistake. There is no art instinct, and but little of the picturesque element, in a people who are indiffe- rent to these things, and whose eye does not instinc- tively demand a meaning and a token in everything. In architecture do we not immediately detect and condemn a pillar that, resting on nothing, appears to support a heavy mass of masonry ; an arch that is gummed against and not built into a wall, unsupported, and therefore in an impossible position ; or a balcony that has neither base nor motive, unsupported and supporting nothing "> And these things are not seldom seen on the fronts of our more decorative buildings, where the ignorant archi- tect, knowing the whole thing to be a sham, the balconies of plaster, the carvings cement, the lintels fictitious, the pillars hollow, forgets that the forms he borrows were meant for use, and not merely for show. Mr. Ruskin has preached to us the motive of all good art ; Sir Charles Eastlake and others have taught us the practical dangers of debased art, and we may at once see how principles that are bad in one place are also bad in another. The uncultured dress-maker, only longing for novelty, invents forms of attire that would be impossible were dress less utterly artificial than it is, and this is half the cause of our universal ill-dressing. No fashion or BEAUTY AND DRESS, form can leave the mind without a jar, that is not where it is because indispensable there. Whether it occur in a house or in a gown, the principle must be the same. One of the reasons why peasants, fish-wives, and such folk, look picturesque and beautiful even in their rags, whatever be the mixture of colour or arrangement of form — so much more beautiful than fashionable people look even when they try to imitate the fish-wives — is, I think, the motive apparent in everything they wear. The bright kerchief that covers the peasant's shoulders is so much better than a bodice trimmed in the form of a kerchief The outer dress that really covers an under dress fully and fairly is so much more satisfactory than one which only pretends to do so, and betrays its own deceit at the elbows, or the wrists, or behind, or in some other unexpected place. Anything that looks useful and is useless is bad, and the more obviously artificial a thing is, the worse it must always be. A hood that is at once seen to be incapable of going over the head ; something that looks like a tunic in one place, yet in another is seen to have no lawful habitation nor a name ; a false apron ; a festoon that looks as though it had fallen accidentally upon the skirt, when by no possible means except glue or irrelevant pins could it stay there ; a veil that you at once perceive is never meant to descend over the face, but is tacked to the top SIMPLICITY. 31 of the head in an exasperating manner ; heavy lappets, that instead of being the natural termination of some- thing else, hang meaningless and mutilated ; slashes that are sewn upon the sleeve instead of breaking through it ; and other things of the same kind — they leave the eye unsatisfied, discontented, often disgusted, and these are artistically immoral. Indeed, the truth is, we have far too many subdivi- sions of attire about us to manage them properly. If we had but half the flounces and furbelows, and upper and under and middle skirts, and aprons and sashes, and * coat-tails ' and festoons, we should just have half the difficulty in combining and arranging effects. It is easier to drive two horses than six, as poor Phaeton could have told us when he upset the chariot of the sun. He was an ignorant driver, and so too often is a woman in the matter of dress. We ought never to admit an addition to our unmanageable team, without due reason. We might dispense with half our complicated folds, our whalebones, our scrunched toes, our immove- able arms, and many other miseries, and look less like mere blocks for showing off clothes, and more like human beings ; but we can't bear to let the housemaid 32 BEAUTY AND DRESS. or the crossing-sweeper think we have got a sixpence m our pockets when it can be hung or piled on our backs, and we go about loaded like the celebrated camel who finally collapsed under a straw. Nevertheless, when I hint at simplicity of attire, I am not looking back longingly to '93, and wishing to see Englishmen and Englishwomen render themselves the guys— I had almost said the revolting guys — that the victims of Jacques Louis David's classic mania did, when they tried to be imitation Greeks. This painter, in many respects great, in others mistaken, felt deeply the inner and outer corruption of his time. He viewed with disgust the melancholy decadence of the once beauteous ' Watteau ' costume, and the prevalent un- cleanliness, artificiality, ugliness, and waste of precious time, entered into his soul. He believed that a return to the simplicity of the earlier world was the only reformation possible, and, like the other enthusiasts for reform at that terrible time, he went too far. Old Greece could not be resuscitated by a change of apparel * but he shared the universal mania for antique standards, and his influence on the fashion was very remarkable, for he succeeded in completely reversing the style of dress worn, and introduced that simplicity which in our colourless clime and unsesthetic minds so soon developed into the worst ugliness. The waist was hoisted to the arm« SIMPLICITY. 33 pits and the bodice became a mere legend. There were not too many petticoats, and no folds ; and as the entire form and action of the body were distinguishable, a lady had to be very careful how she crossed her legs, lolled on sofas, or ran across a room. To do such things grace- fully was the study of every girl ; hence, walking, and entering a room, taking a seat, &c., were practised under artistes, as we have since practised the rapid steps of modern round dances. There was plenty of satire at our expense then, naturally, and not without ground, for simplicity too often gave place to mere indelicacy, and there was no means of disguising thinness or fatness or anything else then. Moreover, there were fanatics who outran David in their desire to be conspicuous, such as the Parisian Merveilleuses who performed many follies under the great artist's wing. Pink tights emulating bare legs, and muslin gowns flung as loosely over the tights as the most paradisiac taste could wish, are only indecent, not picturesque or beau- tiful, for no generations of care have made the British body perfect like the Greek's ; and when men take to wearing their hair plaited and combed after Apollo, and indiarubber continuations (about as much Hke the Greeks as shell flowers are like real ones), the result must be called ridiculous and nothing else ; whilst the more decorous votaries, who make a compromise betweeu D 34 BEAUTY AND DRESS. goddess and mortal, such as the dress our grandmothers wore, can at best look only like resuscitated victims of the auto da fe — luckless women who, having been tied up in sacks and flung into the river, have saved themselves by kicking out the sack-bottom (an appearance rather favoured by the * classic ' chevelure, which was eminently damp-looking), and are on their way home to be dried. Let us have no burlesque parodies of classic sim- plicity, yet let us curb our insatiable passion for sticking everything we can procure, feathers and flounces, beads, birds'-nests, tabs, tinsel, and tails all over us, anywhere, like wild Indians or the Terebella. Alas ! how like we are to the Terebella ! Perhaps you ask what is the Terebella ? The Terebella is a little creature that lives in the sea, to whose tender body nature has allotted no protec- tive covering, and which cleverly sets itself to supply the want with a taste about as fastidious as that shown by our own fair countrywomen. It collects materials for its little coat with the same rapacity, and often with as little judgment — for some of its most ambitious ornaments being more costly than it can afford, have actually led to its own destruction ! Nothing comes amiss to it. Sand, shells, pieces of straw, sticks or stones, atoms of sea-weed, every kind of debris within its reach, good, bad, or indiff"erent, it will collect and stick upon itself, FORM. 35 agglutinated together by a secretion that among marine animals takes the place of needle and thread. It has even been known to add a heavy chignon pebble to its load, more inconvenient than serviceable, after quite a human fashion ! When its laborious coat is finished, it thrusts out its triumphant head and rejoices. This little creature is one of the annelids, and the pretty name of Terebella, though belonging to the sea, would not always be out of place on shore. form; As for shapes of dresses, a good way of testing the beauty of form is by drawing the outline of a dress, and looking at it from all points of view, and with half-closed eyes." This test, applied to that form of gown which was so long in vogue— the long, pinched waist, and the unnatural width of the hips, low neck, and no sleeves — proves the extreme ugli- ness of it. Observe the sketch. This gown, in outline, simply looks like a very ill-shaped wineglass upside down. The wide crinoline entirely conceals any natural grace of attitude ; the horizontal line across the neck invariably D 2 36 BEAUTY AND DRESS. decreases height, and the absence of sleeves is a painful blot to an artistic eye. Few women's arms are beautiful above the elbow ; fatness is not correctness of outline, as some seem to think, and if we judge English arms from Mr. Whistler's unflattered portraits, we may see they are as a rule of the skinniest. We are not like the Greeks, who made the improvement of the body their dearest study ; and, not having reduced our super- fluous fat, and cultivated our muscles into perfection, we ought to be careful how we expose them. A dress, high behind or on the shoulders, gives the whole height of the figure, and full sleeves are an improvement to every figure but a very stout one, just as the fashion of wearing the hair full and loose is more becoming to the face than that which scrapes it all back out of sight. The best way to decide on a really beautiful dress is by studying the pictures of the great masters of light and shade, and copying them — Vandyck, Lely, Watteau, Gainsborough, Reynolds, or Lawrence. I will now pro- ceed to notice a few special rules. ^^^^ CHAPTER IV. 'S for dresses suitable to certain persons, I need say but little. There are many books on the etiquette of dress, showing what is proper to be worn in the morning and in the evening and at noon- day. A few simple hints will suffice here. Those who are very stout should wear nothing but black ; those who are very thin should put a little padding in their gowns ; and neither should be in the least decolletee. Perpendicular stripes in dresses give height, and increase fulness, and are therefore particularly suited to very slight, small people, and particularly unfitted for stout figures. To fair persons blue is becoming — but not every blue. Dark blue, or too brilliant a blue, is ex- tremely unbecoming to that kind of complexion, and makes the skin yellow and the hair sandy. It is the old, pale, dull blue that really changes sand to gold. 38 BEAUTY AND DRESS. Pink, especially the old-fashioned yellow-pink, is, when not too brilliant, becoming to all complexions, except that which goes with red hair. Light green may be safely worn by the very dark, the very rosy, and by the very pale when the skin is extremely clear ; but to ordinary English faces it is a trying colour, though there are people who look well in nothing else. Green, mixed properly with pale blue, is very becoming indeed. Grey is the most beautiful colour for old and young — -I mean the soft silver grey which is formed by equal parts of black and white, with no touch of mauve in it. It admits of any colour in trimming, and throws up the bloom of the skin. Rose-colour, for some people, is pretty, and not unbecoming. White, so disastrous to rooms, is generally becoming in dress — only very coarse complexions are spoilt by it. Short women should never wear double skirts or tunics — they decrease the height so much ; unless, in- deed, the tunic is very short, and the skirt very long. So also do large, sprawling patterns used for trim- mings ; let these be left to women tall enough to carry them off. Neither let a very little woman wear her hair half down her back ; let her lift it clean up as high as possible. Large feet should never be cased in kid — least of all, white kid slippers — for kid reveals so clearly the form EXTRA VA GANCE. 39 and movements of the feet, and stretches so easily, that few feet have a chance in them. Black stockings and shoes, even for evening wear, are the most appropriate choice. Although I have been dealing with the moralities ot dress, I have not said a word about extravagance. That is a most important subject, no doubt, and one which everybody is bound to settle for herself. But the whole morality of luxury is quite a separate branch, and must be separately discussed. Ladies are accused of spending too much on their dress : my point is, that whether they spend little or much, they may lay their money out on right — or wrong — artistic principles. A woman who understands and knows how to apply a few general principles, such as I have tried to point out, may often spend half as much as her friend who gives herself over to her dressmaker and empties her purse by exhausting the last fashion- book. We are told again that ladies think too much about dress : I should say they think too little, or rather they don't think at all. If they thought a little more about dress, they would waste less time, and probably spend less money ; but the result would be grace, harmony, and 40 BEAUTY AND DRESS. expressiveness, instead of those astonishing combinations which rob the fairest women of half their charms, and expose ruthlessly the weak points of their less favoured sisters. We are most anxious that women should devote, not less time, less money, less study, to the art of self-adorn- ment, but even more, if the results are proportionately better. We are anxious that a pretty girl should make the very utmost of herself, and not lose one day of looking beautiful by dressing badly while her fresh youth lasts. We are desirous that when the first fresh- ness is past, advancing age should not grow slovenly as it is apt to do, but that then the art which once en- hanced beauty should conceal its fading away : we want every woman to be at all times a picture, an ensample, with no ' bar ' between herself and her surroundings, as there should be none between her character and its outward reflection — dress. For this reason, Nature must not be destroyed, but supported ; her beauties revealed, not stifled ; her weaknesses veiled, not exposed ; her defects tenderly remedied ; and no fashion should be tolerated which simply tends to bur- lesque her. As, in spite of Quakers and philosophers, women are likely to spend money and time over their dress to the end of the chapter, the sternest censor may well join in the hope that not the girl of the period, but GOOD AND BAD COSTUMES. the woman of the future, will produce greater results, waste less time, whilst bestowing more thought upon the beauty and the propriety of her dress. I long for the time when some acknowledged censor will force the laws of propriety and beauty upon the fashionable world, who will absolutely forbid the ill- favoured to exhibit their misfortunes with ill-judged candour and false pride ; who will forbid the heated dreams of overworked dressmakers to disclose them- selves in gigantic patterns on human drapery ; who will then perhaps even commence a raid against the obstinacy which clothes our men in swallow-tails, elephant-legs, shirt collars, and * anguish pipes.' <©ooti ant! 25ati Co^tume^* As an instance of costumes which entirely deny and falsify the natural form of the body, I will quote the farthingale of the end of Elizabeth's reign. A waist so long that it seemed to belong to the knees more than to the hips ; shoulders padded so high that the undu- lating grace of the neck was wholly lost ; a head made to look ridiculously small amid the mass of material under which it was buried — material in positions that it was impossible that it could retain, or did retain, without a wire support — or else the head recalled that of John Fig. 2.— Queen Elizabeth. No. 95, Library. British Museum. GOOD AND BAD COSTUMES. 43 the Baptist, lying in a platter-shaped ruff. A corset disgracefully low and disgracefully tight, cut square and stiffened with buckram, until every memory of the human form was obliterated ; shoes so broad and short that nothing but the misery of bunions could excuse them ; the wide farthingale square where th-e hips are round, and perpendicular where the body curves. This costume (at its worst) would appear to have been de- signed with but one object, that of making the person grotesque, and were it not that a pretty woman looks pretty anyhow and anywhen, one marvels why women did not 'strike.' The woodcut which we give is from the British Museum, one of the most grotesque examples I ever saw. The weight of the whole edifice, a mass of millinery and pierrerie^ is visible in the starting veins on the poor queen's heated brow. Yet, the faults of the dress moderated, a beautiful costume remains. A stand-up frill of lace is pretty and very becoming if it will keep in its place. High sleeves are piquantes, and recall a pretty shrug, when they do not obliterate anatomy. There is nothing radically wrong in a stomacher, nor in a wide shoe, within limits. This shoe, in a moderate form, would prevent the malady which the same shoe, exaggerated,'seemsto accommodate, and a somewhat short dress has its advantages, if allowed 44 BEAUTY AND DRESS. to fall in its own folds, and not in stiff artificial pleats like a vallance. Fig. 4. —i860. The crinoline of fifteen years ago had some disadvan- tages less than the farthingale. The upper outline was GOOD AND BAD COSTUMES. 45 not angular, and the skirts were made sufficiently full to form their own folds. The waist, pinched and ugly enough, was nearer to its original place over the hips, and the shoulders were not deformed by padding. One only looked as though one stood in an inverted basin with its bottom out, instead of in a drum. At the same time, the Elizabethan dress v/as so rich in detail, that the whole figure presented an appearance of extreme magnificence — a woman was scarcely a woman, but a prop to support a heap of exquisite needlework and jewellery and lace, and looked like a sort of prickly pear. But in crinoline time, nought of all this atoned for the badness of form. The colours and materials were of the poorest and showiest. The trimmings were unmeaning and debased — a woman succeeded in spoiling her appearance with- out producing any adequate corresponding effect. Hogarth shows us the not over decent hoop worn in his day (fig. 3). The finest costume ever worn was the Greek and Roman, for it combined the three great requirements- of dress — ■ 1. To protect. 2. To conceal. 3. To display. It consisted of three chief portions, the tunica iiiterior^ the stola, and the palla. The first named was a simple 46 BEAUTY AND DRESS. shift, which, in earlier times at least, was sleeveless, over it was drawn the stola, a tunic with sleeves, which, as a rule, covered the upper part of the arm only, and which were clasped, not sewn, together. This upper tunic was extremely long, and was caught up by a hip-girdle, forming broad folds and gathers about the waist ; and bands were worn beneath to support, but never to distort, the figure. Sometimes a second girdle encompassed the waist. The palla, or mantle, was worn out of doors only, and endless were the graceful and becoming ways of arranging it, partly over the head and draped about the figure. The numberless folds at once revealed and concealed the figure, protected from heat and cold, and admitted of almost every variety of form ; the shapely limbs of Hellenic or Italian dames were thus displayed, yet shrouded ; their necklaces, earrings, and other ornaments, were often magnificent ; and their feet, not buried like ours in stiff cases, were visible through the elegant sandal. How gracefully the dress followed the movements of the body, may be perceived better from the small coloured clay figures in the British Museum [Greek Room], than even from marble statues, for they represent the ordinary domestic manners and are not carefully- posed and idealised goddesses. I have roughly sketched a few, which we may suppose to be the simple people GOOD AND BAD COSTUMES. 47 as they went about Greek streets, hiding their hands from the sun in the folds of their mantles, defending their heads against sharp winds and showers. No. 5 — might be a handmaiden with a kerchief around her curls, chatting by the wayside on a spring morning ; 5 — may be a lady strolling in the June sunshine, her throat and hands well defended ; 7 — perhaps a serving lass, busy and unconscious amid her market avocations, Fig. 5. Fig. 6. Fig. 7. Fig. 8. with uncovered hair, as in Germany and Italy they go barehead still, in summer ; 8 — looks like some wise and comely matron intent on some good errand, as she hastens through the bleak winds and miry grounds of wintry weather. The absurd parody of the dress, adopted by the last century enthusiasts, whom I have elsewhere christened the * Imitation Greeks,' was bad, because it missed the 48 BEAUTY AND DRESS. Spirit of the old costume. It concealed and shrouded nothing, it was indelicate without being picturesque, the absence of folds rendered it poor and weak in effect, and the practice of forcing the high waist into a small compass impossible, through the anatomy of the ribs, rendered it as dangerous as it was ugly, owing to various diseases brought on by exposure and pressure. As for the feet, the thin pumps with ribbons were a mere caricature of the pretty and sensible sandal ; and those unblest with perfect feet and figures must have had a very sad time of it. The mischievous person who first brought in stays (some suppose her to have been Mademoiselle Pantine, a mistress of Marshal Saxe, others say, an early Norman lady — and, no doubt, from very early times stiff stays have been worn) is to blame for the first and greatest defect of modern appearance — the grotesque outline of the body — and many a dire disease. We are not denying the necessity for some close fitting garment as a support to the body, and an im- provement to the figure ; people who refuse to wear any corset at all look very slovenly ; but we must pro- test against a machine that, pretending to be a servant WHAT STAYS COST US. 49 is, in fact, a tyrant — that, aspiring to embrace, hugs like a bear — crushing in the ribs, injuring the lungs and heart, the stomach, and many other internal organs. The Eastern lady who, pitied for her dull harem life, said she Fig. 9. — Natural form of the ribs and spine. more pitied English wives, whose husbands (as she innocently thought) ' locked them up in a box,' was not far wrong. And all to what end ? The end of looking like a wasp, and losing the whole charm of graceful E so BEAUTY AND DRESS. human movement and easy carnage — the end of com- municating an over-all-ish sense of deformity ! Nothing is so ugly as a pinched waist ; it puts the Fig. II. — Natural position of the organs. FiG. 12. — Deformed position of the organs. hips and shoulders invariably out of proportion in widths and it is a practice more culpable than the Chinese one Fig. 13.— Natural form of the waist. FiG. 14.— Artificial form of the waist. of deforming the foot — in this case, no vital organ is interfered with, whilst in deforming the waist, almost all WHAT STAYS COST US. the vital organs are affected by the pressure, and the ribs pushed out of their proper place. I have here sketched the natural positions of the organs, and the unnatural. To those who know anything of anatomy, the impos- sibility of the organs retaining their natural place, and performing effectually their natural function, when the ribs are pressed in upon them, will at once be clear. All space in the body is utilised, and required by health ; and though whilst the pressure affects the flesh and fat only, no harm results, directly the bones are touched the vital organs suffer. One can easily discover whether one's compression moves the bones, by measuring the width across the ribs with and without the stays. And the face betrays the condition of the inside. Who can forgive the unhealthy cheek and red nose induced by such a practice Who can forget the disease which has come or is coming } What sensible man or woman can pity the fool who faints, perhaps in the midst of a dance or conversation, from the unbearable pressure on the heart, caused by stays and girdle— or, if they pity, do not also blush for her ? The Roman dame was wiser in her generation ; the bands she employed prevented a slovenly appearance, and afforded support without impairing health or the supple beauty of the body. E 2 CHAPTER V. HERE have been many exquisite costumes in England that we might imitate, if we cannot invent better ones. It is curious in studying the progression of fashion from the earhest times, to notice how, again and again, common sense combined with poetic feeHng has brought in something good, how that good thing has had a httle run, and begotten other things good or bad by the way, and, finally, has grown corrupt and bad in its old age, and then been destroyed by a new regime. The Druids in their * proud white garments,' as the ancient Welsh bard, Taliesin, calls them, represent the earliest form of graceful attire. After Eve's attire, in- variably follows, in all nations, the long flowing robes, which attained perfection in what we call the Roman or Greek dress, by which we mean not this or that fashion of arranging certain portions of clothing, but the general SOME OLD DRESSES S3 principle of gown and mantle, comfortable, graceful in itself, and suitable to any figure. The Anglo-Saxons wore loose and graceful dresses, but the toga or pallium was discarded for a sleeved gown or mantle — whose sleeves were so very long that they completely hid the hands in many cases— very use- ful in sun-burning weather — very pretty when pushed up during indoor vocations. Women's desire to display the waist and arms, and men's need of close-fitting dresses in war, have, in almost all ages, given us tight robes contemporary with flowing ones, for certain occa- sions ; but the flowing robes lingered long in England among the upper classes, and especially among those whose costume denoted official rank. Royal persons, lawyers, the clergy, doctors, and hosts of others, con- tinued to wear long and loose attire, while the middle classes whose dress denoted no position, were always un- dergoing Protean changes — a curious instance of ofiicial conservatism. The mantle and head-rail lingered among women even when the loose tunic had long been ex- changed for a garb full of seams to fit the form. The veil of modest wifehood, and the mantle which wrapped the * bread-giver ' ^ as she moved about her farm — that actually, perhaps, held the bread she gave — grew in * Lady is derived from hlafdig—\>x&2Ag\\&x ; lord, from hlaford—\)XtzA- winner. 54 BEAUTY AND DRESS. time to be the badge of nobility, and the sign of wealth. The dress of women in the eleventh century was very graceful and appropriate. Our cut, fig. 1 5, represent- ing a countess of Anjou, who died at the beginning of Fig. 15.— Eleventh century (early). Fig. i6.— Eleventh century (late). that century, shows the head-rail in the form of hood and wimple, rather than veil, and with its pads or knots at the side, very similar to what the middle classes wore three centuries later. Around the face, a border of that embroidery for which the Anglo-Saxons were renowned, SOME OLD DRESSES. 55 is suggested — a form of decoration which had become universal. The traditional garb of the saints and angels shining in our stained windows, is the fashionable daily dress of the eleventh century. In the following reign, the people, set free from the stern rule of the first William, became most extravagant and fantastic in clothing. The loose sleeve of the outer gown had gradually been elongating itself into a pendant (figs. i6 and i8). Now this pendant outran all bounds, and the ' foul waste of cloth and excessive ' had to be knotted up in bags big enough to hold a consider- able amount of portable property, the headrail had much diminished, and the hair, which we see prettily cut across the forehead in fig. 1 5, was worn loose, sometimes bare, and carried into a long silken case, like a pump handle. In this reign were introduced the grotesque ram's-horn shoes, which had a second run in Richard IFs. time. Up to this time, women's attire consisted of three chief portions : a close inner robe, an outer and wider robe, and the mantle. What they did for those portions which require frequent washing, it is difficult to under- stand. Linen was held almost as luxurious as silk — cotton was introduced into France only in the twelfth century. Satin and velvet existed under the names of samite and downy cloth {pannus villosus). There were nu- merous woollen materials — some woollen web, probably. 56 BEAUTY AND DRESS. was the substitute for our use of linen and cotton in undergarments ; of course, like the linen, woven at home. The useful and pretty (for it admitted of pleasant contrasts of colour) fashion of a semi-loose outdoor or winter garment over a close-fitting under-dress, lasted Fig. 17.— Tenth century. Fig. 18. — Twelfth century. Fig. 19. —Fourteenth century. Origin, decline, and final form of the elongated outer sleeve. long, with many variations in detail, too numerous to describe. The equally useful and not ungainly sideless gown, also for winter or sharp spring weather, did not survive so many centuries — indeed, only about one — it protected the chest and back from wind, the skirts from SOME OLD DRESSES. 57 mud. I have sketched the origin and end of each — the wise beginning as the peasant's tabard, the corrupt and ornate end, a mere vaunt of wealth and rank (p. 58). Yet there has never been a more elegant dress of its kind, than that worn in Edward III.'s reign (fig. 19), a plain gown, fitting the figure, cut in one almost from the low throat to the end of the skirt. Unmeaning as it was, the long narrow ' tippet ' from the shoulder was pretty. It gave an undulating unity to bodice and skirt, other- wise too bare and hard in out- line. It was more stately than the intermediate variety, and not more useless. The sideless gown, too, has its merits. It admitted of the richest decoration ; and though in its last stage I do not imagine it could have been very warm, though faced with ermine — and, per- haps, not admit of the hands being pushed inside — it is stately, and often pic- turesque. It certainly dis- 1 1 i -I /- t . Fig. 20. — Sideless gown in its prime. played the figure, and was m no wise inconvenient. The head-dress gave the outline 58 BEAUTY AND DRESS, of the nape of the neck, too long hidden under the coverchief, and the pendent veil of gauze united the upper and lower portions of the figure, as the tippet did in the other sketch. Fig. 21. — Sideless gown in its decadence. For my own part, however, I prefer the plainer dress for general use ; it is taken from a statuette on Edward IIL's tomb in Westminster Abbey, and represents one of the princesses. At the period of which I speak SOME OLD DRESSES. 59 (fourteenth century) rich belts were worn ; but so de- sirous were the ladies of preserving the unbroken out- line of the whole figure, that the belt was never placed around the waist, but always somewhat below, about the hips. This was far more pretty and picturesque than a pinched waist, with the sudden and unnatural breadth at the hips of innumerable plaits and gathers. This graceful dress saw the birth and death of many enormities in the way of head-gear and foot-gear, and survived the great period of horns, borrowed from the East and exaggerated, and of long pointed shoes, which at last dragged their slow length up to the garter. It survived the fashions of embroidering huge devices, ar- morial bearings, flowers, scenes, mottoes, &c., all over the dress. A slender shape was too dear to sacrifice hence- forth ; at length corruption came in the form of an un- naturally tight girdle around the waist, with a skirt ab- surdly long all round, as seen in Van Eyck's pictures : and then it gave way to the hideous but convenient farthingale, which while courts are immoral always will come in again and again for the same reasons. The first form of farthingale was that of an ex- tinguisher, in which we see the daughters and wives of Henry VIII. arrayed. It was stifi", formal, uncomfort- able, no doubt, and the compressed ribs and long waist are as ugly as they were unhealthy. It is interesting to 6o BEAUTY AND DRESS. note how when this fashion had come in at court, the countiy ladies whom it had not yet reached, were still Fig. 22. — Court lady, early sixteenth century. wearing the clinging robe of the preceding reign, and a form of the heavy head-dress, still lingering in Holbein's portraits (fig. 23). SOME OLD DRESSES. 6i The final and corrupt form of the farthingale, is sketched, p. 42, ' Good and Bad Costumes,' and was un- natural and hideous enough, growing more and more monstrous, like a mighty bubble, till it disappeared. Fig. 24. — Duchess of Richmond (Lely). About 161 5, it went out for a time, and was gradually replaced by the picturesque and graceful negligence which characterised the court of Charles 11. and which Lely has immortalised. 62 BEAUTY AND DRESS, The Puritan rigidity of taste and hatred of frivolity, whose stiff and formal costume we see preserved in the liveries of many charity schools in our own day, had, doubtless, a powerful influence upon the dress of the period, though throughout the troubles of the Protec- Fig. 25.— Puritan lady. FiG. 26.— Royalist lady. torate there were many who adhered, in spite of every- thing, to the old fashions of long hair and laced collars, and were ever ready to exclaim with Sir Toby Belch, * What, dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale ? ' Exclusive of the Puritan costume pure and simple, Puritan feeling SOME OLD DRESSES. 63 was probably instrumental in exterminating the great wheel farthingale and stiff coloured ruff still worn during Charles I.'s reign, and traces of Puritanism may be seen even in the loose and voluminous dresses of 1660 (fig. 26). In William 1 1 I.'s reign the costumes were declining, and they had run to the opposite extreme of starch and buckram ; more than once, as women will be women, they from time to time burst into abnormal and uncom- fortable extravagances— such as parodies of male attire, shooting crests, and unearthly wigs ; and though hoops had time to appear again (1746) in a huger and more ridiculous shape than ever the old farthingale had as- sumed (being, in addition to their enormous width, often of eight yards, caught up on each side, and drawn in behind and before, so as richly to merit the witty nick- name of the time. Vane avec deux paniers, see fig. 9, p. 80, from the similar appearance of a lady to that op- pressed animal !), yet the buckram was the parent of the most beautiful (in its perfect state) costume that ever ,set off a beautiful woman — the dress immortalised by Watteau — sacks, trains, and powder. I have elsewhere alluded to the many admirable qualities of this costume. In its corrupt stage it became ugly, indecent, and uncleanly; and people wasted so much time over the toilette that a complete reaction 64 BEAUTY AND DRESS. was inevitable. This came amid the horrors of that memorable period of revolt against the corrupt luxury of France, when the fevered mind had begun to turn back with an almost delirious longing to far-off days of sim- plicity and truth : days whose spirit could not be then resuscitated, but which fashion parodied whilst it strove to blind its eyes to the present. A national movement so violent could not in any age have past without some reflection of its tendency in the national dress and style of living. David, the artist- politician, headed the mad chase after simplicity amidst the turmoil of massacre. He was the devoted friend and panegyrist of Marat and Robespierre, yet he was an honest and disinterested man, and a man of considerable ability in more ways than one. He painted his great cold statuesque groups as the images of an ideal period. To be ancient Greeks once more — that was the ambition of his followers. * I wish,' said he, * that my works may have so completely an antique character that if it were possible for an Athenian to return to life, they might appear to him to be the productions of a Greek painter.' David was able to make his personality felt. The re- dundant forms of furniture and cushioned couches were changed into the straightbacked, comfortless, almost seatless chairs, still approved by our grandmothers. Men and women vainly emulated the Greek, and tore SOME OLD DRESSES, 65 him to tatters in the effort. Down came the mountains of false hair, away went hoop and sack, colour and fold, light and shade. The eccentricities were carried to such lengths, that at balls the merveillenses of Paris appeared in flesh-coloured drawers, with imitations of the Greek stola above, and sandals, attached by ribbons to the naked feet, while their tresses were confined by fillets a Vantique. The men also began the tight elastic drawers to the ankle (many are the funny stories of accidents at parties, when dancing burst the strap beneath the foot, and the garments flew up to the thigh), square- tailed coats with high collars, * their hair plaited on the fore- head and flowing down behind, or turned up and fixed with a comb.' The full buffont, whose chief aim seems to have been to make a woman look like a pouter pigeon, appeared in 1788, and the rest of the dress was as bare of trimming and of beauty as could be wished by the strictest. All the new fashions that were introduced at that time seemed to result in ugliness, in spite of the idealisa- tion of such painters as Gainsborough, Reynolds, and Lawrence. To the influence of the Revolution we owe the prevalence of the chimney-pot hat, whose discomfort and ugliness have earned for it among the witty Germans the slang name of * anguish pipe ' {Aitgst-rdhre) as well as the bird-like dress-coat, both of which are confessed by all F BEAUTY AND DRESS. members of the 'strong ' sex who have ever tried any other costume, to be the most disagreeable and uncomfortable of all known inventions in clothing, but which they have been weak enough to endure for just a hundred years. tiG. 28. — i«3o. Fig. 29. — 1790. When the classic follies subsided, the waists grew longer again, and the result arrived at is sketched above. The habitual bare shoulders and arms, with 'gigot' sleeves, long tight waist, short scanty skirts, flat shoes, with ribbons, still retaining the name of ' sandals,' and mighty bonnets, may be seen in the wood- cuts of any old magazine or other work of the beginning of our century. 67 U>tt$^t^ of <©ur SDap* Bodices. — In speaking of dress it is impossible to go too much into details. I will begin with the gown, viewed in its several parts. As to the cut of the bodice, there are many forms, good and bad. The worst is, perhaps, the ordinary tight bodice, which we may christen the Pincushion style, from its hardness and stuffiness, and which follows the form of the stays, and never that of the body. But you may say, * Why is this " neat " bodice ugly t It is a pity to conceal a pretty figure for ever in loose folds. Why may we never see a clear outline ' Certainly, if we did but see the outline of the body, and not the French milliner's idea of what the body should be ! Nothing can be more beautiful than a close- fitting garment, such as that worn in the time of the Plantagenets, before the modern stays had come into being. But a box that stiffens the whole figure un- naturally, draws the waist into the shape of a V, when the female figure is much more like an H, is a detestable invention, and, indeed, only a kind of coffin ; while, as for the bodice fitting it, any garment containing so many unnecessary seams and wrong lines must always be an unpicturesque one. The sketches, given on p. 68, of the ordinary tight bodice, I submit to my readers, that they F 2 68 BEAUTY AND DRESS. KiG. 29. DRESSES OF OUR DAY, 69 may decide this question for themselves. (See figs, i and 2.) As for the skirt (which ought to be, if it is not, a portion and a continuation of the bodice), it must partake of the character of the bodice — that is to say, if the bodice be cut tightly and formally to the figure, the skirt should be so. For instance, none but the plain gored skirt, without a single plait, can properly go with a tight bodice. But if the bodice be full at the waist the skirt must contain plaits — for this form must signify a full and folded garment closed to the waist by a girdle. Nothing can be in worse (artistic) taste than to wear a loose bodice, such as a Garibaldi, with a tight gored skirt, which we have seen done, or a gathered skirt with a close bodice — no dress could be naturally cut in either way. It at once betrays that the skirt and bodice do not belong to each other, and are not cut together ; or as the artists say, * not all painted with the same palette.' As a glove that ends exactly at the wrist-bone, or a boot at the ankle, with a straight line, is always ugly, so are the necks of dresses when cut in a circle close up to the throat. They have an incomplete look invariably, and seem to require some sort of ornament like the collar we have sketched in fig. 3 (fourteenth century) ; this is not a natural form, and, besides, it gives the head a decapitated look. The corners (see fig. i) taken 70 BEAUTY AND DRESS. off (fig. 4; at once give us a natural form. The V may fairly be carried down to the waist— but in this case let me beg my fair countrywomen to wear a chemise. The fashion in vogue a few seasons ago of wearing the chest bare to the waist while the dress was high behind and on the shoulders, was inexpressibly odious. We have seen these V-shaped bodices at evening parties, where the V was only stopped by the girdle ! As to the pic- turesqueness of the dress, it was lost by the hard edge of the V upon the chest. A dress ought never to end upon the skin — there should always be a tucker, firstly for cleanliness, and, secondly, for softening the line of contrast. Seams ought never to have been introduced into the backs of close bodices. Surely the human back would be easy enough to fit without these lines, sometimes contradicting so flatly the natural ones of the figure. What can be more ugly than the forms of the spaces sketched in figs, i and 2 ? What can be a more need- less break in the line of the arm and shoulder than the seam that chops off the arm just beneath the joint, or the square seam that crosses the bladebone "i There is another seam which is just as ugly and just as needless, which goes straight from the arm-pit to the waist. If a tight bodice demands a seam down the back it cannot need the side seams nor the seam under the arm. If the DRESSES OF OUR DAY. 71 seam under the arm is conceded no other is required at the back. In the case of fig. 4, which is a form of the crossing bodice, however, the arm-hole is properly placed Fig. 30.— From a drawing by Holbein. just at the joint. But in figs. 3 and 6, there should be no such seam ; the sleeve ought to be cut from the throat The old sacque, of the seventeenth century (fig. 5), was a very perfect pattern, as far as patterns go. The sleeve, 72 BEAUTY AND DRESS. whether tight or full, was put into the neck. The seam under the arm united with the pocket-hole, at the lower end of which an extra breadth was gathered in, necessary to admit of the sweep of the train ; the seam of the back was concealed by the long folds of the sacque, while giving the graceful line of the natural waist and hip; and the line of the side of the neck, which was usually square, swept straight down to the ground, revealing the under vest, or jacket and petticoat (both perfectly legitimate forms and distinct from each other). When a change of fashion brought the dress together on the bosom, with no under-jacket, the neck was cut as in fig. lo, a very natural and honest form. There is a portrait of Madame de Pompadour, by Ch. Coypel, in a dress of this pattern. Another sensible and honest form of bodice we give on the previous page from one of Hans Holbein's drawings. In all cases the seams of garments should follow and recognise the natural lines of the body. A sleeve-seam reaching the throat, or one surmounting the shoulder- joint, is a more natural and proper form than one cutting across the arm, and should be used in all close bodices, where the eye is meant to take in a smooth outline with- out a break. In bodices less simple in construction, and where the sleeve rises into puffs or other capricious forms, the seam may be at the joint, or, in fact, anywhere where it is least obtrusive. DRESSES OF OUR DAY. 73 Sleeves. — Let me instance a few natural forms and honest effects in sleeves. In sleeves there have been so many forms that are good, it sometimes seems impossible to believe that they have all died out. In the dressmakers' book of ' Modes/ it is wearisome to see the very small number of forms — and those chiefly bad — on which the milliners ring the changes year after year. The plain coat-sleeve, so fashionable some years ago, was inoffensive, but a straight sleeve tight to the arm is a better form, for the bulge at the elbow was unnatural. And in the tight sleeve there is generally the fault that seems inseparable from the necks of high dresses — the sudden stoppage — ^just at the wrist-joint. This is some- times remedied by a frill spreading downwards (which recalls the fig. 8 sleeve), or spreading upwards (which suggests a sleeve turned up with a cuff), both proper and beautiful forms — only the reality is better than a sugges- tion. Now a sleeve such as fig. 8 is a much more graceful and artistic form than fig. lo, and this is what I alluded to in speaking of gloves and boots, a page or so back. The one suggests a termination, a sudden cutting off, a separation ; the other is a higher conception — the artist's mind has gone a little beyond the need — the line swerves out as a flower spreads, with a little thought to spare, 74 BEAUTY AND DRESS. and holds the hand like a flower's cup. It gives the im- pression of greater handicraft and swifter thought, and it is by far the most natural, as the curve that sweeps out from the wrist recalls Nature's own curve in the hand beneath. It has also other merits. It is useful ; shading the delicate whiteness of the hand from the sun in summer, and in winter giving a comfortable warmth to the wrist. These may have been considerations which gave the sleeve its popularity at a time when in summer women lived much more in the open air than now they do, and in winter were less protected from the cold, owing to the absence of doors. The flap that covers the hand is not nearly as inconvenient as might be supposed, from the facility with which it can be turned up. Some such close sleeve, surmounted by another, broader, and reaching only to the elbow, is often very picturesque, and is an honest form, recalling a short- sleeved tunic over a close under-garment. The ordinary white sleeve of a bishop is a very fine and eminently natural pattern. A straight piece of muslin of the required width, simply tied in at the wrist with a ribbon, at once makes the bishop's sleeve. It is the frill at the wrist which constitutes its chief beauty, and which is a primitive form. A very beautiful sleeve, perfectly good in construc- tion, was worn in the time of the Stuarts, with different DRESSES OF OUR DAY. 7S modifications. It is sketched in fig. 8. The upper part was probably derived from that identical broad short sleeve so long in vogue, which we have spoken of above. The sleeve worn beneath it constantly varied, and pro- bably often bore a cuff as deep as that which constitutes the lower half in fig. 8. This cuff it would be perfectly legitimate to tie up with ribbons to the upper sleeve, in order to display a pretty wrist, thus forming, not, indeed, the primitive sleeve, but a most beautiful form that had grown out of the primitive sleeve, admitting of almost any amount of decoration. The antique sleeve sketched in fig. 9, is another instance of natural form. The puffs, whether sewn on, or breaking through slits in the form of slashes, are in the natural place — at the joints where roominess is so essential to comfort. Some persons may be re- minded by it of gouty joints it is true ; but, nevertheless, there is scarcely any sleeve that has been so frequently immortalised' by painters as a beautiful one. A full sleeve bound close to the arm between the joints gives the same form. Slashes are at all times, when neatly arranged, a most beautiful kind of decoration, and in the olden time, when they were most fashionable, they were always placed with a careful regard to the action of the muscles. Thus slashes were placed upon the shoulder 76 BEAUTY AND DRESS. and elbow joints, the breast, the edges of a flattened cap, the knees, the front of shoes, &c. ; in almost all cases the slits were cut just as any abandoned devoted of comfort would naturally cut them who was incon- venienced by tight clothes. Moreover, the slit afforded a good opportunity for the most brilliant or delicate combination of colour, dull green breaking through crimson, white through black, deep blue parting to reveal a glimpse of amber; again, a natural form, an under garment (whether sock or shirt), visible beneath an outer one. There is a period of decadence, nevertheless, to every fashion, however good, and the decadence of slashes was when the entire dress was covered with tiny slits in lines or diamond patterns, when they only lent a ragged appearance to the dress. But it is our part here to remember only the noble forms, and to forget their decay and corruption. Yet what an idealisation of rags ! what splendid tatterdemalions were those slashed chevaliers and goodly dames ! Even at that extrava- gant pitch, one can imagine that there was a certain shimmering beauty of effect in a close doublet, peppered with slashes of some good contrasting colour, the move- ments of the body alternately revealing and concealing the minute slits. We have no effects as ingenious now- a-days. The careful, conscientious skill of workmanship DRESSES OF OUR DAY. 77 put into a garment then, quite apart from the thoughtful designs, would bring a modern tailor to great honour, or beggary, in a very short time. Many of the variations of hanging sleeves, at times carried to such fantastic extremes in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, were, nevertheless, very beautiful. The strange fashion of wearing one sleeve small whilst the other trailed on the ground was not more ridiculous than fifty things we have admired within the last half century. The difference between the two sleeves was originally a picturesque idea, and one which artists such as Sir Joshua Reynolds and Sir Thomas Lawrence, have hinted at from time to time. In many of these pictures one may find a noticeable difference in one sleeve from the other (only, however, in women's portraits). And when the long sleeve outgrew due proportion to so great a degree that it had to be held up by an attendant, and was so costly as to draw on it satirical complaints such as the pun — Because pride hath sleeves, the land is without alms (arms), it, in reality, ceased to be any longer a mere sleeve, and became such an ornament as a scarf or mantle, being thrown over the shoulder in the same way (and very gracefully), while the popular practice of utilising space did not fail to pack it with pockets. 78 BEAUTY AND DRESS. Perhaps the two most objectionable (though for dif- ferent reasons) forms of sleeve ever seen were the huge flaps worn in the time of Henry VII. — sleeves that did not belong to the dress, but were put on and taken off at pleasure like the Columbine's wings, — and the tight case to the elbow worn by the Imitation Greeks, which recalled nothing but the tucked-up gown of the kitchen maid. Yet in point of dishonesty neither was worse than the * Dolly Varden ' sleeve recently (1872) worn — a coat- sleeve (!) with a meaningless frill sewn at the elbow ; or a muslin sleeve with lumps of satin tacked on outside half-way down, a vague degradation of slashes; or a sleeve that looks as though it opened in front and were laced up, when the ' opening ' is only suggested by a strip of trimming, and the * lacing ' is sewn on. Not worse, nor as bad — for the false sleeves hooked on out- side deceived no one, and were indeed only a kind of mantle in halves ; while the close case was rather an absence of sleeve, and pretended to be, as it was, nothing. Both were bad, but not dishonest. Skirts. — It must be apparent to everyone that a long skirt has advantages over a short one in point of grace, dignity, and improvement to the figure, while the short skirt has the advantage in point of convenience. A skirt may, however, be too long for grace, like the volu- minous petticoat that Van Eyck painted ; and it may be DJ^ESSES OF OUR DAY. 79 also so brief as to be no longer convenient, like the un- gainly dress of the ballet-dancer. And here by force of contrast we may perceive how the long folds of a train increase height, and soften the movements of the figure, by noticing the generally short, tubby appearance of even the most delicate figure in the shameful 11,1 . 1 Fig. 31.— Grace and ballet-dress, and the * choppmg run Disgrace, of even the most finished dancer the moment she comes down on both feet. Certain peculiarities of the form which cannot be in the least exaggerated without corre- sponding loss in grace, are in this curious costume ex- aggerated to the extent of deformity, and everyone knows how the dress decreases stature. This is the more to be deplored as the ballet might be made one of the most graceful and poetic exhibitions of female beauty and artistic fancy. The harlequin, on the other hand, in spite of his colours, is seldom in his wildest antics ungraceful, because there is nothing in his dress that tends to vulgarise or debase the perfect proportions of a well-trained body. The ornaments of a skirt must always be considered with reference to the position they are to occupy ; these are, however, too numerous to permit of more than a slight mention here. Fringes and all such edgings, So BEAUTY AND DRESS. should be placed only upon edges, and never introduced in the centre of a breadth, or used as braids, bands, and insertions. Frills, therefore, should never be used to in- 1. The Wine-glass or Pincushion style. 2. The Open-hearted style. 3. The Sans fagon style. 4. The Cross-over style. 5. The Dresden Shepherdess style. 6. The Medieval. 7. The Watteau. 8. The Rag-bag. 9. The Donkey with Panniers. 10. The Imitation Greek. 11. The Real Greek. Fig. 32. dicate a pretended second skirt when they do not really DRESSES OF OUR DAY. 8i belong to one. Bows are inappropriate except where the dress is really caught up and tied. The most villainous trimming we ever saw upon a skirt was one which is indicated in fig. i. Velvet bands running around in four slight curves, exactly to give the appearance of a cubic rather than a circular form to the person. Now unless a dress be worn over a crinoline of a square form, no folds could possibly hang squarely ; but the last excess of weary fancy was probably reached in this trimming. I must leave it to the intelligent student of the pro- prieties and consistencies of dress to observe and decide between the merits and demerits of the thousand and one other forms of sleeve and bodice that space forbids us to enlarge upon here. When one has once begun to apply to costume the principles whose presence or absence is instantly detected in any other department of art, it is easy to see where there is a falling short or a contradiction, or a manifest impossibility. We must now go on to some other parts of apparel not less important, though perhaps less conspicuous^ Meanwhile, here are a few distinguishing marks of dresses worn now or very recently, exhibiting some of the best and worst qualities that can belong to a costume. G 82 BEAUTY AND DRESS, It is a mystery how any fashion so hideous or so unmeaning as the modern low dress ever came in. It infallibly diminishes the height. There was nothing approaching it in bareness of design, in poverty of invention, or opportunities for indecency, in the days of the finest costumes — I had almost said in any previous age. There have been many corrupt fashions, but they have been almost always picturesque ones. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the women were sufficiently d^colletee for such a book to be published as *A Just and Seasonable Reprehension of Naked Breasts and Shoulders/ with a preface by Richard Baxter : and they were as bad in the eighteenth century ; but then if the dress was not high behind, the arms were covered to the elbow — the whole effect was not so scanty and fleshy as the modern low neck and back, and shoulder-straps. This last fashion must have been introduced gradu- ally. Some leader of fashion who had beautiful shoulders thought it a pity they should bloom unseen, and may have "pushed down the high dress accordingly. Well, if you are not shy about exposing your neck, a dress pushed open loosely is not ugly, far from it. There would be folds naturally falling in a pretty form, nearly LOIV DRESSES. 83 horizontally. Probably at first the actual shoulder-joint was hidden, then, as the rage for self-display increased, and as the ladies emulated each other in it, the dress got to be entirely off the shoulder — and possibly the false horizontal plaits round the shoulders of our mothers in their girlish days were the remnants, or an imitation, of the natural folds. Then the enterprising dressmaker soon yearned for a change of ornament, and the loose ' Berthe' gradually hardened into the plain, tight, low bodice, with a still harder and more unmeaning tucker sewn in (once the close chemise), run through with a black string, from which we so long have suffered. The sleeves shrunk shorter and shorter, from the elbow rich with ruffles, to the round * bell-sleeve,' then to degenerate variations of it, till it narrowed into a finger-wide founda- tion for bows and laces, and became, finally, the detes- table * strap.' Again, observe the unmeaningness of the low neck fashion. Our mothers wore low dresses and bare arms all day long ; they knew if their shoulders and arms were beautiful they would look as well by daylight as by candlelight ; if, in their daily occupations, the English climate would not temper its winds to the shorn lambs or limbs of fashion, they tucked in a kerchief, or fastened on long sleeves in the morning. Why, the servant- maids wore low dresses too, at that time. There was 84 BEAUTY AND DRESS, some sense then in throwing off the kerchief in the even- ing, when there was nothing harder to be done than chatting in a warm drawing-room, and exposing so much of the body as it was fashionable to display. It was not unmeaning then. In those days people were only just recovering from the classic mania, and were worshipping mock simplicity. But now, when the low neck is used for nothing but display, it were well to ask what one has to display, and whether the effect is pleasing, before blindly accepting a bad fashion. Consideration for others is really necessary in those who wish to be * a joy for ever.' You must choose suitable shapes and suitable colours for your dresses, you must study the room that you are to appear in, if you ever mean to look right ; and if you know not what kind of room you are about to be seen in, or if you know that it is one of the modern white and glaring drawing-rooms, a plain black dress (but never with low neck and short sleeves) will always be safe. The reason that an ordinary low neck with short sleeves looks worse in black than in any other colour is because the hard line round the bust and arms is too great a contrast to the skin. A low neck always lessens the height, and a dark dress made thus, lessens it still LOIV DRESSES. 85 more, and it strikes the artistic eye as cutting the body- in pieces, in this way : — If you see a fair person dressed in a low dark dress, standing against a light background some way off, the effect will be that of an empty dress hung up, the face, neck, and arms being scarcely discer- nible (fig. 33). On the other hand, against a dark background, the head and bust will be thrown up sharply, and the whole dress and body will disappear Fig. 33. Fig. 34. (fig. 34). This effect, common enough, is execrably bad. If you must wear a low black bodice, let it be cut square, giving the height of the shoulders (or better, with the angles roundedy for corners are very trying), and have plenty of white or pale gauze, or thin black net, to soften the harsh line between the skin and the dress. White gauze or lace softens down the blackness of the dress at the edge of the bodice, and thin black stuff has 86 BEAUTY AND DRESS. an equally good effect, as it shades the whiteness of the skin into the dark colour of the gown. Oiily imder these conditions does the sudden contrast enhance, as some persons suppose, the fairness of the complexion. Nature abhors sharp edges. We see contrasts in flowers and in marbles ; but they are always softened, each colour stealing a little of the other at the junction of the two. Even the sharp edges of a crag or house against the sky are seen by a practised eye to gather some softening greyness, either from the surrounding colours, or by mere perspective. Trees grow thin at the edges and melt into the sky ; in a prism, of course, we see the tender amalgamations of hues more distinctly, the secondaries lying clearly between the primaries. Ruskin had noticed this surely when he said, * All good colour is gradated,' each mixed into the next where there are contrasts. We are at the present day adhering to a form whose motive and spirit departed seventy years ago ; we have lost its few merits, and retained its doubtful delicacy, and added an ugliness of our own, which our grand- mothers were quite innocent of. The crinolines super- seded all our attention to posture ; whilst our long trains, which can hardly look inelegant even on clumsy persons, make small ankles or thick ones a matter of little mo- ment. We have become inexpressibly slovenly. We LOW DRESSES, 87 no longer study how to walk, perhaps the most difficult of all actions to do gracefully. Our fashionable women stride and loll in open defiance of elegance ; if they patronise crinoline, they jump coquettishly in their * bal- loons,' causing these to leap up as though on springs ; push by chairs, forgetful that crinolines bend up behind and reveal their uncared-for boots, not to say stockings. If they adopt a clinging garb, the same want of caution produces equally awkward results. Our women are most blind and thoughtless followers of fashions still imposed upon them, Heaven only knows wherefore and by whom. CHAPTER VI. <©ur ^oor fttt UR feet play no insignificant part in our per- sonal appearance and in our quarter s allow- and everybody who leads an active ance life knows how all-important is perfect comfort in this particular. Yet there is no portion of our bodies so Fig. 35. — Outlines of natural and fashionable feet. branded for our sins as our poor feet. To what ex- tent may be seen in fig. 35. So renowned are these members for vicarious suffering, that in this one matter the populace and the better classes are at one — there is OUR POOR FEET. 89 common feeling for common suffering, and whatever the suffering be, whether the chilblains and frost-nips of cold, or the sickening discomfort of tight boots, every- Fig. 36. — Fpurteenth-century shoe. Fig. 37. — Foot deformed by shoe. one has had his turn, and been more or less at the mercy of the street Arab with his insolent inquiry. What are we to do with our feet ? Fig. 38. — Eighteenth-century shoe versus normal foot. Well, if we must deform and bury them, the pointed Watteau shoe, with its slender heel, is very pretty ; it raises the instep and makes the foot look small. I have 90 BEAUTY AND DRESS. sketched one (fig. 38) in my own possession, worn by my own great-grandmother. The long taper shoe worn at the end of the fifteenth century was not without merits ; not the least of these was that it followed the form of the foot almost exactly ; the extreme and narrow length made the foot appear slender, apparently the greatest modern desideratum, as seen — as felt — in our pinched toes ; and the longer the toes could be made, the more aristocratic must appear the foot, so they stuffed Fig. 39. — Fifteenth-century shoe. their serpent length with hay, to the imminent peril of everybody's life. There is a well-known French proverb still vulgarly applied to a wealthy person, * II a du foin dans ses bottes.' The exquisitely decorated shoe of an earlier date, such as Chaucer's smart parish clerk wore, — * Paules windows corven on his shoes,' — cannot be too much admired and regretted by us who never see gold or jeweller's work on our * bottines' The shoes were made * rights and lefts,' and were worn high on the leg or low as desired. But the Watteau shoe brings corns, SANDALS. 91 and the peaked-toed shoe was horribly inconvenient ; and there is something better than all these. Would that women who care for their own beauty, if not for their own comfort — would that girls before their pretty feet are irremediably spoilt, would make a new stand in the face of fashion, that bugbear of the sex, and institute a new era ! When we saw ' Pygmalion and Galatea * performed a few years ago, we were struck with a peculiar movement in the players' feet, which for a time, sitting afar off, we did not understand. With every step, with every turn of the ancle, a kind of delicate ripple passed over the instep, as a thrill runs through a corn-field sometimes, under a tender wind ; we were surprised to see how beautiful the movements were, how graceful were the lines from the ancle in every position. Presently we discovered that the beauty and grace were due to the absence of shoes. On examination, the feet of the ladies were not particularly small : yet they were prettier than the smallest concealed in boots ; there was scarcely a position in which they did not appear lovely. The actresses were in fact thinly stockinged, with sandals beneath the feet, an embroidered strap coming between the two first toes across the instep after the old 92 BEAUTY AND DRESS. Roman fashion. We have often thought, considering how much we lose by shoes and how very little we gain, that it is a thousand pities women do not bring in sandals — not the foolish ribanded pumps of the last century, but the real Greek sandal. Without the hard and deforming shoe, every muscle of the foot is in motion, and visible at every step ; it is quite wonderful how pretty the feet appear even when not very small. In reality, we lose nearly as much by the shoe as the face loses by a mask ; how much, we could easily see by covering the hands with patent leather or lined French kid, and then expecting them to entrance the spectator. We never see a woman's foot, we only see its leathern case, which is about as much a part or expressive of her foot as a violin-case is of a fine violin ; and if women only knew the fascinations of a neat and delicate foot, where the outlines have not been impaired by corns, nor the bones by generations of deformity, no shoe would be worn again for ever. But the truth is, just as the pace of an army must be regulated by the slowest man in it, so the beauties of the community must be disguised according to the plain- ness of the plainest member. A deformed foot is hidden by a shoe, so all the pretty feet must be hidden in shoes. An imperfect figure is disguised by a hoop or a bustle, so all the sylphs must be huddled into hoops and SANDALS. 93 bustles. And, probably, if any graceful little sylph refused to be disguised, she would be called 'vain,' * shameless,' and other pretty names. Every artist knows that any foot that has ever worn a shoe is deformed. The great toe is bent in towards the rest of the toes, instead of being boldly parted. The other toes are crushed and shortened. How seldom in real life does one find the second toe longer than the great one, its natural length ! If an artist wishes to make studies of a beautiful foot, does he choose out the smallest-footed lady of his acquaintance, and copy those * little mice ' of hers 1 No, he ignores the whole race of French and English women. He goes off to the East, or to the fish- women on the shores of Italy, who have never worn a shoe ; there he studies the free, practised muscles, the firm steps, the ineffably graceful movements. One may see in the pictures of Mr. Leighton, who has made a special study of feet, what feet ought to be. What do we lose by the shoe t Form, firmness of tread, charm of appearance. And what have we gained by the shoe t Perhaps cleanliness, and a certain amount of protection for the foot against cold, wet, and friction : this in the case of men at least. Before shoes, people existed well enough without them, though there were still fragile ankles and tender toes. Stockings indoors, at any rate, would be as useful as shoes, if the great toe 94 BEAUTY AND DRESS. were separated from the rest, and the foot protected by a sole of leather, wood, or any other material, which while being in itself twice as serviceable as our * paper soles,' could be padded with silk, inlaid with ivory, or coloured in any way, at once more beautiful and more useful. The straps might also be ornamented. Where warmth was needed, the stocking, of kid, indiarubber, worsted, or even velvet, would be quite as warm and serviceable as ordinary ladies' boots. The only differ- ence would lie in their shape, and the absence of corns ; and what a dangerous arrow might be added to our quiver of charms ! As it is, our want of appreciation of the real beauty of the body, or our ignorance of how to make the best use of our materials, reconciles us to all kinds of foot diseases, and dis-ease, little behind the proverbial Chinese victim to fashion ; and if our sufferings have caused the medical profession to advance with rapid strides from the leech of old, we may just hint that prevention is as good as, if not better than, cure. There is one kind of shoe — which I may just name, en passant — that is of a proper and sensible form from the medical point of view. It is that wide-ending shoe worn in the time of Henry VIII., in whose capacious front the toes might spread and be at ease. But its ugliness will probably hinder its re-institution, and nothing really equals the sandal. 95 While we are on the subject of foot-gear, and in anti- cipation of an English winter, a few words on c/o^s or pattens will not be inappropriate. When a day's rain has filled our roads with mud, and a hundred feet have covered the pavement with a monotint that beats all the browns of the old masters, what becomes of all our aesthetics ? One would have thought that so many- generations of damp and bad weather would have taught the English how to combine convenience with attractive- ness, even under the greatest skyey disadvantages. But alas ! on a wet day no one looks well. The lovely beings of whom England is justly proud are transformed into frights by a few hours' pelting rain and a little yellow fog under such conditions. Those who are brave enough to venture out prepared for the worst, present a depressing spectacle to a lover of the beautiful. There is a general smashedness of head-gear, and vagueness of outline as to feet, which ten centuries have not taught us to provide against. What can one expect when the * little mice ' are covered up in goloshes } ah, woe be to the man who invented that gutta-percha penance ; why did he not elevate the gentle sex on pattens } Now a patten is not an ugly thing in itself, and it has the prestige of antiquity. Our countrywomen in the last 96 BEAUTY AND DRESS. generation plodded through miry fields on ' clogs ' of a very unpicturesque description, eminently worthy of the name, with an uncomfortable ring of iron beneath the foot ; but this clog was not older than Anne's reign. A far better clog was the early wooden one, of which we see many representations in the mediaeval MSS., and which is very clearly represented in a picture by John Van Eyck in the National Gallery, a clog that was made in the form of the shoe then worn, with two props beneath it, effectually preserving the decorated boots from injury in the ill-cared -for streets. Again, some of the old Italian pattens, tall, slender, light, formed of costly wood, or inlaid with delicate mother o' pearl or ivory, prove that even a clog can be idealised and made a becoming as well as a useful protection. Little feet were not concealed then, nor soiled with wet, when roads were heavy with mud ; they were lightly lifted above it ; indeed, a world of chivalrous thought and apprecia- tion divides the two periods. Then, glittering props like the wings of Mercury upheld the dainty passenger, now, her feet and her petticoat-tails may be drenched with mire ; then it was a delight to see the fairy slippers unharmed, though the street might be a torrent of mud ; now they must not only descend into the depths, but, in addition, be swelled to unnatural proportions by the hide- ous golosh, and be ugly as well as dirty. Oh, will not some CLOGS AND PATTENS, 97 fair lady who has pretty feet make a pilgrimage through the park in a neat little pair of pattens, and teach her timid sisters how to avoid the annual ordeal of mire ? I suggest two forms, figs. 40 and 41, for heeled and unheeled boots. The one simple, attached by straps : in Fig. 41. — Suggestions for modem pattens. these rinking days what is the difficulty 1 The other is curved to fit the heel, to which it is fastened by a screw and an almost invisible perforation through the heel. Either is pretty, practical, and in price, what you will. H CHAPTER VII. T may not be superfluous to add here a few words upon ornaments, which form so im- portant a part of a woman's attire, and no doubt have a very considerable effect in marring or improving her appearance. Ornaments of gold and silver came into use too long ago, and have remained and will ever remain too great a delight to the eye ever to be laid aside. In vain have moralists inveighed against our propensity for outward adorning. The need of conspicuousness, which Darwin tells us results in the survival of the fittest, is at the root of this love of ornament, a healthy instinct not to be sneered down. It is amusing, however, to see the amount of reviling which it has outlived. Worthy Philip Stubbes was, like a few persons now, much opposed to the use of earrings : ORNAMENTS. 99 * Another sort of dissolute minions and wanton simpro- nians (for I can terme them no better) are so farre bewitched as they are not ashamed to make holes in their eares, whereat they hang ringes and other jewels of gold and precious stones. But what this signifieth in them, I will holde my peace, for the thing itself speaketh sufficiently.' It is no doubt very sad to be a simpronian, whatever that is, and still worse to be left in the dark as to the fate reserved for simpronians — yet as there is no chance of ornaments going out of use, we had better turn our attention to the artistic significance and grace of such ornaments as we wear, and insist that good and not bad art be represented. It ought to be considered, what sort of things are suited for personal adornment, and how they ought to be treated. The thing should be beautiful in itself, and it should be beautiful for you. The appropriate must have its part therein. Some forms may be treated in a naturalistic spirit ; others should be conventionalised. For instance, a large dried butterfly, though beautiful in itself, would not be beautiful for you — as a head-dress : its wings clasping the head, its antennae surmounting it. The result would convey a painful sense of instability, fragility, and incongruous- ness. Whilst leaning against a cushion, the wings would H2 lOO BEAUTY AND DRESS, crush and shatter ; the very stillness of the wood creature on a human head, and in a vitiated atmosphere, would outrage the possibility of nature ; thus, a butterfly should always be treated conventionally and in an abso- lutely different material, such as metal. Any woven material, plain or embroidered, is a fit ornament ; it adapts itself to the shape of the body it enfolds, and recalls, at least, the notion of utility. Metal and stones used in fragments, are also suitable, linked by various legitimate means, and under the latter heading falls jewelry, which we shall consider specially. The quality of all ornaments is of three kinds — barbaric, artistic, or merely ostentatious. Of course the barbaric ornament was for ostentation too, but for a very different motif. The motif of the first period (the above-named healthy impulse — how many beautiful objects in nature and in art do we owe it !) may be called one's body ; the second, ones mind ; the third, one's posses- sions — the meanest of the three. The barbarous man strings coloured stones together into various forms — hooks fragments of gold and silver — encloses gems that are not perforable in little frames or cases slung by chains — modes whose simplicity and appropriateness often arrive at grace ; then he begins to select the forms of his fragments, to mould them to the images in his mind, and here begins art knowledge ORNAMENTS. loi t and handicraft. From sheer lack of a school he draws upon the natural forms about him ; he has no compasses, no machinery, no cut-and-dried rules ; he never makes two objects alike ; he has an imperfect sense of the charm of monotony ; he loves the infinite surprises in nature, and he turns out an ornament that to all time will be beautiful. It is nature which made it beautiful — the leaf, the shell, the bird whence they came, and to which they carry back the mind. Here is the artistic period grown out of the barbaric. And as the workman mentally progresses, as his soul opens to civilising influences and he becomes a deep and earnest thinker, the thought in his work deepens and burns. His creed, his memories, his imagination, are pressed into the service of his craft, and ennoble it. Scenes and subjects as well as natural forms enter in, as we find in Greek and mediaeval art. Men who work thus never scamp. The art becomes to them something sacred, an emblem of their best self, whilst ever striving towards an ideal unachieved ; something else to learn, something greater to attain to. In this spirit worked Quentin Matsys at his forge, Holbein at dagger-handle or queenly portrait, the ancient Greek or Celtic work- man, whose name has disappeared, but whose works * do follow him.' Then come satiety, flagging thought, indifference, 102 BEAUTY AND DRESS. and the third stage creeps on, the love of mere display. Every kind of extravagance follows, and the extrava- gance of wealth destroys art, because it does not care for beauty. Value of material is the one thing aimed at ; lavishness, cutting down the rare materials into * pairs ' and ' sets,' and wasting them. Hence the mighty suites of diamonds and emeralds such as I saw in a shop recently, gaudy masses, but 'worth 12,000/.!' and, as workmanship goes for little or nothing, the result is usually as vulgar and ugly as any common mixture of large bits of glass and tinsel ; for when wealth is the sole idol, higher feelings, especially that self-sacrifice and moderation which beauty ofttimes involves, have no room. A large pared emerald does not remind us of God's natural works like a row of unmatched pearls, as in the barbaric collar ; no suggestion of ancient story and man's accomplishments, as in the gems of Greece, Rome, and the Renascence. No idea is conveyed. The mere coloured glitter is suggestive of nothing— we stare and pass on, and the mind is left as vacant as before. Things are beautiful according to the degree in which they recall things more beautiful than themselves. A bit of enamel that records an accidental mineral effect (e.g. a streak of arsenic green or vivid cobalt) is less beautiful than a bit which recalls the sky or the grass ; and the larger and more improbable quantity the small ORNAMENTS. 103 bit of accidental colour occurs in, the less pleasing it is ; whilst in reminding of the sky, or the grass, which is in broad masses, the colour gradated and not perfectly equal, is lovelier than an uniform tint, impossible in nature. How beautiful are many barbaric forms may be best seen in an exhibition, such as that of the Prince of Wales's Indian presents ; the leaf-shapen spoon of crystal, the flower-like bangles, myriad forms suggested more or less directly by mother Nature. Mediaeval and the art of the Renascence may be studied in the South Kensington Museum. It is depressing to see how incapable we appear in England of originating any new thing which is not bad in art composition. But it was more depressing a few years ago to mark how whilst nothing new was good, nothing old was recognised as being so. We are beginning nozv to borrow with intelligence and humility. Several of our fashionable jewellers' shops contain exquisite facsimiles of old work, so thoughtful in design, and charming in general effect, eminently fit for their purpose. Greek and Roman forms constantly occur, reproduced by careful copying or by electrotype. I04 BEAUTY AND DRESS. Mr. Giuliano of Piccadilly, and Messrs. Phillips of Cockspur Street, merit especial notice for their artistic appreciation of good forms and good work. In the establishments of these gentlemen, who are most courteous in exhibiting their productions to artists and inquirers, work equal in technical ability to any of the old may be seen. Indeed, modern technical work actu- ally excels the old, as I convinced myself one day at Mr. Giuliano's, in a necklace of his own design and work- manship, worthy, for its beauty, of a place in a museum of art. The grain work (each grain being made in gold, and laid on separately, not imitated by frosting) was finer than any I ever saw. Under the direction of Messrs. Phillips, the most per- fect models are sought for the ornaments they furnish. Museums and picture galleries are ransacked for devices of necklaces, earrings, and pendants. I there observed an elegant cross copied from a picture by Quentin Matsys in the National Gallery ; a bracelet of enamel and gold, whose delicate traceries, with the Tudor roses and Jieur de lis^ are adapted from a fine frieze beneath the tomb of Henry VII. in Westminster Abbey ; bonbon boxes of Louis Seize shapes, grafted on an Indian pattern, in which much of the Indian feeling MODERN JEWELLERY. for colour is retained. In general, however, I found their form superior to their colour — the English eye lacks the Oriental instinct. I saw facsimiles of exquisite Etruscan and Greek collars in gold, every detail being carefully studied, and reproduced after the manner of the ancients. This is as it should be ; real artistic feeling is carried into the work. Messrs. Phillips aim less perhaps at originating than Mr. Giuliano ; but this seems to me after all the higher mood, involving as it does the sacri- fice of self We are not an artistic nation — but we are a mechanical nation ; many a savage tribe can outdo us in conception, no country can match us in mechanism. It is, on the whole, wiser to wed our mechanical excellence to the vivid and passionate thoughts of past ages, than to strive to equal (since we can never excel) them in design, for which we have neither the spirit nor the range of opportunities. We have not enough beauty about us, nor have we leisure, for observation and meditation whence creative insight comes. People who dwell in streets, and have to supply a regular demand, cannot create, though they may reproduce, the beauti- ful. The conditions are not favourable. For instance, our miserable failure is chiefly manifest when we attempt to reproduce the human figure — how can we portray what we never see } No doubt the art of a period ought to be a chronicle io6 BEAUTY AND DRESS. of the period, and not an effort to resuscitate past taste and past notions. Only when art is degenerate, owing to changed conditions, is it good to go back to the pure art of an earlier time, rather than perpetuate and spread the false principles and weak production which have succeeded it. In the old days, the then celebrated artists — the Holbeins, the Durers, the Clouets, the Cellinis — did not disdain to design ornaments, plate, vases, dagger-hilts, and many other things ; but now, when our chief artists do disdain so to employ themselves, the jewellers act in the best and wisest spirit when they reconstruct after the ancient models. Many exquisite ornaments of early Greek and Renascence art in the British Museum and the Louvre, might be more commonly reproduced ; and it would be well did buyers observe and compare more than they do, so that they could appreciate modern work when it really is good, and not spend large sums on poor work- manship and poorer designs, under high-sounding names. By these means art in England would receive a genuine impetus, and popular taste be gradually raised. Yet it is greatly to be deplored that living artists should do so little to popularise good art, and bring it within the reach of the many who cannot buy pictures, but who can buy a bracelet or a tea service. ORIENTAL AND ANCIENT ORNAMENTS. 107 Machine-made jewellery has debased to the utmost the few fine forms which once were popular, and in- creased the ignorant and mistaken craze for * sets ' and * pairs,' which are in themselves antagonistic to all true beauty, the essence of which is change, variety, freshness. It is food for regret that it has been found possible to manufacture so much cheap work, and to find buyers among the vulgar and uncultured masses. We wish it were more widely understood that, like good forms and colours in dress, good forms and fancies in ornaments are a real aid to womanly beauty: and rather than bad art, it is almost better to have none. (Oriental anb Ancient €>tnamettt^* I have laid before the reader for comparison, a few cuts from early. Oriental, and modern work. The history of the progress in ornamental art may be studied in various exhaustive works on the subject — best by the eye, which soon learns to see more than books can teach. In fig. 42 we have the seven pendants of an Indian ornament, which I was fain to take from Mr. Eastlake's charming book, * Hints on Household Taste.' They are a very good instance of the natural and agreeable variety running through Oriental and all semi-barbaric work. io8 BEAUTY AND DRESS. The several drops will be found to be in colour and proportion of about equal value, and have the interest which belongs to variety, never to carefully matched and Fig. 42.— Indian pendants. I Fig. 43. — Irish brooch. From Walker's 'Hist, of the Irish Bards.' paired sets of stones. No two pendants are alike, how- ever, but this does not strike obnoxiously on the eye, it requires a second glance to observe it. No. 43 is a ORIENTAL AND ANCIENT ORNAMENTS. 109 fibula of ancient Irish work, very rich and involved in pattern, and the form is one worthy to revive. 44 and 45 are Keltic patterns, very simple instances of the Fig, 45.— Keltic Ornament, Keltic love of interlaced ribbons, which I suggest for buttons, clasps, brooches, watch-backs, &c. It is singular to observe how the old traditions linger in some countries — the simple and honest form of the Italian earring, fig. 46, not of the present century, but no BEAUTY AND DRESS. still not extremely old, might have belonged to a work- man ten centuries — nay, thrice that — ago. The pearls are all strung, not attached by partial boring, and the gold knot which keeps them safe is seen at the end of the wire. The whole system of decoration is simple and ingenuous, the flat surfaces being adorned with a trimming of wire, plain or twisted, in graceful curves, and one coloured stone lights up the centre. It is perfectly artistic and good. In all the old work one is struck by the simplicity of the fastenings — never disguised, and as much safer than our solder, as a nail is safer than glue. The Greek and Etruscan gems hang from hooks of wire passing through them ; the soft gold meant at times to be bent in use, as in fig. 47 (earring). The links of the chains are all visible and satisfactory to the eye, there is no feeling of doubt as to how they are held — so annoying in much modern work. No doubt this may be explained by the ancients' fear of passing delicate work through the fire to solder it, a process no longer dangerous in the present days of improved mechanical means ; but the artistic effect is better when the fastening is seen than when it is disguised. You may ornament, but not conceal it : as mediaeval artists ornamented a blot or flaw in the vellum, rather than cover or cut it away. ORIENTAL AND ANCIENT ORNAMENTS. iii Fig. 48.— Greek earring, Russ. Coll. Fig. 51. —Etruscan necklace, Brit. Mus. 112 BEAUTY AND DRESS. The great difference between Greek and Etruscan work, is not well shown in the present very inadequate drawings. The spirit is always lost in copying, and at no time am I a good copyist ; but they will serve to indicate the forms to look for in the British Museum collection, where the varieties should be carefully studied. The Etruscan work has perhaps a larger and broader type — the Greek is far more subtle and refined. The earring (in the Russian col- lection), fig. 48, is one of the most graceful I have seen in such early work. I have included two designs, figs. 53 and 54, for brooches, form Holbein's sketches — fanciful and pretty, but he made many more intricate and ambitious. Compare the good old designs — in which the setting is always adapted to the gems, not the gems, as now, sacrificed to the Fig. 52.-Modern aigrette. getting— with the Comparatively modern design for an aigrette by Paul Birckenhultz, fig. 52, the lower part of which is exceedingly graceful and beautiful, the pearls safely secured, and the cherub- APPROPRIATE PATTERNS. 113 head delicately handled, but the upper portion hard, heavy, and trenching on various modern defects. Fig. 53. — Pendant. Fig. 54. — Button (?). Designs by Holbein, Brit. Mus. The class of patterns adapted for certain materials,, is a subject too large for me to enter on at length in a book of this kind ; but a few general rules may be use- ful to those who have never considered the subject at all. The ornament of an object which is required to be strong, should express strength ; if possible, it should I 114 BEAUTY AND DRESS, give an appertrance of additional strength to what it would have had if undecorated. In the art (often ex- tremely beautiful) of various savage tribes, we may see this principle expressed in the ornament of their paddle- handles, door-posts, &c. — the rings or stripes in the pattern run in such a manner as to strengthen not weaken the form. Flat surfaces are not treated in the same manner as cylindrical ones, perpendicular objects have their own class of ornament as opposed to horizontal or leaning objects. The natural sense of what is fit and appropriate, un- confused by rules of art, thus leads to what we call * high art' The ornament of a large plain surface should be skilfully balanced so as to correct the tendency of the eye to run in any one direction. In such ornaments as trimmings, the form of the body they surround should be considered ; round forms ought never to be made to look square, or angular forms round. Geometrical patterns are eminently suited to woven materials, whose nature and form they express ; waved patterns, or shaded ones, should be admitted only where there is some possibility of natural movement, from fold, breeze, or billow entering in — e.g. a curtain, cloak, or loose garb ; not a stuffed chair or a carpet. Patterns of beetles and snails are out of place wherever they would GOOD TASTE. not be naturally admitted alive — such as on a dinner or tea service. Metallic ornament can only artistically describe living forms when they are treated purely conventionally. A wall ought never to simulate a landscape, after the debased Italian fashion — nor to represent trellis and sky like some modern wall-papers. It is false art, because it outrages nature, and is inconsistent ; what comfort could there be in a house whose sides were open to the weather Some people instinctively surround themselves with right colours and appropriate forms. Without being always beautiful such persons always look attractive — to an artistic eye they are positive wells of refreshment. They are never seen slovenly, or tumbled, or in un- gainly attitudes and foolish situations. The appropriate comes naturally to them, the beautiful is their own. Others must study it. The greatest mistake a wife can make is to neglect her appearance ; it is a direct surrender of a magic wand, without which a woman may still have charms, but most often punishes herself too severely, and sees her error too late. In a mother it is a mistake, too, for form and colour having a definite effect on minds of a certain constitu- I 2 ii6 BEAUTY AND DRESS. tion, even children are sensible of the influence Young boys take a deeper interest in their mothers' looks than is commonly believed. They are proud of their mothers' and sisters' appearance, and with a chivalrous affection, uphold their family ' beauties' against each other in their schools. A mother may often have more influence with her child by being a graceful and pleasing woman, than by the most admirable virtues combined with a dowdy or slovenly dress. Aunts and grandmothers are liked by children for a pretty look often, whereas ugliness and frowziness in dress may be the first step towards losing influence over them. A child who has ever been impelled to observe that ' Granny looks such a fright ! ' loses respect for Granny, and is less likely to obey her. I always felt as a child sympathy with Rosamond in the tale of the ' pinch in the black bonnet' Rosamond's antipathy to the kind lady of disagreeable appearance was a natural one, and betrayed an aesthetic sense in the child which ought to have been encouraged. The kind lady was much to blame for wearing a bonnet with an objectionable * pinch 'in it ; and however justly Rosa- mond was reproved for judging merely by appearances, the lady, had she possessed wisdom and tact, should have left off the black bonnet, or at least effaced the pinch forthwith. Whatever the pinch was, it must have been some bit THE REASON WHY. 117 of slovenly work, or some milliner's freak, which struck Rosamond's sense as contradicting the natural lines of the human cranium — something singularly bad indeed, considering the grotesque ornaments people were used to on the gigantic bonnets of that day. CHAPTER VIII. FEW remarks on recent fashions may not be out of place here, with the Reason Why. The reason why a train is pretty, is be- cause it increases height and grace of movement : the reason why a train too long (as in Court dress) or girt in (as in fig. 56) is ugly, is because it does just the reverse. Thus extremes meet. The reason why the present tied-in style of petticoat, which recalls, without imitating, the Japanese costume, is good, and when not overdone, pretty — is because it does pretend to follow the natural lines. It does display the clear Hne of the hip, without the deformity of a * bustle,' and this gives a pretty figure grace and light- ness. It does fall in at the knees where the human figure naturally narrows, and spreads a little below with much the curve natural in walking. This curve may be THE REASON WHY. 119 traced in any statue. All women have a slight tendency to be knock-kneed, whilst a man's leg is by nature straight. But any costume carried to an exaggerated extent becomes ridiculous, and if women have the bad taste to sacrifice the free use of their limbs in the attempt to out-Herod Herod, so much the worse for Fig. 55. — dress that does not contradict the Fig, 56.— A dress that contradicts natural lines. the natural lines. them. A tied-in dress is also commendable because it indicates those forms of the body which have too long been completely hidden, and so far wasted ; for beauty implying visibility, a beauty undiscovered is scarcely to be reckoned as a beauty. The reason why the same dress, too tightly tied, is bad, is because when the limbs are deprived of com-