ON THE PECULIARITIES OF DRESS, WITH REFERENCE TO THE STATION OF THE WEARER.
“Dress drains our cellar dry,
And keeps our larder lean; puts out our fires,
And introduces hunger, frost, and wo,
Where peace and hospitality might reign.”
COWPER.
As there is a propriety in adapting your dress to the different seasons of your life, and the peculiar character of your figure, there is likewise a necessity that it should correspond with the station you hold in society.
This is a subject not less of a moral concern than it is a matter of taste. By the universality of finery, and expensive articles in dress, ranks are not only rendered undistinguishable, but the fortunes of moderate families, and of industrious tradesmen, are brought to ruin: the sons become sharpers, and the virtue of the wives and daughters too often follows in the same destruction.
It is not from a proud wish to confine elegance to persons of quality, that I contend for less extravagant habits in the middle and lower orders of people; it is a conviction of the evil which their vanity produces, that impels me to condemn in toto the present levelling and expensive mode.
A tradesman’s wife is now as sumptuously arrayed as a countess; and a waiting-maid as gaily as her lady. I speak not of our merchants, who, like those of Florence under the Medici family, have the fortunes of princes, and may therefore decorate the fair partners of their lives with the rich produce of the divers countries they visit; but I animadvert on our retail shopkeepers, our linen-drapers, upholsterers, &c. who, not content with gold and silver baubles, trick out their dames in jewels! No wonder that these men load their consciences with dishonest profits, or make their last appearance in the newspaper as insolvent or felo de se!
Should the woman of moderate fortune be so ignorant of the principles of real elegance as to sigh for the splendid apparels of the court, let her receive as an undeniable truth, that mediocrity of circumstances being able to afford clean and simple raiment, furnishes all that is essential for taste to improve into perfect elegance. Riches and splendor will attract notice, and may often excite admiration; but it is the privilege of propriety and sweet retiring grace alone to rivet the eye, and take captive the heart.
“Many there are who seem to shun all care,
And with a pleasing negligence ensnare.”
The fashion of educating all ranks of young women alike, is the cause why all ranks of women attempt to dress alike. If the brazier’s daughter is taught to sing, dance, and play, like the heiress to an earldom, we must not be surprised that she will also emulate the decorations of her rival. We see her imitate the coronet on Lady Mary’s brows; and though Miss Molly may possibly not be able to have her’s of gems, foil-stones produce a similar effect; then she looks for rings, bracelets, armlets, to give appropriate grace to the elegant arts she has learnt to practise; and when she is thus arrayed, she plays away the wanton and the fool, till some libertine of fortune buys her either for a wife or a mistress.
Were girls of the plebeian classes brought up in the praiseworthy habits of domestic duties; had they learned how to manage a house, how to economize and produce comfort at the least expense at their father’s frugal yet hospitable table, we should not hear of dancing-masters, and music-masters, of French and Italian masters; they would have no time for them. We should not see gaudy robes and glittering trinkets dangling behind the counter, or shining at a Sunday ordinary; we should not be told of the seduction, or ruin of those,
“Whose modest looks the cottage might adorn,
Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn.”
The appearance of these young women would not attract the flatterer; and their simple hearts know not the desires of luxury and vanity.
After having drawn this agreeable picture of her who has well chosen, I will leave this modern daughter of industry to her discreet and virtuous simplicity; and once more turn to her whose fortune and station render greater change and expense in apparel not only admissible but commendable. A woman with adequate means, when she fills an extensive wardrobe, encourages the arts and manufactures of her country, and replenishes the scanty purse of many a laborious family.
At this period of universal talent, articles of dress may be purchased at a price so insignificant as hardly to be named, or at the vast cost of half a fortune. A pretty muslin gown may be bought by the village girl for a few shillings; while a robe of the same material, but of a finer quality, cannot be purchased by a lady of rank for less than as many guineas. Indian muslin wrought with gold or silver is nearly as costly as the stately brocades of our ancestors, but it is infinitely more elegant.
Indeed, when we look back upon their heavy fashions, we cannot but see, that in almost every respect the advantage of the change is on our side. With the stiffness of cloth of gold and embroidered tissues, have also disappeared the enormous pile of hair, furbelows, feathers, diamond towers, windmills, &c. which a certain witty poet used to denominate “the building of the head.” Now, easy tresses, the shining braid, the flowing ringlet confined by the antique comb, or bodkin, give graceful specimens of the simple taste of modern beauty. Nothing can correspond more elegantly with the untrammelled drapery of our newly-adopted classic raiment than this undecorated coiffure of nature.
While we find that the pious Bishop Latimer remonstrated with the females of his time against the monstrous superfluity of their “roundabouts, artificial hips,” &c. &c. and recommended to their use the “honest single garment;”—our moralists, equally pious, take up the argument on the contrary side, and justly condemn the too adhesive and transparent robe worn by our contemporary belles! On this subject we must dissent from the venerable reformer of the sixteenth century; and agree with those of the nineteenth, that the single garment (as the texture now usually is) is not a meet covering for a christian damsel.
I am sorry to be obliged to call to your observation, my gentle friends, that the modern fair have deviated widely from that medium between the Bacchante and the Vestal, which a discreet candidate for admiration would wish to preserve. The nature of man is prone to extremes; and flying from the heavy farthingale and the stuffed petticoat, women assume almost the Spartan guise; and, not meeting minds in the opposite sex as pure as those in Lacedæmon, no wonder that the chaste matron, called upon to foretell the consequence, should remain silent, and veil her head.
“Good sense,” says La Rochefoucault, “should be the test of all rule, whether ancient or modern. Whatever is incompatible with good sense must be false.” Modesty should, on the same principle, be the test of the propriety of all personal apparel or ornament; for whatever is incompatible with her ordinances, must degrade and betray.
Hence you will perceive, my young readers, that in no case a true friend or lover would wish you to discover to the eye more of the “form divine” than can be indistinctly descried through the mysterious involvements of, at least, three successive folds of drapery. Love, friendship, and real taste, are alike delicate.
To the exposure of the bosom and back, as some ladies display those parts of their person, what shall we say? This mode (like every other which is carried to excess and indiscriminately followed) is not only repugnant to decency, but most exceedingly disadvantageous to the charms of nine women out of ten. The bosom and shoulders of a very young and fair girl may be displayed without exciting much displeasure or disgust; the beholder regards the too prodigal exhibition, not as the act of the youthful innocent, but as the effect of accident, or perhaps the designed exposure of some ignorant dresser. But when a woman, grown to the age of discretion, of her own choice “unveils her beauties to the sun and moon,” then, from even an Helen’s charms the sated eye turns away loathing.
Were we even in a frantic and impious passion to set virtue aside, policy should direct our damsels to be more sparing of their attractions. An unrestrained indulgence of the eye robs imagination of her power, and prevents her consequent influence on the heart. And if this be the case where real beauty is exposed, how much more subversive of its aim must be the studied display of an ordinary or deformed figure!
Judgment, as well as decency, declares, that it is sufficient in the evening and full-dress to disrobe the back of the neck to the top of the delicate undulation on the rise of the shoulder. Women, according to the fineness of their skins and proportions, must accept or decline the privileges which modesty grants. It is preposterous for her who is of a brown, dingy, or speckled complexion, to disarray her neck and arms, as her fairer rival may. A clear brunette has as much liberty in this respect as the fairest; but not so the muddy-skinned and ill-formed. A candid consideration of our pretensions on these subjects, and an impartial judgment, must decide our style of apparel, and consequently our respectability with the discerning.
Perhaps it is necessary to remind my reader that custom regulates the veiling or unveiling the figure, according to different periods in the day. In the morning, the arms and bosom must be completely covered to the throat and wrists. From the dinner-hour to the termination of the day, the arms, to a graceful height above the elbow, may be bare; and the neck and shoulders unveiled as far as delicacy will allow.
As Cicero said of action, so say ye of the essentials of your charms. What is the eloquence of your beauty?—Modesty! What is its first argument?—Modesty! What is its second?—Modesty! What is its third?—Modesty!—What is its peroration, the winding up of all its charms, the striking spell that binds the heart of man to her forever?—Modesty!!!—In the words of Moore,
“Let that which charms all other eyes
Seem worthless in your own!”
Modesty is all in all; for it comprises the beauties of the mind as well as those of the body; and happy is he who finds her!
The bosom, which nature has formed with exquisite symmetry in itself, and admirable adaptation to the parts of the figure to which it is united, has been transformed into a shape, and transplanted to a place, which deprives it of its original beauty and harmony with the rest of the person. This hideous metamorphosis has been effected by means of newly-invented stays, or corsets, which, by an extraordinary construction and force of material, force the figure of the wearer into whatever form the artist pleases.
Curiosity may incline you to wish to know something better of these buckram machines, that you may form an idea of their intention, use, or rather inutility. I will satisfy you by describing them to the best of my power.
The leader in this arming phalanx is usually called long-stay. And its announcement to the female world, if not by drum or trumpet, furnishes not only much matter for oratory in the advertisement, but a no inconsiderable fund of merriment to the readers of these curious performances. For instance, “Mrs. and Miss L. P. have willed it, and it is done at their house,” &c. &c. Here follows a list of their improved long stay, pregnant stay, divorces, &c. &c. O! female delicacy, where is thy blush, when thou lookest on such exposure of the chaste reserves of thy person!
The first time my eyes met these words so coupled, I was seized with that honest shuddering which every delicate woman ought to feel at seeing the parts and situations of her person which modesty bids her conceal, thus dragged before the imagination of the opposite sex. The pure must read it with the frown of disgust—the impure with the smile of ridicule. To this moment, though I find that nothing disrespectful to modesty was meant by the advertisement, I cannot approve of the terms in which it is written; for it is my opinion, (and I am so happy as to be supported in it by the sanction of the wisest moralists,) that, rob woman of her delicate reserves, and you take from her one of the best strong holds of her chastity. You deprive her of her sweet attractive mysteries; you lay open to the eye of love the arcana of her toilet, the infirmities of her nature; the enchantment is broken, and “the bloom of young desire, the purple light of the soul’s enthusiasm,” expire at the disclosure.
To please my still curious readers, I will still further displease myself, and enter more circumstantially into a detail of these strange appendages to a female wardrobe.
But before I proceed with my remarks on the long stay, (the ringleader of the rest,) I will so far rescue the intention of its constructors from any design to excite improper ideas by the words of their advertisement, as to explain to you the proposed usefulness of the inventions denominated pregnant stay, and divorces.
The first is a corset or stay of dimity, or jean, or silk, reaching from the shoulders down to the waist, and over the hips, to the complete envelopement of the body. It is rendered of more than ordinary power by elastic bones, &c. which, introduced between the lining and covering of the stay, bring it into something of the consistency and shape of an ancient warrior’s hauberk. This new-fashioned coat of mail for the fair sex is so constructed, as to compress and reduce to the shape desired the natural prominence of the female figure in a state of fruitfulness. Some women, who are bold enough to wear this Procrustean garb during every stage of their pregnancy, affirm that it preserves their shape without injury to their state of increase. However this may be with a few hardy individuals, I profess myself no proselyte to the innovation, as it must necessarily put a degree of restraint upon the operations of nature, very likely to produce bad effects both on the mother and the child.
Support and confinement to an overstrained part are two different things; the one is beneficial, the other destructive. And this I can assure my readers, that I ever have remarked those married women who have longest maintained their virgin forms were those who, in a state of maternal increase, observed a proper medium between a too relaxed and a too contracted boddice.
Nature in these concerns is our best guide; and when she dictates to us to provide against the possible disagreeable consequences of any of her operations, it is well to obey her; but when a fastidious, and, allow me to say, an indelicate, regard to personal charms would excite you to brace with ribs of whalebone the soft mould of your unborn infant; or when it has, in spite of these arts, burst its prison-house alive, you seek to deprive it of the nourishment your breast prepares—then remember you perform not the duty of a mother, but show yourself rather egregiously guilty of wantonness and unpardonable cruelty.
No person living can feel a more lively admiration than that which animates me at the sight of a beautiful form,
—“rife
With all we can imagine of the sky.”
I behold in it the work of the most perfect being—the accomplishment of one of his fairest designs. He seems to show in earthy mould the lovely transcript of the angels of heaven: she looks, she breathes, of innocence and sweet unconscious beauty. But when I cast my eyes on women issuing from the house of a modern manufacturer of shapes; when I see the functions of nature impeded by bands and ligatures; when I behold the abode of virgin modesty thrust forward to the gaze of the libertine; when I observe the pains taken to attract his eye,—I turn away disgusted, and blush for my sex.
Vile as these meretricious arts are, they are not less dangerous to health than to morals. The constant pressure of such hard substances as whalebone, steel, &c. upon so susceptible a part as the bosom, is very likely, in the course of a very short time, to produce all the horrid consequences of abscesses, cancers, &c.: on their miseries I need not to descant.
On the long stay I shall now make a few remarks, arising from the observations I have been enabled to make on the ladies of various ages and figures whom I have known wear it. To the woman whose waning charms set in an exuberance of flesh, perhaps the support of this adventitious aid is an advantage. But in that case its stiffening should rather be cord quilted in the lining, or very thin whalebone, than either steel or iron. In all situations, the boddice should be flexible to the motion of the body and the undulations in the shape; and it should never be felt to press upon any part.
Thus far we may tolerate the adoption of this buckram suit for elderly, or excessively embonpoint ladies; but for the growing girl (whom, I am sorry to say, mothers not unfrequently imprison in these machines,) it is both unrequired and mischievous.
Before nature has completed her work in the perfection of the youthful figure, she is checked in her progress by the impediment which the valves, bands, &c. of the long stay throw in her way. Those finely-rounded points which mark the distinction and the grace of the female form, and which the artist, enamored of beauty, delights to delineate with the nicest accuracy, are, by the constant pressure of these stays, rendered indistinct, and in a short time are entirely destroyed.
Let, then, the long stay be restricted to the too abundant mass of fattening matronhood; so may art restrain the excesses, not of nature, but of disease. Unwieldly flesh was never yet seen in a perfectly healthy person. It generally arises either from intemperance overloading the functions of life, or dissipation decomposing them.
Let the padded corset rectify the defects of the deformed; but where nature has given the outline of a well-constructed form, forbear to traverse her designs. Youth should be left to spring up, unconfined, like the young cedar; and when the hand of man, or accident, does not distort the pliant stem, it will grow erect and firm, spreading its beautiful and cheerful shade over the heads of its planters.