PICTURES AND DRESS.
TRIVATE View week is the best time for seeing the fashions," said a lady, a little while ago, in the hearing of the present writer, who thought there was a good deal of truth in the remark, and that it could be no harm for the "horrid male creature," in the intervals of observing the novelties in art upon the walls of the Picture Galleries which have been opened this week, to observe the novelties of fashion within them. It is not, indeed, given to men to remember the fashions of last spring, nor to any except men-milliners to forecast those of next, but there is an advantage in this disability ; the present is all the more amusing, even delightfully bewildering. It is a mistake to accompany a lady on these occasions ; accurate information is disturbing, and self-esteem is wounded by the gentle ridicule with which an outsider's guesses are met who has not courage honestly to confess to the all - comprehensive ignorance that would be a sure passport to the sweetest indulgence. The temptation to seem to know just a little bit about everything is too strong for most men, and in a lady's corn- pany one will be sure to talk of a " Gainsborough " hat or a " Watteau " sacque, when those lovely things have been "quite ages" gone by, and to be impressed by the taste and originality I of the wrong costumes,—" wrong" meaning those which are I not in unison with the artistic persuasion of one's fair com- panion. The mere instinct of self-preservation would make us I ascertain whether our guide held by Morris or Burne Jones, made her arrangements in obedience to Mr. Whistler's dictates, tried on, or rather off, the oldest things in Greek costume, or was a devotee of those "sweet, sad" harmonies in sea and sage greens that recall equally Robespierre and roast goose. Even then, however, one would not be quite safe ; there are fine I distinctions in these things, nuances as subtle as the Bismarck en' colere and Paris briilt of nearly a decade ago, and a reckless con- demnation of bleufum, or preference of clair de lane over arc-en- del in bead trimmings, might be as dangerous as an imputation of any of the virtues to Count Schouvaloff at a Tory dinner- party.
Profound ignorance is, then, the happiest state of mind, and soli- tude is the most favourable condition for observing the clothes of the period, as displayed at Private Views, where one may see the best and the worst-dressed women in the world, and contem- plate them with the serene satisfaction of a member of that sex whose costume has never been, since the woad and sheepskin periods, so simple, so ugly, or characterised by such complete extinction of individuality as it is at present. With what a happy conviction that at least he is not ridiculous, may the male biped mingle with the crowd, his unpresuming cloth ingserving as a foil to the richness, the variety, and the eccentricities of the dresses which swish, and rustle, and trail all around him, in a frou-fron accompaniment to the old refrain of "That's the way the money goes !" Trying, after a while, to systematise his impressions, he notices that the general snippettincsa is less than he has formerly observed it to be ; and he is glad, because he has previously bethought himself in a humble way that the best use to which rich silk, sheeny satin, soft woollen stuffs, and majestic velvet can be put is not the cutting of them up into small pieces, and the sewing of those small pieces together in huddled masses, to the total destruction of the idea of lines and drapery. This irritating peculiarity of recent costume is replaced, he perceives, by sweeping lines and curves, by simplicity allied with richness, and a sensible abatement—for which mankind can- not be too grateful, in the interest of feminine gracefulness and of common-sense—of the detestable fashion of "tying back." The fair beings who inspect the pictures " on the line" (frequently with the audible comment of "how awful !") do not hop, or stumble, or struggle in the swathing-bands of their one garment, with knees threatening to protrude, and maimed feet bobbling in imitation of the "Tottering Lily of Fascination," as they hopped and stumbled last year ; their skirts fall decently and softly round them, and unless the "horrid male creature" be more than commonly idiotic, there are surely in a few instances symptoms of crinoline,—real crinoline, not wire, not the bird- cage or balloon of John Leech's palmy days, but the finely modulating horse-hair of the far past, which lifted the heavy folds of the gown, and left the movements of the wearer free. Some of the portraits on the walls of the Galleries have their gowns (or "frocks," as it is the correct thing, our grand-daughters tell us, to say this season) tied back to what, in real life and any earthly vesture, must certainly be the crack of doom ; and they seem quite old-fashioned, after one has been looking for a while at the living pictures.
The hard and brazen style has almost disappeared, and it is replaced, for the most part, by the soft, the timid, the appealing. One does see monstrosities in tight black satin, with arrangements in crimson and yellow upon them (upon inquiry of good-natured female friends, one learns that these horrors are called " pipings ") which resemble costume advertisements of Court plaster ; and very terrible specimens of blue-and-green embroidery of unsur- passable sickliness, do overcome us, to our especial wonder: but these are passing afflictions. On the whole, dress at the private views last week was a thing of beauty, and in most instances, doubtless, a joy, for a week or two, to its possessors. Richness of material, combined with simplicity of form, invariably recommends itself to the inarticulate half of humanity (on the subject of dress) ; and there it was, "in perfect heaps," like the good-sense of Mrs. Toots ; in purple-velvet pelisse-like gowns, fitting without a crease, and fastened with plain buttons, worn with white " baby " bonnets, quite bewitching in form and expression ; in dead-leaf satin, in dull black silk, with folds which even Mr. Millais would have to study before he could paint them ; in grey cashmere and camels'-hair and homespun, so trim and dainty, with the accoutrements of hanging pouch and precise three-cornered pelerine, that two-thirds of each assembly might have been costumed by Mr. Mulready to help the future Mrs. Primrose in the choosing of her wedding-gown. or on their way to visit Miss Austen's county families in Northamptonshire. It is evidently no longer the fashion for young girls to look saucy, and in none of the typical assemblages of last week was the affectation of mannish- ness that has recently grieved the middle-aged, masculine breast, perceptible. There were plenty of other affectations, but not that,—and any other kind is better. There was, for instance, the good, old-fashioned affectation which was in Dickens's mind when he described Miss Snevellicci "glancing up at Nicholas Nickleby from the depths of her coal-scuttle bonnet," but none of the new, which would have led the young lady to stare at an
admirer from under the brim of her " Jerry " hat, with her hands
in the pockets of her ulster. If this revulsion should continue and spread, we need not despair of our girls arriving at the sing-
ing of Balfe's ballads, the quoting of Haynes Bayley, and Barry Cornwall, the playing of the Duc de Reichstadt's waltz, and the reading of Sir Walter Scott ; and so that the swing of the pen- dulum stops short of the wearing of broad -sandalled shoes and screaming at spiders, we shall not desire to arrest it. Clothes are indications of taste in other things than dress only, and women are always more or less "in character" with their
garments. There is something wholesome in the "distinctly English" style of the day—it is not also distinctly hideous, as it was some years ago when fashionable London rebelled tempo- rarily against the legislation of Paris—although we are told it is "frightfully expensive ;" that the modest little tippets cost as much as our grandmothers' gowns, a quite too lovely baby bonnet is about as dear as a grown-np coat by an eminent artist ; and the soft and graceful fringes with just a touch of mother-of-pearl or the least dash of gold in them, mount up in a horrid way in the milliners' bills, which are the to-morrows to the yesterdays of clothes.
The various head-dresses are almost all pretty, at least to the unskilled eyes that do not know the difference between the hat of last week, the bonnet of the moment, and the toque of to-morrow. Dead-leaf satin hats with soft plumes, hats of the Mother Bunch and the " beefeater " style, set trimly on curly hair, hats of "drawn "white satin, with rolling brims, very like those which the Court cavaliers doffed in the presence of Henrietta Maria, quaint prim, buckled, sugar-loaf hats, like Anne of Denmark's, as she stands among her dogs in her portrait, and unless our eyes de- ceive us, b onnets with curtains, not little rims, but real curtains of the substantial silk of yore, stoutly sewn. The " old- fashioned " costumes are thorough this year ; one is reminded of the pocket-books of seventy years ago, with texts and house- hold recipes for their supplementary literature, by figures which might be the originals of their frontispieces, in short-waisted " jockeys " of sage-green, with miniature coachman's capes, large worked-muslin collars almost touching the shoulders, tight sleeves with puffs at the wrists ; bags—not the elegant trifles of the last few years, but stout bags, with stout ribbon strings—hung on the arm, just above the substantial wash-leather glove (bags with " housewives " in them, doubtless, and franked letters on blue Bath post), and bolt-upright bonnets with piped edges and quilled caps, like Madame Tallien's in the picture at Versailles. A costume a la guillotine (not so called now, we may be sure, or con- veying any such notion to the fair young wearer) reminds one suddenly of the old print-shop on the Quai D'Orsay, where ever so many years ago studious persons, with books under their arms, used to stand in contemplation before the pictures of those terrible times, which were not so old then. Just such trailing, flat-backed robes, with such open, rolling collars,—they called them "the save-Samson-trouble collars,"— and just such short, artistically creased waistcoats may be seen in the old prints of the promenades of Paris with the Terror pressure off, and theletes of the Directoire.
The mediteval affectations in costume are less pleasing ; they are too completely out of harmony with their surroundings, living and pictorial. A lady in a gown of the Plantagenet period, with sleeves which were meant to imitate the stiffness of the mail armour of the time, and a cap like Crook-backed Richard's, making out Mr. Frith's "Road to Ruin" by way of "College," Ascot," and Boulogne, is a discord in the scene, but the singing girls in Mr. Leslie's picture, and the group which carries out the autumnal sentiment of Mr. Boughton's, have their counterparts in the repetitions of history in the matter of attire, which form an amusing exhibition of their own, as well worth seeing as any that is on view this May.
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