ENGLISH DRESS.* NOBODY can rise from a perusal of Mrs.
Hill's instructive and entertaining volumes without an enhanced appreciation of the achievements of the English nation, when due allowance has been made for the sartorial drawbacks under which it has laboured from the earliest times. If there is one thing in regard to which we can safely indulge in the Homeric boast that we are better—or at least better off—than our forefathers, it is our dress. Utilitarian and lacking in individuality though our raiment may be, on the score of comfort, economy, and healthfulness there can be no question of the immense strides that have been made within the memory of even middle- aged men. Mrs. Hill's work, however, as she is careful to make clear, is a history of "the changes that have occurred
* A 'Aston( of Zniisli Dross. from tho Saxon Period to the Present Day. By Gloorginna Hill. 2 vols. Londoa : Bentley and Boa.
in the fashion of our apparel since the days of the Roman occupation of Britain," And we are free to con- fess that the optimism which springs from a contem- plation of our present condition is considerably tempered by the reflections forced upon the reader by this exhaus- tive survey. There have been revolutions in dress as well as in politics, and there is no certain guarantee that such revolutions may not occur again. Fashion has her wheel as well as Fortune, and some of the most preposterous fashions have synchronised with periods of remarkable national activity and prosperity. Per contra, the halcyon days of English costume—so far as picturesqueness is concerned— coincided with grave political abuses and laxity of manners. The very simplicity of our modern costume may provoke a violent reaction in the direction of eccentricity and extrava- gance. Even the Puritan women of Cromwell's time were vulnerable in their heels, and wore them high. And at the present day we should not be surprised if the relentless tyranny of the hygienic-clothing faddists led to a wholesale revolt of the most insanitary nature. It is true that men's dress has been wonderfully stationary for the past fifty years ; but, on the other band, the fluctuations in that of women have been remarkably rapid and variegated, as may be gathered from the pages of Punch. And as the influence of women is making itself more and more widely felt every day, one cannot help speculating on the possible advent of a time in which they will thoroughly infect their brothers and, husbands with that passion for novelty and change which has always been the characteristic of woman's attire.
In early days, curiously enough, as Mrs. Hill is at pains to show, men and not women were the pioneers on the un- trodden paths of mode. Women's fashions were far less changeable in the days of the Plantagenets than men's ; in the race of garishness and eccentricity which marked that period, they followed the example of the sterner sex. The great feature of the Elizabethan days was the ruff, and here, as Mrs. Hill telust .-us, the men were beforehand, "as they commonly were vs ne'N,he fashions." Later on, in dealing with the reformatio costume under the Stuarts, she
• ary
writes :—" While the to „ were still clinging to the fashions of the past, the gentlowiti had already begun to free them- selves from the most belied incongruities of their costume.
Beautiful women there wimp, undoubtedly, but not in their most winning aspect. They were disguised under ruffs and farthingales." The female apostle of rational dress is essen- tially a product of the latter half of the nineteenth century.
As for the historic beaux, Mrs. Hill generously admits that they ruled manners as well as dress, and exerted a refining influence on their circles. Beau Nash called wit to his aid in his crusade against boorishness; while much may be forgiven Brummel for his "exquisite appreciation of cleanliness," of which Mrs. Hill remarks that it' was "too uncommon a virtue in days when oils, essences, powders, and scents were far more used than soap and water." It is a remarkable and impressive fact, of whiSh the author does well to remind us, that no soap was made in London before 1524, and that imported soap in what may be called the "black ages" was far too dear for general use. How people washed themselves is a mystery, but they were at least exempted from the horrors of the hoarding, to say nothing of the extortions of the laundress. In the days of Henry III. "the washing-bill for the household of a great lady like the Countess of Leicester was only is. 3d. for five months."
Nothing is so remarkable in the history of the Middle Ages as the extraordinary disparity between dress and furniture. The latter was meagre and plain, the former complicated and sumptuous. Every knight was a fop, and every calling bad its distinctive dresg. "There was not," writes Mrs. Hill, "as there is now, a vast army of sedentary workers, all dressed alike in ' suitings,' and producing a dull uniformity." The numerous and elaborate sumptuary laws passed under suc- cessive Sovereigns had a twofold origin. They were doubt- less in part prompted by a sincere desire to save the people from the disastrous results of their extravagance, but mingled with this was the feudal jealousy of any attempt at equality. But in spite of their elaborateness and stringency, these sumptuary laws were always disregarded. It is impossible either to legislate or to preach people into sobriety or economy in their attire. No fashion, however preposterous, has ever been demolished by fulminations from the pulpit. And yet the clergy spoke with all the weight of a good example. For, to quote Mrs. Hill, "no change ever came over civil costume with such suddenness as the Reformation brought to ecclesi- astical dress It took us three hundred years to acquire the simplicity which marks the later Victorian era. The Church made the change in one generation."
Although, as we have remarked above, the practical dress- reformer is eminently a latter-day product, satire and ridicule have been directed against the extravagance of fashion from very early times. "0 what a monster and a beaste of manye heades," writes T, Becon in his jewel of Joys, "is the Englyshe manne now become ! To whom male he be compared worthely but to Esoppe's crow P For as the crow decked hys selfe wyth the fethera of all kynde of byrdes to make hys selfe beautiftill, even so doeth' the vaine Engylshe man, for the fonde apparelyng Of hym selfe, borrow of every nation to set forth hym selfe galaunt in the face of the worlde." Two centuries earlier, when we were carrying havoc into France, she in turn "conquered us," as the author of this history expresses it, "not by her acts, but by her follies." Gallia capta ferurn victorent cepit ; and the process has gone on almost uninterruptedly from the reign of Edward I. to that of Worth. Under the early Georges, a society was actually started, called the Anti- Gallieana, to encourage home industries, and George III. did what he could to stem the tide of foreign importation. Heavy duties were imposed upon foreign lace ; but the only result was to promote smuggling of the most wholesale order. In conse- quence of the war between the two countries, however, we were left to our own devices for a considerable time in regard to cos- tume; and the occupation of Paris by the Allied Armies after Waterloo, gave a cosmopolitan character to French costume, which made itself speedily felt on this side of the Channel. Still, the tendency towards simplicity was already making itself felt ; and as early as 1808, gentlemen are described as acting as foils to the ladies. In 1814, the insidious incursion of trousers provoked an edict of the ladies' committee of Almack's to the effect that no gentlemen should attend the balls given by the club in Willis's Rooms without knee- breeches ; and it is on record that the Duke of Wellington was refused admittance to one of these balls in this year for venturing to disobey the order. The tall silk-hat, which for fifty years has opposed a dauntless front to the shafts of ridicule and survives by its sheer unfitness, superseded the beaver-hat in 1840. It came from France, and Mrs. Hill gives an interesting account of its variations, including that affected by the eccentric Earl of Harrington, who tested his hats by standing on them, and "considerately wore a sage-green hat when he walked in his garden, in order not to frighten the birds." English dress, according to Mrs. Hill, reached the nadir of ugliness in the fifties and sixties. But she consoles us with the assurance that there is one characteristic of this period which will always militate against its revival. "It had the fatal quality of making all the young women appear middle- aged. There was no youthfulness in those days ; the very children looked strangely grown up." Old photographs and the pages of Punch amply bear out this assertion. Women's costume was crude in colour and shapeless in design. "There were too many flowers, too many ornaments, too many ribbons, and above all, too many petticoats, and too much skirt." The belle of 1856 went to balls in a crinoline with fourteen petti- coats! In one of her later chapters, Mrs. Hill dwells on the work of the ./Eathetic and the Dress Reform movements— plenum, opus aleae—and while exposing the extravagances of their uncompromising advocates, frankly admits the excellent services rendered by both. But she winds up with the follow- ing weighty words :— " Dress while to outer seeming more simple, is really more elaborate. Prices are lower, but needs are more numerous and pressing because the changes of fashion are so rapid. A greater number of people now feel it incumbent upon them to keep up with the times. Formerly, fashion was pretty much confined to the minority -who constitute what is called society. The rest envied and admired at a distance, following only the general changes, but not concerning themselves about trifling details. Now, people who cannot afford to discard half-worn articles of attire because fashion has taken some new turn, have their gowns and bonnets unpicked and altered for every passing whim. robe fashionable is to be commonplace. The really distinguished thing is to be unfashionable."
And here we must take leave of Mrs. Hill's fascinating volumes, in which the results of wide and varied reading are set forth in a most attractive, and at the same time philo. sophic, manner. For the author does not treat of dress in itself, but as a progressive outcome of the life and thought -of the nation. The illustrations are excellent, but they are iar too few.
Previous page
