THE POWER OF FASHION.
IF one may trust the general impression in political circles, the strong feeling expressed by the Princess of Wales on the barbarous sport of Pigeon-shooting, as it has lately been practised in England, is likely to make it a very easy task to carry through the Bill for its suppression. It is quite true, of course, that the sport, as it has usually been practised, is no true sport at all, that it tests neither the perceptions, nor the endurance, nor the resources of those who engage in it, as a true sport ought to test them, and that while very cruel in its inci- dents, it is barren of the kind of discipline which every such sport should involve. That is perfectly true, and we are far from saying that the Princess of Wales would have formed the opinion she has formed against the pigeon-shooting of the day, had she not had these good grounds to go upon ; and still less do we say that had she formed an unfavourable opinion that was comparatively groundless on any sport, she would have had the same sort of success in persuading other people to adopt it which she notoriously has had under existing circumstances. But this we do say,—that other things remaining exactly as they are, if it had not been for the fortunate circumstance that the Princess of Wales has taken up the matter as she has, it would have been many years before opinion in political circles would have ripened, as it has actually ripened, to the point of rendering it easy to put this barbarous sport down. Fashion has still an immense power in the circles in which political opinion is formed. Let the Queen, or any popular member of the Royal Family, take up a sound view of a question of this kind, and we may be sure of this,—that it is more than equivalent in political effect to the separate conversion of at least ten thousand ordinary mortals to the same opinion. It is not easy to ex- plain exactly how the thing works. But it does work, and works most powerfully in rendering everybody whose influence is of importance in such matters predisposed to come over to the influential side. We do not say, and do not mean, that it would work equally in favour of a really weak or false opinion. But in favour of a sound or true opinion, the adoption of it by a really influential member of the highest social circles is equivalent to a good many years' start in public favour without any such advantage. And it is a matter of no little interest, therefore, to understand how this power of Fashion works, and why it smooths away obstacles which it would otherwise take a very powerful popular movement to dispose of.
We believe the explanation to be precisely of the same kind. as the explanation why it is comparatively easy for the greater Public Schools to set a fashion as to cricket or football, or what pastime you will, to the schools of second rank, when it would be impossible for the schools of second rank to set the fashion to the schools above them. As to all the so-called amusements of life at least, men take hints from those who are supposed to have carried their amusements to a more refined point, and not from those who are supposed to have had less opportunity and leisure for the elaboration of their amusements. And whatever else the highest social circles understand, it is always assumed that they understand better the amusements and refinements of life than the circles beneath them: and, no doubt, to some extent, this is the truth. The higher breeding, as it is called, certainly does not involve a higher morality ; in some points, it is apt to involve a definitely lower morality than the breeding of the professional classes; but it does involve, on the whole, better trained and more refined tastes as to things external,— often finer senses,—almost always a better class of conventions, conventions protecting individual freedom better, and imposing finer tests of individual capacity and skill. This is the reason, we take it, why amusements are so apt to descend in the social scale, while moral convictions ascend. You frequently find, that when first an amusement is borrowed by one class from the class above it, it does not give half the real satisfaction to the class on which it is imposed which the old amusements supplanted by it used to give. And yet it will hold its ground, because there is some secret conviction that it will educate and train those who have adopted it, till they find as much in it as those from whom they have borrowed it have found. There is at least sufficient social hero-worship to engender the conviction that the higher strata of society understand amusing themselves more completely than the lower strata, and that what the former have long preferred, the latter will come to prefer so soon as they have been educated sufficiently by following the example of their betters. This, as we suppose, is the reason why a fashion setting in against such a sport as pigeon-shooting removes the chief difficulty in the way of abolishing it. Men cannot enjoy an amusement, after they are once seriously possessed by the conviction that they are feeling what it is "bad form" to feel in every moment's pleasure that it gives them. It takes, after all, a number of subtle conditions to render a social amusement of any kind really delightful, and of these almost the very first is that you shall not feel lowered in the eyes of those who set you the standard of . amusement by the pleasure you take in it. When the Princess of Wales and her set take up the notion that a certain amusement is "bad form," the fact that they have done so vitally diminishes, if it does not destroy, the animation with which that amusement is pursued in a hundred circles just beneath her own ; in other words, in those circles the amusement becomes less amusing, becomes dull and lifeless, or else defiant. But men cannot be defiant when they are amusing themselves and still take full delight in their amusements, though they may, and often do, show themselves contemptuous or scornful in their amusements and still take full delight in them. But here is just the difference. In their amusements, men naturally support themselves on the sanction of those socially above them, and very often feed themselves on their contempt for those socially beneath them, but never vice vend. While they often have a shrewd suspicion that the
dames below them have higher moral convictions than their own, they never have the least suspicion that the classes beneath their own understand the art of enjoying themselves half so well. Hence, as we believe, the savour is taken out of an amusement by its discouragement from above, in a way in which it is impossible to take the savour out of it by its discourage- ment from below.
Even in regard to moral questions, the power of Fashion has, we believe, always been exerted through its effect on men's social position, on the position which they value chiefly for the sake of their tastes and their enjoyments, and not through its effect on their conscience. The Code of Honour, which was the Code of Fashion in another form, exerted its enormous power to make men fear the repute of cowardice much more than the reality, because the repute of cowardice was so utterly incon- sistent with the pleasant mutual respect and freedom of ordinary social intercourse. The code of honour exerted the tyrannous influence it had—and, indeed, still has, so far as it still obtains —not because any defiance of it interfered gravely with men's duties, but because it interfered so gravely with all the social freedom and cheer of the hours of leisure and recreation. A man who had not satisfied the code of honour was a man with whom no one chose to associate needlessly, and even with whom it was "bad form" to be friendly, a man with whom it was discreditable to talk and laugh and ride and play, a man who ought to be "sent to Coventry" for all but the most absolute exigencies of life. Nothing shows more powerfully how tremendous is the influence which such an ostracism as this inflicts, than the number of duellistic murders which men used to commit against their conscience, and with a. permanent loss of peace ultimately as well as of self-respect at the time of the duel, just because they could not bear to be ostracised in this way from all the give-and-take of the lighter social intercourse. Yet it was the terror of this banishment chiefly, if not solely, that gave the code of honour all its powerful sanctions, and rendered it so difficult a matter to break its yoke. When at last it was broken, in the matter of duels, it was rather, we imagine, because the mimicking of these so-called vindications of honour by vulgar and unfashionable people had contrived to make them ridiculous, than because their wickedness had become really intolerable to men. The tyranny of Fashion is almost always broken from above, and 'hardly ever effectually from below.
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