Part 13 (2/2)
We are not aware whether the speaker was consciously or unconsciously reproducing a well-known archiepiscopal _mot_.
Though our neighbors are not strait-laced, so far as bathing-costume is concerned, they are less tolerant of the nude than we are in this highly-favored land. There was lately a story in one of the French papers that at a certain ball a lady was requested to leave the room because a chain of wrought gold, suspended from shoulder to shoulder, was the sole protection which it seemed to her well to wear on her bosom. To have made the toilette correspond throughout, the dress should have consisted of a crinoline skirt, which, though not so ornamental, would have been not less admirable and more effective.
Of course there are women to whom nature has been n.i.g.g.ardly in the matter of roundness of form, but even these need not despair; if they cannot show their own busts, they can show something nearly as good, since we read the following, which we forbear to translate:--”Autre excentricite. C'est l'invention des _poitrines adherentes_ a l'usage des dames trop etherees. Il s'agit d'un systeme en caoutchouc rose, qui s'adapte a la place vide comme une ventouse a, la peau, et qui suit les mouvements de la respiration avec une precision mathematique et parfaite.”
Of those limbs which it is still forbidden to expose absolutely, the form and contour can at least be put in relief by insisting on the skirts being gored and straightened to the utmost; indeed, some of the riding-habits we have seen worn are in this respect so contrived that, when viewed from behind, especially when the wearer is not of too fairy-like proportions, they resemble a pair of tight trousers rather than the full flowing robe which we remember as so graceful and becoming to a woman. It will be observed that the general aim of all these advent.i.tious aids is to give an impression of earth and the fullness thereof, to appear to have a bigger cerebellum, a more sensuous development of limb, and a greater abundance of flesh than can be either natural or true; but we are almost at a loss how to express the next point of ambition with which the female mind has become inspired.
The women who are not as those who love their lords wish to be--indeed, as we have heard, those who have no lords of their own to love--have conceived the notion that, by simulating an ”interesting condition” (we select the phrase accepted as the most delicate), they will add to their attractions; and for this purpose an article of toilet--an india-rubber anterior bustle--called the _demi-temps_, has been invented, and is worn beneath the dress, nominally to make the folds fall properly, but in reality, as the name betrays, to give the appearance of a woman advanced in pregnancy.
No person will be found to say that the particular condition, when real, is unseemly or ridiculous. What it is when a.s.sumed, and for such a purpose--whether it is not all that and something worse--we leave our readers to decide for themselves. It is said that one distinguished personage first employed crinoline in order to render more graceful her appearance while in this situation; but these ladies with their ridiculous _demi-temps_, without excuse as without shame, travesty nature in their own persons in a way which a low-comedy actress would be ashamed to do in a tenth-rate theatre. The name is French, let us hope the idea is also; and this reminds us of the t.i.tle of a little piece lately played in Paris by amateurs for some charitable purpose--_Il n'y a plus d'enfants._ No; in France they may indeed say, ”It is true _il n'y a plus d'enfants_, but then have we not invented the _demi-temps_?”
And if each separate point of female attire and decoration is a sham, so the whole is often a deception and a fraud. It is not true that by taking thought one cannot add a cubit to one's stature, for ladies, by taking thought about it, do add, if not a cubit, at least considerably, to their height, which, like almost everything about them, is often unreal. With high heels, _toupe_, and hat, we may calculate that about four or five inches are altogether borrowed for the occasion. Thus it comes to be a grave matter of doubt, when a man marries, how much is real of the woman who has become his wife, or how much of her is her own only in the sense that she has bought, and possibly may have paid for it. To use the words of an old writer, ”As with rich furred conies, their cases are far better than their bodies; and, like the bark of a cinnamon-tree, which is dearer than the whole bulk, their outward accoutrements are far more precious than their inward endowments.”
Of the wife elect, her bones, her debts, and her caprices may be the only realities which she can bestow on her husband. All the rest--hair, teeth, complexion, ears, bosom, figure, including the _demi-temps_--are alike an imposition and a falsehood. In such case we should recommend, for the sake of both parties, that during at least the wedding-tour, the same precautions should be observed as when Louis XV. travelled with ”the unblus.h.i.+ng Chateauroux with her bandboxes and rougepots at his side, so that at every new station a wooden gallery had to be run up between their lodgings.”
It may be said that in all this we are ungenerous and ungrateful, and that in discussing the costume of women we are touching on a question which pertains to women more than to men. But is that so? Are we not by thus exposing what is false, filthy, and meretricious, seeking to lead what was once dignified by the name of ”the fair s.e.x” from a course alike unbecoming and undignified to one more worthy of the s.e.x and its attributes? Most men like to please women, and most women like to please men. For, as has been well said, ”Pour plaire aux femmes il faut etre considere des hommes, et pour etre considere des hommes il faut savoir plaire aux femmes.”
We have a right to suppose that women do not adopt a fas.h.i.+on or a costume unless they suppose that it will add to their attractions in general, and possibly also please men in particular. This being so, it may be well to observe that these fas.h.i.+ons do not please or attract men, for we know they are but the inventions of some vulgar, selfish _perruquier_ or _modiste_. We may add that if we want to study the nude we can do so in the sculpture galleries, or among the Tableaux Vivants, at our ease; and that for well-bred or well-educated and well-born women, or even for only fas.h.i.+onable and fast women, to approximate in their manners, habits, and dress to the members of the _demi-monde_ is a mistake, and a grievous one, if they wish to be really and adequately appreciated by men whose good opinion, if not more, they would desire to possess.
THE FADING FLOWER.
If there is any part of man's conduct which proves more conclusively than another the baseness of his ingrat.i.tude, it is his indifference to the Fading Flower. Woman may well wonder at the charm which prostrates the heavy Guardsman at the feet of the belle of the season. Even the most ardent of wors.h.i.+ppers at such a shrine must, one would think, desire in their deity a little more sweetness and light. But the beauty of eighteen summers is trained to look on wors.h.i.+p as simply her due, and to regard amiability as a mere superfluity. She knows she can summon an adorer by one beckon of her fan, and dismiss him by another. A bow will repay the most finished of pretty speeches, and conversation can be conducted at the least possible expense by the slight trouble of recollecting who was at Lady A.'s ball, and the yet slighter trouble of guessing who is likely to be at Lady C.'s.
It is utterly needless to bestow any labor on society when society takes it as a crowning favor to be suffered simply to adore. There is a certain grandeur, therefore, of immobility about the English beauty, a statuesque perfection which no doubt has great merits of its own. But it must be owned that it is not amusing, and that it is only the intensity of our wors.h.i.+p which saves us from feeling it to be dull. Beauty is apt to be a little heavy on the stairs. A shade of distress flits over the loveliest of faces if we stray for a moment beyond the happy hunting-grounds of the ball-room or the Opera, the last Academy or the next Horticultural. Beautiful beings are made, they feel, not to amuse, but to be amused. The one object of their enthusiasm is the ”funny Bishop” who turns a great debate into a jest for the entertainment of his fair friends in the Ladies' Gallery. The object of their social preference is the young wit who lounges up to tell his last little story, and then, without boring them for a reply, lounges away again.
The debt which they owe to society is simply the morning ride which keeps them blooming through the season. The debt which society owes to them is that eternal succession of gay nothings which keeps London in a whirl till the grouse are ready for the sacrifice. In a word, woman in her earlier stages is simply receptive.
Light and sweetness come in with the Fading Flower. It is when the shy retreat of the elder sons makes way for the shyer approach of their younger brothers that woman becomes fragrant and intelligent. The old indifference quickens into a subdued vivacity; Hermione descends from her pedestal and warms into flesh and blood. She turns chatty, and her chat insensibly deepens into conversation. She discovers a new interest in life and in the last novel of the season. She ventures on the confines of poetry, and if she does not read Mr. Tennyson's _Lucretius_, she keeps his photograph in her alb.u.m. She flings herself with a far greater ardor into the mysteries of croquet. She has been known to garden. As petal after petal floats down to earth she becomes artistic.
She reads, she talks Mr. Ruskin. She has her own views on Venice and its Doges, her enthusiasm over Alps and artisans. The slow approach of autumn brings her to politics. She is deep in Mr. Disraeli's novels, and quotes Mr. Gladstone's Homer. She speculates on Charlie's chances for the county. She knows why the Home Secretary was absent from the last division. The drop of another petal warns her further afield. She is manly now; she comes in at breakfast with her hair about her ears, and a tale of the gallop she has had across country. She takes you over the farm, and laughs at your ignorance of pigs. She peeps into the odoriferous sanctum upstairs, and owns to a taste for cigarettes. She is slightly horsey, and knows to a pound the value of her mare. Another season, and she is interested in Church questions, and inquires what is the next ”new thing” at St. Andrew's. She adores Lord Shaftesbury, or works frontals for St. Gogmagog. She collects for the Irish missions, or misses an _entree_ on Eves. It is only as woman fades that we realize the versatility, the inexhaustible resources, of woman.
The one scene, however, where the Fading Flower is perhaps seen at her best is the County Archaeological Meeting. Of all rural delusions this is perhaps the pleasantest, and if the name is forbidding, the Fading Flower knows how little there is in a name. About half a dozen old gentlemen, of course, take the thing in grand earnest. It is beyond measure amusing to peep over the learned Secretary's shoulder, to see the gray heads wagging and the spectacles in full play over the list of promised papers, to watch the carefully planned details, the solemn array of morning meetings, the grave excursions from abbey to castle, from castle to church, the graver soirees where Dryasdust revels amidst armor and knicknackery. It is even more amusing to see the Fading Flower step in at the close of this learned preparation, and with a woman's alchemy turn all this dust to gold. A little happy audacity converts the morning meetings into convenient gatherings for the groups of the day, the excursion resolves itself into a refined picnic, the learned soiree becomes a buzzing conversazione.
Those who look forward with interest to woman's entrance into our Universities may gather something of the results to be expected from such a step in the fields of rural archaeology. Her very presence at the meeting throws an air of gentle absurdity over the whole affair. It is difficult for the driest of antiquaries to read a paper on Roman roads in the teeth of a charming being who sleeps to the close, and then awakes only to a.s.sure him it was ”very romantic.” But it must be confessed that the charming being has very little trouble with the antiquaries. Half the fun of the thing lies in the ease and grace of her taming of Dryasdust; the learned Professor dies at her touch into ”a dear delightful old thing,” and fetches and carries all day with a perfect obedience. It is a delightful change from town, a sort of glorified afternoon in a pastoral Zoological, this junketing among the queer unclubbable animals of science and history. There is a n.o.ble disdain of rheumatism in the ardor with which they plunge into the dark and mysterious vaults where their willful student insists, with Mr.
Froude, that those poor monks s.n.a.t.c.hed their damp and difficult slumber; and there is a n.o.ble disdain of truth in their suppression of the treacherous and unsentimental ”beer-cellar” which trembles on their lips.
Woman, in fact, carries her atmosphere of romantic credulity into the gray and arid scepticism of a groping archaeology. She frowns down any suggestion of the improbability of a pretty story, she believes in the poison-sucking devotion of Queen Eleanor, she shrugs her shoulders impatiently at a whisper of Queen Mary's wig. Every kitchen becomes a torture-chamber, every drain a subterranean pa.s.sage. But resolute as she is on this point of the poetry of the past, on all other questions she is the most docile of pupils. Her interest, her listening power, her curiosity, is inexhaustible. If she has a pa.s.sion, indeed, it is for Early English. But she has a proper awe for Romanesque, and a singular interest in Third Pointed. She is ruthless in insisting on her victim's spelling out every word of a bra.s.s in Latin that she cannot understand, and which he cannot translate. She collects little fragments of Roman brick, and wraps them up in tissue-paper for preservation at home like bride-cake. She is severe on restoration, and merciless on whitewash.
She plunges, in fact, gallantly into the spirit of the thing, but she gracefully denudes it of its bareness and pedantry. Her bugle sings truce at midday for luncheon. She couches in the deep gra.s.s of the abbey ruins, and gathers in picturesque groups beneath castle walls. A flutter of silks, a ripple of feminine laughter, distract the audience from graver disquisitions. It is difficult to discuss the exact date of a moulding when soda-water bottles are popping beneath one's antiquarian nose.
After all, archaeologists are men, and sandwiches are sandwiches. It is at that moment perhaps that the Fading Flower is at her best. Her waning attractions are heightened artistically by the background of old fogies.
Her sentiment blends with the poetry of the ruins around. The young squire, the young parson, who have been yawning under the prose of Dryasdust, find refreshment in the gay prattle of archaeological woman.
The sun too is overpowering, and a pretty woman leaning on one's arm in the leafy recesses of a ruined castle is sometimes more overpowering than the sun. There is much in the romance of the occasion. There is a little perhaps in the champagne. At any rate the Fading Flower blooms often into matronly life under the kindly influences of archaeological meetings, and antiquarian studies flourish gaily under the patronage of woman.
There is a certain melancholy in tracing further the career of the Fading Flower. We long to arrest it at each of these picturesque stages, as we long to arrest the sunset in its lovelier moments of violet and gold. But the sunset dies into the gray of eve, and woman sets with the same fatal persistency. The evanescent tints fade into the gray. Woman becomes hard, angular, colorless. Her floating sentiment, so graceful in its mobility, curdles into opinions. Her conversation, so charmingly impalpable, solidifies into discussion. Her character, like her face, becomes rigid and osseous. She entrenches herself in the 'ologies. She works pinafores for New-Zealanders in the May Meetings, and appears in wondrous bonnets at the Church Congress. She adores Mr. Kingsley because he is earnest, and groans over the triviality of the literature of the day. She takes up the grievances of her s.e.x, and badgers the puzzled overseer who has omitted to place her name on the register. She p.r.o.nounces old men fogies, and young men intolerable. She throws out dark hints of her intention to compose a great work which shall settle everything. Then she bursts into poetry, and pens poems of so fiery a pa.s.sion that her family are in consternation lest she should elope with the half-pay officer who meets her by moonlight on the pier. Then she plunges into science, and cuts her hair short to be in proper trim for Professor Huxley's lectures.
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