THE CRINOLINE CRAZE
The bustle is not only objectionable in itself as a hideous deformity and a revival of Hottentot taste, but still more as a probable forerunner of that most unutterably vulgar article of dress ever invented by Fashion—the crinoline. For we read that when, in 1856, the crinoline came in again, it was preceded by the “inelegant bustle in the upper part of the skirt”; and it is a notorious fact that cunning milliners are making strenuous efforts every year to reintroduce the crinoline.
In their abhorrence of the crinoline men do not stand alone. There are several refined women to-day who would absolutely refuse to submit to the tyranny of Fashion if it should again prescribe the crinoline. One of these is evidently Mrs. Haweis, who in The Art of Beauty remarks that “The crinoline superseded all our attention to posture; whilst our long trains, which can hardly look inelegant [?] even on clumsy persons, make small ankles or thick ones a matter of little moment. We have become inexpressibly slovenly. We no longer study how to walk, perhaps the most difficult of all actions to do gracefully. Our fashionable women stride and loll in open defiance of elegance,” etc. And again: “This gown in outline simply looks like a very ill-shaped wine-glass upside down. The wide crinoline entirely conceals every natural grace of attitude.”
Another lady, writing in the Atlantic Monthly (1859), remarks concerning the crinoline: “A woman in this rig hangs in her skirts like a clapper in a bell; and I never meet one without being tempted to take her by the neck and ring her.”
About 1710, says a writer in the Encyclopædia Britannica, “as if resolved that their figures should rival their heads in extravagance, they introduced the hooped petticoat, at first worn in such a manner as to give to the person of the wearer below her very tightly-laced waist a contour resembling the letter V inverted—ʌ. The hooped dresses, thus introduced, about 1740 attained to an enormous expansion; and being worn at their full circumference immediately below the waist, they in many ways emulated the most outrageous of the fardingales of the Elizabethan period.”
“About 1744 hoops are mentioned as so extravagant,” says Chambers’s Encyclopædia, “that a woman occupied the space of six men.” George IV. had the good taste to abolish them by royal command, but they were revived in 1856. The newspapers of two decades ago daily contained accounts of accidents due to the idiotic crinoline. “The Spectator dealt out much cutting, though playful, raillery at the hoops of his day, but apparently with little effect; and equally unavailing are the satires of Punch and other caricaturists of the present time against the hideous fashion of crinoline.... Owing to its prevalence, church-pews that formerly held seven are now let for six, and yet feel rather crowded. The hoops are sometimes made with a circumference of four or even five yards.”
It is universally admitted that the human form, in its perfection, is Nature’s chef d’œuvre—the most finished specimen of her workmanship. Yet the accounts of savage taste given by travellers and anthropologists show that the savage is never satisfied with the human outlines as God made them, but constantly mars and mutilates them by altering the shape of the head, piercing the nose, filing or colouring the teeth, enlarging the lips to enormous dimensions, favouring an adipose bustle, etc. This is precisely what modern Fashion, the handmaid of ugliness, does. We have just seen how fashionable women, unable to comprehend the beauty of the human form, have for several generations endeavoured to give it the shape of “a very ill-shaped wine-glass, upside down,” “a clapper in a bell,” or “the letter V inverted.” And concerning Queen Elizabeth the Atlantic writer already quoted says very pithily: “What with stomachers and pointed waist and fardingale, and sticking in here and sticking out there, and ruffs and cuffs, and ouches and jewels and puckers, she looks like a hideous flying insect with expanded wings, seen through a microscope—not at all like a woman.”
Fortunately, for the moment, the crinoline, like the fardingale, is not “in fashion.” But, as already stated, there is considerable danger of a new invasion every year; and, should Fashion proclaim its edict, no doubt the vast majority of women would follow, as they did a decade or two ago. In the interest of good taste, as of common sense, it is therefore necessary to speak with brutal frankness on this subject. There is good evidence to show that the crinoline originated in the desire of an aristocratic dame of low moral principles to conceal the evidences of a crime. Hence the original French name for the crinoline—Cache-Bâtard. Will respectable and refined women consent once more to have the fashion set for them by a courtesan?