“Change your linen whenever it is at all dirty.
“This is the best guide with regard to collars, socks, pocket-handkerchiefs, and our under garments. No rule can be laid down for the number we should wear per week, for everything depends on circumstances. Thus in the country all our linen remains longer clean than in town; in dirty, wet, or dusty weather, our socks get soon dirty and must be changed; or, if we have a cold, to say nothing of the possible but not probable case of tear-shedding on the departure of friends, we shall want more than one pocket-handkerchief per diem. In fact, the last article of modern civilization is put to so many uses, is so much displayed, and liable to be called into action on so many various engagements, that we should always have a clean one in our pockets. Who knows when it may not serve us is in good stead? Who can tell how often the corner of the delicate cambric will have to represent a tear which, like difficult passages in novels is ‘left to the imagination.’ Can a man of any feeling call on a disconsolate widow, for instance, and listen to her woes, without at least pulling out that expressive appendage? Can any one believe in our sympathy if the article in question is a dirty one? There are some people who, like the clouds, only exist to weep; and King Solomon, though not one of them, has given them great encouragement in speaking of the house of mourning. We are bound to weep with them, and we are bound to weep elegantly.
“A man whose dress is neat, clean, simple, and appropriate, will pass muster anywhere.
“A well-dressed man does not require so much an extensive as a varied wardrobe. He wants a different costume for every season and every occasion; but if what he selects is simple rather than striking, he may appear in the same clothes as often as he likes, as long as they are fresh and appropriate to the season and the object. There are four kinds of coats which he must have: a morning-coat, a frock-coat, a dress-coat, and an over-coat. An economical man may do well with four of the first, and one of each of the others per annum. The dress of a gentleman in the present day should not cost him more than the tenth part of his income on an average. But as fortunes vary more than position, if his income is large it will take a much smaller proportion, if small a larger one. If a man, however, mixes in society, and I write for those who do so, there are some things which are indispensable to even the proper dressing, and every occasion will have its proper attire.
“In his own house then, and in the morning, there is no reason why he should not wear out his old clothes. Some men take to the delightful ease of a dressing-gown and slippers; and if bachelors, they do well. If family men, it will probably depend on whether the lady or the gentleman wears the pantaloons. The best walking-dress for a non-professional man is a suit of tweed of the same color, ordinary boots, gloves not too dark for the coat, a scarf with a pin in winter, or a small tie of one color in summer, a respectable black hat and a cane. The last item is perhaps the most important, and though its use varies with fashion, I confess I am sorry when I see it go out. The best substitute for a walking-stick is an umbrella, not a parasol unless it be given you by a lady to carry. The main point of the walking-dress is the harmony of colors, but this should not be carried to the extent of M. de Maltzan, who some years ago made a bet to wear nothing but pink at Baden-Baden for a whole year, and had boots and gloves of the same lively hue. He won his wager, but also the soubriquet of ‘Le Diable enflammé.’ The walking-dress should vary according to the place and hour. In the country or at the sea-side a straw hat or wide-awake may take the place of the beaver, and the nuisance of gloves be even dispensed with in the former. But in the city where a man is supposed to make visits as well as lounge in the street, the frock coat of very dark blue or black, or a black cloth cut-away, the white waistcoat, and lavender gloves, are almost indispensable. Very thin boots should be avoided at all times, and whatever clothes one wears they should be well brushed. The shirt, whether seen or not, should be quite plain. The shirt collar should never have a color on it, but it may be stiff or turned down according as the wearer is Byronically or Brummellically disposed. The scarf, if simple and of modest colors, is perhaps the best thing we can wear round the neck; but if a neck-tie is preferred it should not be too long, nor tied in too stiff and studied a manner. The cane should be extremely simple, a mere stick in fact, with no gold head, and yet for the town not rough, thick, or clumsy. The frock-coat should be ample and loose, and a tall well-built man may throw it back. At any rate, it should never be buttoned up. Great-coats should be buttoned up, of a dark color, not quite black, longer than the frock-coat, but never long enough to reach the ankles. If you have visits to make you should do away with the great-coat, if the weather allows you to do so. The frock-coat, or black cut-away, with a white waistcoat in summer, is the best dress for making calls in.
“It is simple nonsense to talk of modern civilization, and rejoice that the cruelties of the dark ages can never be perpetrated in these days and this country. I maintain that they are perpetrated freely, generally, daily, with the consent of the wretched victim himself, in the compulsion to wear evening clothes. Is there anything at once more comfortless or more hideous? Let us begin with what the delicate call limb-covers, which we are told were the invention of the Gauls, but I am inclined to think, of a much worse race, for it is clearly an anachronism to ascribe the discovery to a Venetian called Piantaleone, and it can only have been Inquisitors or demons who inflicted this scourge on the race of man, and his ninth-parts, the tailors, for I take it that both are equally bothered by the tight pantaloon. Let us pause awhile over this unsightly garment, and console ourselves with the reflection that as every country, and almost every year, has a different fashion in its make of it, we may at last be emancipated from it altogether, or at least be able to wear it à la Turque.
“But it is not all trousers that I rebel against. If I might wear linen appendices in summer, and fur continuations in winter, I would not groan, but it is the evening-dress that inflicts on the man who likes society the necessity of wearing the same trying cloth all the year round, so that under Boreas he catches colds, and under the dog-star he melts. This unmentionable, but most necessary disguise of the ‘human form divine,’ is one that never varies in this country, and therefore I must lay down the rule:—
“For all evening wear—black cloth trousers.
“But the tortures of evening dress do not end with our lower limbs. Of all the iniquities perpetrated under the Reign of Terror, none has lasted so long as that of the strait-jacket, which was palmed off on the people as a ‘habit de compagnie.’ If it were necessary to sing a hymn of praise to Robespierre, Marat, and Co., I would rather take the guillotine as my subject to extol than the swallow tail. And yet we endure the stiffness, unsightliness, uncomfortableness, and want of grace of the latter, with more resignation than that with which Charlotte Corday put her beautiful neck into the ‘trou d’enfer’ of the former. Fortunately modern republicanism has triumphed over ancient etiquette, and the tail-coat of to-day is looser and more easy than it was twenty years ago. I can only say, let us never strive to make it bearable, till we have abolished it. Let us abjure such vulgarities as silk collars, white silk linings, and so forth, which attempt to beautify this monstrosity, as a hangman might wreathe his gallows with roses. The plainer the manner in which you wear your misery, the better.
“Then, again, the black waistcoat, stiff, tight, and comfortless. Fancy Falstaff in a ball-dress such as we now wear. No amount of embroidery, gold-trimmings, or jewel-buttons will render such an infliction grateful to the mass. The best plan is to wear thorough mourning for your wretchedness. In France and America, the cooler white waistcoat is admitted. However, as we have it, let us make the best of it, and not parade our misery by hideous ornamentation. The only evening waistcoat for all purposes for a man of taste is one of simple black, with the simplest possible buttons.