Send petitions to the Queen,
Get the House to intervene.
Paris fashion's transmarine—
Let us stop by quarantine
Catastrophic Crinoline!
FASHION
"Oh, Mummy, have you been
vaccinated on both arms?"
Du Maurier, in a picture which serves as a pendant to one which appeared in November, 1857, contrasts the Misses Roundabout's inflated circumference with the graceful lines of the normal skirt, but the warning was happily unnecessary and the threatened danger never materialized. Another revival, that of the "Coal-scuttle" bonnet, was not nearly so formidable, but it enabled Punch to indulge in a characteristic gibe at the headgear of the "loud Salvation lasses." The mania for expansion had ascended, and the fashion of large puffed sleeves in the same year prompted the criticism of the little girl: "Oh, Mummy, have you been vaccinated on both arms?" For many years huge hats continued to offend Punch's sense of proportion. In 1893 he contrasts the small flat sailor-hat worn at the seaside with the monstrosities in vogue in London, and in 1894 I note the first of his many tirades against the "Matinée Hat." In the 'fifties Punch had derided "Bloomerism"; now he was momentarily converted to the introduction of "rational" dress for women cyclists. Thus in 1894 he defended the innovation with pen and pencil against the protests of Mrs. Grundy, that "great Goose Autocrat, the Palladium of Propriety, the Ægis of social morality," and attacked her inconsistency in banning knickerbockers while she acquiesced in audacious décolletage. The lady in knickerbockers portrayed in 1895 is a distinctly attractive figure though she owns that she had adopted them not to ride a bicycle, but because she had got a sewing machine.
Matinée Hats and Russian Blouses