The pillars of Hercules

by David Urquhart

Great as is the distance between the attire of Europe and that of the East, not greater is the distance between its magnificence and the dignity of that of Numidia. The excellence of all other costumes resides in their own composition. There is not one which does not strain or coerce the human frame into its own design. The excellence of this is, that it follows nature, neither designing to embellish nor endeavouring to conceal; it reveals, but does not expose; it covers, but does not disguise.

The antique is, however, only present where all the subsidiary garments disappear, and the haïk remains the sole clothing: there protrudes an arm and part of a leg, or the breast is heaved, or sometimes the whole outline of one side is visible; for the drapery is shifted in all conceivable ways, and according to their occupations; so that there are passing before you, and called up, as you look around, all the celebrated statues or groups of antiquity. One of these, which has remained most strongly in my eye, occurred in a boar hunt. While watching in my cover, a rustling called my attention to a neighbouring clump, and there stood an Arab; his gun resting on an edge of rock, his haïk unwound from both shoulders, and secured by a cord of plaited palmetto over the shoulder, as is often seen in the ancient statues; the drapery falling behind and extending over the ground; the left limb advanced, slightly bent, and exposed to mid-thigh, where the drapery swept to the ground. Here was a statue, and yet a man; not a model set up in a studio, and the form of the antique adapted to a modern musket!

We admire the mechanism of a joint, and then invent clothing which shall deprive it of its play, and ourselves of its use! Here nothing interferes with the freedom of the limbs, or disturbs the mechanism of the frame and its action. It is plastic to the hand, to relax or gird, as the occasion may require. Each figure as he stands before you is a statue, and each change of attitude, a study.

When we raise a statue to a hero, we eschew our own dress—the dress he wore. Our fancy weaves for him a haik: we borrow the majesty of its large folds, although we have never beheld the splendid simplicity of its dead colour. It is the dress for kings and patriarchs.[293]

The exposure of the body to the air does not give the impression of cold in the way that those whose clothing has a similar character or integuments will suppose; whoever has worn the kilt will know this. The fact is, that the air supplies warmth, and when freely circulating round the body, a sort of respiration takes place through the skin, which, while conducive to strength and health, supplies that light and agreeable sensation which belongs to a costume, where there is clothing enough to secure warmth, and freedom enough to admit air. Of the value of this freedom we have a striking illustration at home, and to which no other country in Europe affords a parallel. The butcher-boys and the Blue-coat school boys go about without that covering to, or protection for, the head, which for all other degrees, and in all other countries, is deemed essential to health and comfort. Do they suffer from being bare-headed? No. What then is the value of our prophylactics, and what do we know about the management of ourselves? Nay, children suffering from all sorts of diseases and weakness are cured, and they cease to complain when their heads cease to be covered. As to comfort, they all prefer it, as every one does prefer the simplest things, when, by some accident, the chain is broken of that servitude of manners which we have forged for ourselves.

Now that we have our portraits taken by the sun’s rays, and numberless scientific men are tracing the effects of light on the functions of animals and the growth of plants, separating the parts of rays, and finding in them agencies of so many, so powerful, and such distinct kinds—it may not be absurd to speak of the merit of a costume that admits to the body light, as well as air. We are always in the dark. On light and heat a series of experiments have been reported to scientific societies by fifty philosophers; but none of them has ever thought of letting his own toes see the sun. Modern science always overpowers me with melancholy—so much light in the focus, and such darkness in the hemisphere! Contrast the majestic ignorance of primeval times; then, grand with so much ease; now, with so much toiling, mean.

Those members which have to support the weight of the rest, deserve peculiar care, and might even claim exclusive favour, but they are more wretched than the rest. Our poor feet are doomed to a dark dungeon, from the cradle to the tomb. Never are they suffered to look upon the sun, never allowed for a moment to touch the earth; once a day, perhaps for a few moments, they get a glimpse of the subdued light of a closed chamber, or perceive round corners of a table, the artificial glare of a wax taper; that respite over, they are straight again, rammed down into their cases. After this, they are vilified; their very name is mentioned with repugnance, and their sight associated with indecency. No revolution is to set them free, no change of fashion to break their chains: hopeless drudgery, unrequited toil, supercilious scorn are their fate, and the care which is bestowed upon them is to pervert their nature, to disfigure and deform them, and make them even to themselves a shame. The man is no gainer, who treats his feet with such injustice; and the costume no slight benefit which prevents him from doing so.

If the standard of taste sink, we expect from the gifted spirit an effort to raise it. Alas! it is they who weigh upon and degrade it. The workshop of the artist:—does one recall the figures which adorn a Moorish encampment.

But the heaping up of drapery, and the loading of gold “for effect,” which the royal academician steps back to admire, leaves the end of costume out of view. That end must be attained in all perfection. It must be a clothing for the figure, as well as a drapery for the eye; and of this no artist—and indeed no master—has had the thought. As to colour, it is the same, with the exception of the appropriation of blue and white in the Spanish school to the vesture of the Virgin. There is no more discrimination exhibited in a gallery of master-pieces, than in a tailor’s or a milliner’s shop, and, in fact, the cant of the virtuoso has passed to the showman in the shop.

How different the Greeks! Their draped statues still exist: their paintings have disappeared, but a Roman critic bewailing the same confusion, points out to his compatriots, the primitive[294] colours of the master-pieces of Apelles, Protogenes, Zeuxis, and Theron.