This sew’d-up race, this button’d nation,—
Who, while they boast their laws so free,
Leave not one limb at liberty;
But live, with all their lordly speeches,
The slaves of buttons and tight breeches.”
Even George IV. and his favourites could not bless or curse the nation with a taste for dress. After all, we are better off in that respect than the Italians of the last century, who were accustomed to walk abroad without hats, and with parasols and fans; and we do not desire to see Kensington Gardens like that at Schesmedscher, near Bucharest, of the figures on which gay stage the correspondent of the ‘Daily News’ thus graphically speaks:—
“From three o’clock in the afternoon till an hour after sunset the place is crowded with boyards, boyardines, and the sons and daughters of the same, shopkeepers, peasants, gipsies, officers, and cadets, without any distinction of rank, but all dressed regardless of expense, and swaggering in thoroughly peacock pride. We have matter-of-fact people, practical people, go-ahead people, ingenious people, etc., but without exception this is the ‘dressiest’ people of Europe. To see the manner in which the young people fig themselves out here, one might imagine that millinery, hosiery, and tailors’ goods were a profitable investment of capital. When one has been awhile in the East one generally ceases to wonder at varieties of costume; but the beau monde of Bucharest in holiday attire might well rouse the most nonchalant or phlegmatic into surprise and attention. Fashions of dress seldom remain long in one’s memory. The man who this year enters the Park with a terribly broad-brimmed hat does not remember for a moment that twelve months previously he would have been miserable had he worn one with a brim more than an eighth of an inch wide. It needs engravings to call up really vivid recollections of what one’s-self, as well as every one else, wore ten, twenty, or thirty years ago; and Bucharest recalls very vividly a certain class of engravings. Every one is familiar with those splendid works of art which represent his Majesty George III. reviewing the Middlesex Volunteers in Hyde Park, the Pump Room in Bath, Charing-cross at the period of the erection of Nelson’s Column, or any other remarkable scene as it appeared in the days of that illustrious individual, Mr. Brummell. Your readers well remember the broad-crowned Caroline hats, the short-waisted coats, the long-tailed surtouts, the ‘pumps’ and Hessian boots, in which fashionables strutted at that period. All this, and more, is to be seen here. Young men walk about in sky-blue cutaway coats with brass buttons and shockingly short skirts, trousers almost as tight as the ancient pantaloons, and cream-coloured kid gloves. Others appear on promenade with coats whose tails descend to their heels, and others again in all the brilliancy of the latest Paris fashions. The contrast and mélange are curious and infinitely amusing, and the display of jewellery is immense. In short, in London I would take the proudest man in the place for a linendraper’s shopman in his Sunday clothes. It is in the article of gloves however that most extravagance is displayed. White or cream-coloured is the colour de rigueur. Present yourself to a Wallachian lady to pay a visit, with your hands cased in anything more durable, and you excite as great a sensation as if you walked into a London drawing-room in top-boots. Nor must you go about the town on foot; a birtcha, or two-horse open hackney carriage or calèche, at two zwanzigers an hour, is indispensable. The vehicles are however generally very good and clean, and the drivers civil; disputes about fares are unknown.”
A portion of the above looks like a scene in a pantomime, and this induces me to offer a remnant or two of remark connected with stage costumes.