(Carlyle on Bloomerism.)
“A mad world this, my friends, a World in its lunes, petty and other; in lunes other than petty now for sometime; in petty lunes, pettilettes or pantalettes, about these six weeks, ever since when this rampant androgynous Bloomerism first came over from Yankee land. A sort of shemale dress you call Bloomerism; a fashion of Sister Jonathan’s.
Trowsers tight at ankles, and for most part frilled; tunic descending with some degree of brevity, perhaps to knees, ascending to throat and open at chemisette front, or buttoned there; collar down-turned over neckerchief; and crowning all, broad brimmed hat; said garments generally feathered, trimmed, ribboned, variegated, according to the fancies and the vanities: these, chiefly, are the outward differences between Bloomer dress and customary feminine Old Clothes. Not much unlike nursery-uniforms, you think this description of costume, but rather considerably like it, I compute. Invisible are the merits of the Bloomer dress, such as it has. A praiseworthy point in Bloomerism the emancipation of the ribs; an exceeding good riddance, the deliverance from corset, trammelling genteel thorax with springs of steel and whalebone, screwing in waist to Death’s hour glass contraction, and squeezing lungs, liver, and midriff into unutterable cram. Commendable, too, the renouncement of sous-jupe bouffante, or ineffable wadding, invented, I suppose, by some Hottentot to improve female contour after the type of Venus, his fatherland’s, and not Cythera’s. Wholesome, moreover, and convenient, the abbreviation of trains, serving in customary female old clothes the purpose of besom, and no other: real improvements, doubtless, these abandonments of ruinous shams, ridiculous unveracities, and idolatries of indescribable mud-Pythons.… Disputes about surplices in pulpit, and also elsewhere, give place to controversies in theatres and lecture-halls concerning petty lunes and frilled trowsers; paraphernalia, however, not less important than canonicals, as I judge for one.… But here are we, my friends in this mad world, amid the hallooings and bawlings, and guffaws, and imbecile simperings, and titterings, blinded by the November smoke fog of coxcombries and vanities, stunted by the perpetual hallelujahs of flunkeys, beset by maniacs and simpletons in the great lunes and the petty lunes; here, I say, do we, with Bloomerism beneath us bubbling uppermost, stand, hopelessly upturning our eyes for the daylight of heaven, upon the brink of a vexed unfathomable gulf of apehood and asshood simmering for ever.”
Anonymous.
The Tichborne Trial.
By Thomas Carr Lisle.
The Tichborne Trial is ended! Yea, my brother and other things are ended of which that is but a type, Looming Portentous; verily, a sort of Fire-balloon of paper, or of papers rather, Standard, Telegraph, and what not.
Men say “The truth is out at last.” The Truth out! my poor brothers-nay, was the Truth ever in. Surely there was no Truth, rather other than that.
And yet doth it not mean something, think you, this Tichborne Trial, its Solicitor-Generals, Tichborne bonds, and legal Inanities? Says it not “Is there Truth in the land, O Israel?” “What is Truth?” said jesting Pilate, or rather where is it? Cry the question into the bottomless Inane of this our world, and what answer? Nothing but an inarticulate response of Tichborne bonds, Solicitor-Generals, and such.