ÆSTHETICS OF DRESS.
A Case of Hats.
Of all the follies that can be fairly placed to the charge of the human race—and, Heaven knows, they are thick as gnats in a summer sunbeam—none can be laid at more people's doors than the fickleness and vagaries of the judgment in adorning, to say nothing of covering, man's outer scaffolding—the body. And the worst of it is, that this folly-cap fits all men, from the Red Indian of America to the sallow-faced, eye-slitted Chinese; and through all the robed pomp of the solemn Turk to the chattering and capering monkeyism of the Parisian exquisite—there are fops every where. As Mr Catlin will tell you, one of his lanky Ojibbeway, or Ioway, or Cutaway, or Anyotherkindo'way Indians varies the feathers in his head-dress, and sticks new tinsel on his buffalo-mantle, whenever he can get them; spending as much time in be-painting his cheeks on a summer morning, as Beau Brummell, of departed memory, ever wasted in tying his cravat. And so it has ever been—so it will ever be; man is not only a two-legged unfledged animal, but he is also a vain imitative ape, fond of his own dear visage, blind to his deformities, and ever desirous of setting himself off to the best advantage. It is of no use quarrelling with ourselves for this physiological fact—for we presume it to be one of the best ascertained phenomena connected with the genus homo—it is better to take it as we find it; and if we cannot hope to cure man of the absurdity any time this side of the millennium, let us try if we cannot turn the failing to some account, and make it useful as well as ornamental.
The chief quarrel to be picked with man for his dressing propensities, is on the ground that he not only hides and disfigures the fair proportions bestowed on him by his Maker, but that he ever and anon loads himself with such masses of useless incongruities, that the very end and object of his care are stultified. Instead of making himself smart, pretty, becoming, beautiful—or any other word that you can find in the dandy's dictionary—he frequently succeeds in making himself positively ugly—frightful, in the pure abstract sense of the term—or detestable, in the lingo of the Stultzean tribe—and relapses, as a Frenchman would say, from civism to brutism: Ah! quel animal que l'homme!
But let it not be supposed that we speak of man only, as applied to that great branch of the species designated by the most experienced naturalists as homo vir; it is quite as true of the other moiety, the homo femina. If it be possible that a woman should ever be made frightful by any thing except age, then it is surely by dress; if a woman never does a foolish thing in any other way, yet at least she errs in her habiliments; if she be fickle at all, (and speak to the fact, ye disappointed bachelors and ye complaisant husbands!) in what is she more fickle than in dress? We might waste a life in finding a suitable simile for her volatility in this matter: rainbows with changing colours, water on a windy day, the wind itself in the month of March, the much-desiderated perpetual motion; all are feeble similes to describe a woman's fickleness in dress. Shall we liken it to her tongue's untiring play? or shall we not rather say that it is a psychological fact standing per se? the concomitant effect and consequence of her beauty? But, dear creatures! we are not going to quarrel with them for what gives us so much unconscious pleasure, (we do not mean milliners' bills, gentle reader;) we glory in living under a petticoat government, and in essentially petticoatian times. All we shall do is to give a word of advice; and in trying on their caps for them, we will show them the rationale of their bows and their lace, if they will only have the patience to sit still for the experiment.
Before embarking on such an important project, allow us to say that we are not going to quiz old Whang-Fong for his pig-tail and peacock feathers, nor his Cannibalean majesty for his obstinate refusal to wear a decent pair of inexpressibles; it is a stiff subject to meddle with the dressing propensities of people that live "in many a place that's underneath the world." For all we care, Abd el Kader and his Arabs may stifle themselves up in their greasy blankets swarming with ancestral vermin under a nearly tropical sun; and the good people of Igloolik may bedeck themselves with the spoils of fish, flesh, and fowl, to set the fashions of the Arctic circle. We are going to speak merely of our home acquaintances and our European friends; if these only would be reasonable in their dress, what a new thing it would be in the world—quel progrés! quel évènement!
The fundamental rule of dress we take to be the following—utility in all cases, ornament when practicable. The first should ever precede, and serve as the basis to the second; and it is the inversion of their due positions that causes so many applications of the utile and the dulce to end in sheer absurdity. The usefulness of any article or system of dress depends entirely upon climate, modified of course by the occupation or pursuits of the wearer; the beauty of it or the suitableness of the ornament to the character of the vestment. We defy all the editors of the Recueils des Modes, Petits Courriers des Dames, Belles Assemblées, &c., with even the poet-laureates of Moses and Son, Hyam and Co., with the whole host of Israelitish schneiders, to find out a better æsthetic definition of the law of dress than this. Who would have the effrontery to maintain that an Englishman, the very type of the useful at Calcutta in his cotton jacket and nankeens, would in the same habiliments be a suitably dressed man at St Petersburg? and however much a well-set ring may ornament an aristocratic finger, (though aristocratic fingers, like aristocratic hands, as Byron observes, need no ornament to tell their origin,) who but an Otaheitan would admire the application of them to the gouty toes of some "fine old English gentleman?" Usefulness first, then, and ornament afterwards; think first of what you actually want for your health or comfort; cut your coat upon that pattern, clap on your lace afterwards; but enrich it only to improve its appearance, not to interfere with, to conceal, or to alter its original destination.
To begin, however, methodically, let us take what are commonly understood by well-dressed English people of the present day, and let us criticise them from top to toe. And first, then, of a gentleman's head—le chef, as the French call it—and the chapeau, its present gear. What a covering! what a termination to the capital of that pillar of the creation, Man! what an ungraceful, mis-shapen, useless, and uncomfortable appendage to the seat of reason—the brain-box! Does it protect the head from either heat, cold, or wet? Does it set off any of natural beauty of the human cranium? Are its lines in harmony with, or in becoming contrast to, the expressive features of the face? Is it comfortable, portable, durable, or cheap? What qualities, either of use or ornament, has it in its favour that it should be the crowning point of a well-dressed man's toilet? The hat is, beyond all doubt, one of the strangest vestimental anomalies of the nineteenth century.
The history of the hat is this:—The simplest covering for a man's head after his own unshorn locks—(do not remind us of the matted and living locks of the Indians or Hottentots)—must have been something like the Greek skull-cap. This we hold to have been the root, or nucleus, of the hat; and yet even this cap had a fault in point of utility, for it failed to shadow the eyes: and on the earliest Greek monuments we find a cap with a wide brim appended, or a flattish straw-hat following close upon the Phrygian bonnet. A light flattish hat has its recommendation in a warm country, but it will not do for the winds and storms of a northern clime; and hence all the old Gauls, the northern nations, the Tartars, and the peasants of Europe, for many a long century wore a modified cap—sometimes swelling out into ornamental proportions, at others shrinking into the primitive simplicity of the Phrygian or Greek cap. Shall we confess it, fastidious reader?—we strongly suspect the cap worn by that idle fellow Paris, when he so impudently ogled the goddesses on Mount Ida, to have been very similar to the good old bonnet de nuit of our grandfathers—(shall we whisper it, of ourselves?) Yes, that little cocked-up corner at the top looks like a budding tassel; he never had such bad taste as to tie it with a riband round his brows; and we do not read in Homer that Helen, though a capital workwoman, ever gave him one; but we are inclined to believe that the old punty-dunty, pudding-bag-shaped cap which is still worn by the French peasantry in their field occupations, and is still patronized by a large portion of Queen Victoria's loving subjects, is of the highest antiquity, and based, we have no doubt, on utility. We must be candid enough to say, that we give up the argument as to the intrinsic beauty of this species of cap—truly we think it the very type of all that is slovenly; but for use, there is not a more comfortable, portable, pliable, buyable, and washable a commodity, than your—nightcap are we to say? no—than your bonnet Grec.