We must now offer a few brief remarks upon certain costumes which appear to us most worthy of our attention and study, for their general elegance and adaptation to the figure. Of the modern Greek we have already spoken. The style of dress which has been immortalized by the pencil of Vandyck is considered among the most elegant that has ever prevailed in this country. It is not, however, faultless. The row of small curls round the face, how becoming soever to some persons, is somewhat formal, and although the general arrangement of the hair, which preserves the natural size and shape of the head, is more graceful than that of the time of Sir Joshua Reynolds, we think it would have been more pleasing had it left visible the line which divides the hair from the forehead. With regard to the dress itself: in the first place, the figures are spoiled by stays; secondly, the dress is cut too low in front; and thirdly, the large sleeves sometimes give too great width in front to the shoulders. These defects are, in some degree, counterbalanced by the graceful flow of the ample drapery, and of the large sleeves, which are frequently widest at their lower part, and by the gently undulating line which unites the waist of the dress with the skirt. The Vandyck dress, with its voluminous folds, is, however, more appropriate to the inhabitants of palaces than to the ordinary occupants of this working-day world. The drapery is too wide and flowing for convenience.
Lely's half-dressed figures may be passed over without comment; they are draped, not dressed. Kneller's are more instructive on the subject of costume. The dress of Queen Anne, in Kneller's portrait, is graceful and easy. The costume is a kind of transition between the Vandyck and Reynolds styles. The sleeves are smaller at the shoulder than in the former, and larger at the lower part than in the latter; in fact, they resemble those now worn by the modern Greeks. The dress is cut higher round the bust, and is longer in the waist than the Vandycks, while the undulating line uniting the body and skirt is still preserved. While such good examples were set by the painters—who were not, however, the inventors of the fashions they painted—it is astonishing that these graceful styles of dress should have been superseded in real life by the lofty headdresses and preposterous fashions which prevailed during the same period, and long afterwards, and which even the ironical and severe remarks of Addison in the "Spectator" were unable to banish from the circles of fashion. Speaking of the dresses of ladies during the reigns of James II. and William III., Mr. Planché, in his History of British Costume (p. 318), says: "The tower or commode was still worn, and the gowns and petticoats flounced and furbelowed, so that every part of the garment was in curl;" and a lady of fashion "looked like one of those animals," says the "Spectator," "which in the country we call a Friesland hen." But in 1711 we find Mr. Addison remarking: "The whole sex is now dwarfed and shrunk into a race of beauties that seems almost another species. I remember several ladies who were once nearly seven feet high, that at present want some inches of five. How they came to be thus curtailed, I cannot learn; whether the whole sex be at present under any penance which we know nothing of, or whether they have cast their headdresses in order to surprise us with something in that kind which shall be entirely new: though I find most are of opinion they are at present like trees lopped and pruned that will certainly sprout up and flourish with greater heads than before."
The costume of the time of Sir Joshua Reynolds, as treated by this great artist, though less splendid, appears to us, with the exception of the headdress, nearly as graceful, and far more convenient than the Vandyck dress. It is more modest, more easy, and better adapted to show the true form of the shoulders, while the union of the body of the dress with the skirt is effected in the same graceful manner as in the Vandyck portraits. The material of the drapery in the latter is generally silks and satins; of the former, it is frequently muslin, and stuff of a soft texture, which clings more closely to the form. That much of the elegance of both styles of dress is to be attributed to the skill and good taste of the painters, is evident from an examination of portraits by contemporary artists. Much also may be ascribed to the taste of the wearer. There are some people who, though habited in the best and richest clothes, never appear well-dressed; their garments, rumpled and untidy, look as if they had been pitched on them, like hay, with a fork; while others, whose dress consists of the most homely materials, appear well-dressed, from the neatness and taste with which their clothes are arranged.
Leaving now the caprices of fashion, we must notice a class of persons who, from a religious motive, have resisted for two hundred years the tyranny of fashion, and until recently have transmitted the same form of dress from mother to daughter for nearly the same period of years. The ladies of the Society of Friends, or as they are usually called "Quakers," are still distinguished by the simplicity and neatness of their dress—the quiet drabs and browns of which frequently contrast with the richness of the material—and by the absence of all ornament and frippery. Every part of their dress is useful and convenient; it has neither frills nor flounces, nor trimmings to carry the dirt and get shabby before the dress itself; nor wide sleeves to dip in the plates, and lap up the gravy and sauces, nor artificial flowers, nor bows of ribbons. The dress is long enough for decency, but not so long as to sweep the streets, as many dresses and shawls are daily seen to do. Some few years back, the Quaker ladies might have been reproached with adhering to the letter, while they rejected the spirit of their code of dress, by adhering too literally to the costume handed down to them. The crowns of their caps were formerly made very high, and for this reason it was necessary that the crowns of the bonnets should be high enough to admit the cap crown; hence the particularly ugly and remarkable form of this part of the dress. The crown of the cap has, however, recently been lowered, and the Quaker ladies, with much good sense, have not only modified the form of their bonnets, but also adopted the straw and drawn-silk bonnet in their most simple forms. In the style of their dress, also, they occasionally approach so near the fashions generally worn, that they are no longer distinguishable by the singularity of their dress, but by its simplicity and chasteness.
PREPARATIONS FOR COMPANY.
A hostess who wishes that her friends should enjoy their dinner, and that she also should enjoy it with them, must see that all is ready and at hand before her guests arrive. If her servants are well trained, and accustomed to do things regularly, when there is no company, there will be little difficulty when there is; and if there is that pleasant understanding between the head and the hands of the household which should always exist, any casual mistake will easily be rectified; an accident itself will occasion more fun than fuss; and although no host and hostess should feel as unconcerned or indifferent at their own table as elsewhere, the duty of seeing that nobody wants anything will be manifestly a pleasant one, whilst the simple cordiality, which delights in good appetites and cheerful countenances, and the domestic order which is evidently, but unostentatiously, the presiding genius of the family, will go far to enhance the flavor of the simplest fare.