DURING THE EIGHTEENTH AND THE BEGINNING OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
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BY FAYETTE ROBINSON.
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People grieve about the departure of the good old times, and prate of the days of chivalry, which Mr. Burke sixty years ago said were gone. That they are gone the world may well rejoice at, not only because they were times of ignorance and cruelty, but also of discomfort and inconvenience. In the diary of a court-officer of the days of Henry VII. is the note of a charge for cutting rushes, to strew on the floor of the Queen-closets; and another one mentions the number of under-garments belonging to Henri III. of France as considerably less than any one of the better orders in our own time would require. In those days, the downy couch meant a bed of goose-wing feathers; gloves were not; and when a gentleman needed a new doublet or head-piece, he went not to a tailor or the hatter of the day, but to a blacksmith. Let the lovers of romance talk as they please, there was little true poetry, and less feeling, in the minds of the heroes they wish to extol, than of the veriest apostles of commerce of our own age. Rightly enough do we date civilization from the times when men laid aside the rugged manners of old with the bronze and iron armor, and doffing the hammered helmet, assumed the cap of velvet and the hat of plush; when they laid aside the iron gauntlet for the chamois glove, and assumed the Cordovan boot in place of the leg-pieces of steel.
The feelings of chivalry yet lingered as late as the days of the English Charles I. and the French Louis XIII. in the minds of the nobility. A new series of ideas, however, had arisen in the breasts of the people at a date long previous to this. Printing had become general, and the learning previously the property of the priests had become the heir-loom of humanity: As a natural consequence, new ideas and new wants were unfolded, and these same ideas had become more general. At this crisis France took the lead, and not only in philosophy but in the minor things of life, French manners and habits were copied. Consequently, in describing costume, Paris will be perpetually referred to, from the fact that from that great city emanated the fashions which controlled the costume of the world.
It is true that other nations had their peculiar costume, handed down and preserved by the tradition of courts, as the Norman dress continues even now the court uniform of the state officials of the British kingdom; Spain had her peculiar doublet, hose and cloak, and Holland her own court apparel. If, however, we look nearer and closer, we shall discover each of these were dresses imported from France at some particular crisis, and retaining position and importance in their new home, when they were forgotten in the land whence they were adopted.
The most highly civilized of all the nations of Europe at the time that this supremacy over the costume of the world was exerted by France, it might have been expected that its selection would have been guided by good taste and propriety. This was not however the case, for in spite of the progress the world has made, the women of France and our own country, and the men also, are not to be compared to the members of the most savage tribes, either in gracefulness of form or propriety of dress. If the Chinese distort the foot, or the Indians of the North West Coast of America the forehead, the civilized women of to-day compress the waist, and men commit not less enormities.
These matters are, however, incontestable; and though we might regret we cannot prevent them. They simply therefore give us a clue in treating our subject, of which we will avail ourselves. They teach us, that to Paris belongs the incontestable empire of that mysterious power known in France as la mode, and in our own land as Fashion. Possibly this may be a remnant, the sole vestige, of that tone of pretension which led France in other days to aspire to universal empire. If so, the pride of other nations which led them elsewhere to resist French assumption here has been silent. Though not the rulers of the world by the power of the sword; though the French idiom be not so universal as the English, even the denizens of “Albion perfide” submit to the behests of the controlling powers of the French mode. Let the French language be universal or not, is to us now of no importance; that French fleets will drive English and American squadrons from the seas, is doubtful, but it is very certain Englishmen and Americans for all time to come will wear French waist-coats, and Germans both in London and Philadelphia will call themselves French bootmakers. How fond soever a people may be of its national garb, ultimately it must submit to the trammels devised in Paris. Ultimately all men will wear that most inconvenient article called a hat, will insert their extremities into pantaloons, and put their arms into the sleeves of the garment, so short before and so long behind, they are pleased to call a coat. When all nations shall have come to this state of subserviency, the end of the world will certainly be at hand, whether because the ultima perfectio has been reached, or because God, who created man after his own likeness, will be angry at the ridiculous figure they have made of his features, better theologians than I must decide. We certainly are not very near this crisis, for hundreds of yellow-skinned gentlemen are yet ignorant of the art and mystery of tying a cravat, and never saw a patent leather boot.
Like great epidemics, the passion for dress often leaps over territorial boundaries, and ships not unfrequently carry with the cholera and vomito bales of articles destined to spread this infection among lands as yet ignorant of it; so that some day we may live to hear of Oakford sending a case of hats to the Feejees, and of Watson making an uniform for the general-in-chief of the King of the Cannibal Islands.