Miss Larches. She is not troubled with trimming.
Grey. Not troubled with it; but she has it just where it should be,—on the bottom of her gown, which is edged with black,—in the flowered border of her kerchief,—on the edge of her bonnet, where there is a narrow line of yellow,—and in the lace or muslin ruffle of the cape which falls from it If she were a queen, or the wife of a Russian prince who owned thousands of girls like her, she might have trimming of greater cost and beauty, but not a shred more without deterioration of her costume, which, if she were court-lady to Eugenie and had the court-painter to help her, could not be in better taste.
Mrs. Grey. But, Stanford, don't you see? (just like a man!) you are charmed with these women, not with their dresses. These fashion-plates of fifty years ago are designed by very different hands from those which produce our niminy-piminy looking things,—by artists plainly; and your peasant-girl was seized upon by some errant knight of palette and brush, and painted for her beauty. These women are what you men call fine creatures. Their limbs are rounded and shapely, their figures full and lithe; they are what I've heard you say Homer calls Briseïs.
Grey. White-armed, deep-bosomed?
Mrs. Grey. Yes; and their necks rise from their shoulders like ivory towers. Any costume will look beautiful on such women. But how are poor, puny, ill-made women to dress in such fashions? They could not wear those dresses without exhibiting all those personal defects which our present fashion conceals. It's all very fine for perfectly beautiful women to have such fashions; but it's very cruel to those who are not beautiful. Don't you remember, at Mrs. Clarkson's party, just before we were married, you, and half a dozen other men just like you, went round raving about Mrs. Horn, and how elegantly she was dressed? and when I saw her, I found she had on only a plain pale-blue silk dress, that couldn't have cost a penny more than twelve shillings a yard, and not a thing beside. All the women were turning up their noses at her.
Grey. Because all the men were ready to bend down their heads to her?
Mrs. Grey. Yes.—No.—The upshot of it was, that the woman had the figure and complexion of Hebe, and this dress showed it and set it off; but the dress was nothing particular in itself.
Grey. That is, I suppose, it was not particularly fanciful or costly;—no detriment to its beauty. But as to the beauty of these costumes depending on the beauty of the women who wear them, and their unsuitableness to the needs of women who are without beauty,—It is undeniably true, that, to be beautiful in any costume, a woman must be—beautiful. This may be very cruel, but there is no help for it. Color may enhance the beauty of complexion, as in the case of Mrs. Horn's blue dress; but as to form and material, the most elaborate, the most costly, even the most beautiful costume ever devised, cannot make the woman that wears it be other than she is, or seem so, except to people who do not look at her, but at her clothes. What did all the ugly women in 1811 and '12 do? and what have all the ugly peasant-girls in Normandy done for hundreds of years past? Do you suppose that their beautiful costume made them look any uglier than ugly women do now and here? Not a whit. Ugliness may be covered, but it cannot be concealed. And does the fashion of our day so kindly veil the personal defects in the interest of which you plead? At parties I have thought differently, and sorrowed for the owners of arms and busts and shoulders that inexorable fashion condemns on such occasions to an exposure which, to say the least, is in many cases needless. No,—by flying in the face of fashion, a woman attracts attention to her person, which can be done with impunity only by the beautiful; but do you not see that an ugly woman, by conforming to fashion, obtains no advantage over other women, ugly or beautiful, who also conform to it? and consequently, that a set fashion for all rigidly preserves the contrasts of unequally developed Nature? If there were no fashion to which all felt that they must conform at peril of singularity, then, indeed, there would be some help for the unfortunate; for each individual might adopt a costume suited to his or her peculiarities of person. Yet, even then, there could only be a mitigation or humoring of blemishes, not a remedy for them. There is no way of making deformity or imperfection beautiful.
Mrs. Grey. But, Stanford, there are times when——
Grey. There are no times when woman's figure has not the charm of womanhood, unless she attempts to improve it by some monstrous contrivance of her own; no times when good taste and womanly tact cannot so drape it that it will possess some attraction peculiar to her sex. And were it not so, how irrational, how wrongful is it to extinguish, I will not say the beauty, but, in part, the very humanity of all women, at all times, for the sake of hiding for some women the sign of their perfected womanhood at certain times!