Common Sense About Women

One of the most amusing letters ever quoted in any book is that given in Curzon’s “Monasteries of the Levant,” as the production of a Turkish sultana who had just learned English. It is as follows:—

My Noble Friend:—Here are the featherses sent my soul, my noble friend, are there no other featherses leaved in the shop beside these featherses? and these featherses remains, and these featherses are ukly. They are very dear, who buyses dheses? And my noble friend, we want a noat from yorself; those you brought last tim, those you sees were very beautiful; we had searched; my soul, I want featherses again, of those featherses. In Kalada there is plenty of feather. Whatever bees, I only want beautiful featherses; I want featherses of every desolation to-morrow.

(Signed)

The first steps in culture do not, then, it seems, remove from the feminine soul the love of finery. Nor do the later steps wholly extinguish it; for did not Grace Greenwood hear the learned Mary Somerville conferring with the wise Harriet Martineau as to whether a certain dress should be dyed to match a certain shawl? Well! why not? Because women learn the use of the quill, are they to ignore “featherses”? Because they learn science, must they unlearn the arts, and above all the art of being beautiful? If men have lost it, they have reason to regret the loss. Let women hold to it, while yet within their reach.

Mrs. Rachel Howland of New Bedford, much prized and trusted as a public speaker among Friends, and a model of taste and quiet beauty in costume, delighted the young girls at a Newport Yearly Meeting, a few years since, by boldly declaring that she thought God meant women to make the world beautiful, as much as flowers and butterflies, and that there was no sin in tasteful dress, but only in devoting to it too much money or too much time. It is a blessed doctrine. The utmost extremes of dress, the love of colors, of fabrics, of jewels, of “featherses,” are, after all, but an effort after the beautiful. The reason why the beautiful is not always the result is because so many women are ignorant or merely imitative. They have no sense of fitness: the short wear what belongs to the tall, and brunettes sacrifice their natural beauty to look like blondes. Or they have no adaptation; and even an emancipated woman may show a disregard for appropriateness, as where a fine lady sweeps the streets, or a fair orator the platform, with a silken or velvet train which accords only with a carpet as luxurious as itself. What is inappropriate is never beautiful. What is merely in the fashion is never beautiful. But who does not know some woman whose taste and training are so perfect that fashion becomes to her a means of grace instead of a despot, and the worst excrescence that can be prescribed—a chignon, a hoop, a panier—is softened into something so becoming that even the Parisian bondage seems but a chain of roses?

In such hands, even “featherses” become a fine art, not a matter of vanity. Are women so much more vain than men? No doubt they talk more about their dress, for there is much more to talk about; yet did you never hear the men of fashion discuss boots and hats and the liveries of grooms? A good friend of mine, a shoemaker, who supplies very high heels for a great many pretty feet on Fifth Avenue in New York, declares that women are not so vain of their feet as men. “A man who thinks he has a handsome foot,” quoth our fashionable Crispin, “is apt to give us more trouble than any lady among our customers. I have noticed this for twenty years.” The testimony is consoling—to women.

And this naturally suggests the question, What is to be the future of masculine costume? Is the present formlessness and gracelessness and monotony of hue to last forever, as suited to the rough needs of a work-a-day world? It is to be remembered that the difference in this respect between the dress of the sexes is a very recent thing. Till within a century or so men dressed as picturesquely as women, and paid as minute attention to their costume. Even the fashions in armor varied as extensively as the fashions in gowns. One of Henry III.’s courtiers, Sir J. Arundel, had fifty-two complete suits of cloth of gold. No satin, no velvet, was too elegant for those who sat to Copley for their pictures. In Puritan days the laws could hardly be made severe enough to prevent men from wearing silver-lace and “broad bone-lace,” and shoulder-bands of undue width, and double ruffs and “immoderate great breeches.” What seemed to the Cavaliers the extreme of stupid sobriety in dress, would pass now for the most fantastic array. Fancy Samuel Pepys going to a wedding of to-day in his “new colored silk suit and coat trimmed with gold buttons, and gold broad lace round his hands, very rich and fine.” It would give to the ceremony the aspect of a fancy ball; yet how much prettier a sight is a fancy ball than the ordinary entertainment of the period!

Within the last few years the rigor of masculine costume is a little relaxed; velvets are resuming their picturesque sway: and, instead of the customary suit of solemn black, gentlemen are appearing in blue and gold editions at evening parties. Let us hope that good sense and taste may yet meet each other, for both sexes; that men may borrow for their dress some womanly taste, women some masculine sense; and society may again witness a graceful and appropriate costume, without being too much absorbed in “featherses.”

We may breathe more freely. The religious prospects of America brighten. Our dealers have received the “Catalogue of Clerical Vestments and Improved Church Ornaments manufactured by Simon Jeune, 34 Rue de Cléry, Paris.”

Why are we not a nation of saints? Plainly, because the church-apparatus has hitherto been so very deficient. Religion has been, so to speak, naked. The dry-goods stores, supplying only the laity, have left the clergy unclothed. In what ready-made-clothing store can you find any thing like a proper alb? Ask your tailor, if you dare, for a chasuble. At Stewart’s shop New Yorkers boast that you can buy any thing; but fancy a respectable citizen entering those marble portals, and demanding a cope or a dalmatic! As for an ombrellino, or an antependium, you might as well attempt to go buffalo-hunting in Broadway. In that case you would at least find the dried skin of the animal; but we doubt if there is to be found on sale any thing nearer an ombrellino than a lady’s parasol. They order this thing otherwise in France.

Mr. Simon Jeune provides every one of these simple luxuries. Not a device by which a rich man may enter the kingdom of heaven, but he has it at his fingers’ ends. None of your cheap salvations mar the dignity of 34 Rue de Cléry. “We do not manufacture these articles at a low price,” he calmly announces. There is no limit in the other direction. You can lead souls to heaven in a robe worth twenty-five guineas; but, if you insist on parsimony in your piety, you must patronize some other establishment.

Yet who that reads this catalogue, and revels for a half-hour amid its gold and jewels, would care to be parsimonious? What is money worth, except as a means of putting one’s favorite minister into a chasuble “in gold cloth with glazed friz ground, double superior quality”? Since the Christian must at any rate bear his cross, is it not a satisfaction to have it “on a gold ground, richly worked in gold and silver”? If there is no true religion without a cope, is it not well that its “hood and orfraies” should be “surrounded with glazed gold-columned galloon”? And, as death must come at any rate, is it not something that your pall may bear “a handsome design of silver tears in emboss in the centre of the cross,” price only six guineas?

Time would fail to tell of the banners and the dais, the altar-cloths and frontals, the pastoral stoles and benediction-scarfs, the pyxes and chalices, and, in short, all dear delights of consecrated souls. This saintly upholsterer makes as many “fresh sacrifices,” it would appear, as any other retailer; but, as this does not prevent him from pricing a dais as high as four hundred pounds sterling, there is no danger of the purchasers finding any thing cheap enough to be really discreditable. And the goods are all warranted to be as indestructible as the lowly virtues they symbolize.

M. Jeune positively announces that he “supplies every article connected with the Roman Catholic Church.” Perhaps he reserves the faith, hope, and charity for the next catalogue, as they do not appear largely in this. In other respects, reading this catalogue is as good as a seat in the most fashionable church, and leaves much the same impression. It is especially useful for summer-time, when one may wander in the country, to the peril of one’s soul, and may consider the lilies a great deal too much, and may come to thinking religion a thing obtainable on cheap terms, after all. This would not do for M. Jeune’s business: let us return to the realities of time and eternity, and consider this “embroidered glory of spangles and prul,”—whatever prul may be.

But can it, after all, be possible that these gorgeous garments are to be worn by men only, and that those same men will sometimes treat it as a reproach to women that they are fond of dress?

In looking over some miscellaneous papers which came, the other day, into my hands, I found among them a newspaper scrap, expressing certain criticisms familiar to the inquiring mind. It stated the predominant attribute of women to be frivolity; an inordinate love of show, display, rank, title, dress; a habit of absorption in the petty details of these follies, to the exclusion of all serious thought and purpose. In reading this lucubration, one was led to suppose that the whole aim of all women was to meet in little circles where they could wear costly attire, call themselves by fine names, and, in the concise Italian phrase, “peacock themselves” generally.

But there happened to be among the same papers another class of documents which tended to unsettle the mind a little on these topics. These documents were in print, and were not marked as private, or addressed to any particular name, so that there can be no harm in reprinting one of them, suppressing, however, all reference to particular persons or places, lest I should be innocently betraying some awful secret. The paper affording most information was as follows, the dashes of omission (——) being mine, but all the rest being given verbatim:—

Sublime Prince:

A stated rendezvous of —— Consistory, A. A. S. Rite, will be held on the 15th day of the month Adar, A. H. 5640, in —— Hall, under the c. c. of the 3, near the B. B. at Five o’clock P.M.

The object of this meeting is thus stated: “Work: the grade of Knight Kadosh, the 30th, will be worked in full at this Rendezvous.” And it appears that this work must have something of a military character; for it seems from another circular, which I will not quote in full, that the purpose of the rendezvous can be much better carried out if the members will provide themselves with a costly uniform, including a sword and other equipments. Yet it would also appear that the expenses of this organization, apart from the uniform, are so great as to call forth the following notice:—

“Delinquents.—The Finance Committee recommend the discharge from Membership of the following Sublime Princes, for non-payment of dues, they having failed to make any satisfactory reply to repealed notices of their indebtedness.” [Then follows a list of names and amounts varying from $17 to $23.]

One of the most brilliant of recent French novels, Daudet’s “Les Rois en Exil,” lays its whole plot among the forlorn class of dethroned sovereigns in Paris; but really their sorrows do not touch an American heart so deeply as this black-list. Here are nearly twenty Princes on our own soil who are publicly exposed in a single circular as refusing, after “repeated notices of their indebtedness,” even to reply satisfactorily. What pleasure can there be in the most attractive “rendezvous,” what joy in the most absorbing “work,” when one thinks of all these fallen Sublime Princes wandering, like Milton’s angels, into outer darkness? I almost blush to own that I recognize among the names of these outcasts one or two acquaintances of my own, who certainly passed for honest men before they became princes.

But the most interesting question for women to consider is this: Who conducts this picturesque consistory, with its rites, its titles, and its uniforms? Which sex is it that makes up this society, and twenty other societies so absorbing in their “work” that some worthy persons have a “society” for almost every evening in the week? Is it the sex which is alleged to be frivolous, dressy, and eager for rank and title? Or is it the grave sex, the serious and hard-working sex, the “noble sex,” le sexe noble, as some of the French grammars call it? No doubt there is under all this display and formality, in this “consistory,” as in most similar organizations, a great deal of mutual help and friendliness. But so there is under even the seeming frivolities of women: the majority of fashionable women have good hearts, and do good. If substantial and practical men like to cover even their benevolent organizations with something of show and display, and to “peacock themselves” a little, why should not women be permitted the same privilege? Surely Sublime Princes should stand by their order, and not look with disdain on those who would like to be Sublime Princesses if they only could.