Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 9/Dress and the age - Part 2
DRESS AND THE AGE.
Croquet: see next page.
PART II.
We must now proceed to extremities. There is a little German picture, in which a shoemaker is represented, so bewildered by the perfection of the foot he holds in his hand, that he loses all power and decision, and remains kneeling in a sort of mesmeric enhancement, or Bhuddist absorption. His tenderness is lavished in trying on the quondam slipper; and now the shoe for walking is discarded, and the boot marches triumphantly over the ground. And there is good cause for the preference. The female angler—the lady who fishes for compliments—has no more killing fly about her than the clean-fitting, clinging, decisive boot. It has revolutionised the whole chaussure. As for sandals, they are as much things of the past as the Vandals—out of doors. Even the final dogma that a black boot cannot be worn with a white dress has been smiled away; and well-booted ladies in any-coloured dresses step fearlessly forward, trampling, with more hauteur, on Plato’s pride. To wear a light-coloured boot requires, indeed, a very small foot; and it has, in general, descended to classes who love the pavement, and is unpopular in higher altitudes; but we can see many occasions on which it might be usefully worn.
A well-made foot in a well-made boot being so attractive an object, it is a pity that the fancy of high-heels has become permanent. It cannot yet be said that high-heels have become very general, though highish heels are all but universal; and the extreme specimens have prevailed longer and more widely than is necessary for the assertion of an idea, or for the display of a taste for renaissance. That degree of elevation, which was named the military heel, is not objectionable, and it gives height—often an important advantage; but even this raises the back of the foot higher than is proper for stability in walking, and surgeons say it has a tendency to weaken the tendo Achillis, whilst everything which acts so as to throw the weight of the body forward on the toes, pressing them into the narrowest part of the boot with force, produces discomfort to the wearer, and—must the name be named?—brings corns. Far from us be those instruments which convert a pretty foot into a cornucopia!
As for those boot-heels, too frequently seen in public places, stilt-like in height, and pared away like a lead pencil, they are exceedingly dangerous, lead easily to sprains and dislocations of the ancle, and are as unnatural in their action on the muscles as the shoe of a Chinese lady. And they are not becoming. Were we to revive an entire Cinque-Cento style of dress they might be then in keeping; but, happily, our hoops are not yet supplemented by the etceteras now said to be adopted by the Empress Eugenie and her court—the ebony walking-stick, for example; to be followed, we may suppose, inevitably, by patches and hair-powder.
The foot-gear has, at all times, exercised great power over its wearers’ thoughts and affections. Nothing delights the youngest children so much as new boots. How tender and how amusing is Hans Christian Andersen’s account of his new red shoes worn at his confirmation; how they absorbed his attention, and covered him with blushes because he fancied the eyes of the whole congregation were fastened upon them. A venerable relation of our own has told us that in looking back to the extremest delights she can remember, she gives the palm to the happy day when she walked to school in a pair of new pattens, which printed the ground with the once well-known form of two parallel waved lines.
A finely-made boot is really a work of art deserving attention; and we may well excuse the pang with which its wearer first sees its beauties trodden in the mud of public ways. It has been said that a well-dressed man suffers a loss in his attire to the extent of a guinea by being caught in a shower; and we have known one of our younger friends refuse to take out his new umbrella because it rained: yet by the perverse system of walking on our feet, our boots, which have cost double the price of our hat, are subjected to the most injurious treatment, and in consequence, they become one of the most expensive parts of the wardrobe.
The game of croquet seems to have been specially invented to exhibit a lady’s foot and ancle to the greatest advantage. So delightful is the drawing of the light, firm, springy foot, booted as an Englishwoman knows how, delicately set on the ball, that the cruel, long-suspended stroke which sends us flying twenty yards away is forgiven for the beauty of the situation which preceded that calamity. The evolutions and unexpected positions of the steel skirt, also, make it indispensable that a lady’s boot and stocking should be soignées. It has been suggested that the strong pressure of elastic sides to boots injures the form of the foot, making it crow-heeled. Here our experience is at fault, and we will not pronounce decisively; but this we will assert, that there is a description of lower limb which does not become a tightly-fitting boot, when above the stringency of the compressed foot and ancle-joint flesh and blood strive not unsuccessfully to assert their dimensions, swelling and even overflowing their bondage with bursting power,—
As where a heart indignant breaks
To show that still it lives!
Well-fitted as is a well-fitting boot for walking, there is nothing comparable in-doors, for either sex, to the shoe and silk-stocking. White and pale-tinted kid-boots may be worn with discretion by ladies for dancing. They do not suit all persons, though there are some feet that would look well in a clod-hopper’s high-lows or anything else. The French kid shoe, with etherial lace-like thread stocking in the house, and the rosetted satin slipper over silken hose for evening wear, have always seemed to us to come near perfection. When men began to wear patent leather boots at dinners and dances, violence was inflicted on our traditions, our feelings of propriety, and our aesthetic sensitivities. They prevailed, like the insidious advance of democracy; but there long remained in more antique minds an uneasy sense, when contemplating them, of something out of doors about a boot at night, however firm and polished. It was akin to the feeling we experience in some of our new churches which have side aisles of pointed brick. We are conscious of a struggle going on in the mind—a struggle as of having to keep ourselves within the building, whilst every side glance brings the suggestion that we are still outside. In fact, a man with a moderately small foot and good instep is unwise to forego the completeness of shoes and silk-stockings worn in dress.
The black silk (originally beaver) hat has been for years obnoxious to remark and ridicule. Yet those who have been most ready to take the hat off are not so ready to supply a succedaneum for the head. It is all very well for a country gentleman to move about his own neighbourhood in a straw fishing-hat: and on a long railroad journey any and every kind of cap and covering is permissible; but those who live in great cities and have a character to support are always driven back to the old, inevitable black silk hat. Every substitute has been tried, and a great deal of sentiment has been talked on the subject, and not a little courage has been shown in very abnormal exhibitions of the head. But all in vain. The hat, like the ghost of the Amundevilles, will not be driven away. Here and there we meet with an individual gallantly leading a forlorn hope against the batteries of fashion, and we admire and pity. We observed at a suburban railway station this summer a daring person carrying on his head a light felt helmet in the form of that used by the fire-brigade. He was endeavouring to look as if there were nothing remarkable in his appearance, but every motion betrayed the exhaustive effort he was making and his intuitive knowledge that the words of Brutus rose on each spectator’s lips,—
I’ll use thee for my mirth,—yea, for my laughter!
We comfort ourselves by deciding that such infatuation could not extend beyond two days, and that he would then have
Regained his felt, and felt what he regained.
Even ladies for riding have lately taken back into favour the straight black hat, 
once the customary equestrian article of dress, and it has been abundantly worn. Indeed the form, in spite of the abuse lavished on it, has its advantages. Caps touch the head all over, the round hat rests thereon with the smallest possible area of contact, and the column of air between the head and the crown, particularly in ventilated hats, is a really valuable contrivance against direct heat. Some experienced Swiss and Continental tourists have come to the conclusion that, on the whole, the ordinary hat is attended with less inconvenience than other coverings for the head.
The present modes in hats for ladies have for their basis the square crown. This is the idea, as opposed to the rounded crown which they have supplanted, and, as it appears to us, without gaining in taste or beauty of form. .png)
With that wanton determination to produce something novel—upon which, as we have already stated, the world of specialités depends—very extraordinary deductions from the original idea are being made; as, for example, untrimmed gray beaver with a wide brim, neither pretty in itself nor becoming to the wearer’s face. In trimmed hats bold innovations are introduced for ornament. The “half-pheasant” gives way to iridescent shells, tufts of prismatic spun glass, &c.
Of gloves we need not speak: we need only regret that the best of all possible gloves, the genuine kid, should be and continue so expensive an article of dress, being as they are so indispensable. Perhaps there is nothing which brings home to us the possibility of a depreciation in gold more vividly than the four shillings which we have so constantly to lay on the counter for a pair of gloves, hearing at the same time that the shopkeeper gets nothing by selling them. The agriculture of kids ought to be more attended to. The flesh of the kid is delicate eating at table—we have introduced it at our own with success—so that the raiser of stock need not lose by the animal itself, whilst he would realise a good profit by the skin. In Australia and other wool-growing countries, the example in Murray’s Grammar has long required reversal. “The fleece, and not the flock, is, or ought to be, the shepherd’s care.” The goat grazier must look primarily to the quality of the skins in his kid speculations.
We will conclude this part of our observations by remarking generally, that, in men’s dress, attention bestowed upon “the points”—the gloves, boots, and hat—creates a greater effect on the observer than the remaining and more expensive parts of his clothing. It may, consequently, be good economy to be a little extravagant in the matter of gloves. In a less degree, the same rule applies to ladies’ dress.