Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3811/My Trousseau
Having been a bachelor from my earliest youth I suppose I ought to be accustomed to the condition; but the fact remains that I miss something—something which only a wedding supplies.
Curiously enough this want is not a wife. I have been without one so long that I should not know what to do with her if I had one. I should probably overlook her, and she would become atrophied or die of neglect or thirst. Neither do I crave a home of my own; nor golden-haired children to climb up my knee. I can do without these accessories.
But what I do hunger for and what I will have is a trousseau. Why the acquisition of a trousseau should be a purely feminine prerogative I have never been able to understand. A bride without a trousseau is generally regarded as an incomplete thing—a poached-egg without toast; a salad without dressing. But the bridegroom without a trousseau is a recognised institution. True, he has new clothes, both seen and unseen, but this is not a trousseau; it is merely a "replenishment of his wardrobe." His least disreputable old things are "made to do"; and nobody thinks slightingly of him if he attends his wedding in a re-cuffed shirt or in boots that have been resoled. A girl, however, would as soon think of entering Paradise with a second-hand halo as she would contemplate being married in anything that was not aggressively new.
Thus it is that before my wish can be consummated I have two honoured conventions to defy: that only a girl may possess a trousseau, and that a marriage is a necessary condition to the acquiring of it. Fortunately I am strong-minded. A long course of Mrs. Humphry Ward's homilies has given me no little facility in achieving this attribute, and I am determined that I will change neither my sex nor my status.
Now, I have prepared a list, just as—I suppose—every girl does. In the first place I am going to indulge in the hitherto undreamt-of luxury of a surfeit of dress-shirts. No one who has not experienced life on two dress-shirts—one in wear, the other in the wash—can quite understand what this will mean to me. Men like Sir Joseph Beecham, Mr. Mallaby-Deeley, Mr. Solly Joel, Lord Howard de Walden, and others, who, I daresay, have four or even five, cannot know what it is to feel that their evening's refreshment and entertainment depend on their finding the French chalk or the india-rubber.
Therefore I am making no stint in this matter. I am having fifteen dress-shirts, so that there may be one for wear each day in the week, seven in the laundry, and one over for emergencies—like Parsifal, that begins in the middle of the afternoon. I mean to be similarly lavish in the matter of collars and handkerchiefs. The number of the former which I am buying amounts almost to an epidemic; while the extent of my commission in the latter is the result of lessons learnt in the hard school of experience. I say unhesitatingly that the man who tries to get through life on a mere dozen handkerchiefs is simply begging for disaster, as, however methodical in their use he may be, a carelessly-caught cold may any day upset his reckoning and leave him at a loose end; sometimes scarcely that. Hence I am doing this part of my trousseau in princely fashion. I am having half a gross of them.
Then there is my slumber-wear. For years I have hungered for silk ones, but have had no conscientious excuse for appeasing my appetite. To buy silk pyjamas in cold blood has hitherto seemed to me to be sheer cynical extravagance; but now I feel that circumstances justify me in my action, for it would be a very sorry thing for me to encounter a burglar or cope with a fire clad in apparel that would not be up to the standard of the rest of my wardrobe.
Now, I am a great believer in dressing for the spirit of the moment; therefore I have resolved upon a pretty colour-scheme for my night-wear. My pyjamas are to be of tints conducive to refreshing rest, namely and severally white, lemon, light pink, and pale green—an idea which I candidly confess was inspired by the spectacle of a Neapolitan ice. If you think that this is merely an idle whim, just imagine endeavouring to sleep in pyjamas patterned like an Axminster carpet or a Scotch tartan. No wonder Macbeth "murdered sleep" if he was arrayed in garments of his club-colours!
I have brought the same aesthetic sense to bear upon my choice of ties and socks: greys and blacks for times of grave political crises; fawn, buff, pearl, moose—I am not sure that this is a colour, but it sounds quite possible—for brighter hours; and colours familiar to every student of spectroscopy for halcyon days of rejoicing—the opening of the Royal Academy, the Handel Festival, the return of Harry Lauder, or the elevation of Mr. Bernard Shaw to the peerage.
As for externals, suffice it to say that they will be en suite, and that I intend to introduce just a little touch of originality into my trousers. I am going to have them made with spats sewn to the leg-ends in order to save time and trouble in dressing.
In short, I have forgotten nothing, except spare studs, and I think it is quite likely that I shall remember them too in course of time. I have even gone so far as to fix a day for a dress rehearsal. But first I shall invite my friends, as is the way with brides-elect, to a private view of my trousseau, when they shall see all of it spread upon the coverlet of my bed, over the backs of my chairs, or hanging in serried ranks in my wardrobe.
And now nothing more remains to be done but to raise the necessary funds, and with this object in view I have instructed my broker to draw my money out of the Savings Bank. I am expecting a postal-order almost any moment.