Shorter Prose Pieces | Page 5

T." and
"Materfamilias" will have all the real influence which their
letters--excellent letters both of them-- certainly deserve.
I turn first to Mr. Huyshe's second letter, and the drawing that
accompanies it; but before entering into any examination of the theory
contained in each, I think I should state at once that I have absolutely
no idea whether this gentleman wears his hair long or short, or his cuffs
back or forward, or indeed what he is like at all. I hope he consults his
own comfort and wishes in everything which has to do with his dress,
and is allowed to enjoy that individualism in apparel which he so
eloquently claims for himself, and so foolishly tries to deny to others;
but I really could not take Mr. Wentworth Huyshe's personal
appearance as any intellectual basis for an investigation of the

principles which should guide the costume of a nation. I am not
denying the force, or even the popularity, of the "'Eave arf a brick"
school of criticism, but I acknowledge it does not interest me. The
gamin in the gutter may be a necessity, but the gamin in discussion is a
nuisance. So I will proceed at once to the real point at issue, the value
of the late eighteenth-century costume over that worn in the second
quarter of the seventeenth: the relative merits, that is, of the principles
contained in each. Now, as regards the eighteenth-century costume, Mr.
Wentworth Huyshe acknowledges that he has had no practical
experience of it at all; in fact he makes a pathetic appeal to his friends
to corroborate him in his assertion, which I do not question for a
moment, that he has never been "guilty of the eccentricity" of wearing
himself the dress which he proposes for general adoption by others.
There is something so naive and so amusing about this last passage in
Mr. Huyshe's letter that I am really in doubt whether I am not doing
him a wrong in regarding him as having any serious, or sincere, views
on the question of a possible reform in dress; still, as irrespective of any
attitude of Mr. Huyshe's in the matter, the subject is in itself an
interesting one, I think it is worth continuing, particularly as I have
myself worn this late eighteenth-century dress many times, both in
public and in private, and so may claim to have a very positive right to
speak on its comfort and suitability. The particular form of the dress I
wore was very similar to that given in Mr. Godwin's handbook, from a
print of Northcote's, and had a certain elegance and grace about it
which was very charming; still, I gave it up for these reasons:- After a
further consideration of the laws of dress I saw that a doublet is a far
simpler and easier garment than a coat and waistcoat, and, if buttoned
from the shoulder, far warmer also, and that tails have no place in
costume, except on some Darwinian theory of heredity; from absolute
experience in the matter I found that the excessive tightness of
knee-breeches is not really comfortable if one wears them constantly;
and, in fact, I satisfied myself that the dress is not one founded on any
real principles. The broad-brimmed hat and loose cloak, which, as my
object was not, of course, historical accuracy but modern ease, I had
always worn with the costume in question, I have still retained, and
find them most comfortable.

Well, although Mr. Huyshe has no real experience of the dress he
proposes, he gives us a drawing of it, which he labels, somewhat
prematurely, "An ideal dress." An ideal dress of course it is not;
"passably picturesque," he says I may possibly think it; well, passably
picturesque it may be, but not beautiful, certainly, simply because it is
not founded on right principles, or, indeed, on any principles at all.
Picturesqueness one may get in a variety of ways; ugly things that are
strange, or unfamiliar to us, for instance, may be picturesque, such as a
late sixteenth-century costume, or a Georgian house. Ruins, again, may
be picturesque, but beautiful they never can be, because their lines are
meaningless. Beauty, in fact, is to be got only from the perfection of
principles; and in "the ideal dress" of Mr. Huyshe there are no ideas or
principles at all, much less the perfection of either. Let us examine it,
and see its faults; they are obvious to any one who desires more than a
"Fancy-dress ball" basis for costume. To begin with, the hat and boots
are all wrong. Whatever one wears on the extremities, such as the feet
and head, should, for the sake of comfort, be made of a soft material,
and for the sake of freedom