Shorter Prose Pieces | Page 7

laws of dress. There is
not a single rule of right costume which is not violated in it, for it gives
us stiffness, tightness and discomfort instead of comfort, freedom and
ease.
Now here, on the other hand, is a dress which, being founded on
principles, can serve us as an excellent guide and model; it has been
drawn for me, most kindly, by Mr. Godwin from the Duke of
Newcastle's delightful book on horsemanship, a book which is one of
our best authorities on our best era of costume. I do not of course
propose it necessarily for absolute imitation; that is not the way in
which one should regard it; it is not, I mean, a revival of a dead
costume, but a realization of living laws. I give it as an example of a
particular application of principles which are universally right. This
rationally dressed young man can turn his hat brim down if it rains, and
his loose trousers and boots down if he is tired--that is, he can adapt his
costume to circumstances; then he enjoys perfect freedom, the arms and
legs are not made awkward or uncomfortable by the excessive tightness
of narrow sleeves and knee-breeches, and the hips are left quite
untrammelled, always an important point; and as regards comfort, his
jacket is not too loose for warmth, nor too close for respiration; his
neck is well protected without being strangled, and even his ostrich
feathers, if any Philistine should object to them, are not merely
dandyism, but fan him very pleasantly, I am sure, in summer, and when
the weather is bad they are no doubt left at home, and his cloak taken
out. THE VALUE OF THE DRESS IS SIMPLY THAT EVERY
SEPARATE ARTICLE OF IT EXPRESSES A LAW. My young man
is consequently apparelled with ideas, while Mr. Huyshe's young man
is stiffened with facts; the latter teaches one nothing; from the former
one learns everything. I need hardly say that this dress is good, not
because it is seventeenth century, but because it is constructed on the

true principles of costume, just as a square lintel or pointed arch is good,
not because one may be Greek and the other Gothic, but because each
of them is the best method of spanning a certain-sized opening, or
resisting a certain weight. The fact, however, that this dress was
generally worn in England two centuries and a half ago shows at least
this, that the right laws of dress have been understood and realized in
our country, and so in our country may be realized and understood
again. As regards the absolute beauty of this dress and its meaning, I
should like to say a few words more. Mr. Wentworth Huyshe solemnly
announces that "he and those who think with him" cannot permit this
question of beauty to be imported into the question of dress; that he and
those who think with him take "practical views on the subject," and so
on. Well, I will not enter here into a discussion as to how far any one
who does not take beauty and the value of beauty into account can
claim to be practical at all. The word practical is nearly always the last
refuge of the uncivilized. Of all misused words it is the most evilly
treated. But what I want to point out is that beauty is essentially organic;
that is, it comes, not from without, but from within, not from any added
prettiness, but from the perfection of its own being; and that
consequently, as the body is beautiful, so all apparel that rightly clothes
it must be beautiful also in its construction and in its lines.
I have no more desire to define ugliness than I have daring to define
beauty; but still I would like to remind those who mock at beauty as
being an unpractical thing of this fact, that an ugly thing is merely a
thing that is badly made, or a thing that does not serve it purpose; that
ugliness is want of fitness; that ugliness is failure; that ugliness is
uselessness, such as ornament in the wrong place, while beauty, as
some one finely said, is the purgation of all superfluities. There is a
divine economy about beauty; it gives us just what is needful and no
more, whereas ugliness is always extravagant; ugliness is a spendthrift
and wastes its material; in fine, ugliness--and I would commend this
remark to Mr. Wentworth Huyshe--ugliness, as much in costume as in
anything else, is always the sign that somebody has been unpractical.
So the costume of the future in England, if it is founded on the true
laws of freedom, comfort, and adaptability to circumstances, cannot fail
to be most beautiful also, because beauty is