The Perfect Gentleman | Page 4

since Adam's apron has any complete garment, or
practical suit of clothes, been devised--except for sea-bathing--that a
busy man could slip on in the morning and off again at night. All our
indignation to the contrary, we prefer the complicated and difficult: we
enjoy our buttons; we are withheld only by our queer sex-pride from
wearing garments that button up in the back--indeed, on what we
frankly call our 'best clothes,' we have the buttons though we dare not
button with them. The one costume that a man could slip on at night
and off again in the morning has never, if he could help it, been worn in
general society, and is now outmoded by a pretty little coat and
pantaloons of soft material and becoming color. We come undressed;
but behold! thousands of years before we were born, it was decided that
we must be dressed as soon as possible afterward, and clothes were
made for us while it was yet in doubt whether we would be a little
gentleman or a little lady. And so a man's first clothes are cunningly
fashioned to do for either; worse still,--a crying indignity that, oh, thank
Heaven, he cannot remember in maturity,--he is forcibly valeted by a
woman, very likely young and attractive, to whom he has never been
formally introduced.
But with this nameless, speechless, and almost invertebrate thing that
he once was--this little kicking Maeterlinck (if I may so call it) between
the known and the unknown worlds--the mature self-dresser will hardly
concern himself. Rather, it may be, will he contemplate the amazing
revolution which, in hardly more than a quarter-century, has reversed
public opinion, and created a free nation which, no longer regarding a
best-dresser with fine democratic contempt, now seeks, with fine
democratic unanimity, to be a best-dresser itself. Or perhaps, smiling,
he will recall Dr. Jaeger, that brave and lonely spirit who sought to
persuade us that no other garment is so comfortable, so hygienic, so
convenient, and so becoming to all figures, as the union suit--and that it
should be worn externally, with certain modifications to avoid arrest.
His photograph, thus attired, is stamped on memory: a sensible,

bearded gentleman, inclining to stoutness, comfortably dressed in
eye-glasses and a modified union suit. And then, almost at the same
moment, the Clothing Industry, perhaps inspired by the doctor's
courage and informed by his failure, started the revolution, since
crowned by critical opinion, in a Sunday newspaper, that 'The
American man, considering him in all the classes that constitute
American society, is to-day the best-dressed, best-kept man in the
world.'
Forty or fifty years ago no newspaper could plausibly have made that
statement, and, if it had, its office would probably have been wrecked
by a mob of insulted citizens; but the Clothing Industry knew us better
than Dr. Jaeger, better even than we knew ourselves. Its ideal picture of
a handsome, snappy young fellow, madly enjoying himself in
exquisitely fitting, ready-to-wear clothes, stirred imaginations that had
been cold and unresponsive to the doctor's photograph. We admired the
doctor for his courage, but we admired the handsome, snappy young
fellow for his looks; nay, more, we jumped in multitudes to the
conclusion, which has since been partly borne out, that ready-to-wear
clothes would make us all look like him. And so, in all the classes that
constitute American society (which I take to include everybody who
wears a collar), the art of dressing, formerly restricted to the few,
became popular with the many. Other important and necessary
industries--the hatters, the shoemakers, the shirtmakers, the cravatters,
the hosiers, even the makers of underwear--hurried out of hiding; and
soon, whoever had eyes to look could study that handsome, snappy
young fellow in every stage of costume,--for the soap-makers also saw
their opportunity,--from the bath up.
The tailor survived, thanks probably to the inevitable presence of
Doubting Thomas in any new movement; but he, too, has at last seen
the light. I read quite recently his announcement that in 1919 men's
clothes would be 'sprightly without conspicuousness; dashing without
verging on extremes; youthful in temperament and inspirational.' Some
of us, it appears, remain self-conscious and a little afraid to snap; and
there the tailor catches us with his cunningly conceived 'sprightly
without conspicuousness.' Unlike the vers-libre poetess who would fain

'go naked in the street and walk unclothed into people's
parlors,'--leaving, one imagines, an idle but deeply interested gathering
on the sidewalk,--we are timid about extremes. We wish to dash--but
within reasonable limits. Nor, without forcing the note, would we
willingly miss an opportunity to inspire others, or commit the
affectation of concealing a still youthful temperament.
A thought for the tablet: As a man dresses, so he is.
Thirty or forty years ago there were born, and lived in a