What Dress Makes of Us | Page 9

sketch No. 44.
A study of the lines of the form will not only aid one in adopting a

more becoming style of dress, but will sharpen the artistic perceptions,
thus adding to the joy of life.
[Illustration: NO. 44]
"A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face" and should be clothed
so that its lines may appear at their best, and not be exaggerated and
caricatured. The figure is seen many more times than the face, and the
defects of the former are more conspicuous than those of the latter.
Do not be unjust to your beautiful body, the temple of your soul; above
all, do not caricature it by selecting your clothes with indiscriminating
taste.
NO MATTER WHAT THE PREVAILING MODE THESE RULES
MAY BE PRACTICALLY APPLIED.
CHAPTER IV.
HOW PLUMP AND THIN BACKS SHOULD BE CLOTHED.
She was from the middle-West, and despite the fact that she was
married, and that twenty-one half-blown blush roses had enwreathed
her last birthday cake, she had the alert, quizzical brightness of a child
who challenges everybody and everything that passes with the
countersign--"Why?" She investigated New York with unabashed
interest, and, like many another superior provincial, she freely
expressed her likes and dislikes for its traditions, show-places, and
people with a commanding and amusing audacity.
Her objections were numerous. The chief one that made a deep
impression upon her metropolitan friends was her disapproval of Sarah
Bernhardt's acting. The middle-Westerner, instead of becoming ecstatic
in her admiration, and at a loss for adjectives at the appearance of the
divine Sarah, merely perked at the great French artist for some time and
then demanded, querulously: "What's the matter with her? Why does
she play so much with her back to the audience? I don't like it."

It was a shock to the adorers of Sarah Bernhardt to hear her so
irreverently criticised. They loyally united in her defence, and sought to
squelch the revolter by loftily explaining that the actress turned her
back so often to the audience because she had such a noble, generous
nature and desired to give the other actors a chance. "She lets them take
the centre of the stage, as they say in the profession," remarked one of
the party, who prided herself upon being versed in the argot of the
theatre.
"But she plays with her back to the audience when she is speaking and
acting, and everybody else on the stage is still but herself," petulantly
insisted the Western Philistine, showing no signs of defeat.
The situation was not wholly agreeable. The worshippers of Sarah
could say nothing more in justification of her turning her back on them,
but, with true feminine logic, concluded, "If Sarah Bernhardt turns her
back on the audience it is right, and that is all there is to say."
Just at this dramatic moment a voice from the adjoining row
providentially interposed. The voice belonged to a well-known
exponent of physical culture, who was never so happy as when
instructing the intellectually needy. She said: "I will tell you why she
plays with her back towards the audience more than any other actress
upon the stage to-day." The middle-Westerner, no less impressed than
her metropolitan friends, listened eagerly.
The exponent of straight backs and high chests explained didactically:
"The back is wonderfully expressive; indeed it is full of vital
expression. Bernhardt knows this better than any other actress because
she has studied statuary with the passion of a sculptor, and because she
understands that, not only the face, but the entire physical structure, is
capable of expressing dramatic emotions. Strong feeling and action
may be strikingly revealed by the back. Imprecations, denunciations,
even prayers, seem to be charged with more force when an actress
delivers them with her back turned, or half-turned to the audience.
"Bernhardt's back expresses a storm of fury when she imprecates
vengeance," said the voice of authority. "Not only on the stage is the

expression of the back discernible, and a knowledge of its character
valuable, but in every-day life in drawing-room and street. How many
women consider their backs when they dress? Look at the backs here
deformed by laces and fallals," she went on contemptuously. "The
majority of women never look below their chins and I believe not one
in ten ever looks thoughtfully at her back," she said emphatically.
The dramatic value of a well-poised, expressive back may only concern
the thousands of young women who are aspiring to be a Sarah
Bernhardt or a Rachel; but a knowledge of what constitutes a properly
and artistically clothed back should be of interest to all women in
civilized countries.
That there is much truth in the assertion that "the majority of women
never look below their chins, and not one in ten ever looks thoughtfully