FASHION IN DRESS
Mr. Punch`s history of modern England, Volume I—1841-1857 | ||
6. FASHION IN DRESS
IT is a noteworthy sign of the times that between 1841 and 1857 the specific references to the dress of men in the text of Punch are much more numerous than those dealing with the vagaries of female attire. The balance inclines in the contrary direction in the pictures which, when tested by old daguerreotypes and the contents of family albums, form a substantially correct and illuminating commentary on the evolution of fashion in women's dress. So we begin with the ladies, with the double proviso that Leech and Doyle and their brother artists on Punch were not fashion-plate designers, and that the charms and extravagances of the modish world which they depicted were drawn mainly from the Metropolis. Punch was a Londoner, even a Cockney, and throws little light on the social life of the provinces.
To speak roughly, fashion in women's dress is subject to two great alternating influences—in the direction of elongation or of lateral extension. In the 'forties and 'fifties the tendency was steadily in the second direction and away from the slim elegance which has been the aim of the modistes of recent years. Long, "mud-bedraggled" dresses are, it is true, condemned in 1844, but width rather than length was the prevailing feature. It was the age of flounces, and this expansive tendency culminated, in the mid-'fifties, in the reign of the crinoline, against which Punch waged for many years a truceless but, as he himself admitted, a wholly ineffectual warfare. The first indication of the coming portent is to be found in the annus mirabilis of 1848, when an "air-tube dress extender" is shown in a picture. This, however, was a single hoop and comparatively modest in its circumference. The crinoline, in its full amplitude, did not invade London until 1856. Thenceforward, hardly a number is free from satire and caricature of this exuberant monstrosity, and
EASIER SAID THAN DONE
MASTER OF THE HOUSE: "Oh, Fred, my boy—when dinner is ready, you
take Mrs. Furbelow downstairs!"
[Description: This cartoon, which satirizes fashion, shows a woman wearing a
dress whose crinoline skirt is so mammoth that it fills the room, restricting her movement.
]GRAND CHARGE OF PERAMBULATORS—AND DEFEAT OF SWELLS
[Description: In this cartoon, "Grand Charge of Perambulators," women pushing baby carriages crowd the sidewalk, forcing the elegantly dressed gentlemen to walk in the street.]ILLUSTRATION FROM AN UNPUBLISHED NOVEL
[Description: In this cartoon, "Illustration from an Unpublished Novel," a woman wearing a huge crinoline skirt prepares to cross a street. A gentleman attempts to escort her across, but in order to find room on the sidewalk he must stand half-upon a lightpost.]WHAT MUST BE THE NEXT FASHION IN BONNETS
[Description: This cartoon shows women strolling down a street carrying parasols to protect their complexions from the sun. Behind one pair of women, a man follows carrying their bonnets, while a boy bears his mistress's bonnet on a stand. ]PLAIN
[Description: This drawing, taken from Leech's illustrations for Surtee's 1860 novel "Plain or Ringlets," illustrates a plain hairstyle. The female model wears her hair up in a sleek bun at the nape of her neck.]RINGLETS
[Description: This illustration, taken from Leech's illustrations for Surtee's 1860 novel "Plain or Ringlets," shows a woman wearing her hair in elaborate ringlets.]This was the age of flounces and crinolines; it was also the age of ringlets. Bands and braids and hair nets are features of early Victorian coiffure, but ringlets were undoubtedly the favourite mode for full dress occasions. The fashion lasted for a good many years. You will find it in the ballroom scene depicted by Leech in 1847, and Leech illustrated Surtees's novel Plain or Ringlets? in 1860. Of the "plain" variety of hairdressing there are several good examples in Punch, notably the head given above, with which
ÆSTHETIC PIONEERS
MRS. TURTLEDOVE: "Dearest Alfred! Will you decide now what we shall
have for dinner?"
MR. TURTLEDOVE: "Let me see, poppet. We had a wafer yesterday—
suppose we have a roast butterfly to-day."
[Description: The cartoon "Aesthetic Pioneers" satirizes
the habits of aesthetes. A young man, whose hair is tousled and who wears
a bandana and a vest, reclines on a sofa, staring intently at his knee.
His wife stands over him and asks him what he will have
for dinner, to which he replies, "We had a wafer yesterday—
suppose we have a roast butterfly to-day."]In the mid-'fifties, it may be noted, it was the fashion for women to wear gold and silver dust in their hair. In 1854 it was often dressed à l'impératrice in imitation of the Empress Eugénie, and Punch satirizes as an absurdity the general adoption of a coiffure unsuited to people of certain ages, features, and positions—a wide scope for his wit. Tight lacing is seldom noted, and in one respect the ladies of the time were exempt from censure: high heels had not yet come in, or, if they had, they escaped Punch's vigilant eye. In the main Leech, on whose pencil the burden of social commentary fell, was a genial satirist of feminine foibles. Whether they were dancing or riding or bathing, walking or doing nothing, the young women
MERMAIDS AT PLAY
[Description: Leech's "Mermaids at Play" shows young women wearing bathing-dresses splashing in the water. To preserve propriety, they enter the water from a tunnel leading out of the dressing room. ]Turning to male attire we have to note that the main features of men's dress as we know it was already established, though in regard to colour, details, and decoration the influence of the Regency period still made itself felt. Trousers were first generally introduced in the Army (see Parkes's Hygiene) at the time of the Peninsular War, but pantaloons—the tight-fitting nether garments which superseded knee-breeches late in the eighteenth century, and were secured at the ankles with ribbons and straps, were fashionable in the 'forties. You will see no trousers, as we know them to-day, in the illustrations to Pickwick, and in the early 'forties pantaloons appear in Punch's illustrations of fashionable wear at dances. The cut of the "clawhammer" dress-coat does not differ from that of to-day, but it was often of blue cloth with brass buttons; shirts were frilled, and waistcoats of gold-sprigged
BATHING WOMAN: "Master Franky wouldn't cry! No! Not he!—He'll come to his Martha, and bathe like a man!"
[Description: In this cartoon, a fat old woman wearing a long bathing gown and a bonnet stands in the water and calls to a screaming child, who is standing under an awning and resisting coming into the water. ] WHY, INDEED!
PERCEPTIVE CHILD: "Mamma, dear! Why do those gentlemen dress
themselves like the funny little men in the Noah's Ark?"
[Description: "Why, Indeed!" shows the backs of three young men standing arm in arm;
all wear top hats and overcoats and carry walking sticks,
causing a child to point at them.]A MOST ALARMING SWELLING!
[Description: In this cartoon, four pretentious young men stand in a line showing off their fancy clothes: plaid pants, oversized ties, chimney pot hats, and other ridiculous fashions. ]Take an easy and well-cut morning jacket of the form no longer confined to, the stableyard or barrack room, but admitted alike into breakfast parlour and country house, or the hanging paletot with a waistcoat, not scrimp and tight, but long and ample, and wide and well-made trousers of any of the neutral-tinted woollen fabrics that our northern looms are so, prolific in; and we assert fearlessly that a broad-leafed and flexible sombrero of grey, or brown or black felt may be worn with such a costume, to complete a dress at once becoming and congruous.
The resources of modern newspaper enterprise were not then available to enable Punch to realize his ideal, but he continued to tilt at the "chimney-pot," though he never succeeded in dethroning it. High collars are caricatured in 1854. At first they were wide as well as high, but the "all round collar" of which Punch has a picture in 1854 approximates to the lofty cincture worn by the present Lord Spencer when a member of the House of Commons. The monocle was not
"SIBBY"—1843
[Description: This caricature of Colonel Sibthorp presents him as a spoon; his face is the round head of the spoon, while his body is the handle. The most prominent feature of the drawing is his square monocle, which the caricature mocks.]If this was the age of ringlets for women, it was the age of whiskers, short but ambrosial, for men. The long "Piccadilly weepers" of Lord Dundreary were a slightly later development, but Leech's "swells" all wear whiskers in the 'forties and 'fifties. (Is not the habit immortalized in the mid-Victorian comic song: "The Captain with his whiskers cast a sly glance at me"?) They wore small moustaches, too, and occasionally chin-tufts. Under the head of "Moustaches for the Million," Punch, in 1847, ironically suggests the placing of sham moustaches on the market for the benefit of seedy bucks, swell-mobsmen, inmates of the Queen's Bench prison, and all impostors who affected a social status to which they had no claim or which they had forfeited. But what he calls the "Moustache Movement" in the early 'fities was undoubtedly inspired by military example, and was followed by the fashion of growing beards. The necessity of campaigning became the adornment of peace, and in 1854 and 1855 we find pictures of tremendously bearded railway guards and ticket-collectors, whose appearance terrifies old ladies and gentlemen.
PROCTOR (to Undergraduate): "Pray, Sir, will you be so good as to tell me whether you are a member of the University, or a Scotch terrier?"
[Description: This cartoon shows an undergraduate wearing a fuzzy, hairy suit; he is confronted by a proctor wearing academic robes. The proctor doffs his hat and asks if the student is "a Scotch terrier." ]The vagaries of Military uniforms—apart from the intrusions of Prince Albert—call for separate treatment. The new and very skimpy shell-jacket introduced in 1848 evokes imaginary protests alike from stout and lean officers. The short, high-shouldered military cape is guyed in 1851. In 1854 Punch throws himself with great energy into the movement for the abolition of the high stock and the adoption of more rational and comfortable clothing—witness the verses, "Valour under difficulties," depicting the sufferings of a half-strangled militiaman; the caricature of the "New Albert Bonnet"; the cartoon in which Private Jones in a bearskin, black in the face from the strangulation of his stock, is afraid that his head is coming off; the ridiculous frogged tunic with a very low belt; and the comments on the Army Order, issued by Sidney Herbert in 1854, providing white linen covers for helmets and shakos as a protection against the heat. The sufferings endured by soldiers
RUDE BOY "O, look 'ere, Jim!—If 'ere ain't a Lobster bin and out-growed his cloak!"
[Description: This cartoon shows two boys following a solider and a woman as they walk down the street. The boys make fun of the soldier for wearing a high shouldered, short military cape that makes him look like a lobster. ]"Æsthetical" was noticed as early as 1847 in a dig at New Curiosities of Literature, and in 1853 we read of an "æsthetic tea," at which "the atmosphere was one of architecture, painting, stained glass, brasses, heraldry, wood carving, madrigals, chants, motets, mysticism and theology."
FASHION IN DRESS
Mr. Punch`s history of modern England, Volume I—1841-1857 | ||