GLORY OF THE NEW GARTER.
BY JOHN A. MORRIS.
A FEW seasons ago when Audrey Beardsleyism was the
rage and Oscar Wilde a lion in "sassiety" gay plaid
stockings in Persian or Audrey Beardsley designs sold as
high as $7.50 a pair, enough I should say to enable a poor
devil like me to live a week. But this is not all. For
spring or June brides of the "swell London sassiety set,"
fine white silk stockings cost $22.50 a pair must go with
a wedding gown and trousseau equally as extravagant, the
climax of fashion's freakish ways being the rose-made
garter worn over said stockings. Parisian society which
smells to heaven in fashionable odors has now originated
garters made of primroses, harebells, narcissus, violets
and lillies, the same being worn by the ladies at balls and
receptions in Paris. Knots of blossoms are caught among
the thick flouncings and ruches of the petticoats; and
even the embroidered corset has its little boquet attachment.
The inside flounce of the most delicate evening
gowns is made entirely of flowers, and the newest garter
is simply made to conform to the general harmony of
fragrance and color.
The appropriateness of a flower for garter-wearing
purposes is considered according to the degree and
strength of its perfume, the most highly perfumed being
the most highly appropriate. Violets are in great favor,
and are used for garters worn with lilac, lavander, delicate
green or white costumes. Again, as American women
love to ape the fashionable society of gay Paris it may
not be very long before in the great cities of the country
we may not only have the American morphine fiend and
cologne-drinker, but also the perfume faddist. Not long
ago a Paris druggist communicated to a few French
"sassiety" women the plan of perfuming the skin by
means of hypodermic injections. The favorite distilled
odors are violet and lavender. I know not how true it is,
but I heard that this fashion is already being taken up
by some of New York city's fashionable freaks of
"sassiety" women.
I have recently been engaged in reading two very
interesting histories, the one of the rose, the other of perfume,
in reading which I was deeply impressed with the fact
that all the civilizations of the past, previous to their
downfall, had their rose fetes, their festivals of flowers
where luxury and license ruled, where effeminacy ruled
supreme, their perfumed halls and extravagant balls and
soirées. Before the fall of the Roman Empire, the wealthy
abandoned themselves to pleasure, luxury and licentiousness
and such expressions as "living in the midst of roses,"
and "sleeping on roses" had a deep and tragic meaning.
Seneca speaks of Smyndiride who could not sleep if one
of the rose petals with which his bed was spread happened
to be curled. Cicero alludes to the then prevailing custom
among the Romans of reclining at the table on couches
covered with roses. Ah, my jeweled buddies, there were
Adonises in those days!
When Cleopatra, the perfumed serpent of the Nile, went
into Cilicia to meet Mark Antony, she gave him for several
days a festival such as the gods themselves would not
blush to participate in. She had placed in the banqueting
hall twelve couches large enough to hold three guests.
Purple tapestry interwoven with gold covered the walls,
golden vases admirably executed and enriched with
precious stones stood on a magnificent gold floor. On the
fourth day the queen carried her sumptuousness so far as
to pay a talent ($600.00 in our money) for a quantity
of roses, with which she caused the floor of the hall to be
covered to a depth of eighteen inches. These flowers
were retained in a very fine net, to allow the guests to
walk over them. According to Suetonius, Nero (the
fiddler of burning Rome and the tyrant par excellence
of the ancient day) gave a fete at one time on the
Gulf of Baiae when inns were established on the banks,
and ladies of noble blood played hostesses to the occasion,
the roses alone costing more than four million of sesterces,
or $100,000. As the hag Tofana was the inventor of a
new and deadly poison, so Lucius Aurelius Verus was the
inventor of a new species of luxury. He had a most
magnificent couch made, on which four raised cushions
closed in on all sides by a very thin net, and made of leaves
of roses. Heliogabalus, celebrated for every kind of vice
and luxury, caused roses to be crushed with the kernels
of the pine (pinus maritima) in order to increase the
perfume. Roses were, by the order of this same emperor,
scattered over the couches, halls and even the portierres
of the palaces were decorated with the same. A profusion
of flowers of every kind, lilies, violets, hyacinths, narcissus,
etc., filled great quantities of space. Gallien, another
cruel and luxurious princeling, lay under arbors of roses
sometimes varying the performance by reclining on beds of
roses. Before her downfall Rome could spend millions on
her royal tables, support the dignity of a single senator
at $80,000 a year, employ courts of sycophants and
flatterers, impose taxes at the pleasure of her ruler,
declare any complaint treason, marry her daughters for
money and title, employ notaries to attest the fatness of
her banquet fowls, punish a servant for disobedience and
trivial offenses with death, while letting the monied thief
and murderer go free with a mild reprimand, and making
slaves and menials of the profoundest philosophers. The
dancer and the buffoon received the homage and the
adoration which in the golden age of Greece under the
reign of Pericles only scholars, philosophers and artists
received. Poverty in those days was crime, so in ours!
Augustine of Rome was utterly ignored. "In exact
proportion to the sum of money a man keeps in his chest,"
says Juvenal, "is the credit given to his oath." Verily,
reader, these days at the end of the nineteenth century
are greatly similar to those last days of Rome. Yvette
Gilbert, the songstress of the vile, the recitationist of the
vulgar, and Le Loie Fuller, the dancer of the serpentine,
live off the fat of the land every day. The songstress
and the kickeress get their thousands of dollars per week,
while "the poor devil of a workingman" must be satisfied
with a dollar a day cash and barrels of unlimited
confidence. Caligula's horse wore a collar of pearls and
drank from an ivory trough. Nero fiddled while Rome
was burning. Cleveland when president drank his morning
coffee from a cup worth $100 at least, and went
fishing at Buzzard's Bay while the ship of state was plunging
among the rocks and breakers of bonded indebtedness.
Conde spent three thousand crowns to deck his palace at
Chantilly. The Duke of Albuquerque had forty silver
ladders. The expression then, as now, was often heard, "the
rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer."
San Pedro, Cal., November 11.