Dress as a Fine Art Part 3

CHAPTER V.

THE FEET.

The same bad taste which insists upon a small waist, let the height and proportions of the figure be what they will, decrees that a small foot is essential to beauty.

Size is considered of more importance than form; and justly so if it is a _sine qua non_ that the foot must be small, because the efforts that are made to diminish its size generally render it deformed. We have before mentioned that to endeavor to diminish the size of the human body in a particular part, is like tying a string round the middle of a pillow; it only makes it larger at the extremities. It is so with the waist, it is so with the foot. If it be crippled in length, or in width across the toes, it spreads over the instep and sides. The Italians and other nations of the south of Europe have smaller hands and feet than the Anglo-Saxons; and as this fact is generally known, it is astonis.h.i.+ng that people of sense should persist in crippling themselves merely for the reputation of having small feet. Here again we have to complain of poets and romance writers; ladies would not have pinched their feet into small shoes, if these worthies had not sung the praises of "tiny feet."

"Her feet, beneath her petticoat, Like little mice, stole in and out, As if they feared the light."

Nor are painters--portrait painters, we mean, and living ones too--it is needless however, to mention names--entirely free from blame for thus ministering to vanity and false taste. They have sacrificed truth to fas.h.i.+on in painting the feet smaller than they could possibly be in nature.

But it is not only with the endeavor to cripple their dimensions that we are inclined to quarrel. We object _in toto_ to the shape of the shoe, which bears but little resemblance to that of the foot. We have heard persons say that they could never see any beauty in a foot. No wonder, when they saw none but those that were deformed by corns and bunions. How unlike is such a foot to the beautiful little--for little it really is in this case--fat foot of a child, before its beauty has been spoiled by shoes, or even to those of the barefooted children one sees so frequently in the street. Were it not for these opportunities of seeing nature we, in this country, should have but little idea of the true shape of the human foot, except what we learn from statues.

According to a recent traveller, we must go to Egypt to see beautiful feet. It is impossible, he says, to see any thing more exquisite than the feet and hands of the female peasants. The same beauty is conspicuous in the Hindoo women.

Let us compare now the shape of the foot with that of the sole of a shoe. When the foot is placed on the ground, the toes spread out, the great toe is in a straight line with the inner side of the foot, and there is an opening between this and the second toe. The ancients availed themselves of this opening to pa.s.s through it one of the straps that suspended the sandal.

The moderns on the contrary press the toes closely together, in order to confine them within the limits of the shoe; the consequence is, that the end of the great toe is pressed towards the others, and out of the straight line, the joint becomes enlarged, and thus the foundation is laid for a bunion; while the toes, forced one upon another, become distorted and covered with corns.

One of the consequences of this imprisonment of our toes is, that, from being squeezed so closely together, they become useless. Let any one try the experiment of walking barefooted across the room, and while so doing look at the foot. The toes, when unfettered by the shoes, spread out and divide from one another, and the body rests on a wider and firmer base. We begin to find we have some movement in our toes; yet, how feeble is their muscular power, compared with that of persons who are unaccustomed to the use of shoes!

The Hindoo uses his toes in weaving; the Australian savage is as handy (if the term can be applied to feet) with this member, as another man is with his hands; it is the unsuspected instrument with which he executes his thefts. The country boy, who runs over the roof of a house like a cat, takes off his shoes before he attempts the hazardous experiment; he has a surer hold with his foot on the smooth slates and sloping roof. The exercise of the muscles of the foot has the effect of increasing the power of those of the calf of the leg; and the thinner the sole, and the more pliant the materials of which the shoe is made, the more the power is developed.

Dancing masters, who habitually wear thin shoes, have the muscles of the leg well developed, while ploughmen, who wear shoes with soles an inch thick, have very little calf to their leg. The French sabot is, we consider, better than the closely fitting shoe of our country people; because it is so large, that it requires some muscular exertion to keep it in its place. We have frequently seen French boys running in sabots, the foot rising at every step almost out of the unyielding wooden shoe. Wooden clogs and pattens are as bad as the thick shoes of the country people. When clogs are necessary, the sole should be made of materials which will yield to the motion of the foot. The American Indian's moccasins are a much better covering for the foot than our shoes.

If thick soles are objectionable by impeding the free movement of the limb, what shall we say to the high heel which was once so popular, and which threatens again to come into fas.h.i.+on? It is to be hoped, however, when the effects of wearing high heels are duly considered, that this pernicious custom will not make progress. It is well for their poor unfortunate votaries, that the introduction of certain fas.h.i.+ons is gradual; that both mind and body--perhaps we should be more correct in saying the person of the wearer and the eye of the spectator--are, step by step, prepared for the extreme point which certain fas.h.i.+ons attain; they have their rise, their culminating point, and their decline. The attempt to exchange the short waists, worn some thirty or forty years ago, for the very long waists seen during the past year, would have been unsuccessful; the transition would have been too great--too violent; the change was effected, but it was the work of many years. The same thing took place with regard to the high head-dresses which were so deservedly ridiculed by Addison, and in an equally marked degree with respect to high heels.

The shoes in the cut, after Gainsborough, (Fig. 71,) are fair specimens of what were in fas.h.i.+on in his time. Let the reader compare the line of the sole with that of the human foot placed, as nature intended it, flat on the ground. The heel was in some cases four and a half inches high; the line, therefore, must have been in this case, a highly inclined plane, undulating in its surface, like the "line of beauty" of Hogarth. The position of the foot is that of a dancer resting on the toes, excepting that the heel is supported, and the strain over the instep and contraction of the muscles of the back of the leg and heel must be considerable; so much so we are told, that the contraction of the latter becomes habitual; consequently, those persons who have accustomed themselves to the use of high heels, are never afterwards able to do without them. It is said that "pride never feels pain;" we should think the proverb was made for those who wear high heels, for we are told, although we cannot speak from personal experience, that the pain on first wearing shoes of this kind, in which the whole weight of the body seems to thrust the toes forward into the shoe, is excruciating; nothing but fas.h.i.+on could reconcile one to such voluntary suffering. The peas in the shoes of the pilgrims could scarcely be more painful.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 9.

Figure 66. From Rubens's "Descent from the Cross."

71. From a drawing by Gainsborough.

72. Woman of Myconia.

74. Queen Anne.

It was with some surprise that we found among M. Stackelberg's graceful costumes of modern Greece a pair of high-heeled shoes, (Fig. 72,) which might rival in ugliness and inconvenience any of those worn in England.

We have known an instance where the lady's heels were never less than an inch and a half high. We were sorry to observe some of these high-heeled shoes in the great exhibition, and still more so, to see that shoes with heels an inch high are likely to be fas.h.i.+onable this season. Could we look forward to this height as the limit of the fas.h.i.+on, we might reconcile ourselves to it for a time; but, judging from past experience, there is reason to fear that the heel will become continually higher, until it attains the elevation of former years. Not content with imprisoning our feet in tight shoes, and thereby distorting their form and weakening their muscular power, we are guilty of another violence towards nature. Nature has made our toes to turn inwards; when man is left to himself the toes naturally take this direction, though in a much less degree than in the infant.

The American Indian will trace a European by his footprints, which he detects by the turning out of the toes; a lesson we are taught in our childhood, and especially by our dancing master. Sir Joshua Reynolds used to say, "The gestures of children, being all dictated by nature, are graceful; affectation and distortion come in with the dancing master." Now, observe the consequence of turning out the toes. The inner ankle is bent downwards towards the ground, and the knees are drawn inwards, producing the deformity called knock-kneed; thus the whole limb is distorted, and consequently weakened; there is always a want of muscular power in the legs of those who turn their toes very much outwards. It must be remarked, however, that women, from the greater breadth of the frame at the hips, naturally turn the toes out more than men. In this point also, statues may be studied with advantage. Where form only is considered, it is generally safer to refer to examples of sculpture than painting; because in the latter, the artist is apt to lose sight of this primary object in his attention to color and form; besides, it is the sculptor only, who makes an exact image of a figure which is equally perfect, seen from all points of view. The painter makes only a pictorial or perspective representation of nature, as seen from one point of view only.

What pains we take to distort and disfigure the beautiful form that nature has bestowed upon the human race! Now building a tower on the head, then raising the heel at the expense of the toe; at one time confining the body in a case of whalebone, and compressing it at the waist like an hour gla.s.s; at another, surrounding it with the enormous and ungraceful hoop, till the outline of the figure is so altered, that a person can scarcely recognize her own shadow as that of a human being.

CHAPTER VI.

REMARKS ON PARTICULAR COSTUMES.

We must now offer a few brief remarks upon certain costumes which appear to us most worthy of our attention and study, for their general elegance and adaptation to the figure.

Of the modern Greek we have already spoken. The style of dress which has been immortalized by the pencil of Vandyck is considered among the most elegant that has ever prevailed in this country. It is not, however, faultless. The row of small curls around the face, however becoming to some persons, is somewhat formal; and although the general arrangement of the hair, which preserves the natural size and shape of the head, is more graceful than that of the time of Sir Joshua Reynolds, we think it would have been more pleasing had it left visible the line which divides the hair from the forehead. With regard to the dress itself, it is apparent, in the first place, that the figures are spoiled by stays; secondly, that the dress is cut too low in front; and thirdly, that the large sleeves sometimes give too great width in front to the shoulders. These defects are, in some degree, counterbalanced by the graceful flow of the ample drapery, and of the large sleeves, which are frequently widest at their lower part, and by the gently undulating line which unites the waist of the dress with the skirt. The Vandyck dress, with its voluminous folds, is, however, more appropriate to the inhabitants of palaces, than to the ordinary occupants of this working-day world. The drapery is too wide and flowing for convenience. The annexed cut, (Fig. 73,) representing Charlotte de la Tremouille, the celebrated Countess of Derby, exhibits some of the defects and many of the beauties of the Vandyck dress.

Lely's half-dressed figures may be pa.s.sed over without comment; they are draped, not dressed. Kneller's are more instructive on the subject of costume. The dress of Queen Anne, (Fig. 74,) in Kneller's portrait, is graceful and easy. The costume is a kind of transition between the Vandyck and Reynolds style. The sleeves are smaller at the shoulder than in the former, and larger at the lower part than in the latter; in fact, they resemble those now worn by the modern Greeks.

The dress is cut higher round the bust, and is longer in the waist than the Vandycks, while the undulating line uniting the body and skirt is still preserved. While such good examples were set by the painters--who were not, however, the inventors of the fas.h.i.+ons they painted--it is astonis.h.i.+ng that these graceful styles of dress should have been superseded in real life by the lofty head-dresses and preposterous fas.h.i.+ons which prevailed during the same period and long afterwards, and which even the ironical and severe remarks of Addison, in the "Spectator," were unable to banish from the circles of fas.h.i.+on.

Speaking of the dresses of ladies during the reigns of James II. and William III., Mr. Planche, in his "History of British Costumes," says, "The tower or commode was still worn, and the gowns and petticoats flounced and furbelowed, so that every part of the garment was in curl;" and a lady of fas.h.i.+on "looked like one of those animals," says the "Spectator," "which in the country we call a Friesland hen." But in 1711 we find Mr. Addison remarking, "The whole s.e.x is now dwarfed and shrunk into a race of beauties that seems almost another species.

I remember several ladies who were once nearly seven foot high, that at present want some inches of five. How they come to be thus curtailed I cannot learn; whether the whole s.e.x be at present under any penance which we know nothing of, or whether they have cast their head-dresses in order to surprise us with something in that kind which shall be entirely new: though I find most are of opinion they are at present like trees lopped and pruned, that will certainly sprout up and flourish with greater heads than before."

The costume of the time of Sir Joshua Reynolds, as treated by this great artist, though less splendid, appears to us, with the exception of the head-dress, nearly as graceful, and far more convenient than the Vandyck dress. It is more modest, more easy, and better adapted to show the true form of the shoulders, while the union of the body of the dress with the skirt is effected in the same graceful manner as in the Vandyck portraits. The materials of the drapery in the latter are generally silks and satins; of the former, it is frequently muslin and stuff of a soft texture, which clings more closely to the form. That much of the elegance of both styles of dress is to be attributed to the skill and good taste of the painters, is evident from an examination of portraits by contemporary artists. Much also may be ascribed to the taste of the wearer.

There are some people who, though habited in the best and richest clothes, never appear well dressed; their garments, rumpled and untidy, look as if they had been pitched on them, like hay, with a fork; while others, whose dress consists of the most homely materials, appear well dressed, from the neatness and taste with which their clothes are arranged.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pl. 10.

Figure 73. Charlotte de la Tremouille.

75. After Gainsborough.

76. After Gainsborough.

77. Costume of Mrs. Bloomer.

Many of the costumes of Gainsborough's portraits are elegant and graceful, with the frequent exception of the extravagant head-dress and the high-heeled shoes. The easy and very pleasing figure, (Fig. 75,) after this accomplished artist, is not exempt from the above defects.

In our next ill.u.s.tration, (Fig. 76,) Gainsborough has not been so happy. The lady is almost lost in her voluminous and fluttering drapery, and the dishevelled hair and the enormous hat give to the figure much of the appearance of a caricature.

Leaving now the caprices of fas.h.i.+on, we must notice a cla.s.s of persons who, from a religious motive, have resisted for two hundred years the tyranny of fas.h.i.+on, and, until recently, have transmitted the same form of dress from mother to daughter for nearly the same period of years. The ladies of the Society of Friends, or, as they are usually called, "Quakers," are still distinguished by the simplicity and neatness of their dress--the quiet drabs and browns of which frequently contrast with the richness of the material--and by the absence of all ornament and frippery. Every part of their dress is useful and convenient; it has neither frills, nor flounces, nor tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs to carry the dirt and get shabby before the dress itself, nor wide sleeves to dip in the plates and lap up the gravy and sauces, nor artificial flowers, nor bows of ribbons. The dress is long enough for decency, but not so long as to sweep the streets, as many dresses and shawls are daily seen to do. Some few years back the Quaker ladies might have been reproached with adhering to the letter, while they rejected the spirit, of their code of dress by adhering too literally to the costume handed down to them. The crowns of their caps were formerly made very high, and for this reason it was necessary that the crowns of their bonnets should be high enough to admit the cap crown; hence the peculiarly ugly and remarkable form of this part of the dress. The crown of the cap has, however, recently been lowered, and the Quaker ladies, with much good sense, have not only modified the form of their bonnets, but have also adopted the straw and drawn silk bonnet in their most simple forms. In the style of their dress, also, they occasionally approach so near the fas.h.i.+ons generally worn, that they are no longer distinguishable by the singularity of their dress, but by its simplicity and chasteness.

We venture now to devote a few words to the Bloomer costume, (Fig. 77,) although we are aware that we are treading on tender ground, especially as the costume involves a sudden and complete change in the dress. Independently of its merits or demerits, there are several reasons why it did not succeed in this country. In the first place, as we have before observed, it originated in America, and was attempted to be introduced through the middle ranks. In the second place, the change which it endeavored to effect was too sudden.

Had the alteration commenced with the higher cla.s.ses, and the change been effected gradually, its success might possibly have been different.

Thirdly, the large hat, so well adapted to the burning sun of America, was unnecessary, and remarkable when forming a part of the costume of adult ladies in this country, although we have seen that hats quite as large were worn during the time of Gainsborough. Another reason for the ill success of the Bloomer costume is to be found in the glaring and frequently ill-a.s.sorted colors of the prints of it, which were every where exposed in the shop windows. By many sober-minded persons, the large hat and glaring colors were looked upon as integral parts of the costume. The numerous caricatures also, and the injudicious attempts to make it popular by getting up "Bloomer b.a.l.l.s," contributed to render the costume ridiculous and unpopular.

Setting aside the hat, the distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristics of the costume are the short dress, and a polka jacket fitting the body at the throat and shoulders, and confined at the waist by a silken sash, and the trousers fastened by a band round the ankle, and finished off with a frill. On the score of modesty there can be no objection to the dress, since the whole of the body is covered. On the ground of convenience it recommends itself to those who, having the superintendence of a family, are obliged frequently to go up and down stairs, on which occasions it is always necessary to raise the dress before or behind, according to circ.u.mstances. The objection to the trousers is not to this article of dress being worn, since that is a general practice, but to their being seen. Yet we suspect few ladies would object on this account to appear at a fancy ball in the Turkish costume.

The disadvantages of the dress are its novelty--for we seldom like a fas.h.i.+on to which we are entirely unaccustomed--and the exposure which it involves of the foot, the shape of which, in this country, is so frequently distorted by wearing tight shoes of a different shape from the foot. The short dress is objectionable in another point of view, because, as short petticoats diminish the apparent height of the person, none but those who possess tall and elegant figures will look well in this costume; and appearance is generally suffered to prevail over utility and convenience. If to the Bloomer costume had been added the long under-dress of the Greek women, or had the trousers been as full as those worn by the Turkish and East Indian women, the general effect of the dress would have been much more elegant, although perhaps less useful. Setting aside all considerations of fas.h.i.+on, as we always do in looking at the fas.h.i.+ons which are gone by, it was impossible for any person to deny that the Bloomer costume was by far the most elegant, the most modest, and the most convenient.

CHAPTER VII.

ORNAMENT--ECONOMY.