Booke of Robin Conscience.

VI
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CRINOLINE

Fielding, in his description of the beauty and many graces of Sophia Western, feeling his subject to be more than ordinarily sublime, introduces his heroine "with the utmost solemnity, with an elevation of style, and all the other circumstances proper to raise the veneration of the reader": "Hushed be every ruder breath. May the heathen ruler of the winds confine in iron chains the boisterous limbs of noisy Boreas, and the sharp-pointed nose of bitter-biting Eurus. Do thou, sweet Zephyrus, rising from thy fragrant bed, mount the western sky and lead on those delicious gales, the charms of which call forth the lovely Flora from her chamber, perfumed with pearly dews, when on the first of June, her birthday, the blooming maid, in loose attire, gently trips it over the verdant mead, where every flower rises to do her homage, until the whole field becomes enamelled, and colours contend with sweets which shall ravish her most.

"So charming may she now appear; and you, the feathered choristers of nature, whose sweetest notes not even Handel can excel, tune your melodious throats to celebrate her appearance. From love proceeds your music, and to love it returns. Awake, therefore," &c.

If one were fortunate enough to possess the power of description and imagination of a Fielding, methinks the crinoline would provide a sufficiently inspiring theme.

It has been said that Milton was a man from his birth. The crinoline, like Milton, is an exception to every law of development. It had, like Milton, neither infancy nor adolescence, but sprang full armed, like "Athene from the brain of Zeus," or perhaps, like Topsy in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," it never was born, but just "growed"—and it grew—like a mushroom (which indeed in form it somewhat resembles), in a night. Or, to adopt yet another comparison, like the sun, which bursts in the morning suddenly in its full refulgence, is obscured for a time by clouds, to blaze again in unabated splendour, and in its turn is again obscured, but only to reappear in glorious sunset.

The crinoletta, which followed, may be described as the twilight or sweet afterglow—beautiful, tender as the blush on a maiden's cheek, and almost as evanescent, but with none of the glory of the preceding day.

In the charming passage from Fielding above quoted, Love, it will be seen, figures as the presiding spirit. This is peculiarly appropriate to the present subject, for, be it known, Dan Cupid begat the crinoline. It is said to have been originally invented for the purpose of concealing the illicit amours of a Princess of Spain; but singularly enough, and in a sort of contradictory spirit, is first identified with the august person of the "Maiden Queen."

The earlier portraits of Elizabeth exhibit her in a dress similar to that of her sister and predecessor, and in an interesting portrait of Catherine Parr at Glendon Hall, Northamptonshire, this Queen appears in a richly embroidered petticoat widened at the base. A similar petticoat or kirtle, widened a little at the hips, is shown in the portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots, with Darnley (p. 169). The hooped petticoat or vardingale, however, appears only in the later portraits of Elizabeth. In the famous print by William Rogers, of which a reproduction is given, she is figured in the great ruff with which she is most identified, the interminable stomacher, and the enormous wheel farthingale, with, as Walpole observes, "a bushel of pearls bestrewed over the entire figure"; she also wears a long light mantle edged with lace, a portentous collar, also edged with lace, expanding like wings on either side of the head. She carries the ball and sceptre in her hands.

The legend at the foot of the plate runs as follows:—

The great wheel farthingale was worn by the nobility during the latter half of the reign of Elizabeth, and during the whole of the succeeding reign. The engraving by Renold Elstracke of James I. and his Queen, Anne of Denmark, shows the latter in a farthingale, which in size and general structure is identical with that worn by Elizabeth. It is, however, box pleated round the top of the drum, the farthingale being divided in front and discovering the kirtle underneath.

The following story is told by Bulwer in his "Pedigree of the English Gallant": "When Sir Peter Wych was sent ambassador to the Grand Seignor from James I., his lady accompanied him to Constantinople, and the Sultaness having heard much of her, desired to see her; whereupon Lady Wych, attended by her waiting women, all of them dressed in their great vardingales, which was the Court-dress of the English ladies at that time, waited upon her highness. The Sultaness received her visitor with great respect, but, struck with the extraordinary extension of the hips of the whole party, seriously inquired if that shape was peculiar to the natural formation of English women, and Lady Wych was obliged to explain the whole mystery of the dress, in order to convince her that she and her companions were not really so deformed as they appeared to be."

In the reign of Charles I. the farthingale, although still worn by the lower gentry and citizens' wives, is discarded by the upper classes, and disappears entirely; and it is not until the latter part of the reign of Queen Anne that it rises again, like the Phoenix from its own ashes, but in another form, however, that of the enormous hoop, which grew to such portentous proportions during the reigns of George I. and II., the outstanding steel or whalebone foundation being mainly at the bottom of the skirt instead of at the hips. Sir Roger de Coverley thus expresses the difference between the earlier hooped petticoats and those of the era of the Spectator: "You see, sir, my great-great-grandmother has on the new-fashioned petticoat, except that the modern is gathered at the waist; my grandmother appears as if she stood in a large drum, whereas the ladies now walk as if they were in a go-cart."

It is surprising to find in dress, as in ornamental design, the same ideas, the same ornamental motifs, occurring to the people of countries widely separate. There is a curious dress appropriated to the young women of Otaheite who are appointed to make presents from persons of rank to each other; one of these was deputed to present cloths to Captain Cook on his last voyage. A representation of the dress is given in the engraving, which is from Cook's Geography, 1801. The proportions of the drum exceed even that of Queen Elizabeth; in general shape, however, it is similar. It is decorated round the uppermost edge with ornamental festoons of feathers, &c., and constitutes the complete dress of the lady, with the exception of a sort of chemise which appears underneath the breasts, and, presumably, covers the loins and a portion of the lower limbs.

The hoop petticoat now approaches its highest meridian; its re-appearance was duly announced by Addison, who, in No. 129 of the Spectator, relates an adventure which happened in a little country church in Cornwall: "As we were in the midst of service, a lady, who is the chief woman of the place, and had passed the winter at London with her husband, entered the congregation in a little head-dress and a hooped petticoat. The people, who were wonderfully startled at such a sight, all of them rose up. Some stared at the prodigious bottom, and some at the little top, of this strange dress. In the meantime the lady of the manor filled the area of the church and walked up to the pew with an unspeakable satisfaction, amid the whispers, conjectures, and astonishments of the whole congregation."

Between 1740 and 1745 the hoops spread out at the sides extensively in oblong fashion, resembling a donkey carrying its panniers. Indeed, the simile of the donkey was a favourite one with the caricaturists. In 1860 Punch adopts the idea, and issues a warning to ladies who would ride in crinolines on donkeys, and gives a cut of a lady in an enormous crinoline riding on a donkey, with nothing but the donkey's hind legs seen below.

A poetic description of ladies' dresses in 1773 directs:

Indeed, the hoop of this period had attained to such enormous proportions that, as Fairholt observes, the figure of a lady was considerable; for they were now not only the better, but the larger, half of creation, and half a dozen men might be accommodated in the space occupied by a single lady.[16]

In a print entitled "The Review," of the latter part of the reign of George II., the inconveniences of the hoop petticoat are exhibited in a variety of ways, and various methods for their remedy are suggested. One of the most ingenious is that of a coach with a moveable roof and a frame with pulleys to drop the ladies in from the top, in order to avoid the disarranging of their hoops which would necessarily attend their entrance by the door.

Hoop petticoats disappeared early in the reign of George III., and the genius of extravagance then turned its attention to the head-dress.

In the expiring years of the fifties of the last century the crinoline proper appeared. There had been hints of it earlier, not to say threats, in the bell-shaped skirts which obtained in about 1835, of which the charming creature in the London promenade dress (p. 55) provides an example.

The chief satirist of the crinoline is Punch, although, amongst others, an amusing skit on the difficulties and dangers of the crinoline appeared about 1870, with a number of coloured illustrations by "Quiz," now very rare.

Punch appears to have been particularly impressed by the "roomy" character of the crinoline, as, in an amusing if somewhat laboured skit in the early days of 1860, he unbosoms himself as follows:

"Among the million objections to the use of the wide petticoats not the least well-founded is the fact that they are used for purposes of shoplifting. This has many times been proved at the bar of the police courts, and we wonder that more notice has not been attracted to it. For ourselves, the fact is so impressed upon our mind, that when we ever come in contact with a Crinoline which seems more than usually wide, we immediately put down the wearer as a pick-pocket, and prepare ourselves at once to see her taken up. Viewing Crinoline, indeed, as an incentive to bad conduct, we forbid our wives and daughters to wear it when out shopping, for fear that it may tempt them to commit some act of theft. A wide petticoat is so convenient a hiding-place for stowing away almost any amount of stolen goods, that we cannot be surprised at finding it so used, and for the mere sake of keeping them from roguery, the fewer women have it at their fingers' ends the better. Some ladies have a monomania for thievery, and when they go on a day's shopping can hardly keep their hands off what does not belong to them. Having a commodious receptacle in reach, wherein they may deposit whatever they may sack, they are naturally tempted to indulge in their propensity, by the chances being lessened that they will be found out.

"As an instance of how largely the large petticoats are used in acts of petty larceny, we may mention a small fact which has come within our knowledge, and which it may be to the interest of shopkeepers to know. Concealed beneath the skirts of a fashionably dressed female were, the other day, discovered by a vigilant detective the following choice proofs of her propensity to plunder: viz., twenty-three shawls, eleven dozen handkerchiefs, sixteen pairs of boots (fifteen of them made up with the military heel), a case of eau-de-Cologne, a ditto of black hair-dye, thirty pairs of stays, twenty-six chemises, five dozen cambric handkerchiefs, and eleven ditto silk, nineteen muslin collars, and four-and-forty crochet ones, a dressing case, five hair brushes (three of them made with tortoiseshell and two with ivory gilt backs), a pair of curling irons, eight bonnets without trimmings and nine-and-twenty with them, a hundred rolls of ribbon, half a hundredweight of worsted, ten dozen white kid gloves and twenty dozen coloured ones, forty balls of cotton, nine-and-ninety skeins of silk, a gridiron, two coal-scuttles, three packets of ham sandwiches, twenty-five mince pies, half a leg of mutton, six boxes of French plums, ten ditto of bonbons, nine pÂtÉs de foie gras, a dozen cakes of chocolate and nine of portable hare soup, a warming pan, five bracelets, a brace of large brass birdcages, sixteen bowls of goldfish, half a score of lapdogs, fourteen dozen lever watches, and an eight-day kitchen clock.

"After this discovery, who will venture to deny that Crinoline with shoplifters is comparable to charity, inasmuch as it may cover a multitude of sins?"

A curious advertisement in the Illustrated London News of October 10, 1863, announces that—"Ondina, or waved Jupons, do away with the unsightly results of the ordinary hoops, and so perfect are the wave-like bands that a lady may ascend a steep stair, lean against a table, throw herself into an armchair, pass to a stall in the opera, or occupy a fourth seat in a carriage without inconvenience to herself or to others, or provoking rude remarks of the observers, thus modifying in an important degree all those peculiarities tending to destroy the modesty of English women, and lastly, it allows the dress to fall into graceful folds. Price 21s. Illustrations free." With all these advantages, who would not wear a crinoline?

In the new year of 1860 Punch gives a cut ("Some good account at last") of a skater in pot-hat and pegtops, encircled by the framework of an enormous crinoline, cutting graceful figures upon the ice and exclaiming, "Entirely my own idea, Harry—ease, elegance, and safety combined—I call it the skater's friend." "Some good account at last"? Unkind Mr. Punch! Must we, then, measure the value of everything in this world by its bare utility? The crinoline will endure as a sweet solace to senses tired by the ennui of this dull earth. The memory of it will outlive the ages.

In the early seventies we find our old friend Punch again upon the warpath, and the Venus of Milo dons the crinoletta! This, however, is only a repetition of his satire on the crinoline in his "Essence of Parliament," May, 1860:—

"Lord Aberdeen's son, Lord Haddock, or some such name, made a supremely ridiculous speech upon the impropriety of allowing money to any school of Art in which the undraped she-model was studied from. His father, who was called Athenian Aberdeen, and has so earnest a love for Greek Art that he actually favoured Russia because she has a Greek Church, ought to have cured his Haddock of such nonsense. Poor old Mr. Spooner, naturally, took the same really indelicate view of the case. Sir George Lewis expressed his lofty contempt for the Haddock, and Lord Palmerston kippered him in a speech full of good fun. It is impossible that the same country which contains Macdowell's Eve, and Bailey's Eve at the Fountain, can hold Haddock and Spooner. Mr. Punch must avow that he prefers keeping the diviner images, and somehow getting rid of the coarser ones. Pam wanted to know whether the latter would like to stick crinoline on the models, or would be content with African garb. The other Wiscount observed, with more truth than politeness, 'Nude, indeed! I knewed Addock was a Nass.'"

An illustration is appended to the article of a figure resembling a fish in the act of adjusting a crinoline on the Venus de Medici. The crinoline rests upon the shoulders of the statue like a huge extinguisher.

As previously hinted, the crinoletta was only a faint echo of the glories of its earlier prototype. It was a cylindrical contrivance, made up of steels or whalebones, either covered with a series of flounces, or worn underneath the dress like a big bustle. In fact, it began as a bustle, and gradually extended its proportions, wagging and swaying from side to side like the tail of a dragon, as the wearer moved. One well remembers—shall we, indeed, ever forget?—these singular "contraptions" displayed unblushingly in drapers' shops, and even hanging in bundles at the doors.