By Ronald Graham.

Who will deliver us from the modern trouser?" once publicly asked a Royal Academician. It has been a question repeatedly propounded since the beginning of the last century, when this much-mooted garment came into fashionable vogue.

Trousers have at length passed permanently into Art. They have been depicted in glowing pigments and embodied in enduring bronze and marble. They have become classical. They have exacted the patience of the greatest painters and most talented sculptors for a full century in portraying them, as well as taxed the ingenuity of the noblest tailors in constructing them.

The time has arrived, we opine, for trousers to be considered as public and not merely as private embellishments. We shall leave other hands to write the history of the two long cylindrical bags which are at once the pride of the swell mobsman and, as we shall show, the dire despair of the sculptor, who can no longer emulate the example of Phidias, and represent his patrons in the superlatively light clothing of the annexed illustration—a corner in a well-known sculptor's studio.

Assuming that the modern trouser is a necessity—and we believe it is regarded as such, at least primarily—the point arises, how is the modern trouser to be made picturesque in Art?

The tailor's notion of the ideal in trousers and that entertained by the sculptor are separated by a wide gulf, which very few of the latter fraternity show any disposition to bridge.

It will never be known how many exponents of the sartorial art, who have in their time fitted masterpieces to the limbs of Lord Derby, Lord Palmerston, Lord Beaconsfield, Sir Robert Peel, and other statesmen, have sighed to see their art transmitted at the sculptor's hands to posterity mutilated by folds, deformed by creases, gifted with impossible falls over the boot, and endowed with plies at the knee which not ten years of incessant wear could be supposed to produce.

"Trousers," remarked Mr. Thomas Brock, R.A., "cannot be made artistic—at any rate in statuary. The painter is better equipped to grapple with the task than the sculptor. He has light, colour, and shade at his command, and may so subordinate these elements as to render the objectionable features of our modern costume less obtrusive. At no time have we been so little attractive from a picturesque standpoint as to-day. It is, therefore, eminently the desire of the sculptor to employ modern street costume as little as possible. It was formerly the custom in a full-length statue to drape the figure in a Roman toga or long cloak, which lent an heroic effect to the most prosaic theme. Costume of the last century was decidedly picturesque—as you may observe in this model of the Robert Raikes statue erected on the Thames Embankment—where knee-breeches, stockings, and shoe-buckles replace trousers." An example of Mr. Brock's treatment of the modern trouser may be seen in his Colin Campbell herewith reproduced.

To illustrate the attitude taken by the sculptor generally it may be observed that as yet, notwithstanding the many recent additions of full-length statues in the northern nave, only a single pair of sculptured trousers have found their way into Westminster Abbey. But, as will be seen from a perusal of the views held by Hamo Thornycroft, R.A., this condition of affairs will not be enduring.

"It is quite impossible," said Mr. Thornycroft, "to go back to the old style, as did the sculptors of less than a century ago, and clothe our heroes in antique draperies. One must follow the costume of the period. I have a hope that what appears conventional now will possess an interest and even a picturesqueness to our posterity. I have modelled Lord Granville in evening dress, which displays the trousers conspicuously, and my recent statue of Steurt Bayley is likewise apparelled in modern costume. Nevertheless, I do not believe any sculptor should slavishly adhere to the canons of form laid down by the tailor. The tailor is, of course, merely carrying out the whims of his fashionable patron, who is not always the most intellectual being extant. Although I am told that some statesmen like Mr. Chamberlain are scrupulous as to the perfect fit of their trousers, yet I should no more dream, if called upon to-morrow to make a statue of one of these eminent gentlemen, of modelling an upright pair of creaseless cylinders than I should paint in the shade of the cloth. No, I could never bring myself to model a pair of trousers such as are daily seen in Piccadilly. I have an ideal and I propose to carry it out. The folds, the creases, and the plies instil life into the work. An artist has a duty to perform in ennobling his work—even though that duty be no more than constructing trousers of marble. It does not lie in perpetuating the fleeting follies of fashion."

Mr. Thornycroft has succeeded very well with the trousers of his John Bright statue. As trousers, and as characteristic trousers, we defy the most captious hypercritic to urge anything against them. They are precisely the sort of leg-covering the late eminent statesman ought to have worn, nor do we doubt that, had he been actuated by that due regard for sartorial proprieties which the artist seeks at the hands, or rather at the legs, of eminent persons, he would have worn them. But an intimate friend of Mr. Bright's, who has, at our request, minutely surveyed the bronze statue at Rochdale, readily pronounces his opinion that the trousers are not by any means his fellow-townsman's. "The material is too thin," he writes. "John Bright's trousers were of extra heavy West of England cloth. They bagged a lot at the knees, but fitted rather tightly at the calves. The boots are certainly not his," he adds; and then, as if to justify this oracular style of speech, "I know because there was no carpet on the floor of the room where Mr. Bright and myself habitually met; so I studied his lower extremities while he spoke to me instead."

In the course of a conversation with the French sculptor, M. Jean Carries, that artist once defined to the writer the whole position of the French school of to-day.

"Its aim is life—animation—drama. To leave anything dormant is to leave the stone as you found it, and to acknowledge the futility of your genius. All the characteristics of life might be imparted to even a modern street costume.

"Only a tailor or a person deficient in culture would criticise the trousers of the Gambetta statue. Such a person would say, 'But I have never seen them in the Boulevards or in the Palais Bourbon.' Of course he has not; and what then? Did Raphael ever see an angel, or Michael Angelo a faun? No. A pair of widely-cut trousers with a single crease or fold might answer very well for a tailor's dummy; but it would not do at all for a chiselled human figure, which must express potential life."

"Idealism? Sense of the picturesque? Fiddlesticks!" declared Mr. George Wade, an exceptionally talented English sculptor, pausing in his work of modelling a full-length statue of a recently-deceased statesman. "Unless art in portraiture possess a rigid fidelity it is not, in my humble judgment, worth the cost of the stone or bronze necessary to evolve it. Idealism!—that is the cry of the sculptor who is deficient—who is dependent rather upon the resources of a departed school than of himself. Why should a sculptor seek to be otherwise than faithful, even to the buttons on the waistcoat of his subject? To cite an instance, some time ago Sir Charles Tupper, viewing my first model for the MacDonald statue, observed: 'I see you have buttoned only a single button of Sir John's coat. I never remember seeing my friend's coat not entirely buttoned. It was one of his characteristics.' When my visitor left I destroyed the old and commenced a new model.

"If it is characteristic of the subject in hand to wear disreputable trousers—very good. I should so model them. If, on the contrary, they were worn faultlessly smooth, it would contribute nothing to my conception of the wearer's identity to invest them with bulges and creases which, if not absolutely and physically impossible, would only be so in Pongee silk and not in the heavy fabric usually employed in trousering. I am not aware that public personages clothe their limbs in Pongee silk. Were this the case it would be so much the better for us. In practice I do not believe in that picturesque ruggedness about the knees which seems so attractive to the average sculptor. I am told that Sir Edward Burne-Jones spent many hours in the course of a single day in the study and device of new complex folds and sinuosities in the most delicate textile stuffs, and that it seems not altogether irrational to believe is the employment of many English and French sculptors when they set about making a pair of trousers.

"If you cannot be original," comments Mr. Wade, "be bizarre. Palm off meretricious effect for truth. Why not be content with the individuality which reveals itself in the limb's attitude as well as in its drapery? Mr. Smith did not stand as the Duke of Connaught does—Paderewski's posture is not that of Lord Roberts. No; you cannot create character by kneading your clay into all sorts of weird concavities and convexities. It is not true to life."

We do not deny character to perfect garments. They may each and all breathe a distinct individuality, and so far the requirements of Art are met. Compare those already mentioned with the rest—compare Colin Campbell's or Mr. Clarkson's legs with Mr. Palmer's of biscuit fame—and the contrast tells it's own tale. But to enforce our point, in spite even of the eloquent utterances of Mr. Wade, we, who were privileged to have seen Sir John MacDonald in the flesh, assert positively that we never saw that flesh draped in such trousers. The fact is, certain men never wore such trousers. With one or two exceptions the trousers presented in the course of this article—examples collated with no little care—are artistic trousers, trousers of Art, and never intended to be trousers of Reality, because the trousers of Reality either express too much or too little, or express something entirely in dissonance with the sculptor's idea of the character he is modelling. Nature, it has been observed, does not lend itself readily to the canons of Art. As it was long ago settled that carved statesmen must wear breeches of ultra length, when it appears that in life they are foolishly addicted to garments of unseemly brevity, it is only proper that this sad circumstance should be blotted out in the studio, and a veil, composed of a yard or two of extra trousering, be drawn over this painful deficiency in their several characters. Had they been stablemen they might have fared differently, although we can have little to object to in the nether garments of Mr. Adams-Acton's Hon. David Carmichael in the accompanying photograph.

On the other hand, there have been sculptors who strive hard for sartorial realism. The trousers no more than the limbs of all our great men are faultless. At a glance we may appreciate shades of difference in the interesting studies by Mr. David Weekes of the trousers of Lord Rosebery and of Mr. John Burns. The former are the garments to the life, such as have long been familiar to the fortunate occupiers of the front rows at Liberal political meetings—redolent of the lonely furrow and on intimate terms with the historic spade—while as for the tumid and strenuous breeches of the member for Battersea, corduroy or otherwise, they are chiselled to the last crease of realism. But such is the perversity of Art that such interesting studies would in the finished statue be exchanged for far less convincing garments. The legs of the Palmerston and Peel statues in Parliament Square are clothed in what we might term a suave trouser—or, more properly speaking, pantaloons—of incredible length and irreproachable girth; whereas those whose eyes have rested upon these great statesmen's garments in the flesh will recall something eminently different. For example, if we do not too greatly err in our conception, Lord Palmerston, in his later years, was somewhat addicted to a style of trouser not often seen in sculpture. Happily, in the studio of Mr. Wade, we have been able to light upon an example of just the sort of trouser we mean, and in order more to accurately impress its proportions upon the reader we give an example of it. It is not the trouser of a statesman, however, but of a stableman, a personage in a lower station in life (page 77).

A reference might here be made to the trousers of Mr. Gladstone, executed in bronze by the late Onslow Ford, R.A. The artist in this piece displayed extraordinary qualities of merit, but as realists we must take issue with him on the question of the length of Gladstone's trousers. Albeit if Mr. Gladstone, in posing for this really admirable work, undertook, with an eye to the effects the consequence would have with posterity, to assume for the nonce an unusual and unprecedented pair of trousers, then, of course, Mr. Ford merits a complete exoneration. He, like posterity will be, was deceived. But we take it upon ourselves, while admiring their aggressiveness and individuality, to assert that such trousers would be much more befitting Mr. Balfour, whose "tailor's length," we are given to understand, is thirty-six inches, rather than the venerable Liberal statesman, whose nether adornments never exceeded twenty-eight.

Indeed, we shall not be at a loss if we seek for examples of the trouser which is manufactured exclusively in the studio of the sculptor. Mr. Brock is certainly a great sinner in this regard (we have only to turn to his statues of the late Mr. Cookson and Collin Campbell), and Mr. Adams-Acton has shown in his statue of the late Professor Powell that he, too, does not always follow the fashion of the street. We think we can safely lay down the proposition once for all that no trousers can possess simultaneously both properties—length and bagginess. We have every confidence in the tailor as well as the greatest admiration for his art, and we do not wish to be considered as speaking lightly or at random when we say that long deliberation and consultation with the highest authorities have shown us that these two qualities are irreconcilable. We must, therefore, in all fairness condemn several pairs of chiselled trousers which seem to us to violate this law, as even the elegant continuations with which, thanks to Mr. Simonds, the late Hon. F. Tollemache stands for ever endowed, the inexpressibles of the late Mr. Palmer, and even Mr. Pinker's genteel specimens upon the legs of the late Professor Fawcett.

After all we have said, it is to Nottingham that we must attribute the unique distinction of possessing the worst pair of sculptured trousers in the kingdom. They adorn the legs of the late local worthy, Sir Robert Juckes-Clifton; and, as the reader will see from the accompanying photograph, embody not inadequately the talented sculptor's dream. That they embody anything but a dream it is out of our power to believe, as we are reliably informed that it is not in the nature of our most flexible English tweeds to assume such grotesque folds, unless there are goods in the Midlands, for which the lamented Sir Robert Juckes-Clifton expressed a weakness, which surpass ordinary material in this respect. After all, they are not so bad as Gambetta's trousers in the statue opposite the Louvre in Paris, already alluded to and reproduced on page 76. The sculptor's aim was apparently to breech his subject Æsthetically, and he has spared no pains to bring about this result. As a matter of truth, M. Alphonse Daudet has borne printed witness to the fact that Gambetta's trousers were invariably too short—not too long—and revealed some inches of white sock. But could a sculptor be expected to take cognizance of this?

All our readers probably are familiar with the magic name of Poole—tailor by appointment to a score of Royalties. Poole is to men's attire what Worth is to women's. It would be strange if the artists of Savile Row did not have a good-natured grievance against their fellow-artists of the adjacent Burlington House.

"I shouldn't be surprised," stated the head of the firm, not without diffidence—for it is one of the traditional principles of Poole since Beau Brummel's time to evince a becoming reticence toward the public aspect of his craft, "if the uninitiated person who contemplates our public statues is forced to conclude that to wear shocking bad trousers is one of the first essentials to political distinction. Why, many of the statues which I have seen in London and the provinces are a standing reproach to us. I dare say, on the other hand, the sculptor who reconstructs our creations is convinced that he is improving upon us, but I think there can be but one mind between the sculptor and ourselves as to how a pair of trousers should hang in real life. And if real life, why not in sculpture?

"I may also observe that the classical fall of the sculptured trouser over the boot is absolutely the contrivance of the artist, and is impossible from the tailor's standpoint. Again, although many gentlemen in real life follow the fashion so far as to wear trousers which just touch the upper portion of the boot, the trouser of sculpture is always of superlative length, in spite of the multifarious folds and creases which one would think, according to common physical laws, would tend to diminish that length."

"An artist," writes Mr. E. F. Benson, in one of his novels, "Limitations," "must represent men and women as he sees them, and he doesn't see them nowadays either in the Greek style or the Dresden style.... To look at a well-made man going out shooting gives one a sense of satisfaction. What I want to do is to make statues like them, which will give you the same satisfaction.... I want to make trousers beautiful, and women's evening dress beautiful, and shirt-sleeves beautiful. I don't mean that I shall ever make them beautiful in the same way as the robes of the goddesses in the Parthenon pediments are beautiful, but I shall make them admirable somehow."

And that is the great problem for the sculptors of the twentieth century.