Part 3

But although so few Englishwomen were converted to the new dress, and though fewer still had the courage to wear it, the Bloomer agitation was largely noticed in the papers and by the satirists of the time. It was noticed, indeed, in a manner entirely disproportioned to its real import, and the humorous papers, the ballad-mongers, and innumerable private witlings, had their fling at the follies of these early dress-reformers. The Bloomers--unlovely name!--held meetings in London, attended, it must be owned, by crowds of ribald unbelievers; and they even went to the length of holding a ‘Bloomer Ball,’ a grotesque idea hailed with delight by a roaring crowd which assembled ‘after the ball,’ and showed its prejudices by hooting the ridiculous women who had come attired in jackets and trousers like those of the Turk. No Turk, indeed, so unspeakable as they. But the crowd did not stop at this point. They had brought dead cats, decayed cabbages, rotten eggs, and all imaginable articles of offence with which to point their wit, and they used them freely, not only upon the women, but also upon the men who accompanied them. For discrimination was not easy between the sexes in the badly lit streets, when both wore breeches, and at a time when men went generally clean-shaven; and so the rightfully breeched were as despitefully used as the usurpers of man’s distinctive dress.

And so Bloomerism languished awhile and presently died out, but not before a vast amount had been written and printed in its praise or abuse. The satirical effusions which owe their origin to this mania are none of them remarkable for reticence or delicacy. Indeed, the subject did not allow of this last quality, and the broad-sheet verses issued from the purlieus of Drury Lane by the successors of Catnach are, some of them, very frank. Perhaps the best and most quotable is the broad-sheet, _I’ll be a Bloomer_. The writer, not a literary man by any means, starts off at score, and his first verses, if models neither of taste, rhyme, nor rhythm, are vigorous. It is when the inspiration runs dry, and he relies upon a slogging industry with which to eke out his broad-sheet, that exhaustion becomes evident.

I’LL BE A BLOOMER.

Listen, females all, No matter what your trade is, Old Nick is in the girls, The Devil’s in the ladies! Married men may weep, And tumble in the ditches, Since women are resolved To wear the shirt and breeches.

Ladies do declare A change should have been sooner, The women, one and all, Are going to join the Bloomers. Prince Albert and the Queen Had such a jolly row, sirs; She threw off stays and put On waistcoat, coat, and trousers.

It will be fun to see Ladies, possessed of riches, Strutting up and down In Wellingtons and breeches. Bloomers are funny folks, No ladies can be faster: They say ‘tis almost time That petticoats were master.

They will not governed be By peelers, snobs, or proctors, But take up their degree As councillors and doctors. No bustles will they wear, Nor stocks, depend upon it; But jerry hats and caps Instead of dandy bonnet.

Trousers to their knees, And whiskers round their faces; A watch-chain in their fob, And a pair of leather braces. The tailors must be sharp In making noble stitches, And clap their burning goose Upon the ladies‘ breeches.

Their pretty fingers will Be just as sore as mutton Till they have found the way Their trousers to unbutton. The Bloomers all declare That men are sad deceivers; They’ll take a turn, and be Prigs, dustmen, and coalheavers-- Members of Parliament, And make such jolly fusses; Cobble up old ladies’ shoes; Drive cabs and omnibuses.

Their husbands they will wop, And squander all their riches; Make them nurse the kids And wash their shirts and breeches. If men should say a word, There’d be a jolly row, sirs! Their wives would make them sweat And beat them with their trousers.

The world’s turned upside down; The ladies will be tailors, And serve Old England’s Queen As soldiers and as sailors. Won’t they look funny when The seas are getting lumpy, Or when they ride astride Upon an Irish donkey?

The ladies will be right; Their husbands will be undone, Since Bloomers have arrived To teach the folks of London-- The females all I mean-- How to lay out their riches In Yankee-Doodle-doos And a stunning pair of breeches.

Female apparel now Is gone to pot, I vow, sirs, And ladies will be fined Who _don’t_ wear coats and trousers; Blucher boots and hats, And shirts with handsome stitches,-- Oh, dear! what shall we do When women wear the breeches?

Now some will wear smock-frocks And hobnail shoes, I vow, sirs; Jenny, Bet, and Sal, Cock’d hat and woollen trousers. Yankee-Doodle-doo, Rolling in the ditches; Married men prepare To buy the women breeches!

_Punch_ had, among other Bloomer skits, the following rather good example:--

MRS. GRUNDY ON BLOOMERISM.

Hoity-toity!--don’t tell me about the nasty stupid fashion! Stuff and nonsense!--the idea’s enough to put one in a passion. I’d allow no such high jinkses, if I was the creatures’ parent. ‘Bloomers’ are they--forward minxes? I soon Bloomer ’em, I warrant. I’ve no patience nor forbearance with ‘em--scornin’ them as bore ’em; What! they can’t dress like their mothers was content to dress before ’em,-- Wearing what-d’ye-call-’ems--Gracious! brass itself ain’t half so brazen; Why, they must look more audacious than that what!s-a-name--Amàzon! Ha! they’ll smoke tobacco next, and take their thimblefuls of brandy, Bringing shame upon their sex, by aping of the jack-a-dandy. Yes; and then you’ll have them shortly showing off their bold bare faces, Prancing all so pert and portly at their Derbys and their races. Oh! when once they have begun, there’s none can say where they’ll be stopping-- Out they’ll go with dog and gun; perhaps a-shooting and a-popping. Aye! and like as not, you’ll see, if you’ve a Bloomer for your daughter, Her ladyship, so fine and free, a-pulling matches on the water; Sitting in a pottus tap, a-talking politics and jawing; Or else a-reading _Punch_, mayhap, and hee-heeing and haw-hawing. I can’t a-bear such flighty ways--I can’t abide such flaunty tast_es_. And so they must leave off their stays, to show their dainty shapes and waist_ses_! I’d not have my feet filagreed, for ever so, like these young women. No; you won’t see _me_, I’ll be bound, dressed half-and-half, as a young feller; I’ll stick to my old shawl and gownd, my pattens, and my umbereller.

The Bloomer agitation was but the beginning of a series of crazes for the reform of women’s dress, and the ‘Girl of the Period’ _furore_ succeeded it, after an interval of several years. True, the Girl of the Period was scarcely a dress-reformer, but her dress and manners were sufficiently pronounced, and certainly her vulgarity could not have been surpassed by the most fat and blowzy Bloomer that ever held forth upon a public platform.

To Mrs. Lynn Linton belongs the honour of having discovered the Girl, and she communicated her discovery to the _Saturday Review_ in 1868. This it was that gave some point to the saying that the Girl of the Period was but the Girl of a Periodical.

And certainly the vulgarity of the Girl of the Period was extremely pronounced. It was a vulgarity that showed itself in bustles and paniers; the ‘Grecian Bend;’ skirts frilled and flounced and hung about with ridiculous festoons, and short enough to display her intolerable Balmoral boots. An absurdly inadequate ‘Rink’ hat rendered her chignon all the more obvious, and ----. But enough! The Man of the Period was her equal in absurdity. He cultivated a hateful affectation of lassitude and indifference; he affected a peculiarly odious drawl, and he taxed his mind with an effort to sustain a constantly _nil admirari_ attitude toward things the most admirable and happenings the most startling. He wore the most ridiculous fashion of whiskers, compared with which the perennial ‘mutton-chop’ and the bearded chin and clean-shaven upper lip of the Dissenter or typical grocer are things of beauty and a satisfaction to the æsthetic sense.

This fashion was the ‘Piccadilly-weeper’ variety of adornment, known at this day--chiefly owing to Sothern’s impersonation of a contemporary lisping fop--as the ‘Dundreary.’ This creature was a fitting mate to the Girl of the Period. He married her, and the most obvious results are the ‘Gaiety-Johnnies,’ the ‘mashers,’ and the ‘chappies’ of to-day, whose retreating chins and foreheads afford subjects for the sad contemplation of philosophers--to whom we will leave them.

As for their female offspring, they are, doubtless, the ‘Lotties and Totties’ of Mrs. Lynn Linton’s loathing, who smoke cigarettes and ape the dress and deportment of the ladies of the Alhambra or the Empire promenades.

It is at once singular and amusing to notice how surely all women’s dress-reform agitations move in the same groove--that of a more or less close imitation of man’s attire. Even fashions which are not ostensible ‘reforms’ have a decided tendency to make for masculinity. The girls who, some few years since, cut their hair short--like the boys; who wore bowler hats, shirt-fronts, men’s collars and neckties; who carried walking-sticks, or that extraordinary combination of walking-stick and sunshade known facetiously as a ‘husband-beater;’ who affected tailor-made frocks, donned man-like jackets, and adopted a masculine gait, were not accredited reformers with a Mission, but they showed, excellently well, the spirit of the age, and if they were wanting in thoroughness, why, Lady Harberton, with her ‘divided skirts,’ was a very Strafford for thoroughness in her particular line.

Divided skirts were introduced to the notice of the public some ten years ago by Viscountess Harberton and a Society of Dress Reformers, calling themselves, possibly on _lucus a non lucendo_ principles, first a ‘National’ Society, and at a later period arrogating the title of ‘Rational.’ It may seem matter for ridicule that an obscure coterie of grandams should adopt such a grandiose title as the first, or that they should, by using the ‘Rational’ epithet, be convicted of allowing the inference that they considered every woman irrational who did not adhere to their principles; but, like all ‘reformers,’ they were without humour and consumed with a deadly earnestness. They (unlike the rest of the world) saw nothing for laughter in the public discussions which they initiated, by which they sought to show that corsets were not only useless but harmful, and that the petticoat might advantageously be discarded for trousers worn underneath an ordinary skirt, somewhat after the fashion that obtains in riding costumes.

But, for all the pother anent divided skirts, they did not catch on; and a newer rival, another variety of ‘Rational Dress,’ now rules the field, the camp, the grove, but more especially the road. For the popular and widespread pastime of cycling has given this newest craze a very much better chance than ever the Bloomer heresy or the original Divided Skirt frenzy obtained; and it is not too much to say that, if the cycle had not been so democratic a plaything, this latest experiment in dress reform would have been but little heard of. Rational Dress, as seen on the flying females who pedal down the roads to-day, is only Bloomerism with a difference. That is to say, the legs are clothed in roomy knickerbockers down to the knees, and encased in cloth gaiters for the rest, buttoned down to the ankles. These in place of the Turk-like trousers, tied round the ankles and finished off with frills, of over forty years ago. As for the attenuated skirts of the Prophet Bloomer, Rational Dress replaces them with a species of frantic frock-coat, spreading as to its ample skirts, but tightened round the waist. A ‘Robin Hood’ hat, even as in the bygone years, crowns this confection; and, really, the parallels between old-time schismatics and the modern revolting daughters are wonderfully close. Everything recurs in this world in cycles of longer or shorter duration. The whirligig of time may be uncertain in its revolutions, but it performs the allotted round at last; and so surely as yesterday’s sun will reappear to-morrow, as certainly will the crinolines, the chignons, and the Bloomer vagaries of yester-year recur. You may call the recurrent fashions by newer names, but, by any name they take, they remain practically the same. The farthingale of Queen Bess’s time is the crinoline of the Middle Victorian period, and ‘came in’ once more as the ‘full skirt’ of some seasons since. The chignon is resurrected as the ‘Brighton Bun,’ and is as objectionable in its reincarnation as it was in its previous existence; and we have already seen that Rational Dress, Divided Skirts, and the Bloomer costume are but different titles for one fad. The very latest development is not pretty: but there! ’tis ‘pretty Fanny’s way,’ and so an end to all discussion.

III.--WOMAN IN ART, LITERATURE, POLITICS, AND SOCIAL POLITY.

In these days, when women begin to talk of their Work with all the zeal and religious fervour that characterises the attitude of the savage towards his fetish, it behoves us to inquire what that Work may be which arouses so much enthusiasm and is the cause of the cool insolence which is becoming more and more the note of the New Woman. A very little inquiry soon convinces the seeker after the true inwardness of modern fads and fancies that Woman’s Work--so to spell it in capitals, in the manner dear to the hearts of the unsexed men and women who reckon Adam a humbug and Eve the most despitefully-entreated of her adorable sex--has nothing to do with the up-bringing of children or the management of the home. Those traditional duties are nothing less, if you please, than the slavery which man’s tyranny has imposed upon the physically weaker sex, and are not worthy of sharing the aristocratic prominence of capital letters which the desultory following of arts and sciences has arrogated. Modern _doctrinaires_ preach heresies which would make miserable that very strong man, St. Paul, who constantly enjoined woman to silence and submission. _Place aux dames_ is the century-end watchword, in a sense very different from the distinguished consideration which the dames of years bygone received. _Place aux dames_ is all very well, as some one has somewhere said--but then, dames in their place, which, with all possible deference to the femininely-influenced philosophers of to-day, is not in politics, nor in any arts or sciences whatever.

Those who so blithely advocate the throwing open of the professions to woman, and invite her to work with them, side by side, in works of practical philanthropy, base their arguments on false premises. They assume, at starting, that womankind has been throughout the centuries in an arrested condition. Her mental and bodily growth has, they say, been retarded by cunningly-devised restrictions; she has not been permitted to develop or to reach maturity--she is, in short, according to these views, undeveloped man, rather than a separate and fully developed sex. Those views are, of course, merely fallacies of the most unstable kind. Woman’s place and functions have been definitely fixed for her by nature, and those functions and that place are to be the handmaid of man (or the handmatron if you like it better), and to be the mother of his children; and her place is the home. Her physical and mental limitations are subtly contrived by nature to keep woman in the home and engrossed in domestic matters; and, really, if abuse is needed at all, man does not deserve it, but to nature belongs the epithet of tyrant, if an owner must be found for the unenviable distinction.

Woman is essentially narrow-minded and individualistic. Her time has ever been fleeted in working for the individual, and the community would be badly off at this day had not the State been thoroughly masculine for a time that goes back beyond the historians into the regions of myths and fairy tales. Small brains cannot engender great thoughts; which is but another way of saying that woman’s brain is less than man’s. It is only recently that woman has organized her forces at all, and she would not have done so, even now, had she not a plentiful lack of anything to occupy her thoughts withal in these days of the subdivision of labour and of extended luxury. And so, with plenty of time to spare, she begins to ask if there is nothing that becomes her better than the ‘suckling of fools and the chronicling of small beer.’ But although Carlyle said in his wrath that men and women were mostly fools, yet there be children nourished with nature’s food who have developed a certain force of intellect; and as for the chronicles of small beer, gossip and scandal-mongering have never been compulsory in women, but only unwelcome features of their nature. Idleness, luxury, and the supreme consideration with which even the most foolish feminine manifestations have been received, have always been fruitful sources of mischief, and this by-past consideration has favoured the development of vanity and the growth of the feminine Ego to its present proportions.

Woman never becomes more than an ineffectual amateur in all the careers she enters. Her practice in art and literature inevitably debases art and letters, for she is a copyist at most. In literature she never originates, but appropriates and assimilates men’s thoughts, and in the transcription of those thoughts seldom rises above the use of _clichés_. But the Modern Woman desires most ardently to enter those spheres of mental and technical activity, undeterred by any disheartening doubts of her fitness for letters or government, of her capacity for organizing or originating. She points triumphantly for confirmation of her sex’s endowments to the lives and works of the George Eliots, the Harriet Martineaus, the Elizabeth Frys, the Angelica Kauffmanns, or the women of the French political salons; but she does not stop to consider that those distinguished women succeeded not because, but in spite of, their sex, and that few of the women who have made what the world terms successful careers had any of the more gracious feminine characteristics beyond their merely physiological attributes. Many of them were unsexed creatures whose womanhood was an accident of their birth.

The rush of women into the artistic and literary professions has always had a singularly ill effect upon technique, for the woman’s mind is normally incapable of rising to an appreciation of the possibilities of any medium. They have not even a glimmering perception of style, and would as cheerfully (if not, indeed, with greater readiness) acclaim Dagonet a poet as they would the Swan of Avon, although the gulf that divides Shakespeare from Mr. G. R. Sims is not only one formed by lapse of the centuries: to them the works of Miss Braddon appear as the ultimate expression of the passions, and they would as readily label a painting by Velasquez ‘nice’ as they would call the productions of Mr. Dudley Hardy ‘awfully jolly.’ Subject rather than execution wins their admiration, and the nerveless handling of a painting whose subject appeals to their imagination wins their praise while the highest attainments of technique are disregarded. For them does Mr. W. P. Frith paint the _Derby Day_ and _So Clean_; for their delight are the ‘dog and dolly’ pictures of Mr. Burton Barber, the _Can ’oo Talk?_ the ‘peep-bo’ and ‘pussy-cat’ stories in paint contrived; and for their ultimate satisfaction are they reproduced as coloured supplements in the summer and Christmas numbers of the illustrated papers.

You may count distinguished women artists upon the fingers of your hands, with some fingers to spare, and some of these achieved their fame by reason of their womanhood, rather than the excellence of their art. Angelica Kauffmann is a notable example. She attained the unique position of a female Royal Academician through Reynolds’s infatuation: she painted portraits and classical compositions innumerable, but the portraits are poor and her classicism the most futile and emasculate. Literature, too--although more women have made reputations with the pen than the brush--can show but a very small proportion of feminine genius; and (although the ultimate verdict of the critics may yet depose these) Charlotte Brontë, Fanny Burney, and George Eliot are the most outstanding names in this department. These few names compare with an intolerable deal of mediocrity, cosseted and sheltered from the adverse winds of criticism in its little day; but yet so constitutionally weak that it has withered and died out of all knowledge. The women who, like George Eliot, and her modern successor, Mrs. Humphry Ward, adventure into ethical novels, are too excruciatingly serious and possessed with too solemn a conviction of their infallibility for much patient endurance; and really, when one remembers the spectacle of G. H. Lewis truckling to the critics, intriguing for favourable reviews, and endeavouring to stultify editors for the sake of his George Eliot, in order that no breath of adverse criticism and no wholesome wind from the outer world should come to dispel her colossal conceit, we obtain a curious peep into the methods by which the feminine Ego is nourished. But the spectacle is no less pitiful than strange.

It is not often, however, that women writers present us with philosophical treatises in the guise of novels. Their high-water mark of workmanship is the _Family Herald_ type of story-telling, even as crystoleum-painting and macramé-work exhaust the energies and imagination of the majority of women ‘art’ workers. What, also, is to say of the lady-novelists’ heroes, of god-like grace and the mental attributes of the complete prig? What but that if we collate the masculine characters of even the better-known, and presumably less foolish, feminine novels, we shall find woman’s ideal in man to be the sybaritic Guardsman, the loathly, languorous Apollos who recline on ‘divans,’ smoke impossibly fragrant cigarettes, gossip about their _affaires du c[oe]ur_, and wave ‘jewelled fingers’--repellent combinations of braggart, prig, and knight-errant, with the thews and sinews of a Samson and the morals of a mudlark.

Philanthropy is a field upon which the modern woman enters with an enthusiasm that, unfortunately, is very much greater than her sense. Her care is for the individual, and she it is who encourages indiscriminate almsgiving, but cannot understand the practical philanthropy which compels men to work for a wage, or organizes vast schemes of relief works. Her whole nature is individualistic, and we would not have it otherwise, for it has, in many instances of womanly women, made homes happy and comfortable, and nerved men in the larger philanthropy which succours without pauperising thousands. But she has no business outside the home.