058. Dominion of Fashion

Dominion of Fashion

Deu_22:5 : ’93The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’92s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God.’94

God thought womanly attire of enough importance to have it discussed in the Bible. Paul, the apostle, by no means a sentimentalist, and accustomed to dwell on the great themes of God and the resurrection, writes about the arrangement of woman’92s hair and the style of her jewelry; and in my text, Moses, his ear yet filled with the thunder at Mount Sinai, declares that womanly attire must be in marked contrast with masculine attire, and infraction of that law excites the indignation of high heaven. Just in proportion as the morals of a country or an age are depressed is that law defied. Show me the fashion plates of any century from the time of the Deluge to this, and I will tell you the exact state of public morals. Bloomerism in this country years ago seemed about to break down this divine law, but there was enough of good in American society to beat back the indecency. Yet ever and anon we have imported from France, or perhaps invented on this side the sea a style that proposes as far as possible to make women dress like men; and thousands of young women catch the mode, until some one goes a little too far in imitation of masculinity, and the whole custom, by the good sense of American womanhood, is obliterated. The costumes of the countries are different, and in the same country may change, but there is a divinely ordered dissimilarity which must be forever observed. Any divergence from this is administrative of vice and runs against the keen thrust of the text, which says: ’93The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’92s garment, for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God.’94

Many years ago, a French authoress, signing herself George Sand, by her corrupt but brilliant writings depraved homes and libraries innumerable, and was a literary grandmother of all the present French and American authors, who have written things so much worse that they have made her putrefaction quite presentable. That French authoress put on masculine attire. She was consistent. Her writings and her behavior were perfectly accordant.

My text abhors mannish women and womanish men. What a sickening thing it is to see a man copying the speech, the walk, the manner of a woman. The trouble is that they do not imitate a sensible woman, but some female imbecile. And they simper, and they go with mincing step, and lisp, and scream at nothing, and take on a languishing look, and bang their hair, and are the nauseation of honest folks of both sexes. O man, be a man! You belong to quite a respectable sex. Do not try to cross over, and to become a hybrid; neither one nor the other, but a failure, half-way between. Alike repugnant are masculine women. They copy a man’92s stalking gait and go down the street with the stride of a walking-beam. They wish they could smoke cigarettes, and some of them do. They talk boisterously and try to sing bass. They do not laugh, they roar. They cannot quite manage the broad profanity of the sex they rival, but their conversation is often a half-swear; and if they said, ’93O Lord!’94 in earnest prayer as often as they say it in lightness they would be high up in saint-hood. Withal there is an assumed rugosity of apparel, and they wear a man’92s hat, only changed by being in two or three places smashed in and a dead canary clinging to the general wreck, and a man’92s coat tucked in here and there according to unaccountable aesthetics. O woman, stay a woman! You also belong to a very respectable sex. Do not try to cross over. If you do you will be a failure as a woman and only a nondescript of a man. We already have enough intellectual and moral bankrupts in our sex without your coming over to make worse the deficit.

My text also sanctions fashion. Indeed, it sets a fashion! There is a great deal of senseless cant about fashion. A woman or man who does not regard it is unfit for good neighborhood. The only question is what is right fashion and what is wrong fashion. Before I stop I want to show you that fashion has been one of the most potent of reformers and one of the vilest of usurpers. Sometimes it has been an angel from heaven, and at others the mother of abominations. As the world grows better, there will be as much fashion as now, but it will be a righteous fashion. In the heavenly life white robes always have been and always will be in the fashion.

There is a great outcry against this submission to social custom, as though any consultation of the tastes and feelings of others were deplorable; but without it the world would have neither law, order, civilization nor common decency. There has been a canonization of bluntness. There are men and women who boast that they can tell you all they know and hear about you, especially if it be unpleasant. Some have mistaken rough behavior for frankness, when the two qualities do not belong to the same family. You have no right, with your eccentricities, to crash in upon the sensitiveness of others. There is no virtue in walking with hoofs over fine carpets. The most jagged rock is covered with blossoming moss. The storm that comes jarring down in thunder strews rainbow colors upon the sky and silvery drops on the orchard.

Then there are men who pride themselves on their capacity to ’93stick’94 others. They say: ’93I have brought him down; didn’92t I make him squirm!’94 Others pride themselves on their outlandish apparel. They boast of being out of the fashion. They wear a queer hat. They ride in an odd carriage. By dint of perpetual application they would persuade the world that they are perfectly indifferent to public opinion. They are more proud of being ’93out of fashion’94 than others are of being in. They are utterly and universally disagreeable. Their rough corners have never been worn off. They prefer a hedgehog to a lamb.

The accomplishments of life are in nowise productive of effeminacy or enervation. Good manners and a respect for the tastes of others are indispensable. The Good Book speaks favorably of those who are a ’93peculiar’94 people; but that does not sanction the behavior of queer people. There is no excuse, under any circumstances, for not being the lady or gentleman. Rudeness is sin. We have no words too ardent to express our admiration for the refinement of society. There is no law, moral or divine, to forbid elegance of demeanor, or artistic display in the dwelling, gracefulness of gait and bearing, polite salutation or honest compliments; and he who is shocked or offended by these had better, like the ancient Scythians, wear tiger-skins and take one wild leap back into midnight barbarism. As Christianity advances there will be better apparel, higher styles of architecture, more exquisite adornments, sweeter music, more correct behavior and more thorough ladies and gentlemen.

But there is another story to be told. Wrong fashion is to be charged with producing many of the worst evils of society, and its path has often been strewn with the bodies of the slain. It has set up a false standard by which people are to be judged. Our common sense, as well as all the divine intimations on the subject, teach us that people ought to be esteemed according to their individual and moral attainments. The man who has the most nobility of soul should be first, and he who has the least of such qualities should stand last. No crest or shield or escutcheon can indicate one’92s moral peerage. Titles of duke, earl, viscount, lord, esquire or partrician ought not to raise one into the first rank. Some of the meanest men I have ever known had at the end of their name D. D. or LL. D. or A. M. Truth, honor, charity, heroism, self-sacrifice, should win highest favor; but inordinate fashion says: ’93Count not a woman’92s virtues; count her adornments.’94 ’93Look not at the contour of the head, but see the way she arranges her hair.’94 ’93Ask not what noble deeds have been accomplished by that man’92s hand; but is it white and soft?’94 Ask not what good sense is in her conversation, but ’93In what was she dressed?’94 Ask not whether there were hospitality and cheerfulness in the house, but ’93In what style do they live?’94 As a consequence, some of the most ignorant and vicious men are at the top, and some of the most virtuous and intelligent at the bottom.

During our Civil War we suddenly saw men elevated into the highest social positions. Had they suddenly reformed from evil habits or graduated in science or achieved some good work for society? No; they simply had obtained a government contract! This accounts for the utter chagrin which people feel at the treatment they receive when they lose their property. Hold up your head amid financial disaster like a Christian! Fifty thousand subtracted from a good man leaves how much? Honor; truth; faith in God; triumphant hope; and a kingdom of ineffable glory, over which he is to reign forever and ever. If the owner of millions should lose a penny out of his pocket, would he sit down on a curbstone and cry? And shall a man possessed of everlasting fortunes wear himself out with grief because he has lost worldly treasure? You have only lost that in which hundreds of wretched misers could have surpassed you; and you have saved that which the C’e6sars and the Pharaohs and the Alexanders could never attain. And yet society thinks differently, and we see the most intimate friendships broken up as the consequence of financial embarrassments.

Proclamation has gone forth: ’93Velvets must go up and plain apparel must come down,’94 and the question is: ’93How does the coat fit?’94 not ’93Who wears it?’94 The power that bears the tides of excited population up and down our streets, and rocks the world of commerce, and thrills all nations, trans-Atlantic and cis-Atlantic, is clothes. It decides the last offices of respect; and how long the dress shall be totally black; and when it may subside into spots of grief on silk, calico or gingham. Men die in good circumstances, but by reason of extravagant funeral expenses are well-nigh insolvent before they get buried. Wrong fashion is productive of a most ruinous rivalry. The expenditure of many households is adjusted by what their neighbors have, not by what they themselves can afford to have; and the great anxiety is as to who shall have the finest house and the most costly equipage. The weapons used in the warfare of social life are not minie rifles and Dahlgren guns and Hotchkiss shells, but chairs and mirrors and vases and Gobelins and Axminsters. Many household establishments are like racing steamboats, propelled at the utmost strain and risk, and just coming to a terrific explosion. ’93Who cares,’94 say they, ’93if we only come out ahead?’94 There is no one cause today of more financial embarrassment and of more dishonesties than this determination at all hazards to live as well as or better than other people. There are persons who will risk their eternity upon one pier mirror, or who will dash out the splendors of heaven to get another trinket. There are scores of men in the dungeons of the penitentiary who risked honor, business, everything, in the effort to shine like others. Though the heavens fall they must be ’93in the fashion.’94 The most famous frauds of the day have resulted from this feeling. It keeps hundreds of men struggling for their commercial existence. The trouble is that some are caught and incarcerated if their larceny be small. If it be great they escape and build their castle on the Rhine or the Hudson.

Again, wrong fashion makes people unnatural and untrue. It is a factory from which has come forth more hollow and unmeaning flatteries and hypocrisies than the Lowell mills ever turned out shawls and garments.

Few people are really natural and unaffected. When I say this I do not mean to deprecate cultured manners. It is right that we should have more admiration for the sculptured marble than for the unhewn block of the quarry. From many circles in life fashion has driven out vivacity. A frozen dignity instead floats about the room, and iceberg grinds against iceberg. You must not laugh outright; it is vulgar. You must smile. You must not dash rapidly across the room; you must glide. There is a round of bows and grins and flatteries, and oh’92s and ah’92s and simperings, and namby-pambyism’97a world of which is not worth one good, round, honest peal of laughter. From such a hollow round the tortured guest retires at the close of the evening, and assures his host that he has enjoyed himself. Thus social life has been contorted and deformed, until, in some mountain cabin, where rustics gather to the quilting or the apple-paring, there is more good cheer than in all the frescoed icehouses of the metropolis. We want in all the higher circles of society more warmth of heart and naturalness of behavior, and not so many refrigerators.

Again, wrong fashion is incompatible with happiness. Those who depend for their comfort upon the admiration of others are subject to frequent disappointment. Somebody will criticise their appearance, or surpass them in charm, or will receive more attention. Oh, the jealousy and detraction and heartburnings of those who move in this bewildered maze! Poor butterflies! Bright wings do not always bring happiness. ’93She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.’94 The revelations of high life that come to the challenge and the fight are only the occasional croppings out of disquietudes that are, underneath, like the stars of heaven for multitude, but like the demons of the pit for hate. The misery that will to-night in the cellar cuddle up in the straw is not so utter as the princely disquietude which stalks through splendid drawing-rooms, brooding over the slights and offenses of luxurious life. The bitterness of life seems not so unfitting when drunk out of a pewter mug as when it pours from the chased lips of a golden chalice. In the sharp crack of the voluptuary’92s pistol, putting an end to his earthly misery, I hear the confirmation that in a hollow, fastidious life there is no peace.

Again, devotion to wrong fashion is productive of physical disease, mental imbecility and spiritual withering. Apparel insufficient to keep out the cold and the rain, or so fitted upon the person that the functions of life are restrained; late hours filled with excitement and feasting; free drafts of wine that make one not beastly intoxicated, but only fashionably drunk; and luxurious indolence’97are the instruments by which this unreal life pushes its disciples into valetudinarianism and the grave. Along the walks of prosperous life death goes a-mowing’97and such harvests as are reaped! Materia medica has been exhausted to find curatives for these physiological devastations. Dropsies, cancers, consumptions, gout and almost every infirmity in all the realm of pathology have been the penalties paid. To counteract the damage, pharmacy has found forthwith medicament, panacea, elixir, embrocation, salve and cataplasm. With swollen feet upon cushioned ottoman, and groaning with aches innumerable, the votary of luxurious living is not half so happy as his groom or coal-heaver. Wrong fashion is the world’92s undertaker, and drives thousands of hearses to Greenwood and Laurel Hill and Mount Auburn.

But, worse than that, this folly is an intellectual depletion. This endless study of proprieties and etiquette, patterns and styles, is bedwarfing to the intellect. I never knew a woman or a man of extreme fashion who knew much. How belittling the study of the cut of a coat or the tie of a cravat or the wrinkle in a sleeve or the color of a ribbon! How they are worried if something gets untied or hangs awry or is not nicely adjusted! With a mind capable of measuring the height and depth of great subjects; able to unravel mysteries, to walk through the universe, to soar up into the infinity of God’92s attributes’97hovering perpetually over a new style of cloak! I have known men, reckless as to their character and regardless of interests momentous and eternal, exasperated by the shape of a vest-button.

Worse than all’97this folly is not satisfied until it extirpates every moral sentiment and blasts the soul. A wardrobe is the rock upon which many a soul has been riven. The excitement of a luxurious life has been the vortex that has swallowed up more souls than the maelstrom off Norway ever destroyed ships. What room for elevating themes in a heart filled with the trivial and unreal? Who can wonder that in this haste for sun-gilded baubles and winged thistle-down men and women should tumble into ruin? The travelers to destruction are not all clothed in rags. In the wild tumult of the Last Day’97the mountains falling, the heavens flying, the thrones uprising, the universe assembling; amid the boom of the last great thunder-peal, and under the crackling of a burning world’97what will become of the disciple of fashion?

Watch the career of one thoroughly artificial. Through inheritance, or, perhaps, his own skill, having obtained enough for purposes of display, he feels himself thoroughly established. He sits aloof from the common herd, and looks out of his window upon the poor man, and says: ’93Put that dirty wretch off my steps immediately!’94 On Sabbath days he finds the church, but mourns the fact that he must worship with so many of the inelegant, and says: ’93They are perfectly awful! That man whom you put in my pew had a coat on his back that did not cost five dollars.’94 He struts through life unsympathetic with trouble, and says: ’93I cannot be bothered.’94 Is delighted with some doubtful story of Parisian life, but thinks there are some very indecent things in the Bible. Walks arm and arm with the successful man of the world, but does not know his own brother. Loves to be praised for his splendid house, and, when told that he looks younger, says: ’93Well, really, do you think so?’94 But the brief strut of his life is about over. Upstairs he dies. No angel wings hovering about him. No Gospel promises kindling up the darkness; but exquisite embroidery, elegant pictures, and a bust of Shakespeare on the mantel. The pulses stop. The minister comes in to read of the resurrection, that day when the dead shall come up’97both he that died on the floor and he that expired under princely upholstery. He is carried out to burial. Only a few mourners, but a great array of carriages. Not one common man at the funeral. No befriended orphan to weep a tear on his grave. No child of want, pressing through the ranks of the weeping, saying: ’93He was the best friend I had.’94

What now? He was a great man. Shall not chariots of salvation come down to the other side of the Jordan and escort him up to the palace? Shall not the angels exclaim: ’93Turn out! A prince is coming.’94 Will the bells chime? Will there be harpers with their harps, and trumpeters with their trumpets? No! No! No! There will be a shudder, as though a calamity had happened. Standing on heaven’92s battlement, a watchman will see something shoot past, with fiery downfall, and shriek: ’93Wandering star’97for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness!’94

But sadder yet is the closing of a woman’92s life who has been worshipful of worldliness, all the wealth of a lifetime’92s opportunity wasted. What a tragedy! A woman on her dying pillow, thinking of what she might have done for God and humanity, and yet having done nothing! Compare her demise with that of a Harriet Newell, going down to peacefully die in the Isle of France, reviewing her lifetime sacrifices for the redemption of India; or the last hours of Elizabeth Hervey, having exchanged her bright New England home for a life at Bombay amid stolid heathenism, that she might illumine it, saying in her last moments: ’93If this is the dark valley, it has not a dark spot in it; all is light, light!’94 or the exit of Mrs. Lenox, falling under sudden disease at Smyrna, breathing out her soul with the last words, ’93Oh, how happy!’94 or the departure of Mrs. Sarah D. Comstock, spending her life for the salvation of Burmah, giving up her children that they might come home to America to be educated, and saying as she kissed them good-by, never to see them again: ’93O Jesus! I do this for thee!’94 or the going of ten thousand good women, who in less resounding spheres have lived not for themselves, but for God and the alleviation of human suffering.

That was a brilliant scene when, in 1485, in the campaign for the capture of Ronda, Queen Elizabeth of Castile, on horseback, side by side with King Ferdinand, rode out to review the troops. As she, in bright armor, rode along the lines of the Spanish host, and waved her jeweled hand to the warriors, and ever and anon uttered words of cheer to the worn veterans who, far away from their homes, were risking their lives for the kingdom, it was a spectacle which illumines history. But more glorious will be the scene when some consecrated Christian woman, crowned in heaven, shall review the souls that on earth she clothed and fed and medicined and evangelized, and then introduced into the ranks celestial. As on the white horse of victory, side by side with the King, this queen unto God shall ride past the lines of those in whose salvation she bore a part, the scene will surpass anything ever witnessed on earth in the life of Joan of Arc or Penelope or Semi-ramis or Aspasia or Marianne or Margaret of Anjou. Ride on, victor!

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage