Reminiscences of Peace and War. Sara Agnes Rice Pryor
noise of angry waters will be too loud to be hushed by the frou-frou of a lady's silken gown. Moreover, there are always mistakes and misconceptions to be corrected and set right. Have I not just read in a New York daily paper of the ugly fashions of the Washington of the times just before the war — the "great hoops, gowns of reps, the hideous tints of red, the Congress gaiters; how nobody wore a ball gown costing more than $55," etc., etc.? The Congress gaiters must be acknowledged, the hoops also, but perhaps they may all come again; and then some beauty like the empress of the French may arise to make them beautiful. They were large! Beside them Queen Elizabeth's farthingale was an insignificant circumstance. The belle in the fifties lived in an expansive time. There was still plenty of room in the world. Houses were broad and low, carriages were broad and low, furniture was massive. Even a small pier glass was broadened by great scrolls of mahogany. Drawing-rooms were filled with vast arm-chairs, sofas, and tables. The legs of pianos were made as massive as possible.
Ladies wore enormous hoops, and because their heads looked like small handles to huge bells, they widened the coiffure into broad bandeaux and braids, loaded it with garlands of flowers, and enlarged it by means of a wide head-dress of tulle, lace, and feathers, or crowned it with a coal-scuttle bonnet tied under the chin with wide ribbons. In this guise they sailed fearlessly about, with no danger of jostling a neighbor or overturning the furniture. They had not then filled their rooms with spider-legged chairs and tables, nor crowded the latter with frail toys and china. Now that so many of these things are imported, now that the world is so full of people, — in the streets, cars, theatres, at receptions, — milady has found she must reef her sails. Breadth was the ambition of 1854 — length and slimness the supreme attainment of 1904. What would the modern belle look like, among all these skyscrapers, in a hoop? Like a ball — nothing more.
Finding herself with all this amplitude, milady of the fifties essayed gorgeous decoration. She had stretched a large canvas; she now covered it with pictures — bouquets and baskets of flowers appeared on the woollens for house dresses; on the fine gauzes and silks one might find excellent representations of the Lake of Geneva, with a distant view of the Swiss mountains.
When a lady ordered a costume for a ball, her flowers arrived in a box larger than the glazed boxes of to-day in which modistes send home our gowns. The garniture included a wreath for the hair, with bunches at the back from which depended trailing vines. The bouquet de corsage sometimes extended to each shoulder. Bouquets were fastened on gloves at the wrist, wreaths trailed down the skirt, wreaths looped the double skirt in festoons. Only one kind of flower was considered in good taste. Milady must look like a basket of shaded roses, or lilies, or pomegranates, or violets. Ropes of wax beads were sometimes substituted for flowers.
I once entered a milliner's shop — not my dear Madame Delarue's — and in the centre of the room, suspended by a wire from the ceiling, was one of these huge garnitures — all tied together and descending down to the floor. "This, Madame," I said, "is something very recherché?"
"Yes, Madame! That is the rarest parure I have. There was never one like it. There will never be another."
I scrutinized the flowers, and found nothing remarkable in any way.
"That, Madame," continued the milliner, "was purchased from me by the wife of Senator —— ! She wore it to Mrs. Gwin's ball, and returned it to me next day. I ask no pay! I keep it for the sake of Mrs. Senator —— , that I may have the honor of exhibiting it to my patrons."
There is no reason, because we sometimes choose to swing back into the ghastly close-fitted skirt, or to wrap ourselves like a Tanagra figurine, that we should despise a more spacious time. Nor is it at all beneath us to attach enough importance to dress to describe it. Witness the recent "Costumes of Two Centuries," by one of our most accomplished writers. Witness the teachings of a theologian eighteen hundred or more years ago, who condescended to illustrate his sermon by women's ways with dress! Says Tertullian: "Let simplicity be your white, charity your vermilion; dress your eyebrows with modesty, and your lips with reservedness. Let instruction be your ear-rings, and a ruby cross the front pin in your head; submission to your husband your best ornament. Employ your hands in housewifely duties, and keep your feet within your own doors. Let your garments be of the silk of probity, the fine linen of sanctity, and the purple of chastity."
"How does that impress you for a nineteenth-century costume?" I asked Agnes my bosom friend, to whom I read the passage aloud. "Well," she replied, "I should be perfectly willing to try the ruby hairpin as a beginning — and get Clagett to order the new brand of silk, which sounds as if it might be a very pure article indeed and warranted to wear well; but if you are seeking my honest opinion of Tertullian, I frankly confess that I think our clothes and our behavior to our husbands are none of his business."
Society letters of 1857 give us strictly accurate description of toilettes, which may interest some of my readers:1 —
"The wealth of the present Cabinet, and their elegant style of living, sets the pace for Washington soirées — equal in magnificence to the gorgeous fêtes of Versailles.
"At the Postmaster-General's the regal ball room was lined with superb mirrors from floor to ceiling. In the drawing-rooms opposite the host, hostess, and daughter and Miss Nerissa Saunders occupied the post of receiving.
"Mrs. Brown was dressed in rose-colored brocade, with an exquisite resemblance of white lace stamped in white velvet, a point lace cape, and turban set with diamonds. Miss Brown wore a white silk tissue embroidered in moss rosebuds, a circlet of pearls on her hair, and natural flowers on her bosom. Lady Napier wore white brocaded satin, with head-dress of scarlet honeysuckle. Madame de Sartige's gown was of white embroidered crêpe, garnished with sprays of green. The wife of Senator Slidell was costumed in black velvet, trimmed with fur. Her head-dress was of crimson velvet, rich lace, and ostrich feathers. A superb bandeau of pearls bound her raven hair. Miss Nerissa Saunders was exquisite in a white silk, veiled with tulle, the skirts trimmed with rose-colored quilling. Mrs. Senator Clay wore canary satin, covered all over with gorgeous point lace. Mrs. John J. Crittenden was superb in blue moire antique, with point lace trimmings. Mrs. General McQueen of South Carolina appeared in a white silk with cherry trimmings, her head-dress of large pearls fit for a queen. Mrs. Senator Gwin wore superb crimson moire antique with point lace, and a head-dress of feathers fastened with large diamonds. Mrs. Stephen A. Douglas, a white tulle dress over white silk — the overdress looped with bunches of violets and grass, similar bunches on breast and shoulder, and trailing in her low coiffure. Mrs. Faulkner from Virginia was attired in blue silk and Mechlin lace, her daughters in white illusion. Mrs. Reverdy Johnson was superb in lemon satin and velvet pansies. Mrs. Pringle of Charleston wore a velvet robe of lemon color; Mrs. Judge Roosevelt of New York velvet and diamonds; Mrs. Senator Pugh of Ohio crimson velvet with ornaments of rubies and crimson pomegranate flowers."
This last lady, Mrs. Pugh, wife of the Senator from Ohio, was par excellence the beauty of the day. To see her in this dress was enough to "bid the rash gazer wipe his eye." Her eyes were large, dark, and most expressive. Her hair was dark, her coloring vivid. Mrs. Douglas, Mrs. Pugh, and Kate Chase were the three unapproached, unapproachable, beauties of the Buchanan administration. The daughter of Senator Chase was really too young to go to balls. She was extremely beautiful, "her complexion was marvellously delicate, her fine features seeming to be cut from fine bisque, her eyes, bright, soft, sweet, were of exquisite blue, and her hair a wonderful color like the ripe corn-tassel in full sunlight. Her teeth were perfect. Poets sang then, and still sing, of the turn of her beautiful neck and the regal carriage of her head." She was as intellectual as she was beautiful. From her teens she had been initiated into political questions for which her genius and her calm, thoughtful nature eminently fitted her. When she realized that neither party would nominate her father for President in 1860, she turned her energetic mind to the formation of plans and intrigues to obtain for him the nomination of 1868! She failed in that, she failed in everything, poor girl. She wrecked her life by a marriage with a wealthy, uncongenial governor of Rhode Island, from whom she fled with swift feet across the lawn of the beautiful home at Canonchet, and hand in hand with poverty and sorrow ended her life in obscurity.
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