Dust Ho!

Whenever I need a good shot of righteous indignation, I like to search through Google Books on keywords like 'ridiculous dress' or 'ludicrous gown', because I'm never disappointed. I can always find some man who has decided that the only thing wrong with the world is women's dress, and that of course he, being far above the vagaries of fashion (and who is, of course, wearing that completely rational item of dress, the necktie) is ideally suited to pass criticism upon it.

This example is wonderful -- it's not that the streets of London are filthy, or that men should perhaps not throw their cigar butts in the gutter -- no, women's dresses are too long. (Why can't both things be true, I wonder?)

SOCIAL CATECHISM.
Q. WHAT is the dirtiest creature you know?
A. The English fine lady.
Q. What are your reasons for saying this ?
A. Her habits.
Q. Explain yourself more fully.
A. When she walks she drags behind her a receptacle for dust and dirt of every kind.
Q. What is this called?
A. A long dress, or train.
Q. What is its action?
A. It sweeps the ground, collects mud, dust, cigar-stumps, straws, leaves, and every other impurity.
Q. What happens next?
A. This accumulation rubs off to a certain extent upon other portions of her dress, or upon the legs of any person who may walk beside her, and when she gets into her carriage, the objectionable matter spoils the lining ; besides that, the dust is most offensive.
Q. Why does she wear such a ridiculous dress?
A. For one of two reasons. Either because she aims at a servile imitation of certain great folks, or because she owes money to her milliner, and dares not order any kind of dress except that which this tyrant sends home to her.
Q. Why does she not raise, or loop up her dress to keep it from the ground?
A. Because, being a lazy person, she has thick ancles [sic], or being a scraggy person, she has skinny ones, which her vanity forbids her to exhibit.
Q. Is there any other reason?
A. Yes; she has probably ugly feet, disfigured by corns or bunions caused by wearing tight boots.
Q. Is there any cure for such habits?
There is none, until her husband has been nearly ruined by her extravagance, when she is compelled by economical reasons to dress like a rational being, and at once becomes clean and charming as the British female was intended to be.
Q. What sensation is caused to man by the sight of these dresses ?
A. Contemptuous pity for the woman, and pity, without contempt, for her unfortunate husband.
Q. Does she know this ?
A. Yes, but as she dresses less to please men than to vex women, the knowledge has no effect upon her dirty habits.
Q. Where can the animal be seen?
A. At the Zoological Gardens on Sunday afternoons, in the Park and Kensington Gardens, and in most places where fine clothes can be successfully exhibited.
Q. What lesson should you deduce from this ?
A. That of thankfulness to Providence that, (if married at all) you are married to a sensible woman and not to a fine lady.
Q. What will you take to drink ?
A. Anything you like to put a name to.

Never Bored

I don't know how anyone over the age of 8 is bored any longer. Hasn't the internet killed boredom? I haven't been bored since about 1993, possibly earlier. All you have to do is enter some random search string, like "most beautiful dress", and you get a treasure like this:

The most beautiful dress in the ball-room that season was worn by Miss D. It was a very handsome India muslin. She was not called the belle of the evening, but belle of the season. She was not only beautiful and graceful, but so winning and attractive in her manners, so amiable and lovely, that the belle-pickers, who picked all to pieces, could not find anything to say about her.

...

The ladies were all elegantly dressed, a few of which I will describe. One lady was dressed in white silk, with upper skirt of silk, with white illusion puffings, which swept the floor for half a yard. One well-known East Fourth- street belle wore a double-skirt of illusion, small puffs about half a yard up each side; berthe to match, trimmed with little forget-me-nots, which could not be distinguished from natural flowers; her hair was trimmed with the same shade of blue flowers, drooping down on her snowy neck, which made her look more like wax-work than a human being. She had not too much religion to go to either the East or West-end, whenever she thought it proper to go. There were many others there—but I will only say they were all beautiful.

from A Hairdresser's Experience in High Life, by Eliza Potter, 1859.

C'mon -- who DOESN'T want to read the memoirs of an abolitionist hairdresser of Cincinnati? Especially when it's full of stories about gossips and beautiful dresses and scandal? It's like Little Women crossed with People.

[image from Victoriana.com]

Certain People of Importance

(image from The Beloved Woman)

Google Books (and Project Gutenberg, too) now has quite a few novels from one of my favorite guilty pleasures, Kathleen Norris. (Not the Kathleen Norris who is a poet and essayist, and who is still alive, but the Kathleen Norris who was the most popular women's novelist of the 1930s and 1940s (selling 10,000,000 books), peace activist, and early woman journalist.)

All her novels revolve around the same romantic linchpin: that marriage is sacred (she was a devout Catholic). I may snort at the plots that seem to tie up neatly with the convenient death of the bounder who is making the heroine unhappy (or, conversely, with the heroine's selfless realization that the bounder is her burden to bear and that her happiness will come, masochistically, from cooking that same burden hot dinners) but I really read them for her wonderful descriptions of the clothes and food of California society from the turn of the last century to the 1940s.

Ella thought her handsome, in a rather bold, savage way. Victoria was dark and rosy, with flashing eyes and [a] vivacious, almost nervous manner. She wore a dress of dark blue cloth trimmed about the high collar and wide cuffs and about the thick panniers of the skirt with scallops of gray silk, and a high straw turban turned back sharply from the face with two triangles of brim and massed with roses. This somewhat elaborate dress was snugly fitted into a narrow waist line; Victoria wore tan kid gloves, and high scalloped boots of tan kid. Her forehead, like her mother's, was covered with curled hair, and bangles jangled on her wrists, about her neck was a long gold chain that held the little watch that was thrust into her bosom. She was twenty-one.

from Certain People of Importance

"'Cucumbers, olives, salted nuts, currant jelly'", Mrs. Carew was
reading her list, "'ginger chutney, saltines, bar-le-duc, cream
cheese', those are for the salad, you know, 'dinner rolls, sandwich
bread, fancy cakes, Maraschino cherries, maple sugar,' that's to go
hot on the ice, I'm going to serve it in melons, and 'candy'--just
pink and green wafers, I think. All that before it comes to the
actual dinner at all, and it's all so fussy!"

from The Rich Mrs Burgoyne

Norris has a way of writing about dimity ruffles and oyster stew and silk "Chinese" pajamas that engender such a longing for you in those articles that it's hard not to book the first seat on the next train (not plane, mind you) to San Francisco, where, in her books, all these things are in such oversupply that it's the rare young woman who doesn't have at least two, if not all three, in her possession. If you have a little time (and don't mind reading on-screen) go ahead and click.

And, in fundraising news, a couple of folks have asked me to set up a Paypal button to donate; I don't mind doing so -- are there other people interested? If the widget below doesn't work for you, here's the link directly to the ChangingThePresent page ...we're up to $1000! Thank you!

Watch Me Fawn All Over Google Book Search

Or "GBS," as I like to call it, now that we're friends:



Note: I am not the person doing really cool research on the British road system. I'm the other one.

Sorry Her Lot Who Loves Too Well

Since I'm talking at O'Reilly's Tools of Change for Publishing conference today (I'm the last speaker), I figured I should post something book-related ... so I went back to the Google Book Search well, and found this gem:

She was very simply dressed; nothing of the grande dame, en toilette de soir, about her as she received her friends. Her dark-colored gown was high nearly to the neck, with sleeves reaching to the elbow, a single row of beautiful lace falling back from the statuesque throat, and over the shapely arms. A rich cream "rose de Provence" was her only ornament. She looked dark and shadowy, yet brilliant, —with that soft brilliancy with which the flowers gleam, as they nestle in their dark-green foliage, beneath the moonlight of an Eastern night.

It's from Sorry Her Lot Who Loves Too Well by Maria Grant (1879) and I think I may have to download it and read the whole thing, just so I can understand this line:

Donna has been a Gentianella (I will not have her called a bluestocking) for years; and she could tell you astonishing things! Why, she is regularly scientific!

What's a Gentianella, that it would be contrasted with bluestocking?

The title of the book is from HMS Pinafore, btw, which I didn't know until I googled it (I'm a Penzance person, myself). And the image is from Nineteenth-Century Fashions: A Compendium. Go forth and explore.

Guaranteed Satisfaction

I've been a bit under the weather the last few days -- fighting off a cold, nothing that Dayquil wasn't specially engineered by NASA to handle (wait, am I thinking of TANG? Oh, well, they're both orange) -- and have been casting about a bit to make sure that I meet or exceed my recommended daily allowance of happiness. (Happiness is even MORE effective than Dayquil in fighting cold symptoms. Have not yet done the head-to-head of happiness vs. TANG.)

Anyway, some things just WORK, happiness-wise. Like, David Tennant as Dr Who. Like, gratuitous, yet sensitive, use of the synthesizer. Like, imagining, even for ONE MINUTE, that at some point, your email inbox will be empty.

But, more than any of those things (although, depending on the episode, David Tennant as Dr Who is hard to beat) happiness is browsing random keywords on Google Book Search.

Look at this gem, found by looking for "famous" and "dresses":

From 1873 to 1887, especially in the last three years of that period, the adoption of European dress progressed rapidly amongst the upper classes. It had been made compulsory for officials when on duty in 1873, and had steadily gained ground amongst students, bankers, merchants, and others coming, more or less directly, under foreign influence.
The wave of German influence that swept over Japan from 1885 to 1887 carried the innovation to a still more dangerous point. The beautiful costume of the women of Japan so absolutely becoming to its wears that one can hardly imagine them clad in any other way, was threatened, and sad to relate, the ladies of the Court began to order dresses from—Paris? No—the pen almost refuses to chronicle the appalling fact—from Berlin! In the nick of time, the reaction against a Slavish imitation of Occidental customs unsuited to the country came to the rescue.

[from Japan as Seen and Described by Famous Writers, by Esther Singleton (1904).]

Did you get that "Slavish" imitation bit? I wish my pen would almost refuse to write when I try to make bad puns like that.

Anyway, if you're feeling a bit low, start playing with Google Book Search (for maximum enjoyment, I suggest limiting your search to "full text" books only -- under "Advanced Search").

The picture here, by the way, comes from Fenwick's Career. If it makes you want to read the rest of the book, click on the image ...

Oh, and a hearty Dress a Day welcome to our newest advertiser, over there on the right: Michelle Lee's Patterns from the Past! Go check out her site, if you will.