- favourable, the public say it is written by a spiteful
enemy,—if eulogistic, by a "friend at court," and they accept neither verdict. They go to see the thing for themselves, and if they like it they keep on going. If not, they stay away, and there's an end.
But to the gowns there is no end. The gowns, even in an un-successful play, are continuously talked of, continuously written about, continuously sketched in every sort of pictorial, small and great, fashionable or merely provincial. And the florid language,—or shall we say the 'fine writing'?—used to describe clothes generally, on and off the stage, is so ravingly sentimental, so bewilderingly turgid, that it can only compare with the fervid verbosity of the early eighteenth century romancists, or the biting sarcasm of Thackeray's Book of Snobs, from which the following passage, descriptive of 'Miss Snobky's' presentation gown, may be aptly quoted:—
"Habit de Cour composed of a yellow nankeen illusion dress, over a slip of rich pea-green corduroy, trimmed en tablier with bouquets of Brussels sprouts, the body and sleeves handsomely trimmed with calimanco, and festooned with a pink train and white radishes. Head-dress, carrots and lappets."
By way of a modern pendant to the above grotesque suggestion, one extract from a lengthy "clothes" article recently published in a daily paper will suffice:
"Among the numerous evening and dinner gowns that the young lady has in her corbeille, one, a l'Impératrice Eugénie, is very lovely. The foundation is of white Liberty, with a tulle overdress on which are four flounces of Chantilly lace arranged
