proud of showing their ankles when they had a good one: now every woman seems proud of showing her knees.’” An anonymous vindicator of the hoop writes to me about the indecency of the dress in a way which reads strangely on the same page with her laudation of the fashion. She tells of housemaids making beds and filling ewers with such a display of the person as makes any lady who passes shut the door in a hurry. She tells of seeing a servant washing the door-steps with her hoop actually lying flat on her back as she stoops to her work. The highest authority that can be quoted on such a question as the one before us,—Florence Nightingale,—says in her “Notes on Nursing” (enlarged edition, p. 68).
“I wish, too, that people who wear crinoline could see the indecency of their own dress as other people see it. A respectable elderly woman stooping forward, invested in crinoline, exposes quite as much of her own person to the patient lying in the room as any opera-dancer does on the stage. But no one will tell her this unpleasant truth.” Nor will any one tell young ladies the unpleasant truth of the remarks which their dress provokes everywhere behind their backs, wherever they move—whether in the breeze of the seashore, or on the deck of the steamer, or entering a railway carriage, or climbing hills, or walking in Exhibition galleries,—or doing anything but sitting still. It was but the other day that an omnibus full of young ladies, on their way to a country ball, was upset; and the perplexity how to get them out was simply and seriously described by the first person who arrived to help. He said that the ladies were tumbled so inextricably together that they could not rise or free themselves and that there was nothing to be seen but a crowd of legs sticking up, so that how to get hold of any one, in order to make a way for the others, was the difficulty. Some may treat this as a joke, though the man himself did not; but there is another view of this defence on the ground of modesty which it is impossible for anybody with a heart and a conscience to make a jest of.
The increase of seduction, of illegitimate births, and of infanticide has been so marked since this fashion of balloon-skirts became prevalent, that it is engaging the most serious attention of our clergy, our physicians and country surgeons, our poor-law guardians, coroners, and everybody who is interested in observing the life of the working-classes. If the ladies who set, or weakly follow, the fashion would give the same attention to the fact, it would be well for their countrywomen; but women who are so squeamish about the honourable state of maternity in married life are not exactly those who can be expected to consider the natural dangers of their sisters of the working-class amidst the realities of life. If they would attend, however, they would find that the present mode does but too effectually conceal pregnancy, and that the domestic misery and shame consequent on a wide spread of sin, and on its sudden disclosure at the last moment, have spread all over the land, in town and country, till those who know most are aghast. It was but the other day that one of the Metropolitan coroners spoke publicly of the increase of infanticide, and of possible means of meeting the calamity. Other coroners everywhere are remarking on the same state of things; but it is to be hoped that none of them will propose the remedy suggested by the East London functionary,—a Foundling Hospital. For my own part, I trust we do not need to be taught the operation of Foundling Hospitals, in encouraging vice, and causing a vast increase of sin and shame. It is disgrace enough to our generation that the ladyhood of the kingdom has spread a new snare before the whole sex, and done more by a vain fashion in dress to corrupt the morals of society than all educational and sanitary effort can do to mend them.
It is not only an alarmed coroner here and there who would, in despair, turn to retrograde methods for a chance of relief. The champions of the hoop ask for a retrograde policy, not in alarm, but in a wantonness of insolence which is astonishing in our day. Several of my correspondents say—
VI. “The real evil is that the working-classes are free to imitate the dress of the non-working order. I, who have no work to do, decline to be influenced by the consideration of what suits the condition of women of the labouring classes.”
I need not comment at any length on this kind of defence. It ignores the fact that, thus far, more ladies have been burnt than working-women. It admits the bondage that “gentlewomen” are living in, under a fashion which compels them to be idle on peril of their lives. It takes no account of the mothers of the opulent class who nurse their babes, play with their children, and tend their husbands or parents in illness: or of the large middle-class, in which the wives share the household work;—of any women, in short, who do something useful in life. As soon as they stir to do something useful, these multitudes incur the risks of the domestic servant and the cottage mother. This defence does not show how or where the line is to be drawn between the industrial and idle classes. All this tells itself. The point which most moves wonder and indignation is, that there should be educated persons in England (if only the few who have written the letters on my desk) who propose to restore the caste distinctions of the Middle Ages, for the gratification of an exclusive wilfulness in dress. After a long course of effort to elevate the mind and spirit of the labouring class,—after congratulating ourselves on the success of this effort, as evidenced by the temper and conduct of the Lancashire population in this period of trial,—it is astonishing to meet the demand that the labouring classes shall have a costume which their superiors shall decide to be fitting and convenient for them! But there is no danger of such a proposal being countenanced for a moment by enlightened men,—or women either. The open career which is the true English privilege,—the absence of all arbitrary distinctions which can prevent the fusion of the intelligence and virtue of all classes,—will never be given up, or in the slightest degree interfered with, for any consideration: and certainly not for that of impunity to English women of any order in wearing a perilous and objectionable sort of petticoat.
