The Dress Doctor: An Ingenious Lady’s Profession: 1894

The Little Seamstress, John Faed, (c) Dumfries and Galloway Council (Kirkcudbright); Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

This is certainly the day of utilizing one’s talent, whatever it may be. A woman who lives in another city found herself, after 20 years of happy sheltered married life, a widow with two daughters, 16 and 18, to make a home for, and an income so small as to be scarcely worth mentioning. The elder daughter was delicate, and the younger had two years of her college course to complete. To meet the crisis and tide over an interval which would give one child health and the other education confronted the mother. For a time she saw no way to pursue. Then a clear-headed friend came to her one day for a talk over affairs.

“No, Isabel,” she began, “I know your liabilities, what are your assets? I mean beside your little income. What can you do absolutely well?”

“I’ve a general knowledge of many things,” was Isabel’s discouraged reply, “but the only thing I can do absolutely well,” and her laugh was mirthless, “is to make over old clothes. You know I’ve always had a great aptitude at that for the girls and myself.”

“To be sure you have, and I believe you can do that now,” came the prompt answer to astonish Isabel.

Further talks followed, and in the end the friend persuaded her companion that something could be done with this talent. The beginning that spring was small and merely among her circle of wealthy friends. She did not actually make over the old clothes, but spent a morning or a day with the family seamstress, carefully inspecting accumulated materials and suggesting designs and combinations which permitted the continued use of dresses and fabrics. She charged by the day, and her rate was not low, but she saved it often a dozen times over to her patrons. The autumn saw her clientele increased, and now, after three years, she is busy nine months of the year at good prices.

Before other women embark in the same occupation it must be understood that this woman has little short of genius for her unique calling. It is positive pleasure to see her at her practice, for she jocosely styles herself doctor of robes, and certainly her skill and deftness are closely allied to the surgeon who fits and restores humanity’s broken bones and misplaced anatomy.

She is shown a fine Paris dress bodice of black satin, whose sleeves have vanished, and of whose skirt is left a single straight breadth. She looks them over critically.

“Have you any velvet or figured heavy silk or silk and wool cloth or any handsome black novelty material?” she asked.

A piece of frise velvet is found which will do for full sleeve tops with some other cuffs and leave two or three straight pieces. Then the odds and ends trimming box is looked over, and a few detached ornaments and some black lace are found. The waist is fitted, the long postilion back carefully opened and pressed and left to hang. The pieces of the frise velvet are set on for skirt fronts and hip pieces joined by jars of the black satin skirt breadth. The jet ornaments are put on the waist and at critical points on the hip skirts. Puffs of lace laid over white silk and a collar to match are made and the end is a costume jacket of imported elegance that looks as if it might have cost $150 and did cost not a penny beyond the seamstress’ time and the designer’s suggestion, as the black silk lining in this case was produced from a discarded coat.

If something extra is needed, she can tell to the shade, quality and fraction of measurement what it must be. And her customers are no longer confined to the wealthy. Persons in moderate circumstances realize that their need of her is quite as great. Did space permit, the recital of her many triumphs in evolving a Worth gown from the family ragbag would be most interesting. Her work is carried on quietly, her patrons advertising her, from one to another and her excellent social position, which has undoubtedly much aided her, has never been in the least impaired. New York Times.

Jackson [MI] Citizen Patriot 21 August 1894: p. 5

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil can only applaud the lady’s ingenuity in dress-doctoring and her willingness to accept the advice of her sensible friend. But we really are intensely interested to hear the details of that “Worth gown from the ragbag…”

Remodeling gowns was done by all classes of society.

“Those who are still deep in the fascinating whirl of society engagements do not need to trouble themselves much on this subject [the remodeling of one’s wardrobe.] They usually employ a dressmaker, as they do their household help, by the year, and she assumes the duty of remodeling and making over what she deems worth the labor; but there are many who at best can but afford to employ a clever seamstress to do this kind of work. There are others, again, who must do the greater part of it themselves, or see many dresses laid aside before they have done full service. There is hardly a gown, whether designed for parlor, bedroom, or ball room, but will bear making over once. The clever dressmaker can take out a breadth here, put a panel there, place a Spanish flounce where skirt front has been soiled, or set in a pleating somewhere else. Slashings can be cut, or covered, vests inserted or removed, etc. etc., till any half worn or half soiled gown may be restored to almost its pristine freshness. Even ball costumes can, by skilled hands, be so reconstructed and remodeled as to last and look well after three alterations, and prove satisfactory to any ordinary society goer, unless she be one of those who consider a wholly new costume sent over by Mons. Worth indispensable to her comfort at every evening out.”

Cleveland [OH] Leader 27 January 1889: p. 10

One reason that remodeling was so popular was that ready-made clothing was not always of good quality or plentiful, while there was a surplus of seamstresses and dressmakers. In 1892, these were just a few of the many ladies advertising their talents as dressmakers in The New York Herald. Note the range of fees:

*A dressmaker and ladies’ tailor, “an artist in cutting, fitting, designing; just returned from Paris; late with Worth, Rhodnot, Mrs. Connolly; carriage and tea gown creations; garments made from $12 up…$3.50 per day or at home.”

*Experienced dressmaker in wealthy society family to remodel evening street dresses; superior judgment, good style $2.50 per day.

*Seamstress, First Class, Hand or Machine…will furnish W.W. sewing machine free of charge $1 day.

*Seamstress, Understanding Dressmaking, to go out by the day $1.25 $6 per week.

See the “dressmaking” and “domestic arrangements” tabs for further adventures in make-do and mend, albeit not always of couture quality.

[This post was originally published in 2014.]

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

The Man Milliners of Paris: 1892

Two Worth ball gowns, c. 1892 Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Collection.

AN ART OF FRANCE.

THE MARVELOUS CREATIONS OF PARIS’ MAN MILLINERS. What Happens to the Customer Who Seeks Fashion in the Shops of the  Dressmakers

Composing a Costume

The Models and Their Duties

Passing an Inspection

The Visit of the Autocrat

How Even the Bravest of Society Fares In the Realm of Style.

There is no outside show nor elegantly-dressed window at the Paris dressmaker’s. The great dressmaker or couturier is not a simple tradesman but an artist. His studios–for he is a man!–generally occupy two or three flats in one of those plain-fronted Restoration houses which line the Rue de la Paix, the Rue Taitbout, or the Rue Louis Legrand. Entering by a large porte-cochére as broad as it is high, you mount a carpeted staircase with walls of simili marble, or simply painted yellow. Through the open doors you see here the packing-room, there workrooms, with squadrons of girls sewing and handling piles of silk on long tables under the superintendence of a lean and severe-looking woman in black. The first reception-room is somber; the walls are hung with tapestry representing landscapes in Normandy and Brittany; the folding doors are painted black; on the chimney-piece are huge bronze-zinc candelabra and a clock surrounded by a nickel-plated Diana; the carpet is dingy and worn. To the left, seated at a desk, is a blonde and effeminate bookkeeper. Moving around the tables charged with piles of stuffs are one or two salesmen–M. Cyprien or M. Alexandre. The head salesman, an elegant person, dressed in black silk in the summer and black satin in the winter, receives the visitors and puts them in communication with the great couturier himself, or with one of his leading women assistants, termed premiéres.

The couturier is a curious creature, a great artist. Pompadour had her tailor Supplis, who is said to have been a designer of genius; the eighteenth century had Mme. Cafaxe, the famous modiste-couturiere, whose bills were as enormous as those of her successors at the present day; but the conditions of feminine elegance have changed since then. The grandmothers were content with spring, summer, autumn, and winter toilets, with a stock of gowns, mantles, and headdresses of a material appropriate to each season. Worth, Pingat, and Aurelly, the three great couturiers who directed feminine elegance under the empire into the paths of art and taste, introduced the “costume” element into dress: and now, instead of dressing his customers four times a year, the modern couturier dresses them ten, fifteen, and twenty times a year. A woman nowadays orders a dress for this ball, another for another ball; she wants a costume for the Grand Prix race-day; a gown for a certain garden party; a special costume for a yachting excursion; a dozen costumes for the seaside, etc. The dressmaker collects the engravings of Eisen, Debucourt, and Moreau; he advances money to mount looms at Lyons to create new stuffs; he keeps an army of brodeuses (embroidery women) at work to make unique trimmings; he examines and confesses his customers, studies them morally and physically, and invents becoming and original toilettes by the hundred. Thanks to these great artists (!) marvelous “lampas” have been brought to light. Lyons has made faithful reproductions of the most admirable brocades, of the most sumptuous plushes, and of silks with golden tissues and all that was so exquisitely magnificent in times gone by. Ex-Empress Eugénie used to be one of the greatest “coquettes,” as regards costume, under the second Empire. Princess Mathilde, Princess of Sagan, Princess of Metternich, Countess of Pourtales, and the Marquise of Galiffet were then the leaders of fashion.

The Dressmaker a Confidant.

Thanks to his continuous relations with all these noble women, the dressmaker becomes often the confidant and even the banker of some of his clients. In a word he occupies a novel and peculiar position on the confines of society. Living in an atmosphere of caprice, he is himself capricious; breathing an air impregnated with perfumes, he is often a victim of chronic neuralgia, which increases tenfold the natural irritability of the artistic nature., The couturier reigns over his elegant customers like a tyrant who knows that he is indispensable. And in truth he is the great arbiter of universal elegance, the oracle of the most beautiful women. From Oceanica to Peru, from Suez to Panama, and from Petersburg to the Cape of Good Hope large trunks arrive, carrying to the daughters of Eve the handsomest “chiffons,” prettily ribboned and saturated, as it were, with that exquisite atmosphere of the Rue de la Paix which has become in a certain sense the temple of all luxury, of all delicacy, of all refinement! And how delighted are they, the poor exiled ones, who dwell thousands of miles from the sacred precincts. How they untie each knot of ribbon with infinite precaution, like devotees arranging a relic. Their curious eyes devour the glittering stuffs. Hardly do they dare touch the costume itself, which when lifted from the depths  of the trunk expands its leaves like a flower whose enraptured corolla blooms beneath the gorgeous rays of the sun. Her heart beats; she blushes, for the emotion is sweet–it is coquetry!

House of Worth Paris salon.

It is between 4 and 5 o’clock in the afternoon. In the reception-room the first woman attendant (Madame la première vendeuse!–such is her official appellation) divides her attention between a dozen women who are looking at the new silks, handling the piles of lace and artificial flowers strewn on the tables, eying curiously half-finished skirts and bodices without sleeves that lie in heaps on the chairs and chattering in strange slang: ” Velvet is again the fashion this winter.” (On est au velours cet hiver!) “Faille is not the mode, I see,” “Surah corkscrews so awfully.” In the adjoining rooms are seen the demoiselles-mannequins, young woman automates, whose business it is to show off in their perfect figure dresses and mantels. With a weary, empty expression the automate walks silently over the thick carpets from room to room and from morning to night, wearing now a court mantle, now the dress of an American millionaire’s wife, now the robe of a queen. Her capital is her figure and her bearing, and her salary is proportioned to her elegance, rising in some cases to $2,000 a year. All languages and all accents are heard, and elegance of all grades meets in the drawing-rooms of a great couturier–the blue-blooded aristocrat, the princesses of the Comédie Francaise Theater, exotic parvenue, and the fashionable demimondaine. Each in turn passes into one of the small trying-on rooms, draped with blue or brown satin, and heated to green-house temperature. The elegant woman, partly undressed, and wearing simply her corset and a short silk dress trimmed with lace, waits in front of the looking-glass. The dress arrives in fragments–a queer mixture of silk, stiff muslin, lining, and loose threads. First comes the corsagère, or woman attendant on the bodice; she takes a regular mold of the torso in coarse canvas, such as the tailors use to pad coats; on this mold the bodice is built, and at the second trying on it is brought all sewn and whaleboned, but only basted below the arms and at the shoulder. Crac! Crac! The corsagère rips and rips away, and then proceeds to pin and lace and make cabalistic signs with a yellow pencil, cutting and slashing here and there with wonderful surety of eye and hand. “Does Madame feel her corset?” she finally asks; and if it is right, Madame replies, satisfied: “Yes ; I’m at home in it!” The Next Step Toward the Finale.  

Next comes the jupière (woman attendant on the skirt). She has charge of the relevés and the details of the train. Then follows the specialist who is charged with what is called the “mounting of the skirt,” and who drapes the skirt on a lining of silk, and crawls on her knees round, and round the woman for half an hour at a time. Dressmaking is perhaps one of the few arts in which the subordinate workers still show a certain amour propre and something of the artist’s ambition. In their light-fingered collaboration with the imagination of the masculine couturier they delight to produce masterpieces, and spare no pains, especially when they have to do with a woman of fine natural figure–“toute faite,” as they say–who has not the artificial dressmaker’s waist.

Meantime the voice of the master is heard as he comes out of one of the trying-on rooms. He is storming at one of the leading women because a “ruche” has been substituted for a flounce, and because a light-colored fur has been put on the mantle of the Countess de Z., a delicate blonde! It is not the creation of models that is difficult; it is to get the models executed. “I am not seconded. The whole mantle will have to be remade. It is enough to drive one crazy! Be good enough to tell M. Cyprien to inquire who is responsible for the error.” And the great artist passes into another room, where several women are waiting in their half-finished dresses for a word of approval from the master, or a touch from his magic hand that will perfect a seam or crumple a mass of tulle into a vision of beauty.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/159189?searchField=All&sortBy=Relevance&ft=worth+tea+gown&offset=0&rpp=20&pos=8

One woman will humbly call the great artist’s attention to a certain fold in her Watteau train. The great artist will shrug his shoulders, and say brusquely, “Madame la Baronne, you look like a broomstick in that robe. Take it off, and come again tomorrow. I will compose something else for you. I am not in the vein today.” He salutes and passes on to another woman. But he cannot digest the patent fact that some one attached to his staff was not aware that “Watteaus” were for blondes who are not too slim and “Violas” (the sober draperies and the rich stuffs of the seventeenth century) were attributed to grave-looking and severe figures and to those that have some majesty about them. As to Madame la Baronne she will take off her robe in disgust and console herself by going to try on her new riding habit in the “Salon des Amazons.” This room is draped in green velvet and adorned with side-saddles, whips, and stirrups; on the table are rolls of dark cloth and silk hats, with green, brown, and blue veils; in the middle is a life-size wooden horse, on which the Baroness mounts to have the folds of her amazon, or riding-habit, arranged. An insipid blonde young man is specially told off to aid the woman mount the dummy steed.

Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Collection

The final trying-on of the finished costumes is a great day in the life of all modern French élégantes, who often invite their friends to the fête. Then you hear in the vestibule or in reception-room such orders as this: “Show M. X. in for Mme. de F.’s trying-on.” “Show M. de Y. in for Countess M.’s trying-on–“for there are men, and especially painters, who are excellent judges in dressmaking, or “chiffons,” as they call the art. Countess M., aided by one of the young women in black, puts on first the skirts which have been cut and made with as much care and skill as the costume itself, for it is an axiom in modern dressmaking that the underclothing is half the battle. Then, having donned her dress, she appeals triumphant in the drawing-room where her friends are waiting, and in the stuffy little room, the air of which is thick with the perfumes of ylang-ylang, heliotrope, jonquil, poudre de riz, and odor di femina, the chorus of admiration breaks out, and the whole staff of the establishment is admitted to contemplate the masterpiece. The première, the chef des jupes, the chef des corsages, the chef des garnisseuses, etc., each in turn opens the door and with a coaxing intonation of voice asks permission to enter.

It Is a Daily Scene.

And so, day after day during the season, there is a perpetual frou-frou of silk and a chattering of musical voices on the staircase and in the salons, and day after day the effeminate bookkeeper adds to the total of the bills– which will be paid who knows when and who knows how? There are women whose bills amount in a year to as much as $30,000 and $40,000. This is enormous, the philosophic observer may remark to the great artist, who will reply in his most delicate and flute-like voice: “Yes, yes! But only think, I have just terminated an embroidered mantle for Countess K. which costs $6,000.” And hailing one of the automates who chances to be passing by, he says: “Mademoiselle, will you kindly go and fetch the mantle for Countess K. to show to Monsieur. Is it not lovely? Look how it falls!” And the master tumbles to his knees in ecstasy before his last creation.

The type of the great couturier has been put upon the stage in its grotesque aspect by Gondinet in his comedy “Paris,” and by “Gyp” (Madame de Martel) in her Gymnase piece, “Autour du Mariage.” But the purely artistic and the psychological aspect of the artist would repay study, and if there were a Balzac living nowadays it would certainly tempt him. The principal Parisian dressmakers are all uncommon personalities. Their names are Messrs. Worth, Felix, Pingat, Roger, Laferrière (Sarah Bernhardt’s preference), Pasguier, Doucet, Rouff, Morin, and Mme. Rodrigues. They are skillful beyond expression in drapery stuff, harmonizing colors, and creating those marvels of silk, and lace, and tulle, which constitute the inimitable toilettes of the Parisiennes, the model to which the civilized world still looks for its highest inspiration. It has been said, and the statement is not devoid of truth, that the leading lady dressmaker in Paris treats all artists and literary men as her equals. She, one day composed a toilette for Mme. Alexandre Dumas, and in complimenting her upon it, M. Dumas said to her: “Madame, you are the Meissonier of dressmaking.”

Chicago [IL] Tribune 9 April 1892: p. 16

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: One is not quite certain what M. Dumas was intimating. Meissonier was a painter of sieges, military manoeuvres, and Napoleonic battle scenes….

Although unnamed, the “man milliner” is, of course Charles Frederick Worth, the autocrat of the cutting-table. He was born in England, but came to France, drawn by the allure of Paris fashions. Strangely, while he first rose to fame in creating exquisite toilettes for the Empress Eugenie, he was never summoned to Windsor or Buckingham Palace to dress Queen Victoria.

Worth might have been called the “millionairess whisperer.” His gift for self-promotion and supreme self-confidence allowed him to dictate to his stupendously wealthy clients exactly what they would wear and how they would wear it. If he did not like the look or figure of a client, he would summarily dismiss her. He seems to have appreciated rich American ladies, saying, famously, that they “have faith, figures, and francs – faith to believe in me, figures that I can put into shape, francs to pay my bills”.

After Worth’s untimely death in 1895, his sons continued the business and the firm’s association with Lyon, creating exquisitely beautiful silk brocades, exclusive to the House of Worth.

Jean-Philippe Worth butterfly gown, 1898, Metropolitan Museum of Art. The skirt has been woven a la disposition.

Mrs Daffodil has often posted about couture and dressmaking, such as this post on the rivalry between M. Poiret and the Queen of Chiffon, Lucile.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

Wedding Gown Contretemps: 1901

JUNE BRIDES AND FINE WEDDING GOWNS

Some of the Experiences That Have Befallen Some Young Women on Their Wedding Day.

They were discussing June weddings and June brides in the last box in the pavilion at Lake Harriet and the sound of their voices rose softly above the two-step with which Sorrentino and his men in red were bewitching their hearers.

“I know for a positive fact,” declared the first young woman, “that the reason Molly was half an hour late for her own wedding was that the dressmaker did not send home her gown until after the time announced for the service. Molly was nearly frantic and was almost ready to start in a last summer’s dimity when the messenger arrived, breathless and cross. The dressmaker tells a good story, but it does not tally with the messenger’s.”

“I wish you could tell me why a dressmaker has such an antipathy to sending a wedding gown home before it is time for the bride to wear it,” asked the second young woman, shaking the pop corn from her skirts. “Molly is not the only bride who has spent her last unmarried moments acting Sister Ann from the hall window, and no Bluebeard was ever more relentless than the woman who made the organdie that was causing so much anxiety and confusion.”

“Perhaps she is afraid the bride will try on the gown if it is sent home early, and you know it is frightfully unlucky to try on a wedding gown,” ventured the third young woman, who was young, as the generous bag of taffy in her lap showed. “Zaidie tried hers on, you know, and spilt lemonade all down the front, and the gown had to be sent to the cleaner’s. Imagine being married in a cleaned gown!”

“Don’t confuse carelessness with ill luck,” advised her elders, “and don’t think the dressmaker is acting from philanthropic motives. Just what her reason is I haven’t been able to decipher, but I know that it is not the welfare of the bride’s future that guides her. When Rebecca went to see about her trousseau, she told her modiste that she was to be married a month earlier than she was, and the woman promised her clothes for early in May. Rebecca thought she was mighty clever, and everything would have been as she planned if she had not ordered her invitations of the same stationer that stamps the dressmaker’s note paper. The modiste saw the invitation at the shop, and work on Rebecca’s trousseau commenced to lag. Instead of getting her gowns early in May, Rebecca never received them until the day of the wedding. The dressmaker made one excuse after another for failing to send them home, although Rebecca declares that they were all finished, except hemming down a facing or two, at the promised time.”

“Minerva had a worse time than that. She ordered her gowns and the dressmaker drilled over them until two weeks before the wedding. When Minerva tried on the wedding gown in its embryonic condition she was discouraged. She did not like it and she would not be married in a gown she did not like. She suggested that certain alterations be made. The dressmaker refused, saying that the gown was made as Minerva had ordered it and she could not change it for the wedding. Minerva has Scotch blood in her veins and she refused to take any of her gowns unless the white mousseline de soie was change to suit her. The dressmaker threatened a law-suit. Minerva’s American blood wavered, but she is more Scotch than American and it was the former that gave her courage to say: ‘Sue!’ The dressmaker went a step further and threatened to bring suit on the very day of Minerva’s wedding. Minerva consulted a lawyer. He advised her to have as quiet a wedding as possible, to smuggle her clothes out of the house and to secrete her wedding gifts as fast as they arrived for fear the dressmaker might levy on them. Minerva changed her plans, packed her trunks at a neighbor’s and sent her presents out of the house almost before they had arrived. Those that came too late to be sent away, were artfully concealed among the family silver and cut glass. The wedding gown, procured from a second dressmaker, was brought into the house from a laundry wagon and the wedding took place with a very uncertain idea of how it would end. Minerva did not dare have her going away gown in the house and left in a shirt waist and old skirt. A friend carried the real traveling gown to the station and she changed there and took the train with a feeling that anticipation is greater than realization and that a wedding and a law suit were too much for one day. The dressmaker did nothing but disturb Minerva’s peace of mind, but she did that well.”

“Penelope had quite an interesting time with her wedding gown. It was sent home early, for a wedding gown, fully half an hour before the service. Penelope was all ready to don it and all of her feminine relatives hastened to help her take it from the box. You know Penelope, tall, slight and dark, just the style of a girl to wear white satin well and her gown was all of the stiffest, heaviest satin. You can imagine her amazement when she opened the box and found a love of an organdie, all ruffles and lace insertion. She gave a shriek which was echoed by all the feminine relatives, they screamed to the masculine relatives and the latter dashed out in mad pursuit of the messenger. It was one of the hottest of June days and outwardly and inwardly the masculine relatives were very warm as they finally persuaded the boy to stop. It. took some time to convince him that he had made a mistake and brought confusion and distress to two brides. Penelope lives somewhere south and the boy had taken her white satin gown to a fluffy little blonde up north and the minutes seemed hours until a change was effected and the guests downstairs wondered if the bridal couple had decided that a wedding would be a mistake and were gathering courage to confess.”

“Last summer one of the girls was married in a gown that was made for another bride and taken to her by mistake. Fortunately it fitted her, and, as the dressmaker did not send it home until the time of the service, it was that or an old gown. The real owner was not to be married until evening, and the afternoon was spent by one of the maids in trying to make the mull look as if it had never been worn.”

“And the moral of that,” said the girl  with the taffy, as she crumpled the bag and threw it over the railing, “is not to be married in June.”

“And the moral of that is not to be married at all,” retorted the girl with the popcorn. “The September and October brides have just as many hairbreadth escapes with their wedding gowns as those of June.”

The Minneapolis [MN] Journal 29 June 1901: p. 20

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: It is a curious quirk, this reluctance to deliver a wedding gown in a timely manner. One would think that the dressmakers would be eager to deliver the dress and receive their thanks and pay. Such things did not only afflict the June bride:

SUES FOR LAUGHTER HURTS.

Man Who Had to Wed in Old Clothes Blames Express Company.

Atlanta, Ga., Jan. 6. Forced to marry in a much-worn suit of business clothes, and embarrassed by the subdued but audible titter of the guests at the fashionable wedding in Ligonier, Ind., Walter Lathrop, a prominent business man of Atlanta, has filed suit for damaged against the Southern Express company, alleging the company contracted to, but failed to deliver his wedding outfit in time. The marriage took place, but Lathrop felt that the humiliation required amelioration of a financial kind. He declared in his petition that Ligonier was too small a place to buy another outfit and he did not have time to go to Chicago.

The Inter Ocean [Chicago IL] 7 January 1910: p. 6

He sued for $1000 damages. $200 for loss of clothes and $800 damages to his social standing for having to be married in a business suit.

There were a considerable number of superstitions–some contradictory–that daunted Victorian brides. Here are a few specifically relating to the dress:

Nor should a bride make her own wedding dress, if she would have the best of luck.

There is an old superstition that if the bride’s outfit was not paid for at the time of the wedding bad luck would affect one of the first little ones later.

It is said to be unlucky to begin making the wedding gown before the wedding day is named.

It is bad luck to try on the bridal costume of a girl friend.

Chicago [IL] Tribune 16 November 1919: p. 61

And, in Britain, bad luck is supposed to dog the bride who wears anything but a secret wedding gown. In 1960, some of the details of Princess Margaret’s wedding gown were “leaked” in the United States publication, Women’s Wear Daily, but she defied the superstition and wore the gown, which was, in all fairness, quite lovely.  Mrs Daffodil is quite sure that the turmoil of that marriage, which culminated in divorce in 1978, had nothing whatever to do with the reports on the gown just before the marriage.

 

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

 

Mending a Misunderstanding: 1860

Early-18th century house-wife or hussif. http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/22689/lot/623/

A BACHELOR’S LOVE-MAKING.

By HELEN FROST GRAVES.

You would have known it for a bachelor’s den the moment you put your head in the door! Blue, spicy wreaths of cigar-smoke circling up to the ceiling–newspapers under the table–Castile soap in the tiny bronze card-receiver–slippers on the mantle-piece, and general confusion everywhere. And yet Mr. Thornbrooke–poor deluded mortal–solemnly believed that his room was in the most perfect order! For hadn’t he poked the empty champagne bottles under the bed, and sent the wood-box to bear them company, and hung up his morning gown over the damp towels, and dusted the ash-besprinkled hearth with his best silk handkerchief? He’d to see a room in better trim than that–guessed he would! And now he was mending himself up, preparatory to going to call on the very prettiest girl in New York. Not that he was particularly fond of the needle, but when a fellow’s whole foot goes through a hole in the northeast toe of his stocking, and there isn’t a button on his shirts, it’s time to repair damages.

Now, as Mr. Thornbrooke’s whole stock of industrial implements consisted of a lump ot wax, an enormous pair of scissors, and one needle, the mending didn’t progress rapidly. His way of managing the button question, too, necessarily involved some delay; he had to cut all these useful little appendages from another shirt and sew them on and next week when the second shirt was wanted, why it was easy enough to make a transfer again! See what it is to be a bachelor of genius! it never once occurred to him to buy a few buttons extra!

“Buttons are not much trouble,” said Mr. Thornbrooke to himself, as he wiped the perspiration from his brow, “but when it comes to coat-sleeves, what the mischief is a fellow to do? I haven’t any black thread either; and he looked dolorously at a small tear just in his elbow, where some vicious nail had caught in the broadcloth. “A black pin may do for to-night, and to-morrow I’ll send it to the tailor. The fact is, I ought to be married; and so I would, if I only dared to ask Lilian. O, dear! I know she wouldn’t have me–and yet I’m not so certain either–if only could muster the courage boldly to put the question! But just as sure as I approach the dangerous ground my heart fails me. And then that puppy, Jones, with his curled mustache, and hair parted in the middle–always hanging round Lilian, and quoting poetry to her—if I could have the privilege of kicking him across the street, I’d die happy! He isn’t bashful, not he ! If somebody would only invent a new way of popping the question–something that wasn’t quite so embarrassing!” Our hero gave a his black, glossy curls an extra brush, surveyed himself critically in the glass, and then, with a deep sigh, set forth to call on the identical Lilian Raymond, resolving as he has done a thousand times before, that if—perhaps—maybe—

Oh, the bashfulness of bachelors!

When Mark Thornbrooke arrived within the charmed precincts of old Mr. Raymond’s handsome parlors, velvet carpeted, chandeliered with gold and ormolu, and crowded to the very doors with those charming knickknacks that only a woman’s taste provides, Miss Lily was “at home” in a bewildering pink merino dress, edged with white lace around the pearly shoulders, and a crimson moss-rose twisted in among the rippling waves of her soft brown hair. She never looked half so pretty; and thank Providence, Jones wasn’t on hand, for once in his life. But what was almost as bad, Lilly’s cousin was there–a tall, slender, black eyed girl, with arch lips and cheeks as red as a Spitzenberg apple. O, how Thornbrooke wished that Miss Esther Allen was at the bottom of the Red Sea, or anywhere else except in that particular parlor. And then her eyes were so sharp—he hadn’t been “doing the agreeable” more than four minutes and a half, before she exclaimed:

“Dear me, Mr. Thornbrooke–pray excuse me–but what on earth is the matter with your elbow?”

Mark turned scarlet–the traitorous black pin has deserted its post. “Only a compound fracture in my coat, Miss Allen,” said he, feeling as though his face might do the duty of all old Mr. Raymond ‘s chandeliers put together, “you know we bachelors are not expected to be exempt from such things.”

“Hold up your arm, sir, and I’ll set it all right in one moment,” said Esther, instantaneously producing from some secret recess in the folds of of her dress, a thimble and needle, threaded with black silk, and setting expertly to work.

“There, now consider yourself whole.”

“How skillful you are,” said Mark, admiringly, after he had thanked her most sincerely. “But then you have so many nice little concerns to work with. I have only a needle and some wax, besides my scissors!”

“You ought to have a house-wife, Mr. Thornbrooke,” said Miss Lily, timidly lifting up her long lashes in his direction. Lily never could speak to Thornbrooke without a soft, little, rosy shadow on her cheek.

“A what?” demanded Mark, turning very red.

“A house-wife.”

“Yes,” said Mark, after a moment’s awkward hesitation, “my friends have told me so very often—and–and I really think so myself, you know. But what sort of a one would you recommend, Miss Raymond?”

“Oh, any pretty little concern. I’ll send you one to-morrow morning, if you’ll accept of it,” she added, with the rosy light in her cheeks again.

“If–I’ll—accept–of it!” gasped Mark, feeling as if he were up in an atmosphere of pearl and gold, with two wings sprouting out of his broadcloth, on either side. And just as he was opening his lips to assure Miss Lily that he was ready to take the precious gift to his arms then and there without any unnecessary delay, the door opened, and in walked Jones.

Mark was not at all cannibalistic in his propensities, but just then he could have eaten Jones up with most uncommon pleasure. And there the fellow sat, pulling his long mustaches and talking the most insipid twaddle–sat and sat until Mark rose in despair to go. Even then he had no opportunity to exchange a private word with Lily. “You–you’ll not forget–”

“Oh, I’ll be sure to remember, said she, smilingly, and half wondering at the unusual pressure he gave her hand. “Ladies often do provide their bachelor friends so!”

Mark went home, the happiest individual that ever trod a New York pavement. Indeed, so great was his felicity that he indulged in various gymnastic capers indicative of bliss, and only paused in them at the gruff caution of a policeman, who probably had forgotten his own courting days–“Come, young man, what are you about?”

“Was there ever a more delicate way of assuring me of her favorable consideration? was there ever a more feminine admission of her sentiment? Of course she will come herself—an angel, breathing airs from Paradise–and I shall tell her of my love! A housewife–oh! the delicious words! Wonder what neighborhood she would like me to engage a residence in–how soon it would be best to name the day? Oh! if I should awake, and find it all a blissful dream!

Early the next morning Mr. Thornbrooke set briskly to work, “righting up things.” How he swept and dusted and scoured—how the dust flew from pillar to post–how the room was aired to get rid of the tobacco-smoke, and sprinkled with Cologne, and beautified generally. And at length, when the dust was all swept into one corner, and covered by a carelessly (!) disposed newspaper, he found the window-glass murky, and polished it with such vengeance that his fist, handkerchief and all, went through, sorely damaging the hand, and necessitating the ungraceful accessory of an old hat to keep out the wintry blast for the time-being. However, even this mishap didn’t long damp his spirits—for was not Lily coming?

Long and wearily he waited, yet no twinkle at the bell gave warning of her approach.

“It’s all her sweet feminine modesty,” thought he, and was content.

At length there was a peal below, and Mark’s heart jumped up into his mouth, beating like a reveille drum. He rushed to the door, but—there was no one but a little grinning boy, with a box.

“Miss Raymond’s compliments, and here’s de housewife, sir!”

“The housewife, you little imp of Erebus!”

“Yes, sir, in de box, all right!”

Mark slunk back into his room and opened the box, half expecting to see a full dressed young lady issue from it, a la  Arabian Nights; but no–it was only a little blue velvet book all tied up with gold cord, and full of odd compartments in azure silk, containing tape, needles, scissors, silk, thimble, and all the nice little work-table accessories!

“And she calls this a housewife!” groaned Mark, in ineffable bitterness of spirit at the downfall of his bright visions. “But I won’t be put off so.”

Desperation gave him courage, and off he hied to the Raymond mansion, determined to settle the matter if there were forty Joneses and Esthers there.

But Lilian was all alone, singing at her embroidery in the sunshiny window casement.

“Dear me, Mr. Thornbrooke! is anything the matter?”

Perhaps it was the shadow from the splendid crimson cactus plumes in the window that gave her cheek such a delicate glow—perhaps–but we have no right to speculate.

“Yes.” And ‘Mark sat down by her side, and took the little trembling, fluttering hand. “You sent me a housewife this morning?”

“Wasn’t it right?” faltered Lilian.

“It wasn’t the kind I wanted at all.”

“Not the kind you wanted?”

“No; I prefer a live one, and I came to see if I couldn’t change it. I want one with brown hair and eyes–something, in short, Miss Lillian, just your pattern. Can’t I have it?”

Lily turned white, and then red—smiled, and then burst into tears–and tried to draw away her hand, but Mark held it fast.

“No, no, dear Lily; first tell me if I can have the treasure I ask for?” “Yes,” she said, with the prettiest confusion in the world; and then, instead of releasing the captive hand, the unreasonable fellow took possession of the other one, too. But as Lily did not object, we suppose it was all right.

And that was the odd path by which Mark Thornbrooke diverged from the walk of old bachelorhood, and stepped into the respectable ranks of matrimony.

The Berkshire County Eagle [Pittsfield MA] 26 July 1860: p. 1

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  A laughable, yet natural mistake. The 19th-century gentleman led a life sheltered from domestic realities, first by his mother, then by his wife, so it is quite possible that he had never seen such a useful article. The “house-wife,” also known as a “hussif,” is, obviously, a little sewing kit in a fold- or roll-up case. It is a more economical version of the necessaire or etui.  Mrs Daffodil suggests that Mr Thornbrooke would be a bachelor still if Miss Lily had recommended an etui. 

18th-century Sailor’s Hussif http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/14388/lot/1569/

One could find similar misapprehensions at the newsagent’s:

He looked over all the papers on the newsstand, and not finding what he wanted, said to the plump, pretty girl clerk: “I want a Fireside Companion.”

“What, sir?” she blushed.

“I want a Fireside Companion,” he repeated.

“O, yes, sir, I hear you now,” and she chewed the corner of her apron; “well-well—do you think I would do?”

It turned out happily.

The Pantagraph [Bloomington IL] 7 January 1880: p. 2

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

The Corset Bag: 1902-1926

1896 corset with blue ribbon flowers https://www.etsy.com/hk-en/listing/471826124/1896-corset-bag-antique-corset-victorian

What do you do with your corsets when you remove them at night? Oh-o-o-o-, I mean girdle, or whatever you wear to hold up your stockings—for no CHIC woman wears ‘em rolled today!

Well, if you are a very NICE little lady, you put them into a scented corset bag that hangs on the closet wall.

‘N if you ever have one, you will never again be able to bear seeing your girdle lying on a chair! So why not give a lovely corset bag to your girl friend? They may be made so easily, you know. But don’t do what we did, and keep it yourself after it is made, just because you like it so well!

EXACTLY HOW TO MAKE ‘EM.

Notice the three top figures in the illustration: they show the way to make this corset bag. Purchase ribbon about 12 inches wide for the outer cover, another length of ribbon of a contrasting color for the lining, and a length of sheet wadding cotton that is about 14 inches wide.

Now make a “sandwich” of the outer covering, the cotton and the lining! Sprinkle the cotton lavishly with sachet, then baste the three pieces together. Now fold them up like Figure A, with the raw edges out, of course. Next bind them like Figure B, leaving loops at either side to hang the bag with. Figure C is the corset bag finished, with the same ribbon you use for the binding appliqued in a circle, and other applique or embroidery in its center. This bag should be about 25 inches long.

Nashville [TN] Banner 19 December 1926: p. 1

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil has been asked, “Why a corset bag? What is the necessity?”  This 1912 squib answers that question nicely:

Corset Bags for Christmas.

This holiday season many women are making corset bags as gifts, and the idea seems a very practical one. The pasteboard box in which the corset is sent home is always a clumsy affair to keep in a dresser drawer, yet one does not like to toss a handsome new satin corset into a drawer filled with other articles. The corset bag is a long, narrow case made of linen or silk, and in it the rolled up corset may be kept when not in use. Every corset should be tightly rolled when taken off, since this keeps it in better shape, and the corset bag will hold the rolled up corset firmly. Some of these bags are of heavy linen embroidered with dots in Dutch blue, old rose or some other pretty color. Evening Star [Washington DC] 8 December 1912: p. 74

The term “corset bag” seems to have made its first appearance beginning in about 1902. Prior to this sellers of corsets often furnished long, narrow boxes to contain the rolled corset. They would have seemed drab compared to the pretty articles described in the papers. And, to be fair, pasteboard is not the optimal material for storing textiles.

Embroidered black satin corset bag, beautifully finished and lined. https://www.etsy.com/il-en/listing/675829325/victorian-corset-bag-edwardian-lingerie

Speaking of underwear, there are the most exquisite bags into which to put one’s corsets in traveling, or one may have a bag for every pair if they are all best, and some fortunate women revel in the finest of the dainty things. One of the corset bags is of white silk, with a large cluster of lilies of the valley with their green leaves hand-painted on it. The bag is long and narrow, and is gathered with a silk cord or ribbon at the top.

The New York [NY] Times 25 March 1902: p. 7

Prettily embroidered linen corset bag https://www.etsy.com/il-en/listing/675829325/victorian-corset-bag-edwardian-lingerie

The corset bag has become a part of one’s underwear. It isn’t really to wear, but all who wear corsets should know about it. This is a long, narrow bag of silk or muslin; it should be four inches longer than the corset and of exactly the same color. It is furnished inside with little scent bags suspended from narrow ribbons Into this bag the corset is put at night and the string is drawn up. This serves the double purpose of protecting the corset and perfuming it. More than that, it hides the corset, and in case it is laid away, one can tell at a glance the color of the corset that is inside.

Nashville [TN] Banner 25 October 1902: p. 13

 

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

The Adventure of the Little Wax Figure: 1895

The Adventure of the Little Lay Figure.

Amongst the many strange things which have befallen me in my career as Court dressmaker, I do not think any experience is more peculiar and out of the way than the one which I am about to relate. I allude now to the “Adventure of the Little Lay Figure.”

By degrees, the difficulties which had beset me in the outset of my career were one by one overcome. I was obliged to take new premises. My show-rooms were wonders of beauty and elegance. I engaged many apprentices, and was, in short, busy from morning till night, and perhaps I ought to add, from night to morning again.

The story which I am going to tell began at a late hour one evening. I was busy helping to arrange the skirt of a very splendid Court train, and was giving eager directions to one of the most experienced of my work women, when a message was brought to me to the effect that a gentleman wished to see me on urgent business in my show-room.

“He begs of you to go to him at once, madam,” said the girl who brought me the message.

My mouth was full of pins, and I held a pair of sharp scissors in my hand as I listened to her.

“Whoever the gentleman is, he looks in an awful taking,” she continued.

“Well, I’ll go to him,” I replied. I ran downstairs and entered my showroom. A tall man in an overcoat, and holding his hat in one hand, was pacing up and down in front of some of my daintiest dresses. A pretty pale blue frock for a little girl of ten, which was to be sent home that evening, seemed in especial to rivet his attention.

As I entered the room, he stooped and took a portion of the fabric between his finger and thumb. “You are Miss Ross?” he interrogated.

“Yes,” I answered. “You have made this?’’ he continued.

“Yes,” I replied again.

“It is in the height of the fashion, I hope?’’

“It is,” I said. “I have copied it from last week’s fashions in the __.” I mentioned the name of our leading journal of fashion.

The gentleman bowed slightly. “It appears to be the correct sort of thing,” he said, “not that I know anything really about such matters. My name is Forrester. I live about eight miles out of town. I require the services of a competent dressmaker without a moment’s delay. My carriage is waiting at the door. Can you come with me at once?’’

“Not to-night,” I began.

Mr. Forrester interrupted with an impatient wave of his hand. “Money is not of the slightest object to me,” he said. “I will pay you any sum you like to ask. Let your work go. This is an affair of life or death. I require your immediate services, and feel sure that you cannot refuse them to me. You will reach my house in an hour and a half. With the assistance that will be given you, you will probably do what is required in a few hours, and I will undertake to send you home as soon as ever your task is done.”

“I can send an able assistant,” I began.

“Pardon me, I must have someone I can trust. I like your face, and am willing to employ you in this most delicate matter. Will you come immediately or not? If you say no, I must seek instant assistance in another quarter. Now, is it yes or no?”

As he spoke I looked straight up at my queer visitor. He was a man of about thirty-five, his eyes were dark, and his hair and sweeping moustache were raven black. He looked like a man who had gone through a great mental storm, but there was something frank and even pleasant about his expression which impelled me not only to sympathise with him, but to like him.

“It is very awkward for me to go,” I said, “but the call of trouble cannot be refused. You must give me five minutes to get ready and to give a few directions to my workwomen, then I will be with you.”

“I am exceedingly obliged to you, Miss Ross,” he answered; he sank down on the nearest chair and uttered a heavy sigh of relief. I rushed away, and at the end of the appointed five minutes was again by his side.

“I am ready now,” I said, “but before we start it may be well for me to know something of  the sort of services which are required of me. I presume I am expected to assist in the making of an important dress. Is it for an old, a middle-aged, or a young lady?”

He gulped down a sort of choking sensation in his throat before he replied.

“The dress is for a child,” he said, “for quite a young child. It must be very soft and pretty, and above all things, fashionable.”

“Is the child dark or fair?” I asked.

His face grew whiter than before.

“The child is fair as an angel,” he said, bringing out the words with difficulty.

“Then perhaps it would be well for me to take some suitable stuffs with me,” I said.

I opened some drawers as I spoke, made a hasty selection from a lovely assortment of soft silks and crêpons, wrapped them up in brown paper, put them into a bag which I carried in my hand, and then followed Mr. Forrester to his carriage.

A footman in livery and powder opened the door for us.

“Tell Jenkins to drive home as fast as ever he can,” said Mr. Forrester to the man. We started forward immediately at a rattling speed, and in an incredibly short space of time found ourselves outside London and on a high road, which I could see in the moonlight was smooth and flat, and commanded a level sweep of country. We drove on for three-quarters of an hour without my companion addressing a single word to me. At the end of that time he broke the silence abruptly.

“I have asked you to come with me,” he said, “to execute a most strange and unusual task. The fact is, my wife has just gone through a terrible illness. Her health in consequence is in a very precarious, I may say dangerous, condition. Her life hangs by a thread, and a very slight shock would kill her. The means which I am about to employ, and in which I seek your assistance, seem the only possible ones to prolong a most valuable and precious life. Dressmaking is not accompanied by such grave issues as a rule, but this case is altogether exceptional.”

“I wish you would tell me frankly what you want me to do,” I said, nettled and somewhat alarmed by his mysterious words.

“I find it difficult to tell you,” he replied; “have a little patience, and you will soon know.”

There was such despair in his voice that I forbore to question him further, and soon afterwards we reached some gates, which were immediately flung open, and the horses plunged down a long avenue overshadowed by trees.

“Remember,” said Mr. Forrester, as we approached the hall door, “that money is no object—no object whatever. The mission I ask you to undertake for me is of so delicate a character that there are few women to whom I could entrust it. I feel sure, when you know all, that you will regard it as a secret. Here we are at last, thank heaven. Now, Miss Ross, have the goodness to follow me.”

We had drawn up at the entrance to a large mansion. A footman ran down a tall flight of steps to open the carriage door, and Mr. Forrester helped me to alight.

“Is Austin in the nurseries, James?” asked the master of the house.

“Yes, sir; Mrs. Austin told me to tell you that she was in attendance and was waiting for your arrival,” answered the footman.

“Very well. Please follow me, Miss Ross.”

We found ourselves in the stately entrance hall, but my host did not give me a moment to look around me. He hurried me down some long corridors and up some richly carpeted stairs, then down other passages and up other stairs, until we drew up at last outside a red baize door.

Here he paused for a second.

“Mrs. Austin can explain better than I can the peculiar services which are required of you,” he said. He opened the door as he spoke, and ushered me in. I found myself in a cheerful and beautiful room. A bright fire burnt in the grate. Wax candles and lamps added to the pleasant effect. The walls were hung with lovely pictures of childhood in many forms. A rocking-horse stood in one corner. A doll sat dismally up in a little arm-chair and stared at me with two round black eyes. The expression on that doll’s face seemed immediately to get on my brain. I turned away from it with a sinking of heart which I could not account for. A middle-aged woman, whose eyes were red as if she had been weeping, came eagerly forward when we appeared.

“I have brought Miss Ross, Mrs. Austin,” said Mr. Forrester. “She is an excellent dressmaker, and will do exactly what is required. See that she gets what assistance is necessary for her work. Miss Ross will be occupied all night, but I should wish to see her before she leaves in the morning.” Here Mr. Forrester turned and bowed to me; the next moment he had vanished.

“Will you take off your bonnet and cloak, Miss Ross?” said Mrs. Austin. I did so without speaking, and with hands which trembled slightly. There was evidently much tragedy in the mysterious affair in which I was called to play a part, and steady as my nerves were, they began to be affected.

Mrs. Austin stood quietly before me. She looked at me earnestly. Her lips were firmly set, but the red rims round her eyes showed the strong control in which she was keeping her emotions.

“Now what am I to do?” I asked. “Your master says I am to make a dress in a great hurry for a child; where is the child?”

“In this room, my dear. Follow me immediately if you please. Oh, you needn’t be frightened; it is nothing infectious.”

I followed the woman with a beating heart. The next moment I found myself in a room where a shaded light was burning, and where another woman, who looked like a trained nurse, was seated by a cot. Even in the darkened light I could dimly notice the outline of a child’s form. She lay perfectly still; her breathing was fast and hurried. The room had that faint, intangible smell which generally accompanies severe illness.

“Why am I brought to see a sick child?” I asked of Mrs. Austin in a whisper.

“Hush, don’t speak; you will know all in a moment,” she replied; then she turned to the trained nurse.

“This is the dressmaker, nurse,” she said. “Will it do Miss Dorothea any harm for Miss Ross to take one good look at her face and figure?”

The nurse shook her head in reply.

“Nothing will harm the child now,” she said; “she is dying fast. Dr. Norton was here not an hour ago, and he does not think she will live to see the morning.”

The woman spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. She took up a candle as she spoke, and motioned to me to approach the little bed. I did so, and looked down at the most beautiful child’s face I had ever seen. Already, however, it looked like a face cut out in wax, so deadly white were the cheeks and lips, so sunken the eyelids which sheltered the closed eyes. The child lay absolutely motionless, her feeble and hurried breath being the only signs that she lived. Her quantities of magnificent golden hair were flung high over the pillow. I gazed at her in pained astonishment. What was the mysterious mission which I was called upon to perform for this dying child?

“You have seen her,” said Mrs. Austin; “you notice that she is fair; observe her figure too; she is slender, very slender. Now, nurse, here are a pair of scissors; if you will cut off the hair, I think we can go immediately to work.”

“I will bring you the child’s hair in a few moments,” replied the nurse. “Miss Ross had better begin her task directly. I will follow you in a few moments into the day nursery.”

We left the room. I sank down on the nearest chair in the outer apartment.

“This frightens me,” I said. “I cannot imagine what task I am expected to perform.”

“Oh, you’ll be brave enough,” said Mrs. Austin; “it isn’t for you to flinch when we have to go through with it. Now listen to me. I’ll tell you the tragedy of this house in a few words. The dying child we have just come from is the heiress to all this splendid old place—not that that matters—what am I talking of? Wealth is of little matter in a supreme moment of this kind. Now listen to me, Miss Ross. My master, Mr. Forrester, is the most devoted husband and father in the world. A month ago there were no happier people on earth than Mr. and Mrs. Forrester and the dear child whom God is taking away from us.

Six weeks ago Mrs. Forrester became very ill. How she took the infection no one knows, but she suddenly developed the most awful form of smallpox.”

I could not help starting; the terrible words pressed like ice against my heart.

“You needn’t be frightened,” said Mrs. Austin. “Precautions of so perfect a nature have been taken that there is not the faintest risk of infection for any one in the house. For days my poor lady lay truly at death’s door; then her disease took an extraordinary turn—she became possessed with an almost insane longing to see her child. She had always been the most unselfish of mothers, and I can only conclude that the illness slightly turned her brain. No persuasions, no arguments had the least effect upon her; she moaned and cried for the child day and night; she said she did not want to touch her, but see her by some means or other she must and would. The doctors at last became quite alarmed, and said that her recovery depended on indulging this craving. After thinking matters over, they devised a plan by which the mother could see the child without risk to the little one. An air-tight window was introduced into Mrs. Forrester’s dressing: room; this dressing-room communicated with another room which was hastily fitted up as a sort of study for the child, and through this window day after day during her convalescence the mother has gazed at the child without the child seeing her, or knowing that she was there. As soon as the window was made, and Mrs. Forrester’s wish could be gratified, she began rapidly to get better; but on Monday last Miss Dorothea developed acute pneumonia, and, as you have just heard, her recovery is hopeless. To tell Mrs. Forrester the truth at this juncture would, the doctors say, bring on such a relapse that either her life or her reason must be the forfeit. She is anxiously counting the hours when she can again clasp the child to her heart, and knows nothing whatever of the terrible illness which is going to take the little one from her. The doctors are nearly distracted, and as to Mr. Forrester, you may imagine the state of his feelings. An idea, however, has occurred to the medical men, which they think may possibly be successful. What they want is time—time to allow Mrs. Forrester to get up her strength sufficiently to bear the blow of her child’s death. She is already fearfully anxious and suspicious at not having seen the child since Monday morning, when the illness first began. The nurses and doctors have put off her questions, and have tried to avert her suspicions in all kinds of ways, but I am told that to-night the poor lady is in a frantic state of unrest and misery—in short, Miss Ross, we have not a moment to lose.”

“I will do all in my power,” I said. “I don’t know in the least what I am to do, but you may be sure when you tell me I will do my very best.”

“Your work is straightforward enough,” replied Mrs. Austin. “Mr. Forrester has had a little wax figure made to resemble the child in all particulars. The child’s own hair is to be put upon the little figure, and you are to dress it. There are some peculiarities about Miss Dorothea which I will specially point out to you; all these you will carefully copy in the little effigy which is to represent her. The little figure is to wear a perfectly new and fashionable dress, which Miss Dorothea was to put on the next time her mother saw her, and which, of course, was never made when the child became so dangerously ill. Mrs. Forrester has always been most particular with regard to the child’s wardrobe, and knew that she was to wear a specially charming and fashionable frock when next she saw her. Now you know what you have got to do —you are to make a beautiful and becoming frock, and you are to give such a life-like air to the little figure, that when my poor lady sees it through the window, she will never guess that it is not Miss Dorothea herself. The figure can be seated with its back slightly turned to the window, and we hope that my poor mistress will never notice the terrible deception practised upon her.”

When I clearly understood what my work was to be, I sat perfectly still. My feelings of astonishment almost stunned me.

“Why don’t you speak?” said Mrs. Austin, giving me an anxious, dissatisfied glance.

“I have been thinking,” I replied, brisking up and rising to my feet as I spoke. “What you have told me has amazed—yes, and terrified me. I promise to do my best; oh yes, you may be sure of that, but  forgive me for saying I think your scheme has little chance of success.”

“It shall succeed,” interrupted Mrs. Austin.

“God grant that it may, if by it your poor lady’s life is saved; but have you not thought of the frightful risk? Remember you are playing with edged tools —you are going to practise this deception on a mother. I remember my own mother; I do not think the most perfect wax representation of one of her children could for a moment have deceived her. You say that Mrs. Forrester is to gaze at the little figure through a window.”

“Yes, yes; she has often since her illness looked at Miss Dorothea in the same way.”

“But the real Miss Dorothea has moved,” I said; “children are never still. The mother has watched each familiar gesture; she has seen the little face wearing many expressions. Now the wax figure—”

“We have thought of all that,” interrupted Mrs. Austin. “The little wax effigy is supplied with wires which will cause certain involuntary movements; the figure will wear the child’s own hair, and will be placed with its back to the mother. She will not dare to call to it, for she would not for worlds let the child see her poor scarred face until it is better. She has promised faithfully never to speak to the child when she looks at it through the window, and I do not for a moment believe she will break her word. In a few days now she will be free from infection, but until then nothing would induce her in her saner moments to risk frightening the child in any way. Oh, I know it is a terrible, terrible risk, but we are forced to run it. God grant that it may succeed.”

“I can fervently echo that prayer,” I responded; “and now let me set to work. I have brought some beautiful materials for children’s frocks with me, and will do my very best to dress the little figure so that the mother may be pleased.”

“We have a workroom all ready for you just beyond this nursery,” said Mrs. Austin. “My mistress’s maid and I will assist you all night. A hairdresser will also be in the room busily converting the child’s own hair into a little wig. Now come; we have not too much time.”

I followed Mrs. Austin, and a few moments later had begun my task. All night long I worked, directing my assistants and manufacturing with their aid one of the most lovely children’s dresses I had ever made. As the dress grew under my fingers I thought of the dying child who would never wear it. There was an ethereal quality about her little face which haunted me. As I worked I seemed to see her with her white wings, in the dress which the angels would give her to wear. I cannot tell why, but the whole tragedy of this most pathetic and terrible story seemed to get into the tips of my fingers, and to help me to fashion the white which I was making. It is impossible for me to describe exactly its particular cut and design. I only know that it looked like no other dress I had ever made. Even now, when I think of it, a lump gets into my throat and a dimness comes before my eyes. As the night wore on, I began to feel a tender affection for the poor little lifeless figure I was clothing. I had only seen the child in illness. When I looked at her sweet face, she was lying under the grey and awful shadow of death, but the little representation of her had been cunningly contrived to resemble the child in health. The colouring on its face was very faint, but the large eyes were blue and rich in their depths, the lips were slightly parted, there was the faint dawning of a happy smile in the expression. The hairdresser worked hard and without a moment’s intermission at the wig of golden hair. When it crowned the little head of the figure, I could not help exclaiming at the lifelike appearance it gave it.

As the hours flew on, my queer work fascinated me. I forgot that I was due in London at an early hour in the morning; my own affairs, my many orders, sank into insignificance. I thought of nothing but the dying child, and the mother who would surely die or become mad if she knew the truth.

When the dawn broke in the winter sky, the hairdresser and I had completed our work. The little figure was clothed in exact representation of the living child. Mr. Forrester was hastily summoned to look at it. His visible start and the colour which rushed over his face, leaving it the next moment deadly pale, were proof sufficient how well we had succeeded.

“You have done splendidly,” he said, coming up to me and speaking in a hoarse voice; then he hastily left the room to hide his emotion.

I had done my task, and under other circumstances would have returned to town, but at this moment there came a knock at the door, and Mrs. Austin went hurriedly to open it. She was absent for some little time talking to someone in the passage, then she returned to me.

“What is to be done now?” she said. “Nobody could have performed their part better than you have done, Miss Ross, and it would be unreasonable, more than unreasonable, to expect anything further at your hands.”

“Not at all,” I said. “I am much, I am deeply interested. In short, if your master will permit me, I should like to stay here until after the experiment of showing the wax figure to your mistress has been tried. I cannot rest until I know if it has been successful.”

“It must be successful,” said Mrs. Austin. “I can’t look at the little figure sitting by that table so natural and life-like without the tears springing to my eyes. Somehow it seems as if she must turn round and speak to us, sweet lamb; but dear, dear, I’m forgetting the new worry.”

“What is that?”

“My poor mistress has been in a very fretful and queer state all night. I have just seen one of the nurses, and she says that she has had a terrible time with her. There is really little or no doubt that the smallpox has slightly affected my mistress’s brain, and now nothing will satisfy her but to have a dress, which was not finished when she took ill, tried on, in order that she may wear it to-day when she looks at the child. It is blue velvet, and Miss Dorothea had taken a fancy to it, so I conclude that is the reason why the wish to wear it has got upon the poor lady’s brain. The nurses know nothing about dressmaking, nothing will induce Simkins, the lady’s maid, to go near my mistress, and—“

“You want me to go?” I interrupted.

“Would you be dreadfully afraid? The doctors say there is little or no infection now from the disease, and you could fit her in a new room into which she is to be moved this morning.”

I hesitated. In this critical moment, was the slight risk to my own life of much value?

“I will go,” I said, “and be vaccinated when I go back to town to-night.”

“Miss Ross, may heaven reward you. You are the bravest woman I ever met.”

“Tell me one thing before I go,” I said; “for it may not be safe for me to see you again. How is the child this morning?”

“Alive, but sinking fast. Oh, God, help the poor mother; if through your assistance, Miss Ross, we keep the terrible truth from her for a week, she will probably have strength to bear the blow when it really falls.”

“Pray give me some breakfast,” I said. “I will go to Mrs. Forrester immediately afterwards.”

“Come this way; what a good woman you are! We can never forget what you are doing for us.”

I had something to eat, and immediately afterwards was conducted to a large bedroom, where Mrs. Forrester and the two nurses, who waited on her day and night, received me. The poor lady herself sat behind curtains, which partly concealed the ravages which the terrible complaint had made on her face. The nurses were very cheerful and practical women. The blue velvet dress lay on a large table in the middle of the room. The skirt was completely finished, but the body required to be taken in and altered, as Mrs. Forrester had shrunk much during her illness. I went about my task in a matter-of-fact spirit, very different from that with which I had worked at the little white dress in the night. Mrs. Forrester talked while I pinned and altered; her dark and beautiful eyes had a slightly vacant look, but she was interested in her dress, stroking down the soft folds of the velvet with her emaciated white fingers. One of the nurses assured me that she would not be permanently marked by the smallpox, and would be quite as beautiful as ever after a time. All her talk while I fitted and arranged the dress was about little Dorothea.

“Be as quick as you can, Miss Ross,” she said many times. “My little girl must be beginning her studies now, and I am quite pining to look at her. It is some days since I have seen her. The child begged for a holiday, and has not been near the study. You see, she does not know that I look at her through the air-tight window, but you cannot guess how I long to see her. My heart is quite starved for another sight of my precious little darling. Nurse, when did you say that I should be quite free of infection? When do the doctors think it will be safe for me to kiss the child? To-morrow, nurse? Do they think it will be safe for me to kiss her to-morrow? Oh, pray don’t think of my poor scarred face; she won’t mind that, my sweet one. I may see her to-morrow, may I not, nurse?”

“Perhaps by the end of the week, dear madam, scarcely to-morrow,” answered the nurse.

“Oh, I have not patience to wait; how cruelly long the time is. Miss Ross, I see that you are a very accomplished dressmaker. You are making this dress fit me most beautifully. How did it happen that you were in the house?”

I thought for a moment, then I said boldly:

“I was sent for to make a new dress for Miss Dorothea.”

“That is delightful; I am most particular about the child’s clothes. I hope it is a pretty dress.”

“It is beautiful.”

“Is it finished?”

“Yes; she will wear it when you see her.”

Soon afterwards, my task being finished, I left the room. The reports from the child’s nursery were just the same; she was alive, and that was all; no one had a shadow of hope about her. Mrs. Austin, whose cheeks were the colour of peonies in her excitement, whispered to me that the little wax figure was now in the study, and that the mother would soon go to the window of her dressing-room to look at it. She left me almost immediately after giving me this information, and I found myself alone. A burning curiosity suddenly seized me to gaze at my own handiwork. There was no one by. I felt sure that I could find my way to the study. I determined to go there to take one good look at the effigy of the child. I stole away on tip-toe, found the room, and went in. by a table. I must own that I had never seen before, either in wax or marble, so lifelike a representation. One arm was pressed on the table, the small dimpled hand was supporting the child’s cheek. From where I stood, the profile could be slightly seen; the rich golden hair fell partly over the little hand, and cast a life-like shadow on the fair face. The clockwork within the figure had been evidently wound up, and it stirred now and then in the most absolutely natural manner.

“That little figure would deceive me,” I said to myself, “but can it take in a mother? That is the question which is so soon to be decided.”

I was still gazing at my own work, when a faint sound caused me to hide quickly behind a screen which happened to be in a part of the room. From there I could see without being seen. I saw the lady in her blue velvet dress come up to the window and look in with a long, earnest, hungry gaze. For a moment she was absolutely motionless. I kept looking at her, too fascinated, too intent to move. Was she satisfied? Would she go away after a time without detecting the awful sham which was being played upon her? She gazed on; she stood as if rooted to the spot. Suddenly, to my terror, I saw a new look come into her eyes, a suspicious, watchful look; it grew and deepened, the eyes filled with fear; the next instant she had left the window; the next, she had rushed into the room.

“I am here, Dolly, my darling—I am here. I must kiss you—I can’t live without kissing you,” she exclaimed. She made a long stride towards the little figure, and clasped the lifeless wax image to her breast. The next terrible moment shriek after shriek filled the room. I can never forget that sound. I can never forget the look on that woman’s face. She had spurned the little figure, which lay prone on the ground, and incoherent, wild, and mad words began to pour in a torrent from her lips. Mrs. Austin and Mr. Forrester both rushed on the scene. They did not notice me; from the first no one had seen me. I don’t know what impulse came over me just then, but I have felt since that I was guided by a Power higher and greater than my own. As if there wings to my feet, I ran from the room. I burst open the door of the night nursery where the dying child lay.

“Give her to me,” I said to the nurse. “Wrap something warm round her, and give her to me at once. She lives; perhaps she will not die; perhaps she will recover. At any rate, give her to me, at once . . . this moment. . . . It is the only chance.”

The woman stared at me as if I were mad. I did not mind her; the strength of a dozen women seemed to have got into me. When the nurse tried to prevent me, I pushed her aside. Quick as thought, I wrapped a warm blanket round the child, and rushing down the passage, carried her into the room where the poor mother was raving madly.

“Here she is,” I said, “your own child, your very own. She lives; take her, save her —let your great love save her—oh, I believe it will.” I put the child into Mrs. Forrester’s arms. The moment she lifted it she stopped muttering. The little one opened her sleepy eyes and gazed full up at her mother. She saw no scars, no ugliness in the well-loved face. She put up her hot hand to stroke it. Mrs. Forrester turned and bore her quickly out of the room.

The mother herself nursed the child back to life and health. Little Dorothea never took the smallpox.

The Woman at Home, “Stories from the Diary of a Court Dressmaker,” L.T. Meade, 1895: pp.  434 -444

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil, who has something in her eye, can add nothing to this tale.

That grim and grewsome [sic] person over at Haunted Ohio shared a strange story one Halloween about a ghastly wax effigy of a child with a less happy ending.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

That Paris Look: 1924

French frock, Spring, 1924. http://vintagetextile.com/gallery_1920s.htm#fort

That Paris Look.

Chicago Dally News:

“I have just seen Mrs. Janes,” said Mrs. Simmons’ niece as she sank wearily into a chair. “She had a new dress on. I don’t think I’d like it a bit if people copied my clothes.”

“You are not very clear in your remarks,” laughed Mrs. Simmons. “But you remind me of an incident in my girlhood that was almost a tragedy. There was a dress I designed all by myself. It was a mighty pretty girlish gown. I wore it to some entertainment at school and when the girls admired it I told them I had designed it myself and I thought it was the prettiest dress in the world.”

“I’m sure it was lovely,” said her niece.

“Three weeks after I first appeared in it,” Mrs. Simmons continued, “one of the girls whom I liked least came to me with a sort of triumphant manner and said she thought I had been boasting that my brown dress was my own design and therefore the only one of its kind. I defended my statement and she finally believed me, but told me that she had seen a white-haired woman wearing a dress of the same style. I was heartbroken and tried to think she was mistaken, but when I asked our dressmaker about it she said the woman had seen my dress and had come in and offered her such a good price to make one like it that she had done so, hoping I would never know about it.”

“Oh, the poor child!” cried her niece. “I was just wondering about whether I’d better tell what Mrs. Janes said. But I don’t know that you would mind after all.”

“Mrs. Janes is a very pleasant woman,” declared Mrs. Simmons.

“It wasn’t much,” said her niece. “She had on a new dress and she very evidently expected me to notice it, so I obligingly admired it. It was really very pretty, so I could do so truthfully, but Mrs. Janes said it did not compare with one her sister had just had made. She said that her sister had met you somewhere or other in a lovely dress that she liked extremely. She said it was one of the dresses you got in Paris last summer and was therefore just at the height of style here now, so she had her dressmaker copy it from her description.”

“That is very flattering,” said Mrs. Simmons dubiously. “It Is nice to have people like your things but I’d a little rather they didn’t copy my Paris dresses. I don’t remember where I wore that gown that Mrs. Janes saw it. Did she describe it at all?”

“She said it is dark blue with a line of red near the neck, and it has some kind of drape on the hips. She says her sister copied it exactly and is telling everybody it is a model by somebody or other in Paris. Mrs. Janes always adds that it is a copy of the model, and her sister tells people that now and makes it sound as if it were really a better thing than the original gown.”

“I never said my dresses were anybody’s model,” protested Mrs. Simmons. “Some woman at the boarding house over there told me about an inexpensive dressmaker, and I went to her to have these two dresses made, that is all. They aren’t anything much, I just wanted to get something there. But I can’t think where either of those two women saw that dress, for I have worn it only twice, and to places where they don’t go. I’ve been saving them, as I said, to use this spring.”

“Mrs. Janes said she saw it when you had it on at a meeting of the guild,” said her niece. “But her sister saw it before that and asked her to notice particularly how the sleeves were made when she saw you next, as she had forgotten them when, she saw you at Mrs. Dunbar’s mah jong party.”

“But I didn’t wear that Paris dress to Mrs. Dunbar’s. Let me think—oh yes, I did wear that blue dress with red pipings. Well, well, so Mrs. Janes’ sister copied it did she?”

“Yes, she did!” cried her niece. “And I should think you’d be awfully sore at her for it, too—your new Paris gown!”

“Oh, no, I don’t mind a bit,” chuckled Mrs. Simmons. “You see, I gave that dress to the janitor’s wife only yesterday.”

“You didn’t! And you have worn it only twice'”

“Oh, I have worn it a great deal. I had made it over three months ago from an old thing I got just before the war and I hoped it would last, but I am getting too plump for it, not to say, fat. That dress never even heard of Paris! I wonder If I haven’t some more old clothes with the Paris look?”

The Nebraska State Journal [Lincoln NE] 23 March 1924: p. 31

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: We have read in “The Lightning Adaptors of Fashion,” how Miss Billie Burke copyrighted her stage dresses so that they would not be copied. And the shockingly brazen methods of the copyists of French couture designs were exposed in “Fashion Pirates.” The practice was not confined to professionals as we see in the confessions in ‘Things I Steal,” and “The Very Worst Thing.”

Copying was, to many ladies, a harmless practice, particularly if they did not think too long or hard about the ethics of the thing. Yet there was a danger in adopting French fashions—one which was rarely mentioned in the press:

A bit of warning advice may be inserted here for the American woman shopper who believes that all French styles must needs be extreme. The absolutely sensational things now and then launched by the French dressmakers are nothing but advertisements, and they are never worn by French ladies, only by the conspicuous beauties of doubtful reputation, who are hired to display the novelties at some public function like the spring races at Auteuil or Longchamps. While it may be a temptation to copy a startling hat or gown, it is really the part of wisdom to select the quieter modes, which are just as artistic and more appropriate and which lead to no embarrassing ambiguity as to the social classification of a good-looking well-dressed American woman.

The French woman of accepted position is the model for the American woman to follow in copying French fashions. All American women intend to do this, but the majority of them make bad mistakes and innocently do themselves harm. But it is almost impossible to make the American woman realize this.

Pittsburgh [PA] Daily Post 5 July 1912: p. 8  

For what shall it profit a lady, if she shall gain an entire French wardrobe, and be mistaken for a conspicuous beauty of doubtful reputation?

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

That Paris Look: 1924

French frock, Spring, 1924. http://vintagetextile.com/gallery_1920s.htm#fort

That Paris Look.

Chicago Dally News:

“I have just seen Mrs. Janes,” said Mrs. Simmons’ niece as she sank wearily into a chair. “She had a new dress on. I don’t think I’d like it a bit if people copied my clothes.”

“You are not very clear in your remarks,” laughed Mrs. Simmons. “But you remind me of an incident in my girlhood that was almost a tragedy. There was a dress I designed all by myself. It was a mighty pretty girlish gown. I wore it to some entertainment at school and when the girls admired it I told them I had designed it myself and I thought it was the prettiest dress in the world.”

“I’m sure it was lovely,” said her niece.

“Three weeks after I first appeared in it,” Mrs. Simmons continued, “one of the girls whom I liked least came to me with a sort of triumphant manner and said she thought I had been boasting that my brown dress was my own design and therefore the only one of its kind. I defended my statement and she finally believed me, but told me that she had seen a white-haired woman wearing a dress of the same style. I was heartbroken and tried to think she was mistaken, but when I asked our dressmaker about it she said the woman had seen my dress and had come in and offered her such a good price to make one like it that she had done so, hoping I would never know about it.”

“Oh, the poor child!” cried her niece. “I was just wondering about whether I’d better tell what Mrs. Janes said. But I don’t know that you would mind after all.”

“Mrs. Janes is a very pleasant woman,” declared Mrs. Simmons.

“It wasn’t much,” said her niece. “She had on a new dress and she very evidently expected me to notice it, so I obligingly admired it. It was really very pretty, so I could do so truthfully, but Mrs. Janes said it did not compare with one her sister had just had made. She said that her sister had met you somewhere or other in a lovely dress that she liked extremely. She said it was one of the dresses you got in Paris last summer and was therefore just at the height of style here now, so she had her dressmaker copy it from her description.”

“That is very flattering,” said Mrs. Simmons dubiously. “It Is nice to have people like your things but I’d a little rather they didn’t copy my Paris dresses. I don’t remember where I wore that gown that Mrs. Janes saw it. Did she describe it at all?”

“She said it is dark blue with a line of red near the neck, and it has some kind of drape on the hips. She says her sister copied it exactly and is telling everybody it is a model by somebody or other in Paris. Mrs. Janes always adds that it is a copy of the model, and her sister tells people that now and makes it sound as if it were really a better thing than the original gown.”

“I never said my dresses were anybody’s model,” protested Mrs. Simmons. “Some woman at the boarding house over there told me about an inexpensive dressmaker, and I went to her to have these two dresses made, that is all. They aren’t anything much, I just wanted to get something there. But I can’t think where either of those two women saw that dress, for I have worn it only twice, and to places where they don’t go. I’ve been saving them, as I said, to use this spring.”

“Mrs. Janes said she saw it when you had it on at a meeting of the guild,” said her niece. “But her sister saw it before that and asked her to notice particularly how the sleeves were made when she saw you next, as she had forgotten them when, she saw you at Mrs. Dunbar’s mah jong party.”

“But I didn’t wear that Paris dress to Mrs. Dunbar’s. Let me think—oh yes, I did wear that blue dress with red pipings. Well, well, so Mrs. Janes’ sister copied it did she?”

“Yes, she did!” cried her niece. “And I should think you’d be awfully sore at her for it, too—your new Paris gown!”

“Oh, no, I don’t mind a bit,” chuckled Mrs. Simmons. “You see, I gave that dress to the janitor’s wife only yesterday.”

“You didn’t! And you have worn it only twice'”

“Oh, I have worn it a great deal. I had made it over three months ago from an old thing I got just before the war and I hoped it would last, but I am getting too plump for it, not to say, fat. That dress never even heard of Paris! I wonder If I haven’t some more old clothes with the Paris look?”

The Nebraska State Journal [Lincoln NE] 23 March 1924: p. 31

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: We have read in “The Lightning Adaptors of Fashion,” how Miss Billie Burke copyrighted her stage dresses so that they would not be copied. And the shockingly brazen methods of the copyists of French couture designs were exposed in “Fashion Pirates.” The practice was not confined to professionals as we see in the confessions in ‘Things I Steal,” and “The Very Worst Thing.”

Copying was, to many ladies, a harmless practice, particularly if they did not think too long or hard about the ethics of the thing. Yet there was a danger in adopting French fashions—one which was rarely mentioned in the press:

A bit of warning advice may be inserted here for the American woman shopper who believes that all French styles must needs be extreme. The absolutely sensational things now and then launched by the French dressmakers are nothing but advertisements, and they are never worn by French ladies, only by the conspicuous beauties of doubtful reputation, who are hired to display the novelties at some public function like the spring races at Auteuil or Longchamps. While it may be a temptation to copy a startling hat or gown, it is really the part of wisdom to select the quieter modes, which are just as artistic and more appropriate and which lead to no embarrassing ambiguity as to the social classification of a good-looking well-dressed American woman.

The French woman of accepted position is the model for the American woman to follow in copying French fashions. All American women intend to do this, but the majority of them make bad mistakes and innocently do themselves harm. But it is almost impossible to make the American woman realize this.

Pittsburgh [PA] Daily Post 5 July 1912: p. 8  

For what shall it profit a lady, if she shall gain an entire French wardrobe, and be mistaken for a conspicuous beauty of doubtful reputation?

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

Something Suitable:1889

A pretty stripe for walking. Pingat, 1880s https://www.augusta-auction.com/search-past-sales?view=lot&id=6919&auction_file_id=9

SOMETHING SUITABLE.

By E.B.W.

“Here is your invitation at last, Margaret!” Mrs. Darton exclaimed, as she pushed open the door of the kitchen, where her youngest daughter sat by the table peeling and slicing the apples her sister Mary was converting, -with dough and paste-cutter, into substantial tarts for half-a-dozen hungry school-boys.

“Hurrah!” and Margaret joyfully waved above her head a long, ribbonlike strip of green and crimson peel. “This is good news, mamma! Blessings light on Aunt Bessie for remembering me, though she has been a long time about it.”

“Three weeks,” said Mrs. Darton, smiling at her daughter’s enthusiasm. “It is no more since she landed in England, and I met her at Gravesend. She accounts in this note for her silence. Business detained her in London for a week, since when she has been looking for a house. She has been advised to take one on the south coast till she and her daughters are hardened to our changeable climate; so many years in India makes them dread an English winter.”

Margaret’s face lengthened.

“Is Aunt Bessie going to bury herself in the country? I thought–that is I hoped–she would settle near town.”

“She has decided on a house at Torquay; but, as it will not be ready for her till the end of next month, she proposes spending the interval at Brighton, and you are to go to her there.”

“Brighton in the heart of the autumn season ! Delicious !” ejaculated Margaret, springing up to waltz her mother round the kitchen, attempting to repeat the dance with her laughing sister, who kept her at bay -with the rolling-pin. “What a lucky girl I am to have a rich aunt, good-natured enough to give me such a delightful change! There’s one drawback, and that is leaving home. Why doesn’t she invite you too, mother dear, and Mary?”

“As if I could leave papa and the boys!” cried Mrs. Darton.

“Or as if I could be spared,” added Mary. “At five-and-twenty one feels too sober for much holiday making. I shall have a day’s blackberry-picking with the youngsters, and go to the cathedral town for the choral festival, and to the park for the annual picnic of the townspeople; and that is all the dissipation I care for.”

“Query. Shall I be as content, at twenty-five, as my sister?” asked Margaret, demurely, “Perhaps I shall, if I have an amiable young curate to strengthen my resolves with his praises. Don’t blush, Mary, and don’t menace me with such a dangerous weapon. It might fly out of your hand, and I could not go to aunt Bessie’s with a bruised cheek or a black eye. By the way, what day am I to start?”

“Next Monday. Her maid will meet you at King’s Cross.”

“And I shall say adieu to the flats of Cambridgeshire for one short, sweet, too fleeting month! But oh, mother dear, the great question of all has yet to be discussed. What am I to wear? I should not like to go shabby; but I know you will not be justified in asking papa for money just as he has been at such heavy expense in articling Will to Messrs. Stapylton.”

“It’s all right,” replied Mrs. Darton, cheerfully. ” Your Aunt Bessie thought of this before I did, and promised to send you something suitable to wear.”

Margaret winced, for she was young and proud.

“It’s very kind of her, she murmured, slowly; “but it makes me feel like a pauper.”

“I don’t think you need say that, my dear,” her mother made answer. “Before my sister left England, to become the second wife of Judge Laurence, your father had given her the advantage of his time and talents, and enabled her to get possession of some property withheld by a very knavish attorney. Papa positively refused to be paid for his services, and she remembers this, and rejoices to requite him through his children. She is going to send Maurice to college as soon as he is old enough. I am so thankful; for a country doctor, with a large family like ours, cannot always give his sons as thorough an education as he wishes.”

“If Aunt Bessie is going to be a fairy godmother to the boys, I shall love her dearly. And now to commence preparations for my journey. Don’t laugh. Mistress Mary; there is a great deal to be done. When a lady’s wardrobe is a limited one, it is necessary to make the most of it; and as soon as the ‘something to wear’ arrives that is promised me, we shall have to set to work at dressmaking in right earnest.”

Mrs. Darton referred to the note she held in her hand.

“I forgot to look for a postscript. Oh, here it is! Listen to it. ‘I selected two or three things for your little girl when I was doing my own shopping, and ordered the parcel to be sent off to you directly.'”

“And here comes Carrier Cripps with it!” exclaimed Margaret, with a skip and a jump. “How can you go on, Mary, so placidly rolling out paste, whilst I am in a flutter of expectation?”

Away she ran to meet the little covered cart in which an apple-faced old man jogged to and fro the market-town and the station three times in the week; received from Master Cripps the important package that bore the stamp of a West-End linen-draper, and hurried with it to the dining-room, whither her mother and sister followed her.

Too impatient to untie knots, Margaret cut the string, tore open the brown paper, and then eyed the contents askance.

Were these the fairy gifts she had expected to receive?–the pretty, if not actually expensive, gowns that were to enable her to make a good appearance beside her more fortunate cousins?

What she really found was a roll of stout, serviceable calico for under-garments; a dress-length of coarse, strong navy serge, and another of a neat chocolate cambric, and these were all.

Margaret looked from these things to her silent, troubled mother, and back again, tossed them into a heap, and ran away to throw herself on her bed and weep bitter tears of disappointment.

“I don’t understand it at all,” sighed Mrs. Darton, in confidence to her sympathizing elder daughter. “Unless your aunt thought it would be wiser to make her present plain and useful, than to encourage in Margaret a love of dress, which, in our circumstances, it is more prudent to repress.”

“Perhaps Aunt Bessie dresses very simply herself,” Mary suggested.

“A rich widow, who had discarded her crape when she landed, and is evidently not in the habit of denying herself any luxury! No, no, Mary, my sister Bessie does not clothe herself in coarse serge and common print. But what is to be done? your father will be vexed if this invitation is declined; yet to bid Margaret go, arrayed in a garb that would mark her as the poor relation, I cannot.”

However, Mr. Darton, rendered irritable by overwork and the anxiety of making a small income meet the wants of a large family, angrily pooh-poohed the mothers objections.

“Decline so kind an offer simply because our sister’s good sense prompted her to send useful articles instead of finery! You shall do nothing so foolish. Margaret is to go to Brighton, I insist on it, and let her remember that by behaving rudely or ungratefully she may ruin the prospects of her brothers. If anything should happen to me, pray what friend have you in the world besides Mrs. Laurence?”

“If papa insists, of course I must obey,” said Margaret, gulping down a sob. “And for Maurice’s sake I will try to be civil and all that; but I shall take care not to stay longer than I can help. and wear those horrid things I will not. The serge can be cut into blouses for the boys.”

“But, my dear child, you are so poorly provided for such a visit,” sighed Mrs. Darton.

“Do not I know that, and writhe at the thought of displaying my poverty to my rich relatives! Yet if they were not ashamed to insult it, why should I care? Not even to please papa will I put on Aunt Bessie’s ‘something suitable.'”

And to this resolution Margaret adhered. Her loving mother would have sold a small quantity of lace she possessed, and made a few additions to her daughter’s wardrobe with the price obtained for it, but her purpose was discovered and forbidden. It was, therefore, with a very small amount of luggage–the gray cashmere, just made up for Sunday wear, the dark green worn all last winter, and an Indian muslin embroidered for her by Mary at the beginning of the summer that Margaret went away, to be convoyed to Brighton by the highly respectable, middle-aged woman in black silk and furred mantle, who introduced herself to the young lady as Mrs. Laurence’s personal attendant.

Some of Margaret’s resentment melted beneath the warmth of her reception, for Mrs. Laurence, a handsome, energetic, middle-aged woman, came into the hall to meet her niece, and tell her, with a hug and a kiss, that she was almost as pretty as her mother used to be at her age.

Then she was hurried upstairs, to be introduced to Emma and Marion, sallow, sickly looking girls of thirteen and fourteen, whose time seemed to be spent in ceaseless squabbling with the brisk little French governess, who was endeavoring to arouse them from their indolence.

There was not much companionship to be expected from them, and for the first three or four days after her arrival at Brighton, Margaret scarcely saw her aunt, except at lunch. Mrs. Laurence breakfasted in her own room, came to the luncheon-tray with her hands full of papers, over which she pored, or made notes while she ate a few biscuits. The carriage bore her off directly after, and she merely returned in time to dress for a dinner-party, being overwhelmed with invitations from friends and relatives of her late husband.

Perhaps Margaret preferred that it should be so. She felt no desire to improve her acquaintance with the lady who had made her feel so keenly that she was a poor relation; but, at the same time, she was in no hurry to return home. Gossiping neighbors might whisper that she had been sent back in disgrace; and her father, whom press of work often rendered unjust, would be sure to suspect her of having given way to temper, and forgetting that any act of rudeness on her part might mar the future of those she loved.

So Margaret resolved not to do anything hastily. Mademoiselle, when set free from her duties in the schoolroom, was a vivacious, intelligent companion; and the gaiety of Brighton was as delightful as it was new to the young girl, who had never before left the village in one of the midland counties where her parents resided.

To stroll along the King’s Road, watching the ever-changing groups that came and went; to sit on the pier, listening to the choicest music; or to venture as close to the waves as could be done with safety, and thrill with mingled pleasure and awe as they rolled on; these were amusements enough for such a novice, and the first week of Margaret’s stay in Blank Crescent glided away with astonishing rapidity. But one morning Mrs. Laurence came to luncheon without the usual budget of papers. “At last I am free,” she said to Margaret, “and I shall have time to attend to you. Poor child, how I have had to neglect you! I have had a whole family on my hands,” she proceeded to explain; “a family in which my dear husband, the Judge, was very much interested. I found them out as soon as I got here; and, as two of the sons were going on in a very unsatisfactory way, I suggested their all emigrating; so they start to-morrow. It has been a tremendous undertaking to get them all off with a clergyman who has promised to look after them; but it is done, and I can repose on my laurels and transfer my attentions to you.

“Have you been dull, my love? No? You shall go with me to a conversazione this evening. To-morrow I have a reception here, and a couple of engagements for the following night, both of which include you. Remember, you must be dressed by seven. I have promised to look in at the theater on our way, and see the first act of the new opera. Jones shall get you some flowers and do your hair.”

But Margaret proudly declined the lady’s-maid’s assistance. She did not choose to be under the inquisitive eyes of that important personage while she shook out the skirts of her only evening-gown, and fastened at her throat her only ornament, a bunch of crimson rosebuds. Mademoiselle whispered in her ear that she was toute-a-faite charmante, and Mrs. Laurence, regal in black velvet and lace, and diamond stars, nodded approval of the simple girlish costume.

Nor did Margaret feel as much embarrassed by the inquisitive or admiring glances of a throng of strangers as she had feared she should, for the first face on which her eyes rested was a familiar one.

When Mr. Darton’s family was smaller and his children younger he had taken pupils and was wont to congratulate himself that the students who commenced their medical education under his tuition had invariably turned out well.

The cleverest of them all—Gordon Evrington—was now practicing at London-super-Mare, where he was steadily rising to the top of his profession. It was not often that he could spare an evening for amusement, but he felt himself repaid when he recognized in the graceful little creature, whose eyes sparkled with pleasure at sight of him, the pretty child whose willing slave he had been in the long ago.

Dr. Evrington soon found his way to the back of Margaret’s chair; and if she had some trouble in keeping back her tears when he talked affectionately of her mother, and recalled the scenes and spots so dear to the young girl now she was so far away from them, still she was sorry when a call upon his attention compelled him to leave her.

“But I shall see you again,” he said “I have the pleasure of knowing Mrs Laurence. You will make a long stay with her?”

“Oh! no; I hope not! That is, I think not. I came reluctantly; and though my aunt is kind, I—”

Here Margaret stopped, afraid of saying too much; and Gordon Evrington went away mystified; but determined to see more of one who came nearer to his fancy-portrait of what a maiden of seventeen should be, than the more fashionable young ladies angling so openly for the hand of the clever physician.

Mrs. Laurence, who saw them meet, asked a few questions in her brisk fashion; then, in the important business of going with her daughters to the dentist, appeared to forget Margaret till both were dressed for dinner on the following day, and met on the stairs just as the first guests arrived.

A swift scrutiny may have shown her that the embroidered muslin was not as fresh as it had been, but she made no remark; and by the aid of a good-natured housemaid, who ironed it out, it even passed muster once again; but this third time of wearing was at a juvenile party, and Margaret, whose gaiety and good-nature caused her to be much in request, came home with her once immaculate skirts so smudged and so soiled by the sticky caresses of some of her small admirers, that nothing but the labors of the laundress could renovate it.

And Mrs. Laurence had issued cards for a soiree; Dr. Evrington would be amongst the guests, and Margaret, alas! would have to stay up-stairs, to miss the pleasant chat he had warned her, during a chance rencontre in the street, that he was looking forward to.

If her lips were tremulous that day, and she found it difficult to appear in her usual spirits, no one appeared to notice it. Mademoiselle was suffering with tooth-ache, and, in the hurry and bustle of preparing for so large a party, no one appeared to see that Mrs. Laurence’s pretty niece shut herself in her room early in the afternoon, and had not emerged from it when the guests began to arrive.

It was verging on ten o’clock when Margaret’s door was thrown open and Mrs. Laurence came in. The room was dark, but crouching at the window she saw a little figure, and hurried toward it.

“Why, what does this mean, child? Are you ill? No, your skin is not feverish. Have you had bad news from home? But of course not! You would have told me directly. Then why are you sitting here in this melancholy fashion? I insist on knowing.”

“I should like to go home, aunt Bessie.”

“For what reason? Be frank, and tell me. What, silent? I did not know one of your dear mother’s children could be sullen. However, I can not–will not–leave you moping here.” And Mrs. Laurence rang imperatively for lights. “Now, dress yourself, Margaret, and come down with me.”

“It is impossible, madam, for”– the truth was told with proud reluctance “for I have nothing to wear.”

“Nothing! Did you not have the gowns made up that I sent you? Was there not time? You should have told me so as soon as you came. I am surprised that, your mother–”

“Do not blame her!” cried Margaret. “She would have sold her lace to fit me out respectably, but how could I let her?”

“How, indeed, poor soul! But surely with what I sent you, child, you ought to have done very well. Where are those dresses? Of course you brought them with you unmade? No! What is the meaning of this? Were you too proud to accept my gifts, or was your vanity wounded by their simplicity? You do not reply. You are beginning to make me feel ashamed of you! How can you display such temper such ingratitude? I bought for you, as I would for my own daughters, and–”

But now Margaret broke in impetuously:

“And would you have had me appear before your guests to-night in coarse serge, or a calico gown?”

“What are you saying?” exclaimed her aunt, looking positively startled. “I begin to think there has been some mistake. I purchased for you a cream surah and pale blue nun’s veiling to be made up for evening wear, a dinner-dress of biscuit cashmere, and a pretty stripe for walking. Did you not receive them?”

Then Margaret described the contents of the package she had received, and Mrs. Laurence threw herself into a chair, and laughed long and heartily.

“My dear, you must forgive me,” she said, when she could speak, “for it is not I who have been in fault, but the shopman, who has evidently put the wrong addresses on the parcels intrusted to him to dispatch. When I was shopping I bought that serge, etc., for a young girl for whom I had procured a situation. I knew she was flighty and had a bad mother, who would have spent the sum I promised for her outfit in useless finery; so I very prudently, as I thought, laid it out myself. And now I can account for the rapturous tone of the letter of thanks I have received, and the assurance that the lovely things that I have sent Sarah Dobbs will make quite a lady of her. What must her mistress have thought of me? And you too, poor child! Now I can understand why you have shrunk from me and not seemed happy here.”

Margaret spent the rest of that evening in her room, but it was in a very different state of mind. She had no more reservations from Aunt Bessie, and not only stayed willingly at Brighton till Mrs. Laurence moved to Torquay, but accompanied her thither.

Only for a brief term, however. Dr. Evrington has won from her a promise to be his, and ere long he will seek his bride at the house of her father, Aunt Bessie having promised, ‘midst laughter and tears, to give her “something suitable,” both for her dowry and her trousseau.

The Daily Republican [Monongahela PA] 19 June 1889: p. 2

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  One does so like a happy ending, especially when a young woman has not only been bitterly disappointed in the contents of a parcel, but finds the weight of her brothers’ fortunes resting squarely on her embroidered-muslin-clad shoulders.

The contrast of dress materials for “lady” and “servant” is a sobering one. Still, one fears for the flighty Sarah Dobbs in that pretty stripe for walking….

 

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

How to Decorate Your Piano: 1900

Applied Embroidery.

Ever since it has been wisely recognized that the right position for a cottage piano is not to be pushed back against the wall, but to stand well out into the room, the question of how to turn its somewhat uncompromising expanse of back to decorative account has been one for careful consideration. Sometimes the solution is productive of extremely pleasing results, sometimes very much the reverse. Flimsy “dust trap” draperies and unaccountable devices in Japanese fans are, happily, for the most part obsolete expedients nowadays, and it has come to be pretty generally acknowledged that the back of a piano is a feature in the decoration of a room to be treated seriously. When it serves the purpose of a screen, breaking up the formal arrangement of the chairs and sofas and creating a pleasant little alcove or fireside corner, no method is more satisfactory than to cover it, screenwise, with an effective panel of embroidery. The needlework should harmonize in character with the pretty, flowered and beribboned chintzes which now lend their charm to many a drawing room or boudoir.

When a piano is constantly left open, it is a capital plan to protect the keys by covering them with a narrow strip of silk. This gives an opportunity for charming needlework decoration after the manner indicated in the group of sketches. Suppose the keyboard cover to be of white or pale tinted satin, the branches of almond blossom should be in fine ribbon work and the scroll, with its motto, “Music, When Soft Voices Die, Vibrates In the Memory,” outlined in gold or silver thread. There should be a lining of thinly quilted silk, pink or green, which may be delicately perfumed with violets, lemon verbena or any other favorite sachet powder.

The Jersey City [NJ] News 8 September 1900: p. 7

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  One can perhaps justify the draping of the grand piano in an elaborately embroidered shawl, if only to prevent the inevitable sprawling chanteuses from scratching the varnish. However, Mrs Daffodil draws the line at the notion of upholstering the back of the piano, no matter how seriously one wishes to treat the instrument. Such embroideries are impossible to dust and even more impossible to wash, not to mention their muffling effect on the instrument itself. “Music, when soft voices die–full stop.” about sums it up. She also points out that the obvious: if the instrument is actually being used, there is no need to protect the keys with superfluous fancy-work.

Something new in needlework is a piano key covering, designed to lay over the keys when closed and on the rack when open. It is an excuse for embroidery, as it is made of light cloth, upon which is worked some pattern emblematic of music. It cannot be said to fill a long-felt want, but is as useful and as much needed as the embroidered bell pull or the decorated shirtbox which long suffering masculines are now asked to accept on gift days.

The Jersey City [NJ] News 3 February 1893: p. 3

 

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.